4. That the same Hegesippus regards the heresies as arising out of schism in the Jewish Church. He was himself a Hebrew convert; and after stating that he travelled to Rome, whither he went by way of Corinth, and had familiar conversation with many bishops, he declares "that in every succession and in every city the doctrine prevails according to what is declared by the law and the prophets and the Lord." (Euseb. iv. 22.) This is not the language of a follower of St. Paul.

5. That in the Clementine Homilies, written about the year 160, though a work generally orthodox, St. Paul is covertly introduced under the name of Simon Magus, as the impersonation of Gnostic error, as the enemy who had pretended "visions and revelations," and who "withstood" and blamed Peter. No writer doubts the allusion in some of these passages to the Epistles of St. Paul. Assuming their connexion, we ask, What was the state of mind which led an orthodox Christian, who lived probably at Rome, about the middle of the second century, to affix such a character to St. Paul? and what was the motive which induced him to veil his meaning? What, too, could have been the state of the Church in which such a romance grew up? and how could the next generation have read it without perceiving its true aim? Doubtful as may be the precise answer to these questions, we cannot attribute this remarkable work to the wayward fancy of an individual; it is an indication of a real tendency of the first and second centuries, at a time when the flame was almost extinguished, but still slumbered in the mind of the writer of the Clementine Homilies. It is observable that at a later date, about the year 210-230, in the form which the work afterwards received under the title of "the Clementine Recognitions," which have been preserved in a Latin translation, the objectionable passages have mostly vanished.

6. Lastly, that in later writings we find no trace of the mind of St. Paul. His influence seems to pass from the world. On such a basis "as where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty," it might have been impossible to rear the fabric of a hierarchy. But the

thought itself was not present to the next generation. The tide of ecclesiastical feeling set in another direction. It was not merely that after-writers fell short of St. Paul, or imperfectly interpreted him, but that they formed themselves on a different model. It was not only that the external constitution of the Church had received a definite form and shape, but that the inward perception of the nature of the Gospel was different. No writer of the latter half of the second century would have spoken as St. Paul has done of the law, of the sabbath, of justification by faith only, of the Spirit, of grace, of moderation in things indifferent, of forgiveness. An echo of a part of his teaching is heard in Augustine; with this exception, the voice of him who withstood Peter to the face at Antioch was silent in the Church until the Reformation. The spirit of the Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians has revived in later times. But there is no trace that the writings of the Apostle left any lasting impress within the Church, or perhaps anywhere in the first ages.

Yet the principle of the Apostle triumphed, though at the time of its triumph it may seem to have lost the spirit and power of the Apostle. The struggle which commenced like Athanasius against the world, ended as the struggle of the world against the remnant of the Jewish race. Beginning within the confines of Judea, it spread in a widening circle among the Jewish proselytes, still wider and more faintly marked in the philojudaising Gentile, fading in the distance as Christianity became a universal religion. Two events had a great influence on its progress. First, the destruction of Jerusalem, and the flight to Pella of the Christian community; secondly, the revolt under Barchocab; both tending to separate, more and more, both in fact and the opinion of mankind, the Christian from the Jew.

It would be vain to carry our inquiry further, with the view of gleaning a few results respecting the first half of the second century. Remote probabilities and isolated facts are not worth balancing. The consciousness that we know little of the times

which followed the Apostles is the best part of our knowledge. And many will deem it well for the purity of the Christian faith, that while Christ himself is clearly seen by us,-as a light, at the fountain of which a dead Church may receive life, and a living one

renew its strength, the origin of ecclesiastical institutions has been hidden from our eyes. In the second and third centuries Christianity was extending its borders, fencing itself with creeds and liturgies, taking possession of the earth with its hierarchy. Whether this great organisation was originally everywhere the same, whether it adopted the form chiefly of the Jewish worship and ministry or of the Roman magistracy, or at first of the one and afterwards of the other, cannot be certainly determined. A cloud hangs over the dawn of ecclesiastical history. By some course of events with which we are not acquainted, the Providence of God leading the way, and the thoughts of man following, the Jewish Synagogue became the Christian Church; the Passover was superseded by Easter; the Christian Sunday took the place of the Jewish Sabbath. While the Old Testament retained its authority over Gentile as well as Jewish Christians, the law was done away in Christ, and the Judaiser of the first century became the Ebionitish heretic of the second and third.

ST. PAUL AND PHILO.

"Canst thou speak Greek?" (Acts, xxi. 37.) "Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee” (Acts, xxiii. 6.), “ brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect way of the law of the Fathers" (Acts, xxii. 3.).

CHRISTIANITY admits of being regarded either from within or from without. We may begin with our own hearts, with the study of the word of God, with the received views which have grown up within the sphere of the Christian Church; or we may place ourselves without that sphere, and look upon Christianity under the aspect which it presented to the contemporaries of Seneca or Pliny; which it continues to present to the eye of the secular historian. Those who take this latter course are sometimes said to put themselves in a false position, which has no rest or stability, until the heavenly is all brought down to the level of the earthly, and the narrative of Scripture has passed into a merely secular chronicle. The Gospel is thought to lose its sacredness when explained by secondary causes or brought into contact with ordinary events. This feeling has been strengthened by the circumstance that, of the age which immediately preceded Christianity in the land where it arose, so slight a record has been preserved to us. For the first century the Gospel stands in no relation to the contemporary history even of the Jews themselves. There is a circle of light around the forms of Christ and his Apostles; while the world, in reference to our knowledge of it, lies in darkness. Naturally, we make no attempt to supply what may be termed "the blank leaves between the Old and New Testament," by gathering together a few doubtful fragments; while the

Christian era furnishes a new beginning, to go beyond which seems like asking "what preceded the creation."

Nevertheless, the really false and artificial position is not that which unites, but that which separates Christianity from the world in general. Practical evils arise from this separation, which begins with history and ends with daily life. The Apostles acknowledged that they were men of like passions with ourselves: the world, too, was a world of men like ourselves; swayed by affections, opinions, traditions, requiring ideas to be on a level with human capacities and to be conveyed in an intelligible language. As our Saviour says of the second coming of the Son of man, it may also be said of the first," they were marrying and were giving in marriage;" their ordinary life was what it had been before; the smoke of the daily sacrifice was still going up; they were disputing about purifying with the disciples of John, sitting at the feet of Gamaliel to be instructed in the Greek learning, of which he was reputed a master. They had their thoughts respecting the tribute money and the Roman government. They knew the difference between their own servile condition and the inheritance of their fathers, of which Moses in the law, and the prophets spoke. They were looking for "the hope of Israel," a few, probably, like Anna, "departing not from the temple night and day;" others ready to take the promises by force in a war against mankind. There were zealots and Essenes among them, though not mentioned in the Gospel, who must have had something in common with the disciples of Christ, and yet more probably with those of John the Baptist. There were characters like Nicodemus or Gamaliel, who regarded with sympathy the new teachers, or waited to see the end; like Caiaphas, who heeded chiefly the political effect on the fortunes of their country. Jewish life was not wanting in individual features; those which have come down to us in the narrative of the Evangelists being such only as contrast most strikingly with the life and sayings of our Lord and his Apostles. Nor were the Jews in the time of Christ without a literature, which had overgrown the Old Testament. In