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FIRST CLASS.

Rev. Wm. Dodd, B. A. Corp. Chr. Coll. James Gorle, B. A. Clare Hall.

SECOND CLASS.

W. B. A. Raven, B. A. Trinity Coll.

GRACES

to the following effect have passed the Senate:

To appoint Mr. Dawes of Downing College, and Mr. Green of Jesus College, Pro-Proctors for the remainder of the year.

To appoint the Vice-Chancellor, the Bishop of Lincoln, the Master of Catharine Hall, Professor Haviland, Professor Whewell, Mr. Carrighan of St. John's College, Mr. Hustler of Jesus College, Mr. Peacock of Trinity College, Mr. Shelford of Corpus Christi College, Mr. Lodge of Magdalene College, and Mr. King of Queen's College, a Syndicate to consider of the arrangements to be made concerning the "Old Court" lately purchased of King's College.

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DEGREES CONFERRED.

DOCTOR IN DIVINITY.

The Rev. Joseph Allen, Trinity Coll. Prebendary of Westminster

BACHELORS IN DIVINITY.

Rev. James Blomfield, Emmanuel Coll. Rev. Charles Wesley, Christ Coll. Alternate Minister of St. Mary's Chapel, Fulham.

MASTERS OF ARTS.

Henry Ashington, Trinity Coll.
Howard Elphinstone, Trinity Coll.
William Keeling, Fell. of St. John's Coll.
W. Hallows Miller, Fell. of St. John's Coll.
Rev. Henry Wm. Crick, Jesus Coll.
Henry Alexander Brown, Christ Coll.
Thomas Kenyon, Christ Coll. (Comp.)
Rev. A. H. Small, Fell. of Emmanuel Coll.
BACHELOR IN CIVIL LAW.
Rev. Paul Ashmore, Christ Coll.

BACHELORS OF ARTS.

George Henry Feachem, Trinity Coll.
Robert Devey, Trinity Coll.
Calmady Pollexfen Hamlyn, Trinity Coll.
Charles Henry Templeton, Trinity Coll.
William Henry Tudor, Trinity Coll.
Thomas Moore, St. John's Coll.
William George Nott, St. John's Coll.
Thomas Storer, St. John's Coll.
Francis J. Courtenay, St. Peter's Coll.
William Ludlow, St. Peter's Coll.
Thomas Moore, St. Peter's Coll.
Horace Pitt Shewell, St. Peter's Coll.
Thornhill Heathcote, Clare Hall
Edward Ethelstone, Pembroke Coll.
Charles Fox Chawner, Corpus Christi Coll.
John Hooper, Corpus Christi Coll.
George William Straton, Corpus Chr. Coll.
James King Went, Corpus Christi Coll.
Richard Bethel Boyes, Queen's Coll.
James Mellor Brown, Queen's Coll.
Joseph Brown, Queen's Coll.
Charles Clark, Queen's Coll.

John Hodgson Steble, Queen's Coll.
Richard Taylor, Queen's Coll.
Bryan S. Broughton, Christ Coll.
James Penfold, Christ Coll.
Allen Allicock Young, Magdalene Coll.
Thomas James Rocke, Downing Coll.

At the same congregation, Dr. Charles R. Elrington, Professor of Divinity in the University of Dublin, was admitted D. D. ad eundem.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

We beg to inform Mr. Terrett, that his work on the Romans is under review; and that his communication shall be attended to shortly.

THE

CHRISTIAN

REMEMBRANCE R.

JULY, 1829.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

ART. I.-Some Account of the Writings and Opinions of Justin Martyr. By JOHN, BISHOP OF LINCOLN, and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge. Deightons, Cambridge; Rivingtons, London. 8vo. 1829. Price 7s. 6d.

