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men; and his successors wholly renounced the lingering reverential scruples of their master. Marsigli was an Averroist; Boccaccio had to defend the favourite studies of his later years against theologians and lawyers; and he relates how on enquiring for the library of the celebrated convent of Monte Cassino he was drily told, "take the narrow staircase to the right,—you'll find the door open;" and how accordingly he discovered only the mutilated remains of a once large collection, the books having been torn and used as blank paper by a poor brother for the manufacture of psalters and breviaries at five sous each. The Reformation had the immediate effect of temporarily arresting the progress of the intellectual culture of the Renaissance, especially in the country where the religious side of the movement was most effectually developed. Luther was far more universally listened to and understood than Erasmus; and the revival of learning, although an essential, remained for a long time a distinct tributary to the general current of thought. And it was fortunate that, instead of being monopolised by a caste, the advantages of erudition were impartially diffused from the first. Printing opened to all opportunities of learning, and made the Bible public property. The labours of Erasmus purified the text, and the general growth of learning prepared the means for its more accurate interpretation. During the 17th

and 18th centuries the severed forces coalesced, and the purifying currents of classical antiquity inundated the dusty imbroglio which had been adopted by churches from mediæval theology. Selden reproved the laziness and ignorance of the clergy, complaining that their credit reposed on nothing but beard and breviary; Spencer, in his work on Hebrew Laws, unveiled, to the horror of

1 Averroism represents the philosophic side of the free thought of the middle age. Another form of free thought was the Provençal and Minnesinger poetry; another again, the speculative self-centred mysticism of Eccart and others, of whose more practical and popular manifestations the religious reformation of Luther was one.

theologians, the heathen origin of many Mosaic institutions; the celebrated Bochart shewed what learning could do to illustrate Scripture history and geography; Grotius, Clericus, Huet, Bentley, Bayle, etc., promoted in different directions the spirit of enquiry; and Richard Simon especially braved theological odium by the freedom of his researches. In Germany philological studies were vigorously resumed after the thirty years' war by many illustrious scholars; Bengel, for instance, revived in the Lutheran Church a spirit which had slumbered since Erasmus; John A. Fabricius, the father-in-law of Reimarus, published among other learned labours his "Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris et Novi Testamenti," a collection of apocryphal writings which it is especially essential to keep in view in considering the claims of the canonical ones; Schoettgen, author of " Hora Hebraicæ," and Wettstein, of an excellent commentary containing copious Rabbinical and other illustrations of the New Testament; J. H. Michaelis, and his nephew, Chr. B. Michaelis, successively professors of Oriental literature and theology at Halle; Mosheim, whose labours in ecclesiastical history are an epoch in that department; Ernesti and Griesbach, both eminent for liberality as well as learning, and who, though generally confining themselves to the lower walks of Biblical enquiry, laid a foundation for others to build on, and greatly facilitated the labours of future critics by the ample materials they collected.

Text Criticism.-Bengel, Wettstein, etc.

For a long time the efficient use of these materials was thwarted and delayed by timidity and prejudice. Criticism was confined in range and narrow in tone; it ventured only into the humbler walks of textual or archæological illustration, and was still more faulty in spirit than deficient

in resource. It was not the fair sentence of impartial judgment formed after a full review of facts, but the onesided pleading of interested advocacy. Its efforts were apologetical; addressed to allay the feeling of uneasiness arising from those misgivings as to the accuracy of the text, by which Bengel complained of having in his early years been "cruelly lacerated." For it was clear that nothing but a continued miracle could have preserved the sacred records amid the corruptions and contaminations to which they had been for ages exposed, and whose actual intrusion was but too clearly proved by the various readings. "These difficulties," says Bengel, "led me to a closer investigation of the subject; a work arduous indeed, and full of religious horror, but which, by God's grace, at last brought peace and consolation to my heart." The sources of consolation were two; first, his conviction that, despite corruptions, the integrity of the text had been providentially so far preserved as to satisfy enquiry in regard to essentials; and, secondly, that this search might be usefully and safely confided to the instinctive sagacity of pious souls, guided by the unmistakeable "flavour” or "aroma" of inspiration. The same problem is more rationally and plainly stated by Mill in his "Prolegomena," as an attempt to restore the true tenour of the apostolic autographs, "in order to escape the perplexities and baffle the objections of unbelief." Richard Simon's criticism, founded as above mentioned on historical tradition, was at bottom an advocacy of precedent and usage, of which the legitimate expression is already furnished to our hands in the Canon itself; and even Wettstein, who, claiming no Scripture instinct or party bias, betrays his comparatively unprejudiced laxity by confronting the New Testament writers with a vast array of Rabbinical and Classical parallelisms, quietly replaces the "Antilegomena” so long noted as doubtful in the list of genuine writings, carelessly accepting "Hebrews," the Greek Matthew, etc.,

