steady decline. Once introduced, the taste for refined and sensual enjoyments rapidly spread. The monastic state, heretofore so sacred and honored in the eyes of all, was regarded with indifference, or excited contempt; and monks became either secretly vicious or openly scandalous” (p. 682).

We have not space to quote, as we should be glad to do, the passage in which our author adverts in terms of severe, but just, condemnation to the state of morals among the Catholic clergy during the Middle Ages. The passages which we have cited indicate a degree of candor on the part of Alzog which we are afraid is not very common with Romish writers. Intelligent Protestants should read such works as this. We are confident that to do so will strengthen their attachment to their faith.

LECTURES ON THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. Third Series; from the Captivity to the Christian Era. 8vo. pp. 531. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co. 1876. [Published by arrangement with the author.] In this third volume of his work the author brings the history of the Jewish church from the period of the Babylonian captivity to that of our Saviour's birth. The book opens with a powerful description of the fall of Babylon, which is followed by an account of the Persian dominion. The character and peculiar work of Ezra and Nehemiah are sketched with a master hand. With an account of the life and labors of Malachi the prophetic period is brought to a close. The author now boldly traverses the historical desert which separates the Old Testament from the New. He opens for us the Grecian period with an account of the life and work of Socrates, showing the vast influence exerted by that remarkable man, not only upon Christianity but upon Judaism itself. The invasion of Antiochus Epiphanes and the deliverance of his country by Judas Maccabaeus are described with great power. The closing chapters upon the Roman era, by giving us a minute account of the life and public work of Herod the Great, prepare us for the volume which is yet to come upon the Jewish church in the time of our Saviour.

The style of the present volume is even more graphic and brilliant than that of the two which have preceded it. Every page of the book reveals to us the author's breadth of view and extent of learning. While strictly confining his attention to the comparatively narrow development of Jewish history, he makes it the stand-point from which we may behold the contemporaneous progress of the world. The successive characters mentioned in the book are brought upon the stage with a rapidity which is breathless and an animation which is dramatic; no hero is presented to us alone, but each one in connection with the men of his time and the circumstances in which he moved. Dean Stanley may well be called the Macaulay of church history. He brings to the illumination of scriptural records the same powerful imagination and masterly arrangement of detail which charac

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terize the great historian of England. Yet Macaulay himself admits that men doubt the solidity of a structure which is covered with flowers," and the distinguishing merit of the present volume is connected with its possible deficiency. The very brilliancy of the work will suggest a doubt as to whether it is invariably accurate; and some men will suspect that the author aims to make his pages fascinating rather than true. It is due, however, to the greatest living master of sacred history to say, that we are not aware of a single important statement in his work which can be disproved.

Translated by Rev.
Edinburgh: T. and

LETTERS OF Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. J. G. Cunningham, Lochwinnich. 8vo. pp. 480. T. Clark; New York: Scribner, Welford, and Armstrong. 1875. We need not say that these letters are full of interest. The translation is perspicuous and natural. Mr. Cunningham has rendered an important service to his readers in appending to some noted sentences the original Latin. Thus we have, on page 22, the celebrated words: "Sicut ergo secundum quemdam modum sacramentum corporis Christi corpus Christi est, sacramentum sanguinis Christi sanguis Christi est, ita sacramentum fidei fides est.

Writings of John Wingate Thornton. Two of the volumes published by this author were to have been noticed during our centennial year; but they have a value independent of times and seasons. One of them is entitled: THE PULPIT OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION; or, the Political Sermons of the Period of 1776. With a Historical Introduction, Notes, and Illustrations. Boston: D. Lothrop and Co. 1876.

This is the second edition of the work; the first was published in 1860. The sermons forming the bulk of the volume are serious and deep. They illustrate the character of the American people.

