It is almost unnecessary to point out the exact agreement of these sentiments with the seventh and fourteenth articles of the Church of England, and how impossible it must be for a person holding them to think that we can do any thing whatever beyond what Christ has a right to expect from us. It is manifest that he would not have thought that any degrees of Christian holiness are really at our option, whether we shall seek them or not; but that every person who, having any degree of perfection, or any means of advancement placed before him, knowingly neglects it, becomes thereby unworthy of him who has given him liberty[291], and hazards his salvation: in short, that “to whom much is given, of him will much be required.”
Chapter VIII. On The Canon, Genuineness, Versions, Use, And Value Of Holy Scripture.
Unnatural as it may appear, it is notwithstanding true that we find much less clear ideas in regard to the canon of Holy Scripture in the earlier ages than in the later. The word scripture was used, as we shall see, in a latitude with which no church or party in later times has used it.
Irenæus quotes all the books which we of the Church of England esteem canonical, except Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Obadiah, Nahum, Zephaniah, and Haggai. But the mere circumstance of his not citing them cannot, of course, imply any doubt as to their inspiration or canonicity. He had no occasion to do so for the purposes of his argument. It is only wonderful that he thought himself obliged to quote so largely upon such a subject.
But besides the writings which we esteem canonical, he quotes others which we reject from the [pg 125] canon. He not only repeats sentiments from them, as when he introduces a sentiment which occurs in the book of Wisdom[292], or the story of Susanna[293], without, however, mentioning the books themselves; he also quotes the story of Bel and the Dragon[294] as truly relating the words of the prophet Daniel, and the book of Baruch[295] as truly recording those of Jeremiah, and uses the latter as inspired. In short, Irenæus quoted from the Septuagint version of the Scriptures; and he consequently read the stories of Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon, as part of the book of Daniel, and the book of Baruch as a continuation of that of Jeremiah. There is, in fact, great reason to think that he believed in the inspiration (in some sense) of the whole of the books contained in that version. But if so, that does not prove (as we shall see presently), that they were all esteemed by the Church as canonical.
But then there is a circumstance which must prevent the Church of Rome from appealing to him with success in support of the canonicity of any of the books of the Apocrypha; and that is, that he quotes, under the express name of Scripture, a work which the whole Church, from not long after his time, has agreed to regard as merely human, if not altogether spurious—I mean the Shepherd of Hermas[296]. It is true that he is not singular in so speaking; for Clement of Alexandria directly ascribes inspiration to Hermas[297]. And yet Tertullian, who was contemporary with Clement, affirms[298] that the Italian Churches had in express councils declared his book apocryphal.
I argue thus on the supposition that his single authority is appealed to. If he is adduced, with other writers of his age, to show that the Church acknowledged the apocryphal books as canonical, then one reply is, that even if this were true of the [pg 127] Church of that age, we are not bound by the decision of a single age. Massuet, indeed[299], reasons as though the canonicity of the books the Church of Rome receives were established by the authority of “all churches, or at least the greater part of them, and those of distinguished rank.” Now it so happens that we have quite a chain of evidence on the opposite side. Melito[300], contemporary with Irenæus, after diligent inquiry in Palestine, reckons up, as canonical, the same books of the Old Testament which we acknowledge, and no others: for the Σοφία[301], which (according to one reading) comes in after the Proverbs, is merely another name for that book; and Ezra, it is well known, included Nehemiah and Esther. Origen[302], in the middle of the third century, [pg 128] and Athanasius[303], Epiphanius[304], Gregory of Nazianzum[305], and Jerome[306], successively in the fourth—and what is more, the council of Laodicea[307], in the third century, whose acts were recognised by the sixth synod of Constantinople and Pope Adrian[308]—all agree in receiving a canon of the Old Testament much more like ours than like that of Rome. It is true that Origen adds the Maccabees, but he states that they are not in the canon. Athanasius, Epiphanius, and the Council of Laodicea reckon Baruch as part of the book of Jeremiah; Athanasius and the Council add the epistle of Jeremiah; Athanasius alone reckons Susanna and Bel and the Dragon. On the other hand, they all, together with Gregory of Nazianzum, Jerome, and Ruffinus, who entirely [pg 129] agree with us, reject all the other books which the Church of Rome has since admitted into the canon. Epiphanius[309] says that Christians and Nazoræi agreed in receiving the Jewish books, so that he could not have been aware that the Jews did not admit Baruch. So that how many soever may agree in quoting the apocryphal books, the weight of authority is clearly against their reception as canonical.
From all that has been said, it must be clear that we can make but little use of Irenæus in settling the canon of Scripture. But from the number of books and of passages which he has quoted, he is of great value in establishing the genuineness of our present copies; all the passages bearing as near a resemblance to the corresponding parts of our MSS. as can be expected from a writer who evidently quotes from memory.