230 WHAT IS LIFE? 



other books were part of the received books. Ancient 

 authorities are neither agreed with respect to the time 

 nor place at which this council assembled. It is reported 

 that about 318 bishops attended. The first thing they 

 did was to quarrel, and to present accusations against 

 each other. There is no record of their decision. It 

 is uncertain whether the books of the New Testament 

 were declared canonical by the Nicene Council or by 

 some other, or when or by whom they were collected 

 into a volume. Thus there is no evidence as to when 

 and how the books called the " Apocryphal New Testa- 

 ment " were rejected. 1 But he who possesses the 

 apocryphal New Testament and the canonical New 

 Testament has, in the two volumes, a collection of all 

 the historical records of Jesus Christ and his apostles 

 now in existence and considered sacred by Christians 

 during the first four centuries after his birth. 2 Any- 

 one who will take the rejected books and read them 

 will be surprised at the silly tales they contain. But 

 when these tales are compared with those which are 



1 " At length, by a sort of law of the survival of the fittest, the 

 present Gospels acquired an increasing authority and superseded the 

 other works which had competed with them ; but the selection was. 

 determined to a great extent, not by those principles of criticism 

 which would now be applied to historical records, but by doctrinal 

 considerations of the support they gave to prevalent opinions. In 

 other words, orthodoxy and not authenticity was the test applied, 

 and it is probable that no Christian Father of the second or third 

 century would have hesitated to reject an early manuscript traceable 

 very clearly to an Apostle, in favour of a later compilation of doubtful 

 origin, if the 'former contained passages which seemed to favour 

 heretical views, while the latter omitted those passages, or altered 

 them in a sense favourable to orthodoxy." (" Modern Science and 

 Modern Thought," S. Laing, 1896, p. 273.) 



2 The Apocryphal New Testament. William Hone, 1820, preface. 



