and the Ionic race and free governments, against Sparta, and the Dorian race and oligarchies. He represents Sparta as an unnatural state, deformed by artificial restraints, and meeting the vengeance of injured nature by her very attempts to defeat the sway of nature's laws; a state glorying in her freedom, and yet the home of the most abject slavery, enjoining the most unnatural self-denial in her citizens, and yet those citizens, in regard to other Greeks, the most selfish of the Hellenes-her rulers debarred by law from wealth, and yet the most accessible to bribery of all Greeks. He so vindicates Athens, as even to defend the ostracism, as being necessary in a government whose greatest danger consisted in the excessive power and usurpations of distinguished men. He maintains, that the right of ostracism, instead of being used capriciously, was employed with signal justice and forbearance, and that even the exile of Aristides was demanded by the public weal, on account of his great influence in the nation and his notorious attachment to oligarchical institutions. How much Mr. Bulwer's views of Athens may be tinged by the radicalism of his English politics cannot fairly be ascertained. He denies being tinctured in his history by any party prejudices.

This work bears witness of much research and of very exact scholarship in the writer. One, to be sure, is very easily deceived by a parade of learning, and the reader may too readily trust in the wondrous erudition of the book, from the display of learning made in the notes. But if the writer has made too much display, or pretended to more learning than he possesses, he will undoubtedly suffer for it. He has spoken so decidedly on many points, and dealt so freely with the good name of such historians, as Mitford, and even the German Müller, that vengeance will come upon him for all the faults of his history. The London Quarterly will probably come down in all its wrath upon the historic champion of Attic Democracy.

The author trusts, in his Preface, that his work will give the best extant account of the letters, institutions, and life of the Greeks. When we have read the two forth-coming volumes, we can tell better, how far this trust is warranted.

A letter to the Rt. Hon. and Hon. the Members of both Houses of Parliament, regarding the Doctrines of the Established Church. By the AUTHOR OF the APOLOGY OF AN OFFICER, FOR WITHDRAWING FROM THE PROFESSION OF ARMS. Printed for the Author, for voluntary distribution. 1836.This Letter was written by Thomas Thrush, Esq. of Harrogate, England, formerly a captain in the British navy, but induced

many years ago to lay down his commission from conscientious scruples in regard to the consistency of the profession of arms with a Christian life. It is an earnest appeal to Parliament so far to reform the Articles and Liturgy of the Established Church as to exclude every vestige of the doctrine of the Trinity, the same being, as he undertakes briefly to demonstrate, a radical and most injurious corruption of the truth as it is in Jesus. Whether in point of fact he is likely to obtain a respectful audience in the quarter to which he looks, may well be doubted; but most of our readers will be convinced by the following paragraph, that he is entitled to such audience, whether he obtains it, or not.

"Permit me, my Lords and Gentlemen, in taking my leave of you, solemnly to assure you, that, in thus addressing you, I have no party, no sectarian views to promote. I am far advanced in life; and to court the approbation, or fear the censure, of the world, on such a subject, would be equally unwise. I must, probably, be shortly called to account for my conduct before a greatly superior tribunal. The life-giving truths that the FATHER is the ONLY TRUE GOD, and that Jesus Christ is sent by him, I have thought it a sacred duty to advocate. If, in doing this, from feeling warmly the high importance of my subject, any expression may have escaped me irreconcilable with the respect and duty I owe you, I humbly intreat your forgiveness. Should I be deemed guilty of presumption in addressing you at all, the importance of the subject must be my apology. At present, skepticism, fanaticism, and lukewarmness materially neutralize the effects that Christianity is destined to produce. These, in part at least, arise from those mysterious, not to say incredible doctrines, which are by many deemed the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Alluding to such doctrines, Dr. Paley remarks; That whatever renders religion more rational, renders it more credible; that he who, by a diligent and faithful examination of the original records, dismisses from the system one article which contradicts the apprehension, the experience, or the reasoning of mankind, does more towards recommending the belief, and with the belief, the influence, of Christianity, to the understandings and consciences of serious inquirers, and through them to universal reception and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for creeds and ordinances of human establishment."

-p. 10.

ART. I. Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Clement of Alexandria. By JOHN, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. London. 1835. 8vo. pp. 472.

WE took some notice in a former volume,* of Bishop Kaye's work on the Writings and Opinions of Justin Martyr, published in 1829. This was preceded by one on Tertullian. The present, as will be seen by the title placed above, relates to Clement of Alexandria. The object of the Bishop is, in a series of publications of this sort, to illustrate the ecclesiastical history of the early centuries, by copious extracts from the writings of the Fathers, accompanied with a general account of the contents of the remaining portion of them. He does not enter minutely into the literary history of their writings, and his biographical notices are exceedingly brief. His extracts, however, are, in the main, well chosen, and perspicuously and faithfully translated. Accompanying them, or subjoined to them, Dr. Kaye gives a statement of the opinions of the writer on all subjects of importance. In doing this, he sometimes allows his Church of England prejudices, and especially the necessity he feels himself

* Christian Examiner, Vol. II. N. S. pp. 140 and 303.

