works, from whence he has drawn many useful facts and striking sayings, he has laboriously gone over the entire literature of his subject. We may agree with him or not; but we shall never, as far as our experience goes, have to accuse him of pronouncing without careful endeavour to look at every side of a question, and to decide it with care and fairness. He has, we regret to see, a permanent bias against the sacerdotal element in Christianity, and he seldom loses an opportunity of giving it expression. In one instance, that of the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews (vol. i. p. 10), he has put forth his own ipse dixit in a curt, almost ill-tempered, note, and in a matter about which no man's mere dictum will be accepted; but this, we readily believe, is an exception to his rule. We doubt very much as to his treatment of the term aláviov, and as to his note upon · S. Chrysostom in connection with this subject (i. 607 and ii. 271). We entirely disagree with him when he charges S. Paul with disingenuous conduct before the Sanhedrin. Other points of dissent we might go on to mention; an ungracious office which we would rather avoid. And we repeat willingly that the excellences of the work far outweigh its defects, and that it is in many respects a valuable and useful addition to our literature.

These excellences we would be the last to deny. The laboriousness with which he has illustrated the career of S. Paul, the sympathy with which he has entered into its toils and its compensations, the keen poetic enthusiasm with which he appreciates its moral heroism, are merits high indeed, and which claim for the Life of S. Paul a distinguished place among the literary performances of our time. But,' as is well said by Dr. Liddon in his recently published volume of University Sermons:1

To see in Holy Scripture the most interesting history, the strongest and most pathetic poetry, the most searching moral teaching known among men, is to do less than justice to the true majesty and power of the sacred volume. We learn all these things from the Bible as its critics; but there is something beyond to be learned from it only when we have the grace to be simply learners, anxious that it should speak to our inmost souls.'

And less than justice is, in truth, done to S. Paul, when he is depicted simply as an earnest and enthusiastic man, who sinned and who suffered, who had faults and made mistakes, like any other; when he is treated 'subjectively' and picto

1 Not with any special reference, however, to this work.

rially, as a hero of romance, and his thoughts and utterances derived from their logical causes in his mind, and made to flow naturally out of his environing conditions; when a complete human character is depicted before us, and we are shown how it was shaped and moulded by circumstances, and every detail of the career caused and accounted for by the forces which aided or opposed it; when the great achievements of such a career are deduced from the working of powers simply human, and mixed with weaknesses and frailties: we may thus obtain a very clear and consistent conception of the man Paul; but will not the Apostle have been lost in the process? In such a character as is here described, which the biographer assumes to bring into the broad light of the modern time, to look at on all sides, to sum up and to dismiss, there can be nothing that is not wholly mapped out and described and understood; no obscure rapports with the Divine, working themselves out in grander actions and a nobler life. And if the character and career of Paul be fully and adequately represented there, then there would seem to be no place in him or function left for the workings of the Divine Inspiration which, as we have received from our fathers, rested upon him; and losing which he is discrowned of his special glory.

It would be going too far to call this work, as we have noticed it has been called by some, 'an illustrated handbook to the Holy Land, with passages from the life of S. Paul.' The purpose of the work is undoubtedly too serious, and its literary standard too high, that it should be fair thus to belittle it. But nevertheless it is worth the author's consideration, whether, in placing the biography on a simply human basis, he has not inevitably thrown the accessories of time, place, and circumstances into too great a prominence, and represented them as adequate causes of great events, and of a noble and apostolic character, of which they were in reality very subordinate and unimportant attendants.

ART. VI.-LAY FOLK'S PRAYER-BOOKS.

1. Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesia Anglicana, with Dissertations and Notes, by W. MASKELL, M.A. Vol. ii. (London, 1846.)

2. Manuale et Processionale ad usum Insignis Ecclesiæ Eboracensis. Edited with Preface and Appendices. By W. G. HENDERSON, D.C.L. Surtees Society, vol. lxiii. (Durham and London, 1874-5.)

3. The Lay Folks Mass Book, in four texts, from MSS. of the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century. With Appendix, Notes and Glossary. By T. F. SIMMONS, M.A., Canon of York. Early English Text Society, vol. lxxi. Original Series. (London, 1879.)

4. An Early Vernacular Service. A Paper read before the (Wiltshire Archæological) Society at Warminster, August 22, 1877, by H. T. KINGDON, M.A., formerly Vice-Principal of the Theological College, Sarum. (Printed at Devizes.)

5. The Roman Breviary. Reformed by order of the Holy Ecumenical Council of Trent. . . . Translated out of Latin into English by JOHN, MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T. 2 vols., with Special Supplements for England and for Ireland. (London and Edinburgh, 1879.)

ALTHOUGH we now have an English version of the Roman Breviary recently executed by the Marquess of Bute, and published, if not with authority, at least with tacit approbation, we can hardly see in such a fact any approach in that quarter to acceptance of the principle of vernacular public devotions. Still less is there any sign in the present of any admission of the laity to respond except by proxy, or to hear in their own language the sacred formularies of the Mass.

