Be this as it may, if we understand by the New Testament a fixed collection, equally authoritative throughout, of all the writings that were regarded as genuinely apostolic, that is, those of the original Apostles and Paul, then the Alexandrian Church at the time of Clement did not yet possess such a book; but the process which led to it had begun. She had come much nearer this goal by the time of Origen. At that period the writings included in the New Testament of the West were all regarded in Alexandria as equally authoritative, and also stood in every respect on a level with the Old Testament. The principle of apostolicity was more strictly conceived and more surely applied. Accordingly the extent of "Holy Scripture" was already limited in the days of Origen. Yet we have to thank the Alexandrian Church for giving us the seven Catholic Epistles. But, measured by the canon of the Western Church, which must have had a share in the matter, this sifting process was by no means complete. The inventive minds of scholars designated a group of writings in the Alexandrian canon as "Antilegomena." The historian of dogma can take no great interest in the succeeding development, which first led to the canon being everywhere finally fixed, so far as we can say that this was ever the case. For the still unsettled dispute as to the extent of the canon did not essentially affect its use and authority, and in the following period the continuous efforts to establish a harmonious and strictly fixed canon were solely determined by a regard to tradition. The results are no doubt of great importance to Church history, because they show us the varying influence exerted on Christendom at different periods by the great Churches of the East and West and by their learned men.