The external testimony to the present epistle is scanty.  Passing by some doubtful references we come first to Origen who says (in Eusebius, Hist.  Eccl., 6. 25):  “But Peter, upon whom is built the church of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, has left one acknowledged epistle; a second also, if you will, for it is doubted of.”  In those of his works which are extant only in the Latin version of Rufinus, Origen in a number of passages quotes the present epistle as Scripture.  It has been suspected that these passages were interpolated by Rufinus, who took many liberties with the text of Origen; but one of them, which occurs at the beginning of his seventh homily on Joshua, is so peculiar that we cannot well doubt that Origen himself was its author.  In allusion to the procession of priests blowing with trumpets when the Israelites compassed the walls of Jericho (Josh. chap. 6), he compares the writers of the New Testament to so many sacerdotal trumpeters, assigning to them trumpets for each book, and mentioning every book, as well the disputed as the acknowledged:  “First Matthew in his gospel, gave a blast with his sacerdotal trumpet.  Mark also, Luke, and John, sounded with their single sacerdotal trumpets.  Peter also sounds aloud with the two trumpets of his epistles; James also, and Jude.  But John adds yet again to blow with the trumpet through his epistles and Apocalypse; Luke, also, narrating the Acts of the Apostles.  But last of all that man came, who said:  ’I think that God has set forth us apostles last,’ and thundering with the fourteen trumpets of his epistles, overthrew to their foundations the walls of Jericho, and all the engines of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers.”  The “epistles” through which the apostle John sounds are obviously his three epistles.  The “fourteen trumpets” upon which Paul blows include the epistle to the Hebrews.  In this remarkable passage, then, we have an exhaustive list of our present canonical books; and there is no ground for imputing any interpolation to the translator.  It may be said, indeed, that this enumeration of the books of the New Testament is made in a popular way, and does not imply Origen’s deliberate judgment that they were all of apostolic authority.  If this be granted, it still remains evident from the form of the passage that all the books of our present canon were in current ecclesiastical use in Origen’s day, whatever doubts he may have had respecting some of them, and that they constituted, along with the writings of the Old Testament, that whole of divine revelation which the Christian churches employed in assaulting the kingdom of Satan.

The testimony of Eusebius himself is of the same general import as that of Origen—­that the first epistle of Peter has been universally acknowledged; but that the one current as the second has not been received as a part of the New Testament; but yet, appearing useful to many, has been studied