Notwithstanding the numerous endeavors both in the East and West to settle the canon during the 4th and 5th centuries, it was not finally closed. The doubts of individuals were still expressed; and succeeding ages testified to the want of universal agreement respecting several books. The question, however, was _practically_ determined. No material change occurred again in the absolute rejection or admission of books. With some fluctuations, the canon remained very much as it was in the 4th and 5th centuries. Tradition shaped and established its character. General usage gave it a permanency which it was not easy to disturb. No definite principles guided the course of its formation, or fixed its present state. It was dominated first and last by circumstances and ideas which philosophy did not actuate. Its history is mainly objective. Uncritical at its commencement, it was equally so in the two centuries which have just been considered. The history of the canon in the Syrian church cannot be traced with much exactness. The Peshito version had only the Hebrew canonical books at first; most of the apocryphal were rendered from the Greek and added in the Nestorian recension. In the New Testament it wanted four of the catholic epistles and the Apocalypse. Ephrem (A.D. 378) uses all the books in our canon, the apocryphal as well as the canonical. The former are cited by him in the same way as the latter. Sirach ii. 1 is quoted with _as the Scripture says_;(336) and Wisdom iv. 7 with _it is written_.(337) Daniel xiii. 9, belonging to the Greek additions, is also cited with _as it is written_.(338) It should be observed that the quotations given are all from Ephrem’s Greek, not Syriac, works; and that suspicions have been raised about the former being tampered with. The Syrian version of the New Testament made by Polycarp at the request of Philoxenus of Mabug, had the four catholic epistles wanting in the Peshito. It had also the two epistles of Clement to the Corinthians, if we may judge by the Harclean recension, A.D. 616; for a MS. in the Cambridge University Library contains those epistles immediately after the Catholic ones, and before those of St. Paul; so that they are put on an equality with the canonical writings. The Apocalypse is wanting. Junilius, (though an African bishop about 550 A.D.), says that he got his knowledge from a Persian of the name of Paulus who received his education in the school of Nisibis. He may, therefore, be considered a witness of the opinions of the Syrian church at the beginning of the 6th century. Dividing the biblical books into those of _perfect_, those of _intermediate_, and those of _no authority_, he makes the first the canonical; the second, those added to them by many (plures); the third, all the rest. In the first list he puts Ecclesiasticus. Among the second he puts 1 and 2 Chronicles, Job, Ezra and Nehemiah, Judith, Esther, 1 and 2 Maccabees; and in the New Testament, James, 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John.