he has admitted into his collection, that we could not hope, within any reasonable limits, to do even the faintest justice to our own views on the numberless important questions which he has raised, and many of which he disposes of by wholesale in a few dashing sentences.

For the present, therefore, we shall confine ourselves to the first division of the work, and indeed exclusively to that part of which regards Hippolytus, and more particularly the Philosophumena; our main object in this article being to complete our examination of the questions regarding Pope Callistus which originated in the celebrated narrative of the ninth book of that treatise. We shall occasionally refer, however, to the fifth volume o the work, which, among the Analecta ante-Nicæna, contains extracts from the text of the Philosophumena, and particularly from the ninth book.

Our readers may remember that on two former occasions we entered at some length into this subject. On both occasions, however, we addressed ourselves chiefly to the statements in matters of fact relating to the character and government of Pope Callistus, which were brought forward on the authority of the writer of the ninth book of the Philosophumena. In the first article we discussed the question of the authorship as well as of the credibility of this portion of the treatise. In the second, we entered in detail into the consideration of each of the specific charges against the conduct of this Pontiff, and against his administration of the affairs of the Church. We reserved one other topic, the most important indeed of all, the allegation that Callistus formally lapsed into heresy; nay, that he framed a new heresy, or rather that he combined into one system the worst characteristics of two pre-existing heresies, that of Noetus, and that of Theodotus.

A full examination of this grave and startling accusation would have been impossible within the limits at our disposal when last we adverted to the subject. We thought it best, therefore, to reserve it for a separate discussion; and for the time we contented ourselves with suggesting a few brief topics of refutation. We had hoped that, after so many distinguished writers of every imaginable shade of doctrine, naturalists and super-naturalists, the school of Tubingen and the school of Holle, divines of the High Church, of the Low Church, and of the Church of the

Future, should have exercised their ingenuity regarding it, we should be enabled to approach the subject with more advantage, from the variety of lights in which it would have been placed during the course of a discussion so varied and so prolonged.

We regret, however, to say, that in this hope we have been disappointed. The alleged heretical teaching of Pope Callistus has been dealt with most unscientifically by almost every one of the writers who have used the supposed fact as against the authority or the doctrinal infallibility of the Roman See. From the first to the very last-from the Quarterly Reviewer in 1851 down to M. Bunsen in the present year, they all content themselves with assuming, as a matter of course, the truth of the allegation ; and conclude that, because Hippolytus declares Callistus to have been a heretic, it is impossible to entertain any doubt of his heterodoxy. The view uniformly taken by all who have written on the subject is the superficial one of Dr. Wordsworth: "that it is too clear from the recital in the ninth book of the newly found treatise, that Callistus lapsed into heresy on a primary article of Christian Faith;" that he did so " in opposition to the exhortation of orthodox bishops;" and that he" strenuously maintained and propagated this heresy by his official authority as bishop of Rome."*

M. Bunsen, in the new and revised edition of his "Hippolytus and his Age," perseveres in the same superficial and uncritical treatment of the subject. It is curious to contrast the tenderness exhibited towards those whom all Christian time has regarded as heretics, with the ready asperity of the judgment pronounced prima facie against a Roman Pontiff: to compare the jealous criticism with which the accounts given of the early beretics, by Theodoret, by Photius, by Epiphanius, nay, by Irenæus, and even Hippolytus himself, are scanned in all their bearings; how they are examined in themselves and in their relations to each other and to contemporary monuments; how the sources of information from which the account of them is drawn are discussed; and especially, how every known fragment of the writings or expressions of the accused party is pressed into service

* Wordsworth's Hippolytus, pp. 210-11.

for the refutation of the charges against him, or at least the mitigation of the rigour of the adverse judgment which it is impossible to withhold ;-it is curious to compare all this with the prompt and unenquiring acceptance accorded to the palpably exaggerated, intemperate, and inconsistent tirade which forms the sole foundation for the alleged heterodoxy of Pope Callistus.

Not one of those who have accepted the testimony of Hippolytus against this Pontiff, has ever taken the trouble to consider the probability of the charge in itself, or even to analyse the terms in which it is made, with a view to ascertaining how far it may possibly have originated in a misconception of the meaning of Callistus, or in a misrepresentation of his words. Above all, not one has thought it worth while to enquire how far the views of Callistus's accuser himself, were in accordance with the strict terminology of the orthodox formularies; not one has had the fairness to propose, as at least a possible conjecture, whether it might not be that the very fact of a charge of heterodoxy being preferred from such a quarter, should not rather furnish a presumption in favour of the orthodoxy of the party accused.

