We must undoubtedly regret often to find plain traces of such a departure from primitive simplicity already presenting themselves in the so called Apostolical Constitutions, and clearly distinguishing them from every genuine Apostolical record; but as yet these corruptions were very far from having developed themselves in such full proportions as should at once betray their evil tendencies; and although they may have partially overshadowed, yet never entirely obscure, the fair face of pure and genuine Christianity; nor is it, I think, at all difficult to separate from some mixture of alloy the pure and unadulterated metal, which had descended from a still earlier age. I shall prefer, however, presenting to the reader fair samples of the work in its actual state, leaving the task of its refinement to his own judgment.

The work itself consists of a compilation of various Ecclesiastical regulations and rites, which had already grown old in the customs of various churches, so as to have become traditionally attributed to such of the Apostles as had originally founded those churches. This applies especially to the body of the work-the Apostolical Constitutions. Bishop Beveridge has clearly proved, that the appended Canons, attributed to the whole body of the Apostles, are, in fact, a collection of the Canons of various local Councils, held before the close of the third century. He has historically shewn this to be the case with many of them, and the inference from analogy as to the rest can scarcely be resisted. He has shewn also, that they were repeatedly referred to by Ecclesiastical writers, subsequently to that period, as authoritative, under the title of "The Canons." Some of them prove that they must have originated in Eastern churches, by referring to Oriental months in determining the time of celebrating the Christian festivals; yet those relating to the Quartodeciman controversy have been accommodated to the practice of the Western church. Both the Constitutions and Canons purport to be issued through the instrumentality of Clement, afterwards Bishop of Rome. This may possibly throw some light on the objects of putting forth such a collection in its present form, claiming a direct Apostolical sanction to regulations, of which a great part could only have been required by the Church when in a state of more mature organization, and which are actually known from history to relate to questions agitated and determined in Councils of the third century. It was understood thus to assert this high and inspired authority for the whole body of Ecclesiastical usages, and to represent them as having been issued through a Bishop of Rome, as the great centre of Apostolical unity.*

The possibility of putting forth a forgery so gross in its form, with any probability of success, must at once shew how very little reliance can be placed on any foundation so extremely slippery and treacherous as Tradition. But although the form of this work is thus stained with the crime of forgery, the materials which have been wrought into

Thus in the Office annexed, the portions, marked in the Extracts 1, 2, 3, 4, are ascribed to the authority of St. Peter; those which follow, to that of St. Andrew; the Canon of the Eucharist (which will be contained in

the next communication), to St. James, the brother of John; but it is clearly the origin of the form used in the church of Jerusalem, and there attributed to the other St. James, our Lord's brother.

it are nevertheless in themselves highly curious and valuable. The very purpose of the forgery could not have been answered, unless the rules and observances, thus ascribed to Apostolical institution, had really been those which were known to have been established in the church for more than one generation before the age of the compilation. It must therefore of necessity, as we have before observed, present to us an exact picture of the Church as it existed before the close of the third century. These Apostolical Constitutions are generally supposed to be identical with the Διδαχαι των Αποστόλων, enumerated by Eusebius among spurious books, (Hist. Eccl. lib. iii. c. 25), and stated by Athanasius to have been read under the sanction of the Fathers, although not Canonical, (Epist. Fest.) Epiphanius however (about 370) is the first writer who clearly cites them in Hær. 70, num. 10. He thus speaks-"The book of Apostolical Constitutions, although controverted by many, is yet far from deserving reprobation. For the whole Canonical order is introduced into it, and nothing is represented contrary to the Faith, or the Confession, or the Ecclesiastical discipline and Canon." Epiphanius cites this work in seven different places. Of these references some agree exactly with the present editions of the "Constitutions ;" but those relating to the controversy as to the due time for celebrating the crucifixion and ascension of our Lord, appear to have been altered since the time of Epiphanius, who says that the Audian heretics abused a passage in them, alleging it as if it might countenance their following the Judaical computation of the Passover. This passage has been (probably in consequence of the use so made of it) expunged and replaced by a distinct condemnation of the Judaizing practice.

