agitation on his bed, or pace with hurried and unequal strides the longresounding corridors, shouting impatiently for the dawn. His dreams were wild and terrible, and in his waking visions his mind seemed ever on the stretch with the vastness of its shadowy images, in which he fancied he beheld the great Spirit of the Ocean, and engaged in converse with him. The might and majesty of the Cæsarean empire, as of a Titan that defied the Gods, inflamed his perturbed imagination; his conceptions expanded like the welling visions of a dream, and his grasp of power was a fitful struggle to realize a sick man's nightmare."-V. 363, 364.

Mr. Merivale characterizes a passage in Tacitus as being "a clang of turgid extravagance" (V. 51, note). Might not the venerable ancient have his retort? Though the Muse of history is often mounted on stilts in his pages, she now and then descends to a very plebeian level, as when it is said of Ovid (IV. 342) that "he got mixed up in the hazardous intrigues of the time." The author's meaning is sometimes confused by the double refraction of mixed metaphors, e. g., "The drop of pious sentiment enshrined in either view, served in some measure to purify the turbid elements of which, at this period, the mass of the Roman people was composed" (IV. 13). St. Januarius' phial enables us to conceive of the enshrinement of a drop, and we have seen a lecturer on chemistry purify turbid elements by a drop; but we are quite baffled when we endeavour to form an idea how such an effect should be produced by a "drop enshrined in a view." It is to be regretted that a work of so much learning and ability should be disfigured by such faults as these, and still more that the author should apparently regard them as beauties.

K.

ON THE SYRIAC GOSPEL USED BY HEGESIPPUS. SIR, THERE is a passage in Eusebius, relative to Hegesippus, on which I should be obliged to some of your learned readers if they could throw any light. Hegesippus, I need hardly mention, was a Jewish Christian who flourished about the middle of the second century, and wrote a history of the Apostolic Preaching in five books.* Eusebius (H. E. iv. 22) says, that Hegesippus derived the materials of his history from the four following sources: "the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Syriac Gospel, some things peculiar to himself from the Hebrew (Aramæan?) dialect (shewing himself to be a believer of the Hebrews), and others, as if taken from unwritten Jewish tradition." I sub

Παράδοσιν τοῦ ἀποτολικοῦ κηρύγματος (Euseb. Η. Ε. iv. 8). "Omnes a passione Domini usque ad suam ætatem Ecclesiasticorum Actuum texens historias." (Jerome, De Vir. Illustr. 22.)

join the original in the margin.* This passage instructively illustrates the mode in which the earliest Christian history was put together, and the various elements which entered into its composition; how the numerous Enymous and dinynoeis, of which the curious fragment of Papias gives us an account (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39), and to which the preface of Luke's Gospel very distinctly alludes, were constructed out of different materials. We find here mentioned in the first place, as of first authority, works which had assumed the complete form of regular evangelical histories or gospels, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which we know, from many passages in Jerome who had resided in Palestine and was likely to be acquainted with the fact, was the Gospel in common use among the Nazarenes and Ebionites (so the Jewish Christians of his day were called in contradistinction from the Catholics), and bore a close affinity to our Matthew. As Hegesippus was a zealous Jewish Christian (we may infer from his description of the martyrdom of James the Just, that he was an Ebionite, Euseb. H. E. ii. 23), we are not surprised to find the Gospel according to the Hebrews among the sources used by him. Besides pre-existing Gospels, detached accounts of particular discourses or particular transactions, couched in the native Palestinian dialect, furnished other materials peculiar to the compiler; and this is what seems to be expressed in the idiwc of the foregoing statement. Lastly, oral tradition opened a copious source of additional information. Papias tells us (Euseb. H. E. iii. 39) how careful he was to interweave with his Xoyiwv κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις, whatever he had learned by word of mouth from the elders who were acquainted with the apostles.

