Peci4uo /aim. 335 dation for the Primitive Chriflians to fix their Faith upon ? In thofe days Paganifm was firong,and Perfecutions hot, and Divine Cor- dials neceffary and yet the Scripture for want of the Churches Definition,was not of Autho- rity as to the Chriftians then livings T fay, ac- cording to the Popifh Thetis it was not. But to go on : Afterwards about the year of our Lord 368 came the Council of Laodicea,which in the 59th. Canon orders, That no Books fhould be read in theChurch but the Canonical ones of the Old and New Teftament,and enu- merates as Canonical fuch as are received in the Reformed Church, only omitting the Apoea- lypfe : And now had not that Omithon been, and had this Council been a General one, the work had been done. But afterwards in this very Century about the year 398, the third. Council of Carthage in its 47th. Canon reckons up as Canonical, Tobit, Judith, two Boobs of Macchabees, and five Books of Solomon, accoun- ting Wifdom and Ecclefzafticus to be two of them. In this Council Sr. eluftin was prefent, who yet in his Book de Civitate Dei, Lib. 17. cap.2o, faith, That YYi/dom and Ecclefaafticus in the judgment of the more learned were not So/omens, and were chiefly received in the TY -4cru Church ; it feems the Eastern received them not. In the end of the next Century a- bout the year 494, Gelafius Bithop of Rome with feventy Bithops enumerates the fame Books as Canonical which are reckoned fo in the Council of Carthage, fave only that he o- mits
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=