BOOKS,
BUNSEN'S IIIPPOLYTUS AND HIS AGE.* TILE four volumes which the Chevalier Bunsen has published under the general title of Hippolytus and Ms Age are a collection of treatises, connected by the fact that they all bear upon Church life and Church literature in the first two centuries and the first part of the third. Hippolytus is made thus prominent partly be- cause a special examination of his works, and in particular a vin- dication of his claim to be the writer of a book published last year at Oxford under the title of " Origen's Philosophumena," are lead- ing objects of M. Bunsen ; and this again rests on the fact that Hippolytus, when his literary performances are thus recovered for him, does really stand out as the most eminent writer of the Roman Church in his day, and represents to us the thought and practice of that Church as no other writer can. While, however, we ac- knowledge a tenable reason for thus making Hippolytus the centre of what is intended for a picture of Antenicene Christianity, we can- not but regret that M. Bunsen should have so little perception of the principles of historical art, or so little care for them, as to present in one book the very rawest material in the shape Of recensions of fragmentary documents, a monograph on the writings of an an- cient author, a collection of philosophical aphorisms, and a work of fiction in which modern theological systems are surveyed from the point of view of the Christians of the Antenicene period. So far from the value of these several labours being enhanced by juxta- position, it seems more probable that readers, incited by the title of the work to expect an historical narrative, will be rather dissa- tisfied at finding themselves put off with what can be considered only as the first stage towards narrative, and that those who want simply a critical examination of an ancient author of whom little has been known, and whose existence has been doubted, will not be well pleased at being compelled to take along with this the strongest dose of German ontology that has yet been administered to the English public. On the other hand, those whose tendencies are to speculation on absolute being will not be much enlightened or even stimulated to thought by the curt abrupt enunciation of Hera- clitan propositions couched in phraseology to which ninety-nine out of every hundred Englishmen of what are called the educated classes will be able to attach no definite meaning. And the worst of all this is, that M. Bunsen publishes his volumes in English iu order to do away with prejudices against German methods of dealing with theological and ecclesiastical topics. His method will cer- tainly raise another prejudice, quite as fatal in this country as any which he seeks to overthrow,—and that is, a terrible fear that to take up a German prose writer, is to encounter a man who, be he honest and good and learned, or the contrary, is so erode, so chaotic, so utterly bent upon saying all that can be lugged in upon a given subject, so regardless of the graces of arrangement and subordina- tion—in a word, so sprawling—as to be en object of abhorrence to all but the few whose intellectual digestion resembles in strength and absence of discrimination the stomach of the ostrich. It is but fair to add, that N. Bunsen's volumes are furnished with indices and tables of contents so copious as to render them easily available as works of reference ; which, indeed, is their real character, in spite of title and form. The first of the four volumes is confined to a discussion of the claims of Hippolytus to be considered the author of the work at- tributed to Origen, to an account of that and other writings of Hippolytus, and to an estimate of his character, life, and writings. It is addressed in five letters to Archdeacon Hare, and forms what is technically called a monograph on Hippolytus. The cir- cumstance which gave occasion to it is this. A Greek, who was despatched by the French Minister M. Villemain on a journey of literary discovery, brought to Paris from Mount Athos, in the year 1842, a manuscript of late date on cotton paper, to which the attention of M. Emmanuel Miller, a learned Hellenist in the ser- vice of the Bibliotheque du Roi, was directed. Encouraged to a close examination by finding in it some unknown fragments of Pinder' he finally succeeded in identifying it as the continuation of a work entitled Philosophumena," and hitherto printed among Origen's works, though more than suspected not to be his by his best editors and critics. Moreover, the name of Origen was added rubrically to the new manuscript. M. Miller, dismissing as un- tenable the notion which had, it appears, been started, that the work was by Hippolytus, edited the manuscript, on these pre- sumptions, as Origen's ; and the Clarendon Press Syndics lent their imprimatur. N. Bunsen, on reading the work, was convinced that not Origen, but Hippolytus, Bishop of Por- tus, near Rome, was the author ; and other scholars have ar- rived quite independently at the same result. The arguments on which the conclusion is founded we cannot of course exhibit in detail, but summarily they amount to four. In the first place, no ancient author mentions any such work of Origen. Secondly, the work was from' internal evidence written by a bishop, who was at the same time a member of the Roman presbytery, which Origen was not and Hippolytus was. Thirdly, several ancient writers mention a work by Hippolytus corresponding to the work in question. Fourthly, the work in question answers minutely to a work attributed to Hippolytus by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and by him described. M. Bunsen gives good reasons for thinking that the manuscript edited by M. Miller is
• Hippolytus and his Age; or the Doctrine and Practice of the Church ,of Some under Commodus and Alexander Severna : and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity Compared. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, D.C.L. In four volumes. Published by Longman and Co.
