The Canon on the Ordination of a Bishop in the Coptic continues to the newly consecrated Bishop's commencing the Eucharistic service with the Sursum Corda, and then after the words, 'It is meet and right;' it proceeds, And let him pray thus, saying the (prayers) following these according to the form of the Holy Communion.' But the form itself is omitted. There is a short and simple form in the Æthiopic; one more large in the Greek of the Hippolytean Canons; the same still more amplified and rhetorical in the Coptic of the same; and again yet more enlarged in the eighth book of the Constitutions; so that we have it in four states. It appears clear that this was not regarded as an authorized form. It does not appear to be the service used by any particular Church, but, so to say, a fictitious or imaginary ritual introduced into a literary production. Even the simple form which is found in the Ethiopic is not a liturgy, nor is it so used in their Church; and, indeed, it is evidently not an entire form, as it omits all intercessions, which from the injunctions of S. Paul (1 Tim. ii. 1), and the concordant testimony of antiquity, were an essential part of every Liturgy. Further, as it seems to have been introduced into these Canons only as the form to be used by the newly consecrated Bishop, it is improbable that the writer intentionally omitted much of what was not special to that occasion; and, again, that a prayer of blessing on the people by the Bishop, which is peculiar to this form, belongs to the idea of its being the Eucharist of the newly consecrated Pastor, who then first invokes the Divine benediction on his flock.

That this form was an early Liturgy of the Church of Alexandria is highly improbable, for it would imply that when the Æthiopians were converted in the fourth century, a translation was made for them of an old form which was itself wholly superseded in the Church of Alexandria, and which, as we conceive, appears from the two as placed in parallel columns,' was certainly not an early form of the Alexandrian Liturgy.

One sign of the earlier date of part of the Coptic B,' appears in a Canon about Confessors, that they need not be ordained for the office of Priest, only for that of Bishop, for he hath the honour of priesthood by his confession.' This points to the period when the Confessor was regarded as specially holy, and to the prevalence of a superstitious reverence for those who had suffered for Christ's sake, such as we find in S. Cyprian's time; but the Canon which occupies the corresponding place in the Greek which we have, and the later Coptic, corrects this superstitious error, and seems to have specially designed to correct

1 See Bunsen's Hippolytus, vol. iv. p. 240. 2 § 34, p. 36. 3 § 68, p. 128.

it. It says that a Confessor must be ordained, whether for the office of Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, and anathematizes him if he presumes to seize the dignity without ordination; for he is not a Confessor, since he has denied the command of Christ, and has become "worse than an infidel."

The Canon, as it is in the earlier Coptic form, also shows indisputably that these Constitutions were local rules, made, we apprehend, among small and obscure bodies of Christians, contradicting the practice of the Catholic Church, and having so little influence, that there is no trace of the practice or superstition in question, of Confessorship conferring the Priesthood, in any ecclesiastical writer whatever; no one notices it even to contradict it. It is only heard of in these Coptic Canons, and in the contradiction and anathema in the later and Greek forms of the collection.

6

Again, the earlier Coptic says,''They shall not lay hands on a Sub-deacon.' This is in conformity with what we know of early practice. S. Basil says, 'Sub-deacons did not receive imposition of hands;' a Canon on the Fourth Council of Carthage' appoints it so.3 The Greek of the Hippolytean Collection, and of the Constitutions, orders that they receive imposition of hands; and these have now become the differing rules of West and East. The Greek forms of the Canon are later; at least they prescribe the practice which prevailed later, and which was probably only the peculiar practice of some particular Church in early times. Just as practices once peculiar to Rome herself, have spread over one-half of Christendom. The mention of Sub-deacons at all has been supposed by the Chevalier Bunsen to be an interpolation, because the Sub-deacon was unknown before Athanasius in the Eastern Church.' It is true Bingham3 says that we do not meet with the name of Sub-deacon in the East before Athanasius's time, citing Habertus as his authority. But Habertus says, we do not meet with the name before, but we find the office, only they are called vπýρeτα, in the Canons of the Council of Laodicea, A.D. 320. There is no doubt that they were quite a settled order in 320; for those Canons speak of them as of course, as they do of Presbyters and Deacons; and S. Athanasius uses the word quite naturally speaking, of such an one as a Sub-deacon.' They were a settled order in Rome and Africa in the days of Cyprian and Cornelius, A.D. 240; and there is no reason whatever to suppose that they did not exist quite as early in the East, only it so happens no one had occasion to men

1 § 36, p. 38.

2 Epist. Can. c. 51.

3 Can. 5. The early Canons in the series correspond in subject matter to the Hippolytean on Ordination.

Vol. ii. p. 311.

5 Book iii. c. 3, and references,

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1

tion them. The Coptic avoided self-contradiction here, by substituting for the words of the Greek Constitution, with which it otherwise agrees, and which here prescribes the imposition of hands, the words, And concerning the Sub-deacons, and 'Readers, and Deaconesses, we have before said that it is not 'necessary to ordain them.' This is an insertion of the Coptic, as the reference to what went before in that Collection shows. A similar change has been made in the Canon for the ordination of a Reader. The first Coptic' says, The Reader shall be ' appointed. The Bishop shall give him the Book of the Apostles, and shall pray over him, (but) he shall not lay his hand upon him.' The second gives the words we have just cited. The Hippolytean Canon, § 11, is to the same effect, saying only Bißov, instead of the Book of the Apostles (as the Canon of the so-called Fourth Council of Carthage also orders only the delivery of the book); but in the eighth book of the Constitutions we find S. Matthew introduced, enjoining the laying on of hands and prescribed form of prayer. These are indications of the changes made in the Canons; and add to the value of the earliest forms, if they could be recovered or restored.

