II. COPTIC.-Next to the Syriac in probable antiquity, are the Coptic Versions. We use the word Coptic in a general sense, as including both the Memphitic, or dialect of Lower Egypt, and the Sahidic, that of Upper Egypt.

These Coptic collections were first made known to us by the publication which we have placed at the head of this article, being the text and an English translation, edited by Dr. Tattam, for the Oriental Translation Fund. It is a most valuable accession to our means of knowledge on these subjects, and as it has opened to us much that was not known before, we shall speak of it more at length.

And first of the Coptic text. Few of our readers would be prepared to hear that this Coptic version of Apostolical Canons is a work of the nineteenth century: but so it is. The text published by Dr. Tattam is a translation in Coptic, i. e. the dialect of Lower Egypt, made from the Sahidic, that of Upper Egypt, just fifty years ago, and is accompanied with an Arabic translation, which he used to aid him in determining the meaning of the Coptic. This fact brings vividly home to us the life and works of the Egyptian monks, who, even to this time, are transcribing and translating these ancient and simple documents, on the view (perhaps) that they are Apostolic.

The following are the concluding words of the work as translated by Dr. Tattam: they exhibit a specimen of the truly Oriental language of the Egyptian Christians of our own times:

'The end of the Canons of our Fathers the Holy Apostles; these are the Seven Books which are by the hands of Clemens, in the peace of God. Amen.

1520 of Diocletian. Translated from the language of Upper Egypt into the language of Lower Egypt, according to his ability, by the poor dust, the least of the Presbyters, George of Kosma.

In the collection of our honoured father the skilful scribe of the language, the great among the Bishops, the holy Athanasius, at the seat of the repository.

'In the government of our holy Patriarch, the honoured sun of the faith, the light of the thoughts, our father, the great Archbishop Abba Marcus, the Patriarch of the great city Alexandria: the God of heaven establish him upon his throne many years, and in peaceful times, that he may humble all his enemies under his feet quickly, for ever. Amen.'

The margin adds, in another hand- the 108th of the number of our fathers the Patriarchs.'

The year 1520 of Diocletian is our A.D. 1803-4, and in Mr. Neale's list of the Bishops of Alexandria,' we recognise as 'Mark VIII. the 108th Patriarch,' under whom the French invasion of Egypt took place,' the Abba Marcus,' the honoured

1 History of the Eastern Church, Patriarchate of Alexandria; vol. ii. p. 474.

Sun of the Faith, the Light of the Thoughts.' Any objection, however, to the correctness of the text, arising from the recent period at which this translation was made, is to a great extent obviated by the information given us by Dr. Tattam in his Preface, that he has a copy of the Sahidic of the greater part of the work; this he collated with the Coptic, with which, he says, it perfectly agrees. For critical purposes the Sahidic ought to have been printed, as the part which is not in the Sahidic is one of the portions out of which one separate collection seems to have been made up, and it would be important to ascertain whether it was really wanting originally, or only displaced, to the end of the whole, and so lost.

The entire Coptic collection is composed of four distinct portions, which we must distinguish by letters :-A. The Duæ Viæ, of which we have the Greek in Bickell. B. A modified form of the Hippolytean Collection, with some considerable additions on the rites of Baptism and Confirmation. C. The Hippolytean Collection itself, stripped of its titles and dramatic character': as the Constitution of Matthew,' I Matthew ordain,' &c., and in a state between that in which it exists separately, and that in which it is embodied in the eight books of Constitutions. D. The well-known Canons of the Apostles,' slightly varying from our common editions. Of the incongruities, repetitions, and contradictions of this consarcination we shall speak presently. We are now concerned with its external form and changes.

It is divided into seven books, or, as they clearly once were, eight; the division of the first and second being omitted by some transcriber, and so lost; those who copied his transcript being reduced to difficulties such as are shown by the following words; at pp. 30-32 (we cite Dr. Tattam's translation), at the end of the first treatise (A):

'The first Book of the Canons of our Fathers the Apostles is finished, which are in the hands of Clemens; and this is the second Book, in the peace of God. Amen.

