them; but expound thou the Scripture as thou pleasest, or as it turns most to account, for thou hast as much authority to interpret it as they. . . . Because I know it is necessary to cite many expositors in order to appear a well-read and Scriptural man, I would not prevent thy citing them whenever thou pleasest. I rather advise thee to cite them by wholesale; but in order to cite them it is by no means necessary to read them, and therefore do by them as thou dost by the holy fathers; father on them whatever thou wilt, taking great care that the Latin has no solecisms in it, and my word for it they will never discover the bastardy to thy face. . . .

'The third rule: Let the title or subject of the sermon be always something jocular, or sonorous, or professional, or theatrical, or quibbling.

"The fourth rule: Let thy style be always pompous, swollen, bristling with Greek or Latin, altisonant, and with as graceful a cadence as possible.'

And so on, with examples ad libitum.

Those who are not weary already of these varieties of folly may like to have some further specimens :

'He was one of those polite preachers who never cite the holy fathers, nor even the sacred Evangelists, by their proper names, thinking that this is vulgar. S. Matthew he called the Historian Angel, S. Mark the Evangelic Bull, S. Luke the most Divine Brush, S. John the Eagle of Patmos, S. Jerome the Purple of Belen, S. Ambrose the Honeycomb of Doctors, and S. Gregory the Allegorical Tiara. It is not to be supposed that in naming a text he would teil you simply and naturally the Gospel and chapter from whence he took it. No; that he thought was enough to brand him for a Sabatine preacher. It was well known that he would always say, “ Ex Evangelica lectione Matthæi vel Johannis capite quarto-decimo," and sometimes, for a more sonorous collocation of words, “quarto-decimo ex capite.""

The following wonderful effusion is from Friar Gerund's own sermon of S. Ann's Day :

'Ann, as we all know, was the mother of our Lady, and grave authors affirm that she carried her in her womb twenty months, "Hic mensis sextus est illi ;" and others add that she wept, "Plorans ploravit in noctem"; whence I infer that Mary was a Zahori,1 "Et gratia ejus in me vacua non fuit." But let the orator attend to argument. S. Ann was the mother of Mary, but Mary was the mother of Christ; therefore S. Ann is the grandmother of the most Holy Trinity, "Et Trinitatem in unitate veneremur." On this account is she celebrated in

1 There was a popular idea in Spain that some persons were born with a power of seeing clearly anything that was covered, even although it were buried in the earth, so that it were not covered with a blue cloth. These were called zahoris, i.e. clairvoyants.

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this her house, " Hæc requies mea in sæculum sæculi." And what can be given thee, O Ann, in retribution for thy compendious benefits? Quid retribuam Domino?" What parallels can express my words in the speaking thy praises? "Laudo vos? In hoc non laudo." Thou art that mysterious net in whose opaque meshes remain captivated the silly fishes. Sagena missæ in mari." Thou art that stone of the desert which the lover of Rachel erected in the Damascan field to

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give water to his flock. Mulier, da mihi aquam." But I shall say better, following the text of the Gospel, S. Ann is that precious pearl which, fecundated by the insults of the horizon, makes those who seek it blind, "Quærentibus bonas margaritas." She is that treasure, now hidden, thesaurus absconditus, now occult, nihil occultum, which the holy soul reserved for the utmost ends of the earth, De ultimis finibus pretium ejus." She is that hidden God, as Philo said, "Tuus Deus absconditus"; and she is the greatest of miracles, as Thomas said, "Miraculorum ab ipso factorum maximum."'

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Of course Gerund's superiors were divided between amusement at his extravagances and concern for the misuse made of a serious function, as his inferiors were lost in admiration of the sermon as 'a most valiant performance.' 'The absurdities which he strings together,' said the former, are insufferable, and are all owing, first, to the want of study, and secondly to the muddy fountains at which he drinks, or the accursed models he proposes for his imitation, than which there cannot be worse either in mode or substance.' And endeavours were made, accordingly, to induce Gerund to change his style of preaching; but he proved unexpectedly obstinate, and at length declared roundly to the head of his monastery, If this be to preach ill, and in a bad style, I must tell your Paternity very plainly that I never think of preaching in any other style, or any other manner, as long as God shall grant me the use of my understanding '—a declaration for the boldness of which he had like to have been put in the dungeon of the convent. Nor did a certain Beneficiary succeed any better in the endeavour to induce him to apply himself in some degree to necessary studies:—

'Gerund tells him, with great candour and coolness, that God never intended him for a professor's chair, but for the pulpit, and that he will as much apply to scholastic studies as it now rains packsaddles. To which the Beneficiary replies that if it should rain pack-saddles everyone would be ill spent which did not fall upon the back of such an ass as his worship, and takes his leave.'

