LAST year a work bearing the title of "Hippolytus and his Age," &c. was published in London, of which a brief account may not be unacceptable to the readers of the Repository. It seems that the Hippolytus here mentioned was the Bishop of a small place in Italy, called the Port or Harbour of Rome, who lived as early as the end of the second and beginning of the third centuries; and that some little time since, a manuscript was discovered amongst the religious houses at Mount Athos, in Greece, of which, from internal and other evidence, there now seems but little doubt that this ancient Bishop Hippolytus is the author. The manuscript, besides much that is interesting to the antiquary and scholar, contains a "Confession of Faith" which throws a remarkable light upon the view of Christianity which was considered orthodox in the Christian Church of that early period,-a view so strikingly different from that taken by modern theologians, as hardly to have a point in common with the so-called orthodoxy of the present day. To prove the authenticity and authorship of this manuscript, and to call the attention of Christians to the differences, both doctrinal and constitutional, between Christian Churches of the third and nineteenth centuries, is the main intention of the Chevalier Bunsen's work; and from the interest and

* Hippolytus and his Age; or the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus; and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity Compared, in three volumes. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, D.C.L.

N. S. No. 167.-VOL. XIV.

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striking nature of its contents, there is little doubt that ere this, its circulation and the impression produced thereby, must have been considerable. In this impression a New Churchman acquainted with the book cannot fail to recognize one of the many means which, in our day, appear to be put in motion by Divine Providence, to set free the human mind from those shackles of ecclesiastical authority by which it still, to so great an extent, lies bound and enchained.

Protestants, who at first took their stand against the false assumptions of the Church of Rome, upon their reverence for the pure Word of God, and the right of every man to use his own judgment in the interpretation of the same, appear to have long lost sight of their first great principles, and, as a body, to be hardly less bound by dogmas established by ecclesiastical authority, than the papists themselves. The natural reverence for principles received through education, the sluggishness of the human mind in spiritual things, the disposition to follow fashion and avoid the trouble of independent thought, will no doubt sufficiently account for this; but when we find a party like that of the "High Church," now in England, availing itself to the utmost of such tendencies, to clench for ever the fetters of this ecclesiastical authority upon men's minds, we have much reason to welcome, in an important work of opposite tendencies, an effectual blow struck on the other side: such I cannot but deem the Chevalier Bunsen's book,- -a blow which we may trust, will strike the fetters of a false reverence for merely human traditions, from many a thoughtful mind.

Not only the "Puseyites," but the bulk of the Old Church clergy are sedulously endeavouring to impress upon mankind the belief, (which I have no intention of saying is not also their own,) that the doctrines they teach have, notwithstanding occasional obscurations of heresy or corruption, always formed the fundamental points of belief in the Christian Church, from the time of the Apostles down to the present day. Of this assumption the book before us completely demonstrates the fallacy, by shewing, that several doctrines now deemed the palladium of the Christian faith had no prominence whatever in ancient creeds, and were, in all probability, unknown to the early church. Among these, is the doctrine of the Atonement, to which, unless we take a single Scripture phrase in its modern and falsified sense, there is no allusion whatever in the "Confession" of Hippolytus. Neither did he hold a Trinity of three eternal and separate Persons in the Godhead, for we find the personality of the Holy Spirit nowhere recognized. What he says of the Father and the Son, does certainly seem to imply a belief in two Persons, though by no means the idea of a Father and Son of

different characters, now prevalent; and it is worthy of notice, that in reference to his declaration, he elsewhere remarks, that perhaps he shall be considered a "Ditheist," plainly intimating that he knew of those in his own day, with whose stricter conceptions of the Divine unity his own would not well harmonize;-on this head, however, it is better that he should speak for himself. Treating of God in the

"Confession" he says,—

"Now this sole one and universal God, first by his cogitation begets the Word, (Logos,) not the Word in the sense of speech, but as the indwelling reason (or Truth) of the universe Him alone of all things he begat; for that which was, was the Father himself; the being born of whom was the cause of all beings. The Word was in him, bearing the will of him who had begotten him, being not unacquainted with the thoughts of the Father. For when he came forth from him who begat him, being the first begotten speech, he had in himself the ideas conceived by the Father. When, therefore, the Father commanded that the world should be, the Logos accomplished it in detail pleasing God."

The wording of this will hardly suit a New Churchman,—yet he will not fail to perceive an idea of the Son as the Divine Wisdom, running evidently through it. Presently the "Confession" touches on the origin of evil, and, presents a view of the subject for the most part identical with that of the New Church :

"But God the Creator did not make evil. He made nothing which was not beautiful and good; for the Maker is good. But the man who was made was a free-willed creature, not possessing a ruling understanding, not governing all things by thought, and authority, and power, but servile and having all sorts of contraries in him. He from being free-willed generates evil, which becomes so by accident, being nothing if thou dost it not for it is called evil from being willed and thought to be so; not being such from the beginning, but an after-birth. Man being thus free-willed, a law was laid down by God; not without need. For if man had not the power to will and not to will, why should a law have been established?, For a law will not be laid down for an irrational being, but a bridle and a whip; but for man a command and a penalty, to do, or for not doing what was ordered."

