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Tyndale was at this time (1535) residing in the house of Thomas Poynty, an English merchant in Antwerp. A plot was formed for the purpose of apprehending him. One Henry Phillips was sent over by the bishops charged with the carrying out of the plot. He at length succeeded, and had Tyndale committed as a prisoner to the castle of Vilvorde, about twenty-three English miles from Antwerp. The divided state of opinion among the English merchants at Antwerp, and the variance between the king of England and Charles, favoured the efforts of Tyndale's enemies. The fact of Tyndale's imprisonment was now well known in England, Scotland, and Germany. Efforts were in various ways made in his behalf, but they were always frustrated. Dark and troublous times had come. The friends of the "old learning" for the time triumphed. At length, after enduring imprisonment at Vilvorde for more than a year and a half, Tyndale was, on 6th October 1536, led forth to be put to death. As he was being fastened to the stake, he cried out with a loud voice, "LORD! OPEN THE EYES OF THE KING OF ENGLAND." He was first strangled, and then his body was consumed to ashes. Thus perished one of England's noblest martyrs. His labour was not in vain. His memory is blessed.

Good old John Foxe thus writes regarding him, in summing up his estimate of his character:-" First, he was a man very frugal and spare of body, a great student and earnest labourer in the uttering forth of the Scriptures of God. He reserved or hallowed to himself two days in the week, which he named his pastime, Monday and Saturday. On Monday he visited all such poor men and women as were fled out of England, by reason of persecution, into Antwerp, and these, once well understanding their good exercises and qualities, he did very liberally comfort and relieve, and in like manner provided for the sick and diseased persons. On the Saturday he walked round about the town, seeking every corner and hole where he suspected any poor person to dwell; and when he found any well occupied, but over-burdened with children, or else were aged and weak, these also he plentifully relieved. And thus he spent his two days of pastime, as he called them. And truly his alms were very large, and so they might well be, for his exhibition that he had yearly of the English merchants at Antwerp, when living there, was considerable, and that for the most part he bestowed upon the poor. The rest of the days of the week he gave wholly to his book, wherein he most diligently travailed. When Sunday came,

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then went he to some one merchant's chamber or other, whither came many other merchants, and unto them would he read some one parcel of Scripture, the which proceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him, much like to the writing of John the Evangelist, that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to his audience to hear him read the Scriptures; likewise after dinner he spent an hour in the same manner. He was a man without any spot or blemish, of rancour or malice, full of mercy and compassion, so that no man living was able to reprove him by any sin or crime, although his righteousness and justification depended not thereupon before God, but only upon the blood of Christ, and his faith upon the same. In this faith he died with constancy at Vilvorde, and now resteth with the glorious company of Christ's martyrs, blessed in the Lord. And thus much of the life and story of the true servant and martyr of God, WILLIAM TYNDALE, who, for his notable pains and travail, may well be called the Apostle of England in this our latter age.'

ART. VI.-Rationalism not allied to Protestantism.

History of Rationalism: embracing a survey of the present state of Protestant Theology. By JOHN F. HURST, D.D. Revised and Enlarged from the Third American Edition. London: Trübner & Co. 1867.

THE tendency of thought in the present day on almost all subjects has a decidedly historical character. Men are more inclined to inquire what has been thought, than what ought to be thought on any given topic; and to form their judgment of the truth or falsehood of any opinion or system, rather from a consideration of its origin, history, and tendency, than from an examination of the direct evidence for or against its reception. It is a striking evidence and illustration of this tendency, that even a phenomenon of so recent appearance in the sphere of theology as Rationalism has already found so many historians. The number of works bearing more or less on the history of this form of opinion is very considerable; and besides those which are more special in their purpose and partial in their extent, there have been several attempts to give a complete and regular history of Rationalism both by its friends and its opponents. In Germany, Kahnis has written this history from the high Lutheran point of view; Schwarz has nar

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rated it with the sympathy of a follower; and Hagenbach has traced it in a moderate and impartial but evangelical spirit: in England we have Farrar's Bampton Lectures, and Lecky's admiring and enthusiastic description of the rise and progress of the spirit of Rationalism in Europe: so that the controversy might seem to be carried on as much on the field of history as on that of reason, for though many of the works we refer to are not avowedly or really controversial, yet they are written with a view of bringing out more or less fully the causes of the rise and progress of the opinions described, and cannot but take a different colouring according to the opinions of the authors. The volume before us is a contribution to this branch of literature from the other side of the Atlantic, and it occupies a very respectable place among the other works of the same class. We do not think indeed that it is likely to be a work of permanent and classical value to future ages; the author probably did not aspire, like Thucydides, to make his work a zrñμa iç ȧsí: but there is hardly any of the works on this subject of which this can be said; and perhaps the time has not yet come when the course of Rationalism can be looked back upon from a sufficient distance or height, that a thoroughly complete and satisfactory history of it can be written. But though falling short of so high a standard, by which it would perhaps not be fair to try him, Dr Hurst has succeeded very fairly in producing a work which will be very useful for the present time, to all who wish within brief compass and in a clear and interesting narrative to obtain some idea of the antecedents and present condition throughout Christendom of that Rationalistic school of thought which is so prominent and powerful in the present day. Even considered from this lower point of view, the undertaking was no easy one. The field is vast and varied, embracing Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, Britain, and America; the period is long, extending in some degree of fulness from the Reformation, and in full detail from the middle of last century down to the present day; and this immense area and extensive time has to be filled with the events and changes in the world of mind and opinion, which are ever more difficult to catch and to depict than those that take place on the stage of external history. Of this wide field our author has given us an exceedingly careful and painstaking, and on the whole accurate sketch. We may sometime have occasion to give him the benefit (to which he is surely justly entitled), of the Horatian maxim, "Verum opere in longo fas est obrepere somnum;" but for the most part we can trust the correctness and fairness of his statement of facts. We also admire very

