rival to the dogmas of Trent, and systematic divinity reigned as before the Reformation. An age must be dogmatic which comments on commentaries. Luther on the Galatians was as much the authority of the Lutheran party for St. Paul's meaning of the doctrine of justification by faith as Augustin's treatises had been of the Medieval Church for her dogma of original sin. Calvin was in the same way set up as the interpreter of the Reformed party. Between these great names there was little room for fresh and independent research, grounded on the study of the Scriptures themselves. The Church was insensibly exalted from being the keeper to be also the interpreter of holy writ. The dread of the charge of novelty lay heavy on all the Reformers, and their writings therefore betray their patristic leanings, under cover of which they sought to escape the reproach of being innovators. With the exception of Calvin, whose commentaries have the freshness of first draughts from the well-head of Scripture, the Reformers returned to the manufacture of catenas, loci communes, bodies of divinity, and other substitutes for the original study of Scripture, according to its grammatical meaning. Even the followers of Calvin became plus Calvinistes que Calvin, and interpreted their master rather by the Institutes, his earliest and unripest study, than by the Commentaries, which was the work of later years and deeper experience. It took another century to break down the credit of the dogmatic method. There were reformers after the Reformation, as well as before. The Arminian party first raised the standard of revolt against the prevailing dogmatism, and like all sects persecuted in their infancy, appealed to Scripture for support against the doctrine taught by authority. Chillingworth, the most Protestant of Protestant divines, took the same ground in England, and advancing on anything hitherto taught in Oxford, set up the Bible as the sole rule of faith and judge of all controversies. Bacon was not a divine,

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and perhaps for that reason had a clearer sense than any mind outside the Puritan party of the weak point of the Reformation, and recommended a freer development of Protestantism than was then in favour either with the court or the clergy. Had his wise counsels been followed, Puritanism would never have grown into a great schism between the two parties of Reformers, throwing the one party back into Laudism, and driving forward the other into Independency. Selden was another eminent name among these Reformers after the Reformation. The most learned man of his time, if he had turned his attention to theology, he would have left something of more enduring interest than a treatise "Tithes 99 or The Gods of Syria." He has said in his "Table Talk" that laymen have best interpreted the hard places in the Bible, such as Johannes, Picus, Scaliger, Grotius, Salmasius, Heinsius, &c. The hints which he throws out of the kind of commentary which was wanting, make us regret the more that he did not add his name to the list of those laymen who, he says, took the lead as Biblical critics. Bacon, in his " Survey of Learning," had reported that the true and sound interpretation of the Scriptures was deficient. "For this divine water, which excelleth so much that of Jacob's well, is drawn forth much in the same kind as natural water useth to be out of wells and fountains ; either it is first forced up into a cistern, and from thence fetched and derived for use; or else it is drawn and received in buckets and vessels immediately where it springeth. The former sort whereof, though it seem to be the more ready, yet in my judgment is more subject to corrupt. This is that method which hath exhibited unto us the scholastical divinity; whereby divinity hath been reduced into an art, as into a cistern, and the streams of doctrine or positions fetched and derived from thence." Selden would have supplied this deficiency better than any man of his age; as it was, he contented himself with throwing out hints, in his "Table

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Talk," as to how a commentary ought to be written without supplying the defect, of which he was as conscious as Bacon. He remarks that the Scripture may have more senses besides the literal, because God understands all things at once; but a man's writing has but one true sense, which is that which the author meant when he writ it. Again he says: "Make no more allegories in Scripture than needs must. Fathers were too frequent in them; they indeed, before they fully understood the literal sense, looked out for an allegory. The folly whereof you may conceive thus: here at the first sight appears to me in my window a glass and a book; whereupon I go about to tell you what they signify; afterwards, upon nearer view, they prove no such thing; one is a box made like a book, the other is a picture made like a glass. Where's now my allegory.'

