Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/16

(16th century) from an obscure Greek work, of perhaps the 10th century, to the effect that certain books were rejected at the council of Nice in a.d. 325, as the result of a miracle. They pretend to believe the occurrence, although they deny the miracle; but it would be more becoming to find some passage in some author of credit who lived near the date alleged, and to show that the tale has at least real antiquity on its side. This they neither have done nor can do. Not one ancient writer intimates that the council of Nice entertained the question of the Canon at all. The use that is frequently made of Jerome's casual remark is simply disgraceful. It amounts to this, — that some people said the book of Judith was quoted as an authority at the council of Nice. Such, and no more, is the meaning of Jerome's few words. Yet out of them one party has concocted the fiction that the council determined the Canon of the Scriptures, and authorised the Old Testament Apocrypha; and another party has foisted in the idea of a miraculous rejection of the false Gospels, and other Christian Apocrypha. Why, even the old Greek does not say one word as to the books which were, according to his fable, rejected, except that they were 'spurious.' Now since an honest man