In the name of God the Most Holy.

The second Book of the Canons of our Fathers the Apostles, by the hands of Clemens, which is the Third Book.'

From the slipping out of the ending of the first book, by which the original second became part of the first, this double numbering arises, which goes on through the whole collection. Now, this dividing into eight books, and attributing the work to Clement, does not belong to the earliest condition of the collection, even as far as we have information respecting it: it appears from Wansleb's History of the Church of Alexandria (the passage is cited by Dr. Tattam in his Preface, p. v.), that this Coptic Collection used to be divided into two books,

the first containing the forms of the Constitutions, (our parts A, B, C,) the second the Canons; and the collection is still extant in this form in Ethiopic, in which the first book is called the Synods of the Apostles; the second, the Synods of the Church. It seems pretty plain that some transcriber wished to make it appear that this collection was the 'eight books of Constitutions, by the hand of Clement,' which was mentioned in the last Apostolical canon in the Greek, either dishonestly, or because he really thought it was so, and only made this division and added the titles in the spirit of an overwise corrector. Anyhow, we must regard this as one of the changes which the collection has undergone; but it is useful, as marking some of the breaks between the minor portions of the whole. The first portion (A) divides itself naturally into two parts at the place where the practical teaching of the Duæ Viæ ends, and the rules respecting Church Offices begins. The second portion (B) makes the third book. The Hippolytean Collection (C) is divided into four (i. e. the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th) books; the first point of division being at a natural break, at the end of an Homiletic discourse about spiritual gifts attributed to S. Hippolytus; the second, at the place where another of the minor elementary portions, as it appears from internal evidence to be, and which is found separate in Syriac, begins. The seventh book is made up of a portion which is found in a different place in this Coptic Collection from what it is in the Greek, in which it occurs in the middle of the Coptic fifth. The Apostolical Canons, the second book of the Æthiopic and old Coptic, makes the eighth book.

What we have to notice in the whole collection is this ;-it is most clumsily made, and appears to have been the work of hands so very unskilful, that it puts together as parts of one body of Church Rules, several different collections, and even different forms of the same collection, so as to repeat itself, pages on pages being simply repetitions; so as to contradict itself, by constitutions directly opposed to each other; so as to go over the same ground in different parts in a way which partakes of the character of repetition and contradiction, and runs into various shades between the two. Many of these points will come in more naturally when we speak of the history of the Hippolytean Collection, and of those portions which have hitherto only been found in Ethiopic and Coptic, and for the most part have only been printed and translated from the Coptic.

It need scarcely be said that this Coptic Collection was translated, so far as we can judge, from the Greek; in those places where it has anything which we have not extant in Greek, we cannot judge, of course, whether they are in any

degree additions, made by the Copt, or were in his Greek copy. But it is plain, in some places, that the translator had a different reading from our present Greek (in one passage enabling us to correct it); in others, that he misunderstood the meaning of his original; e. g. p. 8, we read: Be not emulous, neither be contentious, nor quarrelsome, for envy proceeds from these.' He read peóvos, the Greek póvos: the context shows that 'murder'

is meant.

P. 16: Inpioaobai, meaning to 'vote' in the election of a bishop, is misunderstood in the Copt, to make a dedication for pious uses for the bishop.'

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P. 108: But the Devil also, and the demons which are under ‹ him, foretell many things; but miracles have not at all on this account been done by them for the service of God, for they have 'done them entirely in ignorance, on account of the evil which they desired to do.' The Greek is, as indeed the argument requires, Yet is there not in them owing to this one spark of godliness” (οὐ παρὰ τοῦτο μέν ἐστιν αὐτοῖς εὐσεβείας σπινθήρ). In the same page (we take these things quite accidentally), Neither a bishop who is content with ignorance;' (Arabic, 'is content, satisfied;') Greek, pressed down by, Teжιéoμevos.

