bour? Behold I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues, and say He saith." The sacred volume is complete (Rev. XXII, 18, 19) and able to make us both wise unto salvation, and perfect unto all good works. 2 Timothy III 15, 11. However, good men having received the teaching of the spirit, have been a blessing by enriching the Church with divine truth, drawn from the scriptures; in this respect, as furnishing an infallible standard or treasury of truth, they must be wholly repudiated: every thing must be tried by the word of God."

MAURICE.

"The Kingdom of Christ, or Hints to a quaker respecting the principles, constitution, and ordinances of the Catholic Church; by Frederic Denison Maurice, M. A., chaplain of Guy's Hospital, and Professor of English literature and History in King's College, London, 2 vols 8vo, 2d edit. Rivingtons, 1842."

In vol. ii, page 389 of this work is the following passage:

It is commonly said that the Fathers must be looked to as the Interpreters of Scripture; in consequence of their proximity to the Apostles; the opportunities they might have had of hearing the very words which they uttered; &c. I confess I have never been able to understand this doctrine of proximity; it would seem to me to prove that ATHANASIUs, or AMBROSE, or AUGUSTINE, must be of far less value, as elucidators of truth, than HERMAS or IGNATIUS: and I do not think that this has been the practical feeling of the church in any age. It would have vol. I.

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seemed to me, rather, that the great worth of the Fathers arose from their being placed by God in circumstances which especially enabled them to apprehend certain great truths, especially those foundation-truths which concern his Being, and the order of the Universal Society. Adopting that view, I can believe that each had his own special merits; that the Alexandrian might see that which the Latins could not see that one principle would be brought out in mighty power by him who struggled with Arians; another by him who, in his own heart and in the world, had done battle with Manicheism. Adopting the other, I think that I shall not only be in danger of making an age into a Church, but of exalting particular individuals of that age above others, to whom perhaps a more important work was committed. But whichever of these views be adopted, it will be difficult to prove, that the Fathers had any better means than other men, of understanding the circumstances of the Jewish nation. They had no proximity with the Fathers of that nation. The Jews with whom they could converse, were either those in whom the national feelings had been merged in more general Catholic sympathies; or those who were trying to set up the old national distinctions against the Church; or those who regarded their whole past history as little more than a collection of allegories; or the development of a Mosaic philosophy. Again, their circumstances could give them no sort of sympathy with the old national life of the Jews: the temple was gone, the city was laid waste: these events had been necessary to the establishment of the Universal Church; and that Church stood in the

midst of a great empire, in which there was no nation that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. Would it not have been more reasonable to expect, under such circumstances, that, so far as they were polemical, they might be able to prove clearly, that the Jewish commonwealth was meant to be the seed of a great tree: so far as they were experimental, that the Jewish saints had struggled with the same internal enemies, which were assailing themselves; so far as they were mystical, that there had been an invisible guide and teacher, training men to know him through all past ages of history; but that whatever belonged to the common daily human life of the Jews, would be utterly puzzling to them, would seem quite out of place in a divine book; and would therefore of necessity be translated into cabalistic lore? I say, would not any one expect this from the position in which the Fathers were placed? And if the facts should be found exactly to accord with these expectations, if every Christian of the present day who looks into them should be puzzled and perplexed by curious and subtle spiritualizations of facts which simply as facts have been his delights as a child, and which, as he grew to be a man, have seemed to connect themselves with what is passing in the world around him if there be a use of this spiritualizing method, which the Church, even of that age, has itself condemned, if yet this extravagant use of it was justified in the practice of the most learned and laborious of all the Fathers, and if it be most difficult to find where the point is, at which he transgressed the legitimate rule, is it more wise and pious, and more respectful to these holy men, to say that they could

not take in the literal meaning of the old Scriptures, so as to give that literal meaning any life, and that it was not intended they should do so; or to determine that we will make out a case for them by renouncing all our own advantages, by resolutely praising a system of interpretation which our consciences and hearts are continually repudiating; and then after all to give up the defence of it, when it is clearly and consistently worked out?

I will not stop to remark, what must be obvious to every person who considers the foregoing statements, that the ideas of the Fathers respecting marriage, property, and every institution which belongs in the first place to our earthly condition, must have been exceedingly affected by their views of the old Testament generally. In all cases they will have sought for the highest, most transcendental ground upon which such ordinances were to be defended; since they must exist, they will readily have looked upon them as types of something higher; but how to connect the type with the actual fact, how to avoid the conclusion -that which is not directly of heaven, belongs in some sense to human depravity,—was impossible.

MAURICE, in page 386 of the above Section, writes against the

contempt of the Fathers, or adopting those notions respecting them which have been propagated of late in this country, with so much more of self-conceit than learning; and which could only have gained currency through some weakness in the theory to which they were opposed.

WAKE.

WAKE, archbishop of Canterbury, in his work "The genuine epistles of the Apostolic Fathers," &c. 8vo, London, 6th edition, 1833, gives the following heads to Chap. iii of his Preliminary Discourse.

Of the authority of the following Treatises, and the deference that ought to be paid to them upon the account of it. This is shewn from the following considerations-1. That the Authors of them were contemporary with the Apostles, and instituted by them-2. They were men of an eminent character in the Church; and therefore, to be sure, such as could not be ignorant of what was taught in it.—3. They were very careful to preserve the doctrine of Christ in its purity, and to oppose such as went about to corrupt it.-4. They were men not only of a perfect piety, but of great courage and constancy; and therefore such as cannot be suspected to have had any design to prevaricate in this matter-5. They were endued with a large portion of the Holy Spirit, and as such, could hardly err in what they delivered as a necessary part of the Gospel of Christ-And, 6. Their writings were approved by the Church in those days, which could not be mistaken in its approbation of them. t hele b..