despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention, was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed. He received a few pence for the labour; and then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, requested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which was given him. He then looked out for the next thing that might chance to offer, and went, with indefatigable industry, through a succession of servile employments, in different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scrupulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which could advance his design, without regarding the meanness of occupation or appearance. By this method he had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily but cautiously turned his first gains into second advantages; retained without a single deviation his extreme parsimony; and thus advanced by degrees into larger transactions and incipient wealth. I did not hear, or have forgotten, the continued course of his life; but the final result was, that he more than recovered his lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth 60,000l. I have always recollected this as a signal instance, though in an unfortunate and ignoble direction, of decisive character, and of the extraordinary effect, which, according to general laws, belongs to the strongest form of such a character.

Of Essay III. the object is to exhibit contrasts to the representations which are given in the second. If here the author appears to be more feeble than in the former, it may be presumed that he found the subject less congenial with his na

ture.

The fourth and last paper discloses, in a neat and candid manner, the religious views of the writer, which are founded on the articles of the church according to the Calvinistical interpretation. The humiliating tenets' of what Mr. Foster terms evangelical religion are represented as meeting a strong resistance from persons of a refined taste, and whose feelings concerning what is great and excellent have been disciplined to accord with a literary or philosophical standard.' We apprehend that this statement is not much in favour of that system which the author denominates evangelical:-but if his essay on this subject will least please readers in general, it will be that which the followers of the author will most value.

ART.

ART. III. Illustration of the Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our three first canonical Gospels. With a Preface, and an Appendix containing miscellaneous Mat

ters.

The whole being a Rejoinder to the anonymous Author of the "Remarks on Michaelis and his Commentator." By Herbert Marsh, B.D. F.R.S., Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. 8vo. pp. 230. 4s. Boards. Rivingtons.

ART. IV. Supplement to Remarks on Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament, &c. in Answer to Mr. Marsh's Illustration of his Hypothesis. Svo. 23. White.

ART. V. A Defence of the Illustration of the Hypothesis proposed in the Dissertation on the Origin of the Gospels; being an Answer to the Supplement of the anonymous Author of the Remarks on Michaelis and his Commentator." By Herbert Marsh, B. D. &c. 8vo. 2s. Rivingtons.

BY

Y some theological wag, the Marshian controversy has been called a dose of hiera picra. Two divines, in conducting a discussion eminently interesting to our religious faith, have here poured forth such a quantity of bitter epithets on each other, as in our polished days has rarely been employed without the most serious consequences. Had not the parties been privileged by their black coats, we should have expected, before this time, to have heard of their having met on Primrose, Gogmagog, or some other hill, to have decided their unchristian disputes about the Holy Evangelists in what is called a gentlemanly manner. To be serious, we lament that this controversy has not been managed on both sides with more temperance and politeness; for, to say nothing of the discredit which is reflected on the parties by unhandsome insinuations and coarse epithets, the mind of the reader is thus incessantly diverted. from the points at issue to mere personalities. It must be granted that Mr. Marsh, in the first instance, had much reason for being offended with his opponent: but in reply he has "written daggers" and has employed all the vehemence of an enraged polemic. The matter in discussion is not only extremely curious but in the highest degree important; and as, from its very nature, it is addressed to scriptural scholars and critics, who alone can be judges in the case, it ought to have been conducted with appropriate courtesy and liberality.

Mr. Marsh having observed various striking circumstances, or as he terms them, phænomena, in the verbal harmony discernible in the Greek copies of the first three canonical gospels, endeavoured, in a dissertation which was the result of minute investigation and of severe labour, to account for these coincidences. He supposes the existence of an Hebrew document,

R 4

which

which he denominates or designates by the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (N), previously to the writing of either of these Gospels; and he attempts, on this assumption, to explain all the verbal phænomena, both of agreement and disagreement, which are apparent in them. His hypothesis was delivered in the following words:

"St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, all three, used copies of the common Hebrew document: the materials of which St. Matthew, who wrote in Hebrew, retained in the language in which he found them; but St Mark and St. Luke translated them into Greck. They had no knowlege of each other's Gospels: but St. Mark and St. Luke, beside their copies of the Hebrew document, used a Greek translation of it, which had been made before any of the additions a, B, &c. had been inserted. Lastly, as the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke contain Greek translations of Hebrew materials, which were incorporated into St. Matthew's Hebrew Gospel, the person who translated St. Matthew's Hebrew Gospel into Greck frequently derived assistance from the Gospel of St. Mark, where St. Mark had matter in common with St. Matthew; and in those places only, where St. Mark had no matter in common with St. Matthew, he had frequently recourse to St. Luke's Gospel.”