itself only a mutilated transcript of the original work by Hippo- lytus : but its importance may be estimated from the fact that it gives an account of heresies from the time of the Apostles to the writer's own age, the first quarter of the third century; that it contains extracts from fifteen lost works of the Gnos- tic and other kindred schools; and that, among other positive results, M. Bunsen finds quotations from the Gospel of St. John made by Basilides, who flourished in the beginning of Hadrian's reign,—thus upsetting the hypothesis of Strauss and the Tubingen school that that gospel was written somewhere to- wards the close of the second century. The real title of the work is " A Refutation of all Heresies"; the title " Philosophumena " be- ing only applicable to that portion known long ago under Origen's name, which in fact consisted of an account of the ancient philoso- phies, as the main source of the heresies to be refuted in the succeeding portion. With respect to the other works of Hippolytus, it may be sufficient to say that the new light thrown upon them by M. Bunsen is so great, as to demand that some competent scholar should apply himself at once to reedite completely a Father whose eminence and importance may be considered as demon- strated, and on whom fortune has hitherto borne peculiarly hard.
Besides many other discoveries with which the name of Hippo- lytus is connected, M. Bunsen finds in the famous " Apostolical Constitutions" traces of a work of his, IrEP1 XaPtcrgal-cov• This is the slight link which connects with the main title of the book what must be considered far the most important element in it, an attempt to restore by collation of the old Greek text of these Con- stitutions with recently published Oriental texts what is truly Antenicene in them ; and to give to this genuine portion, not indeed Apostolic authenticity, but Apostolic authority, as a real reflection of the Apostolic age modified only by the rightful liberty of the early Church, or rather Churches, to snit their ordinances to the wants whether of place or time. If the consent of impartial scho- lars be obtained for M. Bunsen's results in this direction, a most important addition will have been made to our knowledge of the community-life of the early Christians. A similar remark will apply to that portion of our author's four volumes which treats of the ancient eucharistic service, at least to so much of it as is docu- mentary and not theoretical. We cannot but again repeat, how much he has obscured these monuments of his industry and scho- larship by throwing them down amid cart-loads of speculative and controversial matter, which may or may not be profound and tree, but which certainly disturb the attention of the critical investi- gator of facts of ancient Christian history.
The critical portion of M. Bunsen's work exhibits a knowledge of the writings of the ancient Christians, and a ready command of that knowledge, which few professional theologians can equal,—if indeed M. Bunsen would not, after the fashion of Ruben; style himself a theologian who condescended to act as ambassador. He furnishes a remarkable instance (not without many parallels in our time) that active duties, generally supposed sufficient to engross and even overwhelm the individuals who undertake them, are no obstacle to an assiduous cultivation of the most extensive range of knowledge. Still, the greatest capacity, if directed to many sub- jects, is liable to errors, principally of haste, which would be avoid- ed by men of far less capacity who employed themselves on one special subject. A single reading of M. Bunsen's work furnishes evidence of haste, and its necessary results ; of which the following specimens are given, not for their intrinsic importance, but to pre- vent the author's conclusions or passing remarks from being taken on his ipse dixit.
