Grant that it is “the traditionary testimony of the Church” which guarantees the canonicity of each and all of the books of the Old and New Testaments.  Grant also that canonicity means infallibility; yet, according to the thirty-eight, this “traditionary testimony” has to be “ascertained and verified by appeal to antiquity.”  But “ascertainment and verification” are purely intellectual processes, which must be conducted according to the strict rules of scientific investigation, or be self-convicted of worthlessness.  Moreover, before we can set about the appeal to “antiquity,” the exact sense of that usefully vague term must be defined by similar means.  “Antiquity” may include any number of centuries, great or small; and whether “antiquity” is to comprise the Council of Trent, or to stop a little beyond that of Nicaea, or to come to an end in the time of Irenaenus, or in that of Justin Martyr, are knotty questions which can be decided, if at all, only by those critical methods which the signataries treat so cavalierly.  And yet the decision of these questions is fundamental, for as the limits of the canonical scriptures vary, so may the dogmas deduced from them require modification.  Christianity is one thing, if the fourth Gospel, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the pastoral Epistles, and the Apocalypse are canonical and (by the hypothesis) infallibly true; and another thing, if they are not.  As I have already said, whoso defines the canon defines the creed.

Now it is quite certain with respect to some of these books, such as the Apocalypse and the Epistle to the Hebrews, that the Eastern and the Western Church differed in opinion for centuries; and yet neither the one branch nor the other can have considered its judgment infallible, since they eventually agreed to a transaction by which each gave up its objection to the book patronised by the other.  Moreover, the “fathers” argue (in a more or less rational manner) about the canonicity of this or that book, and are by no means above producing evidence, internal and external, in favour of the opinions they advocate.  In fact, imperfect as their conceptions of scientific method may be, they not unfrequently used it to the best of their ability.  Thus it would appear that though science, like Nature, may be driven out with a fork, ecclesiastical or other, yet she surely comes back again.  The appeal to “antiquity” is, in fact, an appeal to science, first to define what antiquity is; secondly, to determine what “antiquity,” so defined, says about canonicity; thirdly, to prove that canonicity means infallibility.  And when science, largely in the shape of the abhorred “criticism,” has answered this appeal, and has shown that “antiquity” used her own methods, however clumsily and imperfectly, she naturally turns round upon the appellants, and demands that they should show cause why, in these days, science should not resume the work the ancients did so imperfectly, and carry it out efficiently.