abbot to grace. At this the King was angry, and replied with an oath, "Per pedes Domini, I should have received him into favour six months ago but for you." Then he turned to Hugo, and told him how the sacrist had intrigued with the courtiers against his election. The sacrist was abashed, and speedily withdrew. The author of the tract gives us no help in conjecturing what motives could have influenced John to make him yield thus suddenly, after having resisted all petition and importunity so long. He had been foiled (p. 124) in the design of making money out of the appointment; the original offence of the monks in presenting but one candidate for his acceptance remained uncorrected; and he had learnt enough of Hugo's character to know that he would never become a mere courtier. On the other hand, many considerations might concur to make John think it desirable, while he had the serious rupture with his barons to deal with, to bring at least one tiresome dispute to an end. It was important for him to keep on good terms with the Pope, on whom he counted for help against the league of barons; but Innocent, through his delegates, had just solemnly confirmed Hugo's election, and it was not to be supposed that he would be favourable to the King's continued obstruction. It might be thought that John's voluntary grant to chapters of perfect freedom of election, by his letter to Innocent of January 15, 1215, must also have weighed with him, as seeming inconsistent with his conduct in the case of Bury. But in fact the concession made in that letter was to a great extent illusory, as events soon proved. A little clause, following all the sweeping declarations as to freedom, really reserves the royal influence and right of interference. After any election the King will give his consent to it," unless we shall have brought forward and legally proved a reasonable objection against it, justifying us in withholding our consent.” In point of fact, every one knows that the influence of the Crown in all important ecclesiastical appointments remained unaffected down to the Reformation, and beyond it. Still, the ink of this letter being scarcely dry, John might think it prudent to cease from conduct which looked as if it were in glaring contradiction with it. Besides, the mixture of amiable frankness and manly firmness which he found in Hugo seems to have made a favourable impression. Nor could he expect, after the result of the division at Bury, to obtain the consent of the monks to the substitution of a man- -Robert Gravelee, for instance-who would be openly a courtier. Had the issue of that division been different, he might have pushed on the scheme of obtaining the appointment of an abbot more to his taste than the good Hugo with some likelihood of success. As things were, he seems to have taken the course which presented the fewest difficulties. Next day Hugo did homage to the King for his temporalities in the usual way, and then returned to Bury. As to the signing of Magna Charta four days afterwards, and the stirring events which followed, down to the King's death in 1216, the writer, true to his principle of minding his own business, does not vouchsafe us one single word. But he tells us that Hugo, after all these storms and trials, so bore himself in the abbot's chair, as to win the love and respect of all the monks, including even those who had maligned and thwarted him. An elaborate date winds up the work. As no reference is anywhere made to Hugo's preferment in 1229 to the See of Ely, and the whole narrative glows with the ardent interest of what has recently happened, and still lives vividly in the writer's memory, it seems probable that its composition should not be dated later than 1220. Of all the lines of thought which this remarkable tract suggests, none is so surprising as the favourable light in which it presents King John. There is literally not one word said in his dispraise throughout. And yet the writer was not on his side: he was among those who would not yield to him in the matter of the election ; and he had only scorn and censure for those who, after voting for Hugo, recoiled from what they had done in fear of the King's displeasure. At the same time, he seems to think John's conduct perfectly natural, and does not resent it as unjust. If the convent laid stress on its privileges, the King had an equal right to insist on the ancient rights and customs of his crown. His conduct during the debate in the chapter-house seems to have been cool, moderate. and good-natured. Indeed, the general impression of bonhomie arises from the tenor of all that is related of him. Again, it is impossible not to be struck by the lofty courtesy with which, when all is settled, he invites the abbot to Windsor: "Sic ignovisse putato Me tibi, si canes hodie mecum.' It is needless to observe how different all this is from the impressions which Matthew Paris and later chroniclers have caused to be a part of our historical consciousness when we think of King John. THOMAS ARNOLD. THE PRIMITIVE GOSPEL. NOWA ADAYS, no impartial critic, or even enlightened theologian, holds to the once general belief that the four Gospels of the Christian Canon either headed the list of written narratives of the living and working of Jesus, or absorbed the vast mass of tradition which speedily gathered round His name. Amid much that is grown dim and indistinct athwart the mellowing haze of ages, we now clearly discern that the Gospels which have come down to us are neither the first nor the last links of the series of written sketches in which the features of the Son of Man were limned. There were Gospels according to the Hebrews and Gospels according to the Egyptians; a Gospel of Marcion and a Gospel of Bartholomew; Gospels of Apelles,* Eve, and Judas Iscariot; indeed, Jerome truly affirmed that it would be a most tedious task even to enumerate them all. But it is perfectly certain that not one of them was written prior to the reign of the Flavian emperors (69-96),† and highly probable that very little attention was paid to them by priests or people for a considerable time after their composition, for the custom of reading them in the assemblies of the faithful was not inaugurated before the middle of the second century.