evangelical governments drew too readily from this the conclusion, that this duty put a new weapon of authority into their hands; and there were not wanting short-sighted divines who gave every favour to this as the right way." He instances not a few Anabaptists, not convicted of rebellion, who were punished by imprisonment and even death, and quotes the church ordering of Basle as enjoining the last penalty on relapsed Anabaptists. "Both princes and free cities alike made themselves responsible for the consciences of their subjects; and if it was complained of that, in Roman Catholic parts, there was no toleration for Protestants, it could be retorted, under Protestant governments there was as little for Romanists. The principles of true toleration, which, without at all sacrificing the truth, can bear with the erring and the weak, were not yet adopted. The victory over error, which the church should have believed in on spiritual grounds, was thus too often made only an external and enforced one; and, while the church did not withstand the temptation to lean on an arm of flesh, she had afterwards to bear the penalty of her unfaithfulness in having her own liberties trammelled by the same power, which she had invoked for the suppression of error" (p. 416). Ere long the Reformation made use of the censure of books, and the forbidding the importation or sale of erroneous ones. Zwingle complained of this at the hands of Luther.

In his chapter on the opposition of the Saxon and the Swiss Reformations, Plitt goes a little into the doctrinal divergences between Luther and Zwingle. To the personal history and ministerial activity of the latter he gives, for his own special object, a somewhat disproportioned space. A much less favourable impression of the Zürich reformer is left upon the reader than that to be gathered from the History of the Reformation, by D'Aubigné. As forcibly, however, as the Swiss historian has shewn, does Plitt bring out the religious independence of Zwingle upon Luther. Plitt's treatment of Zwingle is too empirical. Individual blemishes, such as his over-estimate of Erasmus; his confused views of faith, as including hope and love, are enumerated, but there is no attempt made to trace them to mental causes in the Swiss reformer's theological system. This has been very ably done by others, and with great compactness of treatment by Güder, in his article on Zwingle in Herzog's Cyclopædia. It was the believing union of the soul to God that was Zwingle's centrepoint of view; theology proper, soteriology proper, bulked little with him in comparison of the reality and the consciousness of the believer's restoration to the divine image. Like most of the reformers, he had studied Augustine much, but

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the confessions, rather than the great dogmatic treatises, of the bishop of Hippo, seem alone to have been ever assimilated by him.

It is also a defect in this chapter, that while not a few of Zwingle's unseemly expressions about Luther are quoted, of the latter it is merely said, He was accustomed to speak out all his mind (p. 481).

The two remaining chapters of the book are occupied with the occasion and the author of the Augsburg Confession. This production of Melancthon, the earliest of the Protestant declarations of faith, must be viewed in connection with the circumstances of its appearing. Laid before the emperor in presence of the diet, when hope of a national or even of an ecumenical council of trustworthy character has just been laid aside, it is to be considered as Protestantism reduced to a minimum. It is not a system of divine truth, for not a few doctrines of importance are left unnoticed. It is an apostle's creed suited to the sixteenth century and to the wants of Germany. The twenty-one articles, of which it is composed (which have had their influence in forming the thirty-nine articles of the English Church), are neither always logically exclusive one of another, nor drawn up in strict theological language. There is about them somewhat of the looseness of conversation, somewhat, at times, of the iteration of the pulpit. There is quotation of Scripture for some points, and absence of all reference to the word for others as important. The Confession is eminently a transition document; it is evangelical, but incomplete. It is a favourite with many German theologians for its very vagueness; but the half century of contests within the Lutheran Church, between its appearance and the putting forth of the Formula of Concord in 1580, is a practical testimony to the evils that spring from a creed embracing few and thereafter unelaborated points. The (unauthorised) version of it which appeared in 1540 from the pen of Melancthon, and which is generally passed over in silence by church historians, is larger, by more than two-thirds, than its predecessor, and, with the exception of the tenth article, which plainly teaches consubstantiation, the additions and alterations are generally for the better. It is still, however, an essentially popular and untheological document. A confession which omits all mention of imputed righteousness, cannot be accepted by us as fully evangelical. Setting aside some distinctive Lutheran views, the Formula of Concord is as much superior in theological weight to the Confession, as the Westminster Confession is to the Thirty-nine Articles. The reason was the same; half a century in Germany, eighty years in England, had shewn how, if you wished one definite faith throughout the church, you must enlarge your theological basis, you must sharply define your

theological terms. In this we are not condemning the earlier, we are pronouncing more informed and more wary the later theologians.

Our remarks and our extracts will, we trust, have given our readers a fair review of this important and interesting volume. Plitt might perhaps have improved his book by abridging his reflections, by giving more of the secular history of Germany in its bearing on the Reformation; by affording us a few glimpses of the great reformer in his epistolary intercourse as a friend; and by presenting somewhat of the better aspects of Romanism. Persecution, ignorance, worldliness, surely these did not then exhaust the catalogue of the qualities possessed by the adherents of Rome.

The notes, of which there are a great many, give a variety of interesting and characteristic extracts from both the theological and the popular literature of the day. From all parts of Germany proof is thus accumulated, how thoroughly reform was the question of the day, Luther the man of the time. Round him, for or against, all literature gathers. But with all our veneration for the German reformer, we miss in him the thorough perception of the principles on which a Church should be founded. It is expediency, Christian no doubt, that seems to determine what is to be removed, and what left in the church. The word is not fully consulted here. It was left for others, after him, to make good his deficiencies here.