The Council of Trullam (A.D. 681,) decrees, that the 85 Canons are undoubtedly authoritative and Apostolical, but rejects the Constitutions, (though directed in those very Canons to be received), charging them with subsequent corruption from Heretical interpolations. This charge is still more distinctly urged by the learned Photias, (Patriarch of Constantinople, 860.) He thus speaks of the work in question: "These Constitutions are only liable to three charges. 1. Fraudulent forgery, which however it would not be difficult to refute. 2. Some apparently injurious remarks on Deuteronomy;* but this may be with the greatest ease dissolved. 3. A tendency to Arianism; but this also an advocate, though with some violence, might be able to repel."

*

With respect to the last of these charges, incautious expressions, with regard to the official subordination of the Son to the Father, are

The compiler of the Apostolical Constitutions appears to include the whole of the ritual laws, given subsequently to the Decalogue, under the name devтepovoμia, the secondary law; he also employs SUTEρwors as an equivalent term; but as this latter word was often used by later Ecclesiastical writers to denote corrupt innovations, such as the traditions with which our Lord reproached the Jews, our author may have been misunderstood as having employed it in this offensive sense. He opposes these secondary and positive

precepts to this natural or moral law of the Decalogue, and says, that almost the whole of it has been abrogated by Christ, as the great legislator, himself the fulfilling of the law, (vi. 22.) He also represents its burthensome ceremonies as having been imposed on the Israelites by God, in consequence of his displeasure at their ingratitude and tendency to revolt, and as a necessary check to correct their abuse of a more free dispensation, and to preserve them from the infection of polytheism. (vi. 20.)

undoubtedly to be found; but this may be observed in other authors who wrote before the development of the Arian heresy had called the attention of divines to the injurious consequences which might be deduced from such admissions, which yet, in themselves, seem to go no further than our Lord's own declarations; and it will be seen, in these extracts, that, in the Constitutions, Christ is without scruple addressed by the title of God, and has all the Divine attributes ascribed to him; and prayer, in its highest form, is offered up to him as the source of all grace. We may therefore rather consider such unguarded phrases as a proof that the work was written before the age of the Arian controversy, and not under the influence of that heresy.

Oriental versions of these Constitutions are extant both in the Arabic and Ethiopic dialects. As these works bear the titles respectively of aldidaskalia and didaskalia, which are merely the Greek didaokadia, written in Arabic and Ethiopic characters, it is manifest they are translations from a Greek original. And this title, moreover, seems to prove that the Διδαχη των Αποστολων, referred to by Eusebius and Athanasius, must have been the same work.

Of the Arabic version there are two MS. copies in the Bodleian Library, and two in the British Museum. Dr. Grabe states that the Bodleian MSS. contain a nearly exact translation of the first five books of the Clementine Apostolical Constitutions, and part of the sixth; only that the order of some of the parts is transposed.

Wansleb and Ludolf, at the close of the 17th century, mentioned the existence of the Ethiopic version; and the latter gave a list of its contents, extending to twenty-seven sections; but it does not appear that any copy was known to exist in Europe, till, about fifteen years ago, one was found among the Ethiopic MSS. collected by the Rev. W. Jowett of the Church Missionary Society, at Jerusalem, and transmitted by him to that Society, by which they were presented to the Library of the Bible Society. Mr. T. P. Platt, honorary librarian of that institution (a distinguished Oriental scholar,) undertook to translate this copy into English, and in 1834 superintended the edition of the original, which, with his translation, was then published by the "Oriental Translation Fund."

