great" Anglo-Catholic" divines in England, utterly ignoring the age of their greatgrandfathers. They were concerned rather with the nature of the Church than with the refutation of Deism or the establishment of morality. Now, it has dawned upon men that history is continuous, and that we cannot understand the nineteenth century without studying the eighteenth. Moreover, a taste has been developed for the history of "culture;" we are no longer content in civil history with accounts of parliaments and treaties, battles and sieges; or in ecclesiastical history with successions of bishops or canons of councils; we want to know what the people were like and what they did, how they talked and wrote, painted and built. Of this "culture-history" Mr. Lecky's works are in England the most conspicuous examples: England in the eighteenth century especially he has depicted with so much learning, skill, and grace, that every one who follows him, whether in the way of civil or ecclesiastical history, must risk an unfavourable comparison. Notwithstanding, the two principal Church histories on our list, both devoted to the eighteenth century, have merits which will enable them to hold their own, even in the wake of so brilliant a predecessor as Mr. Lecky.

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Dr. Stoughton, a veteran in the field of English ecclesiastical history, in his Religion in England under Queen Anne and the Georges, 1702-1800 (London: Hodder and Stoughton), aims at presenting "a general view of national life under its religious aspects during the last century;" a comprehensive view" of religion in England, including the action of Government, the conduct of representative men, and the habits of society." This is no doubt the right conception of history, especially in the eighteenth century, the interest of which consists rather in the changes which gradually stole over society than in any striking events. Dr. Stoughton has carried out his purpose worthily. In his pleasant pages we pass from the days when Queen Anne touched sufferers for the "King's Evil" and the restoration of the Stuarts was still probable, to the days when the Church Missionary Society was founded and Henry Martyn went forth to the East. The very mention of these events shows how great was the change which had passed over England in the interval. There had been no great convulsion, and yet the change which passed over English life in the eighteenth century was scarcely less than that in the seventeenth, although in the latter both Church and Crown were for a time swept away. At the bottom of it all lies the philosophy of Locke; even phenomena which appear most diverse, such as Berkeley's writings, took their rise in the intellectual movement which Locke began. Philosophy, however, Dr. Stoughton deliberately eschews; his object is to depict events and not causes, to paint for us religious life, and not the hidden springs of that life of which even the actors in it were for the most part quite unconscious. Hence the Deistic controversy, which more than anything influenced English theology in the days between Bentley and Paley, and which had such momentous consequences when transferred to the Continent, appears but slightly in his pages. Butler is dismissed very briefly, nor is any adequate conception given of his relation to the controversies of his time. Waterland is, we think, scarcely appreciated. If Dr. Stoughton had been of a philosophical turn he would have seen more clearly than he appears to do the immense difference between Priestley's Necessarianism and Calvin's Predestination. But nothing is easier or less satisfactory than to find fault with a book for not being a different book, and Dr. Stoughton has done what he has attempted so well that it is ungracious to quarrel with him because he has not done more. If all writers kept as well within their powers it would be a considerable advantage to literature. He has introduced into the picture of English life in the eighteenth century many traits which will be new to most; a harvest of the smaller facts which give life to history has been gleaned from unpublished manuscripts and scarce tracts, as well as from a considerable collection of local Nonconformist histories in the possession of the author. Some very interesting touches are derived from the writer's personal intercourse with leading Nonconformists of an earlier generation. The specialty of the work may be said to be that, while it does not neglect the history of the Church in general, it bestows especial care on the Christian life of the Nonconformist bodies, for which the eighteenth century is the period of an important development. For the benefit of future editions we note a few slips or misprints:-Evelyn's Sylvia for Sylva (i. 40); Jacobin for Jacobite (i. 85); "Bromley T. Roffin" (i. 170) is no doubt a blending of the name of the Bishop of Rochester with that of his house at Bromley, and if the Bishop is Atterbury it should be "F. Roffen" not "T. Roffin;" Brant Broughton (i. 249) is in Lincolnshire, not near Warwick; Priestly is given for Priestley (ii. 41); Prettyman for Pretyman (ii. 57); Rodney for Romney (ii. 89); Cox for Coxe (ii. 85); Stephens for Stephen (ii. 133).