This hypothesis is certainly ingenious, and is supported with much learning and ability. Of this Hebrew document, however, no trace or memorial is to be found in history; which is a strong argument, in the estimation of Mr. Marsh's opponent, against its having ever existed: but in reply it may be ob served that it is not easy to suppose that the Church remained, from the death of our Saviour to the period usually assigned to the composition of the Gospels, without any written documents or memorials" of those things which Jesus began both to do and to teach." It is natural to believe that these most important transactions and discourses were committed to writing either by the pens or from the lips of the apostles; and that these invaluable memoranda were read occasionally in Christian assemblies, and compared with each other. Since our Lord's discourses were all delivered in the Hebrew dialect, as spoken in Palestine at the era of his public ministry, the first record of them was unquestionably in that dialect; as the Gospel spred into those provinces of the Roman Empire in which the Greek tongue prevailed, it was translated into that language; and as the majority of Christians were those who understood Greek, the Greek copies of these memoranda far exceeded those of the original Hebrew. Their value not only occasioned an indiscreet multiplication of them, but induced many persons (as we may conjecture from St. Luke's preface,) to attempt, without proper qualifications and authority, to construct on the basis of these church memoranda a regular Memoir of the Life of

Christ.

Christ. To counteract the bad consequences which were likely to result from the narratives of these injudicious and inaccurate, though perhaps not ill designing, historians, is the implied intent of St. Luke's undertaking; since, if the labours of the woo had been satisfactorily executed, no motive could have existed for an additional history. He does not expressly say that the Church was in possession of written materials for the history of our Saviour, furnished by those "who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word:" but it is scarcely credible that, from our Lord's crucifixion and resurrection to the year 63 or 64, (the date of St. Luke's Gospel, according to Lardner,) the Church should have reposed on mere oral instruction and tradition. Reasoning, then, on the probability of the case, the existence of some Hebrew materials, answering to Mr. Marsh's document, is not altogether incredible.

Mr. Marsh indeed contends that the facts which come out, or the phænomena which strike us, in making a verbal harmony of the first three Gospels, force us to admit the existence of such a document; while his hypothesis, he says, completely explains them, and we cannot satisfactorily account for them on any other. He observes that

Where all the three evangelists relate the same thing, there St, Mark has very frequently and in very long examples the same words with St. Matthew, when St. Luke relates the same thing in different words.

'But St. Luke never has the same words with St. Matthew when St. Mark relates the same thing in different words:

'On the other hand, where St. Matthew and St. Luke relate what St. Mark has not, there we find a very frequent and very remarkable verbal agreement.'

Whether the statements here made be strictly correct, and, if correct, whether the hypothesis will completely account for them, are matters highly meriting the consideration of the biblical critic. Ingenious men are not to be discouraged and abashed by the insinuation of the Remarker, that the pride of making discoveries is a trap and a snare to men of great talents and learning; nor will the searchers after truth be diverted from examination by the alarms of the timid believer.

So confident is Mr. Marsh in the strength of his ground, that he has published an Illustration of his Hypothesis, by way of Rejoinder to the first Remarks of his anonymous opponent; (see Rev. Vol. xlv. N. S. p. 374.) and his adversary having replied in a Supplement, Mr. M. returns to the charge in a Defence. Thus far the grand matter in dispute seems to have been obsti

nately

nately contested, but in our judgment with unequal ingenuity

and success.

In the Illustration, Mr. M. first inquires whether the authenticity, or the credibility, or the integrity, or the inspiration of the Gospels, can be affected by his hypothesis; and then, secondly, he enters into an examination of the question whe ther the proposed hypothesis be true. the Gospels, nothing, we think, which Mr. M. maintains, in As to the credibility of the least affects it*: but we cannot assert the same on the subject of their inspiration; on which, while Mr. M. is arguing for it, he inadvertently employs expressions which, in our apprehension, are at variance with it. e. g. in p. 116. he says,

If St. Luke had known the precise day, (i. e. of the Transfiguration) he would no more have neglected to mention it, than St. Matthew and St. Mark, both of whom thought it worth their while to be precise in this matter.'

Previously to the examination of the hypothesis itself, Mr. M. endeavours to obviate an objection very reasonably suggested by his adversary, viz. the total want of all historical proof; for at first it will seem a little strange, supposing a document of so much importance as Mr. M.'s to have existed in the primitive church, that no trace of it whatever should be found in history. To this, however, it is replied that, after the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written, the date of none of which was later than the year 65, no more transcripts of the document could have been wanted by the Church; and if no more were wanted, we may conclude that no more were made: especially as the copying of MSS. was expensive, and the primitive Christians were poor. It is farther remarked that the Christians of Palestine, to whom alone the Hebrew document was intelligible, were of all the poorest; that few must have been the number of the manuscripts of this document; and that various causes, particularly the Jewish war, which commenced in 66, conspired to destroy that little number. To talk (says Mr. M.) of neglect on the part of the Church about this document is ridiculous.' Granting, however, that it may be ridiculous to talk of the neglect of the Church in this instance, it must still be difficult to account for its total silence. A case in point is the Hebrew Gospel of St. Matthew, the use of which was superseded by the Greek

Now that any discovery in the verbal barmony of the Gospels should derogate from them in any way whatever, is more than my adversary could venture to assert: for it would be tantamount to say. ing that the Gospels degraded themselves.'

translation