THE writings of the primitive Fathers and early Ecclesiastical writers are in several points of view highly interesting and important. As exhibiting a vast body of external evidence in support of the genuineness and authenticity of the Sacred Scriptures;-as detailing the peculiar circumstances of the first progress of Christianity, and the various expedients to which Jews and Gentiles resorted in opposing it ;-as credible vouchers for the form and practice and constitution of the infant Church;-and as faithful records of the doctrines and discipline of Christ himself and his apostles, they furnish an invaluable source of inquiry in the various branches of theology. In ascertaining, more especially, the opinions of the primitive Christians respecting those doctrines which have become the subject of controversy in modern times, their testimony must ever be regarded as a useful and instructive guide. We do not mean to affirm that the Fathers are always the most correct and judicious interpreters of Scripture, or that they are always to be relied upon as infallible expounders of the opinions of the ancient Church; but conversing, as they did, with the apostles, and their immediate successors, they were doubtless better able than ourselves to judge of the meaning and purport of their writings, and had a nearer access to their thoughts and sentiments than we can possibly enjoy. Hence their authority on any disputed point is justly entitled to due consideration and regard, and, though much inferior to the plain and obvious sense of Scripture itself, calculated to confirm and establish that interpretation of the sacred text, to which the legitimate rules of criticism most naturally lead. On this point we cannot produce a more independent authority than that of Cicero, in his Tusc. Quæst. 12. Omni antiquitate uti possumus, quæ, quo

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propius aberat ab ortu et divina progenie, hoc melius ea fortasse, quæ vera erant, cernebat. Tertullian also observes, (cont. Marc. IV.) Si constat id verius quod prius, id prius quod et ab initio, ab initio quod ab Apostolis; pariter utique constabit, id esse ab Apostolis traditum, quod apud Ecclesias Apostolicas fuerit sacrosanctum. In the same degree therefore that the canonical Scriptures, making all due allowance for the claims of inspiration, are of higher authority than the writings of the Apostolical Fathers, the nearer we approach to the Apostolical age the more genuine may we expect to find the doctrines of the Gospel, which became gradually more and more tainted with the errors and absurdities of Gentile philosophy.

The force of this argument is so clearly perceptible, that sectarians of all denominations have ever been ready to shelter their several tenets under the authority of the early Fathers, and to assign a greater or less degree of importance to those writers respectively, who were more or less likely to give an apparent sanction to their views. It becomes necessary therefore to inquire how far their references will bear out their assertions, and, by a diligent examination of the context, to detect the sophistry by which an isolated passage is sometimes made to advocate an opinion totally at variance with the principles maintained by the author. It is an easy matter to affix perverse meanings to words and sentences; and by this means not only the writings of the Fathers, but even the Scriptures themselves, have been tortured to defend the most heterodox notions. The Apostolical Fathers have ever been brought forward in support of the dogmas of modern Unitarianism; and Calvinism has carried its claims to antiquity much higher than the times of Augustin. Hence the utility of such works as the "Ante-Nicene Testimonies " of Dr. Burton, and the selection of opposing authorities from the writings of the early Fathers in the Bishop of Winchester's admirable "Refutation" of the decretum horribile of the Genevan School.

The work now before us is of a more comprehensive nature than those to which we have just referred. Instead of exhibiting a collection of the opinions of a variety of writers on one particular doctrine or sect, it produces the testimony of a single writer to the several doctrines of the Gospel as set forth in the Articles and Formularies of the Church of England. In one point of view at least this plan has the decided preference. It is not only calculated to be eminently useful per se, as a compendium of Justin's sentiments; but it will serve as a guide for the student in analysing any other of the Fathers in a similar way, and investigating the nature of their reasonings, not on one only, but on all the doctrines of Christianity. Of Justin it may be remarked, that his writings are particularly valuable, as transmitting to us the prevailing opinions of the times immediately

succeeding the Apostolic age. Many of his ideas are doubtless fanciful," and many of his arguments weak and even puerile; but his honesty may safely be relied upon, and his testimony received as that of a faithful witness of the constitution of the church at the time in which he lived. The account of his writings and opinions with which the Bishop of Lincoln has furnished us, forms the substance of a course of lectures, which he delivered as Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, in the year 1821. A subsequent course embraced the writings of Tertullian on a more extended plan, which have been some time before the public; and the Reverend Prelate was doubtless induced by the reception which they have most deservedly met with, to send these, which he had previously delivered, to the press. In the present instance a memoir of Justin's life is followed by an analysis of his works, and a selection of passages made chiefly with a view to the illustration of the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England. The memoir is extremely brief; we shall therefore present it entire.

It is not my intention to engage in the discussion of the different hypotheses which have been formed respecting the Chronology of Justin's life. The data are too few and too uncertain to justify us in coming to any decided conclusion. We know from himself that he was born at Flavia Neapolis in Samaria, of Gentile parents and we are told by Eusebius, who refers to Tatian, Justin's scholar, that he suffered martyrdom at Rome, in the reign of Marcus Antoninus. One important circumstance, from its connexion with the history of his opinions, is, that he had carefully studied the tenets of the different philosophical Sects; having successively attached himself to the Stoics, the Peripatetics, the Pythagoreans, and the Platonists. To the last he manifestly gave the preference; but not deriving from any of them the entire satisfaction which he had expected, he was induced to examine, and having examined to embrace Christianity: finding it, as he himself states, the only sound and useful philosophy. He appears, however, after his conversion to have retained a fondness for his former pursuits, which he evinced by continuing to wear the philosophic habit.-Pp. 4, 5.

