.

The

to combine in one foundation monks and seculars. attempt was made in the interest of the monks, but it was too late. The discordant elements would not combine, and the temporary success of this last effort did not retard the fall of the monks generally. In this contest the friars had no interest; they were the jealous and professed enemies of both litigants; they might regard the rival Wardens with equal indifference, or, if they sympathised with either, they would sympathise with Wyclif, who fifty years before would have been wholly one of themselves, who at this time had much in common with them. The Canterbury Hall scandal' was no scandal to a Carmelite; why should he take the part of a monk against a secular, and retail stories to the discredit of the secular when he was at the time more of a brother than the monk?

Again, there is a personal fitness in connecting Wyclif the Reformer with Canterbury Hall in 1366, and with the Eucharistic controversy in 1381. The man and the cause were the same, and as one advanced so did the other. The struggle was the old one-freedom of personal judgment against external authority. To repress the spirit of free inquiry the Church allied herself with the monks at one time, with the friars at another; to maintain it, Wyclif strove at Canterbury Hall against monkish domination, and in the Oxford schools against ‘idolatry,' as he himself called it.

One more remark suggests itself about Oxford parties at this time. The voice of the University was not heard in 1366; the University spoke and was roughly silenced in 1381. Still she did not cease to remonstrate against the overbearing mandates of Pope and Archbishop. A new party arose, an academical, as distinguished from a theological, party, whose chief object was to support the independence of the University against external pressure. This party Professor Shirley overlooks; he calls Rugge a 'Lollard Chancellor ;' but all Rugge's actions, as well as those of his chief supporters -Brightwell and Repyngdon-are opposed to this conclusion. These men were not Lollards; they withstood Wyclif as a theologian, but within the University took his side as representing at the time the cause of the University against the Church.

Professor Shirley's last piece of evidence is this :

'Archbishop Parker says that Islip intended to give to his Hall the patronage of Mayfield. This, if true, is of course conclusive as to the identity of the vicar and the warden. Parker wrote with Stephen Birchington's Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury before

him, and Birchington says that Islip intended to give to his Hall, not Mayfield, but Ivechirche. This Parker corrects. Either, therefore, he possessed authority which he considered better than Birchington's, or Mayfield was a simple oversight. If the latter, what were the chances against his inserting the one name which had, unknown to him, a remarkable historical significance ? '

Without admitting the assumed conclusiveness of this argument, it is sufficient to meet it by quoting Parker and Birchington correctly. Parker says, not that Islip 'intended to give,' but actually gave (appropriavit) the rectories of Pagehan and Mayfield. In this he is clearly mistaken, for Islip never gave Mayfield. Birchington says, Islip intended to appropriate Pageham and Ivechirche, but was prevented from completing his work by his death;' that is, he gave Pageham, but not Ivechirche. Birchington is perfectly right, so that if Parker corrected Birchington, he himself fell into error. The probability is that Mayfield was written by Parker as an oversight for Ivechirche. He may easily have been led into this oversight by the frequent mention of Mayfield in the narrative which follows of Islip's death. While on his way to Mayfield, the Archbishop fell from his horse into a swamp. Wet and muddy he came to Mayfield, dropped asleep before changing his clothes, was paralysed, and died at Mayfield.' Surely the chances are not very strong against Parker writing down by error in anticipation a name which occurs so frequently in the context of the authority whom he was following.

We have endeavoured to discuss fairly Professor Shirley's arguments on this question of the identity of the Warden of Canterbury Hall and the Reformer. The question is neither trivial nor unimportant in itself, and is full of interest in reference to the history of the University of Oxford and its early relations to the Colleges. How far we have succeeded in proving the identity of the two personages must be judged by others; but at all events we claim to have established that Dean Hook was premature in regarding the question as conclusively settled in the negative by Professor Shirley's arguments.

ART. VI.-THE BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY AND ITS CRITICS.

I. The Prophets and Prophecy in Israel: an Historical and Critical Inquiry. By Dr. A. KUENEN, Professor of Theology in the University of Leyden. Translated from the Dutch by the Rev. ADAM MILROY, M.A. (London: Longmans, 1877.)

2. The Religion of Israel: a Manual.

Translated from the

Dutch of J. KNAPPERT, Pastor at Leyden, by RICHARD A. ARMSTRONG, B.A. (Williams and Norgate, 1877.) 3. Deuteronomy, the People's Book; its Origin and Nature: a Defence. (Daldy, Isbister, and Co., 1877.)

