The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wiseThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise

where a thousand witnesses of men, without the same of God, ought not to bold any place in the religion, But sithence, that the superstition of the suffrages & prayers: for the dead hath begun to have crept into the Church, this book also hath begun to take great authority, in such sort that it oftener is read and song in the Popish Church, then those that contained more surer doctrine. And thou oughtest also to understand, that the ancients have sometime put a difference between y• Canonical, Apocrypha & Ecclesiastical books, as it appeareth by the author which hath expounded, ⟨image 225⟩the Creed the which some do think that it was Saint Cyprian: other that it was Ruffin. But whosoever if were of them both, they are both of them very ancient, and have divided those books after that sort: Ye must know (saith he) that thee be other books after the Canonical, which are not called of the ancients & of our prede••••ors Canonical, but C••lessasticall: as are the wisdom of Solomon, and the other wisdom, which is called Jesus the son of Sirach, the which book is among the Latins, by that general title called Ecclesiasticus, by the which word the author of the book is not named but the quantie of the Scripture. The book of Toby is of the same order, and of Judith, and the books of the Maccabees: the which they would that they should be all read in the Church, but they would not that they should have been settle forth, for to con••rme the authority of the faith by them. The other Scriptures, they have called Apocrypha: the which they would not that they should be read in the Church. Thou […] see here most plainly, how that they do attribute more authority unto the Canonical Scriptures then unto the Ecclesiastical Scriptures: and unto the Ecclesiastical more then unto the Apocrypha: but they have not yet nevertheless esteemed those Ecclesiastical (which they have many times called apocrypha) of equal and such authority, as the divine scriptures: nor they have called them Ecclesiastical for that cause, but because that they were in such reputation, that one niyght read and sign them in the Church (the w•••• was not permitted in the ancient Church) or because that their antiquity or holiness of their authors added unto them a •yttle more authority then unto the other.