From this document then, the Preface to the Prayer Book, we see what was really the "mind and purpose" of those who lawfully represented and acted for the Church of England in the revision of her ritual. They did not seek to make any change for the sake of change. Certain principles were laid down in respect to what was necessary and what was expedient. (1.) It was, one may say, forced upon them, by GoD's Providence, to give to the people their ritual in their own language. (2.) It was necessary to put away some usages and some prayers because they were connected with doctrine of late introduction, by which the Church of England would no longer permit herself to be held in bondage. (3.) It was expedient to put away others, because though not otherwise objectionable, they had become the medium of superstition, and the abuse had made the good use of them almost impossible. But in acting upon these first principles, the Reformers used great care to make as little substantial alteration as possible. They looked upon the old Church and its old usages with the greatest respect, and had no sympathy with those who did otherwise. Least of all had they any notion of taking up a position of antagonism to those portions of the Church which still adhered to the current usages of the day. The term Protestant was of course deliberately eschewed, and they declare that "in these our doings we condemn no other nations, nor prescribe anything but to our own people :"1 with other words of a like moderate tone. And in the midst of all their work we may trace their extreme anxiety that none should have fewer opportunities than hitherto for worshipping GOD, or for receiving that grace which they, as much as the Churchmen of older days, considered to be the life of every Christian soul. If justice were habitually rendered to the Church of the sixteenth century, it would have been unnecessary and impertinent to our readers to have entered upon these details. But when we find on the one hand those who decry the Reformation as a mere destructive movement, while others praise it on grounds which the Reformers themselves would never have accepted, we have felt it necessary to bring together these few facts as an explanation of the real position which the Reformation took up towards the Church at home and abroad; and the real position in which we ourselves stand, who, as members of the same Church in later centuries, enter upon other men's labours, and stand pledged to their principles. 1 It is to be borne in mind that the Thirty-nine Articles are later in date, and do not belong to the Prayer Book; nor have the laity, in fact, anything to do with them. THE PHILEBUS-PLATO AND CHRISTIANITY. Platonis Philebus, with Introduction and Notes. By CHARLES The Philebus of Plato, with a Revised Text and English Notes. 1860. SOME noble remarks are to be found in the Preface to the Oxford Translation of the Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril of Jerusalem.1 The writer is there pleading for the collective value of Patristic doctrine and interpretation; he shows most clearly the weak points, or what was likely to engender particular or exclusive teaching in S. Cyril. His youth, the almost sectarian school to which he belonged-" a school never dominant in the Church, and expiring with his age," and the qualifications with which several of his statements should be guarded. He disclaims the especial personal authority of his lectures, while at the same time he admits how all this supports and elucidates the principles upon which the editors of the "Library of the Fathers" were proceeding with their work. It was to collect a vast body of evidence, in part coincident, in part subject to minor differences, both as to the discipline and the teaching of the Primitive Church. Personally S. Cyril was not to be made the subject of such authoritative veneration as we might accord to S. Athanasius the Great, to S. Chrysostom, or to S. Ambrose, yet as witness to a system his testimony is of the last value. Now all this bears upon the subject before us in this way. We wish to show the application, and the concordance of the sublime morality of the greatest heathen moralist, with the highest morality of all, that which is laid down in the teaching of the New Testament; to give an illustration or two, of that simple yet profound method of mental analysis, which for the last twelve hundred years and more, has awakened unnumbered dormant sympathies, and has been the great minister of disciplinal introspection to the successive generations of men. And further still, we should like to point out, how the writings of Plato can be consecrated to the great office of Christian teaching; to follow somewhat in the track of those Library of Fathers, vol. ii. part i. Preface, p. vi.—xvii. earlier fathers, who without Platonizing, pressed the keener truths of the great heathen master into their own service. The Catholic Church has in many things exhibited her great absorptive power, she has given a new significance to heathen phraseology, supplied a new use for heathen art, consecrated poetry, painting, sculpture, giving a better reality and a newer life to each. Shall her teachers then be afraid of "corrupting the simplicity of the Gospel," when they endeavour to illustrate certain applied portions of that Gospel, by truths, the very immortality of which flows from their own nature, and their consentient reception in the minds of all thinking people? To act thus were indeed to despise and cast away a setting for the orthodox faith of no mean value. Now as it would be somewhat easier to illustrate the primitive faith from the writings of S. Jerome rather than S. Cyril, so would the application of writings of Plato to the purposes of Christian teaching be more apparent if we illustrated such application from others of his works rather than the Philebus. We take this Philebus, then, very much in the same way as the Oxford Editors took S. Cyril for an early volume of their "Library," especially as this dialogue is most magnificent in itself, and has formed the subject of the several editorial labours which stand at the head of our paper. There is a noble use of Plato yet to be made, and the work should be undertaken not by men, who indirectly, if not directly, would seek to substitute for the inspired dogma of the Catholic Church, the statements of any uninspired philosophy, however pure and exalted; but by men, who walking unswervingly along the "ancient paths" still believe that the course may be enlightened here and there by torches kindled at a shrine not wholly alien to their own. We are accustomed to commend the labours of such men as Lightfoot and Schottgen, who would illustrate the Gospel by the Jewish writings and ritual; of scholars like Wetstein, Schleusner, and Elsner, who apply classical authors to the explanation of the New Testament text: our theologians are slowly working back again to the older use of catena, by which the collective opinions of the Fathers are brought to bear upon particular texts. With these facts before us, we may well ask why the vast body of philosophy which admits of a Christian application-which formed the only faith of earnest men for many centuries,-should not be redeemed and consecrated, as it might be, if used by us aright. The merest details of Plato's teaching are ofttimes capable of this higher use. ; Take for examples; his use of the word åλŋlɛúw, in connection with that subjective truthfulness so often dwelt upon by him. how nearly akin it is to David's "truth in the inward parts," and to S. Paul's aλndeúovтes év åɣáπn, which he speaks of to the Ephesians, or to his relation to the Galatians,2 λneúv úμiv. Again, what an exalted interpretation of several passages of Holy Scrip1 Eph. iv. 15. 