are downright lies, and many more grossly misrepresented and exaggerated; yet if there were no other evidence than the letter addressed by Foxe, Bishop Winchester, to Wolsey, dated January 2, 1521, there is enough to show how terrible must have been the state of things in that diocese, which there is no reason to suppose was exceptionally bad. He says that as for himself, though within his own small jurisdiction he had given nearly all his study to the work for nearly three years, yet whenever he had to correct and punish he found the monks so depraved, so licentious and corrupt, that he despaired of any proper reformation till the work was undertaken on a more general scale and with a stronger arm.

It is true that Dr. Jessopp's recent publication, also issued by the Camden Society, gives a more favourable account of the visitations of the monasteries in the diocese of Norwich; but even here, though the crimes discovered are the exception and not the rule, there is enough to show that there ought to have been a far more searching enquiry by the bishops into the condition of their dioceses-enough at least to show that the state of the Church of England at the close of the nineteenth century is far more hopeful than it has ever been during the four preceding centuries.

At the risk of repeating what has been already said we conclude our review of Mr. Child's book with pointing out the different conclusion which we draw from the dismal array of facts he has enumerated, the reality of which we have no disposition to contest or to depreciate. His intention has been to represent the Church as hopelessly Erastian, and of course it did not fall within his province to look forward to a period when such a forlorn state of things has entirely passed away. We have referred to a lecture on the 'Principles of the Reformation.' We should like to draw his attention to another lecture by the same author, entitled 'The Recovery from the Principles of the Reformation.' To us the horrors of the reign of the last of the Tudors, as contrasted with the increased and increasing holiness of life in members of the Church in this nineteenth century, and the steady resistance to the usurpation on the part of the State which has set in since the iniquitous judgment in the Gorham case, are full of hope for the future that this Anglican Church may yet in God's good providence be the honoured instrument in promoting the union of the Eastern and Western Churches, and that her bishops may take their seat in the eighth Ecumenical Council side by side with bishops from the East and from the farther West.

ART. X.-DEAN LEFROY'S 'CHRISTIAN
MINISTRY.'

1. The Christian Ministry: its Origin, Constitution, Nature and Work: a Contribution to Pastoral Theology. By WILLIAM LEFROY, D.D., Dean of Norwich. (London, 1890.)

2. The Ministry of the Christian Church. By CHARLES GORE, M.A., Principal of the Pusey House. (London, 1889.) 3. The Organization of the Early Christian Churches. The Bampton Lectures for 1880. By EDWIN HATCH, M.A., Vice-Principal of St. Mary Hall. (London, 1881.)

TEN years ago Dr. Hatch-alas! that we should have to say the late Dr. Hatch-startled the ecclesiastical world by putting forward from an advanced Broad Church point of view, in the Bampton Lectures for 1880, a novel and original scheme of the development of the organization of the early Church. Dr. Hatch's work was admittedly characterized by a powerful style, singular erudition in certain spheres of knowledge, and a rare faculty for selecting and marshalling facts so as to present them in the light most attractive for his theory. With not inferior ability, with characteristic moderation, and with knowledge which, if not equal to Dr. Hatch's in some outlying departments or in acquaintance with the by-ways of Teutonic speculation, was more than a match in familiarity with the primary sources of ecclesiastical history, the Principal of the Pusey House approached the same subject two years ago in his Ministry of the Christian Church. And to complete the triangular duel, the Dean of Norwich now steps into the arena as the representative of the third great school of thought in the Church of England. His Donnellan Lectures on the Christian Ministry were delivered, internal evidence would suggest, in the interval between the publication of the Bampton Lectures and of Mr. Gore's book, for the first six lectures form a more or less organic whole, of which the four on the Divine Origin, and on the Constitution, of the Christian Ministry keep in steady view Dr. Hatch and his German colleague Professor Harnack, while the seventh and eighth, on Apostolic Succession and on Sacerdotalism, are of the nature of a postscript, and attack the position taken up by Mr. Gore. Dr. Hatch's object was to strip the Church and its ministry

of all Divine claims and sanctions, and to explain their genesis on strictly natural grounds. Our Lord, he would tell us, founded no Church-at least in the ordinary sense of the Church as an aggregate of visible and organized societies and His apostles organized no ministry as of authoritative appointment. The tendency of the times was to organization, and the presumption was that the early Christians would organize, just as contemporary Pagans did; the differentiation of their body from other similar bodies lay, not in any supernatural character, not in the Divine promise, but in the primary stress it laid on almsgiving, thus uniting a leading characteristic of Judaism with the outward forms adopted by religious Paganism. This primary stress suggested naturally that its chief officers or officer should, together with the duties, inherit the name by which the administrator of alms was known in Pagan guilds, that, namely, of èriσ коTOS, 'bishop'; or, to put it conversely, the 'bishop' meant originally the administrator of the corporate revenues of the local Christian body, and the 'deacons' were his subordinates in that capacity. Two of the three orders of the later ministry were thus exclusively Pagan in origin; the third was jointly Pagan and Jewish. Not only were all communities of Jews governed by elders' ('presbyters '), but the municipalities had their senates and the guilds their councils, in all of which special respect was paid to seniority. But the distinguishing functions of the Christian officers were borrowed from their Jewish homonyms, and the presbyters thus exercised discipline and administered consensual jurisdiction. Such being the rationale of the Christian ministry, it is a natural and a logical deduction that in the Christian Church was no essential difference between clergy and laity. The councillor of a guild, or its administrator of alms, was in no way separable, except for purposes of the expediency of the moment, from his fellow-guildsmen. The official elected for one term might fail to secure re-election, and become the private member of the next. In the same way ordinations in the Church were made and unmade with facility, for 'ordination' itself was in its origin merely the counterpart of secular appointment to office. Since ordination was thus nothing more than a form, it is not surprising to find that, although the officers as such had a prior right, they had not an exclusive right to the performance of any ecclesiastical function. Lay, no less than officers, could upon occasion teach or preach, baptize, celebrate the Eucharist, or exercise discipline; and the Montanist movement, though in the end it failed, was a powerful and well nigh a successful reassertion

