The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil

would not contribute to common doctrine and utility.

XV. From the beginning there was a division of the Canonical books with their titles, and since, for the sake of their dignity, it was indecent for books made by God to be incomplete, confused, and unordered, it is probable that the Sacred books of the Old Testament were divided not only by titles, but also by chapters and verses; so that at least they could be distinguished by some space and interval, if not precisely under that formality. However, this arithmetic of the individual chapters and verses which we now have in the Bibles as a distinction, did not exist among the ancients, and before the thousandth year of the Church, after which both the Greeks and the Latins introduced it for the greater convenience of those teaching and learning.

XVI. That the Gospel of Luke is divided into sixty-four titles in the commentaries of Ambrose, and into ninety-three chapters in the commentaries of Bede, whether this division was made by the scribes (as some wish) or by the authors, as is truly that of the Gospel of Matthew divided by Hilary into thirty-three Canons; indeed, that in the older Latin codices, even printed ones, the Gospel of Matthew contains ninety-four chapters, and the Gospel of Luke one hundred and seven: now, however, that the Church uses a more concise division in the Vulgate Bibles, contained in fewer chapters, does not at all harm the integrity of those same Gospels, in both the old and the new exemplars. Nor, because of such arithmetic diversity, are the codices, whether older or more modern, to be refuted as having some fault.

XVII. The later books of Ezra and Maccabees, not numbered among the authentic ones in the Canon by the Church, we recount among the apocryphal, not because we hold them for false, but because they are of hidden authority, for the reason that it is not certain to the Church that they are divine and parts of Holy Scripture. Hence, we neither adhere to Genebrard in his Chronology when he asserts them to be canonical, nor do we follow the parts of those by whom any one of them is called fabulous. We leave them their authority, such as they deserve, by revering them, especially since something from each of them is read in the Holy Fathers and classic Doctors; indeed, it is even used by the Church in divine offices, not as canonical, but as pious. Although printed in many editions, we do not examine them for this very cause, because they are not canonical.