ans, showing that it was the practice to read in the churches,
even from the earliest times. 'To-day,' says he, 'we have passed the
Lord's holy-day, in which we have read your epistle, in reading which we
shall always have our minds stored with admonition, as we shall, also,
from that written to us before by Clement'" (Eusebius' "Eccles. Hist.,"
bk. iv., ch. 23). So far is "reading in the churches" to be accepted as
a proof, even of canonicity, much less of genuineness, that Eusebius
remarks that "the disputed writings" were "publicly used by many in most
of the churches" (Ibid, bk. iii., ch. 31). Paley then takes as a further
mark of distinction, between canonical and uncanonical, that the latter
"were not admitted into their volume" and "do not appear in their
catalogues," but we have already seen that the only MS. copy of
Clement's first Epistle is in the Codex Alexandrinus (see ante p. 246),
while the Epistle of Barnabas and the Pastor of Hermas find their place
in the Sinaitic Codex (see ante p. 246); the second Epistle of Clement
is also in the Codex Alexandrinus, and both epistles are in the
Apostolic constitutions (see ante p. 247). The Canon of
Muratori--worthless as it is, it is used as evidence by
Christians--brackets the Apocalypse of John and of Peter ("Sup. Rel.,"
vol. ii., p. 241). Canon Westcott says: "'Apocryphal' writings were
added to manuscripts of the New Testament, and read in churches; and the
practice thus begun continued for a long time. The Epistle of Barnabas
was still read among the 'apocryphal Scriptures' in the time of Jerome;
a translation of the Shepherd of Hermas is found in a MS. of the Latin
Bible as late as the fifteenth century. The spurious Epistle to the
Laodicenes is found very commonly in English copies of the Vulgate from
the ninth century downwards, and an important catalogue of the Apocrypha
of the New Testament is added to the Canon of Scripture subjoined to the
Chronographia of Nicephorus, published in the ninth century" ("On the
Canon," pp. 8, 9). Paley's fifth distinction, that they "were not
noticed by their [heretical] adversaries" is as untrue as the preceding
ones, for even the fragments of "the adversaries" preserved in Christian
documents bear traces of reference to the apocryphal writings, although,
owing to the orthodox custom of destroying unorthodox books, references
of any sort by heretics are difficult to find. Again, Paley should have
known, when he asserted tha