were the same, though the one order was adopted by the Western Church, and the other failed to make its terms; multitudes of associations might be quoted to the same purpose. And there exists about the Church of England a broad margin of spiritual life and activity; but unfortunately, not only without the ranks of the clergy, but outside even its lay communion. It has issued in forms often of wild and startling enthusiasm. A late lay preacher at Exeter Hall (an ex-prizefighter) announced that the Gospel would soon find its way into every corner of London, not by an exclusive order vested in night-shirts,' but by the voice of every man who felt its truth. In the Irish revivals has been proclaimed the monstrous delusion of a fresh Pentecost, together with such theories of private illumination and assurance as, if true, would render all claims of the Church and its sacraments either superfluous or an imposture. But this cannot be said of the Wesleyans or of the many settled forms of dissent around us. They have indeed commonly proceeded to the utter denial of any existing sacred Church system upon earth, thus opening the way to total scepticism as to the means of grace or standard of truth. This, however, was very often not the tenet with which they commenced their course. Vast numbers have been drawn in by the simple attraction of social sympathy, the greater opportunities of charitable work, and sometimes by the facility of obtaining ministerial office. Fearful as is the spectacle of modern dissent, we cannot regard it as a mere congeries of mischievous heresy, which the Church is well rid of; we believe religious association in the Church itself presents the only chance of arresting it. 224 ART. X.-1. Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, with an Introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. By ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D. Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. London: Murray. 2. Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, MCCCXV-MCCCCII. e Codd. MSS. sumptus præbente Cæsarea scientiarum Academia, ediderunt FR. MIKLOSICH, Prof. Univers. Vindobon. et Jos. Müller, Prof. Universit. Patavinæ. Tomus prior. Vindobona: Carolus Gerold. 1860. 3. Σύνταγμα τῶν Θείων καὶ ἱερῶν κανονῶν τῶν τε ἁγίων καὶ πανευφήμων ἀποστόλων, καὶ τῶν ἱερῶν οἰκουμενικῶν καὶ τοπικών συνόδων, καὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἁγίων πατέρων, ἐκδοθεν, σὺν πλείσταις ἄλλαις τὴν ἐκκλησιαστικὴν κατάστασιν διεπούσαις διατάξεσι, μετὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων ἐξηγητῶν, καὶ διαφόρων ἀναγνωσμάτων, ὑπὸ Γ. Α. ΡΑΛΛΗ και Μ. ΠΟΤΛΗ, ἐγκρίσει τῆς ̔Αγίας καὶ Μεγάλης τοῦ Χριστοῦ ̓Εκκλησίας. ̓Αθηνῇσιν, ἐκ τῆς τυπογραφίας Γ. Χαρτοφύλακος, 1852. 4. Le Raskol: Essai historique et critique sur les Sectes religieuses en Russie. Paris: A. Franck. 1859. 5. Histoire, Dogmes, Traditions, et Liturgie de l'Eglise Armenienne Orientale. Par E. DULAURIER. Paris: A. Franck. 1859. NOTHING can show the increased and increasing interest which attaches itself to the Eastern Church, more than the fact that the Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford should have chosen it for the subject of his first series of lectures. And the argument is the stronger, because Dr. Stanley would never,—and, in several passages of the work we are to consider, he confesses as much,-have chosen that subject of his own accord. He seems almost to apologise for such a selection; and promises his auditors that, if they will listen patiently to him now, he hopes to take them hereafter into more stirring scenes, and epochs of more vital importance to ourselves. Whatever we may think of the necessity for such an apology, we at all events earnestly hope that he may long be spared to fulfil his promise. It would be in the highest degree disrespectful to Professor Stanley himself, and indeed to the University in which his lectures have been delivered, to give merely a cursory glance at his work. The only question is, in what way we may most thoroughly take it into consideration. And after some thought, we believe that we can pursue no better plan than this: to go through it, chapter by chapter in order, directing the attention of our readers to the many eloquent passages which occur in it, while at the same time we shall not shrink from pointing out some errors in fact, and some assertions which an Eastern Christian (to say nothing of ourselves) would consider errors in opinion. In the first place we are disposed to find fault with the very title of the work. These lectures on the Eastern Church consist of three parts, in addition to a very able introduction. The first contains a history of the Council of Nicæa, of which it is scarcely possible, as a work of art, to speak too highly: the next a brief sketch of the rise of Mahometanism, on which we shall have to pass a very different verdict: and the third a dissertation on the Russian Church, which, if not equal to the first part of the work, contains much which will be new to English students of Church history. We will commence then with the Introduction: and we can give no better idea of the whole tone of the work than by the following quotation which occurs at the very commencement: 'I have said that the field of Eastern Christendom is a comparatively untrodden field. It is out of sight, therefore out of mind. But there is a wise German proverb which tells us that it is good from time to time to be reminded that, 'Hinter dem Berge sind auch Leute.' This, true of all large bodies of the human family, from whom we are separated by natural or intellectual divisions, is eminently true of the whole branch of the Christian faith that lies in the far East. Behind the mountains of our knowledge, of our civilization, of our activity—behind the mountains, let us also say, of our ignorance, of our prejudice, of our contempt is to be found nearly a third part of Christendom: one hundred millions of souls professing the Eastern faith. No theory of the Christian Church can be complete, which does not take some account of their existence. proper distances, the lights and shades, of the foreground which we ourselves occupy, of the prospect