( III )

Nor was this Epistle wanting in any of the ancientV?rjions , except the Syriac . The Reason of whichprobably was, that the first Version of this Sortwas made so early, that their Churches had notthen sufficiently inquired into the Merits of thatEpistle . It was certainly in the Canon , and con-sequently in the Language of those Churches in thefourth Century. For then Pphrœrn the Deacon frequently cites it; and from their Nearness to Pa-latine, one would imagine they must have had itmuch sooner. In a Word, nothing but extremePrejudice could induce Grotius to believe, againstthe express Characters of the Writing itself, thatany one was the Author of this Epistle but Jude ,the Brother of James . Much less could it be solate, as the Time of Adrian, and the Year of Christ130, which was the ConjeBure of that very learn-ed Man. But of this the Annotator is very posi-tive, adding, “ That the Epistle is writ chiefly a-" gainst the Carpocratians , of whose enormous Be-“ haviour in putting out the Candles , &c. at the“ Love-Feast, fee Clemens Alexandrinus , Strom. 3." p. 430.” Now if this could be depended uponas Fact, that the Epistle of Jude was written a-gainst the Carpocratians , it would convince us thatthe Date of it must be near as late as the Year 130.However that it could not possibly have been writ-ten by Jude the Apostle , who was dead manyYears before the Rise of the Carpocratian Heresy .But Clemens Alexandrinus , who flourished butSixty Years aster the Year 130, plainly supposes theEpistle of Jude to have been far more ancientthan that Period, or indeed than the Heresy abovespoken of. For in the third Book of his Stromata t