of property, but of the daily use of all worldly possessions," (though this, indeed, was little more than an exceptionally ample form of the large-hearted charity which long survived Apostolic days;) the absolute contrast between the Apostolic Church and all forms of Jewish asceticism, in that, "instead of withdrawing itself in stern and silent self-discipline from the polluting contact of society, it went out to the conquest of the world, radiant with overflowing joy, and exulting in the consciousness of power." (P. 12.)

The first chapter extends to the martyrdom of S. Stephen: whose discourse, inasmuch as it announced that "the Church would survive her rejection by the chosen people, and the ruin of the very temple itself," was an epoch in the Church's relations with Judaism. "It was the bitterest word," to Jews, which had yet been uttered in the name of JESUS CHRIST; and the favour with which the Jewish multitude had regarded the Apostles was now exchanged for bitter hatred. The next chapter takes us on to the Council of Jerusalem: the various courses open to the Church as to the treatment of Gentile converts, after the conversion of Cornelius, are clearly stated; and the difficulties are so pointed out as to explain why that conversion was not the signal "of an immediate and large opening of the Church of CHRIST to the Gentile." Immediately afterwards comes a very remarkable discussion of the question of S. Peter's visit to Rome. Dr. Shirley believes that, immediately after the deliverance of the Apostle (whose primacy, in the sense of precedency among the Apostles, he very emphatically recognises, calling him, in p. 65, "the unquestioned chief of the twelve") from Herod Agrippa's power, he visited Rome, A.D. 44 or 45, just twenty years before his martyrdom in that city: which period of twenty years he considers to account for the upgrowth of the unhistoric statement, that S. Peter was Bishop of Rome for a similar period. To the objection from the silence of S. Luke in the Acts, he replies in the following passage, which is specially valuable as giving a very lucid description of the objects and plan of that sacred book :

"That an event so momentous in the eye of later controversy as the founding of the Church of Rome by the chief of the Apostles should be absolutely passed over in the inspired narrative of S. Luke, has appeared to some so strange, as to throw entire discredit on the fact. It will appear less strange, indeed, but even more significant to those who have examined closely the structure of the Acts of the Apostles. That book has often, indeed, been regarded as an unmethodical fragment. The incompleteness of the narrative, if viewed as a history of the Apostles, the sudden change which passes at the close of the twelfth chapter over the persons and scenes of the history, and the abrupt close of the whole, are indeed indications which suggest to the most uncritical reader that he has before him either an unfinished or a most inartistic hook.

And yet, under this apparent disorder, is concealed a plan as

complete, as sustained, as carefully elaborated, as belongs to almost any historical work. The subject of the Acts of the Apostles is the planting of the Church of CHRIST. How it was originally founded; what were its earliest form and characteristics; what its first difficulties; how it came to be more perfectly organized; how it outgrew the measure of a purely Jewish sect; how, once proclaimed to the Gentiles, it laid hold one by one of the great centres of the Greek and Roman world; how it held on its way from Jerusalem to Samaria, from Samaria to Antioch, to Ephesus, to Corinth, and finally to Rome itself; how it dealt with the varied populations with which it met in its career; how it encountered, under the two forms of Judaism and of Gnosticism, the germs of all future heresy ;-such are the historical questions with which S. Luke deals in the sacred volume of the Acts. He shows us the Church in her majestic advance from Jerusalem to Rome, from the upper chamber of the Eleven to the capital of the Gentile world; and he gives us, in this advance, a prophetic epitome of her history from her first hour to the end.

"If in such a narrative as this the visit of S. Peter to Rome finds no place whatever, it can only be that in the mind of the inspired author that visit was not of primary importance in the planting of the Church of CHRIST. The visit of S. Paul to Rome is of moment; for he plants the greatest of Gentile Churches by the throne of the Gentile world. It is the culminating point of the great apostleship of the Gentiles. But the planting by S. Peter of another Jewish Church, even at Rome itself, is nothing new in principle, nothing which suggests the thought of a mighty future, nothing but the territorial extension of the old Church of the Circumcision."-Pp. 42-44.