But the circumstance to which I wish particularly to direct attention in the passage before us, is the Gospel here associated with that of the Hebrews—τὸ Συριακὸν ; for that ἐυαγγελίον must here be understood, is evident from the use of the correlative conjunctions Te and kaì, so that we might render the passage,"from both the Hebrew and the Syriac Gospel." What was this Syriac Gospel? Heinichen, the modern editor of Eusebius, and the late Dr. Routh in his Reliquiæ Sacræ, unaccountably pass over the statement without a comment; and Dr. Lardner, in his chapter on Hegesippus, is hardly more satisfactory. It cannot be the Peschito, usually considered the oldest version extant of the New Testament, if Hegesippus wrote about the middle of the second century, and the Peschito, according to the prevalent opinion of scholars, did not appear till quite towards its close. Indeed, it is very unlikely the Peschito should be of an earlier date, since it implies the existence of our canon; and though the books admitted into that canon, must of course have

† ̓́Εκ τε τοῦ καθ' ̔Εβραίους ἐυαγγέλιου καὶ τοῦ Συριακού, καὶ ἰδίως ἐκ τῆς 'Εβραίδος διαλέκτου τινὰ τίθησιν, ἐμφαίνων ἐξ ̔Εβραίων ἑαυτὸν πεπιτευκέναι· καὶ ἄλλα δὲ ὡς ἂν ἐξ Ιουδαϊκῆς ἀγράφου παραδόσεως μνημονεύει.

existed much earlier, yet we discern no traces of anything like a canonical recognition of them till we come to the writings of Irenæus and Tertullian in the latter part of the second century. The old Latin canon, discovered by Muratori, belongs probably to the opening of the third. The question, then, occurs again, What was the Syriac Gospel used by Hegesippus? I ask for information. Was there an early commencement of a Syriac version, before the appearance of the completer work of the Peschito? The existence of a numerous body of converts at Antioch, even in the apostolic age, would seem to render the production of such a Gospel as necessary for the use of Syrians, as that of the Aramæan Gospel of the Hebrews for the Palestinian Christians, and that of Matthew or Mark (whichever we suppose to be the older) in Greek for the Hellenists and the heathens. As the want was pressing, the work would probably begin before the whole number of our present canonical books was completed, and be continued progressively as new books were approved and recognized by the Church. From the association of the Syriac Gospel with that of the Hebrews among the sources used by Hegesippus, we may perhaps infer that it was a Syriac rendering, with some additions peculiar to itself, of the original Aramaæan collection of our Lord's discourses made by Matthew. It could not have been widely at variance with the Hebrew Gospel, or it would not have been employed by Hegesippus. Possibly it might stand to that Hebrew, or rather Aramæan, original (ipsum Hebraicum, Matthæi authenticum, in the language of Jerome) in somewhat the same relation as our present Greek Matthew; that is to say, it might be not a simple version, but the adoption of a primitive nucleus incorporated with materials from other sources. Few renderings of earlier materials were in that age mere translations. Though closely allied to the Gospel of the Hebrews, this Syriac Gospel must still have been different from it; otherwise it would not have been mentioned as a distinct source used by Hegesippus. These preliminary labours would not be overlooked by subsequent translators, as the Syriac version of the New Testament Scriptures continually widened its limits to take in new books; earlier translations being constantly corrected and modified, to bring them into more exact agreement with the recognized standard of the Catholic Church; till the Peschito, which represented the canon of Irenæus and Tertullian, of Clemens Alexandrinus and Origen, and which we learn from Ephrem Syrus enjoyed full ecclesiastical authority at Edessa in the first half of the fourth century (De Wette, Einleit. N. T. § 11 c.), superseded all earlier versions, and caused them to go out of use and be forgotten. It is undeniable, that the recognition of a scriptural canon by the Catholic Church at the end of the second century, had a great effect on the use of a previous Christian literature. We have an example in the well-known story of

