Lactantius; and with regard to others, the most eminent o those times, as Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria it is contended by the scholars of that church, that much in their writings is to be excused only by a consideration of the crude and yet unformed conceptions of religiou doctrines which existed in their time.*

The very false judgment which has prevailed in the Roma Catholic Church concerning the relative worth of the earlier an later fathers, of those who lived before and those who lived after the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the Empire, cannot perhaps, be better illustrated than by a few words of one of the mos learned, intelligent, and liberal-minded of its theologians, Du Pin. I his "Bibliothèque des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques," when he comes t treat of those of the fourth century, he says (in his " Avertissemen au Lecteur "); "It is not necessary here to speak in praise of th Ecclesiastical Authors of the fourth century. The public is suffi ciently prepossessed in their favor. Their names are more know than those of the Authors of the first three centuries, and their repu tation better established. They are held in greater esteem; and higher idea is entertained of their knowledge and their merit. I must in truth be confessed, that, as the Church was never mor flourishing than in this century, so it never had more illustrious more able, and more eloquent writers."

On the contrary, the more eminent writers of the first three centu ries, whom (with the exception of Lactantius) I have so often ha occasion to mention, are of great interest, because in their works w may trace the developement of our religion in the hearts and live of men whom it had withdrawn from the Pagan world. The work of those of after times are to be read principally to trace the develope ment of its corruptions. But it is not strange, that a church whic has embodied and sanctified those corruptions should prefer the latte to the former.

The eloquence of the heart and the intellect is to be found in th earlier fathers, the eloquence of men of uncommon minds and stron feelings, struggling in a cause for which they were prepared to suffe and to die. There is no eloquence of the fathers of later date to b compared with that of Tertullian or Lactantius. There is none

The credit of the fathers was shaken by the Reformation. But other causes have since powerfully operated to produce in many a feeling of indiscriminate disrespect towards them. Many of the errors respecting Christianity that existed before the Reformation remained among Protestants. These errors were traditionary. They were to be found, or their rudiments at least were to be found in ancient times, in the theology of some of the fathers, particularly the later fathers. It followed, therefore, when the attention of Protestants was more directed to the controversies among themselves, than to the contest with the Romish church, that the defenders of those errors appealed to the fathers anew, and again asserted their authority. They were brought forward as expounders of religion entitled to the highest deference; and, with all the ignorance. and all the intellectual defects that belonged to them, as belonging to their age, they were opposed to the learning and acuteness of the most enlightened of modern times. Hence the attention of some of the ablest scholars was directed particularly to their errors and defects, as affording proof that they had no claim to the deference which was so injudiciously demanded for them. The want of wisdom which had placed them in so disadvantageous a position. was exposed by showing how ill qualified they were to occupy it. A prejudice was thus raised against the ancient Christian writers as a body; and great injustice has been done to the fathers generally, but especially to the earlier and more excellent of their number. Being ancients they have been estimated as if they were contemporaries. They

their number who rivalled Clement of Alexandria in learning; and still less is there any one who presents a character so blameless and estimable as that of Origen.

have been exhibited in relations altogether different from those in which they actually stood, and placed under a point of view from which they ought never to have been regarded. In consequence, their character and writings have been directly, as well as indirectly, misrepresented. The prejudice against them has been readily adopted by the superficial and ignorant, who are ever disposed to triumph over the great men of other times on account of their wanting the knowledge and the intellectual advantages belonging to the age in which they themselves live. To the fate of the early Christian writers of real eminence for their talents and virtues, we may find a parallel in that of Aristotle, who was, perhaps, the most penetrating and profound of Grecian philosophers, but whose foolish admirers opposed his authority to the progress of science, till his name almost became a by-word of ridicule.

Ir, then, the view we have taken of the accounts of Justin, and of other fathers, respecting the statue of Simon Magus be correct, the unqualified rejection of them by a great majority of Protestant scholars may, perhaps, be ascribed mainly to the operation of that prejudice of which I have spoken; and, if so, it affords a remarkable exemplification of it.

NOTE B.

(See pp. 66, 245.)

ON THE CLEMENTINE HOMILIES.

THE fictitious narrative contained in the Clementine Homilies* exists in two principal forms, one of which bears that title, and the other is called the Recognitions of Clement. The title of the Recognition of Clement (in the singular) + seems anciently to have been common to both. To the Clementine Homilies we have formerly had occasion to refer. They have been published by Cotelier in his edition of the Patres Apostolici from a single manuscript, in which the latter part of the work is wanting. There are three different abridgments of the Homilies extant in manuscript, of which Cotelier has published one. The Recognitions have come down to us only in a Latin translation by Rufinus, who, generally an unfaithful translator, professes, in regard to this particular book, to have omitted certain passages "concerning the unoriginated

* I do not think it worth while to change the modern title, but the Greek word 'Ouxía should have been rendered "Discourses." It refers to the conversations and discussions with which the work is filled.

+ '0 'Avayragioμòs Kańμivros. The title of "The Circuits of Peter," Α' Περίοδοι Πέτρου, appears also to have been used concerning both

forms of the narrative.

See before, Vol. I. p. ccxliv.

§ This translation was made about the end of the fourth century.

God and the originated (de ingenito Deo genitoque), * and some other topics; as these passages, to say nothing more of them, surpassed his comprehension." Rufinus mentions that there were two editions of the work of Clement, in some respects different from each other, but giving in great part the same narrative. He refers, probably, to the Homilies and the Recognitions.

Both these works contain a fictitious narrative, the hero of which relates his own history. He represents himself as a young man, a citizen of Rome, by the name of Clement His mind, he tells us, had been long occupied and dis tressed by inquiries and doubts on the subject of religion Whilst in this state, he hears at Rome of the promulgation of Christianity. He seeks out the apostle Peter, and be comes his associate and convert. During his intercours with Peter, he informs him, that he was of a noble family but that he had been separated in his childhood first from his mother and his two elder brothers, and afterwards from his father. Of his father, who had left him for the purpos of seeking his mother and brothers, he had not heard fo twenty years. But during his travels with Peter he meet and recognises all his lost relatives. Hence the narrativ was called the Recognition of Clement. A considerabl part of each work is occupied by accounts of Simon Magu who is supposed to have been, at the time of the story, th great opponent of Peter, and by the detail of public dispu tations, in which Peter and his disciples are represented a having contended against him. In the Homilies, Simo

* The passage, or one of the passages, relating to this subject, preserved in some manuscripts as rendered by another translator, ai is comprised in ten sections of the third book, as published by Coteli namely, from the second to the eleventh, inclusive.