Third, that it is one thing not to accept but another to reject.
Third, that it is one thing not to accept but another to reject.
§ 102. (III) “It is one thing not to accept but another to reject. Indeed, the fact that the Israelite church did not accept those controversial books nevertheless does not at all mean that it rejected and repudiated them” (Melchior Canus, Locor., bk. 2, c. 2).
We respond. (1) This is an insignificant distinction, for in this question not to accept and to reject are equal. Whatever books are not taken into the canon or are not counted in the canon are thereby rejected from the canon. Thus Bellarmine proves that Psalm 151 is apocryphal from the fact that the Councils of Laodicea, Rome, and Trent set into the canon 150 psalms by name (De verbo Dei, bk. 1, c. 20). If there were any strength in this distinction, one could press it against Bellarmine’s proof in the same way.
(2) The equivalence in meaning between “not to accept” and “to reject” is obvious from a comparison of passages: Matt. 10:40: “He who receives you receives Me” with Luke 10:16: “He who rejects you rejects Me.”
(3) How does Canus prove that the Jews did not reject those books? He says, “The Jews did not accept these books within their canon by public authority, though some believed that they were sacred and divine.” But who are these “some”? Melchior Canus does not express this but sends us back to Cochlaeus, De canone Scripturae et catholicae ecclesiae auctoritate, c. 11. Nothing at all about this, however, do we find in Cochlaeus. Sixtus Senensis, bk. 1, sect. 2, on the title De libr. Maccab., quotes Josephus as affirming definitely in his book on the Maccabees: “The account of Eleazar and the seven children with their mother is considered in the canon by the Hebrews.” However, it is a translator, not Josephus, who declares this, for no trace of these words occurs in the Greek volume nor do these words agree with Josephus’s opinion in Contra Apion., bk. 1, which Eusebius quotes (Hist., bk. 3, c. 10).