Dr. Shirley has given much attention to the subject of the Apostolical Council at Jerusalem. Some inaccuracies of expression in p. 53 being allowed for, and, besides them, waiving the point of S. James' actual official position at the Council,-on which Dr. Shirley seems to us rather too ready to adopt the interpretation suggested by the Authorized Version, "My sentence is," we think his narrative very sound and interesting. Some years ago, it will be remembered, there was a considerable excitement in the theological world about laymen in synods, and very confident appeals were made to the precedent of this Apostolical Council, as being in favour of the admission of laymen on a footing of perfect equality with the Bishops or Priests of the Church. Dr. Shirley, who had no predispositions in the "hierarchist" direction, quietly disposes, by implication, of all such arguments, by inferring from a combination of texts "that the discussion was confined to the Apostles and Presbyters, but that that discussion was public in the face of the Church, and the decision approved by the whole body of the brethren, who were also consulted as to the fittest means of communicating that decision when approved." (P. 56.) He proceeds to add, that if this Council, in the proceedings of which peculiarities of individual character had been fully at work, and whose

final decree bears marks of the spirit of compromise, "claims for its decisions the sanction of the HOLY SPIRIT, . . . . it may be that" the decrees of later Councils also " repose upon a basis which the passion and the weakness of men have no power to disturb."

Dr. Shirley is especially distinct and bold in recognising the differences which existed, in a certain sense, between the great Apostles, and which German criticism has often exaggerated, by something like a licentious indulgence of historical imagination, into real diversities of belief and object. He exhibits the contrast between S. James on the one hand, and S. Paul on the other, in the matter of the ceremonial law, and the deportment to be observed towards Gentile converts. Indeed, we could hardly go along with him in assuming that S. James "avoided, it would seem," any close intercourse with such persons. There is really no reason for thinking that those who "came from James," and under whose influence Peter and Barnabas were led to take a retrograde step at Antioch, had any actual commission from S. James, or spoke his mind. S. Paul's conduct at a later time, when he willingly adopted a suggestion by S. James as to the "men that had a vow, would seem to show that the persons who came down from Jerusalem were, in fact, exceeding their commission if they appealed to S. James as advising the course which they induced S. Peter for a time to follow.

A valuable passage at p. 77 discusses the question, whether there was, or was not, any absolute conflict of opinions between the various Apostles, as was maintained by the pseudo-Clement, and in our own times by German critics, such as Baur. In the pseudo-Clementine Homilies

"it is maintained that the earliest Church had two sets of doctrine, an exoteric and a secret; and that S. Peter and S. James, finding it vain to preserve the exoteric teaching free from the corruptions of S. Paul and his school, handed down a secret lore to be divulged when the times should be more prepared for its reception, and that it was in fact so published early in the second century. That secret doctrine is a modification of the great Ebionitic heresy; by which our LORD was regarded as the human Messiah of the Jews, and as the greatest of all the prophets; but with express denial of His Divine Nature and Kingdom.

"In modern times this theory has assumed a simpler form. The difficult machinery of an open and a secret teaching has disappeared from view; but it has been maintained that the teaching of the original Apostles was Ebionitic or humanitarian, and that to S. Paul primarily is due the higher theology which we now receive as Catholic. The generic resemblance between the theories of the pseudo-Clement and of Baur is one of the most suggestive of the many points of likeness between the controversies of the second and the nineteenth century. The differences in detail are at the same time significant; for it

is evident that the Clementine writer found a difficulty in harmonizing his position with known and notorious facts, which is unfelt by his modern successor; while the modern feels, not less acutely, the critical absurdity of the contrivance by which the difficulty is evaded. They may be left to comment on each other. It is obvious that either view is really inconsistent with acknowledging, I will not say the inspiration, but the genuineness of the Gospel of S. John.

"In a work which, like the present, assumes the exactness of the New Testament Canon, the discussion of such opinions is beyond our province. But it does concern us to point out that in their modern shape they ultimately rest upon a faulty treatment of history, which has led in countless instances to conclusions, perhaps less extravagant, but hardly less untrue. Such views, in fact, are only possible where the history of doctrine is extensively studied apart from the general history of the Church; and they stand as a warning against all that handling of history which reduces it to a branch of literary criticism." -Pp. 78-80.

