literary controversies, not only with opponents of the church orthodoxy, like Helvidius (against whom he had appeared before in 384,) Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius, but also with his long-tried friend Rufinus, and even with Augustine.* Palladius says, his jealousy could tolerate no saint beside himself, and drove many pious monks away from Bethlehem. He complained of the crowds of monks whom his fame attracted to Bethlehem.† The remains of the Roman nobility, too, ruined by the sack of Rome, fled to him for food and shelter. At the last, his repose was disturbed by incursions of the barbarian Huns and the heretical Pelagians. He died in 419 or 420, of fever, at a great age. His remains were afterwards brought to the Roman basilica of Maria Maggiore, but were exhibited also, and superstitiously venerated in several copies in Florence, Prague, Clugny, Paris, and the Escurial.

The Roman church has long since assigned him one of the first places among her standard teachers and canonical saints. Yet even some impartial Catholic historians venture to admit and disapprove his glaring inconsistencies and violent passions. The Protestant love of truth inclines to the judgment that Jerome was indeed an accomplished and most serviceable scholar, and a zealous enthusiast for all which his age counted holy, but lacking in calm self-control, and proper depth of mind and character, and that he reflected, with the virtues, the vices also of his age and of the monastic system. It must be

* His controversy with Augustine on the interpretation of Gal. ii. 14, is not unimportant as an index of the moral character of the two most illustrious Latin fathers of the church. Jerome saw in the account of the collision between Paul and Peter in Antioch an artifice of pastoral prudence, and supposed that Paul did not there reprove the senior apostle in earnest, but only for effect, to reclaim the Jews from their wrong notions respecting the validity of the ceremonial law. Augustine's delicate sense of truth was justly offended by this exegesis, which, to save the dignity of Peter, ascribed falsehood to Paul, and he expressed his opinion to Jerome, who, however, very loftily made him feel his smaller grammatical knowledge. But they afterwards became reconciled. Compare on this dispute the letters on both sides in Hieron. Opera ed. Vall., tom. i. 632 sqq., and the treatise of Möhler in his "Vermischte Schriften," vol. i., pp. 1–18.

"Tantis de toto orbe confluentibus obruimur turbis monachorum."

The Jesuit Stilting, the author of the Vita Hieron. in the Acta Sanctorum, devotes nearly thirty folio pages to accounts of the veneration paid to him and his relics after his death.

said to his credit, however, that with all his enthusiastic zeal and admiration for monasticism, he saw with a keen eye, and exposed with unsparing hand, the false monks and nuns, and painted in lively colours the dangers of melancholy, hypochondria, the hypocrisy and spiritual pride, to which the institution was exposed.

Most Roman Catholic biographers, as Martianay, Vallarsi, Stilting, Dolci, and even the Anglican Cave, are unqualified eulogists of Jerome. (See the "selecta veterum testimonia de Hieronymo ejusque scriptis," in Vallarsi's edition, tom. xi., pp. 282-300.) Tillemont, however, who on account of his Jansenist proclivity sympathizes more with Augustine, makes a move towards a more enlightened judgment, for which Stilting sharply reproves him. Montalembert (Monks of the West, vol. i. 402) praises him as a man of genius inspired by zeal and subdued by penitence, of ardent faith and immense resources of knowledge, yet he incidentally speaks also of his "almost savage impetuosity of temper" and "that inexhaustible vehemence which sometimes degenerated into emphasis and affectation." Dr. John H. Newman, in his opinion before his transition from Puseyism to Romanism, exhibits the conflict, in which the moral feeling is here involved with the authority of the Roman church: "I do not scruple to say, that, were he not a saint, there are things in his writings and views, from which I should shrink; but as the case stands, I shrink rather from putting myself in opposition to something like a judgment of the catholic (?) world in favour of his saintly perfection." (Church of the Fathers, 263, cited by Robertson.) Luther also here boldly broke through tradition, but, forgetful of the great value of the Vulgate even to his German version of the Bible, went to the opposite extreme of unjust derogation, expressing several times a distinct antipathy to this church-father, and charging him with knowing not how to write at all of Christ, but only of fasts, virginity, and useless monkish exercises. Le Clerc exposed his defects with thorough ability, but unfairly, in his "Quæstiones Hieronymianæ," (Amstel. 1700, over 500 pp.) Mosheim and Schröckh are more mild, but the latter considers it doubtful, whether Jerome did Christianity more good than harm. Among later Protestant historians opinion has

become somewhat more favourable, though rather to his learning than his moral character, which betrays in his letters and controversial writings too many unquestionable weaknesses.

