not written by the Apostles.  Marcion rejected all, except St. Luke’s Gospel.  The Manichees disputed much against the authority of St. Matthew’s Gospel.  The Alogians rejected the Gospel of St. John as not his, but made by Cerinthus.  The Acts of the Apostles were rejected by Severus, and the sect of his name.  The same rejected all Paul’s Epistles, as also did the Ebionites, and the Helkesaites.  Others, who did not reject all, rejected some particular epistles....  Several of the books of the New Testament were not universally received, even among them who were not heretics, in the first ages....  Several of them have had their authority disputed by learned men in later times” (Ibid, pp. 8, 9).

If recognition by the early writers be taken as a proof of the authenticity of the works quoted, many apocryphal documents must stand high.  Eusebius, who ranks together the Acts of Paul, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Revelation of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Institutions of the Apostles, and the Revelation of John (now accounted canonical) says that these were not embodied in the Canon (in his time) “notwithstanding that they are recognised by most ecclesiastical writers” ("Eccles.  Hist.,” bk. iii., chap. xxv.).  The Canon, in his time, was almost the same as at present, but the canonicity of the epistles of James and Jude, the 2nd of Peter, the 2nd and 3rd of John, and the Revelation, was disputed even as late as when he wrote.  Irenaeus ranks the Pastor of Hermas as Scripture; “he not only knew, but also admitted the book called Pastor” (Ibid, bk. v., chap. viii.).  “The Pastor of Hermas is another work which very nearly secured permanent canonical rank with the writings of the New Testament.  It was quoted as Holy Scripture by the Fathers, and held to be divinely inspired, and it was publicly read in the churches.  It has place with the Epistle of Barnabas in the Sinaitic Codex, after the canonical books” ("Supernatural Religion,” vol. i., p. 261).

The two Epistles of Clement are only “preserved to us in the Codex Alexandrinus, a MS. assigned by the most competent judges to the second half of the fifth, or beginning of the sixth century, in which these Epistles follow the books of the New Testament.  The second Epistle ... thus shares with the first the honour of a canonical position in one of the most ancient codices of the New Testament” ("Sup.  Rel.,” vol. i., p. 220).  These epistles are, also, amongst those mentioned in the Apostolic Canons.  “Until a comparatively late date this [the first of Clement] Epistle was quoted as Holy Scripture” (Ibid, p. 222).  Origen quotes the Epistle of Barnabas as Scripture, and calls it a “Catholic Epistle” (Ibid, p. 237), and this same Father regards the Shepherd of Hermas as also divinely inspired. (Norton’s “Genuineness of the Gospels,” vol. i., p. 341).  Gospels, other than the four canonical, are quoted as authentic by the earliest Christian writers, as we shall see in establishing position h; thus destroying Paley’s contention ("Evidences,” p. 187) that there are no quotations from apocryphal writings in the Apostolical Fathers, the fact being that such quotations are sown throughout their supposed writings.