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authority; and to give them only the place of subsidiary or confirmatory witnesses.

The result of our investigations thus far, as to the authority of any collections of so-called Apostolical ordinances, may materially lessen the interest with which we enter upon the next part of our subject-the inquiry what the primary forms of these works were, and how far we now possess the means of restoring them to their original state. Still that inquiry is not unimportant; because these works, if ancient (and with their text unaltered), might, as we have said, have an indirect historical value, as showing incidentally, and in correspondence with other evidence, the practices or views of their own day.

We have already stated what is the generally received view on the subject, as a whole; namely, that the entire work, our Eight Books of Apostolical Constitutions, consists, first, of a long work, the original, the first six of these books, and, then, of several shorter tracts on kindred subjects, dovetailed together, and occupying the rest of the collection. That the work is thus made up of divers tracts, is clear from the general want of internal unity, method, or connexion; the difference of style in the various portions, and sometimes statements almost contradictory; the same topics being treated over again in different places; besides a formal conclusion at the end of the sixth book, and other indications of their being distinct works joined together. The suspicions which these internal marks suggest, are established by our finding these several portions actually existing as distinct works.

The first and largest portion, the first six books, is already known to be extant in Syriac, in Æthiopic, and in Arabic, not made into separate books, but divided into chapters, differing in their divisions, and with some dislocation of their varicus parts in the several versions. It bears the name of the Catholic Didascalia, or the Didascalia of the Apostles; this seems to have been its proper name; and it is that which we shall use in speaking of it.

Further, the substance of the first portion of the seventh book is extant in Greek, in the diarážeis, printed by Bickell from the Vienna MS. so often referred to by Grabe. This we believe may be the Doctrina Apostolorum, Διδαχὴ τῶν ̓Αποστό Mov, of Athanasius and Eusebius; the Duca Via, or Judgment of Peter, of Ruffinus. In embodying it in the Constitutions, the compiler has omitted the latter portion, on Ecclesiastical Offices, and robbed the former of all those parts which gave it its dramatic character as an actual conference of the Apostles. An earlier form of the eighth book is extant as a separate

work, in Greek, but without the chapter, that was apparently introduced by a compiler to connect it with the rest when it was embodied with them; itself being demonstrably made up of divers shorter pieces. From this collection being connected with the name of Hippolytus, and a portion of it being probably written by him, we shall call these the Hippolytean Collection. Thus we have three of the components of our Constitutions, -the Didascaly, which forms the bulk of the work; the Dua Viæ; the Hippolytean Constitutions. The remaining elements are-a list of Bishops ordained by the Apostles; a Collection of prayers and ritual forms, in the latter part of the seventh book, which appear, from several signs, to be separate works joined on to each other.

Lastly, it must be stated, that in the various forms of these works, or parts of them which appear now in versions, or are cited by ancient authors, there are portions which are not included in our eight books; e.g. in the short collections in Coptic and Ethiopic, corresponding to the Hippolytean, there is much matter that does not appear there; and there are portions of the Didascaly (the first six books) in Ethiopic and Arabic, which are not in the Greek in our eight books. The eight books, then, are made up out of several of these earlier works, omitting portions and adapting them together.

As to the time when this work was so put together, we do not know; we can only approximate to it. In the last of the so-called Apostolic Canons, probably made up when those Canons were appended to the Constitutions, we read in the list of sacred books, And the Constitutions, in eight books, given to you, the Bishops, by the hand of me, Clement.' The authority of this is absolutely nothing; the date uncertain. The Constitutions, as one work, is cited by Maximus early in the seventh century. The Trullan Council at the end of the seventh century, refer to the above Canon, but reject the Constitutions as having been interpolated by heretics. It seems that they were then received as we have them. Prior to this, in the curious Arian book which we have mentioned, the Opus Imperfectum of the pseudo-Chrysostom on S. Matthew, which was probably composed in the fifth century, we find the eighth book distinctly cited as the 'eighth book of the Canons of the Apostles' (on Matt. xxv. 18). This, however, may have been a later interpolation, for there are such in this Opus Imperfectum. But there is no reason against believing that the eight books were put together even as early as the latter part of the fifth century. And that it was not done earlier, may be inferred from the fact, that we do not find any Oriental version of the eight books as whole, only of their elementary parts; a strong indication that

in the year 451, when the Egyptian, Ethiopic, and Syriac Churches were severed from the communion of the Greeks and Latins, the composite work, our eight books, had not been put together.

It is then in the elementary portions of the Constitutions, or the works out of which they were made up, or others cognate to them, that we must hope to recover the earlier forms. Now, of these component parts, we believe the fiction out of which the beginning of the seventh book was made may be the Doctrina Apostolorum, and that this was a work of the early part of the second century; recommended to the use of catechumens, and read in some churches. The Didascaly we should put at the latter part of the third century, as, besides internal evidence, which we shall state presently, it is regarded by Epiphanius as an Apostolic book, and is first found (if we identify it with the Clementia) in the list of spurious sacred books in the Stichometry, and the Synopsis Sacræ Scripturæ.' Of the Hippolytean and the cognate collection, which we must call the Coptic, we shall speak more distinctly afterwards.