Enquiries of this kind are on other occasions a favourite pursuit of M. Bunsen. But his sympathies in the case of Callistus unfortunately stood in the way, and deprived the ill-fated Roman Pontiff of the benefit which his case might expect from the ingenuity and learning of such a critic. He is content, even in his new edition, to leave the narrative of Callistus's adversary unquestioned. He still speaks as before of "Callistianism;" of "the Callistian branch of Noetianism;" he still adopts, without question and without criticism, as a part of his own narrative, Hippolytus's account of the heresy of Callistus ;† nay, he still stops short at a semicolon, as we observed in our first notice of the work-breaking off, even in this onesided and intemperate statement, at a point which shuts out a most important modification of Callistus's view; and, although the passage which he thus omits occurs immediately afterwards in a subsequent note; and though in the first volume of the "Analecta Ante-Nicæna, the whole narrative is given entire, yet for the cursory

reader of the historical sketch given by M. Bunsen himself, an impression is conveyed as to this implied Noetianism of Callistus, even stronger and more decisive than by the narrative of Hippolytus.

This loose and uncritical method, too, is more to be regretted in M. Bunsen, inasmuch as, unlike Dr. Wordsworth and the other English critics, he distinctly maintains that the opinions of Hippolytus himself on the subject of the Trinity, were not in accordance with the notions of modern Trinitarians, or even with those of the Nicene formularies. He expresses himself very plainly on this point, in speaking of "some people who," he doubts not, will" think it their duty to prove that Hippolytus had the correct doctrine respecting the Athanasian definition of the Three Persons ;" an attempt which he treats with undisguised ridicule. He declares for himself in another place, that Hippolytus was not a Nicæan divine, much less an Athanasian." Nor does he mean by this simply that he did not use the same formulas, although he believed substantially the same doctrines; for he professes without disguise that "it would not be honest' this; and that every fair critic must allow that Hippolytus's own formulas not only do not agree with the creeds of the councils," but "move in a different circle of ideas."

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Again, in explaining the peculiar views of the doctrine of the Logos which he ascribes to Hippolytus, M. Bunsen adopts the statement of Dorner in his "Treatise on the Person of Christ," that "as it lay very near to this latter view to mix up the Son with finiteness, (a combination which brought Tertullian himself to the verge of Patripassianism, and also placed him in contradiction to himself, since the Son was to spring out of the Eternal Substance of God,) Hippolytus endeavoured to remove this difficulty by strictly distinguishing God as the Only Infinite, the Super-Infinite One, from the world; but by his determinism, the world, and even the Humanity of Christ, were divested of personality; and he is obliged to subject the hypostatic existence of the Son to the omnipotent will of God. It is true that he turns his glance back from the personality of the Son which comes forth a little later, to His Eternal Substance; and he tries to draw lines of connection

between the two, speaking of the Eternal predestination of the Personality of the Son. But the Son, it is manifest, is only placed hereby in still more dependance on the omnipotent will of God; and he considers that Eternal Substance merely as belonging to the Father, and as communicated by Him according to His will and decree to His hypostatic Son."*

Now we cannot help thinking it strange, that, with these notions of the peculiar views of Hippolytus, it did not occur to M. Bunsen to criticise more strictly his allegations against one who is at issue with him on these very points, before accepting his mere ipse-dixit as decisive evidence of the heterodoxy of that adversary. There is one passage which might lead us to suppose that this idea at least presented itself to M. Bunsen's mind. He cites, with approval, from professor Jacobi, a passage to the effect, that "Hippolytus identifies Callistus more than is just with the Patripassians;" but even this suggestive sentence does not lead him to any development of the circumstances or expressions calculated to disprove, or at least to qualify, the charge of heterodoxy against Callistus which he had adopted; and he continues to speak of Callistianism as a heresy; and a branch of Noetianism, just as though there were not a possible doubt of the justice of Hippolytus's representations.

That exact analysis of Hippolytus's narrative, and that examination of his charge of heresy against Pope Callistus which we look for in vain in the Protestant critics of the Philosophumena have been executed with great learning and success by Dr. Döllinger; and more recently by Dr. Kuhn, in the excellent Theological Review of Tübingen. The subject is so important, both for its own sake and for its bearing on the papal question, that we shall devote a few pages of our present number to a summary review of this portion of it, as it now stands between Callistus and his accuser.

The common vice of all anti-papal writers upon the case of Pope Callistus, has been simply this: they have fastened. upon it as an isolated fact; and, shutting out of view all the antecedents as well as the consequents of the great theological controversy, of which it forms but a single episode,