not really faced. Moreover, the author's calmness and caution, and his anxiety to avoid over-statement, valuable as these are in their way, perhaps hardly contribute so much to the elucidation of the thought of St Paul as they might to that of a less enthusiastic and more systematic thinker. Who would recognize St Paul's Gospel in the second of the five propositions in which Dr Fletcher says that that Gospel centres : 'That the breaches by all men of God's law, due to the immanence in all men of the defiling influence, sin, would not be permitted by God to prevent the entrance of some men into His kingdom'?

Yet the book should be welcomed as a really learned and useful contribution to the discussion of a difficult and important subject.

G. H. CLAYTON,

The Credibility of the Gospel (Longmans, Green & Co., 1912) is the title of the English translation (by the Rev. G. C. H. Pollen, S.J.) of Mgr P. Batiffol's Orpheus et l'Évangile (V. Lecoffre, Paris, 1910), eight lectures given under the presidency of the Bishop of Versailles to a large audience of leading Roman Catholics a couple of years ago, of which I regret that no notice has appeared in the JOURNAL. The book contains an admirable and attractive presentation of the trustworthiness of the Gospel history in general, with special reference throughout to the chapter on Christian origins in M. Reinach's Orpheus, and English readers will be grateful to author and translator for this English version of it. I do not know of any book which covers the ground so effectively. Mgr Batiffol has no difficulty in shewing that M. Reinach's position is dependent on theories of early Christian history and of the composition of the Gospels that are now abandoned by many of the chief 'critics' of various schools. If he conveys the impression that traditional views are more completely justified than, in some respects, they really are, he does so less by questionable assertion than by delicate suggestion, and by passing lightly over some of the more dangerous ground and concentrating attention on the evidence for the credibility of the central facts of the Gospel story. And that is what was needed for his purpose: the purpose, namely, of reassuring educated Christians in view of criticism such as that of M. Reinach. Yet in the interests of a wider and more permanent apologetic some of Mgr Batiffol's positions cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. For example, while rightly emphasizing the judgement of recent critical students of the Gospels who find Catholicism in St Matthew, he appears to treat this judgement as carrying with it the credibility of such a passage as xvi 17-19, though really it in no way affects the question whether our Lord Himself used the words or not.

And in appealing to the sayings 'which the Gospels report concerning Jesus' as revealing 'the consciousness He has of Who He is', he gives no hint of the high probability that many of these sayings reflect later conceptions of Christians rather than our Lord's own thought about Himself at the time to which they are ascribed. With regard to 'assertions in the fourth Gospel which cannot be verified by history' he says that we hold them to be true because they are inspired, and we hold them to be inspired because the Church guarantees them as such'— a form of reasoning which I cannot distinguish from M. Reinach's own, which is condemned on the same page because it leads him to negative results. And occasionally he is definitely unfair, as in repeating of Schmiedel the old slander that he accepts in the Gospels only nine authentic 'passages from Jesus', and in saying with regard to the authorship of the fourth Gospel that 'we can take it as settled that this Gospel is correctly ascribed to the Apostle St John'-a saying which is notoriously contrary to critical opinion of to-day (but perhaps the translator is at fault here: the words are nous pouvons tenir pour assuré que...). And it is surely extravagant to describe as 'better attested than any other in the Gospel' the saying 'this is my blood, the blood of the alliance (sic), which shall be shed for you'. The early history of the Eucharist is certainly not one of the things we can take as settled, and the question whether our Lord used the equivalent of the term dialky at the Last Supper cannot be lightly dismissed.

J. F. BETHUNE-Baker.

Primitive Catholicism, by Mgr PIERRE BATIFFOL, Litt.D.: translated by H. L. BRIANCEAU. (Longmans, Green & Co, 1911.)

AN English edition of L'Église naissante is welcome. Harnack has recommended Protestants interested in Church history to study it thoroughly, and the fifth French edition, from which the translation is made, differs from its predecessors in containing, in the Introduction, a reply to Harnack's Constitution and Law of the Church.

Mgr Batiffol frankly sets out to prove, solely by historical methods, that 'from the very outset of its historical existence Christianity was a formed faith, a visible society, a living authority' (p. xvi), or again, 'The Church . . . was not, in this first period of her existence, in an amorphous state . . . she was a Gospel, an Apostolate, a tradition,

1 Mgr Batiffol follows the common text of the Vulgate here; but will be shed', not shall be', is the English translation of it. In another passage, where I Cor. xi 26 is cited, the translator follows the future tense of the Vulgate (again shall'), though the author there gives the present.

a worship, a hierarchical society, one Church made up of many Churches, a unity preserved by the unity of the Cathedra Petri' (p. vii). He holds that 'the prerogative of the Apostles is . . . the true key to the question of the origin of the Church: by this prerogative is explained the initial fact that Christianity is a society and not a mere preaching, a society ordered and governed and not a "charismatic anarchy", so that 'what Professor Sohm holds to have been an initial confusion, and Professor Harnack holds to have been an initial logic, we hold to have been a thing intended' (p. xxii).

The first chapter sets out to prove that Christianity began as an organized unity, not constituted by unity of race (witness the early separation of Judaism and the Faith); nor yet by outpourings of the Spirit, for St Paul subordinates 'charisms' to the Faith; nor by its being an eleemosynary brotherhood; but because it was a religio, a corpus without legal existence and proscribed when noticed.

