st._ i. 4.

(6) When Eusebius declined being translated from the see of Caesarea to
Antioch, Constantine complimented him on his "observance of the
commandments of God, _the Apostolical Canon_, and the rule of the
Church,"--_Vit. Constant._ iii. 61,--which last seems to mean the
regulation passed at Nicaea.

(7) In like manner, Julius, bishop of Rome, speaks of a violation of
"_the Apostles' Canons_;" and a Council held at Constantinople, A.D.
394, which was attended by Gregory Nyssen, Amphilochius, and Flavian, of
a determination of "_the Apostolical Canons_."

It will be observed that in some of these instances the Canons are
spoken of in the plural, when the particular infraction which occasions
their mention relates only to one of them. This shows they were
collected into a code, if, indeed, that need be proved; for, in truth,
that various Canons should exist, and be in force, and yet not be put
together, is just as unlikely as that no collection should be made of
the statutes passed in a session of Parliament.

With this historical information about the existence, authority, and
subject-matter of certain Canons in the Church from time immemorial, we
should come to many anti-Protestant conclusions, even if the particular
code we possess turned out to have no intrinsic authority. And now let
us see how the matter stands on this point as regards this code of
eighty-five Canons.

5.

2. If this Collection existed _as_ a Collection in the time of the above
writers and Councils, then, considering they allude to nearly half its
Canons, and that no Canons are anywhere producible which are not in it,
and that they do seem to allude to a Collection, and that no other
Collection is producible, we certainly could not avoid the conclusion
that they referred to _it_, and that, therefore, in quoting parts of it
they sanction the whole. If no book is to be accounted genuine except
such parts of it as happen to be expressly cited by other writers,--if
it may not be regarded as a whole, and what is actually cited made to
bear up and carry with it what is not cited,--no ancient book extant can
be proved to be genuine. We believe Virgil's AEneid to be Virgil's,
because we know he wrote an AEneid, and because particular passages which
we find in it, and in no other book, are contained, under the name of
Virgil, in subsequent writers or in criticisms, or in accounts of it. We
do not divide it into rhapsodies, _because_ it only