[British Critic, October 1838.]
Mr. Jacobson’s Edition of the Epistles of St. Clement, St. Ignatius, and St. Polycarp, lately published, we suppose, to be the commencement of an undertaking on the part of the Oxford press, which was reported to be in agitation some years since, of editing a number of the works of the Fathers. The University is fortunate indeed, if the editions which follow are executed with one half the pains and critical skill which Mr. Jacobson has evidently taken with this.
Dr. Pusey’s Edition of the Original Text of St. Austin’s Confessions is just published, as well as his Translation of the same Work, and the Translation of St. Cyril’s Catechetical Lectures. Much pains seem to have been bestowed upon all of them. A most elaborate and instructive account of the Manichæan tenets is added to the Translation of the Confessions. Dr. Pusey’s arduous work having now at length commenced, we trust that no obstacles will lie in the way of its regular progress.
We are indebted to Mr. Dowling for one of the most important works to a theological student which has appeared for a long time, “An Introduction to the Critical Study of Ecclesiastical History” (Rivingtons.) It consists of the list of historians of the Church down to the present day, and an Essay upon the sources of Ecclesiastical History generally. The work is the more important, as we cannot but hope we see in it the augury of some more extended and methodical attention to this great subject, than has ever been paid it in our Reformed Church. Mr. Dowling at least has begun at the foundation, and that alone is an omen of a superstructure.
Mr. Dowling’s work commenced in the pages of the British Magazine; a publication which, more than any of the day, has been successful in bringing churchmen together, making them feel confidence in each other, and giving occasion to works some of which at least would not otherwise have been written. Dr. M’Caul’s instructive Sketches of Judaism and the Jews, which has just been published in a separate form, is another instance of the last mentioned service.
A series has commenced of most interesting reprints from the works of some divines of the 16th century, under the title of “Tracts of the Anglican Fathers.” Those which we have seen are “Cranmer’s Sermons on Holy Baptism;” on “the Apostolical Succession and the power of the Keys;” on the “Blessed Sacrament of the Altar;” and on “the Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the Holy Catholic Church.” If the series continues as it has begun, it will exercise an important influence on the theological points at present in controversy.
Mr. Parkinson’s instructive Hulsean Lectures (Rivingtons) have a value even beyond their intrinsic worth, as indicating and promoting the advancement of ethical studies at Cambridge. They are intended to show that the doctrines of the Gospel are but the great conclusions to which the phenomena of this world tend; “that their specific defects are exactly such as meet with their specific remedies in the very revelation which we possess; that they stop short just where revelation begins; and that it appears by the deficiency on the one side being exactly met by the sufficiency on the other, that they each form part of one harmonious plan, and were originally designed by the artificer of that plan to be united together for the great end of furthering the moral advancement of man.” Accordingly he brings the testimony of ethical philosophy, of the intellectual powers, of the human body, of man as related to external things, to his fellow men, and to himself. It is curious, as a coincidence, that the same subject has lately, as our pages have shown, been discussed, independently of Mr. Parkinson, by Mr. Woodgate and Mr. Oakeley. The subject is most important.
A third edition has appeared of Mr. Miller’s well known Bampton Lectures.
Mr. Faber has published an Inquiry into the History and Theology of the ancient Vallenses and Albigenses, (Seeley and Burnside,) which is conducted, as might be expected, with the research and vigour which are the usual characteristics of his works.
Mr. Townsend, the Master (we believe is his title) of the Peculiar of Allerton, has published a charge, which, were we his enemies, we should delight in seeing run to the “fifth thousand.” It is written against speaking with reserve to the world at large on the more sacred subjects of religion! The style is as extraordinary as the matter. In any one else it would be pompous. It is not so in Mr. Townsend. It is his own style.
Mr. Vernon Harcourt’s Doctrine of the Deluge (Longman) is a work of much ingenuity in its design, and most elaborate research in its execution. Its object is to vindicate the Scripture account “from the doubts which have recently been cast upon it by geological speculations;” and he does so, by setting out to show that the Noachical deluge was the type of the doctrines of “expiation of past guilt” and “regeneration,” that it is attested by “evidences impressed not upon the surface of the earth, but upon the memory of its inhabitants, and derived from their traditions, their superstitions, their monuments, and their usages,” and that “the doctrine which it inculcated was kept alive obscurely in various parts of the world, till it was finally enlisted in the service of true religion, and obtained a permanent place in the institutions of Christianity, and was consigned to holier purposes and endowed with a more operative practice and exalted to the dignity of a Sacrament.” In a word, he proves the fact and doctrine to come under the “quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.” “Ever since,” he says, “the family of Noah issued forth into the air and light of a new life, and stepped once more upon the renovated earth now cleansed from its former guiltiness by the waters of the deluge, the providence of God had so overruled the superstition thence arising, that a notion of some mystical regeneration by water and expiation of sin had been kept alive among all the nations, with whose history we are well acquainted; and thus the world was prepared to receive that doctrine of a moral regeneration by baptism and forgiveness of sins, which is the commencement of a new life to every Christian.” There is an important chapter at the end, on the view of the early Church concerning the regenerative power of baptism, in which Mr. Harcourt nobly upholds our Church’s doctrine and the authority of the Fathers against the schools of the 16th century. “The nearer,” he says, “we ascend to the fountain head, the purer will the waters flow; the three first centuries therefore after the Apostles were more likely to know in what sense the Apostles themselves used a theological term, than any three centuries that have since elapsed. I do not say that they are free from error, or that any uninspired writers are absolutely safe authorities for doctrine: but they are unexceptionable witnesses to a mere matter of fact; and in the present instance the fact with which we have to do is this: were the first converts to Christianity in the habit of considering baptism equivalent to regeneration, and necessarily attended with some spiritual grace, or were they not?” What can be desired clearer or more sensible than this? Mr. Harcourt considers Antiquity to supply the comment on the text of Scripture.