work of St. Paul.” Apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. L. vi. c. xxv. p. 290, 291. Ed. Cantab. 1720.
SERAPION, G. C.[1]“ We receive Peter and the other Apostles, as we receive Christ himself. But as to writings, which falsely bear their names, them we reject; because we are well aware, that we have them not from our ancestors.” Apud Euseb. Hist. Eccles. Lib. vi. c. 12. p. 270.
CENT. IV.
COUNCIL OF LAODICEA, G. C.- About the beginning, or rather, as it is thought, about the middle of the fourth century, was assembled a Council at Laodicea, in Asia Minor, which, in its Canons, having regulated many points of ecclesiastical discipline, and forbidden private psalms to be recited in the Churches, or any books to be read there which are not canonical, but only the canonical books of the Old and New Testament, it proceeds, in its sixtieth and last Canon, to enumerate these books. In the catalogue are included Esther and Ruth, but not Tobit, Judith, Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom, nor the books of the Maccabees. In the New Testament, the canonical books are the four Gospels, the Acts, the seven canonical Epistles, and the fourteen of St. Paul, but not the book of Revelations. Conc. Gen. T. 1. p. 1507.
EUSEBIUS, G. C.-“I therefore deemed it necessary to draw out a list of the Sacred Books, that, as from the tradition of the Church, we distinguish the true and genuine Scriptures, from those which are of doubtful authority, and not admitted into the body of the New Testament, though received by most ecclesiastical writers; we may, by this means, more easily ascertain what are genuine, and mark
- ↑ He was the eighth Bishop of Antioch, and governed that Patriarchal See from 191 to about 213.
