lation between them is at
present not determined. The third section consists of the Apostolic
Canons already referred to, the last and most significant of which
places the Constitutions and the two epistles of Clement in the canon of
Scripture, and omits the Apocalypse. They are derived in part from the
preceding Constitutions, in part from the canons of the councils of
Antioch, 341, Nicaea, 325, and possibly Laodicaea, 363.

A comparison of the Constitutions with the material upon which they are
based will illustrate the compiler's method. (a) To begin with the
_Didascalia_ already mentioned. It is unmethodical and badly digested,
homiletical in style, and abounding in biblical quotations. There is no
precise arrangement; but the subjects, following a general introduction,
are the bishop and his duties, penance, the administration of the
offerings, the settlement of disputes, the divine service, the order of
widows, deacons and deaconesses, the poor, behaviour in persecution, and
so forth. The compiler of the Constitutions finds here material after
his own heart. He is even more discursive and more homiletical in style;
he adds fresh citations of the Scriptures, and additional explanations
and moral reflexions; and all this with so little judgment that he often
leaves confusion worse confounded (e.g. in ii. 57, where, upon a
symbolical description of the Church as a sheepfold, he has superimposed
the further symbolism of a ship). (b) Passing on to books vii. and
viii., we observe that the compiler's method of necessity changes with
his new material. In the former book he still makes large additions and
alterations, but there is less scope for his prolixity than before; and
in the latter, where he is no longer dealing with generalities, but
making actual definitions, the Constitutions of necessity become more
precise and statutory in form. Throughout he adopts and adapts the
language of his sources as far as possible, "only pruning in the most
pressing cases," but towards the end he cannot avoid making larger
alterations from time to time. And his alterations throughout are not
made aimlessly. Where he finds things which would obviously clash with
the customs of his own day, he unhesitatingly modifies them. An account
of the Passion, with a curiously perverted chronology, the object of
which was to justify the length of the Passion-tide fast, is entirely
revised for this reason (v. 14); the direction to observe Easter
a