2 Gal. iv. 16. ture can be derived from Plato's marked antithesis between eiuí and ylyvoua, the former expressing the Being, essential, eternal, necessary, having no dependence on time and space; the latter a phenomenal, temporal, contingent, dependent being, generated in time and space. Passages in which this antithesis is plainly shown can be found in the Theætetis, (153 E., 155 A., 157 D.,) in the Phædrus, (247 c. D. E.,) in the Parmenides (138 E., 141 c., 154 C. D., 161, 162 A. B.,) in the Hippias Major (294 B. c.,) and in several others, in the Republic, the Phædo, and the Timæus. In the Dialogue to be mentioned directly, the Philebus, pleasure of sense or physical pleasure, is ever defined as a yéves, but never as an οὐσία, (53. c. So we do not read ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐγένετο ὁ λόγος, but we do find our Blessed LORD saying that "before Abraham was," Αβραὰμ γένεσθαι came into being,received his γένεσις, " I am,”1 (yú eius,) eternally, essentially, am, was, and ever shall be, which words have generally been considered to have reference to God's own designation of Himself in Exodus iii. 14, according to the LXX. "'Eyú eiu o v;" it was the ó v, and not the o yyvóμavos that sent Moses; and similarly we regard the i v of Romans ix. 5, as a Divine name, and not as a mere participial copula; as finding its correlative in the description of the Almighty given by S. John the Evangelist,2 2 « the ὁ ὢν, καὶ ὁ ἦν, καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος. This Platonic distinction between the sipi and the yiyvoμas seems fully borne out in the Scripture references to life and being (e. g., Acts xvii. 28,) but this is too extensive a subject for us to notice in detail now. But not alone in its more refined and subtle ethical analysis does this power of illustration hold good, it extends itself to the broader and to the more homely moral lessons of the new Dispensation. Take for instance our LORD's own appellation of Himself, as the Good Shepherd, an expression, as a modern has observed,3 which " is full of figures and analogies of loving-kindness;" "almost sacramental in its depth and power;" an epitome of "all care, love, providence, devotion, watchfulness, that is in earth or in heaven, in the ministry of men or angels:" which "has expressed as in a parable, all men's deepest affections, fondest musings, most docile obedience, most devoted trust;" a title in which all other titles meet, in the light of which they blend and lose themselves. Priest, Prophet, King, SAVIOUR, and Guide are all summed up in this one more than royal, paternal, saving name." Now, when, in the Critias1 Plato romantically describes that Atlantis in which the primeval life of the Athenians passed through its ruder stages of culture and development; he speaks of that blessed isle as of the chosen settlement of the Gods, wherein they reared the Athenian people, who were to them as the flocks and herds, over which they were the S. John viii. 53. 3 Manning's Sermons, vol. iv. pp. 1, 2. 2 Rev. i. 8. shepherds. Twice in the Laws1 are men spoken of spoken of as "the flocks of the Gods ;" and in the Phædo,2 he lauds the older saying, "that the Gods are our keepers, and that we men are among their flocks." We may well place Ps. c. 3, and Isaiah xi. 11, side by side with such expressions as these, noting, that the use of the word waive in the old Homeric poems points out most conclusively the analogy that existed between a shepherd and a king, as a traditionary notion common in men's minds from the beginning, altering in character as time went on, gradually assuming its aristocratic sense as pastoral life faded away, and as fixed in its later meaning in sundry passages of the New Testament (e.g., S. Matt. ii. 6; Rev. ii. 27; vii. 17; xii. 5; xix. 15.) Again, does not S. Paul ever make reference to a certain class of men, the yo, the separate, the peculiar, the elect, men who have by their baptism been ecclesiastically elected into the graces and privileges of the Church? The coincidence is not a little remarkable when we find Plato3 speaking of men who have entered into the family of the Divine, and describing the holy place, whither they go away, as the pure, the ever-being, the immortal, the unchangeable; a place where the soul of the ayos would abide, and cease from its restless wandering, where it will be lastingly engaged in the contemplation of the eternal. And when he further dwells upon the holiness required of those who shall enter thither, the stern assertion of Heb. xii. 14, rises before us in all its force and significance. An ayaσuós is indeed demanded of us, if ever we would hope to see the LORD. We cannot afford space, but for one or two more examples, out of the very many which a casual thought even of this subject, suggests. Plato, more than once, refers to a type or form of life, to certain knowledges and intentions that is, which raise life above the moral chaos,-which give a meaning to it, that it would not have unless some intelligible form were impressed upon it: and from the notion of a type came in the doctrine of the Túros in its various significations. Usually this doctrine was but an expansion of the teaching of Solon, who showed that the type of life for the blessed man, depended not alone upon the end of his own life, but upon the bearings which this life of his had upon the great ouvréλea of the economy or cosmos of which he forms a part. Plato advances a step even beyond this, in the Republic1 he speaks of the "types of the theology"-intimating that there were certain first principles respecting the divine nature which were ever to be kept in mind. S. Paul then uses language which was not by any means new at the time he wrote, language the ethical sense of which had been fixed long before; when he thanks GOD that the Romans (vi. 17) had obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine (Tõπov didays) which 1 Book x. 902 B., 906 A. 3 Phædo, 79 D., 82 B. 2 Phædo, 62 B. |