Dr. Stoughton is everywhere fair towards the Church of England; nowhere have we to complain of prejudice or misrepresentation. The utmost that can be said is, that, as is natural, the Established Church is less present to his mind as he writes than it would be to the mind of a Churchman, and that in consequence Churchmen are somewhat less prominent in his pages than we might expect. Nothing, for instance, is said of Bentley, or Berkeley, or Law, in connection with the Deistic controversy, though they produced by far the most considerable treatises on the orthodox side-the only anti-deistic treatises in fact, except Butler's, which can be said to have lived. But if the Church of England sometimes seems a little in the background in Dr. Stoughton's pages, this certainly cannot be said of the next work on our list, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, by Charles J. Abbey, Rector of Checkendon, Oxon, late Fellow of University College, and John H. Overton, Vicar of Legbourne, Lincolnshire, late scholar of Lincoln College, Oxford (London: Longmans). The writers do not call it a history, and it is in fact rather a series of historical essays, but it covers all that can fairly be included in the term "ecclesiastical history" within its period, and a great deal more than any one would have included under that term a generation back. Certainly no complaint can be made here that the Deistic controversy is not adequately treated, or that Churchmen do not get their share of the glory of refuting the Deists-a refutation which, from whatever cause, was nowhere so complete as in England. Moreover, the effect of the propagation of Deistical opinions on the Continent, when they had passed from the feebler grasp of Collins and Toland into the terrible hands of Voltaire and Lessing, is treated at some length. This portion of the work is perhaps something of an excrescence on the history of the English Church, but it is so interesting and so well written that we cannot wish it away. The writers follow the course of English Deism on the Continent, but they say nothing of its continental sourceBayle's Dictionary, the great storehouse of sceptical writers for several generations. There are excellent chapters on "the Church and the Jacobites," and on the group of good Churchmen-nonjuring and conforming-who clustered round the excellent Robert Nelson, whose "Fasts and Festivals" is probably now no longer one of the commonest household books, as it was within living memory. In the chapter on "Latitudinarian Churchmanship," it was, we think, a mistake to devote more than seventy pages to an elaborate examination of the works of Tillotson, who belongs wholly to the previous century. He is no doubt a highly convenient person to treat as a representative, but the traits of Latitudinarianism in the eighteenth century might surely have been adequately given without presenting us with so much of Tillotson's individuality. The chapter itself, however, is excellent, showing the working of the spirit of compromise and comprehension from the days of Tillotson to those of the "Feathers' Tavern" petitioners of 1772. A short and pleasant chapter is devoted to the "Essayists"-Steele, Addison, and their fellows-and their influence on the national religion. The account of the Trinitarian controversy takes us back to the days when Waterland contended against Samuel Clarke's Arianism, and again to the time when Horsley delivered his vigorous strokes against Priestley's Unitarianism. Under "Enthusiasm," that bugbear of the eighteenth century, are included such phenomena as Shakerism; the French "prophets" who had arisen under the savage persecution in the Cevennes, and about whom there arose a "mighty noise" in England, in 1706; Behmen and his English followers, especially his incomparable expositor, William Law; Moravianism; Methodism considered on its mystic side; Bishop Berkeley, William Blake, and S. T. Coleridge. "Church abuses" unfortunately supply abundant matter for an interesting chapter of fifty-six pages. The evils of pluralities and nonresidence; the abject poverty of some, by the side of the inordinate wealth of others of the clergy; the shameless canvassing for the higher preferments constantly practised even by men of good repute; the general apathy and carelessness in the discharge of parochial duties; the dull and perfunctory preaching these things form, it must be confessed, a very unattractive picture. And yet the germs of good were present even in the worst times of the Church; out of this decaying mass came forth the " Evangelical Revival," of which Mr. Overton gives us so admirable an account. The sketches of Wesley and Whitfield, their influence and their adherents. and again of the later race of Evangelicals within the Church, when Methodism had left it, are extremely good. The names of Hervey of the "Meditations," of Romaine and Henry Venn, of John Newton and William Cowper, of Scott and Cecil, of Joseph Milner and his brother Isaac, of the Thorntons, Wilberforce, and Hannah More, and of others whose influence is sketched in this chapter, were still household words in Evangelical circles when the middle-aged men of the present day were boys.