P. 138: And let all believers pray their servants in meekness.' The Arabic, wishing to make this clearer, translates it, let them call to,' or 'order.' The Greek is TроσεXÉτWσаν, προσεχέτωσαν, let them bear themselves towards.' The Coptic read, or misunderstood the Greek to be, προσευχέτωσαν.

As one reads Dr. Tattam's book one sees that the cause why the matter which appears in his translation is so often utterly unintelligible, is, that the original is presented through the refracting medium of the Coptic; this must be the case, even independently of mistakes, in languages of quite different idioms. It is highly probable, however, that much of this might have been avoided if the Greek had been used as a guide to settle the meaning of the Coptic; and also if the translation had been made by one who was familiar with ecclesiastical antiquity and liturgical terms; e. g. Eucharist is sometimes translated thanksgiving;' to offer' (πроopéрew), to put on;' and the poopopá (the Oblation), the Holy Communion.' But, independently of this, it is quite clear that we cannot in any way argue with safety from the expressions of the Coptic,

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1 At p. 68 we find 'the Lord's Supper;' a correct and literal translation of the Coptic. Let not the Catechumens come in to the Lord's Supper with a faithful person. And let him who calleth remember him who hath called him, as often as they eat,' &c. But it is not the Holy Communion which is meant, but a feast of charity, an evidence that the Kupiakov deîπvov was then understood to be (as S. Chrysostom understands it in S. Paul) the supper which followed the Holy Com munion, not the Communion itself. See Estius in loc.

because it is a translation originally made by ignorant and uncritical men, and has been subjected to a series of copyings and we know not what other modifications by successive generations of ignorant men; not to dwell on the fact that the whole collection, whether originally made by a Greek or a Copt, is most uncritically put together, and a point to which we shall refer again that it has been, in Greek, and perhaps even in Coptic, the subject of repeated successive interpolations.

III. ETHIOPIC.-In Ethiopic there is extant (a) in MS., partly printed, the compilation of four collections which we have just been describing as found in Coptic, A, B, C, D; and the observations we have made concerning the one apply in great measure to the other. The prominent point of difference is (as we have already noticed) that the Ethiopic is not divided into eight books, nor has the whole acquired the false title of being by Clement,' which is distinctively given to the Apostolical Canons that form its second book. In a preface and table of contents prefixed to the collection, the first book, being the first six of the Coptic, A, B, C, is called, A Collection of the Canons of our Fathers the Apostles;' the second, 'Ecclesiastical Canons, which the Apostles delivered by Clement.'

But besides this there are differences in detail which it is probable would appear much more decidedly if the whole text was published from the MSS. As it is, a part only has been printed, namely, the first tract, A, our Duæ Viæ, and the beginning of the second portion, B, the greatly modified form of the Hippolytean Collection, down to the ordination of deacons. These were printed by Ludolf in his Commentaries on the History of Ethiopia. A, from p. 314 to p. 323; B, from p. 323 to p. 328. For the rest we have only the table of contents: but this is sufficient to identify the collections.

The Apostolical Canons are extant also in a separate form; the titles and some portions of them are printed in Ludolf, pp. 330-333. Judging from these titles, the 47th, 49th, and 50th canons, on heretical baptism, are omitted, as they and the 48th are in the Coptic.

B. The Hippolytean Collection, or, as the Ethiopians call it, the Canons of Abulides, again, exists in a separate form, and, so far as we can judge from the titles of the chapters, with very considerable additions and modifications; e. g. c. 13 is, 'De loco quem summi reges aut principes tenebant in templo.' The partiality of those Churches for this collection appears from its existing in so many forms among them. The name of Hippolytus, perhaps, carried greater weight, because they, whether rightly or not, believed he was a Bishop of Rome; and they