r himself after balance of evidence. Eusebius,[365] who first (l.
3, c. 25) recorded the distinction--which was much insisted on by the early
Protestants--states the books which are questioned as doubtful, but which
yet are approved and acknowledged by _many_--or _the many_, it is not easy
to say which he means--to be the Epistles of James and Jude, the second of
Peter and the second and third of John. In other places he speaks
doubtingly of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The Apocalypse he does not even
admit into this class, for he proceeds as follows--I use the second edition
of the English folio translation (1709), to avert suspicion of bias from
myself:--

"Among the _spurious_ [[Greek: nothoi]] let there be ranked both the work
entitled the _Acts of Paul_, and the book called _Pastor_, and the
_Revelation of Peter_: and moreover, that which is called the _Epistle of
Barnabas_, and that named the _Doctrines of the Apostles_: and moreover, as
I said, the _Revelation of John_ (if you think good), which some, as I have
said, do reject, but others allow of, and admit among those books which are
received as unquestionable and undoubted."

Eusebius, though he will not admit the Apocalypse even into the
_controverted_ list, but gives permission to call it _spurious_, yet
qualifies his permission in a manner which almost annihilates the
distinctive force of [Greek: nothos], and gives the book a claim to rank
(if you think good, again) in the controverted list. And this is the
impression received by {221} the mind of Lardner, who gives Eusebius fully
and fairly, but when he sums up, considers his author as admitting the
Apocalypse into the second list. A stick may easily be found to beat the
father of ecclesiastical history. There are whole faggots in writers as
opposite as Baronius and Gibbon, who are perhaps his two most celebrated
sons. But we can hardly imagine him totally misrepresenting the state of
opinion of those for whom and among whom he wrote. The usual plan, that of
making an author take the views of his readers, is more easy in his case
than in that of any other writer: for, as the riddle says, he is
You-see-by-us; and to this reading of his name he has often been subjected.
Dr. Nathaniel Lardner,[366] who, though heterodox in doctrine, tries hard
to be orthodox as to the Canon, is "sometimes apt to think" that the list
should be collected and divided as in Eusebius. He would have no one of the
controverted books