E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Ecclesias’ticus
is so called, not because the writer was a priest, but because the book (in the opinion of the fathers) was the chief of the apocryphal books, designated by them Ecclesias’tici Libri (books to be read in churches), to distinguish them from the canonical Scriptures.