M. Bunsen seems to have entirely mistaken a passage in which Simon Magus is made to say of himself, that he had appeared to the Jews as the Son, to the Samaritans as the Father, and to the Gen- tiles as the Holy Spirit. M. Bunsen holds that these words are spoken by Simon not of himself but of Jesus ; because, says he, how could Simon say of himself (as the text of the treatise makes him say) that he suffered death in dudes ? Plainly, he could say this because his doctrine was the metempsychosis, and he announced himself as the Divine manifestation which had appeared at differ- ent times under different forms for the salvation of men; identify- ing himself thus in one of his appearances with Jesus of Nazareth, just as he identified the woman whom he took about with him with Helen of Troy. In another place, Bunsen scolds Pearson for his in- terpretation of the SiO in the Ignatian Epistle to the Magnesians. Now, unless we are mistaken, Bunsen's friend Rothe, to whom he dedicates his second volume, follows Pearson in this, and considers Bunsen's own interpretation wrong if not absurd. Why, too, should Bunsen insinuate against Cave that he invented his author- ities P Cave may not be a great philosopher, but for honesty and industry his reputation stands unsurpassed, and his curious in- formation has already been manifested in one most unexpected and remarkable instance in this century, where every one supposed that he had committed a blunder of memory or a slip of the pen. M. Bunsen, too, should be more carefully literal in his transla- tions, as upon apparently trivial oversights in important docu- ments great consequences may depend. Why, for instance, in that most interesting confession of faith by Hippolytus, does he omit to translate the adjective Xes-rje with irvEritia P and again, why does he translate ivtlitieurov 7-ei; Iravros Xcryterp.ov by the technical phrase "indwelling spina" of the universe ?—since, even if wa-rpov be not the reading plainly required by the context, the phrase itali- cized has a meaning quite different from what he means by it. Then, directly. afterwards, he renders bvva and yusoaaaa by the same word, beings, where they are contrasted as beings and becom- ing& Finally, we cannot forbear remarking upon the unnecessarily acrimonious tone adopted by M. Bunsen towards those who differ from him in opinion on matters of history and scholarship. Espe. cially towards Pearson, one of the greatest theologians and scho- lars that the seventeenth century, an age of theologians and scho- lars, produced, is the Chevalier discourteous and abusive. He has already received polite chastisement for this at the hands of Arch- deacon Churton, the learned but not very logical editor of the rindicia Ignatii Epistolarum. Bunsen, it seems, has not forgot- ten or forgiven this sarcasm—" Felix studiorum, nisi theologian et res ecelesiasticas tentasset." Pearson, at any rate, would never have attributed to Marcion the famous epistle to Diognetus, on the strength of a passage in the treatise .De Carmen Christi by Tertullian, which contains no evidence whatever on the subject. The fact is, that M. Bunsen is a clever man and a man of great reading, but his mind has that impatience of doubt, and arrogant confidence in his own arbitrary conjectures, that go far to render any conclusion of his quite worthless as authority, and to make it necessary for any field in which he has worked to be resurveyed by a calmer scholar.
As a transition to the more speculative portions of the book, we will quote that part of the confession of Hippolytus which re- lates to the doctrine of the Logos.
