which they knew to be false; and such, indeed, is the tone in which the Fathers have been spoken of by some writers of our own country. It is our intention presently to enter rather at length into the question of the continuation of miracles; but we should say, that allowing the charge of credulity to be true, this does not make the Fathers less valuable testimonies as to the doctrine and practice of Christians in their own times. There is no doubt that Bishop Bull believed in the existence of witches and in the admonitory nature of dreams: he tells us so in his own sermons (see Sermon 11 and 12); but no person would say, that this detracts from the force of his reasoning in the Defence of the Nicene Faith-and so we say of the Fathers, that because, in common with every person of their own age, they fell into certain weaknesses and mistakes, this ought not to influence our opinion of them as honest men and authentic witnesses. Few persons, perhaps none, ever so far soared above the prejudices of their times, as not in some measure to be affected by them. There is a fashion in the train of ideas and in the habits of thinking, as there is in the dress which is worn, and the language which is spoken at any particular period; and nothing is more unfair, though nothing is more common, than to condemn the individual for what is the fault of the age; or to try the morals and the reasoning of our predecessors by standards which have been set up in later times. To say that there are no fixed rules for taste, would, perhaps, be going too far; for there never was a time when the Iliad would not be thought a sublime poem, and the Apollo Belvedere a beautiful statue : but although there are some principles of taste, upon which all persons and all ages are agreed, yet it is certain that in other respects taste is a relative term, the meaning of which varies. with the age; and though it may be just to object to the taste of our ancestors collectively upon any one point, it may tremely unjust to blame any one individual who went with the

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If we look through our own writers, or, indeed, the writers of any country, we shall find that what was admired in one century was condemned in another; and this not only in the ornaments and superfluities of composition, but in the whole form and substance of it: the very ideas seem to flow differently at different periods, and the popular modes of reasoning have been equally fluctuating. Thus we wonder how our forefathers could sit patiently through a sermon of two hours in length, and filled with syllogisms; but we have no right, in these cases, to abuse the taste of the preacher. It would be bad taste to adopt the syllogistic form in the present day, but it would be

very difficult to prove from the eternal fitness of things, that such a form is not as good as our own. It is not followed now, because it is not the fashion; and perhaps our readers will be satisfied with our assigning no better cause.

Upon the same principle we contend, that the inconclusive reasoning and the fanciful interpretations in the works of the Fathers ought not to deter us from consulting their authority. We should remember, that they are the only contemporary records which we have of the belief of Christians for the first three centuries. We have no ecclesiastical history previous to that of Eusebius, and he tells us himself, that he collected his facts from those very writers whose works we are now considering, and who have received such an unmerited share of reprobation and neglect. It appears, therefore, that the Fathers are valuable, not only as telling us what the early Christians believed, but because it is to them we must go for the rites and ceremonies of the church, for its prosperous and adverse fortunes, and for the schisms and heresies which disturbed and divided it.

No person will deny the importance of ascertaining the faith and the practice of primitive times, and whatever we may think of the intellectual and reasoning powers of the divines of those days, a confusion of ideas, or a want of judgment, will surely not incapacitate them from telling us what they saw and what they believed. Thus Irenæus may have advanced unsound arguments to prove the divinity of Christ, or he may have failed in exposing the error of an heretical opponent; but still we cannot doubt that he himself believed what he wished to prove, and that he really considered the man to be a heretic whom he laboured to confute. In the same manner we prove the baptism of infants, and the giving of the cup to the laity, &c. &c., because we find the facts repeatedly mentioned in the works of the Fathers; and such evidence is more valuable, because we collect it, not from treatises written expressly on those particular points, but from incidental notices, which show that the customs were established, and that the writers were not aware that they were mentioning anything remarkable.

Such being the case, we may suppose that, the works of the Fathers have often been consulted, and everything extracted from them which is valuable, concerning the manners and belief of those early times. The Tillemonts and the Mosheims must necessarily have resorted to these original resources; and when once an ecclesiastical history was compiled from such authorities, we might fancy that everything was collected which the lapse of ages has permitted us to know. Still, however, the plan of a work like that which is now before us is, perhaps, capable of

amusing the reader, and impressing facts upon his memory more than a general history, which is extended through many centuries, and is collected from the authority of many different writers. There is no department of theological learning in which the English student is so poorly supplied as in that of ecclesiastical history, we mean the history of the Christian church in early times. The meagre compilation of Mosheim, which includes the four first centuries in one moderately-sized volume, can never satisfy the inquisitive mind, which meets with sanguinary persecution in one chapter, and in the next finds the whole Roman Empire converted to Christianity. The causes which led to so great a change can only be traced by searching the original records which have come down to us. None of these, as already mentioned, expressly treat of ecclesiastical history; but unless we consult them we shall know little of the heresies and controversies which existed at any particular period, of the progress which the gospel was making among the heathen, or of the customs and discipline which prevailed in the early church. All these facts, and many more, which are of great interest to the antiquary and divine, can only be found in the writings of the Fathers. Eusebius leaves many of them untouched; and though we appear to have so little remaining to us of the three first centuries, yet much valuable information might still be collected, if the writings of the ante-nicene Fathers were searched with this view.