What he means by man "not possessing a ruling understanding," &c. &c., is not over clear; but at all events, here is nothing about fallen angels, in whom evil is supposed to have commenced, by spontaneous generation during their state of blessedness. Hippolytus, like the New Church, dates all evil from the abuse of man's free-will, and looks for his restoration to the right use of the same faculty; for he subsequently says, speaking of the Lord,

"If thou art obedient to his solemn behests, and becomest a good

follower of Him who is good, thou wilt become like Him, honoured of Him."

In fact, the faith of this ancient church appears to have been a very simple one. To worship God as manifested in Christ Jesus, and keep His Commandments, seems pretty nearly the sum total of it, and we owe a debt of gratitude to Chevalier Bunsen for this glimpse of Christianity before it had departed very far from that original simplicity which, in after times, became so overlaid by human inventions as to be entirely obliterated. The great change took place after the Council of Nice, a change in what Chevalier Bunsen calls the "consciousness of the church," and which consisted mainly in this: that, whereas, before that period, Christians thought of the sacrifice of Christ as of something to be imitated by themselves, in the sacrifice of self, and the subjection of their own evils; they afterwards came to think of it as of something done in their stead, whereby God was to be propitiated ;→→ a change, which, working together with the doctrine of the Trinity of separate Persons, developed itself, at length, into a view of the Christian religion so different from that of the early church, as to render the writings of the ante-Nicene Fathers worthless or unintelligible in the eyes of modern divines.

I see by the "Times" newspaper, that "Hippolytus and his Age" is already prohibited at Rome, and no wonder! Nothing is said in the "Confession" of the worship of saints and of the Virgin Mary. Nor does the fiction of the Papal power having been transmitted directly from St. Peter through a regular succession of Popes, gain much credibility from the fact now brought to light, that in the days of "Hippolytus there was no Pope or Bishop in the Church of Rome, invested with any similar authority. A Bishop of Rome there undoubtedly was, of whom 'Hippolytus" speaks pretty freely, and for whom he entertained certainly not more, but considerably less respect, than for the other Bishops, his brethren; a feeling which what he has to say about the character of the man, amply justifies. Indeed, the principles and revelations of this book strike heavily at the root of all hierarchical pretensions to power, which are supposed to have their foundation in the early form of the Christian Church, by shewing how really foreign such things are to the freedom and simplicity of her original constitution, and by the light thrown on the social condition and practice of her early communicants.

Among other results, this has now cleared away for us the confusion which has so long existed between the "Jewish Sabbath" and the Christian "Lord's Day." It appears that the early Christians worked

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only on five days of the week, and kept both these days as religious observances, the Sabbath" or Saturday as a day of rest, and the "Lord's Day" or Sunday as a religious festival. Hence it is easy to see, that after the keeping of the "Jewish Sabbath" had fallen into disuse, there would be an appearance of the day of rest having been shifted from the seventh to the first of the week, whereas in reality no change, or substitution of the one day for the other, ever occurred.

The second of the four volumes which comprise the work, contains much philosophy of the German school, on which I will only observe, that in the author's case its results appear so far satisfactory as to have rendered his religious views incomparably wider, more tolerant and far seeing, than those which generally prevail.

But as for the hope in which these volumes have been evidently put forth, that the present Christian Church may be re-constructed out of her ancient materials in the light of this philosophy, it is one in which, of course, a New Churchman will not sympathise, but of which he will consider that he sees the fallacy, from a far deeper ground than any mere sectarian prejudice.

Modern Christianity is hopelessly imbued with the idea of the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, as that of one Divine being offered up to satisfy the justice and appease the wrath of another; and is philosophically crippled (so to speak) by the division of the one God, whom men pretend to worship, into distinct Persons of irreconcilable characters and qualities, and all the incoherent and God-dishonouring notions of Deity which this idea necessarily entails. As such it has placed itself at variance with human rationality in a degree which will not diminish, but increase, as that rationality strengthens and clarifies by the influx which is now descending into it from above.

With a false idea of God as its centre-" the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place"-no re-construction of the church is possible. But with whatever intention, Chevalier Bunsen has opened up a track of inquiry in these volumes, which promises to be any thing but conservative of those points of doctrine which constitute what is now called "Orthodoxy;"-for surely it is only necessary that the striking differences in opinions so designated at various periods of the church, should be fairly brought to view, to destroy at once, all that truth assuring power with which this imposing word now acts, as by a spell, on the great majority of uninquiring minds.

This, to a considerable extent, will be effected by the present work. Upon those rigid prejudices of education and habit, by which Old Church principles now mainly attach themselves to the human mind, it