to those who have elevated themselves to God. What we call sin, in the world, is only a negation, a lack, and is not recognized as a positive entity, by God. All things real thus proceed forth from him, and hold their existence, course, and destiny, of him.

Man contains in himself both the intellectual world and the material or sensible world; which would be separated by an abyss were they not united in him. He is the microcosm, the summary of all the elements of the universe; for there is nothing, material or immaterial, but is found living, sentient, and subsisting in him. Thus constituted, he was designed, by the Creator, as the medium in which all contrarieties should be reconciled, all variety united, and through which all things should return to God. In his original condition, he was a pure spirit, with an immortal body, composed not of matter, but of a celestial element-[how then did he contain the material world?]; and it was not till he sinned that his soul was obliged to form for itself an earthly body. He still retains the original celestial body within the present material one; he retains his moral freedom, also, and is still the summary of all things. But his fall interrupted the communication of the world with God, and spread disorder through the whole, so that he could no longer fulfil his function as the reconciling medium. Jesus Christ took his place, and repaired what man had broken. He will accomplish the original design, bringing all humanity into its harmonious relation with God; and, as all creation is contained in humanity, the whole will thus be restored together.

This is the last and grand act in the divine drama-the return of all things to God. Adopting the axiom of Origen, (De Principiis,) he says that the end must be as the beginning; for the conclusion is determined beforehand by the agencies in which the commencement arose; and, moreover, we actually see, that, in all nature, every thing tends back to its origin. The first step in the return of humanity to God, is the death of the body, by which man is loosed from the degrading bonds of matter; the second, is the resurrection; which will be followed by the transfiguration of the body into a spiritual body, and the restoration of the whole being to the state of those primary ideas which existed in the Son as the original types. The pro

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cess will be completed when man, containing all things in himself, shall live in perfect union with God. Then God alone will appear. His creatures will not be absorbed in him, so as to lose their identity; they will be transfigured with his likeness. As the air still exists when the light of the sun thoroughly illumines it; as the iron has not ceased to be, when, all red in the flame, it seems changed into fire; so our souls will subsist, more beautiful, united with God, penetrated and clothed with his glory. Evil, with its attendant, misery, will be abolished from the universe; for it has no substantial existence, and the goodness of God, which alone is eternal and infinite, must overcome. Not only with men, but with the fallen angels also, and with the demons themselves, evil will disappear, and the nature which God has made will be resuscitated free and purified.

The eternal fire, the worm that dieth not, and all the punishments of the kind, which are threatened in the Scriptures, are to be realized only in the thoughts of the creature. It is the deranged will alone, and not the human nature, which is to be punished. We need not show how futile is this distinction; but our author tries to illustrate it. When an earthly judge convicts a culprit, what does he condemn in him? his nature? or only that will of his, which has done the wrong? Certainly, his will only. As he cannot, however, separate the one from the other, he punishes them both at the same time. But what the earthly judge cannot do, the Supreme Judge accomplishes without difficulty. He will separate the disordered will from the nature, maintain the latter in its purity, and leave the former alone to suffer the wrong it has done.

We have thus endeavored to indicate the prominent features of the system which Scotus Erigena wrought out in the ninth century, an interesting monument of that age. It stands between the defunct philosophy of the Alexandrian Neoplatonicians, and the Scholastic, of after times. When we began, we thought only to give a brief statement of it, among our Literary Notices; but being struck by the similarity, if not identity, of its leading philosophical elements with those which have been revived in our day, we were led to insert some reflections, which the perusal of Taillandier's work suggested.

H. B. 2d.

ART. VII.

Literary Notices.

1. Corpus Ignatianum: a Complete Collection of the Ignatian Epistles, Genuine, Interpolated, and Spurious; together with numerous Extracts from them, as quoted by ecclesiastical writers down to the tenth century; in Greek, Syriac and Latin: an English Translation of the Syriac Text, copious Notes, and Introduction, by William Cureton, M. A., F. R. S. Chaplain in ordinary to her Majesty the Queen. London: Francis & John Rivington, &c. 1849. 8vo. pp. lxxxvii. 365.

An ancient Syriac Version of three Epistles of St. Ignatius has been recently discovered, differing considerably from all the Greek copies of them, which were previously in use.

Mr. Cureton's work is an edition of this Syriac Version, accompanied with a complete Apparatus for a critical judgment of the Ignatian question, which has been the subject of so much doubt and controversy.

A special interest has attached to the Epistles of Ignatius, from their being the only ecclesiastical writings, before the third centu ry, in which Bishops are recognized as an order of Christian ministers distinct from Presbyters. Of course, Episcopalians have appealed to them as proof of the prelatical constitution of the primitive church; while the rest of Protestant Christendom has sought to invalidate the documents, or to show that they are not in point. It is worthy of remark, that the Bishops spoken of by Ignatius, though apparently of rank superior to Presbyters, are not such Bishops as the modern, that is, diocesans, but merely overseers of single churches; a distinction which neutralizes the force of the Episcopalian argument.

