From Theodosius therefore, dates the state-church theory of persecution of heretics, and the embodiment of it in legislation. His primary design, it is true, was rather to terrify and convert, than to punish, the refractory subjects.*

From the theory, however, to the practice was a single step; and this step his rival and colleague, Maximus, took, when, at the instigation of the unworthy bishop Ithacius, he caused the Spanish bishop Priscillian, with six respectable adherents of his Manichæan-like sect (two presbyters, two deacons, the poet Latronian, and Euchrocia, a noble matron of Bordeaux,) to be tortured and beheaded with the sword at Trier in 385. This was the first shedding of the blood of heretics by a Christian prince for religious opinions. The bishops assembled at Trier (Treves), with the exception of Theognistus, approved this act.

But the better feeling of the Christian church shrunk from it with horror. The bishops Ambrose of Milan† and Martin of Tours raised a memorable protest against it, and broke off all communion with Ithacius and the other bishops, who had approved the execution. Yet it should not be forgotten, that these bishops, at least Ambrose, were committed against the death penalty in general, and in other respects had no indulgence for heathens and heretics. § The whole thing, too, was

* So Sozomen asserts, 1. vii., c. 12.

† Epist. xxiv. ad Valentin. (tom. ii. p. 891.) He would have nothing to do with bishops, "qui aliquos, devios licet a fide, ad necem petebant."

In Sulpic. Sever., Hist. Sacra, ii. 50: "Namque tum Martinus apud Treveros constitutus, non desinebat increpare Ithacium, ut ab accusatione desisteret, Maximum orare, ut sanguine infelicium abstineret: satis superque sufficere, ut episcopali sententia haeretici judicati ecclesiis pellerentur: novum esse et inauditum nefas, ut causam ecclesiae judex saeculi judicaret." Comp. Sulp. Sev. Dial. iii. c. 11-13, and his Vit. Mart. c. 20.

Hence Gibbon, ch. xxvii., charges them, not quite groundlessly, with inconsistency: "It is with pleasure that we can observe the humane inconsistency of the most illustrious saints and bishops, Ambrose of Milan, and Martin of Tours, who, on this occasion, asserted the cause of toleration. They pitied the unhappy men, who had been executed at Treves; they refused to hold communion with their episcopal murderers; and if Martin deviated from that generous resolution, his motives were laudable, and his repentance was exemplary. The bishops of Tour and Milan pronounced, without hesitation, the eternal damnation of heretics; but they were surprised and shocked by the bloody image of their temporal death, and the honest feelings of nature resisted the artificial prejudices of theology.”

irregularly done; on the one hand the bishops appeared as accusers in a criminal cause, and on the other a temporal judge admitted an appeal from the episcopal jurisdiction, and pronounced an opinion in a matter of faith. Subsequently the functions of the temporal and spiritual courts in the trial of heretics were more accurately distinguished.

-The execution of the Priscillianists is the only instance of the bloody punishment of heretics in our period, as it is the first in the history of Christianity. But the propriety of violent measures against heresy was thenceforth vindicated even by the best fathers of the church. Chrysostom recommends, indeed, Christian love towards heretics and heathens, and declares against their execution, but approves the prohibition of their assemblies and the confiscation of their churches; and he acted accordingly against the Novatians and the Quartodecimanians, so that many considered his own subsequent misfortunes as condign punishment.* Jerome, appealing to Deut. xiii. 6-10, seems to justify even the penalty of death against religious errorists. Augustine, who himself belonged for nine years to the Manichæan sect, and was wonderfully converted by the grace of God to the catholic church without the slightest pressure from without, held at first the truly evangelical view, that heretics and schismatics should not be violently dealt with, but won by instruction and conviction; but after the year 400 he turned and retracted this view, in consequence of his experience with the Donatists, whom he endeavoured in vain to convert by disputation and writing, while many submitted to violent punishment. Henceforth he was led to advocate the persecution of heretics, partly by his doctrine of the Christian state, partly

* Hom. xxix. and xlvi. in Matt. Comp. Socrat. H. E. vi. 19. Elsewhere his principle was (in Phocam mart. et c. haer. tom. ii. p. 705): 'Eμoì ¿Dos irri Siwnet Das nas jeù disy; that is, he himself would rather suffer injury than inflict injury.

† Epist. xxxvii. (al. liii.) ad Riparium adv. Vigilantium.

