the pretences of the Papal and Anglican prelates to be the legitimate successors of the apostles is either sheer ignorance or impertinent conceit, for the twelve had no legitimate successors, except in that continuant race of holy and wise ministers of the gospel, who never advance this grandiloquent claim. Of the apostolic fathers, as the immediate disciples of the twelve are usually called, very little worthy of credence is known. With the exception of a few tractates, some even of which are doubtful, they have left no writings; nor is that surprising, when we consider their missionary activity, the disarrangement of the age, and the absence of that scriptus furor, that now creates fruitless and neglected authors by thousands. For the most part, the very names of the apostolic fathers are lost; the spheres of labour of some whose works remain, are unknown; and though all intervening and expectant Christian ages would have been glad to have had their histories, their letters, their experience, and their obituary, it is probably a vast boon of Providence to the Church, that they did not survive. From what we have, we may naturally infer, that if we had possessed much more of the patristic history and literature, our pseudo-scholarship, the natural worship of antiquity, and the spirit of prelatic superstition, would only have used them as so many stronger entrenchments against the truth as it is in Jesus.' We have, however, in the vestiges of early patristic history, the clear proof, that long after the apostles had all departed to their rest, there was still no tendency in the Church to affiliate themselves to the civil power, and as little to subordinate their faith and practice, either to their individual teachers, or to the conventions that were not unfrequently held. The same truth is frequently and often curiously brought out through the successive ages of persecution, which department of the early history of Christendom, Mr. Cooper has treated, in our opinion, with adequate scholarship and high-minded effect.

Our author next proceeds to those sad and spiritually nebulous ninety-five years that intercalated the martyrdom of Polycarp, and the close of the persecution under Valerian, A.D. 164-259, and vigorously sketches the struggle of heresy represented under the names Gnosticism, Montanism, and the Neo-Platonic school. In this section he sketches the Christian faith in its new aspect of literature, in which Mr. Cooper shows the overwhelming force with which Christian writers bore down alike the glittering sneers and gibes of the pagan school, the rhodomontade and mock learning of Alexandrine theosophists, and the more biblical, but malignant attacks of the Jews. This development of Christianity, that began its course with but one book, into all but instantaneous ascendency in literature, is a remarkable feature of its early history. But glorious as this masterdom appears, it is in that very age that we behold the sham Clementines, and the bastard Apostolic Constitutions, which, though every tyro knows to be utterly spurious, became for 1200 years the pillars on which the edifice of prelatic episcopacy arose and consolidated itself. What resistance was made by true men to the doctrine of these novels, we cannot now

All of
Let

hope to know, literature being, in any large sense, then a novelty, and the mischief of a fictitious production might not have been understood; but we have reason to fear that by this time, the sacerdotal germ had too far developed to leave it possible for the Church of Christ to express herself jealously for her liberties. To Victor at Rome, and Cyprian at Carthage, the hierarchical leaven must be mainly attributed which, when once initiated, with a decayed tone among the Christians generally, and a consequently enfeebled ministry, it only required time to consummate. A wondrous relaxation must have befallen Christian Society, before Victor could be tolerated to declare, 'It is evident that we ought to look unto the bishop as unto the Lord himself Let all reverence the deacons as the commandment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ you follow the bishop as Jesus Christ the Father that eucharist be considered valid which is celebrated by the bishop It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to hold the agape Do nothing without the bishop.' While these were the opinions announced by the Church of Rome, Cyprian, soon after, regarded the bishop appointed by God himself, and acting in the name of Christ;' taught the doctrine that a layman might not oppose him; that a presbyter might not baptize without the permission of the bishop; that there could be no church without such a bishop, and no salvation out of that church. When such arrogant absurdities were broached, and that in a treatise on the Unity of the Church, and its author, meanwhile, the foremost man of all his age,' it is needless to say the Church had now lost the substance of its freedom; nor shall we travel far before we find it loses the form too. But not only was the spirit of freedom exorcised from the Christian Church, but if the definition of the body of Christ given by Cyprian were generally admitted, viz., The whole body of baptized persons throughout the world organized by the sacerdotal college of prelates into a unity,' the true notion of the Church of Christ had departed also.