The second volume of Mr. Thornton appeared in 1874, and is entitled: THE HISTORICAL RELATION OF NEW ENGLAND TO THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. By John Wingate Thornton. 8vo. pp. 105. This is a compressed recital of facts, accompanied with many terse quotations, regarding the power exerted by the New England Colonies, more especially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on the Commonwealth of England. Mr. Thornton is eminently successful in hunting up what Mr. Carlyle calls "the interesting reciprocities and mutualities between New England and her old mother, which ought to be disentangled, to be made conspicuous and beautiful" (p. 33). "I propose to show, step by step, by exact historical evidence, that the English Commonwealth was the daughter of New England, the reflex of the New on the Old; for ideas control the world and create institutions, while men are merely players. The political ideas of the Pilgrims have penetrated the thought and life of both lands"

(p. 46). Robert Baillie, in his Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, 1645, p. 54, says: "Master Robinson did derive his way to his separate congregation at Leyden; a part of them did carry it over to Plymouth in New England; here Master Cotton did take it up and transmit it from thence to Master Goodwin, who did help to propagate it to sundry others in Old England first, and after to more in Holland, till now by many hands it is sown thick in divers parts of this kingdom" (p. 42). The religious influence exerted by the fathers of New England was also political. It must have been so. The science of theology and the science of politics are intimately blended. The religious spirit intertwines itself with the spirit of patriotism. In various particulars it is easy to see the bearing of the New England principles in ecclesiastical and political science upon the opinions and practice of the English divines and statesmen.

Among the prominent men in New England who early exerted an influence upon prominent men in Old England, Mr. Thornton names Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Shepherd, Allen, Mather. The Rev. John Cotton is known to have had a personal influence over Archbishop Usher and Lord Say; upon Thomas Goodwin, John Davenport, Philip Nye, John Owen, and other men who were powers in the mother country. Dr. Goodwin, for example, who was president of Magdalen College, Oxford, was an important adviser of Cromwell, and a leader of the nonconformists. Dr. Owen exerted his great influence not only as an author, but also as the vicechancellor of Oxford University, and as an intimate friend of Cromwell. One of Owen's pupils was John Locke, whose political power is even yet conspicuous. In the family of Mr. Cotton at Boston, Massachusetts, Sir Henry Vane resided when a young man, and under Cotton's personal influence was educated for his great work in the British House of Commons. The treatises which Cotton, Hooker, Norton, Shepherd, and Mather printed in America were extensively read in Great Britain. "These treatises were often 'published' and circulated in manuscript before being printed. For instance: Mr. Cotton's 'discourse' or 'treatise,' sent to Archbishop Usher in 1626, at his desire to know what Mr. Cotton' conceived of the way of God's eternal Predestination, and the Execution of it,' seems to have been multiplied in manuscript copies, and was ' in hands of many,' for more than twenty years, and was finally printed, together with an examination thereof, written by William Twisse, D.D., pastor of Newbury.' London, 1646, pp. vii. 288.8. See Cotton's letter in Parr's Life of Usher, reprinted in N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg., 1870. Oct. Twisse's Epistle unto the Reader, and marginal note on p. 261. Others of Cotton's books were 'published,' in manuscript, years before they were printed. Dr. Twisse was President of the Westminster Assembly" (p. 53). When we reflect on the learning and the spirit of several New England divines like those above named, and on the character of the above-named scholars and statesmen in Old England, we should be prepared to believe, had we no other proof, that VOL. XXXIV. No. 134.

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there went forth from these colonies an important influence on the politics as well as religion of Great Britain.

Among the changes effected in Old England through the agency in part of the men in New England, Mr. Thornton makes general references to the various measures adopted to secure the toleration of different religions and political opinions, and to give more liberty of action, as well as thought, to the common people. He makes particular reference to the reform of the British civil law in relation to the "inconveniences, delays, charges, and irregularities" in legal proceedings. "The late Prescott Hall declared that 'the known defects in the laws and practice of England, pointed out and most strikingly stated by Lord Brougham in his great speech upon Law Reforms, delivered in the House of Commons in 1828, were discovered and banished from the New England States while they were yet colonies under the British crown. But we must leave this attractive inquiry, fitter for a volume than a page, with the emphatic declaration of one whose opinion is authoritative in this department : 'Certainly,' says Dr. George H. Moore, of New York, Massachusetts has given the law to the United States more literally than either her friends or enemies have ever cared to claim or acknowledge; and the diligent student of legal antiquities may recognize in her earliest codes the expression of principles of reformation which have since pervaded the whole realm of English law" (pp. 77, 78).