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The chapter on "Sacred Poetry" is in our judgment much too long; a very sufficient conception of the sacred poetry of the eighteenth century might have been given in a third of the space. That on "Church Cries" to a certain extent supplies the want of one on the relation of Church and State, which might perhaps have been looked for. It must be confessed that some of the cries which excited the strongest passions when they were fresh and new, seem a little ridiculous when they are contemplated in cold blood. In the essay on "Church Fabrics and Church Services" we have probably the most complete account to be found anywhere of the whitewashed churches, the pews and galleries, the services and customs, the music and vestments, which were common a hundred years ago. In reference to the latter, it is strange to see that after all the suits relating to the matter, Mr. Abbey is not quite clear about the provisions of the rubrics and canons. On p. 467 he seems to suppose that the use of the cope depends upon the "Ornaments rubric;" whereas in fact its use is prescribed in cathedral and collegiate churches by the same Injunctions and Canons which make the surplice and hood the ordinary vestments of the clergy in their ministrations. It is the use of chasuble and dalmatic which depends upon the " Ornaments rubric." The most considerable omission in the work before us is that of missionary work; and yet surely the progress of the Church in America and India belongs to the history of the Church of England. more systematic account of theological literature and learning is also to be desired. If space had been gained for these by the omission of a considerable portion of the essays on Tillotson and on Sacred Poetry, the book would, we think, have gained in value. We have noted one or two slight errors. Pfass (i. 248) should be Pfaff; edited by Tholuck (i. 251) should be quoted by Tholuck," who is again quoted by Lechler. p. 451, from which latter place Mr. Overton no doubt took the passage in question. Hales (i. 274) should be Hale, though the name is often written Hales by contemporary writers. Jablouski (i. 373, &c.) should be Jablonski. Keppel (ii. 8) should be Kebbel. Grinley Gibbons (ii. 416) should be Grinling Gibbons. Stanley (ii. 452) should be Stukeley. Mr. Overton is, we think, mistaken in supposing (ii. 19) that parsons confined in the Fleet prison had any "privilege" in respect of marriages; as the marriage law stood before 1753, a clergyman who performed an irregular marriage was liable only to ecclesiastical penalties, and the Fleet always contained a supply of men who had neither benefice nor character to lose, and were consequently indifferent to such penalties. marriage by a regularly ordained priest was then equally valid, wherever and whenever it was performed. The "State Trials" of this period contain some good illustrations of the working of the old marriage law, as well as of other social matters. Keith no doubt performed many marriages, but not in the Fleet; his chapel was in Curzon Street, nearly opposite the present Curzon Street Chapel. Mr. Abbey notes (ii. 420) that in 1746 the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, "after Saturday evening prayers was the scene of the public Latin declamations;" to the best of our belief, the declamations are delivered there under similar circumstances still. These are small matters, such as no one can hope to escape entirely in an extensive work; and it must be said for Messrs. Abbey and Overton that no other period of the history of our Church has been so well and so fully illustrated as the eighteenth century is in their book. They have rendered a great service to students by making accessible to all that knowledge of the eighteenth century without which any adequate understanding of the nineteenth is impossible.

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The first volume of Dr. Stevens's History of Methodism, published at the Wesleyan Conference Office, was noticed in these pages in October. The two volumes which complete the work carry on the narrative, the first to the death of Wesley in 1791; the second to the centenary jubilee of Methodism in 1839. The earlier, Dr. Stevens regards as "the forming period" of Methodism, in which it begins, spreads, and is organized; the second, its "testing period," the period of internal and external controversies, issuing in settled polity, in augmented vigour at home, and in missionary zeal abroad. Whenever an anecdote or an incident could serve the writer's purpose, he has preferred it, he says, to "general remarks." The work deserves high praise for impartiality, for research, and for interest; but the principle of composition avowed in the preface results in a general patchiness and want of cohesion, and the very conscientiousness with which it is attempted to notice every possible detail of biography, robs the whole of perspective and unity. If it may be said that a great history, in breadth of view and singleness of end, should resemble a great picture, Dr. Stevens' book, among histories, is what Cruikshank's big "Condemnation of Drink" is among paintings,-a bulky collection of little ones.

