Book One: On the Sacred and Apocryphal Books

Chapter Ten: On the Books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees

These books are all rejected together by the Hebrews as Jerome testifies in his Galeatic Prologue. Then the heretics of this age almost all follow the opinion of the Hebrews. The Magdeburgians, bk.2 cent.1 ch.4 fol.51, receive only those books which the Jews received. Martin Chemnitz does the same in his Exam. of Sess.4 of the Council of Trent. Again John Brentius in the Confession of Wittemberg in the chapter on sacred Scripture, wants to receive those books only about which there was never any doubt, and these are only those that are received by the Jews. Calvin in Institutes bk.2 ch.11 sect.8 accuses the book of Wisdom of lying, so far is he from accepting it. In bk.2 ch.5 sect.18 he does not want the book of Ecclesiasticus to be of solid authority. In bk.3 ch.5 sect.8 he judges the same of the books of the Maccabees. But in his Antidote to the Council of Trent sess.4 he seems to repudiate Tobit also and Judith. Calvin is followed by those ministers who published the confession of faith at Pissy. Finally the Lutherans and Zwinglians in the prefaces to the books translated by them remove these five books in fact from the canon, and Luther especially contends that the books of the Maccabees are of no authority, in assert. art.37 which is about purgatory.

But the Catholic Church holds these books like the rest for sacred and canonical. But before proving it, one must note that the heretics, and especially Chemnitz, do not deny that these books are good and holy and deserving of being read; but yet that they are not such that from them firm arguments may be drawn. In this way they try to elude the witness of the ancients in which these books are called sacred or Ecclesiastical. Wherefore we must prove that these books are holy in such way that they are of infallible truth. It is proved first about all of them in general, and then separately about each of them individually.

First then these books together with the rest are placed in the canon by the third Council of Carthage can.47, by Trent ses.4, by the Pontiffs, by Innocent I in his epistle to Exuperius, by Gelasius I in his decree about the sacred and Ecclesiastical books, along with 70 bishops. Then the Fathers, Augustine On Christian Doctrine bk.2 ch.8, Isidore Etymologies bk.6 ch.1, Cassiodorus bk.1 of Divine Readings, and Rabanus bk.2 on Institutes of Clerics. And the fact they are put in these places as books of infallible truth is collected from this, that they are numbered and put in the same order as the others that are of infallible truth.

Besides as to the Council of Carthage, from which the other Councils have taken the canon, it calls these books not only canonical but also divine. But that a book is divine, what else is it than that it has divine authority? Again the fact that in the aforesaid places they are called canonical books and pertain to the canon; further, for a book to be canonical is for it to be of infallible authority.

And certainly most vain is the distinction of Chemnitz who says that some canonical books are of infallible authority and that some are not. For as he rightly deduces from Blessed Augustine bk.2 Against Faustus ch.5 and bk.2 Against Cresconius ch.32, books are called canonical because they are a sort of norm and rule whereby the infirmity of our lack of skill is ruled, and from which judgment is made about all other books. How then will those books that are not of infallible authority be a norm and a rule?

But against this Chemnitz first objects in the following way: “Blessed Augustine bk.2 On Christian Doctrine ch.8 says that in the canonical books this is to be observed, that those which are received by all the Churches are to be preferred to those which are not received by them all, and these are held to be of greater authority. But if they were all of infallible truth one should not be preferred to another, but all would have the same authority”. Add that Blessed Jerome in his Galeatic Prologue says that the canonical books are divided into the law, the prophets, and the hagiographa, and he himself in the preface to Tobit and in the preface to Judith says that these books are also numbered by the Jews among the hagiographa, and yet they are not suitable for confirming dogmas of the faith.

I reply that Blessed Augustine was most certain that all the canonical books are of infallible authority; but he was not equally certain about whether all the books he had enumerated were canonical. For although he himself thought so, yet he knew the thing was not yet defined by a general Council, and that therefore it was possible without lapse of heresy for some books to be received apart from others. This then is what he says must be observed in the case of the books called canonical, that those which are received by all are put before those which are not received by all. Because, to be sure, there was then greater certitude about the former than about the latter, that they were canonical; but now because general Councils have defined the whole matter, we are equally certain about the authority of all the books, nor should we prefer one to another.

But that Blessed Augustine really thought all those books which he calls canonical were of infallible truth is made plain both by the third Council of Carthage, to which he subscribed, and also because not one place can be produced from Augustine where he calls any book canonical and yet says one can doubt of its truth; but on the contrary infinite places can be produced where he says that all books called canonical are of infallible truth. Epist.19 to Jerome, “Only to those books already called canonical have I been taught to attribute this fear and honor, that I should most firmly believe that in writing them none of their authors erred in anything”. He speaks in the same in epists.8, 9, 48, 112, bk.2 on Baptism ch.3, on Psalm 67, bk.2 Against Cresconius chs.31, 32, bk.2 Against Faustus ch.5 and everywhere in other places.

To the place from Jerome I say that the Jews had two kinds of hagiographa, some within the arc and some outside it, as Epiphanius teaches in his book of Measures and Weights. Those that were in the arc were called hagiographa to distinguish them from the historical and prophetical volumes, and these were held to be canonical and about them Jerome was speaking in his Galeatic Prologue; but those that were outside the arc were called hagiographa to distinguish them from the canonical and sacred books, and about these Jerome is speaking in his prefaces to Tobit and Judith, from which is plain that never are those books about which one could doubt called by Jerome canonical.