Gerund then holds on his way throughout the rest of this volume and the whole of the next; and it conducts him through a variety of adventures, some grave and some gay

but all amusing. Like its prototype, Don Quixote, the story preserves the reader's liking, and even a measure of respect, for its hero, notwithstanding the succession of follies he perpetrates, and which place him in one ridiculous situation after another. In freshness of tone, natural and simple incident, and in the number and novelty of the types of character described in its pages, it is no unworthy successor of the great mockheroic romance of Cervantes. But it has this drawback to popularity among the general public, that a professional flavour pervades its humour. The depth of its incongruities, the force of its irony, the sal Atticum of its sarcasm, can be fully appreciated only by the clergy, though there is enough mirth even on the surface to delight the general reader.

But its special purpose of scourging faulty methods of preaching, and of instructing both congregations and preachers what are the conditions and qualities upon which goodness depends in discourses to be spoken from the pulpit, is by no means even now obsolete. It is not every oration that happens to hit the popular fancy of the moment that is necessarily excellent in itself. Average congregations are not discriminating in the matter of sermons, and our experience is that they have, as a rule, rather bad taste than good. They know, as people commonly say, what they' like,' and very often they see little more deeply into the matter than that. Now Gerund is a very malleus prædicatorum for the silly, the vulgar, the pretentious, the tawdry, and the profane style in preaching. If England should ever be threatened with an outbreak of so-called 'popular' preaching marred by the presence of any or all of these qualities in unbearable degree (and some recent displays in connexion with the Salvation Army and similar organizations have seemed to show that this is by no means a very remote possibility), then this veracious history of Friar Gerund may prove even now not to have outlived its usefulness.

ART. III. THE CREED AS THE BASIS OF

APOLOGY.

The Historic Faith. Short Lectures on the Apostles' Creed. By BROOKE FOSS WESTCOTT, D.D., D.C.L., Regius Professor of Divinity and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. (London and Cambridge, 1883).

AT certain periods of Church history almost all the energies of theological writers seem to be turned into the direction of apology. Whether it be that the attacks of infidelity at times grow stronger, or that the capacity for original and constructive theological work grows weaker, and therefore men fall back upon the easier and secondary task of defence, or that the Church is brought at times into fresh contact with the world, and has therefore to justify herself afresh, it is difficult to say; but from some cause or other it is plain that every now and then the literature of Christianity becomes mainly, or at least very greatly, apologetic. Such a period was the second and third quarters of the second century-the age of Justin Martyr-when the first impulse derived from living contact with the Apostles was dying away, and the spread of the Church was attracting the attention of opponents. Another such period was the earlier half of last century, when English Deism was opposed and finally silenced by the apologetic writings of Butler and Warburton, of Berkeley and Bentley, and pure theology seemed almost to have perished with the Stuart dynasty. Such a period, again, is that in which we are now living: the great dogmatic works of the Tractarian movement have given place to apologetic writings of every kind; and historical and literary criticism on the one hand, and philosophical and scientific attacks on the other, call away the best energies of many divines from the more original and profound work of theology.

But in these similar periods of apologetic activity a great difference of method and tone is apparent. The earliest apology was not so much a defence against special and direct attacks as the presentation of the Christian faith in such a form as to commend it to ignorant or prejudiced readers, and therefore these writings have been not only effectual for their proper object, but also of permanent value as theological treatises. The opponents of English Deism also, at least so far as Butler may be taken as their representative, though

their work was more strictly defensive, conducted the controversy in a broader way than is now common; they left us, not only answers to particular objections, but also a method of apology which has shown itself capable of adaptation to very different controversies and attacks. The Analogy is almost out of date in its details; in its method it is more valuable and effective than ever. It seems, on the contrary, that the apologies of the present day are rather answers to particular objections than broad statements of Christian truth; their strength is in detail rather than in method; and, therefore, they are likely to prove rather ephemeral than permanently valuable to the Church. In one department only has our age produced apologetic work which is more than defensive, greater than its immediate object, and that is in the department of history and criticism. Here method has opposed method, and the victory will remain, we are persuaded, if it has not already declared itself, with the inductive and truly historical method of Bishop Lightfoot and Dr. Westcott, and not with the à priori and hypothetical method which Baur and Hilgenfeld inherited from Strauss and Hegel. But we cannot help thinking that in the scientific and philosophical controversies concerning religion the defenders are too apt to be purely defensive, to take up separate arguments as they occur, and to deal with them independently, without sufficient regard to the general aspect of the question, and without following any one definite method of defence. It should be remembered that, unlike the Voltairean attack of last century, the present anti-Christian movement is essentially a matter of general principles, not of details. We have to deal with broad and comprehensive theories, not with small cavillings at dates and verbal contradictions, when we confront evolution, or defend our faith against the generalizations of comparative religion.' No doubt, and this is one of the great difficulties of the position, the old form of attack continues among the half-educated, and has to be met by those who are called upon to teach the half-educated. Mr. Bradlaugh's type of infidelity is that of the eighteenth century, and it has obviously great attractions for the working classes. The most elaborate analogies, the most profound re-statements of Christian truth, the most learned historical defences of the Gospels, the most comprehensive apologetic methods are liable to be outflanked and checked by some ridiculously minute verbal difficulty or logical quibble. The lecturer on Christian evidences must, with a working-class audience, be prepared to face the momentous question, How did Cain get a wife? before he can