"The system of commercial policy contained in the Navigation Act of Oct. 9, 1651" is also ascribed by Mr. Thornton in part to a New England influence. This system was initiated by Sir George Downing, whose "early youth had been passed on the seaboard of New England, where the spirit of enterprise and trade had from the beginning found its most genial home. His mind was formed and his genius shaped in Salem, where commerce and navigation were then, as they have ever since been, the chief topics of interest among the people. Hugh Peters was his kinsman, pastor, and instructor, at the very time when that enlightened statesman was laying the foundations of American navigation and commerce, and revealing to the colonists the relations, and circulations, and mysteries of the coasting and foreign trade, and pointing out to them the value of the fisheries, as contributing to the mercantile and naval strength of a people" (pp. 78, 79).

Mr. Thornton also refers to Sir George Downing's plan of specific parliamentary appropriations, introduced Oct. 21, 1667; a plan which Sir George had brought from New England (p. 74).

In treating of the Relation of New England to the English Commonwealth, Mr. Thornton naturally and very happily alludes to various sources from which New England derived its power. One of these sources was the radical character of the opposition made by our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers to the spirit and forms of Romanism. In this particular the fathers

of New England were in thorough agreement with the Calvinists of the Old World. From this radical antipathy to Romanizing tendencies certain evils have resulted. Under the impulse of it many precious works of art were mutilated or destroyed. Still, the people of that day needed extreme measures; not all, perhaps, which were actually adopted. Mr. Thornton says: "The reformers and their precursors, Waldo, Wicliffe, and Iuss, were like skirmishers on the enemies' frontiers, engaged in light combats, at a distance from each other; but the first to organize hostilities against Rome, the first general in the field to combine the forces in aggressive and systematic war, was John Calvin. Rome never felt a deadlier wound than that inflicted by Calvin's policy of quick and thorough destruction of its ecclesiastical pageantry, imagery, and symbolism. It proposed a revolution sharp and decisive, rather than a halting, lingering, reformation, like that in England. The pulpit and the Bible in the vernacular superseded the altar with its priestly mediation and anathema, oblations, and idols, clouds of incense and glitter of ornament, gorgeous vestments, punctilious ceremonies, and drawling of dead words "3 (pp. 5, 6).

Another source of the power acquired by New England fathers was their regard for the distinctive preaching of the gospel. In this particular they were in hearty sympathy with the reformers. "The Reformation was,' says Mr. Carlyle, ' a return to truth and reality in opposition to falsehood and semblance.' Lord Bacon, in his Controversies of the Church, 1589, says: "They have made it in a manner of the essence of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to have a sermon precedent. They have, in a sort, annihilated the use of liturgies and divine service.' The travelled observer, Sir Edwin Sandys, son of the archbishop, a man pleasantly associated with the Pilgrim Fathers, and whose books had the honor to be burned in Paul's churchyard, by order of the High Commission, in 1605, records in his Europae Speculum, 1599, p. 76, that' the first and chiefe meanes, whereby the Reformers of religion did prevaile in all places, was ... preaching,...

1 "Where images were left there was most contest, but most peace where they were all sheer pulled down, as they were in some places.' Strype in IIallam's England, i. 86. Ye ceremonies and servis booke and other popish and antichristian stuff, the plague of England to this day,” caid our Governor Bradford in 1630. 'Not daring to eke out what was defective in our light, in matters divine, with human prudence, the fatal error to reformation, lest by sewing any picce of the 'old garment' into the 'new,' we should make the 'rent' worse.' - An Apologetical Narration to Parliament, by Goodwin, Nye, et al., 1643."

2 "The vestments 'led to erroneous notions among the people, and kept alive a recollection of former superstitions, which render their return to them more easy in the event of another political revolution.' — Hallam, i. 175.”

8 "The mysteriousness of an unknown dialect served to impose on the vulgar, and to throw an air of wisdom around the priesthood.' — Hallam's England, 1866, i. 86."