chronology where the others are definite. Thus St. Matthew and St. Mark connect one of the disputes 'as to who should be the greatest' with the return from Cæsarea Philippi to Capernaum, St. Luke says nothing as to time; the same is true of the incidents recorded at xxi. 5, xxii. 1. On the contrary, St. Luke is sometimes definite where they are indefinite, as, for example, at xiii. 18 or xxii. 59. In this last passage, where St. Matthew and St. Mark use the expression μεтà μIKρóv in connexion with the interval between St. Peter's denials, St. Luke says διαστάσης ὡσεὶ ὥρας μιᾶς. In connexion with this same question of the arrangement of St. Luke's Gospel, we may suggest that it is quite likely that the juxtaposition of a number of facts and sayings of our Lord at a particular place may be due to some point in the immediately preceding narrative; thus the saying (xx. 47) about robbing widows' houses might naturally lead on to the recollection of the incident of the widow's mites' (xxi. 1-4). On the whole, therefore, we are not much inclined to hold the chronological arrangement of St. Luke's Gospel, and should not interpret κaεğĥs in that sense. We pass from the arrangement of St. Luke's Gospel and its relation to the others, with a reference only to two other points. The first is the way in which Dr. Plummer very frequently throws light on the connexion between the third and fourth gospels, a fact which has been noticed by others before. Thus (p. 479) St. Luke and St. John particularly emphasize that the persecution of Christians will come from the Jews; again (p. 508), St. Luke, and St. Luke alone, says that our Lord Kaтà Tò los (xxii. 39) went to the Mount of Olives, while St. John tells us (xviii. 2) that Judas knew the place because πολλάκις συνήχθη Ἰησοῦς ἐκεῖ. Another point of undesigned coincidence between the third and fourth Gospels is the close agreement in the character of Martha and Mary as we gather them from the narratives of St. Luke x. 38-42 and St. John xi. The second point to which we wish to refer is to emphasize once more the great difficulty of dealing with the often contradictory phenomena in trying to work out the problem of the relation of the Synoptic narratives to each other, and the need of not hastily arriving at 'characteristics.' One or two illustrations will suffice. It is often urged that we have evidence of the presence of an eye-witness in St. Mark's Gospel, in the frequent allusions to our Lord's looks or feelings, as for example (iii. 5): περιβλεψάμενος μετ ̓ ὀργῆς, and the phrase oi d'einav, which is very similar, has no such force; see pp. 161, 214, 360.

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συλλυπούμενος ἐπὶ τῇ πωρώσει τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν, or (x. 21) ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς ἐμβλέψας αὐτῷ ἠγάπησεν αὐτόν. But if we pressed the argument to the same extent in St. Luke, we might arrive at the same conclusion, for it is noticed as one of the characteristics of St. Luke that he records the impression made by our Lord's acts and teaching on those who were present, often where the other Evangelists say nothing as to this. Moreover, we have at least two instances where St. Luke records a look or motion of our Lord, where the others omit it (see xx. 17, xxii. 61). This illustrates the extreme caution to be used before inferences can be safely drawn from data of this kind. We are inclined to think that very often these details are the insertion of the historian, rather than the necessary mark of the eye-witness.

We have left ourselves little space to deal with the general subject matter of the Gospel, as distinct from its arrangement and literary form; such, for example, as the stress laid on the universal character of the Gospel message, or on its connexion with St. Paul both in phraseology and in the prominent marks of his teaching, such as xápis and owτnpia. We cannot dwell on the points, in our Lord's doctrine, which St. Luke brings out in regard to prayer, and the responsibility of wealth,' or on the prominent references which he makes here, as in the Acts, to the Holy Spirit. From many of Dr. Plummer's notes the reader will get much that is interesting and suggestive on points like our Lord's method of teaching, His mode of answering questions, His choice and training of the Twelve. We cannot in the least accept his statements as to the limitation of Christ's human knowledge, such as those which he makes for instance (p. 473) in regard to our Lord's use of Ps. cx. We maintain, on the contrary, 'that Jesus has decided the question,' and that to doubt or dispute the Davidic authorship of that Psalm is to challenge the authority of our Blessed Lord Himself. On this point we greatly prefer the noble language of Dr. Liddon in the preface to the second edition of his sermon on the Worth of the Old Testament, p. 8. Nor, again, do we think that he is correct in his statements about the Roman coinage in Palestine (pp. 465-6), for it has been pointed out to the writer of this article, by a well-known and very accurate scholar, that Dr. Plummer 'has overlooked the distinction between the copper coinage of the Procurators which bore no effigies, and the silver imperial coinage not minted in Palestine to which the denarius belonged.' The point is impor1 His remarks on the supposed Ebionitism of St. Luke seem to us very good (see pp. 91, 300, 329).

2

See Madden, Jewish Coinage, pp. 134 ff., 247 f.; and Schürer, History &c. E.T. i. ii. 77 f.

tant because our Lord's argument turns on the fact that the tribute money bore the effigies as a matter of course and not in an accidental instance. We might have prolonged this article, but instead of doing so we will rest content with sending our readers to the volume itself. Our differences from Dr. Plummer, which we have not exhausted, are in the main on small points of criticism, on which it is often possible to hold opposite opinions. On the larger and more important points we may commend the volume as being (so far as it goes) a good specimen of sound scholarship, and a fair statement of the views that have been held on the many points of interest connected with the Gospel. The disappointment we have felt from time to time has been due to the fact that the discussions often seem to fail in real grip, while the authorities used are in the main few and obvious, such as Herzog, Edersheim, and one or two more, the references to which recur. But, even so, we may say that it seems to us the best English Commentary as yet available on a book the beauty of which Renan did not perhaps greatly exaggerate when he described it as le plus beau livre qu'il y ait.