And there follows upon this a caution against overstatements of the fact that "the great types of human character-it may be added, of Christian theology," were vividly embodied in different Apostles. (P. 82.) And this leads the author to consider the question, which to some minds, perhaps, presents a serious difficulty: Why is it that the first chapters of the Acts exhibit so little of the higher teaching which, in other parts of Scripture, sets forth the majesty of our LORD's Person? Partly, he answers, because "the lessons imparted by our LORD needed to be matured in the hearts of His Apostles, before they could be produced in all the clearness of their outline;" partly because a certain " reserve and prudence" in the exhibition of "the holiest Christian mysteries" were effectively present in the tone of the Apostles, as they were, "even in an exaggerated form," in "the missionary work of the early Church."

"It may well seem amazing that any one could rise from the perusal of the Gospel narrative and believe that the first twelve chapters contain an adequate account of the theology of the chief of those chosen Twelve, to whom the LORD had taught, without veil or parable, the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven; to whom He had foretold His sufferings and His resurrection; in whose presence He had cast out devils and raised the dead; with whom He instituted the Sacrament of His Body and Blood; and to whom He had left, as a last command, that they should baptize in the name of the FATHER, the SON, and the HOLY GHOST.

"The complete failure of the attempt to elicit from the early chapters of the Acts a body of primitive theology may well make us cautious in the application of a similar method to the comparative teaching of the Apostles. If doctrines of cardinal importance, which we know to have been held by the very earliest Christians, yet fail to appear in a narrative like that of the Acts, what reasonable expectation can we form of extracting from the brief Epistles of S. Peter and S. James the whole

theology of these two Apostolic leaders? It is evident, indeed, that any negative argument from the omission of particular doctrines is powerless when weighed in the balance against the considerations to be derived from the general position of the Apostles and Church of CHRIST; and that even when they speak of facts and doctrines which are dwelt upon by other Apostles in apparently divergent language, their differences are to be estimated, if the meaning of their words is doubtful, by what we know from other sources of the relation of the Apostles to each other, not only as disciples of the same Divine Master, but partakers of a common gift of apostleship, and as fellow-rulers of a Church which bound its meanest members together by a tie more close than brotherhood."-Pp. 86, 87.

We will now select some indications of Dr. Shirley's views on certain cardinal points, which must emerge on the very surface of any treatise, however brief or unfinished, upon the Church of the apostolic age.

And first, as to the visibility and organization of the Church of CHRIST, Dr. Shirley writes as follows. His words might well be recommended to Protestant thinkers. They carry with them the whole weight of a vast principle, which our own times have seen going forth like the sun in his might. Of the first disciples, he says:

They did not of course deny the presence of unfaithful members within the visible Church, but it was contrary to their mode of thought to speak of the truly faithful as of an invisible Church. Still less, of course, could they have formed the idea of an invisible Church consisting of those who, however severed from communion with each other upon earth, are united together by the love of their common LORD. Historically indeed, this conception, so familiar to modern thought, had its origin, or at least its full definition, in the polemical exigencies of the continental Protestants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; who when pressed by Romanists with the inconsistency between their position and the belief in One Catholic Church, replied that they believed the Catholic Church to be invisible, and to be in fact the company of God's elect. It is obvious, however, that such a definition, whatever it may be worth, would never have led to the placing of One Catholic Church among the primary objects of the Christian faith; and that, arising as it did out of the failure of external unity, it could have had no place in the minds of the first Christians. It is only the importance of the fact, and the facility with which modern ideas are transferred to an ancient context, that make it necessary to state thus plainly, that when the first Christians spoke of the Church existing upon earth, they spoke of an actual and visible society."-Pp. 92, 93.

Again, as to the constitution of the Hierarchy. As we have said, Dr. Shirley is very emphatic in his recognition of the special prominence of S. Peter, "whose great commission, though not different in kind from that of the remaining eleven, was yet first