Second, that the councils and fathers consider those books as canonical.
Second, that the councils and fathers consider those books as canonical.
§ 105. (II) They argue from the witness of fathers and councils. “The following place the controversial books in the canon: the Third Council of Carthage,12 can. 47; the Council of Trent, sess. 4 (some add the Council of Florence13 held under Eugenius IV); Pope Innocent I, in his letter to Exuperius; Gelasius I, with seventy bishops, in his Decretum on the sacred and ecclesiastical books; and, finally, the fathers Augustine (De doctr. Christ., bk. 2, c. 8), Isidore [of Seville] (Etymolog., bk. 6, c. 1), Cassiodorus (Divin. lect., bk. 1), and Rabanus (De instit. cleric., bk. 2).”
We respond. The major premise of the argument is: Those books that the Councils of Carthage and Trent, Innocent, Gelasius, Augustine, Isidore, Cassiodorus, and Rabanus call canonical are truly canonical. But in this major premise there are many things that can be desired: (1) Even if all of them stood on the side of the Papists in this question, nevertheless they would harm nothing of the truth confirmed by the testimonies of so many of the ancient fathers, both Eastern and Western, near the times of the apostles.
(2) Councils are either old or more recent. The old ones are either ecumenical, whose authority is great—such as the Council of Laodicea is, which acts with us—or they are particular, such as the Third Council of Carthage, the weight of whose authority is not as great as that of the general Council of Laodicea. The more recent ones are the Councils of Florence and of Trent, to which the authority of the old councils must be preferred by far.
(3) Not even the Papists themselves approve simply the decrees of the Council of Carthage. In canon 26, it decrees that “the bishop of the first see not be called the chief priest or the prince of priests.” The same council counts five Books of Solomon; meanwhile, it leaves Baruch14 and Maccabees out of the canon. Up to this point, then, it does not agree with the hypotheses of the Papists.
(4) The Council of Carthage and the fathers cited simply explain their opinion but by no means pronounce an anathema on those who feel the contrary. That is what the Council of Trent does. However, the rest of the fathers, whose testimonies we brought out earlier and who lived before and after that council, removed those controversial books from the canon with no regard for that decree.
(5) That canon that is commonly called canon 47 of the Council of Carthage in some books is canon 24 of the Second Council under Boniface, as Surius tells us. Therefore that council’s catalog of books of the canon is doubtful.
(6) The Council of Carthage is a particular council; therefore it cannot create an indubitable confidence concerning canonical books. If they respond, “It was confirmed in the general Trullan Council,” one should note that the Trullan Council also confirmed the Council of Laodicea, in which our opinion regarding the canon was approved. Moreover, Pighius (Tract. propr.), Canus (Loci, bk. 5, c. 6), and Bellarmine (De Rom. pontif., bk. 2, c. 18) claim that the canons of the Trullan Synod are of doubtful genuineness and there are also many things in the Trullan Council that not even the Papists themselves accept. For example, canon 13 prohibits deacons and presbyters from being separated from their wives; canon 36 makes the bishop of Constantinople and the bishop of Rome equals; canon 55 prescribes the law of fasting to the Roman Church; canon 67 decrees that blood and suffocated animals not be eaten; canon 2 accepts eighty-five canons of the apostles.
(7) Gelasius, along with his council of seventy bishops, lists only one Book of the Maccabees and one of Ezra.
(8) The decree of the Council of Trent was created in session 4. In all, there were about fifty legates, cardinals, archbishops, and bishops who were present there and who passed this decree about the number of canonical books, and they were almost all Spanish and Italian. With so small a crowd, they could not have been holding a general council.
