We come to the period of the Latin, corresponding to that of the Greek Church which has just been noticed. Augustine(290) gave great attention to the subject, laboring to establish a complete canon, the necessity of which was generally felt. According to him the Scriptures which were received and acknowledged by all the churches of the day should be canonical. Of those not universally adopted, such as are received by the majority and the weightier of the churches should be preferred to those received by the fewer and less important churches. In his enumeration of the forty-four books of the Old Testament, he gives, after Chronicles, other histories “which are neither connected with the order” specified in the preceding context, “nor with one another,” _i.e._, Job, Tobit, Esther, Judith, the two books of the Maccabees, and Esdras. Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, he thinks, should be numbered among the prophets, as deserving of authority and having a certain likeness to Solomon’s writings.(291) He says of the Maccabees that this “Scripture has been received by the Church not uselessly, if it be read or heard soberly.”(292) The famous passage in the treatise on Christian doctrine, where he enumerates the whole canon, is qualified by no other; for though he knew the distinction between the canonical books of the Palestinian Jews and the so-called apocryphal ones, as well as the fact of some New Testament writings not being received universally, he thought _church-reception_ a sufficient warrant for canonical authority. Hence, he considered the books of the Maccabees canonical, because so received by the Church; while he says of Wisdom and Sirach that they merited _authoritative_ reception and numbering among the _prophetic_ Scriptures.(293) Of the former in particular he speaks strongly in one place, asserting that it is worthy to be venerated by all Christians as of divine authority.(294) But he afterwards retracted his opinion of the canonical authority of Sirach.(295) He raises, not lowers, the authority of the so-called apocryphal books which he mentions. He enumerates all the New Testament books, specifying the Pauline epistles as fourteen, and so reckoning that to the Hebrews as the apostle’s; but he speaks of it elsewhere as an epistle about which some were uncertain, professing that he was influenced to admit it as canonical by the authority of the Oriental churches.(296) In various places he speaks hesitatingly about its Pauline authorship.