Precious faith considered in its nature, working, and growth

Such a momentous thing should have been done by the Primo-primitive Church, in the first Century, whilst the Church of Christ was a pure Virgin, as Egesippus said.¹ Thus the School-man Durandus lays it down, Hoc quod dictum est de approbatione Scripturae per Ecclesiam, intelligitur solum de ⟨p. 334⟩Ecclesiâ, que fuit tempore Apostolorum, qui suerunt repleti Spiritu sancto: No Church so fit to do it as that which had so much of the holy Spirit; but nothing was done in it in that Age. The so called Canons of the Apostles (which in the 85th. Canon take in three Books of Maccabees into the old Canon, and the Constitutions and Epistles of Clement into the new,) are clearly adulterate; these condemn second Marriages, deprive not a Clergy-man of communion for Fornication or Perjury, or Thest, and speak of Altars, Oblations, Vessels, of Gold and Silver sanctified, Cantors and Lectors, and many other such-like altogether unknown in those Apostolical times. About these Canons Mirè inter se digladiantur Pontisicii, saith one. Gelasius in a Roman Synod of seventy Bishops, declares them Apocryphal, in toto; Bellarmine rejects all but the first fifty, and I think all the Romanists cast away the 85th. Canon touching the Scripture as Supposititious. The first Virgin-Century doing nothing in this grand matter; one might have looked for it in the second or third; but there is no foot-step of it. In the fourth Century about the year 320 came the famous Council of Nice, and then it might have been expected, as the aptest foundation for their Orthodox Conclusions against Arrius, and withal for a stated Rule against all future Heresies; but there is a failure also, nothing was done in it. And into what Heart can it enter, that in all those 320 years there was no Canon, no Authority of Scripture, no foundation ⟨p. 335⟩for the Primitive Christians to fix their Faith upon? In those days Paganism was strong, and Persecutions hot, and Divine Cordials necessary; and yet the Scripture for want of the Churches Definition, was not of Authority as to the Christians then living; I say, according to the Popish Thesis it was not. But to go on: Afterwards about the year of our Lord 368 came the Council of Laodicea, which in the 59th. Canon orders, That no Books should be read in the Church but the Canonical ones of the Old and New Testament;