enotes an ordinance, decision, regulation, or law, made by authority of any superior, civil or ecclesiastical.

Apostolic Constitutions, a collection of regulations respecting the doctrine and discipline of the church, attributed to the apostles, and said to have been collected by Clements Romanus, whose name they likewise bear.

It is the general opinion, however, that these Constitutions are spurious, and also that St. Clement had no hand in them. They appeared first in the fourth century; but they have been much changed and corrupted since that time. They are divided into eight books, consisting of a great number of rules and precepts, relating to the duties of Christians, and particularly to the ceremonies and discipline of the church. Whiston, in opposition to the general opinion, asserts that they are a part of the sacred writings, dictated by the apostles at their meetings, and written down from their own mouths by St. Clement, and intended as a supplement to the New Testament, or rather as a system of Christian faith and polity. The reason why the Constitutions are suspected by the orthodox, and perhaps the reason also why their genuineness is defended by Whiston, is that they seem to savour of Arianism.