What Cyril calls "Divine," Ruffinus calls "Inspired," as appears from a citation in Whitby (as above):

"What are the volumes of the Old and New Testament, which, according to the tradition of the ancients, are believed to be inspired by the Holy Ghost, and delivered to the Churches of Christ, it seems convenient here evidently to declare, as we have received them from the monuments of the Fathers;" and having reckoned up the books of the Old Testament, proceeding to the books of the New Testament, he adds: "These are the books which the Fathers comprised in the canon; these things are delivered to us by the Fathers."

In like manner, Whitaker proves the Divine authority of the New Testament (p. 527):

"Augustine, in the last chapter of his first book upon the consent of the Evangelists, says expressly, that Christ wrote all those things which the Apostles and Evangelists wrote; because the Apostles were only the hands, but Christ the head. Now the hands write nothing but as the head thinks and dictates. Therefore, says he, we should receive their books with the same reverence as if Christ had written them with His own hands, and we had seen Him writing them. His words are as follow: Through that

human nature which He assumed, He is the head of all His disciples, as members of His body. When, therefore, they wrote what He showed and spoke to them, we must by no means say that He Himself did not write, since His members did that which they knew by the influence of their head. For whatever He willed that we should read concerning His deeds or words, He commanded them as His hands to write. He that understands this harmonious unity, this ministry of the members in divers offices, but agreeing under one head together, will receive what he reads in the Gospel narratives of Christ's disciples no otherwise than as if he saw the very hand of the Lord, which was a part of His proper natural body, engaged in writing it.' Thus Augustine. Irenæus also, lib. iii. c. 1, says, that 'the Gospel is delivered in the Scriptures by the will of God:' and Athanasius, in his epistle to Liberius, speaking of Christ, says, 'He composed both the Old Testament and the New.' Finally, Gregory, in the fourth book of his Epistles, Epistle 84, says, 'That the Scripture is the Epistle of God the Creator to His creature;' which assertion is also in some places made by Augustine and Chrysostome. Now, then, who dares to forge letters in a prince's name? Much less would the Apostles or prophets have dared

to do so in the name of God. From these considerations, it is manifest that all the books of the Old and New Testaments were written not merely by the will and command, but under the very dictation of Christ; nor yet merely occasionally, or under the suggestion of some slight circumstance, but with the deliberate purpose of serving the Church in all ages."

Any one who desires to see more testimonies from the Fathers to the same purpose will find them in Cosin's "Scholastical History of the Canon." But what has been cited is sufficient to show the nature of the authority ascribed to canonical Scripture by the early Christian Church. In the statements of the Fathers there is nothing indefinite or ambiguous. All canonical Scripture is inspired, and because inspired, therefore canonical. The authority ascribed is not an authority in some shape or other, but accurately defined as to its source, its nature, and its extent, as emanating from the will of God, written by men whom He inspired, and extending to all the canonical books; so that they are to be regarded with the same reverence as if men had seen Christ write them with His own hands. In none of these statements is there any thing resembling the distinction made by Mr. Stephen between Scripture and the Word of God. Of

this distinction the Fathers knew nothing. To them all Holy Scripture is the written Word of God.

11. This doctrine of the Fathers, that the canonical books were inspired, the Apocryphal uninspired, and therefore insufficient to prove doctrine, continued through the middle ages to that of the Reformation, as shown at large by Bishop Cosin. To follow him in his proof would here be out of place; one or two specimens may suffice. In section cviii. he cites Alcuin, the great ornament of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as calling the canonical books "The testimonies of the prophets," and rejecting the Apocrypha, because "they were not written in the time of the prophets, but in the time of the priests only, under Simon and Ptolemy." In sections cxxxiv. v. he refers to "the Ordinary Gloss," begun in the ninth century, but which, in the thirteenth century, "was, with a general consent and applause of all the pastors and doctors in the Western Church, received as a work of special use and benefit for the better knowledge and understanding of the Holy Scriptures." From this Gloss he cites these words: "The canonical books are distinguished from those which be not canonical, and as great a difference made between these two as between that which is certain and

that which is doubtful; for the canonical were written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, but who were the authors of the other, or at what time they were written, no man can tell." In section clxxii. he cites the words of Erasmus: "The canonical Scriptures are so called, which, without any controversy, all men acknowledge to have been written by the inspiration of God."

12. Such was the doctrine which the Reformers found when they began their work. Did they depart from it? or did they lower that which was an article of faith into a mere matter of opinion?

And here we must notice the admission of Mr. Stephen himself, and the mode in which he endeavours to neutralize it. "I admit," says he, page 114, 115, "that in general terms the divines of that age, like the divines of this age, and like the divines of the intermediate age, did profess their belief, not only in the inspiration, but in the infallibility of the Bible. But upon this subject I must make two observations. First, there is a broad distinction between an opinion and a doctrine. The infallibility of Scripture may have been their opinion, but it was not their doctrine. It was the inference which they drew from the doctrine that the Bible contains all