full of high and noble sentiments, professing with all apparent sincerity a conscientious desire to know and to say what is true, and to forward above all other things the interests of truth among mankind.

It is, if we may presume to judge from the phenomena before us, that he is so strongly and deeply possessed with certain speculative theories, that he can see objects only in their light. That even in common matters he is thus the slave of an idea, is evident from the examination we have made of his views and arguments about the book which Photius read, views which are simply groundless and utterly opposed to facts. Once thus possessed with a view, it seems to him absolutely certain; the facts that contradict it, stubborn as they are, bend like the grass before him, or vanish from his sight. He seems to labour under an dopaoía, or σkóтwμa, as the ancients called it, and to be blinded alike to the laws of evidence and the existence of facts. He even creates facts by the strength of imagination. The delusion is like that which has been noticed of old, in the union of enthusiasm and unconscious deceit. Love of system, M. Bunsen himself observes, leads men to misinterpret facts. The wish to make it appear that all the Fathers generally speak one doctrine, and mean the same thing, though they themselves thought they did, as did also the age that followed them,-is, in M. Bunsen's view, quite sufficient to prevent men from attaining truth. Is not the intense persuasion that some theory of our own is true, and an earnest wish to impress that same view on others, calculated to produce the same effect? Is not this quite as inconsistent as the former, with the calm and equable state of mind, which alone can do justice to the work of balancing evidence-with the use of that experimental method, which is the great instrument of attaining truth in the history of the past, as much as in the facts of nature? It is, indeed, curious to see how controversialists of different schools and different ages have put a force upon the facts of antiquity; but no Roman controversialist, no obscurantist' of modern times, has ever been guilty of much more unfair handling of documents, or tampering with evidence, than the writer of the 'Age of Hippolytus.'

If we are to believe M. Bunsen to be at all what his high and noble sentiments would lead us to suppose him, we must imagine that he is labouring under a delusion like that which they say has made devoted enthusiasts, whether consciously or not, feign miracles and disbelieve what they might see. There must be a S. Philumenism in liberalism, and a superstition even in philosophy, to account for the facts before us.

Indeed, no little light is thrown on the subject by M. Bunsen's

own statement. He talks, in a passage to which we have often referred, of our not grounding our convictions upon this or 'that passage which may be controverted, but upon the undeni'able existence of a general consciousness of the ancient 'Church.'1 Here we seem to have a key to the whole matter. M. Bunsen is possessed with the notion of the undeniable existence of a general consciousness of the ancient Church,' corresponding to his own view: its records are but as a mirror to him, in which he sees himself reflected. This or that passage, therefore, is of no consequence. We have the early working of this same mental temperament in his letter to Dr. Nott on the Christian Sacrifice.' The facts all go in one way-the particular passages are all against him. But M. Bunsen was not willing to submit to the facts and to accept the truth which they taught. He was possessed with an idea, and he saw that idea embodied in a creation of his own mind, which he called 'a general consciousness of the ancient Church.' Unfortunately that general consciousness did not find expression in any one of the ancient forms of prayer-which were indeed the embodying, if anything could be, of that consciousness-except very partially in one Ethiopian Liturgy.

There are other instances of the like possession. Such was the antiquarian of the last age. He was the slave of his own ideas. He discerned the traces of a Roman camp in an old earthwork, and reconstructed history, by deciphering a Latin inscription out of a mouldering milestone. He misconstrued texts, and imagined emendations, because he was quite sure that his theory was true, and that the author must have written accordingly. Such an one sees sights we cannot see, and is all the more certain that he is right the more deeply he has drawn from his imagination; for that imagination has seen connexions which become, so to say, part of himself. To him trifles light as air are confirmations strong as Holy Writ. And he entertains no doubt whatever of his own sincerity or fairness. He is impelled to put out his views and the arguments which seem to him so convincing, from a belief that he has seen a vision of truth, which the rest of the world cannot discern; the same blindness making him meanwhile utterly unconscious of his own mental state.

We can in no other way account for the phenomenon before us. For the most remarkable circumstance is, that M. Bunsen himself seems perfectly unconscious of his own faults. He writes with the seeming sincerity and honesty of a man who is all truth and all conscientiousness. He pleads against any misapprehension on this ground: and, as if conscious of his integrity, and anticipating misrepresentation, he says:

1 Vol. i. Pref. p. ix.

'No just and intelligent critic will have to blame me for the want of a conscientious wish to be historically true, and perfectly impartial.'-Vol. i. Pref. p. xiv.

And again, in discussing those heresies, where he seemed so blind to opposing facts, he says:

'I do not see how I can go through this argument conscientiously, without a complete enumeration of the thirty-two articles in question.'-Vol. i. p. 31. Again:

'I have not written and published my Ignatian researches, any more than others, in order to produce an effect upon this or that person; but to satisfy my own mind, by expressing a conscientious conviction on a point on which I thought I had something to say.'-Vol. i. p. 60, note.

Lastly, with a tone that pervades his whole book, and reminds us of the sanctimoniousness of other classes of men similarly possessed:

'Let no one search unless he be prepared to take the high ground of Christian life and liberty, and to apply historical criticism to the facts, and independent speculation to the ideas of Christianity. But above all let him be honest and true. Whoever will make a bargain with his reason and conscience will braid and twist them, and lose all power of conviction and faith.'

We can with this case before us believe the most incredible of all inconsistencies, the union of the highest sentiment, with actions the very reverse. Indeed, the very profuseness and exaggeration of M. Bunsen's professions and high sentiments makes their reality suspicious.

