Though we do not now think on the lines of
the theology of the seventeenth century, for students of Scottish Church history Forbes' Irenicum has a certain documentary interest ; and this translation of the First Book of that once famous treatise, which is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor James Cooper, is put forward not only in usum scholar-urn, but with the Practical design of promoting the Union move- ment as it bears on the relations between the Church of England and the Unreformed Churches, in particular the Church of Rome. The translator wishes to treat the doctrine and ceremonial of the Eucharist very much as Forbes treats Episcopacy and the Five Articles passed by the General Assembly at Perth (1618) and ratified by Parliament three years later. Neither the cases nor their. circumstances are parallel ; and the book would perhaps have come more appropriately from Messrs. Mowbray than from the University Press. The learned and excellent John Forbes, of Corse, the son of the first Bishop of Edinburgh, was the most eminent of the " Aberdeen Doctors," the Moderates of an immoderate age ; men who, like Hooker and Jeremy Taylor in England, wearied of strife, saw that the questions which distracted the various Churches were not religious, but things indifferent
• which might reasonably vary with the varieties of circum- stances, place and time. But neither in England nor in Scotland would the Church tolerate moderation ; the violent " bore it away."
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