VOL. XXIII. 3D S. VOL. V. NO. II.

Art. Justin Martyr,

18

under, to find the Trinity in the productions of the early ages, to give a coloring to his statements. Some of his positions are altogether indefensible. The volumes he has given us, however, are very creditable to his industry; he has evidently bestowed no little thought on them, though we discover in them no proof of extraordinary research or compass of reading. On the whole, we regard them as a valuable acquisition, and should be glad often to meet the author on similar ground. They present a favorable view of the merits of the Fathers, of their merits as writers, much too favorable, for as the Bishop gives only the best portion of their works, and omits a great deal that is obscure, prolix, marked by bad taste, incoherent reasoning, and false and absurd interpretation of the Scriptures, his extracts furnish no true specimen of their general style and method.

*

Of the personal history of Clement very little is known. The sum of what can be gleaned from himself, from Eusebius, Jerome, and other sources, may be told in a few lines. Jerome says that he flourished in the days of Severus, and his son, Antonine, that is, at the end of the second and beginning of the third century, but the time of his birth and death he does not tell us, nor has history preserved any record of it. The place of his birth is equally uncertain. Both Athens and Alexandria are mentioned by different writers, but on no better ground than conjecture. We have the authority of Eusebius for believing that he was a convert from heathenism. It is certain that he was presbyter of the church of Alexandria, and for some time head of the catechetic school in that place; that he was the disciple of Pantænus, and among his pupils numbered the celebrated Origen.† To Pantænus, he is supposed to refer, when, in his Stromata, speaking of his instructers, after enumerating several, as (if we understand him, for the passage is somewhat obscure) one in Greece, one in Italy, the former from Cole-Syria, the latter from Egypt, besides two more, one an Assyrian and the other a native of Palestine, by descent a Hebrew, he says, that the last with whom he met was the first in merit, that he found him concealed in Egypt, and having discovered him, he desisted from further search. "He was," says Clement, "in truth, a Sicilian bee, who, cropping the flowers of the

* De Viris Illustribus.

† Euseb. Hist. Lib. VI. c. 6.

Prophetic and Apostolic meadow, caused a pure knowledge to grow up in the minds of his hearers."* These men, he says, preserved the tradition of the "blessed doctrine as delivered by Peter, and James, and John, and Paul, the holy Apostles," and handed down from father to son, though, he adds, "few resemble their fathers." The Stromata, one of his principal works, contains, among other things, according to his own account of it, the reminiscences of what he learned from them, which, as he tells us, he records as an antidote against forgetfulness, and a treasure against old age.

Eusebius, in the sixth book of his history, and Jerome, in his short account of "illustrious men," have left us a catalogue of Clement's writings, apparently, however, incomplete. Of these, some are lost, but we have still the Hortatory Address to the Greeks, the Pædagogue, the Stromata, and a

* Stromata, Lib. I. Opp. T. I. p. 322, Ed. Potter. † c. 13.

Of these the Hypotyposes, or Institutions, in eight books, is particularly to be regretted, on account of the historical information which, according to Eusebius, it contained, particularly an abridged account of the canonical writings of the New Testament, together with those then considered as of doubtful genuineness, as the Book of Jude, and other catholic Epistles, as also the Epistle of Barnabas, and Revelation of Peter. The tradition relating to the order in which the Gospels were written, to the origen in particular of Mark's Gospel, and the purpose of John in writing his, too, is given by Eusebius as a quotation from the Hypotyposes. From the same source it appears that Clement asserted that the Epistle to the Hebrews was written by Paul in Hebrew, and translated by Luke. Euseb. Hist. Lib. VI. c. 14, also Lib. II. c. 15. The work, no doubt, embodied several traditions, which it would be desirable to possess. It contained, according to Photius, some errors of doctrine, or what in his time were esteemed such. In it, he says, Clement makes the Son a creature; matter he represents as eternal; and he asserts the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and says that there was a succession of worlds before Adam. These, and several other doctrines, which he enumerates, Photius says, Clement attempted to defend by quotations from the Scriptures. That Clement might have held these, and other views mentioned by Photius, however some admirers of the Fathers may be shocked at the thought, is by no means improbable, as they are found amongst that assemblage of philosophical opinions which found a ready reception in the schools of Alexandria in the time of Clement, and many of which, as his writings show, he incorporated into his theology.