individual reader; and it has restored the Epistles to the Hebrews and of James and Jude to their proper places in the New Testament, instead of leaving them in the kind of appendix to which Luther had banished them and the Revelation. Moreover, the passage containing the statement about the "veritable Epistle of straw"[16] is now omitted from the preface to his translation. And with regard to this very point, his former friend and later opponent Andrew Rudolph Bodenstein, of Karlstadt, pertinently asked, "If you allow the Jews to stamp books with authority by receiving them, why do you refuse to grant as much power to the Churches of Christ, since the Church is not less than the Synagogue?" We have at least as much reason to trust the Councils of Laodicea, Hippo, and Carthage, which formally defined the limits of the New Testament, as we have to trust the unknown Jewish influences which fixed those of the Old. And when we examine for ourselves the evidence which is still extant, and which has greatly diminished in the course of fifteen hundred years, we feel that both on external and internal grounds the decision of the fourth century respecting the genuineness of the Epistle of St. James, as a veritable product of the Apostolic age and as worthy of a place in the canon of the New Testament, is fully justified. [8] The date so frequently given, A.D. 363, cannot be substantiated, and on the whole is not probable. See Hefele, _History of the Church Councils_, II. vi. 93. [9] The Epistle to the Hebrews and the Apocalypse. [10] γνωρίμων δ' οὖν ὅμως τοῖς πολλοῖς (_H. E._ III. xxv. 3), where γνώριμος, as usual, indicates _familiar_ knowledge. Eusebius is a desultory writer, and one has to gather his views from statements scattered over chaps. iii., xxiv., and xxv., some of which are not very precise. The following table seems to represent his opinion:-- { Four Gospels, Acts, { fourteen Epistles { _Universally acknowledged_ { of Paul (Hebrews ?), { (τὰ ὁμολογούμενα) { 1 John, 1 Peter, CANONICAL BOOKS { { Apocalypse (?). (ἐνδιάθηκοι { γραφαί) { { _As to authenticity_--2 Peter. { _Disputed_ { { (τὰ ἀντιλεγόμενα) { _As to Apostolicity_--James, { Jude, 2 and 3 John.