hat has been once
ascertained and verified by appeal to antiquity." [9]

Grant that it is "the traditionary testimony of the Church" which
guarantees the canonicity of each and all of the books of the Old and
New Testaments. Grant also that canonicity means infallibility; yet,
according to the thirty-eight, this "traditionary testimony" has to be
"ascertained and verified by appeal to antiquity". But "ascertainment
and verification" are purely intellectual processes, which must be
conducted according to the strict rules of scientific investigation, or
be self-convicted of worthlessness. Moreover, before we can set about
the appeal to "antiquity," the exact sense of that usefully vague term
must be defined by similar means. "Antiquity" may include any number of
centuries, great or small; and whether "antiquity" is to comprise the
Council of Trent, or to stop a little beyond that of Nicaea, or to come
to an end in the time of Irenaeus, or in that of Justin Martyr, are
knotty questions which can be decided, if at all, only by those critical
methods which the signatories treat so cavalierly. And yet the decision
of these questions is fundamental, for as the limits of the canonical
scriptures vary, so may the dogmas deduced from them require
modification. Christianity is one thing, if the fourth Gospel, the
Epistle to the Hebrews, the pastoral Epistles, and the Apocalypse are
canonical and (by the hypothesis) infallibly true; and another thing, if
they are not. As I have already said, whoso defines the canon defines
the creed.

Now it is quite certain with respect to some of these books, such as the
Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Eastern and the
Western Church differed in opinion for centuries; and yet neither the
one branch nor the other can have considered its judgment infallible,
since they eventually agreed to a transaction by which each gave up its
objection to the book patronised by the other. Moreover, the "fathers"
argue (in a more or less rational manner) about the canonicity of this
or that book, and are by no means above producing evidence, internal and
external, in favour of the opinions they advocate. In fact, imperfect as
their conceptions of scientific method may be, they not unfrequently
used it to the best of their ability. Thus it would appear that though
science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or
other, yet she surely comes back again. The appeal to "antiqu