Together with the habit, it is more than probable that Justin retained some of the peculiar notions of the philosophers, more especially of the school of Plato, of whom he had been an ardent admirer. Of this philosopher, it has been asserted by Gibbon, in one of his sneers against the credibility of the Gospel, that he had "marvellously anticipated one of the leading doctrines of Christianity;" and many of those who contend that the early Christians were Unitarians, would fain persuade us that the Martyr's opinions respecting the Divinity of the Aóyos, and the Trinity, were formed on the basis of the Platonic writings. To a refutation of this assumption the Bishop proceeds-(after a critical analysis of the two Apologies, and the Dialogue with Trypho, the only remaining works of Justin which can be viewed as genuine) by an induction of the passages in which the Aoyos and Trinity are mentioned, opposed to those with which they are said to correspond in the works of Plato.

Hence it appears, that although the language in which he speaks of these doctrines may have been affected by the notions which he imbibed in the heathen schools, he could not have derived the doctrines themselves from that source. This is abundantly confirmed by his attributing the profession of the same sentiments to the whole Christian community, as well as by what he has delivered respecting them, in places where Plato affords no parallel.

In the first Apology Justin, when defending the Christians against the charge of Atheism, says, that they worshipped the Creator of the Universe, and placed next to him his Son, and honoured in the third place the Prophetic Spirit. In another place the same statement is made with reference to the same charge.Pp. 52, 53.

When we proceed further to inquire into the manner in which Justin distinguishes between the persons of the Trinity, we find that there are certain epithets and expressions which he applies to the first person alone; such as Unbegotten, Ineffable, the Maker and Creator of all things. He says also, that the Father never descended on earth or appeared to man, but remained always in the highest heaven.

With respect to the second Person in the Trinity, Justin says, that in the beginning before all created things, God begat from himself a certain Rational Power, who is called by the Holy Spirit the Glory of the Lord, sometimes the Son, sometimes Wisdom; and he illustrates the mode of generation by a comparison borrowed from a fire, which does not diminish the fire from which it is lighted. So this Rational Power was generated without any abscission or division of the Essence or Substance of the Father. Sometimes instead of the word generation, Justin uses emission or prolation. The general opinion of the Ante-Nicene Fathers appears to have been that, previously to this generation or emission, the Logos subsisted from eternity in a state of most intimate union with the Father, though personally distinct from him; being his Intelligence and his Counsellor, in devising the plan of Creation. But though we find Justin's writings nothing decidedly at variance with this opinion, he no where expresses it in clear and explicit terms.. When we find it expressly stated that it was Christ who appeared to Moses, and described himself as the Necessarily Existing eya ei av, we must conceive Justin to have maintained the perfect Divinity of Christ, and consequently his co-eternity with the Father.-Pp.54-59. This rational power, according to Justin, was begotten or emitted, that he might be the Minister of the Father in creating the universe, and conducting what the Fathers term the Economy. Hence we find him present at the creation of man; he it was who appeared to Abraham, who wrestled with Jacob, who conversed with Moses from the burning bush, who announced the approaching fall of Jericho to Joshua, who inspired the prophets, who in the fulness of time condescended to be born of the Virgin, to assume the human form, and to suffer death on the Cross; who rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, and shall come again to judge mankind.

Of the titles applied by Justin to the second Person in the Trinity, some have reference to his nature; some to the relation in which he stands to the Father; some to the part which he bears in the Gospel Economy. In the first respect he is repeatedly called God, and said to be the object of worship. In the second respect he is called the Son of God in a peculiar sense, or his only-begotten Son, his Reason or Word, his First-Born or Begotten, his Power, his Thought or Intelligence, if the received reading is correct, his Christ or Anointed, his Glory, his Wisdom. With reference to the part borne by him in conducting the Gospel Economy, he is styled, as we have already seen, the Minister, and the Angel or Messenger of God.-Pp. 59-64.

With respect to the human nature of Christ, Justin uniformly speaks of him

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