non of the New Testament,
did not find at first a universal reception.

4. In the caution and hesitation of the early churches with respect to
the books in question, we have satisfactory evidence that, in settling
the canon of the New Testament, they acted with great deliberation and
conscientiousness, their rule being that no book should be received
whose apostolic origin could not be established on solid grounds. Did
the early history of the Christian church present no such phenomenon as
that of the distinction between acknowledged and disputed books, we
might naturally infer that all books that professed to have emanated
from the apostles, or to have had their sanction, were received without
discrimination. But now the mature and final judgment of the churches is
entitled to great consideration. This judgment, let it be remembered,
was not affirmative only, but also _negative_. While it admitted to the
canon the seven books now under consideration, it excluded others which
were highly valued and publicly read in many of the churches. On this
ground it is entitled to still higher regard. It is not, however, of
binding authority, for it is not the decision of inspired men. We have a
right to go behind it, and to examine the facts on which it is based, so
far as they can be ascertained from existing documents. But this work
belongs to the introduction to the several books.

Three books alone "obtained a partial ecclesiastical currency,
through which they were not clearly separated at first from the
disputed writings of the New Testament." Westcott on the Canon,
Appendix B, p. 550. This was on the ground that they were
written, or supposed to be written, by the immediate successors
of the apostles. The oldest known codex of the Bible is the
_Sinaitic_, discovered at mount Sinai by Tischendorf in 1859,
and which belongs to the fourth century. This contains the whole
of the epistle of Barnabas, and the first part of the work
called the Shepherd of Hermas. The Alexandrine codex, belonging
to the fifth century, has appended to it the first epistle of
Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, the genuineness of which is
admitted, and also a portion of the second or apocryphal
epistle, the remainder of it being lost. The explanation is,
that these three books were read in some at least of the
churches when these codices were formed. But they never obtained
any per