BUNSEN. * To review the seven volumes whose titles are printed
below, on the ordinary scale and in the usual method, would be simply im- possible, because instead of one work, or even three as the title- pages would indicate, we should have to study and deliver a criti- cal judgment on a collection of treatises. The mere tables of con- tents occupy forty pages of ordinary printing; and the huge bulk of talk is rendered more utterly unmanageable by the multifari- ousness of topic and diffuseness of treatment. We do not mean to charge M. Bunsen with introducing matter that is altogether irrelevant to his object, which is to provide the student of Chris- tian history with the means of forming his judgment on the life and thought of Ante-Nicene Christianity from original documents; though we can scarcely imagine that the two volumes entitled "Philosophy of Universal History" will help much in that direc- tion. But we are accustomed to consider that a judicious writer will not pour forth upon his public all that he has to say, or might say if he pleased, in reference to his subject; that he will remem- ber that thoughts make more impression the more tersely and con- cisely they are presented; and that the public has something to do besides reading his books. M. Bunsen evidently understands nothing of all this. To him every subject has infinite relations, countless and far-reaching branches intertwining in fact and theory with every other subject; and upon this principle he con- structs his books, giving us between a biographical and literary history of early Christianity, and a collection of texts of docu- ments' literary, liturgical, and canonical, nothing less than an ela- borate work on comparative philology, bringing up the science by aid of treatises from learned friends to the latest results in each main division of tongues. With such a miscellaneous collection, delusively bound in seven volumes of continuoue appearance, we can do nothing but indicate the matter that may be found. A set of prefaces to the first volume of the first section of the work carry on the discussion as to the authorship of the Philoso- phunl,!.t,., which occupied the 4rst volume of the original publica-
tion; five letters to Archdeacon Hare being now thrown into an appendix. M. Bunsen maintains against Jallabert his original assertion that Hippolytus wrote the Philosophumena ; against Wordsworth, his views of the doctrine of Hippolytus and of Ante-Nicene Christianity, as well as some special points of his- torical and philological criticism; against Dellinger, that Hip- polytus was Bishop of the Portus Romanus, in opposition to that learned Romanist's ingenious theory that the saint and inarts was really an Anti-Pope, a rival Bishop of Rome to that °afflatus of whom he has handed down to us the scandalous historyc Those who enjoy controversy sharpened by the odium theologicum will find satisfaction for their tastes in these prefaces, especially where
• Hippolytus and his Age : or the Beginnings and Prospects of -Christianity. By
Christiab Charles Joseph Buzwen, D.D., D.Ph. Sectond edition. In two volumes. Volume I. Hippo4eus and the Teachers of the Apostolieal Age. Volume II. The Life ofthe Christians of the Apostolical Age. Published by Longman and Co. Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History, applied to Language and Reli-
gion. By Christian Charles Joseph Bunsen, D.D., Wit, In two volumes. Same Publishers. '
Analeata Ante-Niciena. reeensuit, illustravit ChrMtiahus Carolus Josh's: • Barmen, 85. Theologire Juris Civilis at Philos. Doctor. Volume I. Beliquim Lite- rarice. Volume II. R'eliquite Canonical. Volume III. Reliquiie Liturgiese. Cum Appendleibus ad tria Analectorum Volumina. Same Publishers.
the author is dealing with Canon Christopher Wordsworth, who is a type of a class of English theologians to which Bunsen manifests the strongest dislike. For ourselves, we conceive that such asper- ity tends greatly to obscure the truth from those who indulge it, and to induce in calm and philosophic inquirers a suspicion of ar- guments and statements that are tinctured with it. The body of the first volume lying between the controversial preface and the letters to Archdeacon Hare consists of a series of sketches of the leading Christian writers and teachers from the Apostles to Origen, with copious extracts from their remaining works. The questions that occupied the mind of the Church during this period are dis- cussed and illustrated ; and the volume altogether reminds us in its method, not in its conclusions, of the volume by Mr. Maurice which we lately reviewed. Taken by itself, it would form a valu- able addition to the means hitherto enjoyed by the English reader of seeing the Christianity of the first three centuries exhibited in the words of the writers of the time.
