n 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 "antiquity" is, in fact, an appeal to
science, first to define what antiquity is; secondly, to determine
what "antiquity," so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, to prove
that canonicity means infallibility. And when science, largely in the
shape of the abhorred "criticism," has answered this appeal, and has
shown that "antiquity" used her own methods, however clumsily and
imperfectly, she naturally turns round upon the appellants, and
demands that they should show cause why, in these days, science
should not resume the work the ancients did so imperfectly, and carry
it out efficiently.

But no such cause can be shown. If "antiquity" permitted Eusebius,
Origen, Tertullian, Irenaeus, to argue for the reception of this book
into the canon and the rejection of that, upon rational grounds,
"antiquity" admitted the whole principle of modern criticism. If
Irenaeus produces ridiculous reasons for limiting the Gospels to four,
it was open to any one else to produce good reasons (if he had them)
for cutting them down to three, or increasing them to five. If the
Eastern branch of the Church had a right to reject the Apocalypse and
accept the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Western an equal right to
accept the Apocalypse and reject the Epistle, down to the fourth
century, any other branch would have an equal right, on cause shown,
to reject both, or, as the Catholic Church afterwards actually did, to
accept both.

Thus I cannot but think that the thirty-eight are hoist with their own
petard. Their "appeal to antiquity" turns out to be nothing but a
round-a