122 Probable that S. Aug. and S. Jerome meant

otherwise punished than by the grief which they feel at the delay and retarding of their felicity; of which S. Brigit cites an instance."

k) Deutero-Canonical Books.

In regard to the Old Testament, our Sixth Article follows, not a mere insulated saying of S. Jerome, but one which embodies in the main a good deal of tradition before him, and which has been accepted by writers of acknowledged weight to the very verge of the Council of Trent'. The

three stages, of which the first is filled with horrible torment and terrible creatures which torment the souls; the second, where they are punished with a certain weakness, until they be delivered by the prayers of their friends or the suffrages of the Church; the third, in which there is no other pain than the desire of arriving at the presence of God and the beatific vision of Him. Here many of those who, in the world, had not a perfect desire to arrive at the presence of God and the beatific vision of Him, remain very long; and she adds that few of those who have lived well escape this last." Then, having dwelt on the examination of S. Brigit's visions at the Council of Constance, and Bellarmine's defence of this last division, he says, "The thing appears very probable in itself; for one does not pass from one extremity to the other without passing through some middle. And as the purgatory, in which there is pain, both of sense and loss, contains pains very grievous and very like to those of the damned, except their duration, it is very probable that souls do not pass from this rigorous purgatory to the bliss of heaven, without previously passing through this terrestrial Paradise or purgatory of desire, where there is only the pain of loss."-De la Rés. gén., Méd. 3. T. v. pp. 344-346.

4 See note A at the end.

the same as to the Deutero-Canonical books. 123

Council of Trent, following S. Augustine, enumerates together the books of the Hebrew Canon and the Deutero-Canonical books written after the order of prophets closed in Malachi. Yet there is an à priori probability that there could be no radical difference between the meaning of those two great fathers, because none ever comes into sharp contrast, and both ways of counting the books continued down to the Council of Trent. The Council of Trullo

.

received at the same time the Council of Laodicea, which includes in the Canon of the Old Testament those books only which were in the Hebrew Canon, and the Council of Carthage, which includes in the Canonical Scriptures the Deutero-Canonical Books also. But it would not have received together two contradictory Canons of Scripture. S. Augustine also, who, with the Council of Carthage, includes the Deutero-Canonical Books under the common title of Divine Scriptures which were to be read, elsewhere makes a distinction between some at least of the Deutero-Canonical Books and the Canon which our Lord sealed by His own authority 5. He

"It is our business, as the Apostle admonisheth, to prove all things, to hold fast the things which are good, to keep us from all evil appearance. And this Scripture, entitled of the Maccabees, the Jews have not, as they have the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, to which the Lord bears testimony, as His witnesses, saying, 'All things must needs be fulfilled which were written in the Law, and the Prophets, and the Psalms concerning Me;' but which was received in the Church, not without benefit, if it be read and heard soberly, and chiefly for the sake of those Maccabees, who, for the law of God, as true

124 Distinction within the books of the larger Canon

challenged the Donatists to "demonstrate their Church in the commands of the Law, in the predictions of the Prophets, in the canticles of the Psalms, in the words of Himself the One Shepherd, and in the preaching and labours of the Evangelists; i. e. in all the canonical authorities of the sacred books. In two places, also, in which he mentions the Maccabees, he assigns the same reason why the Church had received them into the Canon, as S. Jerome gave for the Deutero-Canonical Books generally, viz. the edifying histories of the martyrdom of the Maccabees'. Singularly the two books

martyrs, suffered from the persecutors such unworthy and horrible things; that hence, too, the Christian people might observe that the sufferings of this time are not worthy [to be accounted of] in regard of the future glory which shall be revealed in us, for whom Christ suffered,' if they endured so great things most patiently for the law which God gave through a servant to those to whom He not yet given the Son" (S. Aug. con. Ep. Gaud. Donat. i. 31, T. ix. 655, 656). In his Epistle to Dulcitius (Ep. 204, n. 6. T. ii. 766) he speaks of the Maccabees in a somewhat disparaging tone. "But, it must be confessed, that, as to that elder Razius, whom, straitened by the most extreme destitution of examples, they, after having minutely searched all Ecclesiastical authorities, scarcely at length boast that they have found in the books of the Maccabees an authority for the wickedness whereby they destroy themselves, I remember I have never yet answered them."

6

Ep. c. Donat. c. 18, n. 47, T. ix. 371.

"The reckoning of the Jews (from the restoration of the Temple) is found, not in the Holy Scriptures, which are called 'canonical,' but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees which, not the Jews, but the Church has counted canonical, on account of some vehement and wonderful passions

in S. Augustine.

125

do not occur in the Greek copies of the Canon of the 3rd Council of Carthage, though they do occur in S. Augustine's enumeration of the whole Canon of Scripture.

In the Council of Carthage, again, the emphasis is as to the books which were "to be read." The Canon closes, "Let this be made known to our brother and fellow-Bishop, Boniface, or other Bishops of those parts, for confirming that Canon, because we have received from the fathers, that these things were to be read in the Church." The Canon adds further, "Be it lawful for the Passions of the martyrs to be read, when their anniversaries are to be celebrated. S. Augustine distinguishes, as you know, the three books of Solomon from Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, stating that these had been of old received into authority, แ chiefly by the Western Church ;" and then, after

of martyrs, who, before Christ came in the flesh, strove even unto death for the law of God, and endured most grave and horrible ills."-De Civ. Dei, xviii. 36, T. vii. 519, and ab. Note 5.

66

"The Greek copies of this Canon, those of Zonaras, Balsamion, and one MS. of the Canons of the Greek Church, the ed. Tillii, A. 1546, and the two Greek, also, of Binius, and the ed. regia, omit the two books of the Maccabees." They are not in the Colbert MS. or ours, but they are in the Codex Pithoean., and in Augustine (De Doct. Xt. ii. 8 Retract. ii. 4), who was also present at this 3rd Council of Carthage. See too De Civ. Dei, xviii. 36."

' Conc. Carth. iii. 47, inserted in the Cod. Eccl. Afr. A. 419, but without the clause about the Passions of the Martyrs.

126 S. Augustine defends passage in the Book

alleging the picture of the conspiracy of the wicked against the just, as a prophecy of the Passion of our Lord, he adds, in language which reminds us of S. Jerome, "But against gainsayers those things are not adduced with so much firmness, which are not written in the Canon of the Jews."

Yet he believed that in some sense they were a Divine authority. It was reported to him that the semi-Pelagians had said, "That attestation which thou hast put down, 'He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding,' they define ought to be omitted, as not canonical." He does not assert, in answer, that it was canonical, in the sense in which the objectors meant. He justifies the saying as true in itself. "This then being so, this saying of the Book of Wisdom ought not to be rejected, which [book] hath merited during so long a period to be recited in the Church of Christ from the place of Readers of the Church of Christ, and to be heard by all Christians, by Bishops to the lowest of the faithful laity, penitents, catechumens, with the veneration of Divine authority." He appeals to them, that they would listen to "those who treated on the Divine Scriptures before them; that they ought to prefer this Book of Wisdom to all those writers, since those excellent writers nearest to the times of the Apostles, preferred it to them

1 Hilarii Ep. (136 inter Aug. Opp. ii. 827, and x. 789). 2 De Prædest. Sanctt. nn. 27-29.