0*10 THIBD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
and was sanctioned by the cor.iicil of Trent at its fonrth seesion.
Protestantism retained the New Testament canon of tlie Roman church," but, in accordance with ihe orthodox Jewish and tlie primitive Christian view, exchidcd the Apocrypha from the OUV
The most eminent of the church fathers speak in tho Btrongest terms of the full msjnration and the infallible authority of the holy Scriptures, and commend the diligent reading of them even to the laity. Especially Chrysostom. The want of genei-al education, however, and the enormous cost of books, left the people for the most part de})endent on the mere hearing of the word of God in public worship ; and the free private study of the Bible was repressed by the prevailing spirit of the hierarchy. No prohibition, indeed, was yet laid upon the reading of the Bible ; but the presumption that it was a book of the priests and monks already existed. It remained for a much later period, by the invention of printing, the free spirit of Protestantism, and the introduction of popular schools, to make the Bible properly a people's book, as it was originally designed to be ; and to disseminate it by Bible societies, which now print and circulate more copies of it in one year, than were made in the whole middle age, or even in the fifteen centuries before the Reformation.
The oldest man.uscri;pt8 of the Bible now extant date no further back than the fourth century, are very few, and abound in unessential errors and omissions of every kind ; and the
1 The well-known doubts of Luther respecting some of the anlilegomcna, especially the Epistle of James, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation, are mere private opinions, which have latterly been re-asserted by individual Lutheran divines, iiko I'hilippi and Kahnis, but have had no influence upon the church doctrine.
" The more particular history of the canon belongs to historical and critical Introducticm to the Bible. Besides the relevant sections in works of this sort, and in Lardneb'.s Credibility of the Gospel History, and KuicnnoFEu's Quollcnsammlung (1844), comp. the following special treatises: TiiiKUScii : Herstellung des "historischen St*ndpunkts fur die Kritik der N. T'tlichen Schriften, 1845; Credner : Zur Geschichte des Kanons, 1847; Oeiiler ; Kanon des A. Ts. in Hcrzog's Encyklopadie, vol. vii. pp. 243-270; LANnEUER : Kanon des Neuen Testaments, ibid. pp. 270-3n;'. ; also an extended article : Canon of Scripture, in W. Smith's Dictionary of the Biljlc (London and Boston, 18G0), vol. i. pp. ^50-268. [.\dd the works of Reuss, Westcott, Gth ed., 1889, and Zahn, 1888.]
§ llb\ SOURCES OF THEOLOGY. 611
problem of a critical restoration )f the original text is not yel satisfactorily solved, nor can it be more than approximatelji Bolved in the absence of tbe original writings of the apostles.
The oldest and most important manuscripts in uncial letters are the Sinaitic (first discovered by Tiscliendorf in 1859 and published in 1862), the Vatican (in Rome, defective), the Alexandrian (in London) ; then the much mutilated codex oi Ephraim Syrus in Paris, and the incomplete codex of Cam bridge. From these and a few other uncial codices the oldest attainable text must be mainly gathered. Secondary sources are quotations in the fathers, the earliest versions, such as the Syriac Peshito and the Latin Vulgate, and the later manuscripts.'
The faith which rests not upon the letter, but upon the living spirit of Christianity, is led into no error by the defects of the manuscripts and ancient and modern versions of the Bible, but only excited to new and deeper study.
The spread of the church among all the nations of the Roman empire, and even among the barbarians on its borders, brought with it the necessity of translating the Scriptures into various tongues. The most important of these versions, and the one most used, is the Latin Vulgate, which was made by the learned Jerome on the basis of the ^Ider Itala, and which afterwards, notwithstanding its many errors, was placed by the Roman church on a level with the original itself. The knowledge of Hebrew among \\\q fathers was very rare ; the Septuagint was considered sufiicient, and even the knowledge of Greek diminished steadily in the Latin church after the invasion of the barbarians and the schism with the East, so that the Bible in its original languages became a sealed book, and remained such until the revival of leamina: in the fifteenth century.
In the interpretation of the Scriptures the system ol allegorical exposition and imposition was in high repute, and
1 Full information on this subject may be found in the Introductions to the New Testament, and in the Prolegomena of the critical editions of the New Testament, among which the editions of Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Alford are the most important. Comp. particr.larly the eighth large edition of Tischendorf, begun in 1865. [Westcott and Hort's Greek Test. 1881, rev. 1888 ; Gregory's Prolegomena to Tischendorf, 1884 ; Schaffs Companion to the Greek Testament, 3d ed. 1888.]
G12 rami) peeiod. a.d. 31 1-590,
often ticgeneratud into the most arbitrary conceits, especially hi the Alexandrian school, to which most of the great dogma^ ic theologians of the Nicene age belonged. In opposition to this system the Antiochian school, founded by Lucian (f 311), and represented by Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsueatia, and best by Joljn Chrysostom and Theodoret, advocated a 6oberer grammatical and historical exegesis, and made a sharper distinction between the human and tlie divine elements in the Sciiptures. Theodore therel)y incurred the suspicion and subsequently even the condemnation of the Greek church.
Among the Latin fathers a similar difference in the interpretation of Scripture appears between the discerning depth and lively play of Augustine and the grammatical and archaeological scholarship and dogmatical superficiality of Jerome.
II. The Holy Scriptures were universally accepted as the supreme authority and infallible rule of faith. But as the Scriptures themselves were variously interpreted, and were claimed by the heretics for their views, the fathers of our period, like Irenajus and Tertullian before them, had recourse at the same time to tradition, as preserved from the apostles through the unbroken succession of the bishops. With them the Scriptures are the supreme law ; the combined wisdom and piety of the catholic church, the organic body of the faithful, is the judge which decides the true sense of the law. For to be understood the Bible must be explained, either by private judgment or by the universal faith of Christendom.
Strictly speaking, the Holy Ghost, who is the author, is also the only infallible interpreter of the Scriptures. But it was held that the Holy Ghost is given only to the orthodox church, not to lieretical and scliismatic sects, and that he expresses himself through assembled orthodox bishops and universal councils in the clearest and most authoritative way. "Tiie heretics," says Hilary, "all cite the Scriptures, but without the sense of the Scriptures; for those who are outside the church can Lave no understanding of the word of God." They imagine they follow the Scriptures, while in truth they