"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 of the universe. Him alone of all beings he begat : for that which was was the Fathei himself; the being born of whom was the eduse 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 his 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. * For whatever he willed, God made. These things He made by the Logos; nor could they be otherwise than as they were made. But when He had made them as He willed, He then marked them by giving them names. After these he created the lord of the whole, making him a compound of all the elements. He did not intend to make bin a god, and fail to do so, or en angel, (be not misled !) but a man. If He had willed to make thee a god, He could have done so ; for thou hest the image of the Logos : but willing to make thee a man, a man He made thee. But if thou would become a god, be obedient to Him who made thee, and transgress not now, in order that, having been found faithful in small things, thou mayst be trusted with great things. " The Word of Him is alone of Him : wherefore he is God, being the substance of God. But the world is of nothing; therefore not God : it is also subject to dissolution, when He willeth who created it. But God the creator did not make evil. Ho made nothing which was not beautiful and good : for the Maker is good. But the man who was made was a freewilled creature, not possessing a ruling understanding, not governing all things by thought and authority and power, but servile and having all sorts of contra- ries in him. He, from being freewilled, 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 afterbirth. Man being thus freewilled, 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 is ordered. For him law was es- tablished by just men of yore. In times nearer to us, a law was laid down full of gravity and justice, by the forementioned Moses, a devout and God- loving man. But all these things are overruled by the Word of God, the
only child of the Father, the light-bringing voice anterior to the morning star. *
"These things God gave in charge to the Word. And the Word spoke and uttered them, bringing man back by these very words from disobe- dience, not enslaving him through the force of necessity, but calling him to liberty of his own free accord. This Word the Father sent in after times, no longer to speak through a prophet : not wishing that he should be guessed at from obscure announcements, but should be made manifest to sight- Him, I say, He sent, that the world, seeing him, might revere him, not commanding them in the person of prophets, nor frightening the soul by an angel, but himself present and speaking to them. Him we have known to have taken his body from a virgin, and to have put on the old man through a new formation ; having past in his life through every age, that he might become a law for every age, and might by his presence exhibit his own hu- manity as an aim for all men ; and might prove by the same, that God has made nothing evil ; and that man is freewilled, baying the power both of willing and not willing, being able to do either. Him we know to have been a man of our own composition. For if he had not been of the same nature, in vain would he ordain that we are to imitate our master. For if that man were of another substance, how can he order me who am beim weak, to do like him ? and how is he good and righteous ? But that he might not be deemed other than we, he bore toil, and vouchsafed to hunger, and did not refuse to thirst, and rested in sleep, and did not resist suffering, and became obedient to death, and manifested 'his resurrection, offering up his own humanity in all this, as the first fruits, that thou, when thou art suffering, mayst not despair, but, acknowledging thyself a man, mayst thy- self expect what the Father granted to him."
Half the second volume is occupied with a series of philosophical aphorisms, enunciating the principles on which a history of Chris- tianity and of the Christian Church should be written. It would be sheer affectation on our part to pretend to understand the greater number of them. The darkest passages in Coleridge's writings are sun-bright luminousness by their side. But, so far as we can see what the writer means by his words, the foundations of his system are the terms of the prologue to It. John's Gospel expanded into propositions, set in various lights, and applied to the developments of human thought, the history of humanity, of Christian consciousness, and the life of the Church. Among the passages that are within the reach of the general understanding, we have the writer's opinion of the bearing upon the philosophy of history of our two countrymen Maurice and Carlyle, whom he takes as representatives respeotively of the " Semitic and " Ja- phetie " elements of the English mind.
