It will be observed that in some of these instances the Canons are spoken of in the plural, when the particular infraction which occasions their mention relates only to one of them. This shows they were collected into a code, if, indeed, that need be proved; for, in truth, that various Canons should exist, and be in force, and yet not be put together, is just as unlikely as that no collection should be made of the statutes passed in a session of Parliament.

With this historical information about the existence, authority, and subject-matter of certain Canons in the Church from time immemorial, we should come to many anti-Protestant conclusions, even if the particular code we possess turned out to have no intrinsic authority. And now let us see how the matter stands on this point as regards this code of eighty-five Canons.

5.

2. If this Collection existed _as_ a Collection in the time of the above writers and Councils, then, considering they allude to nearly half its Canons, and that no Canons are anywhere producible which are not in it, and that they do seem to allude to a Collection, and that no other Collection is producible, we certainly could not avoid the conclusion that they referred to _it_, and that, therefore, in quoting parts of it they sanction the whole. If no book is to be accounted genuine except such parts of it as happen to be expressly cited by other writers,--if it may not be regarded as a whole, and what is actually cited made to bear up and carry with it what is not cited,--no ancient book extant can be proved to be genuine. We believe Virgil's aeneid to be Virgil's, because we know he wrote an aeneid, and because particular passages which we find in it, and in no other book, are contained, under the name of Virgil, in subsequent writers or in criticisms, or in accounts of it. We do not divide it into rhapsodies, _because_ it only exists in fragments in the testimony of later literature. For the same reason, if the Canons before us can be shown to have existed as one book in Athanasius's time, it is natural to conceive that they are the very book to which he and others refer. All depends on this. If the Collection was made after his time, of course he referred to some other; but if it existed in his time, it is more natural to suppose that there was one Collection than two distinct ones, so similar, especially since history is silent about there being two.

However, I conceive it is not worth while to insist upon so early a formation of the existing Collection. Whether it existed in Athanasius's time, or was formed afterwards, and formed by friend or foe, heretic or Catholic, seems to me immaterial, as I shall by-and-by show. First, however, I will state, as candidly as I can, the arguments for and against its antiquity _as_ a Collection.

Now there can be no doubt that the early Canons were formed into one body; moreover, certain early writers speak of them under the name of "the Apostles' Canons," and "Apostolical Canons." So far I have already said. Now, certain collectors of Canons, of A.D. (more or less) 550, and they no common authorities, also speak of "the Apostolical Canons," and incorporate them into their own larger collections; and these which they speak of are the very body of Canons which we now possess under the name. We know it, for the digest of these collectors is preserved. No reason can be assigned why they should not be speaking of the _same_ Collection which Gregory Nyssen and Amphilochius speak of, who lived a century and a half before them; no reason, again, why Nyssen and Amphilochius should not mean the same as Athanasius and Julius, who lived fifty to seventy years earlier than themselves. The writers of A.D. 550 might be just as certain that they and St. Athanasius quoted the same work, as we, at this day, that our copy of it is the same as Beveridge's, Pearson's, or Ussher's.

The authorities at the specified date (A.D. 550) are three--Dionysius Exiguus, John of Antioch, patriarch of Constantinople, and the Emperor Justinian. The learning of Justinian is well known, not to mention that he speaks the opinion of the ecclesiastical lawyers of his age. As to John of Antioch and Dionysius, since their names are not so familiar to most of us, it may be advisable to say thus much--that John had been a lawyer, and was well versed both in civil and ecclesiastical matters,--hence he has the title of Scholasticus; while Dionysius is the framer of the Christian era, as we still reckon it. They both made Collections of the Canons of the Church, the latter in Latin, and they both include the Apostolical Canons, as we have them, in their editions; with this difference, however (which does not at present concern us), that Dionysius published but the first fifty, while John of Antioch enumerates the whole eighty-five.

Such is the main argument for the existence of our Collection at the end of the third century; viz., that, whereas _a_ Collection of Apostolic Canons is acknowledged at that date, _this_ Collection is acknowledged by competent authorities to be that Apostolic record at the end of the fifth. However, when we inspect the language which Dionysius uses concerning them, in his prefatory epistle, we shall find something which requires explanation. His words are these, addressed to Stephen, bishop of Salona:--"We have, in the first place, translated from the Greek what are called the Canons of the Apostles; _which, as we wish to apprise your holiness, have not gained an easy credit from very many persons_.

