the faith of others, he nowhere confirms them by his own authority.*

Of the treatises contained in the collection of his works, some are certainly not his; and there are others doubtful. At the close of his ecclesiastical history he himself gives us a catalogue of those which he had composed down to the completion of that work; and such as are not contained in it must be regarded with suspicion, unless internal evidence lead us to infer their paternity. That from 731 to 735 he was busily occupied there can be no doubt; but had he lived four times that period, he could not, if we take into the account his numerous monastic, sacerdotal, and didactic duties, have composed all that is attributed to him. On the other hand, there were some written by him which are not contained in any edition of his works; of these the greater portion is probably lost; but that a diligent search might discover a few may be inferred from the success of Martene, who, in his Collectio Anecdotorum, published the Commentary on Habakkuk. Some, again, have appeared in Simeon of Durham and other writers. Into the interminable controversy as to which are and which are not his, we cannot enter: we will restrict our notice to such as are incontestibly the productions of his mind. Of these the most considerable are his scriptural comments. They exhibit, in general, a plain good sense, always an extensive reading; his language is exceedingly simple, evidently because he aimed at edification, not at applause. The world, indeed, in which he moved, was too narrow to leave room for the exercise of the ordinary incentives to ambition. Confined to an obscure corner of Northumbria, which, during his whole life, he appears never to have left, except on one visit to York, he could command no other applause than that of the simple monks, or the still simpler pupils, by whom he was surrounded. He under

*Ceillier, Histoire des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques, tom. xviii. p. 1, &c. Southey, Vindiciæ Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, art. Bede.

took his theological works, which constitute three fourths of all attributed to him, in the pure spirit of duty. He felt the responsibility under which he lay of imparting to others the knowledge which he had received: he was not merely a monk and a priest, but an authorised teacher, whose chief obligation it was to educate youth for the ministry of the altar. Hence his extensive reading of the Fathers; hence the unwearied diligence with which he laboured to diffuse a knowledge of the Scriptures; hence his devotional temperament, which governed the minutest actions of his life. That he aimed only at utility is plain from the whole tenour of his writings. In fact, so submitted was his judgment, his very thoughts, to the authority of the church, that he refrained from the agitation of questions which might lead him into dangerous ground. Yet that such questions often presented themselves to his mind, is certain from innumerable passages of his commentaries. The following extract from his exposition of the first chapter of Genesis will better illustrate his manner than a thousand general remarks : —

"And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, &c. In creating other things, God said, fiat; let it be: hence, faciamus hominem, let us make man, implies a plurality of persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; yet that this plurality subsists in the perfect unity of the divine nature is evident from the verse immediately succeeding, So God created man in his own IMAGE: in his own image, not as a father in the image of the son, nor the son in that of father he did not say, in our image, but in the image of God. Now when it is said that man was created in the image of God, the words must have reference to the inward man, the seat of his reason and understanding; they allude, not to his body, but that power, derived from God, by which he has dominion over all other animals. In this case, the scripture does not say, as at the conclusion of the creation of the preceding things, and it was so; but it says, so God created man; clearly implying the intellectual nature of the new creature, the implication having reference also to light, which was first created." "Some have suspected that the creation in this case refers only to the inward man; because in the following chapter it is said, and the Lord God formed man out of the dust

of the ground, words which in their opinion imply the subsequent creation of the body; nor did they understand how the distinction of the sexes- male and female created He them could exist otherwise than as a bodily distinction. In what sense man, who before his fall was immortal-received for food, in common with other animals, every herb and fruit tree bearing seed, is difficult to be explained. For the words increase and multiply, though it might be supposed that the command could not be fulfilled without the actual junction of the man and woman, yet it is possible that in immortal bodies there might be some other mode of generation, that children might be born through some peculiar operation of a pious intellectual love; neither they nor their parents being subject to death, until the whole earth were filled with immortal men. 'As to food, however, nobody will venture to say that it would be required by any other than mortal bodies."—" And God saw every thing that he had made, and beheld that it was very good. Here a natural question arises, whether God, foreseeing as he did that man would sin, not separately, but with all his kind, called him good in reference to the future.* Singly, each thing as created was called good; every thing, the aggregate, very good, the body and each of its members, is fair, even when separately beheld; each is much fairer, when viewed as forming part of the same body. Others enquire in what respects our interior man possesses the image and likeness of God. According to Origen, that image and that likeness consist in two things, — in man's immortality, and in his moral goodness: according to Faustinus, the resemblance of our inward man with God is sixfold—it is immoveable, rapid, invisible, incorporeal, subtle, immortal. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he HIM; male and female created he THEM. This passage proves that the soul both of the man and of the woman was created; consequently, that these heretics are mistaken who deny this. As to the fact that Adam was not created until the sixth day, until all other things were formed, was it fitting that he should be made until his house was ready for him?"

