Tue term xaSorux7y, catholic or general, applied to the Epis- tles of James, Peter, John, and Jude, was used from the sec- ond century onward in the sense of something addressed to the faithful generally, as distinguished from Christians of particu- lar nations or cities, as the Galatians or Ephesians. Hence, Clement of Alexandria speaks of the letter of Acts xv. as “the catholic letter of all the Apostles, given to the faithful.” The term was also used of letters specially addressed, but with a general application, which made no claim to canonical authority.
In the later Western Church the group of letters known as catholic was called canonical through a mistaken interpretation of the words of Junilius,* who referred to the letters of James, 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John as added by many to the collection of canonical books. This was understood to mean that the term canonical applied to those books peculiarly.
1. Compare John i. 1, 9,14. The construction of the first three verses is somewhat involved. It will be simplified by throwing it into three parts, represented respectively by vv. 1, 2, 3. The first part, That which was from the beginning— Word of Life, forms a suspended clause, the verb being omitted for the time, and the course of the sentence being broken by ver. 2, which forms a parenthesis: and the Life—manifested
* About A.D. 550, generally believed to have been a Bishop. The author of a work ‘‘De Partibus Divine Legis,” a kind of introduction to the sacred writings.