points, the leading features of the contest have been long patent to all students of history. With the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ended the most glorious, though not the most successful, portion of the career of the French Puritans. The pureness of their cause, sustained with unwavering devotion and unshaken perseverance amidst the worst calamities by the genius of Gaspard de Coligny, after his death suffered a sensible deterioration. Henry of Navarre had indeed many eminent qualities, but they were little in harmony with the position in which he found himself placed. If the high-minded Jeanne of Navarre, who presented her son to the dispirited Protestants as their future leader, could have inspired into his breast her own elevated conceptions of duty, the fate of the Reformation might have been very different, and the history of France have presented a much more pleasing theme. But Henry, though a Protestant by education and early impressions, was a Bourbon king by nature. On the other hand, the cause of the Catholic League was upheld and rendered finally victorious by the resolution of the citizens of Paris and the fidelity of the House of Guise. Exactly when the fire of religious zeal was dying away among the Protestants, it blazed forth with double fury among the adherents of the old religion. The character of Henry, the second Duke of Guise, was eminently suited to the crisis at which he appeared. At another time, so restless and proud a spirit would have spent itself in vain attempts to break through the restraints of regular Government. Here, however, it found its natural sphere of action, and equal to every emergency, undaunted by any danger, it displayed the rare combination of the zeal of the Fanatic with the practical and cool sagacity of the Statesman. Compared with the "King of the Barricades," Henry of Navarre appears in his true character of the legitimate monarch, and the errant knight, in short le Roi Chevalier. Destitute as the former was of the nobler motives of Coligny, and the slave of an overweening ambition, still it is impossible not to feel that had Guise instead of Navarre led the cause of the Reformation, the Protestants of France might never have been compromised into a merely and doubtfully tolerated sect.

It is hardly too much to say that the cause of the

French Puritans ceased to exist when the extinction of the race of Valois rendered Henry of Navarre the legitimate successor to the throne of France. From that moment it became the interest of Henry to sacrifice his friends, in order to become the recognised king of his enemies. It became also the interest of the Politiques, and that large body of men who were indifferent as to all religions, to persuade him to pursue this course. As long as the House of Valois existed, it was the interest and policy of that line of princes to balance and preserve in a somewhat equal position the two religions. There is evidence to show that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was but part of one great drama; and that the other part, which Henry III. afterwards endeavoured to play out, was the similar destruction of the House of Guise. But, on the death of that prince, the Huguenots found themselves exposed to the chances of a combination against them among all the other parties. The safety of a great cause rested on the fanaticism of a few adherents of the Spanish King, which might hinder the acknowledgment of an excommunicated Monarch, and on the fidelity to his faith of that Monarch, in the midst of every possible temptation to a contrary course. The succession to the throne of France had become a primary object; the cause of the Reformation sank into comparative obscurity. If few now cared to persecute its adherents, fewer still cared to sacrifice fortune at its shrine. French Puritanism perished, by becoming the party of Legitimacy; the religious fanatics of Paris were seemingly defeated, but, in the hour of defeat, they found present security, and laid the foundations of future victory. The revocation of the edict of Nantes consummated the fall of the first race of French Protestants; but, with the apostasy of Henry of Navarre, the French Puritans disappeared as a party in the State; with them, disappeared the last chance of constitutional liberty for monarchical France. The triumph of Henry of Navarre was that of Catholicism, and of absolute Monarchy he became a Catholic King, and he crushed the Republican spirit of Catholic Paris. With the preachers of the Sorbonne, was banished the spirit of resistance to the Crown which they had evoked; the Catholic party became that of absolute monarchy; the Huguenots ceased

to be a party at all. Thus disappeared, at the same time, the guardians of Civil and Religious Liberty. There needed but the genius of a Richelieu, and the cunning of a Mazarine, to render complete the triumph of Despotic Rule:

ART. VI.-HIPPOLYTUS AND HIS AGE.

Hippolytus and his Age; or, the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Severus and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, D.C.L. 4 Vols. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1852.

Ωριγένους Φιλοσοφούμενα, ἢ κατὰ πασῶν αἱρέσεων ἔλεγχος. Origenis Philosophumena, sive omnium hæresium Refutatio; e codice Parisino nunc primum edidit Emmanuel Miller. Oxonii: e typographeo Academico. 1851.

In the year 1842 a Greek scholar, Mynoïdes Mynas, was commissioned by the French government at the instance of M. Villemain-then, we believe, Minister of Public Instruction-to explore the manuscript treasures which lay buried in the conventual recesses of Mount Athos. Among other works which he discovered-including the Fables of Babrius and two treatises by Galen and Philostratus was an anonymous MS. on cotton paper, apparently of the fourteenth century, containing fragments of a 'Refutation of all Heresies.' For some time this work attracted little notice, but was quietly deposited with others derived from the same source in the National Library at Paris. M. Miller, its present editor, an officer attached to that noble institution, on looking into the manuscript, became at once aware of the deep interest which attached to it; and having extracted out of it some Pindaric and other lyrical fragments, which he forwarded to his literary friends in Germany, was strongly urged by them to publish the entire work. In 1850 he offered his transcript of it to the Delegates of the University Press at Oxford, who liberally undertook its printing and publication, and gave it to the world as a long-lost treatise of Origen *.-Such were the circumstances attending the first appearance of a work, which has been the immediate occasion of the four volumes recently issued from the press by the Chevalier Bunsen.

* Milleri præfat. in Origen. Philosophum., v. vi. Bunsen, i. pp. 7, 8.

This last very remarkable production we hardly know how to describe. It is not so much one work as a collection (Syntagma would have been the word two hundred years ago) of several works, having each a different object and written in part at different times, but all pervaded by a common unity of thought and aim, and bearing with more or less directness on the great religious questions of the day. A critical examination of the fragment ascribed to Origen, is made the centre of a wide circle of kindred inquiry and speculation, into which the learned author has gathered up the results of his studies for thirty years, with all the thoroughness and somewhat of the prolixity which belongs to the scholastic mind of Germany. Reserving to a future occasion the expression of our respectful dissent on particular points, we desire thus early to offer him our hearty thanks for the large and catholic spirit in which he has executed a task of no little difficulty and delicacy-for the manly honesty with which he has given utterance to his convictions without fear of offence in any quarter-and for the rare union which his book displays, of philosophic freedom and boldness with great depth and tenderness of Christian feeling. The first volume, which he distinguishes as the 'Critical Inquiry,' is occupied with a discussion in five letters to Archdeacon Hare, of the authorship and contents of the Greek work edited by M. Miller. In the second, entitled the Philosophical Research,' are contained a series of aphorisms on the History and Philosophy of Religion,' followed by some critical disquisitions on the life and doctrines of the ancient Church, more particularly in the age of Hippolytus, to whom, as we shall presently see, and not to Origen, he thinks the anonymous fragment ought to be assigned. The third, or the Life of the Ancient Church, in Education, Baptism and Worship, in Government and Social Relations,' exhibits what the author describes as the textbooks of the early Christians, or their Creed, Worship and Discipline, recovered by a critical process from the old liturgies and the so-called Canons and Constitutions of the Apostles, and contrasted in some ensuing chapters, by a sort of reflex, with the dogmas and usages of the present time. The fourth presents us with an imaginary' Apology of Hippolytus,' supposed to be delivered by that