We forbear following our author through his Second Transition Period, though the two chapters relating to that tenebrious time of sixty-six years (A.D. 259-325) will richly remunerate the reader of Mr. Cooper's book. We have seen how explicitly exempt the Church of Christ was in its origin, and for some two centuries, either from alliance in any form with the civil power, or from the domination of its clergy. The sad corruption of human nature that deteriorates all institutions that mankind has ever possessed, sprung from the imperfect men of which the Church and its clergy were composed; the general degradation of the age facilitated the retrogression of the Church; and when the new persecutions arose, swarms of professing Christians abandoned their church without compunction, and leaped headlong into the old slough of paganism, which the Caesars were so desirous for three centuries to honour and to save, as a more trusty corroborative of their polity, than the churches of Jesus Christ.

Of the general character of Mr. Cooper's little volume we heartily approve; it is the contribution of an independent and acute thinker,

equally familiar with the patristic writings, and most of the best modern works on this period of ecclesiastical history. To those readers to whom larger works are inaccessible, or useless for want of leisure, the volume before us will be invaluable, if it be not too erudite for such readers. We could have wished, however, that the style had been less redundant, the leaning to German authority less exclusive, and that fewer topics, somewhat irrelevant from the purpose avowed by the author, had been occasionally introduced. With many of our author's critical opinions we can scarcely be expected to concur. We dissent from his exposition of the motive power of Judas Iscariot; and we are of opinion, that though Victor and Cyprian richly merit the odium that Mr. Cooper attaches to their prelatical tendencies, that he has too exclusively confined the blame to them. We cannot help feeling also that if Mr. C. had introduced further illustrations, easily accessible to him, of the actual working of religious society in its conventions for worship and church business in the ante-Victorine period, he would have greatly subserved the avowed object of his work, and brought conviction more directly home to the conscience of such of his readers who have their misgivings of episcopal forms, but who continue their connexion with them, which they would not do if they could have seen what the true internal state of individual churches was, when Victor was about to ascend to power.

reason.

But it is not with the slightest wish to disparage the present work, or from any unwillingness to acknowledge the great merits of its author, that we confess this is not the book that can, from its nature, produce any powerful effect in this age on the all-absorbing question of the Church. Arguments that are mainly erudite will have their influence on literary readers; and such are, no doubt, of great importance to the young ministry, as they verify the conclusions of popular But in this country the literary Vulcan, however powerful, has but small sway in the political hemisphere; for, unfortunately, we have to deal with our ecclesiastical incumbrance, not so much in a moral or literary aspect, as in one of economy and legislation. The judgment of the nation, if fairly taken, we have no doubt would be found already against Church establishments. It is not, therefore, so much with the thinking power of the public that we have to do, as with its cupidity and its superstition, its pride and idle fears; and those antagonisms will never be overcome by any historic demonstration, however lucid, that the ante-Constantine fathers of the Church bear clear testimony, on the whole, to the voluntary state and constitution of the evangelical societies of their day. Mr. Cooper's volume is imcomparably better than many that are popular; but we fear it never will become so: for the needy have no taste for such studies; and the great bulk of even the intelligent middle-classes are so far gone into the insanity of the immoderate desire to grow rich, and idle away the last portion of their life in a villa, that they will not, and do not, read more than the newspaper, the periodicals, and now and then a work of fiction. Standard books are bought, indeed, by such persons, but it is only for the same purpose that a citizen buys a picture,

or his wife old china, to flatter themselves and their visitors that the room so gorgeous, in which they sip bohea, or drink champagne, is the abode of a man of taste, who, though heretofore only familiar with 'prices current,' the bankrupt list, and the state of his ledger and stock, is now as diligent a student of Locke and Hobbes, crops flowers from the region of poetry, and occasionally dances with Olympian goddesses, or shouts among the myriads in the Isthmian games. In many such libraries we hope Mr. Cooper's work will be found; by many may it be read; but it will not be worn out by much reading, but in this our author will only share the fate of Milton and Shakespeare, or Bacon, who must gnash their teeth while they hear Punch quoted a thousand times for their once, and Dickens raise roars of merriment by the evening fire-side, while their immortal tomes are often only used as a lullaby or a penance.