6

These most valuable and interesting Canons, the earlier Coptic form, of the Hippolytean Collection, our B, have been regarded as the second series of the Canons of the Church of Alexandria, without other evidence than that they are found in Coptic, and that the fruits to be offered for blessing are such as grow in Egypt; the latter being probably the insertion of the person who put them into Coptic. There is no sign of any special connexion with Alexandria, no signs in any Alexandrian. writer of the peculiar practices described.

III. The last element of the Constitutions which we shall notice, is that which forms the principal portion, and is, indeed, the basis of the whole; the Didascaly of the Apostles; the original of the first six books. From this we have in Greek a few short citations in S. Epiphanius, indicating the text as it was received in his time-the Syriac Version, which we hope soon to see printed entire, and which, judging from the specimens in Bickell and Ecchellensis, will give an earlier and purer text than our present Greek-the Ethiopic Version, so far as it was printed by Mr. Platt, which implies a text substantially the same as our Greek, with omissions and additions such as we have described, and Arabic Versions of very much the same character. Of the contents of this work we need not speak; they are well known; and have been used, largely and incautiously, as a repertory of

information as to the practice of the Ante-Nicene Church, which we can depend on only when supported by other authority. The whole has been analysed in Bunsen's Hippolytus (vol. ii.), and an attempt made to discriminate by internal evidence the insertions and enlargements which the original had undergone; the result of which, as the author intimates, would bring us to a text somewhat like that of the Syriac Version. On this point we are not prepared to give any opinion.

The general character and composition of the work, we need not say, impress a reader at once with the view that it is a mere literary composition; the highly rhetorical language-the lengthy quotations of Scripture-the inflated style of word and thought

-the amplifications-the large hortatory and sermon-like portions, seem inconsistent with the notion that it was at any early period received as an authoritative representation of the system or regulations of the Church. It bears all the marks of being the production of a florid littérateur among the Christians of Asia Minor, who wished to represent his idea of some Church rules, possibly as they existed in his own part of Christendom, and to convey excellent practical thoughts and admonitions in the fictitious form of Constitutions of the Apostles. This work of his has been altered, added to, amplified, and retrenched, by successive hands, and in different portions of the Church. The alterations do not appear generally to have been made with any particular view: names of later Church offices are added, but other offices and gradations of rank which were in full power at the same time as they do not appear; e.g. there is, as is well known, no mention of Metropolitans or Patriarchs. There was evidently a wish on the part of the editors to conform the rules in some obvious cases to the practice of the Church, as appears from the alteration of the rule about the observance of Easter after the time of Epiphanius. Some alterations and amplifications were probably made when the whole compilation of the eight books was formed.

It was asserted by the Trullan Council that the collection had been interpolated by heretics, and that it contained marks of Arianism. It is said in opposition to this, and it is true, that many of the expressions are such as would not have been used by later Catholics, but were used innocently before the development of Arianism. On the other hand, it must be considered that we do not find traces of any attempts to conform the doctrinal statements to those of Catholics, when it is almost certain we should have seen them if the later recension had been made by Catholics. The Creed, the Gloria in Excelsis,' the Liturgies,

See the Christian Remembrancer for Jan. 1853, vol. xxv. p. 256. It ought to have been said that Alcuin attributed this hymn to Hilary. This does not affect the argument.

and other forms, are amplified, new matter inserted, and the old enlarged, but yet the phrases which a Catholic would most naturally have used do not appear; e. g. the word ouoovσios does not occur anywhere, and the alterations are in an Arian direction. We can have little doubt that the recension was made by Arianising hands, though there are expressions which strong Arians would not have used, and yet might not have removed from the text in which they found them.

On the whole, it is plain that much more knowledge will be required before we can ascertain the genuine text of the work, if that can ever be done; and so far as appears, the faults, and we may say the follies, of the composer appear to be inherent in the work, and congenital with it. Such are those of making the Apostles, by the hand of Clement, set forth regulations for the Church, as it existed in the third or fourth century, and the exaggerated views which pervade the whole.

Add to this Didascaly an abridged form of the Duæ Viæ, and a large collection of prayers, and you have the seventh book; and the Hippolytean Collection make the eighth.

And now to revert to the question originally proposed. In case we are able to recover the original text of the different documents of which we have been speaking, what would be its authority or historical value?

We do not think that any of these writings can be regarded as authoritative collections of regulations, or even as reliable exponents of the Church Rules of the ages in which they were written, in any critical points.

1. We restate the consideration, that we do not find them referred to as such; that, as regards the chief part of the work, there is no citation, or clear reference, or intimation of its existence, prior to the time of Epiphanius; that, as to the little treatise, which may be the Doctrina Apostolorum, it was only regarded as an edifying tract, not as a code of Church Rules. The Hippolytean Canons, in part, may have existed, but, so far as we have the means of judging, were not regarded as of authority, much less were they the actual law-books of the Church; there is no external evidence whatever to support their claim.

2. There is a very strong presumptive argument against there being any authoritative written collections of Church observances in the early ages, from the silence respecting them, not only in writers generally, but even in those who were treating of points on which a reference to such authentic records of traditions would

be both a natural and cogent argument. Especially in two notable places, where the subject of traditional observances, unwritten, i.e. not recorded in Holy Scripture, is specifically treated of,-in Tertullian, De Corona Militis, c. 3, 4; and S.