Epist. 93 ad Vincent., 17: Mea primitus sententia non erat, nisi neminem ad unitatem Christi esse cogendum, verbo esse agendum, disputatione pugnandum, ratione vincendem, ne fictos catholicos haberemus, quos apertos haereticos noveramus. Sed-he continues-haec opinio mea non contradicentium verbis, sed demonstrantium superabatur exemplis. Then he adduces his experience with the Donatists. Comp. Retract. ii. 5.

by the seditious excesses of the fanatical Circumcelliones, partly by the evident wholesome effect of temporal punishments, and partly by a false interpretation of the cogite intrare, in the parable of the great supper, Luke xiv. 23.* "It is, indeed, better," says he, "that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not there

ment.

fore be neglected. . Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain the highest grade of religious developThe Lord himself orders, that the guests be first invited, then compelled, to his great supper." This father thinks that if the state be denied the right to punish religious error, neither should she punish any other crime, like murder or adultery, since Paul, in Gal. v. 19, attributes divisions and sects to the same source in the flesh. He charges his Donatist opponents with inconsistency in seeming to approve the emperors' prohibitions of idolatry, but condemning their persecution of Christian heretics. It is to the honour of Augustine's heart, indeed, that in actual cases he earnestly urged upon the magistrates clemency and humanity, and thus in practice remained true to his noble maxim: "Nothing conquers but truth; the victory of truth is love." But his theory, as Neander justly observes, "contains the germ of the whole system of spiritual despotism, intolerance, and persecution, even to the court of the Inquisition." The great authority of his name was often afterwards made to justify cruelties, from which he himself would have shrunk with horror. Soon after him, Leo the Great, the first representative of consistent, exclusive, universal papacy, advocated even the penalty of death for heresy.T

* The direction: "Compel them to come in," which has often since been abused in defence of coercive measures against heretics, must, of course, be interpreted in harmony with the whole spirit of the gospel, and is only a strong descriptive term in the parable to signify the fervent zeal in the conversion of the heathen, such as St. Paul manifested without ever resorting to physical coercion. Epist. 185 ad Bonifacium, 21, 24.

C. Gaudent. Donat. i., 20. C. epist. Parmen. i., 16. 8. "Non vincit nisi veritas, victoria veritatis est caritas."

|| Kirchengesch. iii., p. 427.-Torry's ed. ii., p. 217.

Epist. xv. ad Turribium, where Leo mentions the execution of the Priscil

Henceforth none but the persecuted parties from time to time protested against religious persecution; being made, by their sufferings, if not from principle, at least from policy and self-interest, the advocates of toleration. Thus the Donatist bishop, Petilian, in Africa, against whom Augustine wrote, rebukes his catholic opponents, (as formerly his countryman, Tertullian, had condemned the heathen persecutors of the Christians,) for using outward force in matters of conscience; appealing to Christ and the apostles, who never persecuted, but rather suffered and died. "Think you," says he, "to serve God by killing us with your own hand? Ye err, ye err, if ye, poor mortals, think this; God has not hangmen for priests. Christ teaches us to bear wrong, not to revenge it." The Donatist bishop, Gaudentius, says, "God appointed prophets and fishermen, not princes and soldiers, to spread the faith." Still we cannot forget, that Donatists were the first who appealed to the imperial tribunal in an ecclesiastical matter, and did not, till after that tribunal had decided against them, turn against the state-church system.

ART. II.-An Introduction to the Old Testament, critical, historical, and theological, containing a discussion of the most important questions belonging to the several books. By SAMUEL DAVIDSON, D. D., LL. D. 3 vols. 8vo., pp. 536, 492, and 492. 1862-3.

UPON the appearance of the tenth edition of Horne's Introduction, six years ago, we felt called upon to notice particularly the volume relating to the Old Testament, which was prepared by Dr. Davidson. At the conclusion of that notice we remarked: "The principles avowed or covertly insinuated in this volume will legitimately lead much further than the extent

lianists with evident approbation: "Etiam mundi principes ita hanc sacrilegam amentiam detestati sunt, ut auctorem ejus cum plerisque discipulis legum putlicarum ense prosternerent."

to which they are actually pursued. There is no logical consistency in going so far as Dr. Davidson does, and stopping there." The volumes before us amply justify this language. Almost every page might be cited in evidence that the author has found his old position of compromise between orthodoxy and unbelief to be untenable, and has exchanged it for another more consistent with his radical principles.

It is not so much our present purpose to subject the merits or demerits of this treatise to examination, as to deduce from it a few illustrations of the processes and results of the "higher criticism," as practised by our author and the school to which he has addicted himself. In order to accomplish this in the most coherent and intelligible manner, we shall restrict ourselves to his discussion of a single book of Scripture. And with this view we have selected the prophecy of Isaiah, both from its intrinsic interest and from its affording a fair specimen of the whole.

In 1856 we were told that the entire book which bears the name of Isaiah was the genuine production of the prophet, not excepting the four historical chapters, xxxvi-xxxix., which, though not incorporated with his prophecies by himself, were extracted from another work written by him. Now we are informed, that out of the sixty-six chapters but twenty-three, together with a few scattered verses, have proceeded from Isaiah. At the former date, Dr. Davidson tells us in his preface, "he had not reached his present maturer views. He did what he could under the circumstances and with the knowledge he had at the time." "The circumstances in which he was placed," i. e., as Professor of Biblical Literature in an Independent College, "were averse to the free expression of thought. A man under the trammels of a sect, in which religious liberty is but a name, is not favourably situated for the task of thoroughly investigating critical or theological subjects." "Harsh-minded theologians," he adds, "who have inherited a little system of infallible divinity out of which they may excommunicate their neighbours, will not understand such development." We are glad to be thus expressly excluded at the outset from a class, which our author so violently and repeatedly reprobates, for we fancy that we do understand his develop