Of Jerome's many female disciples the most distinguished is St. Paula, the model of a Roman Catholic nun, who deserves a fuller notice in this connection. With his accustomed extravagance he opens his eulogy after her death in 404, with these words: "If all the members of my body were turned into tongues, and all my joints were to utter human voices, I should be unable to say anything worthy of the holy and venerable Paula."*

She was born in 347, of the renowned stock of the Scipios and Gracchi and Paulus Æmilius,† and was already a widow of six-and-thirty years, and the mother of five children, when, under the influence of Jerome, she renounced all the wealth and honours of the world, and betook herself to the most rigorous ascetic life. Rumour circulated a suspicion, which her spiritual guide, however, in a letter to Asella, answered with indignant rhetoric: "Was there, then, no other matron in Rome, who could have conquered my heart, but that one, who was always mourning and fasting, who abounded in dirt,‡ who had become almost blind with weeping, who spent whole nights in prayer, whose song was the Psalms, whose conversation was the gospel, whose joy was abstemiousness, whose life was fasting? Could no other have pleased me, but that one, whom I have never seen eat? Nay, verily, after I had begun to revere her as her chastity deserved, should all virtues have at once forsaken me?" He afterwards boasts of her, that she knew the Scriptures almost entirely by memory; she even learned Hebrew, that she might sing the Psalter with him in the original; and continually addressed exegetical questions to him, which he himself could answer only in part.

Repressing the sacred feelings of a mother, she left her

* Epitaphium Paulæ matris, ad Eustochium virginem. Ep. cviii., ed. Vallarsi. (Opera, tom. i., p. 684.)

Her father professed to trace his genealogy to Agamemnon, and her husband to Eneas.

This want of cleanliness, the inseparable companion of ancient ascetic holiness, is bad enough in monks, but still more intolerable and revolting in nuns.

daughter Ruffina and her little son Toxotius, in spite of their prayers and tears, in the city of Rome,* met Jerome in Antioch, and made a pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt. With glowing devotion, she knelt before the re-discovered cross, as if the Lord were still hanging upon it; she kissed the stone of the resurrection, which the angel rolled away; licked with thirsty tongue the pretended tomb of Jesus, and shed tears of joy as she entered the stall and beheld the manger at Bethle hem. In Egypt she penetrated into the desert of Nitria, prostrated herself at the feet of the hermits, and then returned to the Holy Land, and settled permanently in the birth-place of the Saviour. She founded there a monastery for Jerome, whom she supported, and three nunneries, in which she spent twenty years as abbess, until 404.

She denied herself flesh and wine, performed, with her daughter Eustochium, the meanest services, and even in severe sickness slept on bare ground in a hair shirt, or spent the whole night in prayer. "I must," said she, "disfigure my face, which I have often, against the command of God, adorned with paint; torment the body, which has participated in many idolatries; and atone for long laughing by constant weeping." Her liberality knew no bounds. She wished to die in beggary, and to be buried in a shroud which did not belong to her. She left to her daughter (who died in 419) a multitude of debts, which she had contracted at a high rate of interest for benevolent purposes.†

Her obsequies, which lasted a week, were attended by the bishops of Jerusalem and other cities of Palestine, besides clergy, monks, nuns, and laymen innumerable. Jerome apostrophizes her: "Farewell, Paula, and help with prayer the old age of thy adorer!"

"Nesciebat se matrem," says Jerome, "ut Christi probaret ancillam." Revealing the conflict of monastic sanctity with the natural virtues, which God has enjoined. Montalembert also quotes the objectionable passage with apparent approbation.

Jerome says, Eustochium hoped to pay the debts of her mother-probably by the help of others. Fuller justly remarks: "Liberality should have banks, as well as a stream." And John Wesley's excellent maxim was: "Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can."

SHORT NOTICES.

The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, &c. Collected and edited by James Spedding, Robert Leslie Eddis and Douglas Denon Heath, (all of the University of Cambridge.) Vol. VIII. Boston: Taggart & Thompson.

We have repeatedly called the attention of our readers to this beautiful, complete, and convenient edition of the works of Lord Bacon. The work has passed from the hands of Messrs. F. A. Brown & Co. into those of Taggart & Thompson. All of the fifteen volumes are now published except one, which is shortly to appear. The price must, as the publishers announced, be necessarily raised after the work is completed. No more convenient, or, for its style, cheaper edition of the works of the great philosopher can anywhere be procured.

Present Truths in Theology. Man's Inability and God's Sovereignty, with their relation to gospel doctrine and moral responsibility. By James Gibson, D. D., Professor of Theology and Church History, Free Church College, Glasgow. Glasgow: Thomas Murray & Son. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. London: James Nisbet & Co. 1863. Vols. I. and II. Pp. 446 and 450.

This extensive and valuable work was received at too late a period to allow of any extended examination of its contents. A very slight inspection of its contents, however, reveals two things: first, that all the great questions concerning grace are brought under discussion; and, second, that the author has a wide field of vision-the views of the later, as well as of the older theologians, German as well as English, are submitted to examination. We do not doubt, therefore, that it will prove highly instructive to all interested in theological discussions. We regret that we have not had the opportunity to gain a better acquaintance with these volumes, to authorize us to speak of them more fully and intelligently.

Critical and Grammatical Commentary on St. Paul's Epistles to the Thes salonians. With a revised Translation. By Charles J. Ellicott, B. D., Dean of Exeter, and Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. Andover: Warren F. Draper. Philadelphia: Smith, English & Co. 1864.

This volume forms the fifth part of Professor Ellicott's Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, a work distinguished by