the extract was written after the Arian contro

versy had begun. This is only an additional confirmation of its forgery. Not only, however, does Jerome never mention Dionysius as an author, but he has nowhere mentioned, among the works attributed to Athanasius, any one of the treatises in which this story of Dionysius is introduced, which is another and a very strong proof, that those treatises did not exist in his day, or in the day of his interpolator. This forgery was clearly a later thought; and it has no support elsewhere. But it may be said, that it is alluded to in the work "On the Holy Spirit" attributed to Basil, bishop of Cæsarea, in Cappadocia. When first I read that work carefully, I could not but ask myself, Can this be the production of the pride of the schools of the ancient world? It is evidently a medley, and, I think, by different hands. It con tains much that is mischievous, placing tradition on an equal footing with the written word, and much that is unworthy of a man of Basil's reputation.

It is only in the latter half of the work, where

he says, 66 we will return to what was at first intended," that the subject of the Holy Spirit is singly regarded; and then it aims to prove that he is God, and in so many words. In the last chapter but one, where the writer is wishing to prove his case from Church doctors, he names the Roman Dionysius; but, what is very strange indeed, if the doctrinal opinions of the bishops of Rome were held in the same repute then that they are now, he gives no extract from any of his works; but he

quotes some passages of the heretical Dionysius of Alexandria, from this letter of apology to his Roman namesake. This is the only authority for the existence of this story beside Athanasius; and I should not, from its style and contents, believe in the genuineness of the book "On the Holy Spirit," even if I had no other evidence against it. But we have the most clear proof that this work was not written by Basil. His intimate friend, Gregory of Nazianzum, published an oration, or a sort of biography of him, in which he alludes to his work in these terms:

"Since I have made mention of his theology, and of the powerful effect of his preaching, I will add this account. It may be very useful to many, and prevent their suffering harm through entertaining a wrong impression of him; while it is aimed at the malignant, who seek to shield their own wickedness by casting stigmas on others. He was ready on account of the truth, the union and co-deity of the Holy Trinity, or whatever other word might more clearly express my meaning, not merely to quit his throne, which at the first he was unwilling to ascend, but to endure flight and death, and even the previous pains, and account them gain not danger. He proved this by what he did and suffered. When he was condemned to exile, all he uttered was, a direction to one of his attendants to take the writing tablets and follow. Still he thought it wise, following the counsel of David, to use his words with discretion in the time of trial, until the war of the heretics had ceased, and days

of freedom had arrived. They sought to catch from his lips the word God as applied to the Holy Spirit; which, being true, was regarded as impious by them and their leader, that they might banish him from the city, and possessing his see as a military position for their wickedness, might, as from a lofty stronghold, devastate the remaining churches. But he, by the use of scriptural expressions, and by clear texts having the same meaning, and by the use of syllogistic reasoning, so gained the victory over his opponents, that they could not contend against him, but were tied down by their own words, which was an instance of his dialectic power and ability. The book which he wrote on this subject shows this. The distinct statement that the Spirit was God he withheld for a time; asking of the Spirit himself, and of his companions in the holy war, that they would not blame him for this management, nor for one word lose the whole in that irreligious period. That they suffered no loss by the language being withheld for a while, if, by other words, the same doctrine was taught. Salvation was not in the words, but in the doctrine. That the Jews even would not be rejected if, seeking our communion, they preferred for a while the word Anointed for Christ; while there would have been the greatest injury to the common welfare if his Church had been consigned to the heretics."

If this description of the book which Basil wrote be compared with the one now passing under his name, it will be found that they cannot be the

same. So that, independently of its being such a book as it would have been utterly beneath Basil to have written, it is a different work entirely. This argument, if Basil ever did write a treatise on the Holy Spirit, would hold good whoever might be thought to be the author of the oration, as the book was then extant.

But there is also another curious transaction attached to this late forgery of the Dionysian story. Eusebius, in the Greek chroniclers, is represented as allotting nine years to the episcopate of Sixtus II.; but in his "Church History" the time is stated to have been eleven years.* Although it is impossible to speak with precision, it would seem that he thought the deaths of Sixtus II. and Dionysius of Alexandria to have occurred about the same period. This was the opinion of Jerome, who, in his Latin version, places both the deaths in the same year. Neither he nor his interpolator had anticipated this story. In after times, when it had been invented, a little management became necessary. How could a complaint against Dionysius the Alexandrian be made to the Roman Dionysius, and all the events have occurred which are related, when the Alexandrian may have died before the Roman mounted his chair? A Cyprianic letter was composed to remove the difficulty. Instead of allowing Sixtus to live the eleven or even nine years Eusebius and Jerome had given to him, they remove him in two. It must be admitted, however,

In the Armenian version of the "Chronicle" it is eleven years. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vii. 27.

that every compensation is made to him. He retires from the world in a glorious martyrdom under Valerian. Of course that fact is unknown to Eusebius, Jerome, and his interpolator.

Indeed Cyprian martyrs all his heroes, and at last himself. They all quit this sublunary scene, to speak in the language of the Roman Confessors*, in ecstatic martyrdom.

No. IV. VICTOR.

THAT a bishop of Rome, of the doings of whose ecclesiastical ancestors nothing is known, should (A.D. 192) suddenly arise, and be seen shutting out from Church communion, as far as he was able, some of the most celebrated Churches of the world, comprising not only, as Valois would interpret it, Proconsular Asia, but the whole of Asia and the Churches bordering upon it, for breaking their paschal fast on the fourteenth day of the moon, and not continuing it till the Sunday (a custom which, it is admitted in the story itself,

* They thus write to Cyprian-"Quid enim gloriosius quidve felicius ulli hominum poterit ex divina dignatione contingere, quam inter ipsos carnifices, in ipso interitu confiteri Dominum Deum? quam inter sævientia secularis potestatis varia et exquisita tormenta, etiam extorto et excruciato et excarnificato corpore, Christum Dei filium etsi recedente sed tamen libero spiritu confiteri ?" Cyprian is called a "rhetor," I suppose to explain such stuff; but it was forgotten that it had to come from the pen of a suffering Roman confessor.