These were the pregnant hints of a thinker who was in advance of his age. The scholastic age had not died out with the Reformation. On the contrary, the first impulse given by Protestantism to Biblical studies had rather tended to revive scholasticism; but still inquiry went on. The critical study of the original began at Oxford with Brian Walton and Pocock. Both Laud and Charles were liberal to learning, though to nothing else. The Archbishop was a discerning patron, and the "Lord Almoner's Reader in Arabic " remains to this day as a monument of his appreciation of critical studies bearing on the interpretation of Scripture. Cromwell was not behindhand in the same patronage of sacred criticism. It seemed as if it was the only study which did not suffer by the civil war. Whether King, Parliament, or Lord Protector were supreme, Scripture criticism never wanted a patron in London, or an asylum in Oxford. Colleges were purged, and fellows ejected, but Biblical studies never stood still,

* Selden's "Table Talk."

With Dr. Owen, an Independent, as Vice-Chancellor of the University, Brian Walton held his ground at Oxford at the time when Jeremy Taylor was meditating on his "Golden Grove" in exile at Lord Carbury's grounds in Wales, and Hammond and Saunderson were glad to enjoy the hospitality of a citizen's house in London. The true interpretation of Scripture, grounded on the critical study of the original, then took root in Oxford, and has steadily grown ever since. In Bishop Patrick and Louth the grammatical school of expositors took their position, which they have held ever since. There have been attempts at reaction, but they have always failed. Mysticism and allegory have shrouded themselves under the venerable names of the Fathers, but hardly any commentator of any reputation has, for the last century at least, advanced these interpretations in propria persona. The manufacture of catena has always occupied a small number of a certain school. To this day they appear occasionally from the press. Mr. Newland has just published a catena on St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians; and Dr. Wordsworth's edition of the Greek Testament is reactionary in a certain sense; it is more of a catena and less of a commentary than is usual in this age. But these are the exceptions, not the rule. We have much less to complain of on this score than Mr. Jowett would have us suppose. Mr. Jowett must not measure our theology by the few catenary divines of Oxford, who still survive the Tractarian movement of 1833. We can produce Mr. Pattison as testimony that even the least critical commentators of our times have sounder principles of interpretation than Mr. Jowett would give them credit for. He shows (p. 278, "Essays and Reviews"), in opposition to Mr. Neale, that modern divines are more truly Scriptural than the medieval. The middle age ecclesiastics may have quoted the letter of the Vulgate more frequently, but they did so by allegorising its meaning, and giving it a fanciful twist very far from the original. This the

modern divine dares not do. He has a better knowledge of the original, and however he improves a passage or spiritualizes it, he builds it upon the foundation of the grammatical meaning. If he dared to do otherwise he would be speedily discomfited, as the Puritan divines were by Selden-" Perhaps in your little pocket Bibles with gilt leaves the translation may be thus; but the Greek or Hebrew signifies otherwise."

To draw our remarks to a conclusion, we would break the force of much that Mr. Jowett has said in his essay by observing of it that "what is new is not true, and what is true is not new." It is not new to assert that the natural or grammatical interpretation of Scripture is the right one. We have seen why it was that this obvious principle was not sooner adopted as the right one, and why the mystical and dogmatical held their ground so long, and are not even yet abandoned as entirely as we should wish them to be. In all this Mr. Jowett has been anticipated by many others, who have made the same complaint, and proposed the same remedy. Hebrew is still behind Greek criticism in this country, and we have no Alfords and Ellicotts of the Old Testament to cope with the Eichorns and Ewalds of Germany. But the principle is admitted, though we are not able yet to carry it out. Hence a commentary on the Old Testament abreast of the age-orthodox, devout, and scholarly-is a contribution for which we must yet wait. But as no one pretending to comment on either the Hebrew or Greek would do so in the style of the Fathers and schoolmen, a great deal of what Mr. Jowett has written is only beating the air. His words return to himself, like a boomerang, having curvetted in the air, but has struck no one except the thrower.

And again, what is new is scarcely true. Mr. Jowett's principle, to interpret the Bible like any other book, is one of those rash half-truths which are pernicious in proportion as they are plausible; it is a negative