much the spirit in which the book is written. It is pervaded by a devout and evangelical tone, Dr Hurst ever manifesting a hearty sympathy with what is true and good; and, at the same time, his language is entirely free from bitterness or vituperation, in speaking, as he has so frequent occasion to do, of what he cannot but regard as errors of the most radical and destructive nature. His intention is uniformly candid and fair, and his language temperate and inoffensive. His style is easy, plain, and perspicuous; though it is far from being elegant or striking, or even always correct, it carries the reader along in an equable and pleasant flow of narrative. Occasionally, however, the work betrays its transatlantic origin by Americanisms, which grate harshly on the ear of an English reader.

But with all his good intentions and painstaking performance, we must say that our author greatly disappoints our expectation. He fails entirely to give anything like a clear and intelligible account of the rise and development of Rationalism, as a system of opinions or mode of thinking in the Protestant churches. He notices indeed in due course nearly all the leading men that have held and promoted such views, and gives accounts more or less full and satisfactory of their opinions; but after all we only see in his narrative a disconnected series of individual phenomena following one upon the other; of the causes that produced these phenomena, and the connection that linked one to another, we get no distinct idea from his narrative, as he either avoids attempting such explanations at all, or where he does, his attempts are of the most weak and unsatisfactary kind. Indeed, the title of his book is really a misnomer. Had it been called the history of the decline and revival of evangelical religion in the Protestant Churches, it would have more accurately described what Dr Hurst has really given us. He has introduced a good deal that would have been very suitable had that been his avowed subject, but which has only a very indirect and remote bearing on the history of Rationalism; as, for instance, the notices of the philanthropic labours of the evangelical school in Germany, which occupy a whole chapter in his work, but which surely might have been sufficiently disposed of, in so far as they bear on the history of Rationalism, by a much briefer notice. And on the other hand he has passed over entirely, or with very slight notice, some subjects which, in a history of Rationalism proper, should have occupied a very important place. Thus we do not find in this work any adequate account of the English Deists and their opinions, nor any notice of the rise of the modern science of criticism, which

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really did attain results that have been universally accepted, and have led to some change in the mode of evangelical statements, but which was pushed to so great an excess by the rationalistic school. A fair recognition and estimate of the labours and successes of the eminent scholars and critics of the last and present centuries should surely have found a place in a history of Rationalism. The truth is, that of Rationalism as a principle, the work does not give us any history at all; it gives, no doubt, a description of most of the results of Rationalism; the special opinions or doubts in which the principle successively embodied itself, in its most distinguished and influential adherents; but it shews no grasp at all of the principles that underlay these particular opinions, and of which they are but the expressions.

The perpetual dealing with results, instead of seeking to penetrate to the principles that lay beneath them, gives to Dr Hurst's book, what it would have been specially desirable in such a work to have avoided, a certain air of dogmatism, which must prove offensive to many readers. As he invariably occupies the stand-point of orthodoxy himself, his mode of judging of all opinions by their results, as approaching to or diverging from that which he regards as truth, causes his discussion not unfrequently to suggest the idea, that he sets up an arbitrary standard of soundness in the faith, and without regard to reason or argument, summarily condemns whatever falls short of that standard, simply because it does so. No doubt, in a historical sketch of so large a field, it would have been impossible to have entered into the proofs of his opinions at every step; nor could it have been expected on the other hand, that he should have concealed or disguised his own convictions; but had he been able to seize the various classes of opinion in their root principles, instead of merely describing them in their application as worked out in detail, he might in the very process of narrating have given his readers such an insight into the grounds and reasons of either side, as would have enabled him to express his own convictions as freely and strongly as he pleased, without the offensive apearance of resting them simply on the ipse dixit of any church or creed. It is only an appearance of dogmatism, we believe, after all; and it is one that necessarily resulted from the superficial mode in which he treats the subject; but it is not the less to be regretted, as it makes the book a very unfit one to make a favourable impression on any who may have a leaning towards Rationalism. Such a one would be apt to jump to the conclusion, that the author is a mere partizan, coming forward with foregone conclusions, measuring everything by their