marriages, regarding them as sinful; but in this they erred in com mon with Tertullian and many other eminent persons. A third charge against them was, that they did not pay due reverence to the martyrs, nor allow that there was any virtue in their reliques ! — A plain proof of their good sense.'

"We are informed by Mosheim, that the schism which thus originated at Rome, soon extended to other places. "It was followed by many," says he, "and their societies flourished, until the fifth century, in the greatest part of those provinces which had received the gospel." One cannot but lament the scantiness of our information concerning this class of Christians, who appear to have had the truth among them, and to have walked in obedience to the commands of God.

Another feature of these early times, which the author considers as supporting his views, is contained in the subsequent passage:

The senate of Constantinople deputed an orator, of the name of Themistius, to express their loyal devotion to the new emperor. His oration is preserved, and merits particular attention, for the discovery which it inadvertently makes of the state of the established Catholic church at that period. "In the recent changes," says he, "both religions have been alternately disgraced, by the seeming acquisition of worthless proselytes, of those votaries of the reigning purple, who could pass, without a reason and without a blush, from the church to the temple, and from the altars of Jupiter to the sacred table of the Christians." Could a volume give us a more striking picture of the wretched state to which the Christian profession was reduced in so short a time as half a century after its establishment?'

It is with great seeming complacency that Mr. Jones introduces to his readers the charges which his contemporaries urged against Erius; and here he finds a champion who promulgated his own favourite opinions as early as the fifth century:

Ærius,' he relates, was an elder of the church of Sebastia in Pontus; and, as Epiphanius, who undertook to confute him and all other heretics, informs us, obstinately defended four great errors. These were, 1. That bishops were not distinguished from presbyters or elders, by any Divine right, for that, according to the New Testament, their offices and authority were absolutely the same. 2. That it was wrong to offer up any prayers for the dead, which it seems was become customary in those days. 3. That there was no authority in the word of God for the celebration of Easter, as a religious solemnity; and, 4. That fasts ought not to be prefixed to the annual return of days, as the time of Lent and the week preceding Easter. Such seems to have been the heresy of Erius, and his writings in defence of which, we are told, met with the most cordial reception from his cotemporaries" We know with the utmost certainty," says Mosheim, that it was highly agreeable to many good Chris

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tians,

tians, who were no longer able to bear the tyranny and arrogance of the bishops of this century."'

Having before thrown out hints respecting his particular opinions, Mr. Jones now steps forwards, and unequivocally proclaims them in the subsequent passage:

The distinction between bishop and presbyter or elder, which Erius so strenuously opposed, seems to have prevailed early in the Christian church, yet it is demonstrably without the shadow of foundation in the New Testament. "That the terms, bishop and elder are sometimes used promiscuously in the New Testament," says Dr. Campbell, there is no critic of any name who now pretends to dispute. The passage, Acts, xx. 17., &c. is well known. Paul from Miletus sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church, saying, "Take heed to yourselves, and to all the church over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers (literally HOTY, bishops). Similar to this is a passage in Titus, chap. i. 5., "For this cause left I thee in Crete that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders (gerBule) in every city." Ver. 7. For a bishop (EIXOTO) must be blaineless." In like manner the apostle Peter, 1 Epist. v. I., "The elders (weißulepas) which are among you, I exhort, &c. Ver. 2., "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, (EWIσXOVES,) discharging the office of bishops." So much for the heresy of Erius as it respected the denial of any distinction between the office of bishop and presbyter. On the other three particulars of his heresy, it is, at this time of day, quite unnecessary for me to bestow a word in the way of apology.'

The scriptural grounds for the equality of the two clerical orders have seldom been more forcibly stated in so small a compass; and surely here the Romanist and the jure divino Episcopalian must be perplexed.

The author pays a just tribute to Vigilantius; who, at the beginning of the fifth century, made a zealous stand against the corruptions of the times, and who, on that account, was treated very roughly by St. Jerome. A specimen of the holy father's refutation of the supposed errors of his antagonist, which is given by Mr. Jones, shews that his logic was not superior to his temper, and that his reasoning manifested as little of solidity as his spirit possessed of Christianity. - This Vigilantius was a learned and eminent presbyter of the Christian church, who wrote a book against the institution of monks, the celibacy of the clergy, praying for the dead, invoking the martyrs, adoring their reliques, celebrating their vigils, and lighting up candles to them, after the manner of the Pagans. The work is unhappily lost.

In order to preserve the continuity of the apostolic succession, the Paulicians are admitted within the pale of the