UPON that ancient Hebrew literature, which we know as the Five Books of Moses, the assaults of the modern school of Biblical critics have been long concentrated with special violence. As the oldest body of records in the world, it perhaps is hardly to be wondered that it has aroused the hostility of a school which regards whatever is old as its natural prey. Like the exposed redoubt or the advanced post, which draws the enemy's fire, so the Mosaic literature acts as a breakwater for much that is of vital importance behind it. Here, as everywhere, the supernatural element in the narrative is pursued with unrelenting hostility. It has become more and more the fundamental axiom with a considerable number of critics that if there be another world, which is, on the whole, unlikely, man cannot possibly have any communication with it or from it; that he is shut up to his own circle of ideas, which originate wholly in this world; and that, therefore, what is called supernatural is, in the nature of things, impossible. It is a regular crusade against the Pentateuch carried on nominally in the interest of historic truth, but who shall say that it is not the joy of eliminating the supernatural that gives the zest to the endeavour? Merely to explain away the marvellous element in it is too evidently hopeless. It is so vast, so continuous, so unmistakable, that the most hardy of critics cannot venture to assume respecting the Pentateuch what, to take an analogous instance from the literature of to-day, Mr. Matthew Arnold assumes respecting the Gospels, that the writers have entirely misunderstood the phenomena they witnessed, or that we have entirely mis

understood them. If therefore its meaning cannot be denied, the only remaining resource is to destroy (if possible) its authority. If it can be shown that, so far from being substantially the composition of Moses, it is a forgery (or, as Dr. Kuenen prefers to call it, a 'programme') of times long subsequent to Moses, and not earlier than in or shortly after the Babylonish captivity,' then the last shred of authority which it possesses, as a serious historical document, will drop away from it, and it will have no further claim to be considered as a record of events supernaturally caused or even supernaturally directed. If, then, the Pentateuch is the advanced outpost of supernaturalism, the book known as Deuteronomy is probably the portion most exposed to assault of the Pentateuch itself. There may, indeed, seem the less ground for discrimination between the several portions of that record, inasmuch as the present division into five books, though certainly very early, is probably not absolutely primitive.1 Such a division is indeed indicated by the nature of the subject-matter with sufficient clearness. Genesis (the Book of Origins,' as Ewald rather oddly calls it) and great part of Exodus are histories pure and simple. Leviticus is an elaborate directory or book of ritual, and, furthermore, is to some extent a book of temporal law; Numbers partly an itinerary, partly a collection of genealogies put roughly together. Each and all are anonymous. Deuteronomy alone presupposes the existence of the other four books, and Deuteronomy alone apparently makes an express claim to Mosaic authorship.2

It differs widely in character from the rest of the Pentateuch. To speak popularly, it is a series of addresses; addresses too, be it observed, often of a highly moral and spiritual character, as opposed to what is formal or technical. It is

1 The titles of the Five Books, as we have them now, are not Hebrew but Greek. In a Hebrew Bible the titles prefixed are simply taken from the first words of each book, and would in the first instance stand merely for brief sections and not for entire books. The whole Law was transcribed upon a single roll, and divided into longer or shorter sections. It was called at first (as appears, exclusively) 'the Law (or book) of Moses' (Ezra vii. 6; Neh. viii. 1, xiii. 1). Varieties of phrase are found as we go onwards, as would naturally be the case: the book of the Law,' 'the Law of Jehovah,' or simply the Law.' This is the name current among modern Jews, 'the Law in (Torah).

6

2 xxxi. 9-12. But compare Exod. xvii. 14, xxiv. 3, 4, xxxiv. 27; Num. xxxiii. 2. These are all the passages which bear on the subject; and obviously not one of them amounts to a statement of authorship. We must carefully distinguish between statements made about Moses in the course of the narrative, and the intention to designate him as the author of the narrative itself.

as if the Book of Homilies should be appended to the PrayerBook and the Act of Uniformity. The flowing, rhetorical, impassioned style in which it is for the most part couched has little in common with the remarkably simple and matter-offact narrative, or with the minute technical details and specifications, or even with the lengthy and painstaking legislation concerning the ordinary life of the Hebrew population, not to speak of the details of ceremonial observance, which, if they do not occupy absolutely the whole of the other books, yet give the specific character to each of them. This difference of subject may in part account for the difference in style which is evident and unmistakable. Then again, as we have just noticed, it cannot possibly itself stand for the whole of the record. It presupposes the other books,' and is, from this point of view, far more of a witness to their authenticity than they to it.

Upon the whole, therefore, we can hardly be surprised that the attack should have been concentred upon this portion of the Pentateuch. That it has been so concentred the works named at the head of this article abundantly show. Ewald (History of Israel) declares that our Deuteronomy was written in Egypt itself, and during the reign of Manasseh. Dr. A. Kuenen, however, may be taken as the ablest, as he is the latest, representative of this destructive school; and we shall address ourselves principally to meeting certain of the arguments contained in his latest volumes (the History of Israel and Prophets and Prophecy in Israel) in the pages that follow. In so doing we are glad to avail ourselves of the opportunity of noticing a small work recently published anonymously upon this subject, Deuteronomy, the People's Book; a gallant attempt, of which we can hardly speak too highly, to tear down the huge structure of misrepresentations and exaggerated conclusions which critics of a theoretical turn of mind have contrived to rear. Its arguments are, on many points, very convincing, and the author need not have scrupled to put his name to his work.

We may regard, then, the attack upon Deuteronomy as a crucial one. If the book cannot hold its ground, much of our received belief concerning Jewish history must be given up with it. It is the key of the position. If, on the other hand, the attack fails here, we need trouble ourselves but little respecting other points in which the authenticity or antiquity of the Mosaic literature has been or may yet be assailed.

Dr. Kuenen lays down in limine the sweeping objection 1 Deut. xiv. 27, cf. Num. xviii. 20, 21; xxiv. 9, cf. Num. xii. 10.