a fact which the writer of this laborious inquiry has not weighed perhaps as much as he ought to have done. Had he done so, he might not have thought it possible to distinguish so absolutely inspiration from revelation. He would understand by 'inspiration' an antecedent process to revelation, preparatory to it. He defines it as follows:

'The supernatural actuating energy of the Spirit of God on the mind and heart of an individual, preparing him for the reception and for the manifestation of any gifts which he vouchsafes to bestow'-(p. 85).

After this he holds, knowledge is communicated to inspired men by revelation, which revelation includes (pp. 98, 99) the words in which it is subsequently to be expressed. We have the following singular result that Dr. Atwell upholds the view known as 'verbal inspiration,' and yet thinks that the term 'inspiration' is improperly applied to the Holy Scriptures, or indeed to writings at all. It can ex vi termini, as he has defined it, have no meaning as applied to other than human beings.

The fact is that, however we may now draw a scientific distinction between them, the sacred writers use 'inspiration' and 'revelation' as convertible terms; and whether he says av de äλλw ἀποκαλυφθῇ, revealed (1 Cor. xiv. 23), or πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος, inspired (2 Tim. iii. 16), S. Paul is obviously referring in different ways to the communication by the Divine Spirit of supernatural knowledge, without attempting minutely to define the stages or method of the process.

Such a course is in our view far preferable to that of over-curiously defining that which is not really within the scope of human knowledge, viz. the method of the Divine communications within the soul of man. But we cannot see that either Dr. Atwell's view, or the ordinary acceptation of inspiration, is untenable, or even that they exclude each other upon any important point so completely as he appears to suppose.

Opera Patrum Apostolicorum. Textum recensuit, Adnotationibus Criticis, Exegeticis, Historicis illustravit, Versionem Latinam, Prolegomena, Indices addidit FRANCISCUS XAVERIUS FUNK, SS. Theologiæ in Universitate Tubingensi Prof. P. O. Editio post Hefelianam quartam quinta. Tubinge: In Librariâ Henrici Laupp, 1878.

THE present edition is founded on the fourth edition of the same edited in 1855 by the learned Dr. C. J. Hefele, then Professor of Theology at Tubingen. During the quarter of a century which has elapsed since that time, the materials for deciding upon the genuineness of treatises claiming to be the work of persons contemporary with the Apostles have greatly increased. Not to speak of Dressel's critical edition, which has gone through a second issue during the interval, the Greek text of the Shepherd of Hermas has been discovered and edited, and new versions of the Latin have been issued—

'Versio Latina altera vel Palatina quæ dicitur ac Versio Ethiopica.' A new and complete text of the Epistle of Barnabas was afforded by the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus in 1859; and Hilgenfeld's edition (1877), based upon the Constantinopolitan MS., has done still more to settle the text of the Epistle. And, finally, the fourteen and a half chapters of the Epistle of Clement of Rome, missing up to that time in the extant copies, were supplied in 1875 from a MS. in the library 'of the most holy Sepulchre in Fanar of Constantinople,' hitherto unknown, and given to the world by Mgr. Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Serræ.

The work of Dr. Hefele had therefore in every respect become antiquated, and was committed to Dr. F. X. Funk to re-edit and adapt to the completer information of the present day, He has had to do part of his work twice over, because of one of these literary 'finds' or, as he expresses it, codex ille Constantinopolitanus inventus est, ita ut commentarius in tres priores, hujus libri scripturas, quem jam perfeceram, retractandus mihi esset.' He has properly excluded from the present edition the Pseudo-Ignatian Epistles, and promises in a separate form the Corpus Pseudo-Ignatianum et Fragmenta Papiæ, and other relics of antiquity.

The general execution of the work is painstaking and laborious. In Prolegomena and Notes the author has taken care to acquaint himself with the very latest publications bearing upon his subject. Thus we notice a reference to Mr. R. W. Cunningham's edition of the Epistle of Barnabas, published last year, and another to Dr. Lightfoot's Appendix' to his Clement of Rome. The work is learned and carefully executed, and is sure to be useful.

6

An Eirenicon of the Eighteenth Century. Proposal for Catholic Communion. By a MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. "New Edition, with Introduction, Notes, and Appendices. Edited by HENRY NUTCOMBE OXENHAM, M.A. 8vo. pp. 327. (London: Rivingtons, 1879.)