Now if these productions are to be, in any measure, of use as an evidence of the faith and usage of the primitive ages, it is clear that we must ascertain with tolerable assurance that the text which we have is in substance the same as that which existed in the early times. But here we fail miserably. The words cited by Origen, from (apparently) some book of the kind, are not found in any of the compositions which have yet been brought to light; neither are those cited by the pseudo-Cyprian. The work which Epiphanius had was, as far as appears, the Didascaly, the first six books; it is only out of this portion of the book that his citations are made, nor is there any reason to suppose that the other tracts had at that time been combined with it. But the text which Epiphanius cited, contained passages which are no longer extant; and in those that are extant the readings are materially different, and in one place, as we have said, directly contradictory to the words cited by Epiphanius. That is, the text Epiphanius had, has been retrenched, modified, altered, by later hands, so as to contradict what it said before; so as, in Grabe's words, to turn affirmatives into negatives, and negatives into affirmatives. In the very passage in which he expresses his own view of the value of the Constitutions, and asserts that there is nothing misstated in them as respects the faith or practice of the Church, he cites the words of the Constitutions as requiring the celebration of Easter at the same time as it was kept by their brethren of the Circumcision. He argues, indeed, that it does not mean what it was

supposed to do; and what, indeed, it obviously did mean: but in our present text the words have disappeared, and very full and strong statements of the opposite rule are found instead.

Of the two citations in the Opus Imperfectum of the pseudoChrysostom in the fifth century, one is found in our eighth book; the other cannot be found at all, any more than those of Origen and the pseudo-Cyprian.

The citations which are found after this, in Maximus and others, agree with our present text, so that we may fairly suppose that the work, as we have it, was current in its present form in the Greek Church at the end of the sixth century.

From the citations, therefore, in the Greek and Latin Fathers, we infer that the text of these books had undergone very great alteration after the fourth, and perhaps the middle of the fifth century. This will be still more manifest after we have considered the versions of the elementary portions of the work in the languages of the East.

I. SYRIAC.-We take the Syriac Version first, because it may naturally be expected to represent these works in an earlier form than any other version, and, in a critical point of view, to be most valuable, from the learning of the Syriacspeaking Christians being superior to that of any others who did not use the Greek or Latin language.

Now in the Syriac we at present know of the following:

1. A version of a portion of the pseudo-Hippolytean Constitutions, contained in a collection of canons in one of the Syriac MSS. in the British Museum, brought from Egypt. A translation of this portion of the MS. was made by Mr. Cureton for the Chevalier Bunsen, and an analysis of its contents, compared with those of the Greek text, is given in the Age of Hippolytus, vol. ii. pp. 347, 348. The portion thus found separately, begins at a point where there is an evident break, and, so to say, a new subject opened in the Greek Collection; and the fact that it is thus found distinct, confirms the supposition which we should have formed from the internal marks of the Greek itself, that the Hippolytean Collection (forming the eighth book of the Constitutions) is itself made up of other smaller sets of canons; whilst the different place occupied in the series by another portion, On Catechumens, in this, as well as in the Coptic Versions, points to the same fact.

2. A version of the first six books, i. e. the Didascaly; of which a MS. is extant in the Library at Paris. This has been examined by Dr. Zenker, and an analysis and extracts from it are printed by Bickell, pp. 148-159. Bickell holds it to be a collection of extracts; Bunsen, an earlier form of the Didas

caly, which, he says, remarkably coincides with what he had himself previously written as to the additions made to the original, when he had access only to the common Greek text. We trust that this Syriac version will be published entire in the next edition of the Chevalier's work, because it is impossible to judge satisfactorily on such points without having the whole before us.

3. A MS. version of the Didascaly from which Abraham Ecchellensis printed extracts in his work De Alexandrina Ecclesia Originibus. Some of these are extracted by Grabe, and compared with the present Greek text. They will exhibit the change which the text had undergone by interpolation-the passages that are in our Greek, and are not in the Syriac, being included in brackets. The first extract is from lib. ii. c. 11 :

Therefore, O Bishop, study to be pure (unblameable) in thy doings, knowing thy station (rónov, present Greek Tрómov) [and thy dignity], as representing God among men, by ruling over all men, priests, emperors, magistrates, fathers, sons, teachers, and all that are subject to thee alike]. And so sit in the Church, when speaking the word, as one that has power to judge those that have sinned; because to you Bishops it has been said: "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

The second, from the 25th and 26th chapters of the second book:

:

And such are now the.... oblations, which are offered by the holy Bishops to the Lord God [through Jesus Christ who died for us], for these are your High Priests; and your Priests are the Presbyters; and your Levites, the deacons that now are [and the readers, and singers, and doorkeepers; your deaconesses, and widows, and virgins, and orphans]; but the High Priest that is higher than all these, is the Bishop. He is the minister of the Word [the guardian of knowledge], the mediator [between God and you in your services to Him]; the teacher [of godliness]; your father, after God, who begat you [unto adoption] through water [and the Spirit]; he is your ruler and governor; your king and potentate; he is your God on earth after God, who ought to enjoy honour from you: [for concerning him, and those that are like him, God said, “I have said ye are Gods; and ye are all the sons of the Most High;" and thou shalt not speak evil of the Gods.2] Let your Bishop preside over you, honoured as with the honour of God, whereby he has authority over the Clergy, and rules over all the people.'

It will appear, we think, that the additions are those of a rhetorical amplifier, disposed, indeed, to exaggerate what he found, but not materially altering the doctrine of his original. We will only call attention to the substance of the citation even in the simple Syriac, and observe that we are not the parties that suppose these statements to be the authoritative exponents of the Church views of the third century.

The division into chapters in our Greek severs these words incorrectly. 2 Exod. xxii. 28, LXX.; and Hebrew literally.

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