# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S206
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Whether Such a One Is to Be Held a Heretic or a Dangerous False Teacher, etc. 206

...which have always been regarded as legitimate, must be accepted! But by what documents do you prove this decree of yours? Pighius answers: The Church has that power, that she can bestow canonical authority upon certain writings, which they have neither of themselves nor from their authors. Why then do they not bestow that authority either on Aesop's fables or on the true tales of Lucian? — Not that I would wish to compare those books which are in dispute to Aesop's fables (for I grant them, with Cyprian and Jerome, the honorable place which they have always held in the ancient Church), but I wished, by an argument drawn from the impossibility of what would follow, to show that the Church has no such power, in the controversy over the books of Scripture, to make true what is false, false what is true, and certain, canonical, and legitimate what is doubtful and uncertain, without any certain and firm documents, which we have said above are required for this matter ... With that Church which existed at the time when those books were first written, the case stands otherwise than with the Church which followed afterward. For the latter only preserves and hands down to posterity the testimony of the first Church, but she may not, nor can she, determine anything concerning those books of which she does not have certain documents from the testimony of the first Church.

"The fourth question is, which books are in the canon and which are not in the canon, as Jerome speaks. But we are not now speaking of spurious, inauthentic, and false writings, of which a catalog is found in Eusebius. Rather, the question concerns those books which are found together in the Vulgate edition of the Bible and which are read in the churches by the faithful. Concerning these the testimony of the ancient Church is sought, whether all of them are of the same certainty and of equal authority. But it is entirely certain and evident that the testimony of the ancient Church is this: that some of those books are in the canon, some are not in the canon but are apocryphal, as Jerome is accustomed to speak, or, what is the same thing, that some of those writings are legitimate and have, from the whole of the early and ancient Church, without contradiction, certain and agreeing testimonies of their authority, but that concerning some it has been doubted, for the reason that, on account of the objection of some, they did not have sufficiently certain, firm, and agreeing testimonies of the early and ancient Church regarding their authority." ...

"Of the books of the New Testament which in the early and ancient Church did not have sufficiently certain, firm, and agreeing testimonies of their certainty and their authority, these are cited: Eusebius, Book 3, Chapter 25: 'The writings which are not held to be beyond doubt, but which are disputed, although they are known to many (to most), are these: the Epistle of James, of Jude, the second of Peter, and the second along with the third of John;