In the preceding extract there is a strange union of simplicity and acuteness, with a considerable admixture of good sense. But after Bede has given us what he considers the natural, he proceeds to the spiritual meaning of the words. In this he is exceedingly fanciful, often puerile, sometimes absolutely ridiculous.

* Bede does not pursue this subject.

We must, however, remember that both for what is good and what is vicious in his writings, he is indebted to the Fathers of the first four centuries, whom, in substance, he always follows, however he may deviate as to the manner. Who, unacquainted with the spirit of the age, which in scriptural exposition was essentially allegoric, would believe that the following puerilities are from the same sober pen, that they form the immediate continuation of the above comment? —

"In a spiritual sense we are to understand by the earth the church; by the beasts of the earth the Jewish people; by the reptiles, the Gentiles; by the fishes, the heretics and philosophers of the world, who are under the dominion of man, that is, of Christ. But, in a good sense, the fish may also mean good teachers, and the fowls of the air may design the saints, who are under the dominion of Christ and his church."

In the same strain he proceeds to tell us, that male and female mean the church and the obedient, because the woman is obedient to the man: that increase and multiply refer to the progressive acquirement of spiritual knowledge, gifts, and graces; that male and female may also mean the spirit, and the soul or life, since spiritus is of the masculine gender, and anima of the feminine.*

The HOMILIES of Bede are chiefly founded on the gospel of the day. They are not expositions of a simple passage, but of several passages, sometimes of a whole chapter, but there is always a unity of subject, because the verses on which he dwells form so many links of the same chain. In the proper sense of the word, however, they are not expositions; they are rather such reflections on any given subject as a sober but often a mystic piety would suggest, accompanied by such exhortations as zeal for the salvation of others would naturally dictate :

Ceillier, Histoire des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques, tom. xviii. Smith's Ju dicium de Scriptis Beda, p. 808. (in vitâ ejusdem). Beda Venerabilis, Expositio in Genesim, cap. i. (in Operibus, tom. iv. p. 24.).

"John chap. ii. And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, &c.

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"That our Lord and Saviour, when invited to a marriage, not only accepted the invitation, but for the entertainment of the guests condescended to perform a miracle when there, without reference to the sacramental consecration,-- confirms even in its literal sense the faith of true believers. Hence this circumstance implies the condemnation of Tatian, Marcian, and others, who heretically preached against marriage. For if there were any thing evil in the bed undefiled, in nuptials celebrated with becoming chastity, in no wise would our Lord have been present, in no wise would he have consecrated the rites by the first fruits of his miracles."

"And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine: Jesus saith to her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come. In no wise did he who commands us to honour father and mother, intend to dishonour his mother: still less did he mean to deny that she was his mother, from whose virgin womb he had condescended to be born, being made, as the Apostle saith, of the seed of David according to the flesh; and how could he be of that seed according to the flesh, except from the body of Mary, who sprang from David? But in that he was about to perform a miracle, he said, Woman, what have I to do with thee? signifying that he had not received the origin of that divine nature which he was proceeding to exhibit from his temporal mother, but that he had enjoyed it eternally with the Father. What, O woman, is there in common between my deity, which I have always held indissolubly with the Father, and the human nature which I have received from thee? The hour is not yet come when by dying I may show the prevailing nature of the humanity which I have received from thee: I must previously exhibit the power of the eternal Deity in great signs. And there were

set there six water pots of stone. after the manner of purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. The hydria (water pots) are vases made for the receiving of water; for in Greek water is called dwp. Hence the water signifies the knowledge of holy Scripture, which cleanses its readers and hearers from the pollution of sin, and becomes the fountain of divine knowledge. The six vases in which the water was contained are the holy bodies of the saints." *

This allegorising spirit of Bede is the greatest blemish in his works. He spiritualises every thing; he can

* Bede, Homiliæ Hyemales de Tempore (Opera, tom. vii. p. 204.).