The second volume opens with an English translation of such portions of the Apostolical Constitutions and Apostolical Canons as M. Bunsen believes to be genuine. These he calls the Church- and-House-Book of the ancient Christians, and the Law-Book of the Ante-Nicene Church. They touch on the reception and in- struction of catechumens ; the rite of baptism; the creeds and litur- gies; the celebration of the eucharist ; rules of conduct for mem- bers of the congregation • ordinances regulating the institution, the conduct, and the functions of the clergy ; presenting in all a vivid though of course fragmentary picture of the domestic and congregational life and ecclesiastical organization of the Ante- Nicene Christians, the age of the martyrs and confessors. These are followed by a collection of essays, which interpret and apply the documents, filling up the picture of the ancient Church, and drawing conclusions bearing upon modern theological and ecclesiastical con- troversies. To express briefly the purpose of the essays, the ancient Church is painted, and the contrast drawn between that and the various Churches of our own day ; with none of which does M. Bunsen entirely coincide either in faith or ritual. The volume concludes with the Apology of Hippolytus, in the form of a ficti- tious address delivered to an English audience on his anniversary, the ides of August 1851. This it may be remembered, was con- tained in the original work ; and it is in fact an elaborate contrast between the ancient theology and the systematized metaphysical theology of the Creeds, especially the so-called Athanasian Creed. We pass over, for the moment, the two volumes entitled The Philosophy of Universal History, and proceed to the third series, entitled Atuzketa Ante-lViceena. The three volumes with this title contain critical texts in the original Greek of many of the documents translated or quoted in the historical portion. The first volume comprises a collection of "loci Christologioi " from the New Testament, the "Dicta Christi ayea0a," from the Ante- Nicene fathers; a First Epistle of Peter rescued from a mass of superincumbent interpolation ; all the genuine remains that are allowed to Ignatius since the Cureton discoveries ; the fragments of Basilides, Valentinus, and Marcion preserved by Hippolytus ; the famous Epistle to Diognetus' with a short " exhortatio ad gentes," attributed conjecturally to Hippolytus ; a fragment of Hegesippus "de canone Novi Testamenti ' originally published by Muratori in 1740, in the third volume Of his Italian Antiquities, from a manuscript in the Ambrosian Library ; all that remains of the work of Clemens Alexandrinus entitled "Hypotyposes," amount- ing to nearly two hundred pages ; selected passages from the works of Hippolytus against heresies—" the Philosophumena." Our readers will perceive by this list, that the volume is, in fact, a col- lection of texts of patristic literature, and may take its place with such volumes as Routh's " Reliquire Sacrse." We do not pretend to give any opinion of the judgment and scholarship with which the texts have been formed ; but, if ultimately found satisfactory in these points, there can be no question of the importance of the contribution to this branch of knowledge. The second volume contains the Apostolical Canons in Greek and Latin, founded on comparison between the Greek and Coptic texts ; the Apostolical Constitutions, edited, with the received and a critical text, by Boettieher ; the Constitutions of the Egyptian Church " nun° primum Grsece redditm " ; with ample historical and verbal indices, which greatly increase, by facilitating, the use of the volume.
The third volume consists of liturgical remains ; "all the ancient sacramental texts of the East, and the few relics respecting the eucharistic service of the Churches of Africa, Gaul, and Spain, (with which those of Alemannia, of Great Britain, and of Ire- land were identical,) of the second, third, and fourth centuries, and of the early part of the fifth. As to the Church of Borne, they naturally go down to the end of the sixth century, or the time of Gregory the Great." A general introduction on the liturgical development in the ancient Church is prefixed to the collection ; and the volume concludes with a series of appendices relating to various matters in the three volumes, including two critical Epistles from "Jacobus Bernaysius ad Bunsenium," on sundry fragments, especially of Heraclitus, in the newly-discovered work of Hippolytus. The five volumes hitherto noticed are eloely connected ; though it has not usually been the practice of s '
cholars in writing the history of a period, to publish as appendices to their history corrected texts of the authors who constitute their authorities. Thus, Grote does not give us editions of Herodotus Homer, and Thucydides, as a portion of his duty as historian Of Greece. Ritter leaves it to Stallbaum and Bekker to provide the public with texts of
Plato and Aristotle, while he sums up their doctrines and traces their development. Still, the method of M. Bunsen is thorough, if only the labour of each branch were not quite enough for one man to perform correctly. How M. Bunsen has performed his editorial functions time and minute research are required to de- termine: one thing is evident ft a glance, that he is little troubled by any want of confidence in his own judgment, whether the ques- tion be as to the date of the Apocalypse, the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the detection of an interpolated text, or the truth of a theological or philosophical proposition. Such self- confidence, unfortunately, does not create a priori confidence in his readers.
The two volumes which M. Bunsen calls The Philosophy of Universal History are not, to our thinking, more intimately con- nected with his subject, than a treatise on grammar, or logic, or on mathematics, would be. Any work which teaches us the laws which underlie and regulate any of the uses of sense or reason, might be shown indeed to bear directly on all religious problems; but on this principle, every book treating of church history or the development of Christian doctrine should be preceded by an organon of universal knowledge,—a practice which would be found somewhat inconvenient, and would, we fear, lead to sciolism. Viewed by .themselves, we cannot but welcome the publication of two volumes which give us a sketch of the progress of the philosophy of history from Hebrew and Hellenic times down to Cousin and Comte ; of the philosophy of language from Leibnitz to William von Humboldt ; and go on to follow up these sketches by elaborate treatises on the two branches of thought and science thus marked out. Thus, in comparative philology we have the last results of researches into the Germanic and Italic languages, reported by Dr. Aufrecht; into Persian, Sansorit, and Turanian, by Professor Max Muller; • into Semitic and Chamitie, by the Chevalier Bunsen himself. Miiller's contributions to the volumes would of themselves form a considerable octavo. The second volume applies to various problems of history and meta- physics the result of the general analysis of human language in- stituted in the first; expands the philosophical aphorisms of the original work into a formal treatise on the philosophy of religion ; gives specimens of a highly interesting attempt to find the Indo- European philosophical equivalents for the Semitic theological ex- pressions and ideas of the Bible; intersperses sundry philological appendices; and finally winds up with a detailed account of some conferences held at the Prussian Embassy in London in January this year, for the purpose of agreeing on a universal alphabet for all languages.
Such is a summary of the leading contents of this very learned, very interesting, but somewhat heterogeneous collection of volumes. We may hereafter return to some of the special divisions.
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