The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

Babylon, and was thrown into the middle of the Euphrates by Seraiah at his command, as Jeremiah himself says in chapter 51; the book of the days of the Priesthood of John cited in the last chapter of the first book of Maccabees; the five books of Jason of Cyrene, commemorated in chapter 2 of the 2nd book of Maccabees; the letter which Paul says he wrote to the Corinthians in chapter 5 of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians; the letter which is called of the Laodiceans by Paul himself in chapter 4 of the Epistle to the Colossians; the book of Enoch, of which a testimony exists in the chapter of the Catholic Epistle of Jude: these are not authentic just because they are cited by Canonical books, even if they were found, unless they are declared to be such by the Church.

XII. Nor can it be said, because such books are not found—whether they have perished or not perished, on which point we are reasonably problematic—that the Church of God lacks any Canonical book; and so we maintain that all and individual Canonical books, which are the integral parts of the body of the whole Holy Scripture, are comprised in the Canon received by the Church and approved by the Tridentine Synod, and indeed all are whole, consisting of all their parts and members, which, as they were accepted from God and dictated by the Holy Spirit, so they have arrived at the Church, faithfully, sincerely, and without corruption or fault, transmitted through the hands of the Prophets and Apostles.

XIII. Whoever were to add something to the books described in the Canon, or alter something from them, even if they made a context with that part of Scripture to which it was added according to the sense or the sound of the words, they would nevertheless corrupt them materially and formally, and according to the added or altered part, they would not be Canonical: indeed, that book which suffered such an addition or alteration would not be Canonical, reduplicatively in terms of its identity, with the addition, because of the alteration of the text, which would not behave as it does in its authentic version received and approved by the Church. Whoever were to reject even the smallest part of them would incur the anathema excommunication fulminated by the Sacred Council of Trent.

XIV. The reasoning, also brought forward by very serious men to whom we are attached to prove that if the Epistle of Paul to the Laodiceans, or another to the Corinthians, or any other writing of an Apostle were to appear, the Church would reasonably define it as Canonical and receive it, does not please us: (namely, because given that it was of an Apostle, it would follow that it is Divine and sacred.) For it to be Sacred and Divine, it is not sufficient that it be written by a Prophet or an Apostle, but that it was Divinely inspired and has God as its author. For Prophets and Apostles could have written many things, in a human manner and sense, which would not be Divine and Sacred because they were written by a Prophet or an Apostle. It is, however, not entirely improbable that after the session of the Holy Spirit upon them, the Apostles were permitted by God to say or write something which