which we ourselves overlook, cannot be rightly represented without bearing in mind the enormous, dark, perhaps unintelligible masses, which form the background that closes the retrospect of our view.' And then follows this noble passage:- The 'It is a Church, in fact, not of cities and villages, but of mountains and rivers, and caves and dens of the earth. The eye passes from height to height, and rests on the successive sanctuaries in which the religion of the East has entrenched itself as within natural fortresses against its oppressors; Athos in Turkey, Sinai in Arabia, Ararat in Armenia, the cedars of Lebanon, the catacombs of Kieff, the cavern of Megaspelion, the cliffs of Meteora. Or we see it advancing up and down the streams, or clinging to the banks of the mighty rivers which form the highways and arteries of the wide plains of the East. The Nile still holds its sacred place in the liturgies of Egypt. The Jordan, from Constantine downwards, has been the goal of every Eastern pilgrim. Up the broad stream of the Dnieper sail the first apostles of Russia. Along the Volga and the Don cluster the mysterious settlements of Russian non-conformity.' Nothing can be truer or more beautiful than this. But now let us ask how it comes to pass that so many historical events, at least as nearly connected with the Eastern Church as was the Council of Nicæa, find no place here? Why not, more especially, the Council of Chalcedon, which, in the very teeth of Rome, elevated Constantinople to the second rank? Why not the Fifth Council, so famous from its anathema pronounced on a Roman Pontiff? Why not the Quinisext, the very source of Ecclesiastical law in the East from that time to this? Above all, why not the Council of Florence, the history of which (about to be translated from the Russ) will be no small addition to English Ecclesiastical lore? Again; in a series of Essays on the Eastern Church,-embracing, as our author does, heretical as well as orthodox communions under that title,-some space ought surely to be allotted to that marvellous Nestorian Church, which in the eleventh century out-numbered Eastern and Western Churches taken together. Surely something also of the Paulicians, the only existing immoral heresy of the East. Surely, too, of the controversies connected with Cyril Lucar, and the Councils of Constantinople and Jassy, and above all, of Bethlehem and also that of Constantinople in 1691, which we believe has never been noticed in any English Ecclesiastical history. : These Councils are undoubtedly events of the highest interest in the Eastern Church; and no doubt in any series of essays on that subject which profess to be complete, they ought to have found a place. At the same time, as Dr. Johnson once said, 'an author is not bound to tell us more than he will:' and, therefore, we ought to be thankful for that which Professor Stanley has told us. Let us look a little more closely into his first lecture. I. We must, in the first place, enter our most strenuous protest against one of its earliest sentences: The Greek dialect of the East, after the sixth century, becomes almost intolerable to the eye and the ear of the classical student.' We suppose that the author would tell us; in the first place, how worthless is the general style of composition employed by the Greek Church: in the next, how barbarous are its measures. To commence with the last charge. It was a sad loss for us English scholars when the accentual pronunciation of Greek was surrendered for a fancied prosodiacal theory. Up to the Revolution of 1688, the older system, that taught in Europe by the refugees from the fall of Constantinople, undoubtedly prevailed. It has left traces in our language even to this day. Maria we might indeed have obtained through the Latin: but why Sophia instead of Sophia? Why S. Helēna (the island) instead of S. Helena? And so it may be observed in all medieval Latin poetry, we find such an accentuation as,—Lucia, harmonia, melodia, theoria, theologia and the like. Take again Milton. How often has that line been pronounced utterly inharmonious: 'And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old.' Undoubtedly had the poet's pronunciation been that which ours is, he would have written: 'And Phineus and Tiresias, prophets old.' But he pronounced Tiresias with the accent on the penultimate ; that is, if a merely English reader would understand us, he would have had his line read thus: 'And Tireseias and Phineus, prophets old.' Making a synalopha between the syllables ei and as. In fact, the barbarism of Greek pronunciation is certainly on our side. Read a passage from Demosthenes, according to the strictest rules of our universities, to an Athenian scholar, and it will be an excess of courtesy only, which can prevent his smiling at your ludicrous mispronunciation. Now we must make one allowance, at the commencement. We cannot affirm of the Greek, as we may, with great probability, of the Latin, that the regeneration of the language, under the influence of the Church, was but a return to the general type of its earliest poetry. When we read such a hymn as the 'Pange lingua gloriosi prælium certaminis;' we are reading a rhythm not unlike that which the '-rusticorum mascula militum Matris ad arbitrium recisos would at once have recognised as their own. But we cannot say, that S. Cosmas of Maiuma, or S. John Damascene, in like manner returned to the metres of Thespis or his contemporaries. Still, Professor Stanley would, we are sure, have taste and courage enough (and we will rather accuse his deficiency of reading on an out-of-the-way subject, than imagine any want of true criticism on the part of so very elegant a writer) to admire the Eastern Church, for throwing herself boldly into a new theory of rhythm. The new wine could not be poured into the old vessels. What! stanzas of this kind intolerable to the classical student? We will boldly match them against any strophe of,-what they should really be compared with,-Pindar, both for the poetry and for the metre; provided it be granted, that S. John Damascene had as good a right to prefer accent to quantity, as Pindar had to subordinate the former to the latter. |