by the
theological world, so far as this--to suppose the matter and the
enactments of the Canons to be of the highest antiquity, even though the
edition which we possess was not published so early as Bishop Beveridge,
for instance, supposes. At the same time it is acknowledged by all
parties, that they, as well as some other early documents, have suffered
from interpolation, and perhaps by an heretical hand.

They are in number eighty-five,[372] of which the first fifty are
considered of superior authority to the remaining thirty-five. What has
been conjectured to be their origin will explain the distinction. It was
the custom of the early Church, as is well known, to settle in Council
such points in her discipline, ordinances, and worship, as the Apostles
had not prescribed in Scripture, as the occasion arose, after the
pattern of their own proceedings in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts;
and this, as far as might be, after their unwritten directions, or after
their practice, or at least, after their mind, or as it is called in
Scripture, their "minding" or "spirit." Thus she decided upon the
question of Easter, upon that of heretical baptism, and the like. And,
after that same precedent in the Acts, she recorded her decisions in
formal decrees, and "delivered them for to keep" through the cities in
which her members were found. The Canons in question are supposed to be
some of these decrees, of which, first and nearest to the Apostles'
times, or in the time of their immediate successors, were published
fifty; and in the following age, thirty-five more, which had been
enacted in the interval. They claim, then, to be, first, the recorded
judgment of great portions of the Ante-Nicene Church, chiefly in the
eastern provinces, upon certain matters in dispute, and to be of
authority so far as that Church may be considered a representative of
the mind of the Apostles; next, they profess to embody in themselves
positive decisions and injunctions of the Apostles, though without
clearly discriminating how much is thus directly Apostolical, and how
much not. I will here attempt to state some of the considerations which
show both their antiquity and their authority, and will afterwards use
them for the purpose which has led me to mention them.

4.

1. In the first place, it would seem quite certain that, as, on the one
hand, Councils were held in the primitive Church, so, on the other,
those Councils enacted certain Canons