" The system of thought of the first, as contained principally in his ' King- dom of Christ,' his History of Ethic Philosophy, and his Lectures on the religions of the world, may, with reference to the present inquiry, be said to have its centre in the following ideas. He believes that the conscience of
men in the present day is at war with the popular theology ; and that this theology, as well among Romanists as Protestants, as well in England as on the Continent, is ineffectual, because it contemplates humanity not as created and constituted in Christ, but as a fallen evil state, out of which Christ came to redeem a certain number of those who believe in Him. This theology he holds not to be that of the Bible, or of the Church as represented in the creeds of Christendom. The Bible represents Man as formed in the image of God; the Fall as the rebellious effort of the individual man to deny that glory for himself; i. e. to deny his human condition. This denial, beginning with the first man, is continued in all his descendants ; the flesh of each struggling against that law of kind under which God has placed it. The Bible is an orderly history of God's education of a particular race to under- stand the divine constitution of humanity, and the possibility of a man, by faith, living according to it. This education does not contradict the Pagan records, but explains them, and shows how the living Word was in all places and in all times the light of man. Christ, not Adam, represents humanity. Christ's redemption is the revelation of humanity in its true state and glory. The faith of a man is in the privilege which God has conferred on his race. Since the appearance of Christ the kingdom of God is come and coming ; we live in it. The incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the gift of the Spirit, the formation of churches, were the preparation for a judgment upon the old world, a judgment answering strictly to the anticipa- tions of it in the Apostolical Epistles. Then began the New Dispensation or kingdom of God, based upon the full revelation of His name, the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—a kingdom for men, as men. The baptized Church is the witness of this kingdom. God has educated the na- tions by it, precisely in the same sense, and under the same limitations, as he educated the nations in the old world by the Jews. The Old Testament remains to us an explanation of the conditions of national life, which isjust as precious and necessary in the New Dispensation as in the Old. The New Testament explains the full law and glory of humanity. If a nation can- not fulfil the idea of the Old Testament by acknowledging a righteous, in- visible king over it, it will sink into a godless absolutism. If humanity does not acknowledge its constitution in Christ, it will sink into godless de- mocracy. " As Maurice may be called the Semitic exponent of the deepest elements of English thought and life in this field, Carlyle, as a philosopher on history, or rather as manifesting in his writings such a philosophy, may be designated its Anglo-Germanic prophet. He considers it as his principal vocation, to point out that all real progress, and all development in history, are due, as far as man is concerned, to the inward truth and reality in man, and in the highest degree to the ' heroes' of mankind. Both individuals and nations who act against that reality fulfil their destiny in perishing. Although his exposition and that, of Maurice may appear diametrically opposed to each other, the Continental inquirer will easily discern in both the same national instinct to consider real life and action as the final object of man, as the highest reality of thought, and the safest, if not the only safe, standard of truth."
M. Bunsen's examination of the Antenicene period of the Chris- tian Church results in a conviction that its system of Government was at once less sacerdotal and less episcopal than it became during the epoch of Councils ; that its formularies were simpler, while its metaphysical deductions from them were at once more Scriptural and more profound. The Apology, of Hippolytus—an address which Hippolytus is supposed to make to a party of English friends on the anniversary of his "franslatio " last year—expands the latter theory in reference to our modern religious systems. In particu- lar, he finds that the philosophy of the Absolute—ontology--has dropped out of our belief, though it retains its place in our creeds, in the slightly perverted form which the Council of Nierea gave it, and the still more degraded shape which it assumed in the hands of the composer of the Athanasian formula. Into such speculations we cannot follow M. Bunsen. Before any such speculations can be valid, the terms in which their processes are carried on must be discussed, and this has yet to be done for English philosophy ; and then, the conditions of true reasoning in such regions would still need fixing. At the same time, it is impossible to avoid conceding to M. Bunsen, that the creeds of the Church of England, and many passages not to say the whole spirit of the Pauline Epistles and of St. John's Gospel, de- mand such discussions, if they are to be intelligently received. Coleridge attempted the problem. For its solution a succession of minds is required who unite the ideality of Coleridge with the clearness and subtilty of Mill or Hamilton.
M. Bunsen's book is a chaos. If the author would elicit from it a cosmos, he must dissolve its inorganic mass, and recombine the elements. Under creative skill, the book would reappear as seve- ral books. There would be a volume of prolegomena and notes to a collected and revised edition of the writings of Hippolytus ; prole- gomena and a revised text of the Apostolic Constitutions and of the Antenicene Liturgies ; a treatise on the philosophy of the Absolute, and all its manifestations in time and space, not excluding physical science as an important element in the evolution of humanity ; lastly, there would be a series of essays on all subjects of civil and ecclesiastical polity interesting to the present generation, and bear- ing on the future especially of Europe. We can only faintly hope that the immediate future of Europe may be tranquil enough to allow so distinguished a diplomatist as the Prussian Ambassador to devote his learned ease to topics so worthy of the highest ability and the profoundest attainments.
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