of the original conception that ecclesiastical office meant only priority of order.

Dr. Hatch sums up his historical positions as two: the development of the organization of the Christian Churches was gradual, and the elements of which that organization was composed were already existing in human society. The theological corollary which he wishes to draw from this conception of history is that it is superfluous to ask whether this or that institution is or is not primitive; we should rather ask whether all that was primitive was intended to be permanent. To this question the probable answer is negative: fixity of form from age to age is impossible. Form there must be, but the Christian Church has shown at once its vitality and its divinity by readjusting its form in successive ages. Originally a democracy-compelled by circumstances to become a monarchy-it may one day return to democracy again.

This sketch of Dr. Hatch's position is taken almost verbatim from the luminous abstract prefixed to his lectures. And yet we are conscious that we have scarcely done him justice; our only purpose has been to analyze what the ordinary reader, possibly the writer himself, has looked on as the crucial portion of the book, its account of the origines of the ministry, and we have, therefore, omitted from our survey those lectures which treat of developments introduced in the fourth and succeeding centuries, principally by the changed relations resulting from the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the State. For part of this later period Dr. Hatch's knowledge was nearly unique; and, apart from controversy, it would, we believe, be admitted that these chapters are his most valuable contribution to the science of ecclesiastical history. So it must be clearly understood that, when in the course of this review we mention Dr. Hatch's book, it is only of the earlier, and, as it seems to us, less valuable, portion of it of which we shall be speaking.

Mr. Gore's volume is much more homogeneous than Dr. Hatch's. It is an apology for the principle of the Apostolic Succession,' and is, in fact, entirely directed to the answer of the question, whether the Episcopate is an essential element in the life of the Christian Church. But within its limits, this book is the fuller and more complete of the two. Dr. Hatch pictured the early history of the Church in the light of a theory, and, with that object, selected portions of the evidence and ignored the rest, and we are far from imputing blame to him for this. Any writer who propagates a theory which he believes will clear up what was before obscure is at

liberty to choose, in the first instance, what seem the most striking confirmations of his view, and to leave to others the task of determining whether the rest of the evidence is compatible with it. At the same time the reader is, of course, prepared to follow more readily when he finds, as with Mr. Gore, that no evidence, whether at first sight favourable or unfavourable to the main position, is withdrawn from his judgment. The Ministry of the Christian Church is more than the mere presentation of a theory; it is much more than simply an answer to Dr. Hatch; at the very least it is a candid attempt to bring together all the evidence, and on the evidence to answer the question set at starting.

Mr. Gore makes, indeed, two assumptions: but they are assumptions necessary for the delimitation of the ground to be traversed in an octavo volume. He supposes, in general, an affirmative answer to all questions of the genuineness of the New Testament books, not in the least because these books are to be exempted more than any others from historical criticism, but simply because, while he is convinced himself, to convince objectors would require a treatise in itself. He is, therefore, quite aware that much of his argument does not apply to Dr. Hatch, or those who hold, like him, that the Pastoral Epistles are 'probably even less defensible' than those to the Ephesians and Colossians, or ask, like him-with what answer in view is clear enough'what is the relation of the nueîs section of the Acts of the Apostles to the rest of the book?' The speculations of Dr. Hatch and Professor Harnack are, of course, very largely coloured by their attitude towards these documents, which contain the chief evidence concerning the ministry in the Apostolic age; for those who reject the Acts, the Ephesians, the Pastoral Epistles, and the First Epistle of St. Peter, will naturally hold, as Harnack admits, quite different views on the history of the Christian ministry to those who accept them, and the objection made, we cannot but think with great reason, to Dr. Hatch's Bampton Lectures was that they postulated, while they did not state, certain very decided views on these questions. Dean Lefroy is here, of course, in much closer agreement with Mr. Gore than with Hatch and Harnack; but, though aware of the divergence of views, he does not seem to grasp the consequent alteration of attitude. Thus he writes that

I

'the appearance of Tò πрeσ ßuτépιov in 1 Tim. iv. 14 is important. That in the year 50 there should be a body known as Tò πрeσBUTÉρLOV who would co-operate with St. Paul in the solemnities of ordination,