the moderate party in the Church, some hundred years after the Reformation; indeed so far was he (BISHOP HALL) from being a High-Churchman, that when he entered upon the bishoprick of Exeter, he was actually "had in great jealousy for the too much favor of Puritanism." Moreover, I will take the fairest of all ways of setting forth his real sentiments; for I will gather them as they escape from him here and there incidentally, in his Contemplations; having happened to note the passages down without any view of making this use of them, when perusing that delightful work. BISHOP HALL then was the man to use such language as the following:

On the true view of the Reformation. What have our pious governors done then in Religion? Had we gone about to lay a new foundation, the work had been accursed; now we have only scraped off some superfluous moss, that was grown upon these holy stones; we have cemented some broken pieces; we have pointed some crazy corners, with wholesome mortar, instead of base clay, with which it was disgracefully patched up. The Altar is old: it is God's Altar; it is not new, not ours; if we have laid one new stone in this sacred building, let it fly in our faces; and blot out our eyes. BLUNT also writes,

Was not the time come, when it began to be almost as much a scandal to search the Fathers; (those witnesses of this Primitive Church of which our Reformers we have seen talk so much,) as it was once to be ignorant of it and of them? And though this jealousy arose, no doubt, out of an honest zeal for the glory of God's word, yet does the Church of

England, which surely shares in such zeal to the uttermost,-nay, of which it is the very characteristic mark,—share in any such alarm when she asks of every man who presents himself for priest's orders whether" he will be diligent in prayers and in reading of the Holy Scriptures, and in such studies as help to the knowledge of the same?" expressions which I think few will say have no reference to these Fathers. And has it been found on experience, (to put the matter to that test) that whilst the Fathers were read, as in the 16th and 17th centuries, our theology was unsound and unscriptural? and that when they comparatively ceased to be read as in the eighteenth century, it became pure and evangelical? On the contrary, was not our declension in orthodoxy properly so termed coincident with our declension in Churchmanship? and did not ethics encroach upon our pulpits, as ecclesiastical antiquity was lost sight of?

If therefore there are any who look with jealousy on the Fathers, as abettors of High Church principles, as they are now called, (I have no delight in the phraseology, but it saves circumlocution,) which they partly may be, let them forgive them the wrong, when they contemplate them as abettors of Gospel principles too, which is undoubtedly true of them; and I feel confident, both from the effect they have had on my own mind and from the very nature of things, that these two results would be found generally to follow from a study of the Fathers; namely, an increased reverence, certainly, for ecclesiastical institutions and ordinances, as having in them a great mystery; but an increased conviction also, that the

only sound and apostolical divinity is that which ceases not to teach and preach Christ Jesus. I trust that in what I have said, I have so expressed myself as not to lay myself open to the just animadversions of persons who have a competent knowledge of the subject before us. Nobody can enter with any thoughtfulness into the multitude of most delicate and difficult questions, which the Reformation stirred, without learning to be temperate in all things, appertaining to it; and if he is called upon to take part in the intricate controversies which these questions give rise to without striving to beware, " that he shoot not his arrow o'er the house and hurt his brother." The deeper he dives into the writings of the primitive Church with a view to elucidate the principles upon which that great crisis moved, the more I think will he be inclined to acquiesce in the discretion, which on the whole guided our Reformers in their handling of antiquity; the more will he perceive a call for the exercise of that virtue in himself, whilst he now calmly reviews and passes judgment on their wonderful works; and if there may be some particulars which he, as an individual, would be glad if they had adopted from the Primitive Church ; or if, having adopted, they had held them fast, even at the risk of whatever abuse might have followed, and which the experience of past times had proved real; yet considering how unspeakable a blessing it is for a people to have a form of faith and worship on which they repose, established for ages, and hallowed by numberless associations; bearing in mind the caution of the preacher, but too little remembered in those days, "Whosoever breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him, and whoso removeth stones, shall be hurt therewith,"

*

Ecc x, 8. 9.

he will be slow to disturb that which is good by any attempt at a second Reformation; even with a view to improve upon the first; content if he can raise the Church again something nearer to the platform upon which CRANMER and RIDLEY left it; (and from which it must be confessed it has insensibly settled down :) who, treading in the steps of the old Fathers, were at one and the same time zealous Churchman; (witness the Ritual they have left us,) and Evangelical Teachers (witness the Articles, and Homilies, the portions of Scripture appointed by them for holy days, and which days mark the sense in which they understood those passages), and in short, witness the whole of our Liturgical Services, from the first line to the last. Rejoiced shall I be if any efforts of mine shall contribute to this consummation ever so little; nor do I despair of it, not from any presumptuous confidence in my own powers, but because I feel the vantage ground I here occupy; and that, fountains as our Universities are, from which the ministers of God are dispersed over the whole surface of the island, here, if any where, can the tree be cast in, which shall flavour the waters."

If, then, I had to express in a word the general effect, which I am anxious these lectures on ecclesiastical antiquity should produce, it would be this; that they may induce my hearers to say Amen! to that part of the declaration of the good Bishop KEN, contained in his last will: As for my religion I die in the communion of the Church of England; as it stands distinguished from all Papal, and Puritan Innovations; and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.

WALSH.

Professor WALSH of Jena (called in his Latin works Walchius) has published a work on the Fathers entitled Bibliotheca Patristica, of which the first edition was printed at Jena in 1770, but the second after his death, by Danzius, in large 8vo, about 820 pages Jenæ 1834. This work contains 15 Chapters.

The first Chapter has the following Title, (translated here from the Latin into English).

Chapter I. Of the lives and affairs of the Fathers of the Church. Contents. Here is explained what Authors are to be understood as the Fathers of the Church. The writers on the Fathers are shewn &c.

WALSH says there have been different opinions as to who should be called the Fathers. That GERHARD, in his Method of studying Theology, p. 280, gives three orders of Fathers: 1st, those who lived from the times of the Apostles to the council of Nice, about anno 325, 2nd, those from this Council to the 2nd of Constantinople, about 681; 3rd, those from this 2nd Council of Constantinople, to the beginning of the Theological schools about 1172, when Peter Lombard lived.

In this first Chapter, he mentions among other authors, who have written on the Fathers, CAVE'S "Tabulæ Ecclesiasticæ," or the History of the Lives, Acts, Deaths and Martyrdoms, of those who were contemporary, or immediately succeeded the Apostles ; as also the most eminent of the primitive Fathers for the first 300 years, Lond. 1674. The same author's "Chartophylax Ecclesiasticus," or the history of the Lives, Acts, Deaths, and Writings of the most eminent Fathers of the Church, that flourished in the fourth Century, Lond. 1685-88. fol.

His 2nd and 3rd chapters give the various editions of the works of the Fathers, and of the libraries, collections, catenas, and chrestomathies of them.