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author's

author's true church. It might be said that bias here carries him to an unjustifiable length; and the charge could not easily be repelled, did he not himself apprize his readers that his hypothesis rests not only in a considerable degree on conjecture, but is also opposed by the accounts of this sect which antiquity has handed down to us. It is true that Mr. Gibbon states that Peter Siculus, from whom we have the fullest report of them, writes concerning them " with prejudice and passion;" and we must admit that the ill treatment and persecution, which they suffered from the church of that day, raise a strong presumption in their favour: because, whether the church is or is not at this time to be denominated Antichristian, it cannot be doubted that, from a period not much later than that which Mr. Jones fixes, it had abandoned the spirit and violated the maxims of its founder. By their adversaries, these sectaries were charged with denying the divinity of the Old Testament: but Mr. Jones is of opinion, that they only disputed the construction assigned by the Catholics to that part of Divine writ, by which they sanctioned their usurpations of temporal authority; and that on this account the latter charged them with rejecting its Divine origin. If, however, we allow the claim of the Paulicians to the character which the author ascribes to them, and in a matter of so much importance can rest satisfied with conjectures and presumptions, his hypothesis will still remain defective. Even on his own statement, it seems to betray a glaring inconsistency, which nothing but the spirit of system could prevent him from perceiving. According to him, the' ostensible church ceased to be the true church as early as the third century; and the schismatic Novatians, and not the selfnamed orthodox, perpetuated the succession of the apostles. On the extirpation of the Paulicians, which was the achievement of an orthodox empress, the notorious Theodora, (who, we are told, had a hundred thousand persons put to death for being of this persuasion,) the author finds the true church removed from Syria to the vicinity of the Alps, to Turin, and to the vallies of Piedmont. In his judgment, Claude of Turin is in this age the sole apostle of truth, and becomes the founder of a succession of true believers, the Waldenses; who make a distinguished figure in ecclesiastical history, and who are worthy of all the encomiums which Mr. J. and other Protestant writers bestow on them. Mr. Jones follows the late Mr. Robinson in his account of Claude, and adopts all his conjectures: but, even if we give credit to their representations, an inconsistency still appears in the hypothesis which we think is fatal to it. Claude, if he preached the

doctrines

doctrines of the heretics and schismatics, always continued to be a member of the church, and lived and died in its communion; nay, according to Mr. Robinson, the followers of Claude did not quit the same communion till fifty years after the death of their founder. Here, then, we have the church ccasing to be the true church as early as the third century, but again find the true church within its pale in the ninth. It revives; and its boundaries are extended by a dignitary of the apostate and anti-christian establishment, for such it is on the principles of Mr. Jones, and such in a qualified sense we admit it to be. While we notice this singular link in the succession, we applaud the fairness which has recourse to no art to conceal or disguise it. The author states facts correctly, and submits his theory to the judgment of his readers, without the slightest attempt to misrepresent. He relies on his hypothesis:-none are misled; and, in works of this kind, which are not destined for the learned, but for ordinary readers, this good faith cannot be too much commended. The philosophic Priestley, and the fanatics Haweis and Milner, have trodden this ground, but each comes far short of Mr. Jones in ingenuousness, and each more offensibly obtrudes his peculiar notions.

We own that, even from the period fixed by the present author, we entertain little predilection for the prominent characters in the church, and that we are much enamoured with the virtues and simplicity which belonged to the heretics but we anathematize neither the church nor the heretics, although they anathematized each other. We believe, however, that faithful ministers and true followers of Christ belonged to each communion. Claude of Turin appears to have deserved much of the praise which Mr. Robinson and this writer bestow on him. Indeed, he seems to have possessed a very enlightened mind in a very dark age, and to have shunned neither labour nor danger in his incessant attempts to dispel the obscurity and to stem the corruption with which he was surrounded. We coincide with the author in thinking that his name and character are less known and honored in the present day than they deserve :' but we doubt whether the Waldenses sprang entirely from the preaching of Claude: a contrary supposition is warranted by the history of the times, and better agrees with the hypothesis of the present author. A dissident but continuing conformist rarely has followers beyond his own time; his labours are soon forgotten; and the public, as well as the body to which he belongs, are apt to regard him as an inconsistent or a weak brother. Clarke and Law have left no followers they are only known to curious people to have dissented

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dissented from the tenets of the church in whose communion they lived and died; while Whiston and Lindsey, by forsaking an establishment whose principles they did not approve, have laid the foundations of new churches which boast of numerous partisans.

Of the Paterines, who enter into the author's succession from the Apostles, he gives an account from the pages of Mr. Robinson's Ecclesiastical Researches: but, though Mr. R. possessed great industry and penetration, he was too much under the influence of prejudice, and was too fond of paradoxes, to allow him to be regarded as an authority in these matters. He examined, however, several points of church-history with distinguished acumen; and, looking at them through the medium of his own particular views, he brought to light many things which had not before been noticed: thus enabling persons, who were less under the influence of bias than himself, to form more correct notions of these subjects.

The Waldenses come next to be considered; and the remainder of the volume is devoted to the history of the various denominations under which they appeared, or of the various sects which have been confounded with them. Mr. Jones again follows Mr. Robinson in stating the origin of the name which they bore:

"From the Latin word VALLIS," says he, "came the English word valley, the French and Spanish valle, the Italian, valdesi, the low Dutch valleye, the Provençal vaux, vaudois, the ecclesiastical Valdenses, Ualdenses, and Waldenses. The words simply signify vallies, inhabitants of vallies, and no more. It happened that the inhabitants of the vallies of the Pyrenees did not profess the Catholic faith; it fell out also that the inhabitants of the vallies about the Alps did not embrace it; it happened, moreover, in the ninth century, that one Valdo, a friend and counsellor of Berengarius, and a man of eminence who had many followers, did not approve of the papal discipline and doctrine; and it came to pass about an hundred and thirty years after, that a rich merchant of Lyons, who was called Valdus [or Waldo] because he received his religious notions from the inhabitants of the vallies, openly disavowed the Roman religion, supported many to teach the doctrines believed in the vallies, and became the instrument of the conversion of great numbers; ALL THESE PEOPLE WERE CALLED WALDEnses." This view of the matter, which to myself appears indisputably the true one, is also sanctioned by the authority of their own historians, Perrin, Leger, Sir S. Morland, and Dr. Allix.'

In a note, the author thus observes on the derivation given to the word by Mosheim, who traces it to a kind of slipper which the Waldenses wore as a distinguishing badge of the

sect:

• But