Theodoret of Cyrus, who found the Diatessaron of Tatian (a fourfold evangelical narrative, which we must suppose had some affinity with our present four Gospels) in general use among the inhabitants of his diocese in the latter part of the fourth century, but withdrew it from circulation by his own authority, and replaced it by our canonical Scriptures. Although, therefore, the Syriac Gospel, used by Hegesippus, could not have been the Peschito, is there anything unreasonable in the supposition, that it prepared the way for it, and formed one in a series of versions which the Peschito itself made use of, and at length, with various corrections and modifications, incorporated in its own more perfect work? The supposition is favoured by analogies in the history of other translations. An old Latin version, commenced as early as the second century-at least with certain books of the New Testament-and probably, in north-western Africa-retouched, revised, interpolated through successive generations, prepared the way for the labours of Jerome, and appears to form at this day the basis of the Vulgate. In our own country the course of our English versions has very much resembled that which preceded the adoption of the Vulgate in the Latin Church; successive scholars assumed and improved upon the work of their predecessors; so that the early labours of Tyndale, Coverdale and Rogers, not without considerable assistance from the Geneva translation, constitute the basis on which our present Authorized Version rests.

It is understood, that among the Syriac treasures which have been recovered from the Nitrian monasteries of Egypt, and some of which have been given to the world by Mr. Cureton, there exist fragments of a version of the New Testament, which exhibits a text differing considerably from that of the Peschito, and from any other yet known and used by scholars. The publication of these fragments might possibly throw some light on the subject of the present paper, and would certainly possess great interest. Whatever might appear on examination to be their character and probable date, no consideration for the sensitive prejudices of orthodoxy should be allowed to prevent an unreserved communication to the world of any documents calculated to illustrate the history and early condition of a text, on which so many questions are yet depending, as that of the New Testament. J. J. T.

I gather this to be the opinion of Lachmann, from some passages in the preface to his Greek Testament. "Alii posthac subtilius exponent quot numero interpretes fuerint et quo ordine scripserint: mihi satis est si de majore parte Novi Testamenti demonstravero, singulos libros semel Latinis verbis expressos esse, deinde inmutatos ab aliis, non denuo versos." P. xi. Again, in another passage, p. xix, he describes the various Latin codices, as "veteres Africanos, emendatos Italicos, privatim interpolatos-vulgatos Hieronymianos."

UNITARIAN CHRISTIANITY.

MY DEAR SIR,

Edinburgh, December 12, 1856.

I AM sure I shall meet with the concurrence of your readers when I express my thanks to Mr. Tayler for opening the important question on which he gave his own views in the last number of the Christian Reformer. I am anxious for the thorough discussion of that question, and I therefore take the earliest opportunity of contributing a few thoughts toward the work.

The question, as I understand it, is-By what remedial means Unitarian churches may be brought to a state of greater efficiency.

Mr. Tayler's remarks so far obtain the assent of my judgment, and are written in a spirit of which my heart so entirely approves, that I should be exceedingly sorry if anything I may say were to be regarded in an antagonistic light. Great as is the agreement between his opinions and mine, of which I am already conscious, I am persuaded it would be still greater if one or two points of his exposition were made clearer to my mind than they at present are; and where I differ from him, I desire to state my difference with the caution which a possible misapprehension of his meaning should produce.

I entirely sympathize with his general statement as to the evils and deficiencies prevailing among us; and I, with him, cannot consider the external disadvantages under which we labour, and the want of ecclesiastical organization in our body, as sufficient to account for the condition of things needing to be improved. It is a spiritual change which can alone effect the improvement; and under the influence of that change we should be able to withstand better than we now do the opposition to which we might be exposed, and should naturally bring into operation every method of united action which the wants of our case might demand. Standing with Mr. Tayler, therefore, on this common ground, I can start fairly by his side in the investigation of the true character of that spiritual remedy which we both agree is the kind of remedy to be sought for.

I may as well state, at the outset, what is my own view of the remedy required. Mine is a very simple remedy indeed,-one which evidently lies within our power to adopt, and to the nature of which no objection can be entertained. It consists in the renewed fidelity to their professed religious principles which should distinguish the individual members of our churches. I desire no change in the constitution of those churches, but I desire a change in the character and conduct of the persons composing them. The evils complained of are personal, and the remedy must be personal also. Without a personal disposition and effort toward the work to be done, no machinery which