At the same time, some of the decrees of the [Roman] pontiffs, at a later date, seem to be taken from these very Canons." Here Dionysius must only mean, that they were not received as Apostolic; for that they were received, or at least nearly half of them, is, as I have said, an historical fact, whatever becomes of the Collection as a Collection. He must mean that a claim had been advanced that they were to be received as part of the apostolic _depositum_; and he must be denying that they had more than _ecclesiastical_ authority. The distinction between divine and ecclesiastical injunctions requires little explanation: the latter are imposed by the Church for the sake of decency and order, as a matter of expedience, safety, propriety, or piety. Such is the rule among ourselves, that dissenting teachers conforming must remain silent three years before they can be ordained; or that a certain form of prayer should be prescribed for universal use in public service. On the other hand, the appointment of the Sacraments is apostolic and divine. So, again, that no one can be a bishop unless consecrated by a bishop, is apostolic; that three bishops are necessary in consecration, is ecclesiastical; and, though ordinarily an imperative rule, yet, under circumstances, admits of dispensation. Or again, it has, for instance, in this day been debated whether the sanctification of the Lord's-day is a divine or an ecclesiastical appointment. Dionysius, then, in the above extract, means nothing more than to deny that the Apostles enacted these Canons; or, again, that they enacted them _as_ Apostles; and he goes on to say that the Popes had acknowledged the _ecclesiastical_ authority of some of them by embodying them in their decrees. At the same time, his language certainly seems to show as much as this, and it is confirmed by that of other writers, that the Latin Church, though using them separately as authority, did not receive them as a Collection with the implicit deference which they met with in the East; indeed, the last thirty-five, though two of them were cited at Nicaea, and one at Constantinople, A.D. 394, seem to have been in inferior account. The Canons of the General Councils took their place, and the Decrees of the Popes.

6.

This, then, seems to be the state of the case as regards the Collection or Edition of Canons, whether fifty or eighty-five, which is under consideration. Speaking, not of the Canons themselves, but of this particular edition of them, I thus conclude about it--that, whether it was made at the end of the third century, or later, there is no sufficient proof that it was strictly of authority; but that it is not very material that it should be proved to be of authority, nay, or even to have been made in early times. Give us the Canons themselves, and we shall be able to prove the point for which I am adducing them, even though they were not at first formed into a collection. They are, one by one, witnesses to us of a state of things.

Indeed, it must be confessed, that probability is against this Collection having ever been regarded as an authority by the ancient Church. It was an _anonymous_ Collection; and, as being anonymous, seemed to have no claim upon Christians. They would consider that a collection or body of Canons could only be imposed by a _Council_; and since the Council could not be produced which imposed this in particular, they had no reason to admit it. They might have been in the practice of acting upon this Canon, and that, and the third, and so on to the eighty-fifth, from time immemorial, and that as Canons, not as mere customs, and might confess the obligation of each: and yet might say, "We never looked upon them as a _code_," which should be something complete and limited to itself. The true sanction of each was the immemorial observance of each, not its place in the Collection, which implied a competent framer. Moreover, in proportion as General Councils were held, and enacted Canons, so did the vague title of mere usage, without definite sanction, become less influential, and the ancient Canons fell into disregard. And what made this still more natural was the circumstance that the Nicene Council did re-enact a considerable number of those which it found existing. It substituted then a definite authority, which, in after ages, would be much more intelligible than what would have by that time become a mere matter of obscure antiquity.

Nor did it tend to restore their authority, when their advocates, feeling the difficulty of their case, referred the Collection to the Apostles themselves: first, because this assertion could not be maintained; next, because, if it could, it would have seemingly deprived the Church of the privilege of making Canons. It would have made those usages divine which had ever been accounted only ecclesiastical. It would have raised the question whether, under such circumstances, the Church had more right to add to the code of really Apostolic Canons than to Scripture; discipline, as well as doctrine, would have been given by direct revelation, and have been included in the fundamentals of religion.

If, however, all this be so, it follows that we are not at liberty to argue, from one part of this Collection having been received, that therefore every other was also; as if it were one authoritative work. No number of individual Canons being proved to be of the first age will tend to prove that the remainder are of the same. It is true; and I do not think it worth while to contest the point. For argument-sake I will grant that the bond, which ties them into one, is not of the most trustworthy and authoritative description, and will proceed to show that even those Canons which are not formally quoted by early writers ought to be received as the rules of the Ante-Nicene Church, independently of their being found in one compilation.

7.

3. I have already said that nearly half of the Canons, as they stand in the Collection, are quoted as Canons by early writers, and thus placed beyond all question, as remains of the Ante-Nicene period: the following arguments may be offered in behalf of the rest:--

(1) They are otherwise known to express _usages_ or _opinions_ of the Ante-Nicene centuries. The simple question is, whether they had been reflected on, recognized, converted into principles, enacted, obeyed; whether they were the unconscious and unanimous result of the one Christian spirit[374] in every place, or were formal determinations from authority claiming obedience. This being the case, there is very little worth disputing about; for (whether we regard them as being religious practices or as religious antiquities) if uniform custom was in favour of them, it does not matter whether they were enacted or not. If they were not, their universal observance is a still greater evidence of their extreme antiquity, which, in that case, can be hardly short of the Apostolic age; and we shall refer to them in the existing Collection, merely for the sake of convenience, as being brought together in a short compass.

