A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DURING THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES. BY BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, M.A. LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. Cambridge: MACMILLAN & CO. 1855. 101. a. 195. BIBI OTH PREFACE. My object in the present Essay has been to deal with the New Testament as a whole, and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the Apostolic heritage of Christians. And thus reserving for another occasion the inquiry into their mutual relations and essential unity, I have endeavoured to connect the history of the New Testament Canon with the growth and consolidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing between the amount of evidence for the authenticity of its component parts, and the whole mass of Christian literature. However imperfectly this design has been carried out, I cannot but hope that such a method of inquiry will convey both the truest notion of the connexion of the written Word with the living Body of Christ, and the surest conviction of its divine authority. Hitherto the coexistence of several types of apostolic doctrine in the first age and of various parties in Christendom for several generations afterwards, has been quoted to prove that our Bible as well as our Faith is a mere compromise. But while I acknowledge most willingly the great merit of the Tübingen School in |