Select Works of Thomas Chalmers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855. Excerpt: ... BOOK IV. ON THE BOOKS OF THE JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN REVELATION, AND THE DEGREE OF AUTHORITY WHICH BELONGS TO THEM. CHAPTER I. ON THE CANON OP SCRIPTURE, AND MORE ESPECIALLY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1. The term " canon " has long been employed to distinguish the real or authoritative books of revelation from all other books, whether they pretended to this high character or not. The origin and significancy of the word in this particular application of it seem not very clear. In the primitive use of it, it denoted the tongue of a balance--whence, by no very distant transition, it came to mean a rule or standard. Every book that is the genuine work of an inspired man, is an absolute rule of faith or life for all who are addressed by it. St. Paul, in Gal. vi. 16, speaks of those who " walk according to this rule," Xommi rourw' and in Phil. iii. 16, he says, "let us walk by the same rule," r$ avrw xavovi. To walk according to the canon of certain doctrines or precepts, is to walk according to the rule and direction of the Scriptures which contain them--which may be well therefore termed canonical, because of their prerogative to rule, or because of the authority which belongs to them. Certain it is, that the term, in this sense and application of it, was very early, and at length very generally made use of in the Christian Church. It appears in phrases of constant recurrence throughout the works of Irenseus, Clemens Alexandrinus, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, Augustine, Eusebius, and others. 2. We may be well assured that all those books which were admitted into the canon, obtained this high distinction because of the peculiar respect and confidence in which they were held at the time, and which signalized them over all other books. But the testimony of these othe...