A fresh and abiding interest will always live about a man of whom Mr. Lecky judges it" no exaggeration" to say that "he has had a wider constructive influence in the sphere of practical religion than any other man who has appeared since the sixteenth century;" and Dr. Stevens' will be found a most readable compendium of information concerning both his work and his life. Mr. Lecky detects in John Wesley something like the vein of insanity which ran through Mohammed, Loyola, and George Fox; but his madness was like everything else about him, very methodical, and his common-sense and quiet humour are as conspicuous as his enthusiasm. His famous Minute of Conference in 1770, on the Arminian controversy, indicated that he looked with contempt on the refinements which have made sects. "What have we been disputing about for these thirty years? I am afraid about words." "Can you split this hair ?-I doubt I cannot."

And the vexed question of the inconsistency of his almost death-bed declaration, "I live and die a member of the Church of England," with his plainly proved conferring of episcopal as well as presbyterial rank, may perhaps best be settled by numbering him among those who would not regard any particular doctrine on Apostolical succession and the order of the ministry as of primary and paramount importance. He exhibits just that sense of humour which may be desiderated even in such a magnificent character as that of F. W. Robertson.

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The aptness of Wesley's replies sometimes took the form of severe repartee, but only when it was deserved. Sir," said a blustering low-lived man, who attempted to push against him and throw him down; "Sir, I never make room for a fool." "I always do," replied Wesley, stepping calmly aside and passing on.

Whatever opinions may be held concerning the remarkable character who is the real hero of Dr. Stevens' story, there is ample proof of his foresight and genius for organization in the development of the society or societies which bear his name. Wesley died at the head of 550 preachers, with 140,000 "members.' "The centenary celebration of 1839, with which the present volumes close, saw these numbers increased nearly tenfold. Not the least astonishing or interesting part of the narrative of this growth is the portion which chronicles, very fairly, and without the sentimental exaggeration too often defacing similar records, the successes of Methodism in its foreign missions. Dr. Stevens' work seems to be accepted by his brother Methodists as a history satisfactory to themselves, and it may be recommended as a useful book for reference, as well as reading, to any one wishing for information concerning the rise and progress of that remarkable revival of AngloSaxon subjective religion which has falsified Luther's prediction of the probable dying down of such movements within a period of thirty years, and justifies by its vitality the soberer boasting of its adherents.

The work is illustrated by some good steel plates of the great champions of the

cause.

Under the title of The Churchmanship of John Wesley, and the Relations of Wesleyan Methodism to the Church of England, by J. H. Rigg, D.D. (London: Wesleyan Conference Office), Dr. Rigg endeavours to prove, not to Wesleyans, who, he thinks, need no such proof, but to non-Wesleyan students of ecclesiastical history, that all efforts on the part of well-meaning Anglicans to undo the gigantic blunder, by which Wesleyan Methodism was forced into hostility to the Established Church, are vain. It is idle to imagine, he contends, that "the Methodism of England would be content, for the sake of union with the ancient and Established Church of this realm, to tear itself from union and communion with the Methodism of all countries besides, and thus to mar the integrity of the greatest sisterhood of Evangelical Churches which the world has known.' Dr. Rigg writes warmly, but with temper, and not without humour. He likens some Churchmen to a fashionable gentleman who might again and again seek the hand of a lady of middle rank and country breeding, but of good looks and property, and notwithstanding repeated and decisive refusals, persist in his overtures with bland assumption, continuing to write letters as to the time and place of the marriage, as though rejection were a thing inconceivable.

If Methodist statistics are to be relied on, the world contains some eleven millions of Methodists, as against some ten millions of Anglicans. But even if this be so, among these eleven millions are probably many forms of faith and practice that would be as alien from the "Churchmanship of John Wesley" as any of the phases of Romanism and Rationalism which Dr. Rigg deplores in the Church of England.

