ART. IV. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE.

SIXTH ARTICLE OF THE THIRTY-NINE.

Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.

OLY Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever

HOLY container may proved thereby, is not to be required of any

man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

Genesis,

OF THE NAMES AND NUMBER OF THE CANONICAL BOOKS.

Exodus,

Leviticus,

Numbers,

Deuteronomy,

Joshua,

The First Book of Chronicles,
The Second Book of Chronicles,
The First Book of Esdras,
The Second Book of Esdras,
The Book of Esther,

The Book of Job,

The Psalms,

The Proverbs,

Ecclesiastes or Preacher,

Cantica, or Songs of Solomon,

Twelve Prophets the less.

Four Prophets the greater,

And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:

The Third Book of Esdras,

The Fourth Book of Esdras,

The Book of Tobias,

The Book of Judith,

The rest of the Book of Esther,

The Book of Wisdom,

Jesus the Son of Sirach,

Baruch the Prophet,

The Song of the Three Children,

The Story of Susanna,
Of Bel and the Dragon,

The Prayer of Manasses,

The First Book of Maccabees,

The Second Book of Maccabees.

All the Books of the New Testament, as they are commonly received, we do receive, and account them Canonical.

As the object of this Paper will be, to give an historical sketch of the views of the English Reformers, and of our own Church, respecting the Canon of Scripture, it will be important for us to quote the first Article of the English Church, relativc to this Canon, and which was published during the reign of Edward VI. It is as follows:

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"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is neither read therein, nor may be proved thereby, although it may be sometimes received of the Faithful, as godly and profitable for an order and comeliness, yet no man ought to be constrained to believe it, as an Article of Faith, or reputed requisite to the necessity of salvation."

This Article resembles, it will be perceived, the first paragraph of our present Sixth Article; but it leaves out, entirely, lists of canonical books. In it the earlier English Reformers seem to have taken for granted, what the Scriptures are, as though it were not necessary, in their day, to be particular in defining what books should be embraced under the specific term of Holy Writ. The stress of their Article lay rather upon the use and application of Scripture, as to the extent and boundaries of doctrine.

But before the Articles were reviewed, in 1562, it became a point of very serious deliberation, what books are to be considered sources of such doctrine, and what are not to be considered such. The Council of Trent, at its fourth Session, in 1546, had issued a decree, which required the faithful to esteem as Scripture, not only the books of the Old Testament, "which are generally acknowledged by Christendom, but many which a large portion of Christendom rejected. So the very constituent elements of Scripture came to be matters of controversy, as well as the legitimate bearings of Scripture; and the method of determining its signification, when constructions are difficult, doubtful, or opposite. Probably, in 1552, there had been no great solicitude awakened about the constituency of Holy Scripture; for the Puritans had not then begun to raise those objections, and make those troubles about the distinction between canonical and apocryphal writings, which they afterwards did, and the Church of our Reformers was not as much disturbed by the Trentine list of canonical books, as might have been expected. We take this view of the matter, because our readers may be surprised to learn, how favorably such a Reformer as old Miles Coverdale, (who in some respects was so pragmatical,) how very favorably he received the Apocrypha. His title to the Apocrypha, in his translation of the Scriptures, is as follows:-"The books and treatises which, among the Fathers of old, are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible; neither are they found in the Canon of the Hebrew." It will be seen, that in a free sense, he does not hesitate to call them a part of the Bible. And he pursues this use of language; for, in his

Address to the Reader, which follows the title just given, he styles the books of the Apocrypha, books of Scripture, or of the Bible, no less than five times over; and thus testifies to their value and reputation. "I have not gathered them together, to the intent I would have them despised or little set by; or that I should think them false, for I am not able to prove it." This will answer pretty well for a Puritan, whose shoulders became so uneasy under a Bishop's robes, that you might have suspected him of wearing Hercules' shirt of fire. We shall not, therefore, think it necessary to be more particular, than to say in general terms, that the free sense in which Coverdale calls the Apocrypha Scripture, is a practice in which he was imitated by his fellow-Reformers. For example, we find traces of it in the works of Bishop Jewell, and in the Homilies of our Church.*

But in 1562, there were some puffs of those breezes beginning to blow, which became at length as furious as the blasts of Eolus against the Trojan fleet. The reviewers of the PrayerBook scented the coming gale, and so prepared their Church for it, by defining her position upon the great questions,—What is Scripture? and, What is not Scripture ? and, How are we to view those Books, which the Church of Rome has endorsed, and which some of the ancient Councils, after the pattern of the Jews themselves, have rejected?,

We say the pattern of the Jews; for we presume it is hardly necessary to remind our readers, that in respect to the New Testament, all Christendom is substantially agreed; as we would to God it were in respect to many other things no difference of any moment having prevailed in it, in reference to the Canon of the Christian Scriptures.† The only controversy, of any serious extent, respects the Old Testament; and this, confessedly, is a subject of far lower consequence, and one where the traditions of the Jewish Church are deserving of reverential deference. We say serious, alluding to the very

* Jewel in Stand. Wks. P. E. Ch. III., p. 262. Instances out of the Homilies, in No. XC. Oxf. Tracts. Bingham's Antiq., 8vo. ed., IX., 93.

