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A Critical Examination of the late New Text and Version of the New Testament ... / by Leonard Twells, Vicar of St. Mary's in Malborough
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Didymus, who lived Twenty seven Years after thesupposed Date of that Council, must have wrotehis Enarratiom some Time within that Period.Secondly , Supposing Didymuss Testimony to belater than the Year 365, it does not contradict; theSixtieth Canon of the Laodicean Council, thenholden, which declares the Second Epistle of St,Peter to be Canonical , and consequently does notstrew that Canon to have been a Forgery. For Didy-mus,as I have already proved,meant no more than thatthis Epistle at the Time of his Writing, was not in theCanon of the Universal Church, which is no wayinconsistent with the previous Declaration of theLaodicean Fathers, in Favour of that Book. Forthe Council there assembled, was merely Provin-cial, not Œcumenical, and extending to the wholeCatholic Church . And the Church of Alexait-dria, to which Didymus belonged, was not a partof the Laodicean Synod. Upon the whole there-fore, when Didymus fays that the second Epistle ascribed to St. Peter was not in the Canon, whe-ther he means the Canon of the Church diffusive,or that of a Provincial Council, binding theChurch of Alexandria, or lastly the particular Ca-non of that Church, the sixtieth Canon of theCouncil of Laodicea comes within none of theseSenses , and therefore is not at all affected by thatSaying, but may still be genuine. But the Annota-tes has more to object against that Canon, viz.that Dionysus Exiguns and Isdorus Mercator havebut si sty nine Canons of that Council in their Tran-slation. To which I might reply, that the ancientCode of the Canons of the universal Church rec-kons also no more than fifty nine Canons: But

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