The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

The first fifty of them have had some authority in the Latin Church, and have sometimes served in Ecclesiastical judgments (whatever may be the case regarding the remaining eighty-four which do not pertain to our matter), we reject them, and most consistently assert that they are falsified, apocryphal, and surreptitious, and we say that no authority for the Canon of the Sacred books can be derived or result from them.

IX. Although in the Catalog of Gelasius only one book of Ezra and one of Maccabees is placed, and Baruch is not numbered, which is also passed over by the Council of Carthage and by Innocent and Augustine, the books did not for that reason cease to be Scriptural and Sacred in their essence. We offer the same judgment regarding the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and Maccabees from the Old Testament, and also regarding the Apocalypse from the New, not described in the Canon of the Sacred books in the Council of Laodicea, chapter 59; indeed, even if many Catholic authors and Holy Fathers before the Council of Trent doubted many books which are read in the Tridentine Canon today, and published a shorter Canon of Sacred books, the books did not for this reason cease to be, in themselves and in their author and object, a part of the body of Holy Scripture, and pertaining to its integrity. The Fathers and Doctors, however, who passed them over, or doubted them, or even denied them, did not err in faith on that account, since nothing had been authentically defined by the Church of God up to that time regarding the authority of those books.

X. It is false and heretical to claim that only those books of the Old Testament which are cited by Christ and the Apostles are to be considered Canonical: for if this were granted, neither the book of Judith, nor Esther, nor Ecclesiastes, nor the Song of Songs, nor Obadiah, nor Zephaniah, and perhaps others, would be Canonical, because no testimony from them is brought forth, nor are they cited in any way, in any Gospel or other book of the New Testament.

XI. The book of the Wars of the Lord cited in chapter 21 of the book of Numbers. The book of the Just cited in chapter 7 of the book of Joshua. The three thousand Parables and five thousand songs of Solomon cited in chapter 4 of the 3rd book of Kings. The description of the Portico and the Temple, which was given by David to Solomon his son, as is found in chapter 28 of the 1st book of Chronicles. The volumes of Samuel, and Nathan, and Gad, Ahijah, Iddo, the Prophets of Shemaiah, and the writings of Jehu the son of Hanani, and the Lamentations composed by Jeremiah and the singers and singing women at the funeral of Josiah, of which mention is made in the 2nd book of Chronicles, chapters 9, 12, 20, and 35, respectively; the little books of the purchase and sale of the field, which Jeremiah testifies were written by him in chapter 32; the one book in which Jeremiah had written every evil that was to come upon