Xi.  Poebadius, a Gallic bishop, who lived about thirty years after the council of Nice, testifies, that “the bishops of that council first consulted the sacred volumes, and then declared their faith.” (Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 52.)

XII.  Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in Cappadocia, contemporary with Epiphanius, says, that “hearers instructed in the Scriptures ought to examine what is said by their teachers, and to embrace what is agreeable to the Scriptures, and to reject what is otherwise.” (Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 124.)

XIII.  Ephraim, the Syrian, a celebrated writer of the same times, bears this conclusive testimony to the proposition which forms the subject of our present chapter:  “the truth written in the Sacred Volume of the Gospel is a perfect rule.  Nothing can be taken from it nor added to it, without great guilt.” (Lardner, Cred. vol. ix. p. 202.)

XIV.  If we add Jerome to these, it is only for the evidence which he affords of the judgment of preceding ages.  Jerome observes, concerning the quotations of ancient Christian writers, that is, of writers who were ancient in the year 400, that they made a distinction between books; some they quoted as of authority, and others not:  which observation relates to the books of Scripture, compared with other writings, apocryphal or heathen. (Lardner, Cred. vol. x. pp. 123-124.)

Section iii.

The Scriptures were in very early times collected into a distinct volume.

Ignatius, who was bishop of Antioch within forty years after the Ascension, and who had lived and conversed with the apostles, speaks of the Gospel and of the apostles in terms which render it very probable that he meant by the Gospel the book or volume of the Gospels, and by the apostles the book or volume of their Epistles.  His words in one place are, (Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. i. p. 180.) “Fleeing to the Gospel as the flesh of Jesus, and to the apostles as the presbytery of the church;” that is, as Le Clere interprets them, “in order to understand the will of God, he fled to the Gospels, which he believed no less than if Christ in the flesh had been speaking to him; and to the writings of the apostles, whom he esteemed as the presbytery of the whole Christian church.”  It must be observed, that about eighty years after this we have direct proof, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, (Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. ii. p. 516.) that these two names, “Gospel,” and “Apostles,” were the names by which the writings of the New Testament, and the division of these writings, were usually expressed.

Another passage from Ignatius is the following:—­“But the Gospel has somewhat in it more excellent, the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ, his passion and resurrection.” (Lardner, Cred. part ii. vol. ii. p. 182.)

And a third:  “Ye ought to hearken to the Prophets, but especially to the gospel, in which the passion has been manifested to us, and the resurrection perfected.”  In this last passage, the Prophets and the Gospel are put in conjunction; and as Ignatius undoubtedly meant by the prophets a collection of writings, it is probable that he meant the same by the Gospel, the two terms standing in evident parallelism with each other.