(9) The Papists themselves have doubts as to when those controversial books were taken into the canon and why the primitive Church excluded them. Costerus says (Enchir., p. 69): “They were not accepted because of the Jews who had been converted to the faith, lest they become irritated.” Pistorius says (Hodeget., p. 3): “For some years the Church had doubts and took counsel.” Bellarmine says (De sacrament., bk. 2, c. 24): “The councils published the canon,” but he does not name them. Stapleton makes the bold claim (Doctr. princ., bk. 9, c. 14, and Relect. princ. doctr., p. 54): “The current Church can take a book into the canon.”
(10) Briefly, one must pass judgment on the canonical authority of those canonical books not from the testimony of a few theologians but on the basis of the essential internal requirements and the harmonious testimony of the Church, especially of the Israelite church. Melchior Canus confesses: “There is doubt among the Papists whether it has been placed completely within the authority of a council to define what book is to be accepted as canonical” (Loci., bk. 2, c. 8).
§ 106. To the minor proposition, that the Council of Carthage and some of the fathers call those controversial books canonical and number them with the canonical books, we respond that the canonical books are so called either strictly and properly (those that have the canonical, divine, and infallible authority to prove dogmas) or generally and broadly (those that are read in the Church to edify the faithful). Books of the first kind are called canonical 
—absolutely and simply—because they are the perfect rule of faith and life together. Books of the latter class are called canonical 
—only comparatively and relatively—because they contain some ideas taken from the canonical books and histories pertaining to the Church of God and also would be read in the assembly of the Church.
You see, whatever books are outside the canon, properly and strictly speaking, are divided into two classes. The first contains those that have been added to the properly canonical books in the corpus of the Bible; nevertheless they do not have an authority equal to those. The second group contains those that simply are rejected books and contain fables that must be repudiated. The noncanonical books of the first class are called “ecclesiastical” because they are read in the Church for the edification of behavior but not to prove doctrine. They are called “apocryphal,” namely, with respect to books indubitably canonical in the proper and strict sense of that word. And they are called “canonical,” namely, comparatively and relatively in respect to the other class of noncanonical books that are completely rejected. Therefore when the Council of Carthage, Augustine, and others of the ancients call these controversial books “canonical” and count them among the canonical books, they are then using the name “canonical books” in a broader sense, in which the books are called “canonical” that are contained in the codex of the Bible and read in the Church to edify the people and that are also distinct from the apocryphal books of the other kind that contain hidden fables that are to be repudiated.
We prove this distinction of ours: (1) From the testimony of Cardinal Cajetan, who says (Comment. hist. V. T.):
Do not be disturbed, O novice, if you discover somewhere, either in the sacred councils or among the sacred theologians, that those books (Judith, Tobit, Maccabees, etc.) are counted among the canonical books. The words of councils as well as of doctors must be brought back to Jerome’s revision, and according to his judgment, those books, and any other similar books in the canon of the Bible, are not canonical, that is, regular, for confirming those things that are matters of faith. They nevertheless can be called canonical, that is, regular, for the edification of the faithful, inasmuch as they have been accepted in the canon of the Bible and authorized for this purpose.
To be sure, Canus makes the exception: “In this matter Cajetan was deceived by the new ideas of Erasmus.” But we set against Canus the fact that Pererius, in his commentary on Genesis 1, calls him “a man who does good thinking about the mysteries of faith and is of the highest merit concerning theology”; that Sixtus Senensis calls him “an incomparable theologian and the most erudite of the learned men of his century” (Biblioth., bk. 4, title Thomas de Vio); and, finally, that Bellarmine calls him “a man of great talent and of no less devotion” (De script. eccles.).
(2) From the Council of Carthage. After the fathers of that council had enumerated the canonical books, they added: “This should become known to our brother and fellow priest Boniface or other bishops of these parts for confirming this canon, for we have received it from the fathers for reading in the Church.” Therefore they consider as canonical those books that are read in the Church, even if they are read only for the edification of behavior.
(3) From the Trullan Council. The Trullan Council confirmed both the Councils of Laodicea and Carthage. Either we must decide that the Trullan Synod approved the councils’ contrary definitions or we must say that the fathers of the Council of Carthage use the expression “canonical books” in a broader sense, but the fathers of the Council of Laodicea use it properly and strictly.