The English Reformation; How it Came About and Why we should Uphold it, by Cunningham Geikie, D.D., author of "The Life and Words of Christ" (London:

Strahan & Co.), which has now reached a second edition, is the work of an earnest man who is favourable to the Reformation. No attempt is made to gloss over the brutality and violence of Henry VIII., or to represent the Reformers as men of extraordinary wisdom and goodness; but the writer believes-not without reasonthat with all its shortcomings the Reforming movement of the sixteenth century was one for which every Englishmen has reason to be thankful. The story is told in a vigorous and lively way and from good authorities. We may say, indeed, thatunless it be in the admirable sketch of the late Professor J. J. Blunt-the story of the Reformation has never been better told in so moderate a compass.

Dr. Fleming, in his Early Christian Witnesses, or Testimonies of the First Centuries to the Truth of Christianity (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.), designs to "give the reader some idea of men who are frequently referred to by writers and speakers on the claims of Christianity." Those who read treatises on early Christianity have, he thinks, frequently no knowledge of the authors whom they find so abundantly quoted. The aim of this volume is to supply this knowledge in such a form as to be acceptable to ordinary readers. He has, we think, very fairly succeeded, and his work will be useful to those who do not possess, or are not disposed to consult, the larger Church histories, and yet wish to know what manner of men were Ignatius and Polycarp, Clement and Tertullian, Ambrose and Augustine, and many others their fellows.

Subterranean Rome appears to have a never-dying interest; we can never hear too much of the labyrinth beneath the earth which served some generations of Christians for places of burial and of worship. We gladly, therefore. welcome the first part of a new edition of Dr. Northcote and Mr. Brownlow's Roma Sotteranea (London: Longmans), an edition so enlarged as to be almost a new work. The part before us contains the general history of the Catacombs; the second will be devoted to early Christian art, and the third to the inscriptions of the Catacombs. The work is avowedly an exposition for English readers of the results of the investigations-now extending over many years-of Commendatore de Rossi, which have been published by himself in his "Roma Sotteranea," and in his periodical, the "Bulletin di Archeologia Cristiana." A main reason for the publication of the new English edition is that the substance of De Rossi's third volume, published as lately as 1877, might be incorporated. The part before us contains not only the history of the Catacombs themselves, and of the researches in them in modern times, but also a curious chapter of ecclesiastical history in the investigation of the nature of the "burial-clubs," under the guise of which Christians legalized their meetings. These meetings were assimilated to those of the pagan clubs at the graves of their members. As it is impossible within our limits to give an idea of the subjects treated in the work before us, we content ourselves with one or two criticisms on points of detail. As to the derivation of the word "catacomb," Canon Venables holds (Dict. Chr. Antiq. i. 295) that "Catacumbæ was simply the name of a certain district near Rome, and came to be applied to the subterranean burial-places from the fact that the one cemetery which remained accessible when the others were forgotten was that "ad Catacumbas." Our authors think that he has been led to this "by the erroneous supposition that the earliest use of the words is by a writer of the seventh century." It seems to us, on the contrary, that his theory requires an early application of the word to the district; to be complete, it requires proof that "Catacumba" was in use before the cemeteries were formed; but, at any rate, the earlier it can be shown to have existed, the less is the probability that it is a barbarous compound of Greek and Latin. It is a little amusing to see (p. 357) the confidence with which the authors bring forward De Rossi's conjectural restoration of an inscription in which only the beginnings of the lines-in no instance more than three words-remain. It is, no doubt, an ingenious cento of Damasine phraseology, but probably a skilful artist in such matters might construct a score as good. How "cum suis" (p. 214) could be translated "with his own money we do not understand, nor how "requirere" could mean "to see the deed of purchase." The inscription in question seems to have been simply a direction where to find the plot itself. On p. 268 "obtained to defend" is an awkward rendering of "meruit defendre," and the insertion of the words "the saints themselves" is utterly unauthorized; what the inscription says is, in brief, that though SS. Peter and Paul were eastern, Rome is more worthy to retain the relics of her great citizens. It is noteworthy that St. Peter as well as St. Paul is claimed as "civis," in accordance probably with the belief of Damasus's time. The reference here to the quaint story