‡ The fact is, that the need of fixing the new doctrine in writing did not make itself felt for a long time after the Master's death. Disciples who never lay down to rest at night without trembling at the thought that they might be aroused before dawn by the falling of the stars of heaven and the coming of the Son of Man in the clouds with * Professor Harnack has proved that the Gospel of Apelles is at bottom identical with the Gospel of Marcion (cf. "De Apellis Gnosi," &c.) + This is of course the earliest possible date. Luke certainly could not have been written before the year 100. Justin Martyr is the first who mentions the usage; and he himself drew remarkably few controversial weapons from the arsenal of the New Testament. great power and glory, were not in the mood to spend in writing history the precious time which they might devote to fashioning it. Nor were the advantages to be derived from written narratives very apparent; for if the chosen few could be aptly described as "unlearned and ignorant,"* the less gifted many would have profited little by their writings. For more than one generation after Jesus" death, faith came "by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,"+ the word of the Apostles. being itself "the word of God"; nay, "the wisdom of God."§ While the well of living water continued thus abundant as of yore, artificial reservoirs were more than superfluous; by the side of inspiration coming direct from God Himself to His whole community,|| a human scrawl on perishable papyrus must have appeared despicable in comparison. Thus, for many a long year after Jesus' departure, the memory of His words and deeds was wholly confided to the safe-keeping of oral tradition. The three principal elements of that tradition, in the order in which they interested primitive Christians, were: the sayings of Jesus these having more than aught else contributed to tame the human beast and fire the souls of men with a divine enthusiasm; the strange wonders which had confirmed the doctrine, and marked the progress of the Teacher; and the record of His life and mission, in so far as they could be shown to have been the literal fulfilment of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament. Upon this last point infinitely more stress was laid by the Christian Jew, still scrupulously observant of the Mosaic law, than by the converted Gentile, solicitous only about the precepts of Jesus. But in respect to all three subjects, the oral tradition was somewhat shifting and plastic. A glance at the discourses of Jesus as recorded by Clemens Romanus, Barnabas, and Hermas, between the years 95 and 140, in which one and the same saying appears now in one context now in another, now in this sense and now in that, is amply sufficient to convey a fair idea of the drawbacks that ensued from entrusting to oral tradition alone the safe keeping of the most precious heritage of Christianity. Nor does a careful study of our canonical Gospels tend to soften perceptibly this somewhat painful impression. The first three, obviously more in touch with the popular tradition of which I am speaking than the Gospel of John, are technically known as the Synoptics," owing to the circumstance that the subjects they deal with and the data they furnish, possess quite enough in common to allow of their being classed under a number of general heads and placed side by side in synoptic tables for comparison and contrast. The oldest of these three narratives is undoubtedly the second, which is known as the Gospel according to Mark. Tradition, equally favourable to *Acts iv. 13. + Rom. x. 17. § 1 Cor. ii. 7, 8. 1 John ii. 27. 1 Thess ii. 13. * 66 incompatible theories, lends colour to the belief that it was inspired by Peter, and committed to writing shortly after his death; and a critical study makes it evident that it was composed originally in Greek, on a carefully elaborated plan, in a terse, realistic lapidary style in which conscious fancy had little part. It is certainly a consecutive history with a beginning, a middle, and an end, which Matthew's narrative is not. Jesus' dealings with His Apostles and His relations towards His people are unfolded very gradually in Mark's account, change with changing circumstances, and shape themselves naturally in accordance with the turn of events and the attitude of men, until they acquire that sublime character with which Matthew invests them from the very first. According to Mark, Jesus' identity with the Messiah is a truth which dawns very slowly indeed on the minds of the crowds who had listened to His teaching and wondered at His miracles. It is not proclaimed aloud by John the Baptist at the very outset of His public life, nor bruited abroad by the zealous Apostles shortly afterwards, but privately attested by unclean spirits. Jesus left nothing undone to hush up every rumour that would have tended to confirm it. Mark, for instance, tells us of a leper who, being come to Jesus (obviously to His house) and made clean, was charged to say nothing to any man "t --a perfectly reasonable command if the conversation was private, as the Evangelist leads us to suppose. But it ceases to be intelligible if, as Matthew tells us, the leper was cleansed in presence of the vast multitude who had just listened to the Sermon on the Mount. This and numerous kindred inconsistencies go to show that Matthew amplified Mark's narrative from another source, without always taking care to make the heterogeneous scraps and fragments dovetail into each other. He is more solicitous about the symbolism of numbers, of which he gives us the makings of a somewhat complicated system, than about the gradual unfolding of the psychological action which Mark sketches in such a masterly way. The author of the second Gospel tells us that at first Jesus was unwilling that people should proclaim Him to be the Messiah: "He suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew Him." The Gadarene whom He had freed from a legion of devils was the first to whom He granted permission to announce the marvel, and he was to tell it only to his heathen fellow-citizens.§ After He had performed several such cures in public Jesus no longer possessed a motive to enjoin silence, and people began to inquire about His person and character, or else to honour Him as a prophet. He Himself was meanwhile careful to do no more than hint obscurely at His Messianic rôle and character, until, having at last definitely broken with the rulers of the people, He arose, and went into the land of the heathen. Here He questioned His disciples: "Whom * Mark iii. 11, 12. † Mark i. 40-45. † Mark i. 34. § Mark v. 19. |