elivered without the Divine
Scriptures." We are assured that Cyril's Scriptures were the same as
ours, for he has left us a catalogue of the books included under that
name.

X. Epiphanius, (Lardner, Cred. vol. viii. p. 314.) twenty years after
Cyril, challenges the Arians, and the followers of Origen, "to produce
any passage of the Old and New Testament favouring their sentiments."

XI. Poebadius, a Gallic bishop, who lived about thirty years after the
council of Nice, testifies, that "the bishops of that council first
consulted the sacred volumes, and then declared their faith." (Lardner,
Cred. vol. ix. p. 52.)

XII. Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, contemporary with
Epiphanius, says, that "hearers instructed in the Scriptures ought to
examine what is said by their teachers, and to embrace what is agreeable
to the Scriptures, and to reject what is otherwise." (Lardner, Cred.
vol. ix. p. 124.)

XIII. Ephraim, the Syrian, a celebrated writer of the same times, bears
this conclusive testimony to the proposition which forms the subject of
our present chapter: "the truth written in the Sacred Volume of the
Gospel is a perfect rule. Nothing can be taken from it nor added to it,
without great guilt." (Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 202.)

XIV. If we add Jerome to these, it is only for the evidence which he
affords of the judgment of preceding ages. Jerome observes, concerning
the quotations of ancient Christian writers, that is, of writers who
were ancient in the year 400, that they made a distinction between
books; some they quoted as of authority, and others not: which
observation relates to the books of Scripture, compared with other
writings, apocryphal or heathen. (Lardner, Cred. vol. x. pp. 123-124.)

SECTION III.

The Scriptures were in very early times collected into a distinct
volume.

Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch within forty years after the
Ascension, and who had lived and conversed with the apostles, speaks of
the Gospel and of the apostles in terms which render it very probable
that he meant by the Gospel the book or volume of the Gospels, and by
the apostles the book or volume of their Epistles. His words in one
place are, (Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. i. p. 180.) "Fleeing to the
Gospel as the flesh of Jesus, and to the apostles as the presbytery of
the church;" that is, as Le Clere interprets them, "in order to
understand the will of God, he fled to the Gospels, which he believed no
less