The writers of the New Testament lived all in less than an age after Christ’s ascension, and had all of them seen our Saviour, or been his disciples, except St. Paul, and St. Luke; and consequently whatsoever was written by them, is as ancient as the time of the apostles. But the time wherein the books of the New Testament were received, and acknowledged by the church to be of their writing, is not altogether so ancient. For, as the books of the Old Testament are derived to us, from no other time than that of Esdras, who by the direction of God’s spirit retrieved them, when they were lost: those of the New Testament, of which the copies were not many, nor could easily be all in any one private man’s hand, cannot be derived from a higher time, than that wherein the governors of the church collected, approved, and recommended them to us, as the writings of those apostles and disciples, under whose names they go. The first enumeration of all the books, both of the Old and New Testament, is in the canons of the apostles, supposed to be collected by Clement, the first (after St. Peter) bishop of Rome. But because that is but supposed, and by many questioned, the Council of Laodicea is the first we know, that recommended the Bible to the then Christian churches, for the writings of the prophets and apostles: and this Council was held in the 364th year after Christ. At which time, though ambition had so far prevailed on the great doctors of the church, as no more to esteem emperors, though Christian, for the shepherds of the people, but for sheep; and emperors not Christian, for wolves; and endeavoured to pass their doctrine, not for counsel and information, as preachers; but for laws, as absolute governors; and thought such frauds as tended to make the people the more obedient to Christian doctrine, to be pious; yet I am persuaded they did not therefore falsify the Scriptures, though the copies of the books of the New Testament, were in the hands only of the ecclesiastics; because if they had had an intention so to do, they would surely have made them more favourable to their power over Christian princes, and civil sovereignty, than they are. I see not therefore any reason to doubt but that the Old and New Testament, as we have them now, are the true registers of those things, which were done and said by the prophets and apostles. And so perhaps are some of those books which are called apocrypha, and left out of the canon, not for inconformity of doctrine with the rest, but only because they are not found in the Hebrew. For after the conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great, there were few learned Jews, that were not perfect in the Greek tongue. For the seventy interpreters that converted the Bible into Greek, were all of them Hebrews; and we have extant the works of Philo and Josephus, both Jews, written by them eloquently in Greek. [Sidenote: Their scope.] But it is not the writer, but the authority of the church, that maketh the book canonical.