"For, if this be not done, (says Peter, after entreating James not to communicate his preachings to any Gentile without previous examination,) our speech of truth will be divided into many opinions, nor do I know this thing as being a prophet, but as seeing even now the beginning of this evil. For some from among the Gentiles have rejected my legal preaching, embracing the trifling, and lawless doctrine of a man who is an enemy; and these things, some have endeavoured to do now in my own lifetime, transforming my words by various interpretations, to the destruction of the Laws: as if I had been of the same mind, but dared not openly profess it, (see Galatians ii. 11, 12, &c.,) which be far from me! For this were to act against the law of God, spoken by Moses, and which has the testimony of our Lord for its perpetual duration; since he thus has said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, yet one jot, or one tittle, shall not pass from the law." But these, I know not how, promising to deliver my opinion, (see Galatians as above) take upon them to explain the words they heard from me, better than I that spoke them; telling their disciples, my sense was that of which I had not so much as thought. Now, if in my own life time, they dare feign such things, how much more will those that come after, do the same." APPENDIX C. Extract from Dodwell's Dissertations on Irenaeus, Diss. 1, p.p. 38, 39. "The Canonical writings (i. e. of the New Testament), lay concealed in the coffers of private churches, or persons, till the latter times of Trajan, or rather perhaps of Adrian; so that they could not come to the knowledge of the church. For if they had been published, they would have been overwhelmed under such a multitude as were then of apocryphal and suppositious books, that a new examination and a new testimony would be necessary to distinguish them from these false ones. And it is from this new testimony (whereby the genuine writings of the apostles were distinguished from the spurious pieces which went under their names,) that depends all the authority which the truly apostolic writings have formerly obtained, or which they have at present in the Catholic Church. But this fresh attestation of the canon is subject to the same inconveniences with those traditions of the ancient persons that I defend, and whom Irenaeus both heard and saw; for it is equally distant from the original, and could not be made except by such only as had reached those remote times. But it is very certain that before the period I mentioned of Trajan's time, the canon of the sacred books, was not yet fixed, nor any certain number of books received in the Catholic Church, whose authority must ever after serve to determine matters of faith; neither were the spurious pieces of heretics yet rejected, nor were the faithful admonished to beware of them for the future. Likewise, the true writings of the apostles used to be so bound up in one