or Apocryphal Books, such books as are not admitted into the canon of Scripture, being either not acknowledged as divine, or considered as spurious. The word is Greek, and derived from ἀπό, and κρύπτω, I hide or conceal. When the Jews published their sacred books, they gave the appellations of canonical and divine only to those which were then made public, while such as still remained in their archives were denominated apocryphal, for no other reason but because they were not published; so that these books might be really sacred and divine, though not promulgated as such. Thus, in respect of the Bible, all books were called apocryphal which were not inserted in the Jewish canon of Scripture. Vossius observes, that, with regard to the sacred books, none are to be accounted apocryphal except such as had been admitted neither into the synagogue nor the church.

The Protestants not only consider those books apocryphal which are esteemed as such in the church of Rome—namely, the Prayer of Manasseh king of Judah, the third and fourth books of Esdras, St Barnabas's epistle, the Book of Hermos, the addition at the end of Job, and the 15th Psalm—but also Tobit, Judith, Esther, the Book of Wisdom, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Susanna, the History of Bel and the Dragon, and the books of the Maccabees. The protestant doctrine is, that these books were not received by the Jews, nor so much as known to that people. None of the writers of the New Testament cite or make mention of them; and neither Philo nor Josephus speaks of or alludes to them. The Christian church was for several ages an utter stranger to these books; while Origen, Athanasius, Hilary, Cyril of Jerusalem, and all the orthodox writers who have given catalogues of the canonical books of Scripture, unanimously concur in rejecting these from the canon. Nay, even in regard to the New Testament, these fathers are divided in opinion whether the epistle to the Hebrews, the epistle of St. James, and the second epistle of St. Peter, the second and third epistles of St. John, the epistle of St. Jude, and the Revelation, ought to be acknowledged as canonical or not. Protestants, however, acknowledge those books of Scripture only to be canonical which were accounted so in the first ages of the church—which were cited by the earliest writers among the Christians as of divine authority, and, after the most diligent inquiry, received as such by the council of Laodicea. The several epistles above mentioned, and the book of Revelation, whatever may Apodectae have been the sentiments of particular persons respecting them, are allowed by all the reformed churches to be of divine authority, and are therefore held as constituting part of the canon of the New Testament.