It is the system of things, the dispensation accomplished 'in heavenly places,' to which the books belong, not the actual collected volume.

The parallel of 2 Cor.iii.14 ([Greek: epi tae anagnosei taes palaias diathaekaes]), which is ably pointed to in 'Supernatural Religion' [Endnote 245:2], is too close to allow the inference of a written New Testament.

And yet, though the word has not actually acquired this meaning, it was in process of acquiring it, and had already gone some way to acquire it.

The books were already there, and, as we see from Irenaeus, critical collections of them had already begun to be made.

Within thirty years of the time when Melito is writing Tertullian uses the phrase Novum Testamentum precisely in our modern sense, intimating that it had then become the current designation [Endnote 245:3].