Of some scriptures too ancient for the Church to allow, because that might procure suspect that they are rather counterfeit then true. CHAP. 38.
NOw if I should goe any higher, there is the Patriarch Noah, before the great deluge: we may very well cal him a prophet, for his very Arke, and his escape in that floud, were propheticall references vnto these our times. What was Enoch, the seauenth from Adam? Doth not the Canonicall Epistle of Iude s•…•…y that hee prophecied? The reason that wee haue not their writings, nor the Iewes neither, is their to great antiquity: which may procure a suspect that they are rather feigned to bee theirs, then theirs indeed. For many that beleeue a•…•… they like, and speake as they list, defend themselues with quotations from bookes. But the cannon neither permitteth that such holy mens authority should be reiected, nor that it should be abused by counterfeit pamphlets. Nor is it any maruell that such antiquity is to be suspected when as we read in the histories of the Kings of Iuda and Israel (which we hold canonicall) of many things touch∣ed at there which are not there explaned, but are said (a) to bee found in other bookes of the prophets, who are sometimes named, & yet those workes wee haue not in our Canon, nor the Iewes in theirs? I know not the reason of this, only I thinke that those prophets whom it pleased the holy spirrit to inspire, wrote •…•…e-things historically as men, and other things prophetically as from the •…•…outh of God, and that these workes▪ were really distinct: some being held their own, as they were men, and some the Lords, as speaking out of their bosomes: so that the first might belong to the bettring of knowledge and the later to the con∣•…•…ming of religion, to which the Canon onely hath respect, besides which if there be any workes going vnder prophets names, they are not of authority to better the knowledge, because it is a doubt whether they are the workes of those prophets or no: therefore wee may not trust them, especially when they make against the canonical truth, wheein they proue themselues directly false birthes.
L. VIVES.
TO bee found in (a) other. For we read: Concerning the deedes of Dauid. &c. they are