This Ethiopic version is only a fragment, containing the whole of the first three books, and the first twelve chapters (according to the Greek division) of the fourth Book. In the Ethiopic there is no distinction of Books, and the chapters generally contain four or five of those marked in the Greek copies. A very close substantial agreement generally prevails between this version and the Greek, though the language is in some places paraphrastically expanded; in others condensed and abridged. The most material variations I have observed, are the substitution, for the short Apostolical salutation with which the Greek commences, of a form which describes the Apostles as assembled in conclave at Jerusalem (as they are said to be in vi. 14 of the Greek), followed by a dozen lines, magnifying the office and dignity of the bishops and clergy, in the spirit, and almost in the words, of many passages in the second Book. Two whole chapters are omitted, i. 9. (περι του μη συλλούεσθαι γυναικα άνδρασιν), possibly passed over from motives of delicacy; and ii. 52, which recommends the cautious spirit of investigation, which marked the criminal proceedings in Gentile courts, as a model to be followed by Bishops in their examination

of delinquents against ecclesiastical discipline, this perhaps may have been rejected as too complimentary to the heathen magistracy. There may be about a dozen more instances of the omission of shorter paragraphs, but generally only of such as appeared superfluous, and were probably left out for the sake of condensation-one or two passages I suspect to have been modified, in order to obviate any suspicion of Arian or Macedonian tendencies. Thus in ii. 44, where the Greek has a direction to "the Deacon to refer all things to the Bishop, even as Christ doth to the Father;" the Ethiopic adds, "for there is one will of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The original, however, does not go at all farther than that high Episcopalian, Ignatius-in the ancient and genuine copy of whose Epistle to the Smyrneans, we find Παντες τῳ Επισκοπῳ ακολουθείτε ws XpLOTOS T Пarp. Again, in ii. 26, where the Deaconess is directed to do all things only on the authority of the Deacon, the Greek compares this to the subordination of the Holy Ghost to Christ, which illustration the Ethiopic omits.

The Ethiopic version does not extend to those passages of the fifth Book, on the proper observance of the Christian Passover, which appear, in the extant Greek MSS., to have been altered from the text they presented in the days of Epiphanius; but I have carefully collated all the passages contained in the books which are presented to us in the Ethiopic fragment, which Archb. Usher, in his Dissertation on the genuine and interpolated texts of the Ignatian Epistles, has brought forward as probable interpolations in the Constitutions, proceeding from the very same hand; and I find the great majority of them to exist in the very same form in the Ethiopic and Greek-the only variation at all material (in addition to those I have already mentioned) pointed out by these suspicions of the learned Archbishop, is that where, in ii. 36, the several religious and moral duties of the true Christian are enumerated, the Greek has this passage, which is wanting in the Ethiopic, "Thou shalt keep the Sabbath unto Him who then ceased from the work of creation, but not of providencea Sabbath for meditation of the law, but not as a period of manual idleness!" It is clear that a religious observance of the seventh day is here inculcated; for in vii. 24, it is said, "Thou shalt celebrate both the Sabbath and the Lord's day; because the former is the memorial of creation, the latter of resurrection."

On the whole, the evidence of the Ethiopic version is calculated, as far as it goes, to increase our confidence in the general authenticity of the text of the extant Greek editions; for as it is said that the Ethiopian church had admitted no books from the Greeks, after the fourth general Council in the middle of the fifth century, this will carry us to within seventy years of the citation of the work by Epiphanius. The Ethiopic fragment does not include any of the liturgical portions given in the present papers; but as the allusions to the Eucharist, ii. 57, and the passage on Baptism, iii. 16, entirely agree with the Greek, we may infer that the rest would do so likewise, if recovered.

SCRUTATOR.

(To be continued.)

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 38.

P

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

THE WORKS OF GRAVES.

The whole Works of RICHARD GRAVES, D. D., late Dean of Ardagh, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin; now first collected, with a Memoir of his Life and Writings by his Son, R. H. GRAVES, D.D. Rector of Belgown. 4 vols. 8vo. Dublin, 1840.