That to which we refer is just such a translation as might be expected from one thoroughly imbued with the Anglican versions, writing with the Latin before him. Some portions, such as the Apostles' Creed, are identical with the forms in our Common Prayer. The book itself (a work of nine years) is written in a great measure for those who were formerly Anglicans, accustomed to vernacular services, and for Anglicans or (we presume) Presbyterians, who-as the author hopesmay some day follow in his steps, but in the meanwhile are accustomed to read portions of the Roman Breviary, as, we gather from Mr. Ward's 'Ideal,' and from the 'Tracts for the Times,' a good many used to do at the commencement of the Catholic revival.

We think that Lord Bute would have done well to have followed certain common editions in giving an index of psalms and hymns, and another of Saints, in addition to the foot-notes, which he has borrowed from Alban Butler and

from other sources, including such Egyptians as Lowth, Pusey, and Walton.

Before we part with this book, which is decidedly an attractive one, we may observe that Lord Bute seems inclined to take rather a broad view of Invocation of Saints. In more than one instance he has diluted an address which appeals to a martyr for protection (protege') into an inoffensive desire for her prayers. And we might notice several passages in which the translator has assumed what we may call an Anglican position, where a simple version of the Latin of the Roman Breviary might have shocked us when read by the light of modern Ultramontanism.

There has been evidence from time to time of a determination to reserve the mysteries of the Church from the bulk of the faithful in Christian times, no less strictly than the secret was kept from the heathen when Pagan was as yet a very brisk giant indeed.

We can well understand the feeling which shrank back at the first suggestion of publishing the full Ceremonial of the Church; a feeling which was so powerful with Paris de Crassis, master of the ceremonies in the Papal chapel, that he procured the suppression of the first edition of Ritus Ecclesiastici sive Sacræ Ceremonia, although its compilation had been ordered by one Pope (Innocent VII.) and it had actually passed through the Venetian press in 1516 with the approbation of another (Leo X.). At the present time, however, there is no difficulty in procuring a modern edition of the Roman Pontifical, or a Rituale Romanum, containing not only the antient rites of Baptism, but the forms for blessing a railroad or a telegraph.

With respect to the most solemn part of the Mass itself, there has then, indeed, been some attempt at reserve; but we doubt if it has availed absolutely against the natural desire for a verbal knowledge of those devotions, the purport of which the laity were always encouraged to follow by attending to the dramatic sequence of the accompanying ceremonies. The translation of the Canon into Dutch was reprobated on all hands about 1470. In the following century, translations into French (some with the Latin in parallel columns) became widely circulated; but in 1651 one particular edition was brought under Papal censure, and a Bull was issued commanding that all copies should be surrendered for the flames.

One motive which may have encouraged some in authority to wink at the frequent contravention of such orders in recent

times, may be found in a hope that the free circulation of such books would increase the number of proselytes, much as the fact that 'in ipsa Angliâ et Germaniâ doctissimus quisque

inter acatholicos tanto studio et sæpe etiam tam sincera indagatione in Ecclesiæ Romanæ dogmata piasque exercitationes hodiedum inquirit,' was considered by the Jesuit editor of the Caleste Palmetum, in 1846, a ground for expecting a sale of a new book of devotions in Latin.

At all events it was, in 1851, found necessary for the Congregation of Rites to forbid the translating, printing, or publishing of the Ordinary of the Mass in the vulgar tongue, and accordingly (as Canon Simmons tells us) a French translation of the Missal, in 1860, omits to construe the Latin of the Canon; and we have before us a Bréviaire et Missel Romain à l'usage des Laïques for the Diocese of Cambrai (1853), which provides certain private devotions in French, but gives the Public Services in Latin, with rubrics and instructions in the vernacular.

If we turn to books provided for the use of Roman Catholic laymen in England, we find in 1633 the offices all in Latin, but the 'Rubrikes in English, for the comoditie of those that doe not understand the Latin tongue. By John le Covsturier, permissu Superiorum.' But in 1737 we have 'the Roman Missal in Latin and English,' arranged in four parts like a foreign Breviary, in each of which is contained the Order and the Canon, with the words of the consecration printed in large letters in both languages. To come to more modern times, the earlier edition of Bishop Challoner's Garden of the Soul contains nothing from the Missal (apart from the responses for servers). excepting an English version of the Gloria in Excelsis, the Nicene Creed, and In Principio, with a running commentary on the whole action, and a supply of private devotions. In a later edition (1872), which to our mind is not in all points an improved edition, the Mass of the

1 The anonymous editor says, 'Though the Council of Trent Sess. 22, Can. 9, justly condemns those that shall say Mass is to be said only in vulgar languages; yet the Fathers of that Council in the said Session, Chap. 8, commend all pastors often to explain, especially on Sundays and Holy Days, some part of that Holy Sacrifice. . . But alas! our pastors are not permitted to comply with this decree of the Council; and to supply this defect, the daily Mass has often been translated into English.. I hope, therefore, no Catholick will find fault with this Translation.

'Let idolatry and false religions endeavour to conceal their shameful ceremonies from the people; but truth, in due circumstances, seeks only to be known, and unveil her mysteries, both for the sake of unlearned Catholicks and to undeceive sincere and misinformed Protestants.'