The work now before us, which professes to be an ecclesiastical history of the second and third centuries, illustrated from the writings of Tertullian, seemed to promise to fill up an important part of the outline proposed above. The writings of Tertullian are more multifarious as to their subject than those of any other of the ante-nicene Fathers. Whatever we may think of his intellectual powers, he was certainly a man of great reading and great reflection: he was evidently not a person who could be lukewarm or indifferent in anything which he undertook: he wrote treatises in confutation of several heresies; he was himself at variance with the Catholic church, which makes it more desirable that we should read his description of it; being a member of the African church, it is probable that he would allude to customs which were different from those of the churches of Europe and Asia; and his copies of the scriptures might also be different. On all these accounts the writings of Tertullian are very likely to reward the ecclesiastical historian, who examines them with a view to the collection of facts. The Bishop of Bristol, it is easy to perceive, is intimately acquainted with the style, the feelings, and, we may add, the imperfections

of his author. As a full analysis of the works of Tertullian, and a fair and judicious specimen of reasoning, his work must certainly command our approbation; but we confess that when we compared the contents with the title-page, we found that our expectations had not been realized.

We had expected-in which, perhaps, we were wrong-to find an ecclesiastical history of the second and third centuries : we had thought, that the student who was about to begin upon this line of reading, would have found in the present volume a detailed description of the church, as it stood in its external and internal relations, at that period of time to which it refers. But we are mistaken, if the book be found in this respect generally useful. Instead of bearing the title which it does, it might rather be styled an analysis of the writings of Tertullian, with occasional reference to the ecclesiastical history of the second and third centuries. A person who has lately been reading Tertullian cannot fail to find in this work a great deal to interest and amuse him; he will see all the peculiar features of this very peculiar author brought together; and the effect of their juxtaposition, aided by the disquisitions and the judgment of the learned prelate, will be likely to place many things in a new point of view, and to make him understand Tertullian more intimately than he did before. Thus far we think that the work will have its use, and in most of the author's remarks, whether upon the probable sentiments of Tertullian, or upon the observations of other critics, we are disposed fully to agree. But the general reader and the young theologian will hardly find that the book contains enough of ecclesiastical history to interest or amuse him. If he has never read the works of Tertullian, and has no intention of reading them, it is obvious that such a minute analysis will weary him; and if he took up the book, as we did ourselves, expecting to find in it a history of the Christian church in the second and third centuries, he will certainly be disappointed.

The work very properly begins with an account of Tertullian himself; and we are not aware that any material fact is omitted, which the labours of Allix, Cave, Pamelius, and Lardner had already brought to light. The accounts which Allix and Pamelius had already given of the life and writings of Tertullian might be said indeed to have exhausted the subject; and we could have wished that the Bishop of Bristol, instead of relating the same facts in so succinct and dry a manner, had exercised his own judgment a little more, and ventured to decide some of the doubtful points in the life of this Father-a task, which his intimate acquaintance with his writings would well have enabled him to

discharge. As it is, we do not perceive that any of the questions which have hitherto been discussed concerning Tertullian have received any new light from the work now before us. Whether Tertullian had once been a heathen, whether he was ordained, and whether he officiated in the church of Rome or of Carthage, has been a subject of debate with former critics and biographers; and the Bishop of Bristol leaves each of these points exactly where he found them. In the remarks which are made upon Tertullian's conversion to Montanism, and upon the heresy of Montanus itself, there is more of original thinking, and we should be disposed to agree that, in most instances, they are judicious and well-founded. The following sentence appears well worthy of observation, and exactly expresses our own opinion upon the subject: "The assertion may appear paradoxical, but is nevertheless true, that the value of Tertullian's writings to the theological student, arises in a great measure from his errors. he became a Montanist, he set himself to expose what he deemed faulty in the practice and discipline of the church; thus we are told indirectly what that practice and that discipline were, and we obtain information which, but for his secession from the church, his works would scarcely have supplied. In a word, whether we consider the testimony borne to the genuineness and integrity of the books of the New Testament, or the information relating to the ceremonies, discipline, and doctrines of the primitive church, Tertullian's writings form a most important link in that chain of tradition which connects the apostolic age with our own." -(pp. 38, 39.)

When

Among the numerous literary paradoxes which we have met with, few have been more glaring than the observation of Gilbert Wakefield, that the writings of Tertullian are to be ranked among "the most genuine remains of pure Roman composition;" and this, because they contain "the language of the old comedians and tragedians, of Ennius and Lucilius." Dr. Kay justly objects to the truth of this assertion, though he says that he has occasionally found some of Tertullian's strange expressions to have been used by Plautus. He might have added, that if a person writing at the beginning of the third century selected terms, which had not been in use since the days of Ennius and Plautus, we can want no further evidence of his bad taste and the barbarism of his style. It may be remembered also, that Lactantius says of Tertullian," he was versed in every kind of literature, but in expressing himself he had little facility, and still less elegance, and his obscurity was excessive." Now, if Lactantius could speak thus of a man who only lived one hundred years before him, it seems absurd for any one to assert in the present