cal Canons, is also used by Origen,
Tertullian, and Cyprian. The word "reader," for an inferior order in the
clergy, is used by Cornelius, bishop of Rome; nay, by Justin Martyr.
"Altar," which is used in the Canons, is the only word used for the
Lord's table by St. Cyprian, and, before him, by Tertullian and
Ignatius. "Sacrifice" and "oblation," for the consecrated elements,
found in the Canons, are also found in Clement of Rome, Justin Irenaeus,
and Tertullian.

This negative evidence of genuineness extends to other points, and
surely is of no inconsiderable weight. We know how difficult it is so to
word a forgery as to avoid all detection from incongruities of time,
place, and the like. A forgery, indeed, it is hardly possible to suppose
this Collection to be, both because great part of it is known to be
genuine, and because no assignable object would be answered by it; but
let us imagine the compiler hastily took up with erroneous traditions,
or recent enactments, and joined them to the rest. Is it possible to
conceive, under such circumstances, that there would be no anachronisms
or other means of detection? And if there are none such, and much more
if the compiler, who lived perhaps as early as the fourth century, found
none such (supposing we may assume him willing and qualified to judge of
them), nay, if Dionysius Exiguus found none such, what reasons have we
for denying that they are the produce of those early times to which they
claim to belong? Yet so it is; neither rite, nor heresy, nor observance,
nor phrase, is found in them which is foreign to the Ante-Nicene
period. Indeed, the only reason one or two persons have thrown suspicion
on them has been an unwillingness on their part to admit episcopacy,
which the Canons assert; a necessity which led the same parties to deny
the genuineness of St. Ignatius' epistles.[375]

(5) I will make one more remark:--First, these Canons come to us, not
from Rome, but from the East, and were in a great measure neglected, or
at least superseded in the Church, after Constantine's day, especially
in the West, where Rome had sway; these do not embody what are called
"Romish corruptions." Next, there is ground for suspecting that the
Collection or Edition which we have was made by heretics, probably
Arians, though they have not meddled with the main contents of them.
Thus, while the neglect of them in later times separates them from
Romanism, the assent of the Arians is a secon