Chapter ii discusses the meaning of 'Apostles' and finds in the Apostolate 'a rallying-centre, a principle of unity and authority, a principle laid down by Jesus Himself' (p. 53), round which the new Israel, a tertium genus, grows up; and Excursus A, despite a somewhat summary dismissal of other theories and the assignment of an official position to Peter after Pentecost that is difficult to maintain, is a very able defence of the Roman view of 'Thou art Peter'.

Contending that the Christian consciousness was profoundly convinced of itself as a new people (yévos) before the time of Clement (Harnack), Batiffol finds in the Didache evidence of 'a Christianity of community life and institutions, autonomous and authoritative', and in 'Prima Clementis' besides a hierarchy of presbyter and deacon, a formulation of the theory of Apostolic succession. Ignatius, again, bears witness to an hierarchically constituted Church and a Roman primacy of authority. The realized sense of the organic unity of all the churches seems clear enough, but we should have liked a clearer indication of what the Bishops really were (ch. iii).

As a teacher of the authority of episcopal succession Irenaeus has forerunners in all essentials in Polycarp, Papias, Hegesippus, &c. The faith is everywhere the same, i. e. what has been handed down (pp. 196-197), and, though the doubtfulness of the translation is acknowledged, the famous passage of Irenaeus is built upon confidently for the Petrine claims (pp. 207-210). Thus 'the symbol of faith, the episcopate, the canon of the New Testament, the Roman primacy appear to the historian as principles laid down from the first, and developing with the continuity characteristic of the growth of an organism, which, once it is created, grows and expands according to its law' (p. 230).

...

Tertullian's variations (ch. vi) are between 'his Catholicism in his best days', which confirms the notion of Catholicism presented to us by Irenaeus', and 'his semi-Montanism and his open Montanism' which 'confirm the same notion, but by way of contrast' (pp. 272-281 and 287 sq.).

Chapters v and vii defend against Harnack the Catholicism of the Alexandrine Church. But, though Origen's strong language about the deposit and tradition of the faith proves that such a way of thinking can scarcely be a new one (pp. 298-321), concerning the Petrine claims 'we should like to see Origen giving some firmer indication of the dogmatic and juridical meaning of this primacy' (p. 326).

Cyprian's Catholicism, though resting on a hierarchical basis, unlike that of Irenaeus and Tertullian on a doctrinal one, was not new. What had still to be made clear in his time was how the see of Peter was not only the source but also the perpetual guarantee of 'the endurance of unity'. This Cyprian nearly had the glory of demonstrating in De Unitate Ecclesiae. He failed because the book was written for the special purpose of establishing the unity of each local church (p. 364). Mgr Batiffol is constrained to argue with Cyprian about the claims of the Roman see; he speaks of 'the restless and inconsistent provincialism of the Africans', of Cyprian's appeal to reason against custom as 'appallingly rash', and, from Cyprian's refusal to acknowledge the jurisdictional supremacy of Peter, he assumes its general recognition (p. 389). Nevertheless, Cyprian's doctrine of empiric catholic unity finds echoes everywhere, and is not a theory refuted by the actual circumstances (Harnack).

An acknowledged bias is better than a concealed one, and Mgr Batiffol has given us a very able, learned, and honest defence of the Roman position, the value of which is little diminished by the fact that sometimes conclusions seem to outrun premises. And at the same time we are grateful to M. Brianceau, who has accomplished the work of translation admirably. There appears to be a word missing on p. xxiii, and on p. 252 n. 'both' ought to be 'book'.

P. N. F. YOUNG.

The Revelation of the Son of God. Being the Hulsean Lectures for 1910-1911. By E. A. EDGHILL, B.D. (Macmillan & Co., 1911.)

THE sub-title of this book is 'Some questions and considerations arising out of a study of second-century Christianity'. The author describes the characteristic features of the Christianity of the second century and tries to shew that the divergence between it and the

Christianity of the New Testament has been much exaggerated. But he writes of the second century with his eye on the Church of to-day, and his real interest seems to lie in modern controversies.

He shews that in the second century Christianity was recognized as being a religion rather than a philosophy, and he gives some account of the religious condition of the world at that time. In his estimate of different religions and philosophies he is perhaps rather unfair to Judaism. He contrasts Christianity with other systems as being both rational and historical; and he attacks the apologetic which rests its case on the satisfaction of human needs. He seems, however, to misinterpret those who adopt that line of thought. For many of them would accept everything that he says about reason, but would say that their reason led them to suppose that real human needs must find fulfilment. 'Truth' in a religious context', he says, 'is as large as life'; and again, 'Reason cannot capitulate even to Revelation, of which Truth-not emotional or aesthetic satisfaction-is the test'. But 'emotional and aesthetic satisfaction' is surely a part of life, and therefore on his own shewing must be taken into account, and probably none of those of whom he seems to be thinking would for a moment make it their sole criterion.

He passes on to deal with the question of Miracles, asking whether belief in miracles was of the essence of the Christianity of the second century, and here his criticisms of Dr Figgis and others are acute and useful. But it is extremely difficult to discover what he himself means. He seems to think that the experience which Christians had of the present power of the Lord led them to think that miracles must have been characteristic of His earthly life. But whether he thinks that the events commonly regarded as miraculous actually took place is not clear. And here again he seems to take those whom he criticizes at their worst, and to fail to understand the full force of their contentions. After a comparison of the Christianity of the New Testament with that of the apologists, in which he recognizes that the apologists believed much more than they mentioned in their apologies, writing as they were to heathen, he concludes with a chapter on the use of creeds, which is largely a criticism of Dr Denney's Jesus and the Gospel.

The book is always interesting and sometimes eloquent; but it cannot be said to add much to our knowledge of the Christianity of the second century.

G. H. CLAYTON.