Second, the same Chemnitz and other adversaries give this reason as objection: the Church that existed at the time when these books were produced was doubtful about their authority, so necessarily the later Church too should be doubtful about the same books. For there is a double way of knowing whether any book is truly divine: one from the testimony of someone who was clearly a Prophet or an Apostle, to whom God was wont to reveal his mysteries, the other, as Augustine teaches in bk.3 Against Faustus ch.6, by the sure testimonies of those who were living when the book was produced, who might testify that those books were produced by a Prophet or an Apostle, and whose testimony, by the succession of men using those books, has come down to us. For thus do we judge not only about sacred books but also about profane ones.

At this time the first way no longer has place. For now there are no Prophets or Apostles living on the earth. Therefore we must proceed by the second way, and we must decided about the canonical books from the testimonies of the first Church. Therefore if the first Church was doubtful, much more do we have cause to doubt.

But that the synagogue of the Jews doubted about these books is plain from Josephus bk.1 Against Appion. That the first Church of Christians was in similar doubt is plain from Origen, Athanasius, Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Jerome, and the other Fathers cited above, who do not put these books in the canon, and who openly say that among learned men there was always question about these books.

I reply that the fact the old Church doubted of these books can be understood in two ways. In one way because the doubt was such that there were no men of that time who could testify that the books were produced by Prophets or Apostles, and in this way the argument has its force. For therefore is the book of Enoch not received by the Church, because the Church had no testimonies from the time when the book was written, nor even from the immediately following times, as Augustine teaches in bk.18 City of God ch.38. But we deny that the primitive Church was doubtful in this way. For it is clear that there were always some worthy of trust who thought those books were canonical.

In another way it can be understood that the Church doubted because some doubted, and yet the Church did not then wish to define the thing; and this is most true, as the testimonies adduced rightly prove; but one cannot collect from this that the later Church should be doubtful, and we prove this as follows. About the book of Judith there was doubt at the beginning, and yet the Synod of Nicea received that book in the canon, on the evidence of Jerome in his preface to Judith, which Synod is accepted, along with the other three, by the heretics, and they value it highly; we are not therefore compelled always to doubt even if at some point there was doubt.

Besides if these books of the Old Testament cannot now be received as canonical because the first Church doubted of them, for the same reason neither can be received as canonical the epistles of James and Jude, the Apocalypse, the second letter of Peter, the second and third of John, and the epistle to the Hebrews, because there was doubt about these in the first Church. But the Calvinists receive these books as truly canonical, as is plain from the books of Calvin in which these books are everywhere quoted, from the confession of the Calvinist ministers art.3 which they offered at Pissy in the year 1561. But although the Lutherans think variously about these books, the Magdeburgians receive the Apocalypse as truly canonical, cent.1 bk.1 ch.4 col.56.

But as to the objection they make, about the two ways of tracking down the authority of books, I admit that there are those two ways, and that now there are no Prophets or Apostles, and that we must proceed by the second way etc. But I affirm in addition that in order for the later Church to be able to decree some book to be canonical, it is enough if it has some testimonies of men worthy of trust from that time, or certainly from the immediately following time.

Therefore we do not say, as Chemnitz most impudently misrepresents, that the Church, that is the Pope, can by his own arbitrary decision, without any testimonies from the ancients, make a book canonical from not being canonical, and not canonical from being canonical; or that if the Pope wishes, the divine Scripture would have no more authority than the fables of Aesop; for that is not what we assert but is a lie of their own. For we confess that the Church can in no way make a book canonical from not being canonical, nor the reverse, but only that it can declare which book is to be held as canonical, and this not rashly or by arbitrary decision, but from the testimonies of the ancients and by the likeness of the books about which there is dispute with books about which there is no dispute, and finally from the common consent and as it were the taste of the Christian people, in the way that Blessed Jerome in his book about the Famous Men in James says that the epistle of James merited authority little by little as time progressed.

The following three things has the Church already observed in declaring canonical books. For first it had testimonies from individuals among the ancients. For although it did not have testimonies from the synagogue of the Jews, yet it had them from the Apostolic Church, and this was enough. For the Apostles could without other testimonies declare these books to be canonical, and in fact they did so; otherwise never would Cyprian and Clement and others whom we will cite have so constantly said that the books were divine. Next they saw that they were in conformity with the others. Finally they observed that these books were little by little received by all Christians as canonical, which argument could not have been had by those who were in the first Church.

The final objection of this sort is: the Church receives those books which Jerome receives, and rejects those books which he rejects, as is plain from dist.15 in the Sacred Roman canon. But Blessed Jerome in the Galeatic Prologue, and in the prologue to Proverbs, asserts that these five books are not canonical, as Cajetan, an otherwise Catholic and pious doctor, argues at the end of his commentary on Esther.

Some reply that Blessed Jerome only says that they are not canonical among the Jews, but certainly in the Galeatic Prologue he numbers together with these books of the Old Testament also the book of the Shepherd, which is from the New Testament, and he says that all of them together are not in the canon; he is not therefore speaking only of the canon of the Jews. Besides in the prologue to Proverbs he says, “As therefore the Church does indeed read Tobit, Judith, the books of the Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also it may read these two volumes Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus for the edification of the people, not for confirming the authority of Ecclesiastical dogmas”.

I admit then that Jerome was of this opinion, because a General Council had not yet decided anything about these books, except the book of Judith, which Jerome afterwards accepted. But as to what Gelasius says in that dist.15 of the Sacred Roman canon, it is understood about the books of the doctors, as of Origen, Ruffinus, and the like, not about the sacred books, as is manifestly deduced from the canon itself.

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