All this has to a large extent been made plain to us by the providence of God in giving to us and preserving for us in the Church the seven Catholic Epistles. We see St. James and St. Jude presenting to us that Judaic form of Christianity which was really the complement, although when exaggerated it became the opposite, of the teaching of St. Paul. We see St. Peter mediating between the two, and preparing the way for a better comprehension of both. And then St. John lifts us up into a higher and clearer atmosphere, in which the controversy between Jew and Gentile has faded away into the dim distance, and the only opposition which remains worthy of a Christian's consideration is that between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, God and the world, Christ and Antichrist, life and death.
[1] "Canonical" (κανονκός), from canon (κανών, connected with κάννα, "a reed or cane," "measuring-rod or ruler"), is used in both a passive and an active sense. A canonical book is primarily one which has been measured and tested, and secondarily that which is itself a measure or standard. Just as a cane, cut to the length of a yard-measure, thenceforth becomes a yard-measure itself, so the Scriptures were first of all tested as to their authority, and then became a standard for testing all other teaching; i.e. they became canonical.
[2] Comp. Ignatius, Magn. X.; Irenæus, Hær. I. x. 1, 2; III. iv. 2; V. xx. 1; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VI., sub-finem; Tertullian, Apol. i., xxxvii.; Adv. Judæos, vii., xii., etc., etc.
[3] It has been remarked that this play upon words (fel and mel), which cannot be reproduced in English, is an argument against the theory of a Greek original.
[4] In the Codex Sinaiticus and some other authorities the Pauline Epistles are placed immediately after the Gospels, an arrangement which probably had its origin in the fact that for many early Christians these two groups constituted their New Testament. Among versions the Memphitic and the Thebaic have this order.
[5] It is omitted by Giles and other editors, but is given by Cave, in his Historia Literaria (I., p. 475), who says that it comes from an ancient MS. in the Library of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
[6] Westcott On the Canon, pp. 362, 417, 3rd Ed.
[7] Westcott and Hort, II., p. 321; Scrivener, Introduction to the Criticism of the N.T. pp. 70, 74, 3rd Ed.