Of those who are opposed to him, he says:

Their mode of conducting controversies would not be tolerated for a moment in the field of classical literature, where men like Porson and Gaisford, Niebuhr and Hermann, Boeckh and Ritschl rule,-where nothing is at stake except that of which Pilate doubted the existence, and where it is considered as unbecoming to seek truth, not as a judge, in order to find it, but as an advocate in order to betray it.'-Vol. iv. Pref. p. v.

He imagines himself to be a model of historical truth, and those who differ from him are either barbarians or obscurantists by profession,' and all that they have written for the last 250 years is chaff.' Lost in the persuasion of the truth of his theories, he expects to overturn the whole of the received views of what is matter of historical fact; and appearing highly to estimate what he has done, and wishing, heartily and sincerely, we doubt not, that the honour should redound to Fatherland, and desirous, through this specimen of his own, to recommend the theology, and the critical and historical method' of his countrymen, to the English mind, he says:

If I have not entirely failed in my efforts to elicit truth out of the records of thought, and out of the annals of history, which are now opened to us for the first time, I owe it to the resources of thought and learning which I have found in the standard works of modern German divinity and

philology, and which I have endeavoured to apply to this subject. Deeply impressed as I am with my unworthiness to represent either, I still trust to have, by this process, and by the very important contents of the newly discovered book, sufficiently shown the real nature and the superiority of the German method of inquiry, and the satisfactory results already obtained.'—Pref. vol. i. pp. xvi. xvii.

And he speaks of the proofs he has given of what has been achieved already in this respect, by the critical and historical school of Germany.' We are not disposed to depreciate what that school has done in its own province; but we can also see its defects. Of one thing, however, we are certain, that M. Bunsen's work cannot hold a place amongst those which have done credit to his country; and, we apprehend, the scholars of Germany will duly appreciate the compliment which is paid them in having the Age of Hippolytus' put forward as a favourable specimen of their theological and critical school.

6

As for the work of Hippolytus, we trust that our own countrymen will not imitate the over-speed of the Chevalier Bunsen. We hope, also, that English writers will show in this important discussion, as they ever have shown and are showing, true scholarship and critical discrimination, soundness, as well as acuteness, and caution, if not brilliancy; above all, candour and honesty.

Those who may wish to follow up the great doctrinal questions which M. Bunsen has opened, will find abundant matter in Waterland and Bull, particularly in the Defensio Fidei Nicænæ, in which copious extracts are given from the Fathers, which are preserved in the original language in the recent English translation;-the works of Bishop Kaye, on Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, and in the Testimonies and Lectures of Dr. Burton. They will find in these works judicious and sound criticism, and in all ample citations from the authors, and fair representations of their opinions.

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NOTICES.

THE Reverend Edward John Shepherd, A.M., Rector of Luddesdown, has favoured us with an 8vo. of 540 pp. which he is pleased to entitle' A History of the Church of Rome to the end of the Episcopate of Damasus,' (Longman.) To this he has also added a Letter of 43 pages to Dr. Maitland, on 'The Genuineness of the Writings ascribed to Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage,' the first instalment of a series which he is so good as to promise us on the subject.

Mr. Shepherd evidently considers himself born to regenerate the whole of Primitive Church History. His theory-very simple and easily enunciated-is that almost all the writings, historical and doctrinal alike, of the early Church are forgeries; and he thinks that a host of persons have been at the trouble and expense at different times, of interpolating genuine works and concocting others-in the different forms of Acts and Canons of Councils, histories, and dogmatic treatises-in order to support the doctrine of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. Who these forgers were, or when they lived, he does not tell us; and indeed he confesses at the outset that he does not see his way clearly on the point, but he believes that they succeeded in suppressing all or greater part of the genuine documents of previous times, (if, indeed, there ever had been such, or, in fact, any person at all to write or be written about,) and in bribing or deluding the transcribers of every country into copying, and their readers into receiving, their spurious compositions for the authentic works of authors-who never existed; and he conceives that it is left for himself to point out to an admiring generation which of all the mass of professedly patristic writings, acts of councils, and the like, may be received as genuine, and which are to be rejected, either as having been interpolated or as being altogether spurious. Thus he doubts Eusebius' account of S. Dionysius of Corinth and his letter to the Church of Rome, (History, Book iv. chap. 23.) He doubts the letter of the Church of Lyons to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome, about Irenæus, then a Presbyter, given by Eusebius, (v. 4,) and referred to by S. Jerome in his Book of Ecclesiastical Writers. He doubts Victor's attempt to excommunicate the Churches of Asia Minor, making more of it than it deserves, (Euseb. v. 24.) He doubts the letter of Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, to Fabius of Antioch, (Euseb. vi. 43.) He doubts not only the writings but the very existence of S. Cyprian. He doubts the account of the letter of Dionysius of Alexandria to Dionysius of Rome, as given by S. Athanasius. He doubts Constantine's letter to Chrestus, and rejects the Council of Arles, but forgets to tell us how a forger could advance the claims of Rome by inventing a Council summoned by an Emperor, and at which a Bishop of Arles sat as president, after the Bishop of Rome had endeavoured in vain to decide the cause; and he gives no indication as to what forger, at all near those times, was likely so much as to have heard of the doctrine of the Romish supremacy, properly so called, and thus falls into the common but palpable contradiction of supposing certain persons to have been labouring for a particular doctrine, which,