Bodenstein of Carlstad examined the question of canonicity more thoroughly than any of his contemporaries, and followed out the principle of private judgment in regard to it. He divides the biblical books into three classes—1. Books of the highest dignity, viz., the Pentateuch and the Gospels; 2. Books of the second dignity, _i.e._, the works termed prophetic by the Jews, and the fifteen epistles universally received; 3. Books of the third and lowest authority, _i.e._, the Jewish Hagiographa and the seven Antilegomena epistles of the New Testament. Among the Apocrypha he makes two classes—such as are out of the canon to the Hebrews yet hagiographical (Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, the two Maccabees), and those that are clearly apocryphal and to be rejected (third and fourth Esdras, Baruch, Prayer of Manasseh, a good part of the third chapter of Daniel, and the last two chapters of Daniel.)(364) Zwingli asserts that the Apocalypse is not a biblical book.(365) Oecolampadius says—“We do not despise Judith, Tobit, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, the last two Esdras, the three Maccabees, the last two chapters of Daniel, but we do not attribute to them divine authority with those others.”(366) As to the books of the New Testament he would not compare the Apocalypse, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John with the rest.(367) Calvin did not think that Paul was the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, or that 2 Peter was written by the apostle himself; but both in his opinion are canonical. CHAPTER VIII. ORDER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS. I. The arrangement of the various parts comprising the New Testament was fluctuating in the second century; less so in the third. In the fourth century the order which the books had commonly assumed in Greek MSS. and writers was; the Gospels, the Acts, the Catholic Epistles, the Pauline, and the Apocalypse. This sequence appears in the Vatican, Sinaitic, Alexandrian and Ephrem (C) MSS.; Cyril of Jerusalem, in the 60th Canon of the Laodicean Council, Athanasius, Leontius of Byzantium, &c. II. Another order prevailed in the Latin Church, viz., the Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles of Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse. This appears in Melito, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Augustine, Jerome, the Vulgate, the Councils of Carthage, held in A.D. 397 and 419; and is now the usual arrangement. Within the limits of the two general arrangements just mentioned, there were many variations. Thus we find in relation to _the gospels_. III. (_a_) Matthew, John, Luke, Mark; in the MSS. of the old Italic marked _a_, _b_, _d_, _e_, _ff_, and in the cod. argenteus of Ulfila’s Gothic version. (_b_) Matthew, John, Mark, Luke; in the council of Ephesus A.D. 431, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, the stichometry of the Clermont MS. Such was the usual order in the Greek Church of the fifth century. (_c_) Mark is put first, followed by Matthew; in the fragment of a Bobbian MS. of the Itala at Turin marked _k_.