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themselves to the mountains of holv Scripture, 1of which it was wvAtsn (Ps, Ixxv. 5) Mlluminastu. mirabiliter in montibus acternis,’ and(Ps. lxxxvi. 1) ‘ Fundamenta ejus in montibussanctis.’ For now, except the Scriptures, nomeans are left of distinguishing the true churchfrom the false. Heretics have their churches,they read the same Scriptures, they have bishopsaud the other orders of clergy, they have bap-tism, eucharisfc, and in short everything. Informer days miracles were a means of distin-guishing the true church, and unbelievers couldonly exhibit barren wonders, not beneficialmiracles like the Christian; but now the work-ing of miracles has ceased and more are allegedto be done among false Christians. Peter fore-told (Clem. Becog. iii. 60) that Antichrist isto have the power of working even beneficialmiracles. Formerly you could tell the truechurch by the morals of its members; for theconversation of all, or at least of the greaterpart, exhibited a holiness not to be found amongthe impious. But now Christians are as bad orworse than the heretics or the heathen. Indeedyou will find more continence among theseschismatics than among Christians. God, then,foreseeing the confusion of the last days, warnedthose desiring to know the true church to feeto the Scriptures, for if they betake themselvesanywhere else they will be scandalised andperish.”

Passages where the reign of Theodosius isnamed as the time when the church was over-whelmed by heresy will be found (48, 199; 49,20). It being clear from the proofs we have giventhat the author was not a member of the Catholicchurch, it is unreasonable to doubt the genuine-ness of the passages where he exhibits hisArianism, as, for instance, where he explainsthat our Lord called heretics “ spinas et tribu-los,” because, foreseeing what heresy wouldprevail above all others, he called them “ tribu-los, quasi trinitatis professores et triangulambajulantes impietatem. ,, We must thereforerather take the expurgation of the hereticalpassages as illustrating the difficulty of trans-mission to our times of sentiments of ancientauthors at variance with later orthodoxy. Thus,in the present case, it was not only the Arianpassages which were expurgated. For instance,where the writer speaks (19, 93) of “ offeringthe sacrifice of bread and wine,” he is made tosay “the sacrifice of Christ’s body and bloodand a passage is cut out altogether where heargues that if it be dangerous to transfer toprivate uses the consecrated vessels “whichcontain not the Lord’s real body, but themystery of His body,” how much more toprofane the vessels of our own body which Godhas prepared for His dwelling-place.

When the controversial passages had beenexpurgated, there was nothing to excite ortho-dox suspicions in our writer’s language aboutour Lord’s divinity. The Arians, it will beremembered, were quite the reverse of Uni-tarians, their doctrines, on the contrary, beingopen to the charge of Ditheism. Accordingly©ur writer uses very high language concerningour Lord, speaks of Him as “ our great God andSaviour,” as does also Maximinus (of whom weshall say more presently, and whose doctrineis in accurate accordance with that of the

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present work). His formula is “ Deus genitus deingenito Deo.” Sometimes it is “unigenitusDeus” (fj.ovoysvfy 6e6s). If in his controversialpassages he is eager to argue that the Son, “ towhom all things were delivered by the Father,”can neither be identical with the Father norequal to Him, he is equally energetic in repellingthe doctrine that He was mere man; and theheresy of the Homoousians is not more repro-bated than that of Photinus, who, in his recoilfrom Arian ditheism, completely separated theSaviour’s manhood from the one supremeDivinity. The third person of the Trinity iscomparatively seldom mentioned, but on thishead the writer’s doctrine is even more distinctlyheretical. The Holy Spirit is evidently re-garded as a third being, as much inferior to theSon as the Son is to the Father (34, 146). Thisis the representation also of the “Ascension ofIsaiah,” a work quoted in the present treatise.

The heretical character of the book beingrecognised, it becomes manifest how much lightit must throw on the history of Arianism,which it presents in a more favourable aspectthan any in which it can be seen elsewhere.Arianism, as known from other sources, we aretempted to regard as a mere creature of courtfavour, contending'against the religious feelingof the Christian world. Its utterances arecontroversial and negative, and we have scantyinformation as to the influence on the heretics ofthe positive truth which they held in commonwith other Christians. Naturally a better sideof Arianism is exhibited in this work, in themain not controversial but exegetical and prac-tical, written when all court favour had long beenlost, and when the sect met from the state withnothing but persecution. How much there was inthe book to recommend it to a religious mind isevident from the fact that it passed so long asChrysostom’s. We cannot explain how themistake originated, for the work itself makesno claim to such authorship; the writer isevidently addressing persons who knew him, andto whom he had no motive for trying to passhimself off as other than he was. He had alsowritten commentaries on St. Mark (49, 211) andon St. Luke (1, 23 ; 9, 56). Fragments of ancientArian homilies on St. Luke have been publishedby Mai {Bib. Nov. Vet. Pat . iii.), but they haveno resemblance to the work of the presentwriter. It would be easy, if space permitted,to give many favourable specimens of this com-mentary which would well justify the estimationin which it was so long held : see, for instance,the whole comment on the text “Seek and yeshall find ” (Horn. 17). But possibly the hookwas commended to medieval readers less by itsmerits than by what a modern reader wouldcount its faults. The whole spirit of the com-mentary is utterly unlike that of Chrysostom,who may be referred to the Syrian school ofrational historic and literal interpretation,whereas this writer constantly follows themystical and allegorical method which is com-monly connected with Alexandria. And in thisstyle he shews a remarkable amount of ingenuity.A reader only acquainted with modern com-mentaries could little divine what lesson wouldhe deduced from any given text. This mayappear from the example already given of hisexegesis of the text “ Flee ye to the mouo»