are to find a place in the hasty sketch of ecclesiastical literature I am afterwards to give; and will be arranged backwards in the order of the deaths of the writers mentioned; the second date denoting the period of their birth unless otherwise specified. It will be only where I do not posssess the means of ascertaining these dates, or where they are uncertain, that I shall put down a single year, as the time about which a writer flourished, allowing a few years on either side for the duration of his testimony; but when the uncertainty of his birth or death does not extend beyond three or four years, I shall satisfy myself with one, as near enough for our present purpose, and pass over the question as one too unimportant to need any especial notice. The standard authors of the schoolmen, will be printed in large italic capitals, and the rest of this class of divines in small capitals of the same character; while those who were but partially imbued with their system, and have the merit of much originality, are printed in ordinary italics. The more extensively renowned of the early fathers will be distinguished by large Roman capitals; the patristic divines by small Roman capitals; and the rest, who may on the whole be esteemed original writers, by the usual type; these discriminating marks must not, however, be understood as intended to express any opinion as to the real merit of the writers, but simply as giving a synoptical view of their general classification; nor does this classificaton itself make any pretensions to completeness and accuracy; though in its broader features, I trust it will be found sufficiently

correct.

For the sake of bringing under one view an entire series from our own age to that of the apostles, I will include in my table the versions, editions and catalogues mentioned in the foregoing section:

In commencing a running comment on this table, I see I have given the first place to Laurentius Valla, a place due to his intrinsic merit, as well as to his accidental position in the order of time; for he holds a distinguished rank among the revivers of learning, and his works are not without their value even at the present day. With his contributions to polite literature, however, we have no concern. His name is introduced in order to notice a small collection of annotations on the New Testament, edited by Erasmus in 1505, which first led the way in the application of the principles of a sounder criticism to the sacred text His contemporary Alphonsus Tostatus, a Spanish Bishop, only claims a passing reference for a voluminous Commentary on the Bible, remarkable for little except its bulk. It will be seen that he was one of the school divines, whose system was now in the meridian of its glory; and whose three redoubted champions had as yet lost none of their celebrity. The latest of these, John Duns Scotus, has a place at the beginning of the fourteenth century; and the trio are intimately connected, for Scotus in this century disputed the tenets advanced by Aquinas in the one before him; and he again commented on the works of Lombard, of a century further back. The interval between Scotus and Valla is filled up by the English Version of Wickliff, made about the year 1378 or 1380; by a catalogue of the books of the New Testament in the ecclesiastical historian Nicephorus Callistus, and the Postills of Nicolas Lyra, a judicious exposition of the Scriptures, in which the words of the text are first given, and after them, (post illa,) the explanation of the commentator.

From the writers of the thirteenth century I have selected the schoolmen Bonaventura, Albertus Magnus, and his distinguished pupil Thomas Aquinas. To what has been already said of Aquinas I may add, that he has left commentaries on many parts of the Old and New Testament, and a Catena on the four Gospels. This last class of writings were compilations from the works of the fathers, arranged in the order of the chapters and verses of the books to which they thus form a continued commentary; and are important as authenticating at the same time the books illustrated; and those whence the illustrations are drawn. The one in question was selected from upwards

of eighty Greek and Latin fathers; and thus may serve as a specimen of the industry of its compiler; and the vast amount of labour bestowed on productions of its kind. Hugo de St. Caro, about the middle of this century, has the merit of having planned the first Concordance; and to him is traced the division of both Testaments into the chapters still in use; a contrivance suggested by the necessity of an easy reference from his Concordance to their pages. He also wrote a celebrated Commentary on the Scripture, and collected the various reading of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin manuscripts. I may not omit another name; that of the renowned Gregory Abulpharagius, the Maphrian or Primate of the Jacobites. It is not however so much the position he occupies among the writers of his age, as the place of his abode, that recommends him to our attention. For at a time when political calamities, as well as religious differences, had cut off all intercourse between the Eastern and the Western Churches, he was illustrating, in Syriac, on the banks of the Euphrates, the same Scriptures, (with the exceptions to be noticed by and bye,) that Aquinas and Hugo were employed on in Italy; and drawing many of his interpretations from some few of the same fathers; for the works of those who lived before the Churches had been severed, retained their reputation, and were similarly used by both.

The twelfth century abounds with commentators; but their expositions are for the most part fanciful, forced, and worthless; and it is in this, and the two or three preceding ages, we must more especially put in requisition the principles explained in the foregoing chapter; for we can extract little else from them than their testimony to the existence of our sacred writings, and those of the earlier Christians; and however worthless and mistaken their comments, that they did comment on them, is clearly as demonstrative of the simple fact of their existence, and of the general nature of their contents, as the best expositions of the most enlightened in any age. The productions of Peter Lombard have now to be referred to. We may pass by his commentary on St. Paul's Epistles, and hasten on to his great work, the Book of Sentences, a laborious compilation, in four books, the design of which was to give a complete body of divinity in Sentences and passages taken