The writers of the New Testament lived all in less than an age after Christ’s ascension, and had all of them seen our Saviour, or been His disciples, except St. Paul and St. Luke; and consequently whatsoever was written by them is as ancient as the time of the apostles. But the time wherein the books of the New Testament were received and acknowledged by the church to be of their writing, is not altogether so ancient. For, as the books of the Old Testament are derived to us, from no other time than that of Esdras, who by the direction of God’s spirit retrieved them, when they were lost; those of the New Testament, of which the copies were not many, nor could easily be all in any one private man’s hand, cannot be derived from a higher time than that wherein the governors of the church collected, approved, and recommended them to us, as the writings of those apostles and disciples, under whose names they go. The first enumeration of all the books, both of the Old and New Testament, is in the canons of the apostles supposed to be collected by Clement, the first (after St.