as authentic, ascribing the suggestion of an original Hebrew Matthew to an unwarranted conjecture of the Fathers, and objecting only to the Epistle of James. A criticism thus hampered with foregone conclusions was of course unworthy of the name; and its range was as narrow as its spirit. The learned Prolegomena of the time are almost exclusively philological; they continue to deal with versions, manuscripts, and texts. Still it was a great advantage to have the traditional circumstances of the Canon methodically stated, and the historical evidence arranged; these preliminary matters were carefully resumed and epitomised in the celebrated "Introduction" of J. D. Michaelis; their ulterior and more thorough application was reserved for a later period.

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What is Canonicity?—Semler.

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The obstacle to true criticism was the vague notion of Canonicity," the idea of a peculiar prerogative exempting certain writings from the treatment applicable to others. "If," says a recent controversialist, "we admit that the Bible is not like other books, that it contains a direct communication from God to man, we place it at once in a separate category, and are forbidden to analyse it with the freedom applied to Sophocles or Plato." If, instead of considering God's spirit as author, and the several writers as amanuenses, we treat the writers as separately and originally answerable for their assertions, we lose the convenient resource of expounding one part by another, and balancing what we dislike by that which better suits our tastes and judgments. History, however, too clearly re

1 The Rev. James Fendall on the Authority of Scripture, pp. 80, 82. Similarly we find the lately appointed bishop, Dr. Ellicott (Preface to "Life of our Lord," pp. iv. and vi.), and even Dr. Arnold (Life, vol. ii., p. 60, Ed. 1858) anxiously disclaiming impartiality in dealing with religious subjects.

veals the nature of the process by which the canon was formed, to allow the continued application of this mode of interpreting it as if it were a single book. It shews that the selected literature of the New Testament was no result of deliberate research, but a deposit of fluctuating usage actuated by theological and party bias ;-a result of local preference silently expanding into general acquiescence, and at last obtaining the formal sanction of the church. The word "Canon" has been satisfactorily shewn by F. C. Baur1 to have originally meant not a law or rule of belief, but only a "list" or "catalogue" of writings, the term referring not to the validity of the contents, but only to the constituted form ;-i.e. certain books defined or appointed by the church, and which in consequence of that appointment, became invested with a normative character. The canon, historically and strictly speaking, is therefore a mere Catholic institution or tradition; and as such ought in consistency to have been left by Protestants to share the fate of the other traditions of which the English Article frankly admits it to be part. But the real meaning of the term, merged, in consequence of the pretensions of Catholicism to represent the true church, in the secondary or substituted one of an infallible or præternaturally given code; and Protestantism, in this, as in other instances, superstitiously adopted an idol created by hostile hands. The stringency of what Coleridge sarcastically calls "the tenet "2 depends on belief in inspiration; and this suggested the rule adopted by Bengel, and so perseveringly adhered to since, that Scripture being the expression of one divine economy, we are not to "harp on particular passages, but to look to the general tendency and analogy of the whole." Such a rule obviously leads to all kinds of misconstruction and perversion. The movement of the eighteenth century dissipated to a great extent the haze of imputed sanctity,

1 See Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft. Theologie., vol. i., p. 146. 2 Coleridge's "Confessions," p. 68.

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