Nor, again, has the group of Cath. Epp. been of the same com- pass at all times or in all parts of the Church. The first of the seven to be generally received seem to have been I P and 1 Jn. The other five were accepted later, and at different times, Ja apparently at a comparatively early period. Chrysostora'8 Si/nopsis mentions only three. Juniiius Africanus places 1 P and I Jn by themselves, and explains that very many add (adjungunt qnampliirimt) the remaining five. Amphilocbius (Jainb. ad Seleucum) notices that some say seven Cath. Epp. are to be received, others only three, viz. one of James, one of Peter, one of John. Cassiodorus (De Iiutit. div. lib. xiv.) men- tions only the Epistola Petri ad GerUes (if the reading is correct), Jacobi, Jokannis ad Parthos. But it may be said that, in the Eastern Church at least, by the end of the 3rd or the beginning of the 4th cent, the group included the whole seven. In Eusehius {UE ii. 23) they appear as seven, and the terms used of them imply that they had a recognised place, though not all quite the same place, iji the Church. The Syrian Church, on the other hand, occupied a peculiar position in relation to these Epp. In that (;hurch the group consisted only of three, 1 P, 1 Jn, and Ja. The remaining four formed no part of its Canon.
The history of the term ' Catholic ' is of interest. It is a term used frequently by the Fathers ; and while it is employed by them of writings outside tlie NT Canon, it seems never to be applied by them to any of the NT books but these seven— neither to any of the Pauline Epp. nor to the Ep. to the Hebrews. For its application to these seven we are indebted to the Church of the East. It was not limited to these, however, in the usage of the great theologians of the East. Clement of Alex- andria (Strom, iv. 15), e.g., employed it of the letter of the Church of Jerus. given in Ac 15. It was aj)plied by Origen {Contra Celsum, i. 63) to the Ep. of Barnabas. It was even used to describe a heretical comjiosition. For Eusebius (HE iv. 23) speaks of an Lj). written by Themison, who appears to have been a disciple of Montanus, as a ' certain Catholic Epistle.' But it was applied to certain members of our group at an early period. Origen (Selecta in J'.<!alin., in Ps. iii. c. 3, 7 ; Comm. in Jonnn. vi. c. 18) speaks of things said by Peter ' in the Catholic Epi.stle ' ; of ' the Catholic Epistle of John ' (Comm. in Mutt. xvii. c. 19) ; and of the
statement regarding the angels which 'Jude the apostle ' makes 'in the Catholic Epistle ' ( Comm. in Ep. ad Rom. B. v. t. iv., in the Latin tr.). Dionysius, in like manner, speaks of ' the son of Zebedee, the brother of James,' and ' the Catholic Epistle which bears his name' (Euseb. UE vii. 25). And by the 4th cent, it had come to be a designation of the group of seven. Eusebius, who reports (BE vi. 14) Clement of Alexandria to have included ' Jude and the other Catholic Epistles ' in the accounts of the canonical writings which he gave in his Hypoti/puses, speaks himself of ' James, who is said to have written the first of the Catholic Epistles,' and of the Ep. of Jude as one which ' not many indeed of the ancients have men- tioned,' but which ' is also one of the seven called Catholic Epistles' (HE ii. 23). So the Canon of Athanasius names the iiriffToXal KaOo\iKai icaXoi;- /iecat Tutv airoaTb\ujv iirri ; the Canon of the Laodicene Council enumerates incrroXal KaSoXtKal iwri ; and the Canons of Cyril of Jerusalem and Epiphaniua speak of them in terms indicating that they were seven in nvimber, bearing the common title of Catholic.
In the Western Church these Epp. seem to have been later in receiving a general desi-jnation, and the title by which they came to be designated was a different one. The term Catholic is indeed applied to them. Jerome (De vir. ill. c. 1), e.g., says of Simon Peter that he wrote two Epistles QucB catholiccB nom,inantur ; of James (»6. c. 2), that ne wrote unam tantum . . . e}n.<itolam, quce de septem catholicis est ; and of ' Jude the brother of James' (ib. c. 4), that he left a ' small Epistle' qua de catholicis est. But elsewhere (Prolog. 7. Epist. Canon.) he writes of the epistolnrum septem, qua eanonic(e nuncupantur. And this term canonica seems practically to have taken the place of CatholiicE in the Latin Church as the common designation of the seven. At what time, however, this came to be the case, is not quite certain. Junilius Africanus (c. A.D. 550) employs it. He speaks of 1 P and 1 Jn as forming part of the seventeen libri canonici which make the species (Scripturw), dealing de simplici doctrina as distin- guished from history, prophecy, and the species proverbialis. To this he adds the statement — adjungunt quamplurimi quinque alias qu» Aposto- lorum CanoniccB nuncupantur; id est; Jacobi L, Petri secundam, Judee unam, Johannis II. [De part, divin. legis. i. 2). Cassiodorus, too, employs it in the following statement about Clement — in epistolis autem canonicis Clemens Alexandrinus presbyter, qui et Stromateus dicitur, id est in Epistola S. Petri prima et secunda, et Jacobi qua'dam Attico sermone declaravit (De inst. div. lilt. c. 8). Hence it is thought that by the 6th cent, this term Canonicce was the accepted designa- tion of the group in the Western Church. Yet Cassiodorus uses the term also of the Apostolic Epistles as a whole. And how it happened that this title took the place of Cntholira; in one half of the Christian communion, is dilhcult to explain. It is supposed by some to have been due to mere mistake. ' By a singular error,' it is said, 'the group of letters was called in the later Western Cliurcn 'canonical' (ranonicw) in place of 'catholic' (Westcott, The Epistles of St. John, p. xxix). Others, e.g., Bleek, think that it 'originated in the belief that by Catholic as applied to the.se Epistles in the Greek Church was meant universally recog- nised and received by the Church, witliout reference to any distinction between them and the Pauline Epistles' (Introd. to NT, ii. p. 135, Clark's tr.). Other explanations, some of them of a fanciful kind, liave been proposed ; as, e.g., by Liicke in SK, 1836, iii. pn. 643-65'J.