THIS extremely interesting and timely volume is a reprint of a small book anonymously published in London in 1704, then brought out again at the seemingly most unpromising and unlikely place and date of Dublin, 1781, with two subsequent London issues in 1801 and 1812. These three republications of a brief treatise on such an abstract, and so to speak unpractical, topic, whose very authorship is still only conjectural, attest the weightiness of its tone, and the interest with which the writer has invested his subject. And this is all the more noticeable because he was obviously a man of what would in the present day be regarded as safe and moderate views, and by no means a 'Romanizer,' though he was certainly above the doctrinal level of the Nonjurors, amongst whom, in despite of their attacks on him, he has been erroneously reckoned; for that level, contrary to the opinion current amongst those who do not personally know their

1 The statement in the 'Præfatio' may perhaps mislead. The complete text of Barnabas was not published until 1863 by Dressel.

writings, was far lower than that of the greater Stuart theologians. The arguments of our unknown author are modelled on the lines of those of Bishop Forbes in his Considerationes Modesta, and of Herbert Thorndike, both of whom he often quotes; but his especial merit is that of relieving the statement of the case from the ponderous load of learning with which nearly all theological literature of that age was encumbered, and putting it in a form sufficiently simple and tell ing to come home to the understandings of all fairly educated persons, however unversed in the technicalites of controversial divinity.

Mr. Oxenham's introduction, which occupies nintey-five pages of the volume, is chiefly devoted to a review of the various efforts at Reunion which have been made before and after the original appearance of this work, with especial reference to such names as Gregory Panzani, Franciscus à Sanctâ Clarâ (Christopher Davenport), Bishop Montague, Archbishop Wake, Dupin, Leibnitz, Spinola, Molanus, Bishop Jebb, and Bishop Doyle ; and to an able survey of the religious collapse of Protestantism throughout the world-though he omits to point out that several still nominally orthodox American sects are now honeycombed through and through with Spiritualism-closing with an appeal from the standpoint of a moderate Roman Catholic for mutual explanations and concessions between England and Rome, in order to unite against the common enemy of Pagan unbelief. Of course there are several difficulties which we could not help raising, were negotiations of the sort begun, which naturally do not affect him equally, but on the whole he has put his case with much fairness. Hereupon follows the original treatise, occupying from page 37 to page 316, and itself divided into eighteen chapters, in which the chief questions treated are the Pope, Invocation of Saints, Images, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Purgatory, Penance and Indulgences, Confession, Tradition, Ceremonies, and Anglican Orders, and all with singular clearness, as well as with a charity of tone rarer then than it is even now in handling polemical matters. Its curious anticipation of Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon and Bishop A. P. Forbes's Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles-for it is clear that neither of these writers used it is rightly pointed out by Mr. Oxenham, and we note the fact as testifying to an historical tradition which has never died out in the Church of England, and is indeed authoritatively embodied in Canon xxx. of 1604, to the effect that we have never broken off communion with Latin Christendom, and decline to retort the anathemas cast at us for retrenching certain things of which no one can deny that they are not only liable to abuse, but have actually been abused.

The English Reformation: how it came about, and why we should uphold it. By CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D. 8vo. pp. xvi.-512. (London: Strahan and Co., 1879.)

No sharper contrast in tone to the anonymous Eirenicon, or indeed to Dr. Geikie's own meritorious Life of Christ, to which we had the pleasure of directing attention, could readily be found than this. recent work of his, which is acridly partisan and indiscriminating throughout. Dr. Geikie is a very recent recruit to the Church from