Nay, a still more serious conclusion will follow, from supposing them not to be enactments--much more serious than any I am disposed to draw.

If it be maintained that these observances, though such, did not arise from injunctions on the part of the Church, then, it might be argued, the Church has no power over them. As not having imposed, she cannot abrogate, suspend, or modify them. They must be referred to a higher source, even to the inspired Apostles; and their authority is not ecclesiastical, but divine. We are almost forced, then, to consider them as enactments, even when they are not recognized by ancient writers as such, lest we should increase the authority of some of them more than seems consistent with their subject-matter.

Again, if such Canons as are not appealed to by ancient writers are nevertheless allowed to have been really enacted, on the ground of our finding historically that usage corresponds to them; it may so be that others, about which the usage is not so clearly known, are real Canons also. There is a _chance_ of their being genuine; for why, in drawing the line, should we decide by the mere accident of the usage admitting or not admitting of clear historical proof?

(2) Again, all these Canons, or at least the first fifty, are composed in uniform style; there is no reason, as far as the internal evidence goes, why one should be more primitive than another, and many, we know, were certainly in force as Canons from the earliest times.

(3) This argument becomes much more cogent when we consider _what_ that style is. It carries with it evident marks of primitive simplicity, some of which I shall instance. The first remark which would be made on reading them relates to their brevity, the breadth of the rules which they lay down, and their plain and unartificial mode of stating them. An instance of this, among others which might be taken, is supplied by a comparison of the 7th of them with one of a number of Canons passed at Antioch by a Council held A. D. 341, and apparently using the Apostolical Canons as a basis for its own. The following, read with the words in brackets, agrees, with but slight exceptions, with the Antiochene Canon, and, without them, with the Apostolical:--

"All who come [to church] and hear the [holy] Scriptures read, but do not remain to prayer [with the people,] and [refuse] the holy communion [of the Eucharist, these] must be put out of the Church, as disorderly, [until, by confession, and by showing fruits of penitence, and by entreaty, they are able to gain forgiveness."]

(4) Now this contrast, if pursued, will serve to illustrate the antiquity of the Apostolical Canons in several ways, besides the evidence deducible from the simplicity of their structure. Thus the word "metropolitan" is introduced into the thirty-fifth Canon of Antioch; no such word occurs in the Apostolical Canon from which it is apparently formed. There it is simply said, "the principal bishop;" or, literally, the primus. This accords with the historical fact, that the word metropolitan was not introduced till the fourth century. The same remark might be made on the word "province," which occurs in the Canon of Antioch, not in the other. This contrast is strikingly brought out in two other Canons, which correspond in the two Collections. Both treat of the possessions of the Church; but the Apostolical Canon says simply, "the interests of the Church," "the goods of the Church;" but the Antiochene, composed after Christianity had been acknowledged by the civil power, speaks of "the revenue of the Church," and "the produce of the land."

Again, when attempts have been made to show that certain words are contained in the Canons before us which were not in use in the Ante-Nicene times, they have in every case failed in the result, which surely may be considered as a positive evidence in favour of their genuineness. For instance, the word "clergy," for the ministerial body, which is found in the Apostolical Canons, is also used by Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian. The word "reader," for an inferior order in the clergy, is used by Cornelius, bishop of Rome; nay, by Justin Martyr.

"Altar," which is used in the Canons, is the only word used for the Lord's table by St. Cyprian, and, before him, by Tertullian and Ignatius. "Sacrifice" and "oblation," for the consecrated elements, found in the Canons, are also found in Clement of Rome, Justin Irenaeus, and Tertullian.

This negative evidence of genuineness extends to other points, and surely is of no inconsiderable weight. We know how difficult it is so to word a forgery as to avoid all detection from incongruities of time, place, and the like. A forgery, indeed, it is hardly possible to suppose this Collection to be, both because great part of it is known to be genuine, and because no assignable object would be answered by it; but let us imagine the compiler hastily took up with erroneous traditions, or recent enactments, and joined them to the rest. Is it possible to conceive, under such circumstances, that there would be no anachronisms or other means of detection? And if there are none such, and much more if the compiler, who lived perhaps as early as the fourth century, found none such (supposing we may assume him willing and qualified to judge of them), nay, if Dionysius Exiguus found none such, what reasons have we for denying that they are the produce of those early times to which they claim to belong? Yet so it is; neither rite, nor heresy, nor observance, nor phrase, is found in them which is foreign to the Ante-Nicene period. Indeed, the only reason one or two persons have thrown suspicion on them has been an unwillingness on their part to admit episcopacy, which the Canons assert; a necessity which led the same parties to deny the genuineness of St. Ignatius' epistles.[375]

(5) I will make one more remark:--First, these Canons come to us, not from Rome, but from the East, and were in a great measure neglected, or at least superseded in the Church, after Constantine's day, especially in the West, where Rome had sway; these do not embody what are called "Romish corruptions." Next, there is ground for suspecting that the Collection or Edition which we have was made by heretics, probably Arians, though they have not meddled with the main contents of them.

