# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1856_S210
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Whether Such a One Is to Be Declared a Heretic or a Dangerous False Teacher, etc. 210

...of antiquity, there is no doubt. But the Tridentine Council, precisely for this reason, will know nothing of this necessary and thoroughly true distinction of the ancient Church; it overturns it and abolishes it, because (as my Andradius says) they are unwilling to be confined within such narrow limits — that, stripped of all other resources, they should have to borrow their credibility from the canonical Scripture alone. For the Tridentine Synod says that it makes canonical books out of apocryphal ones precisely in order to show what testimonies and resources it intends to use in the confirmation of dogmas and in the ordering of morals." (Loc. cit., Geneva edition, fol. 45, sq.)

We will now let the Magdeburg Centuries* speak on the same subject. They say: "God by no means wished that the wonderful things which he did, through the apostles, by the sending of the Holy Spirit from heaven, in the propagation of the doctrine of the Gospel throughout the whole world, should be given over to oblivion. Therefore it came about, by God's working, that some things were recorded in writing by certain and trustworthy authors, and that this was entrusted to the Church, so that the godly might at all times learn and recognize what kind of doctrine the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven by our Lord Jesus Christ, proclaimed throughout the circle of the world and confirmed by signs and wonders. The writings of this kind are (besides the four Gospels) the Acts of the Apostles, published by Luke; all the Epistles of Paul except the one written to the Hebrews; the first of John; and the first of Peter. That these have always been held beyond doubt is confirmed by Eusebius, Book 3, Chapter 25. From these the foundations of the articles of faith can be taken with certainty. But there are also some other writings, circulated in that century through the churches in the name of the apostles or their disciples, of which some were for a time left undecided on account of the doubt of some, but afterward were received into the number of the catholic writings, while others were entirely rejected as apocryphal. To the former class belong: the Epistle of James, the Epistle of Jude, the second of Peter, the second and third of John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John. Eusebius, speaking of his own time, says that the Epistle of James is the first among the seven catholic epistles, and that the Epistle of Jude is likewise one among them and is publicly read in most churches, yet he maintains that they are spurious, on the ground that not many of the ancients make mention of them. Eusebius, Book 2, Chapter 23. But besides this proof, which is drawn from the testimony of antiquity, there are also other not indistinct indications from which one may conclude that their authors were not

* This great work of church history was, as is well known, written by the four distinguished theologians: Flacius, Wigand, Judex, and Basilius Faber.