ART. IX. THE INTERNAL ORDER OF AN
ENGLISH MONASTERY.

1. The Observances in use at the Augustinian Priory of St. Giles and St. Andrew at Barnwell, Cambridgeshire. Edited with a Translation and Glossary by JOHN WILLIS CLARK, M.A., F.S.A., Registrary of the University of Cambridge. (London, 1897.)

2. The English Black Monks of St. Benedict. A Sketch of their History. By the Rev. ETHELRED L. TAUNTON. (London, 1897.)

3. Compotus Rolls of the Obedientiaries of St. Swithun's Priory, Winchester. Edited by G. W. KITCHIN, D.D., F.S.A. (Hampshire Record Society.)

4. On the Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury. I. The Library. II. The Church. By MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES, Litt.D. (Cambridge Antiquarian Society.)

5. Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, A.D. 1492-1532. Edited by the Rev. A. JESSOPP, D.D. (Camden Society.)

IT is somewhat remarkable, considering how much attention has been given during recent years to English Church

history, and especially how much has been written upon it from its antiquarian side, that the general reader is still almost left in the dark with regard to the internal life of the English monasteries; whilst matters are further obscured by the fact that prejudice has frequently been allowed to take the place of study in its elucidation. That this should be the case is the more remarkable in view of the fact that Dugdale. and Stevens, Browne Willis and Bishop Tanner have done so much for the elucidation of their external history; and that in the great edition of Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, published early in the present century in eight folio volumes, under the supervision of Sir Henry Ellis and others, we have a great storehouse of information, the like of which is possessed, with regard to its monasteries, by no other nationin Christendom.

This, however, deals for the most part with the external features and history of the monasteries. With regard to their internal life our information is considerably less satisfactory. English monasticism has been described as a whole, indeed, by Mr. O. Travers Hill, and more recently (and far more accurately) by Mr. Fox; but both of these descriptions are somewhat slight. Its early history receives some illustration in Mr. I. Gregory Smith's Rise of Monasticism, in which is gathered together the substance of his valuable articles in the Dictionaries of Christian Biography and Christian Antiquities. Its downfall is described with much graphic power and critical acumen in the volumes in which Dom F. A. Gasquet (following in the steps of a greater historian than he, Mr. R. W. Dixon, in his History of the English Church from the Abolition of Roman Jurisdiction) narrates the suppression of the monasteries at the hands of King Henry VIII. Again, readers of Dr. S. R. Maitland and Dean Church, not to speak of other writers, will at once call to mind graphic passages which have helped to make the life of a mediæval monastery a real thing to them. Whilst Mr. Ethelred Taunton's recently published English Black Monks of St. Benedict, although it is primarily a sketch of the English Benedictines, and as such is entitled to a fuller treatment elsewhere, contains also a somewhat slight description of the life of the members of the order.

But in spite of all these, it remains the fact that for the general reader the fullest account that we have of the inner life of an English monastery, and on the whole the best, is still that which is given in the pages of Fosbroke's British Monachism, a book which, even in its latest form, dates from

the earlier half of the present century. We shall realize better what ancient history it is when we remember that Mr. Fosbroke's work was old enough to be studied by Sir Walter Scott, who bestowed upon it his warm commendations. And not undeservedly; for, in spite of the fact that it is marred by most of the prejudices of its day, it is a very meritorious performance, and contains a remarkable amount of research amongst what was then, to a large extent, unpublished material. But even if there were no other faults to be found in it, the whole treatment would be vitiated by the fact that Mr. Fosbroke made no attempt to discriminate, but assumed that whatever he found to be in use in one monastery was common to all others. He distinguished, of course, between the various Orders; and in a few cases he noted what was peculiar to some particular house. But beyond this, his picture is composed of elements derived from heterogeneous sources, thrown together into one frame. The result of course is a system and a life something like that of many different houses, but exactly like that of none.

Meanwhile the material available for the purpose has gone on growing, by the publication of much that was previously inaccessible; and it may be said in passing that the introductory matter contributed by the editors of this is amongst the best work that we have on the subject. (1) There has been published, by private enterprise, by means of societies, and in the great series produced under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, a large and ever-increasing collection of monastic annals and chronicles, in which most of the greater houses are represented for a shorter or longer period. These, it is true, are primarily concerned with external events; but they incidentally throw not a little light upon the internal life of the monasteries from which they emanated. (2) There have been published a considerable number of monastic chartularies, containing the writings by which the houses held their possessions and privileges, together with many other documents throwing light on their constitution and character. (3) We have, further, such valuable records of the internal life of the society as are contained in the Rites of Durham and the Compotus Rolls of St. Swithun's, Winchester, published by the Surtees Society and the Hampshire Record Society respectively. (4) And in the Episcopal Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, edited by Dr. Jessopp for the Camden

1 The first edition (in two thin octavo volumes) appeared in 1802, the second (in quarto) in 1817, and the third (in one large octavo volume, published after the author's death) in 1843.