Biblical compared with other ancient Bistories.

IV. EGYPT: GENERAL CULTURE AND PARTICULAR POINTS

OF AGREEMENT.

IN the former paper we took what may be termed a microscopic view of biblical and Egyptian history. In the operation, as it has been with the application of the microscope to material organisms, we were led to the discovery of minute, and, in some degree, unexpected points of light, which furnished important conclusions in favour of the historical reality of the biblical records. We now purpose to throw our eyes around a wide horizon, and take in an extensive prospect, which we shall contract until we bring our minds to contemplate the mutual relations of Palestine and Egypt.

Still, confining our thoughts to the postdiluvian ages, as being those in relation to which alone biblical and Egyptian archæology admits of comparison, we discover at the first view a general agreement between the two respecting the origin and march of civilization. The age to which the Biblical writings lay claim implicate the very early existence of alphabetical writing. Unless such a channel of transmission existed at least in the days of Moses, or even of Abraham, the earliest biblical scriptures lack a solid historical basis. This fact was clearly seen by the sceptical philosophy of the end of the last, and the beginning of this century, and called forth the most strenuous efforts in order to show that writing was not in use until a comparatively late period in the ancient world. The attempt was so far successful that even classical scholars, of undoubted learning, were induced to admit the conclusion, and seek for expedients to account for the transmission, for instance, of the Homeric poems, to what they considered historical

times, in somewhat of their original integrity. The progress, however, of Egyptian discovery has revolutionized the whole of this department of learning, and occasioned a universal admission of the existence of writing long anterior to the age of Homer. It is, indeed, now well ascertained, and among competent scholars universally admitted, that writing goes back in the culture of the Egyptians until it is lost from sight in the thickening shades of mythological traditions. Such is the fact. That fact, were we writing a volume on the origines of civilization, we might think it our duty to establish on detailed evidence. Here it suffices to make the statement. Beyond a question, the voice of Egyptian antiquity places writing in the primeval ages, which passed between the flood and the first great oriental monarchies.

That voice finds an echo in the literature of Palestine. Did not such a counterpart exist, we should scarcely be justified in contracting the age of that literature a parte ante, for we now see in the case of the Grecian literature that at least poetry may be very ancient without bearing in its texture traces of the art of writing. In possession, however, of a resonance of the kind, we are warranted in declaring that the earliest books of the Bible, in bearing witness to the extreme antiquity of writing, thereby attest their own antiquity, and present themselves in unison with Egyptian archæology.

We may premise, that learned Germans and others have maintained that several hands were concerned in the formation of the great series of historical documents which extend from the history of the creation in Genesis to the foundation of the monarchy under David. This view has been most recently set forth by Ewald with a care and a precision which become sound scholarship. On the correctness of the view we here pronounce no judgment, and we allude to it merely in order to remark that, as it excludes evidence which but for it we should have had the power of adducing, we shall, for the sake of being on indisputable ground; consent in our remarks to the restrictions which it imposes; for in these papers we write to the unbelieving, rather than the believing mind, since it is the former which, being in danger of losing its faith amid the errors of partial knowledge and obsolete opinions, is in need of sound information and reliable evidence.

That it is with written and not traditional materials we have to do in the historical notices which intervene in the Bible between the deluge and Moses, the most historical of the ancients, as well as the most ancient of historians, may appear sufficiently proved by the fact that those notices present distinct and separate characters in each, say, of the patriarchs, not delineated in formal sketches, but implicated and unconsciously set forth in the detailed actions of domestic and public life. Look at Abraham, at Isaac, at Jacob, at Joseph. You know them each, you know their distinctive qualities; you do not, you cannot mistake the one for the other. Yet scarcely is an epithet employed to describe any one. They are put on the stage; they act, they speak, and in so doing they are each a distinct individuality. As distinct individualities they exist in your mind. You are in no danger of confounding the stern firmness of Abraham's faith in Providence, with