ART. IX-Page's "Man: Where, Whence, and Whither?"

Man: Where, Whence, and Whither? Being a Glance at Man in his Natural History Relations. By DAVID PAGE, LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.G.S., Author of "Past and Present Life of the Globe," "Philosophy of Geology," "Geology for General Readers," &c. &c. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. 1867.

THE

HE work to which we devote this article is not of large size, but it demands attention, both on account of the importance of its subject and the reputation of its author. It is a volume of not quite two hundred pages, an expansion of two lectures delivered last year before the members of the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh. Dr Page assigns as a reason for its publication, the opposition which his views met with when propounded in his lectures,-an opposition which he characterizes as, on the part of some, "vehement and unreason

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enlarge your theological basis, you must sharply define your ing,' and which he alleges to have been accompanied, " either ignorantly or intentionally," with misrepresentation. In justice both to himself and his subject, therefore, he tells us that he has been constrained to publish this work, and so to seek for his views "a wider, and he trusts also, a fairer consideration." Of what misrepresentations he complains, he gives us no hint.

Dr Page has a very high and well-earned reputation as a geologist, and some of his works on geology are among the best that can be put into the hands of a student. He has come before the public, however, also, as an anthropologist, and in the present work he appears rather in the latter character than in the former, geology being introduced only as subservient to anthropology. That his views meet with opposition, can hardly be regarded by himself as wonderful,-contrary, as he is evidently aware that they are, to prevalent opinions and beliefs. Let us endeavour to examine them carefully, and to consider what he says in their behalf.

Entering, however, upon the wide field of science, over which the anthropologist claims the right to range, Dr Page is far from shewing himself so much at home everywhere as in his own particular field of geology. When we depart from strictly geological subjects, we soon feel that we cannot follow him with perfect confidence, even in his statement of scientific facts. Facts become commingled with theory or hypothesis, until it often seems as if the distinction between the one and the other had been forgotten. Dr Page's book is far from being rich in scientific facts, and in this we have been disappointed; for, on beginning the perusal of it, we expected to find it somewhat like Darwin's work on the Unity of Species,-a work abounding in facts and in arguments based upon them; the facts extremely interesting, and admirably exhibited in relation to the hypothesis which the author seeks to maintain, whatever may be thought of the arguments by which he maintains it. As Dr Page does not think it necessary to bring forward a great array of facts, so neither does he make much show of arguments. He speaks, indeed, again and again, of being "logical," and plainly intimates his opinion that his opponents are far from being so; but he seems not to know what close reasoning is, and makes assertions of the most questionable character, enforced by such a phrase as It must be, or such an adverb as clearly. Thus in his chapter on Man in his Ethnological Relations, he says, concerning the differences of the races of men, "These differences, when interpreted in the light of progression, have clearly reference to time, to periods during which the higher succeeded the lower, and the lower that which stands next beneath it." This is merely to take for granted

that which ought to be proved; and indeed Dr Page's whole system is here taken for granted at once; and there are many instances of the same kind throughout the work. The development hypothesis is assumed as true, and everything is accommodated to it. Again and again, it is made to serve the purpose of argument in favour of itself, or of those things which are adduced only in order to maintain it. Reasoning in a circle is the ordinary process of argument throughout the work.

The inaccuracy of Dr Page's reasoning may be strikingly illustrated by quoting one of what he calls his Propositions. They are formally introduced to notice even in the table of contents, and each chapter, except the introductory and concluding chapters, ends with a proposition, "Our first proposition," "Our second proposition," &c. Here surely we might expect to find definite statement, a conclusion derived from argument, and to be founded upon in argument again. We find instead mere summaries of the views and arguments of the chapters. Let us take, for example, the fourth proposition. It concludes the chapter on Man in his Functional Relations.

"Looking, therefore, at man in his functional relations, our fourth proposition is, that, like other animals, he has certain duties to perform purely of a physical nature, and which are rendered imperative by the requirements of existence. In virtue, however, of his higher organisation and intellect, he can, within certain limits, subjugate and adapt the forces of nature, and thus acquire a mastery over obstacles which no other animal can, and this mastery will be in direct proportion to his intelligence and cultivation. And further, that while other animals but slowly and within restricted limits affect the distribution of plants and other animals, man becomes a modifier and subcreator, as it were, here extirpating and transferring, there cultivating and disseminating, according to the natural capacity or inaptitude of the inferior races for civilisation and advancement. We say civilising and extirpating, for there can be no domestication of man as there is domestication of the lower animals. To domesticate is to enslave, and nature has never yet permitted the institution of permanent enslavement, as it has provided for and fostered that of permanent domestication. And, finally, that these functional relations are in accordance with a great law of natural progression, by which the development of newer and higher races shall ever be coincident with the extinction of the earlier and inferior."-(Pp. 100-101.)

Is this a proposition? We would not stickle about the mere term, but it is too evident that the employment of it here is indicative of inaccurate thought, and loose, careless argument.

In his introductory chapter, and in the very first paragraph