Thus, while the neglect of them in later times separates them from Romanism, the assent of the Arians is a second witness, in addition to their recognition by the first centuries, in evidence of their Apostolical origin. Those first centuries observe them; contemporary heretics respect them; only later and corrupt times pass them by. May they not be taken as a fair portrait, as far as they go, of the doctrines and customs of Primitive Christianity?

8.

I do wish out-and-out Protestants would seriously lay to heart where they stand when they would write a history of Christianity. Are there any traces of Luther before Luther? Is there anything to show that what they call the religion of the Bible was ever professed by any persons, Christians, Jews, or heathen? Again, are there any traces in history of a process of change in Christian belief and practice, so serious, or so violent, as to answer to the notion of a great corruption or perversion of the Primitive Religion? Was there ever a time, what was the time, when Christianity was not that which Protestants protest against, as if formal, unspiritual, self-righteous, superstitious, and unevangelic? If that time cannot be pointed out, is not "the Religion of Protestants" a matter, not of past historical fact, but of modern private judgment?

Have they anything to say in defence of their idea of the Christianity of the first centuries, except that that view of it is necessary to their being Protestants. "Christians," they seem to say, "_must_ have been in those early times different from what the record of those times shows them to have been, and they must, as time went on, have fallen from that faith and that worship which they had at first, though history is quite silent on the subject, _or else_ Protestantism, which is the apple of our eye, is not true. We are driven to hypothetical facts, or else we cannot reconcile with each other phenomena so discordant as those which are presented by ancient times and our own. We claim to substitute _a priori_ reasoning for historical investigation, by the right of self-defence and the duty of self-preservation."

I have urged this point in various ways, and now I am showing the light which the Canons of the Apostles throw upon it. There is no reasonable doubt that they represent to us, on the whole, and as far as they go, the outward face of Christianity in the first centuries;--now will the Protestant venture to say that he recognizes in it any likeness of his own Religion? First, let him consider what is conveyed in the very idea of Ecclesiastical Canons? This: that Christians could not worship according to their fancy, but must think and pray by rule, by a set of rules issuing from a body of men, the Bishops, over whom the laity had no power whatever. If any men at any time have been priest-ridden, such was the condition of those early Christians. And then again, what becomes of the Protestant's watchword, "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," if a set of Canons might lawfully be placed upon their shoulders, as if a second rule of faith, to the utter exclusion of all free-and-easy religion? and what room was there for private judgment, if they had to obey the bidding of certain fallible men? and what is to be done with the great principle, "Unity, not Uniformity," if Canons are to be recognized, which command uniformity as well as unity?

So much at first sight; but when we go on to examine what these Canons actually contain, their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of Protestantism becomes still more patent. I will set down some instances in proof of this. Thus, we gather from the Canons the following facts about Primitive Christianity:--viz., that,

1. There was a hierarchy of ordained ministers, consisting of the three orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.

2. Their names were entered on a formal roll or catalogue.

3. There were inferior orders, such as readers and chanters.

4. Those who had entered into the sacred orders might not afterwards marry.

5. There were local dioceses, each ruled by a Bishop.

6. To him and him only was committed the care of souls in his diocese.

7. Each Bishop confined himself to his own diocese.

8. No secular influence was allowed to interfere with the appointment of Bishops.

9. The Bishops formed one legislative body, and met in Council twice a year, for the consideration of dogmatic questions and points in controversy.

10. One of them had the precedence over the rest, and took the lead; and, as the priests and people in each diocese obeyed their Bishop, so in more general matters the Bishops deferred to their Primus.

11. Easter and Pentecost were great feasts, and certain other days feasts also. There was a Lent Fast; also a Fast on Easter Eve; and on Wednesdays and Fridays.

12. The state of celibacy was recognized.

13. Places of worship were holy.

14. There was in their churches an altar, and an altar service.

15. There was a sacrifice in their worship, of which the materials were bread and wine.

16. There were oblations also of fruits of the earth, in connection with the sacrifice.

17. There were gold and silver vessels in the rite, and these were consecrated.