A few years after, the divines of the Conndl of "rent aaaembled, and among the earliest subjects of [lelr deliberation was the Canon of Scripture. " The '.anon of Augustine," says bishop Marsh, ** continued > be the canon at the ruling party. But as there rere not wanting persons, especially among the learn- d, who f^rom time to time recommended the Canon of erome, it was necessary for the Council of Trent to yecide between the contending parties (^Comparative r^iew, p. 97). The Tridentine fiithers had consequent- y a nice and difllcult question to determine. On the ith of April, 1546, all who were present at the fourth lession of the Council of Trent adopted the Canon of Augustine, declaring, " He also is to be anathema who Loes not receive these entire books, with all their parts, is they have been accustomed to be read in the Cath- >lic Church, and are found in the ancient editions of Jie Latin Yulgate, as sacred and canonical, and who knowingly and wilfully despises the aforesaid tradi- tions • . . ." We are informed by Jahn (Jnlroduo- tion) that this decree did not affect the distinction which the learned had always made between the ca- Donical and deutero-canonical books, in proof of which he refers to the various opinions which still prevail in his church on the subject, Bernard Lamy {Apparatut Bibliate, H, 5) denying, and Du Pin (Prolegomena) asserting, that the books of the second canon are of equal authori^ with those of the first. Those who desire further information will find it in the two ac- counts of the controversies which took place at the council on this sufajeot— one from the pen of cardinal Pallavicini, the oCher by &ther Paul Sarpi, the two eminent historians of the council. Professor Alber, to whom we have already referred, having denied that any such distinction as that maintained by his brother professor, Jahn, can lawfully exist among Roman Cath- cAic divines, insists that both canons possess one and the same aathority. The words of Bernard Lamy, however, cited by Jahn, are— "The books of the second canon, idthough united with the Jirst^ are not, how- ever, of the same authority" (Apparent, Bibl. ii, 5, p. 833). Alber endeavors to explain this as meaning only that these books had not the same authority be- fore the Canon of the Council of Trent, and cites a passage from Pallavicini to prove that tiie anathema was ** directed against those Catholics who adopted the views of cardinal Cajetan" (ii, 106). But, however this may be, among other opinions of Luther con- domned by the council was the following : ** That no books should be admitted into the Canon of the Old Testament but those received by the Jews; and that from the New should be excluded the Epistle to the Hebrews, those of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 8 John, Jude, and the Apocalypse." The whole of the books in de- bate, with the exception of Sd and 4th Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasses, are considered as canonical by the Council of Trent. But it must be recollected that the decision of the Council of Trent is one by no means peculiar to this council. The third Council of Car- thage had considered ihe same books canonical. ** The Councfl of Trent," says bishop Marsh, "declared no, other books to be sacred and canonical than such as
.had existed from the earliest ages of Christianity, not only in the Latin version of the Old Testament, but even in the ancient Greek version, which is known by the name of the Septuagint. ... In the manuscripts of the Sept. there is the same intermixture of canoni- cal and apocryphal books as in the manuscripts of the Latin version" [although there are in different man- uscripts variations in the particular arrangement of single books]. ** The Hebrew was inaccessible to the Latin translators in £urope and Africa daring the first three centuries." The ecclesiastical books were gen- erally written within a period which could not have extended to more than two centuries before tlie birth of Christ. In the choice of the places which were as- signed them by the Greek^ Jews resident in Alexan- dria and other parts of Egypt, who probably added these books to the Sept. version according as they be- came gradually approved of, they were directed *^ part- ly by the subjects, partly by their relation to other writings, and partiy by the periods in which the re- corded transactions are supposed to have happened." Their insertion shows how highly they were esteemed by the Greek Jews of Eg3rpt ; but whether even the I^yptian Jews ascribed to them canonical and divine authority it would not be easy to prove (Marshes Com- parative View),
The following were the proceedings of the Anglican Church in reference to this sul^t : In Coverdale*s English translation of the Bible, printed in 1535, the deutero-canonical books were divided frtmi the others and printed separately, with the exception of the book of Baruch, which was not separated fh>m the others in this version until the edition of 1550. They had, how- evei^ been separated in Matthew's Bible in 1537, pre- faced with the words, *Hhe volume of the book called HagioffraphcL," This Bible contained Olivetan's pref- ace, in which these books were spoken of in somewhat disparaging terms. In Cranmer's Bible, published in 15^, the same words and pre&ee were continued ; but in the edition of 1549 the word Hagiographa was changed int% Apocrypha^ which passed through the succeeding editions into King James's Bible. Olive- tan's preface was omitted in the Bishop's Bible in 1568, after the fhmiing of the canon in the Thirty- nine Articles in 1562. In the (Geneva Bible, which was the popular English translation before the present authorized version, and which was published in 1559, these books are printed separately with a preface, in which, although not considered of themselves as suf- ficient to prove any point of Christian doctrine, they are yet treated with a high degree of veneration. In the parallel passages in the margin of this translation, references are made to the deutero-canonical books. In the first edition of the Articles of the Church of England, 1552, no catalogue of the ''Holy Scripture" had yet appeared, but in the Articles of 1562 the Can- on of St. Jerome was finally adopted in the following order : 5 books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel ; 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 1 and 2 Esdras, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Cantica, four Prophets the Greater, twelve Prophets the Less. In the 6tii Article it is declared that "in the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church," and that * ' the other books (as Jerome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of man- ners, but yet it doth not apply them to establish any doctrine." The books which the article then enumer- ates are 1 and 2 [3 and 4] Esdras, Tobias, Judith, the rest of the book of Esther, Wisdom, Jesus the son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, the Song of the Children, the Story of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. It is not, how- ever, altogether correct, in point of fact, in including in the number of books thus referred to by Jerome as read by the Church for edification the third and fourth