There is something, in the literary history of the Ignatian Epistles, that awakens distrust. 1. That Ignatius wrote Epistles, of some kind, appears from an expression of Polycarp, (A. D. 108117,) if the passage in this latter author be not an interpolation. Irenæus also, (A. D. 180–190,) quotes a sentence, as the saying of some Christian who had suffered martyrdom by being condemned to wild beasts; and that sentence is found in one of the Epistles of Ignatius. In Theophilus of Antioch, (about A. D. 181,) there is a quaint notion, which is the same with one in the present copies of Ignatius; and which may have been derived from him, though this is not certain. Origen (about A. D. 230,) quotes two sentences expressly from Ignatius, which are now found in his Epistles. These are the only traces, with which we meet, of any such writings till we come down to the time of VOL. VII. 10

Eusebius, (about A. D. 330,) who ascribes to Ignatius seven Epistles, namely, to the Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, Romans, Philadelphians, to Polycarp, and to the Smyrneans. From some of these, he also quotes extracts, which are still found in their places, in our current copies. In subsequent ages, these and other Epistles of Ignatius are frequently spoken of. It may be well to observe, that all the allusions, before Eusebius, may be traced to some of the three Epistles given in the Syriac Version, namely, the Epistles to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. -2. We pass onward to the Revival of learning in the West. From A. D. 1495, when the first printed edition of Ignatius is thought to have appeared, to A. D. 1557, there were published, under his name, no less than fifteen Epistles, but from Latin manuscripts only. More than half of these have long been universally regarded as spurious. The Greek text was first printed, in 1557, from a manuscript in the library at Augsburg, containing twelve Epistles. To these were added, in some of the subsequent editions, the three which have never been found except in the Latin,—making fifteen again in all. In the early part of the next century, the learned began to criticize the text; and it was soon concluded that only the seven Greek Epistles, mentioned by Eusebius, were genuine, and these perhaps interpolated. Only the Longer Recension (so called) of these, had as yet been discovered. In 1644, Archbishop Usher first published what is called the Shorter Recension of the seven Epistles, but from Latin manuscripts which he had found in England. Two years

afterwards, Isaac Vossius first issued the same Recension, in Greek, from a manuscript in the Medicean Library at Florence; and in the next year, (1647,) Usher gave another edition, revised from his former one, and from that of Vossius. From this date onwards, the Shorter Recension has been, with few exceptions, preferred to the Longer, although it has been generally supposed, by those who acknowledged its genuineness in the main, to be more or less interpolated. Many, however, have thought that all the Epistles, in whatever form, were either spurious, or else so much corrupted as to be totally unworthy of confidence. The extravagant authority and sacredness which they attribute to the clergy, the distinction they make between Bishops and Presbyters, the ostentation, apparently studied, with which they often designate Christ as God, together with other peculiarities in which they obviously differ from the rest of the early Christian writings, have been frequently urged against them. Some of these very objections, however, have endeared them to the more zealous partisans of episcopacy. The controversy, with respect to the worth of their evidence on this latter subject, began on the first appearance

of a Greek copy in 1557; it raged with much vehemence from 1660 to 1674; it has been partially revived at several subsequent periods. 3. From the time of Archbishop Usher, it has been known that there were Syriac manuscripts of Ignatian Epistles; but the editors were baffled in their search for them. At length, in 1839, the Rev. H. Tattam brought from the convents in the valley of Nitria, Egypt, a number of Syriac manuscripts; and among them was found the Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp, in an ancient Syriac version. In 1843, he brought thence three or four hundred more manuscripts; among which were the three Epistles of Ignatius to Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans, in the same version. In 1847, the rest of the Syriac manuscripts at Nitria, was obtained, and another copy of the three Epistles discovered. Mr. Cureton's Syriac edition is made from a collation of these three manuscripts; which appear to have been transcribed in the sixth and seventh centuries, and to have come from Mesopotamia. He infers, from a variety of considerations, which seem very strong, that the three Epistles, above named, are the only genuine ones, and that the Syriac version presents them in their true form. Such is the literary history of the matter.

The Epistle to Polycarp, in Syriac, is but a little more than two-thirds as long as in the Shorter Greek Recension, omitting nearly the whole of chapters vii and viii, in the latter; the Epistle to the Ephesians, not quite half as long as in the same Recension; and the Epistle to the Romans, about two-thirds of its length in the Greek. Many passages, in these three Epistles, which had been suspected by critics, are wanting in the Syriac; the whole appears in a simpler style than formerly; and several expressions concerning the authority of the clergy and the Godhead of Christ, are omitted, as well as some that relate to future punishment. All that we can say, however, in these respects, is that the general tone of the Epistles is considerably softened; for they still contain expressions that do not harmonize with the language of the other Apostolical Fathers, on the authority of Bishops, and the person of Christ. These considerations seem to demand a more rigorous inquiry whether even the Syriac Recension is wholly exempt from the frauds which, it is certain, have been practised to a very great extent under the name of Ignatius.

Mr. Cureton published the Syriac Version of the three Epistles, with an English translation and Notes, in 1845. Of his later and much larger work, now under notice, the contents and arrangements are as follows: 1. Introduction, or the literary history of the Ignatian Epistles, from 1495 to the present time; particularly of the Syriac manuscripts recently discovered. 2. The Syriac Version of the three Epistles, and the supposed Greek