+ Bergier, in his Dict. I., 133, says, the Calvinists have denied the Books of James, Jude, and the Apocalypse.

serious and anathematizing earnestness with which the Church of Rome insists upon our acceptance of the Apocrypha; though why she should do so, we are at a loss to conjecture. A Church, which can pronounce a decree of a Pope equal to any authority under Heaven, can hardly want a Bible of any sort; and still less, a Bible made up of books, whose pretensions are contradicted.

Still, with wise forecast concerning coming events, the Reviewers of 1562 endeavored to prepare their Church for conflicts respecting the Canon of Scripture, by saying what it is believed the Primitive Church would now say, if it could utter a living voice, viz., that we may divide the books which claim to be Scripture, into two classes, those of whose canonicity there "was never any doubt in the Church," and those which are esteemed apocryphal or doubtful,-i. e., apocryphal or doubtful, not as having no claim to so high an honor, but as having claims which may be questioned, and which, accordingly, are sufficient to destroy the doctrinal authority of any book, in a predicament so equivocal. Wherefore, at this juncture, our Article was made to go on, and to say not only how Scripture was to be esteemed and treated, but also what was Scripture, in all its genuineness, and also what was Scripture in a lower sense,- -a sense sufficient to save it from abandonment and rejection, but which would deprive it of all pretensions as a basis for doctrine.

The tenor of the Sixth Article, as it now stands, is doubtless familiar to Episcopalians, and also the fact, that it conflicts with Romish dogmatism on the one hand, and Puritanical prejudice on the other. It can now be seen, how it behooves us to sketch, by the light of history, the correctness of the ground our Church has taken ;-in other words, to show that our doctrinal Canon of Scripture is the one which the Primitive Church adopted; and, moreover, that the Primitive Church never scorned and flouted the Apocrypha, as it has been the fashion of modern ages to do.

* Some good people treat the Apocrypha, as Bp. Butler says infidels treat Revelation, as if a doubt implied no evidence. Whereas, he most correctly maintains, that a doubt implies evidence.-Anal. Pt. 2, ch. 6. Or, Vol. I., p. 228, of his Works.

In commencing an inquiry respecting the constitution of the Canon of Scripture, as held by the Primitive Church, we should here remember, that our contest is not with Infidels, who would not believe in any Canon at all. If it were, we might appeal to such an allusion as is found in the Nicene Creed, to show that Scriptures of some sort were common and notorious things, in the age when the Nicene Creed was promulgated. We allude to the expression, "And the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures." Such an incidental and unstudied allusion, on the part of the Nicene Fathers, proves, incontestably, that Scriptures,-whatever those Scriptures might be,—were familiarly acknowledged and appealed to in their early times.*

But our opject is not to make an offset against the Infidel, but against those who acknowledge Sacred Scriptures, as well as we do, yet not the same Canon of them. Our Sixth Article, e. g., lays down the following list, as composing the Canon of the Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc. But the Romish Canon is quite different, and adds the following books to our list, (which, by the way, is the same with that acknowledged by the Jews,) viz., the Book of Tobit, that of Judith, of Wisdom, of Ecclesiasticus, of Baruch, and those of the Maccabees, which are usually bound up with English Bibles,-there being five books of the Maccabees, altogether. While the Puritanical Canon, if there be such a thing, would probably pare ́down the list, which we derive from the Jews, by leaving out such a book as that of Job, or the Canticles of Solomon.†

It may seem singular, and we confess it is, prima facie, a singular fact, that the Church Catholic did not, (unless some records of Councils are lost,) agree upon a list of canonical books, at the earliest date, and never directly in a General

* Lists, according to Tertullian, may have been prepared. Kaye's Tertullian, p. 296, 3d edit. And these lists may be lost. Wordsworth on the Canon, p. 135, 2d edit., English.

The Anabaptists rejected Job; Castalio the Canticles. Rogers on the 39 Art., p. 81, Parker edit. Dr. J. Pye Smith rejected the Canticles. Many Baptists, it is said, now reject, as an authority, the whole of the Old Testament.