some Presbyterian body, and while not as yet by any means at home in her annals, polity, and doctrine, has seemingly pushed his new admiration for Episcopacy so far as to assume the veracity, if not indeed the infallibility, of anything a bishop tells him, for we learn from his preface that some bishop wrote to inform him that the Reformation is menaced by a conspiracy, and that he at once accepted the inerrancy of this statement, setting to work upon the present book as the best means of counteracting the plot. The English Church Union, it would appear from Dr. Geikie, being a Ritualist league, and virtually Romish, is the head-quarters of this conspiracy (though, by the by, it has ten bishops on its roll, and its latest episcopal recruit, Bishop Medley of Fredericton, is senior by some years to any occupant of an English see, for he was consecrated in 1845, and Bishop Ollivant of Llandaff in 1849), and the ' official organs' of the Ritualists 'frankly admit that their object is ultimate union with Rome;' while the only way to deal with the present distress is for 'examining chaplains simply to give all candidates for ordination a paper of Protestant questions to answer,' so that those only who show themselves Protestants by their answers might be accepted.' Dr. Geikie is sure that, speaking the truth in love, as he does, his book will doubtless be assailed by the Romanists who have crept into English Holy Orders, but that the reader may feel confidence in its statements; and it may comfort Protestants to know that the doctrine of Apostolical Succession was not held by the Reformers who founded our Church under Elizabeth, for Presbyterian ordination was held valid till 1662. Having dealt with these questions elsewhere in this number of the Church Quarterly Review, we merely remind Dr. Geikie that, at any rate, his own previous ordination has certainly not been treated as valid, so that his personal experience must have made him aware that the Church of England under Victoria is agreed in this respect with the Church of England under Henry VII., and that there may therefore be other points of coincidence between them, as well as of common divergence from modern Protestantism, of which he, as a neophyte, is still unconscious. The history itself, commendable for the industry and the compression bestowed upon it, does not warrant that confidence of readers. which its author demands, and does not even pretend to impartiality, but is utterly one-sided throughout, and it never seems to have occurred to Dr. Geikie that there must be something possible to be said for the side which Fisher and More espoused, and something against that which reckoned Crumwell and Poynet amongst its champions. With him, Queen Catharine of Aragon was an artful and crafty woman, the daughter of an infamous mother-Isabella the Catholic who entrapped the young and inexperienced Henry into a marriage unsuitable on the ground of disparity of years, as well as on that of her pre-contract with his brother. Here Dr. Geikie deliberately suppresses two weighty facts: first, that the second marriage to Prince Henry was almost exclusively the work of Henry VII., whose greed could not bear the notion of relinquishing the great dowry of the Infanta; and next, that the assumption of the

title of Duke of Cornwall and heir-apparent by Henry VIII. immediately on his brother's decease (he is so entitled in a State paper at least as early as October 1502, six months after Prince Arthur's death on April 2, 1502), shows that both Henries were fully aware that Catharine had been Arthur's wife in name alone. Had so much as a faint possibility existed that the marriage had been consummated, it would have been necessary to have waited some time for possible issue of the earlier marriage, and indeed, Henry was not created Prince of Wales till February 18, 1503. But this is not so material a point as the earlier one, since several heirs-apparent were never created Princes of Wales, though always ranking as Dukes of Cornwall by right of birth, e.g., none of Henry VIII.'s three sons was ever created Prince of Wales, nor was Charles II. Contrariwise, no speck exists in his portrait of Anne Boleyn, and her 'purity' and ' chasteness' are dwelt on as if all authentic history did not brand her as the reverse. So, again, when speaking, naturally enough from his point of view, in strong condemnation of the prohibition and destruction of Tyndall's New Testament, Dr. Geikie studiously suppresses the notorious bibliographical fact that each part, as it was issued, appeared bound up with a virulent preface, which, to pious and honest churchmen of that day, read very much as one by Mr. Bradlaugh affixed to a new version, say, of the Old Testament, which he might think fit to circulate, would read to the eyes of Dr. Geikie and his friends. Once more, Thomas Crumwell, almost the worst character in all English history, is the object of strong panegyric, as 'faithful and true, unostentatious, charitable, merciful,' and only to be pitied for being the servant of so despotic a master. These few criticisms, not touching any doctrinal points whatever, will suffice to show that Dr. Geikie's work is historical in form only, but that its real character is that of a controversial lampoon, evidenced by its last words, where the wish is father to the thought: As for the conspirators, England loathes them, and will not rest till they be ejected from a Church whose wages they take while they betray her faith.' But as England never cared a tithe so much for her Church since the Reformation as she has done since the 'conspirators' breathed fresh life into it, we take leave to doubt both the present loathing and the future ejection.

There is just as rabid writing, however, to be had on the other side of the question, and Dr. F. G. Lee's Historical Sketches of the Reformation (8vo. pp. xi.-427. London: Griffith and Farran) have as little claim to impartiality as Dr. Geikie's book. The volume is dedicated to some lurking sect of Reformed Episcopalians, whom Dr. Lee is pleased to describe as 'the Prelates, Provosts, Priests, and Members of the Order of Corporate Reunion,' but who have not hitherto had sufficient confidence in their own titles and characters to give their names to the public, or indeed any tangible information as to their intentions and organisation.

Dr. Lee, albeit a man of ability, culture, and discursive, though inaccurate, reading, is deficient in the historical instinct. He lacks the capacity for comparing, weighing, and estimating evidence, so that he does not understand what any fact he adduces really proves.