(4) From Augustine, who was present at the Council of Carthage and subscribed to it. From a careful reading of Augustine, it is evident that he calls “canonical” whatever is read in the Church, whether it avails for confirming doctrine or only for the edification of behavior. On the other hand, to him, whatever is fable-filled, corrupt, or false is “apocryphal” (De doctr., bk. 2, c. 8). When he had said that the canonical books were to be read, he immediately added: “The catechumen will keep this method in reading the canonical Scriptures: He will place those that all the Catholic churches receive ahead of those that some do not accept. In the case of those that not all accept, he will place those first that the majority and more important ones accept.” Ibid.: “You see, let him who has been equipped with faith in the truth read the others more securely, so that they do not preoccupy his weak mind and prejudice anything against sound understanding as they deceive with their perilous lies and phantoms.” From this it is understood that Augustine is speaking about those things that are apocryphal in an extreme degree, which earlier (§ 67) we declared were apocrypha of the second class with regard to which the ecclesiastical hagiographa or holy writings somehow deserve to be called canonical. Also pertaining to this is the fact that in Contra Faust., bk. 2, c. 2, he says that those books are called apocryphal “that have been declared and brought forward by no light of testification.” In De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 23, he calls those things “fables of the Scriptures” “that are called apocrypha of which, because of many false ideas, there is no canonical authority.” He defines as apocryphal “those whose hidden origin is not clear to those by whose witness the authority of the true Scriptures has come to us” (ibid.). In De civ. Dei, bk. 18, c. 36, he writes: “That reckoning of the times is found not in the Holy Scriptures that are called canonical but in others, in which are also included the Books of the Maccabees, which the Jews do not, but the Church does, consider canonical because of the sufferings of some martyrs.” Therefore, to Augustine, whatever is publicly read in the Church for the edification of behavior is “canonical,” even if it is not truly and properly canonical for confirming dogmas of faith. In Contra epist. Gaudent., bk. 2, c. 23, he warns that “one must read the Books of the Maccabees soberly,” but he would not have applied this caution to the properly canonical books, as we gather from Contra Faust., bk. 11, c. 5; De baptism., bk. 2, c. 3; Contra Crescon., bk. 2, c. 31-32; epistles 8, 9, 19, 48, 112, etc., where he attributes infallible authority to the truly canonical books. In De mirabilib. Script., bk. 2, he distinguishes the Books of the Maccabees from the divine canon. In De civ. Dei, bk. 17, c. 20, he concedes that “those things that are not written in the canon of the Jews are less dependable.”
From all of this it is clear as crystal that Augustine calls “canonical” what has not been totally rejected as fable-filled but what is and can be read in the Church for the edification of the faithful, even if it does not have an authority equal to the rest of the properly canonical books. You see, with the words “apocryphal” and “canonical” he does not distinguish three classes of writings with Eusebius and Jerome, but only two. He calls those “apocryphal” that are fable-filled, corrupted, and false, but those that were being read in the Church he calls with the single name “canonical,” though he does not assign these equal authority, as is evident from the passages we have quoted. Ludovicus Vives, on De civ. Dei, bk. 15, c. 23: “Those writings were ‘apocryphal’ that the Church was not using publicly. Rather, they were writings that it held privately and anyone who wished would read, such as the Apocalypse of the Apostle Peter and the book of his Acts.”
(5) From Isidore. He also distinguishes the noncanonical books, properly speaking, from the ecclesiastical books, but with the name “canonical” he distinguishes the biblical books from the fables of the heretics. He writes, Etymol., bk. 6, c. 2, at the end: “For the heretics bring out many things under the names of the prophets and more recent things under the names of the apostles. By careful examination all of them have been removed from canonical authority under the name ‘apocryphal.’”