Disruption of 1838, and a few extracts from the New School Declaration of 1839, which is characterized as "a tissue of extraordinary inaccuracies." What became of the New School branch after that, the historian affirms not, nor can it be gathered from his book. Thirty years have passed since the Disruption-thirty eventful years-full of materials for a deeply interesting chapter, at least, in the history of the New School, but that chapter Dr. Baird had neither the candor nor the honesty to append to his partisan narrative.

Much as the author claims for himself in respect to a thorough acquaintance with the materials for such a history, the work bears the marks of a hasty production. Indeed he rather prides himself on having written it currente calamo-" chiefly during a month's midsummer vacation." This may account, in part, for the inaccuracies and errors with which some portions of it abound, some of which are amusing enough. He ventures the affirmation, (p. xi.) that "Dr. Dutton in his history of the North Church in New Haven, states himself to have been informed by the younger Edwards, that, in 1777, there were in Connecticut three parties, etc." "The younger Edwards" died in 1801, and "Dr. Dutton" was born in 1814. Does Dr. Baird believe in "spirit-rappings ?"

Again, in his account of the Assembly of 1836, which elected an Old School Moderator, he says, p. 488: "But the arrival of a steamer, crowded with commissioners from Illinois and Missouri, turned the scale, and gave the New School party the absolute control." The whole number of commissioners in that Assembly, from those States, was just fourteen, five of whom were present at the opening, seven appeared on the third, and two on the fourth day. A remarkably small "steamer" that must have been, that could be crowded by seven backwoodsmen! Or possibly they were men of remarkable corpulence.

His account of what took place in the Joint Committee of Thirty is entirely unreliable, and abounds with incorrect statements, as shown by the Rev. Dr. Monfort, (a member of the Committee) in the Presbyter of October 14, 1868. In quoting the Resolutions of the Old School Assembly of 1866

on reunion, nine mistakes are made in twenty lines, besides the omission of an important clause of six words; and yet it appears as a verbatim quotation-a strange proceeding for a believer in the ipsissima verba theory of subscription.

The truth of the matter is, that the author is bitterly opposed to reunion, and has done his best to show that there is a fundamental and irreconcilable difference between the bodies on the "subject of doctrinal divergence from the standards," and that, in assenting to the reunion, the Old School must be prepared "to enter into covenant to abandon the precious doctrines of grace to the mercy of every theological empiric who may fancy that his free inquiries have found a new and better way."

In thus outraging the convictions of nine-tenths of his own communion, and raising an issue known to all the world to be utterly false, he has entirely overshot the mark. The Disruption era has passed away with its bitter strifes and animosities. A better era has dawned. A new generation has come into power, fully resolved to bury the dead of past controversies, and to join hands with their brethren in the great work of building up the kingdom of their Lord and Master. Dr. Baird's book is an anachronism. It belongs to the buried past.

ART. VI. THE CANON MURATORIANUS.*

By WM. G. T. SHEDD, D. D., Professor in Union Theological Seminary, N. Y. In the year 1740 Muratori published an ancient Latin fragment containing a list of the books of the New Testament. He derived it from a kind of common-place book which he had discovered in an Ambrosian library at Milan. The entire volume seems to have been a receptacle for extracts, which some industrious monk, perhaps, was in the habit of making from ecclesiastical writings. The common-place book itself, from internal evidence, such as the chirography, color of the ink,

Canon Muratorianus.-The Earliest Catalogue of the Books of the New Testament. Edited, with Notes and a fac-simile of the MS., by Samuel Prideaux Tryelles, LL. D. Oxford, Clarendon Press. 1867.

etc., appeared to have been written in the eighth century; and this particular extract relating to the canon, which had been copied into it, from an incidental statement in it, must have been originally composed in the second century. It was therefore a new and very important testimony respecting the antiquity of the New Testament; although Muratori seems to have published it rather as a specimen of the barbarism of the scribes in Italy, during those dark ages in which ancient learning had declined, than as a witness for the authenticity of the documents of Christianity. It immediately, however, attracted the attention of scholars. Eichhorn reprinted it in his Introduction to the New Testament with annotations. Routh did the same in his Reliquiæ Sacra. More recently it has been carefully examined and criticised by Wieseler, Credner, Westcott, and others. And, last of all, Tregelles, at the expense and under toe auspices of the delegates of the celebrated Clarendon Press, has published an exact fac-simile of the fragment with learned and copious explanations.

The copyist of the eighth century was evidently illiterate, and Muratori could not have discovered a better specimen to prove the ignorance certainly of some of the scribes of that time. Some portions of the fragment are in such ungrammatical and corrupt Latin, that it is impossible to make any sense of them, and even those parts from which an intelligible meaning can be deduced, are greatly marred by mis-spelling and grammatical errors. Cum, the adverb, is mistaken for Cum, the preposition, and eum is altered to eo, in order to agree with it. Numeni is written for nomine; secundo for secundum; decipolis for discipulis; concribset for conscripsit; Callactis for Galatis; Thesaoleceusibus for Thesalonicensibus; Apocalebsy for Apocalypsi. Westcott remarks, as follows, upon the manner in which the scribe has done his work: "In thirty lines there are thirty-three unquestionable clerical blunders, including one important omission, two other omissions which destroy the sense completely, one substitution equally destructive of the sense, and four changes which appear to be intentional and false alterations. We have therefore to deal with the work of a scribe either unable or unwilling to understand the work

he was copying, and yet given to arbitrary alteration of the text before him, from regard simply to the supposed form of words."

Critics differ in respect to the language in which the fragment was originally written; some, (and among them Tregelles and Westcott,) asserting that it was Greek; and others, like Wieseler, contending that the original author composed it in Latin. But, surely, the ignorance of Latin which the scribe of the eighth century evinces in his errors and blunders, is strong proof that he could not have been acquainted with the Greek language-a tongue of which the Western Church, generally, in the eighth century, had very little knowledge.

Respecting the antiquity of the fragment, the following statement, contained in it, shows that it belongs to the second century. The original author, whoever he was, after mentioning the canonical books of the New Testament, alludes to the Shepherd of Hermas in the following manner: "Hermas wrote the Shepherd very recently, in our time, in the city of Rome (Pastorem vero nuperrime temporibus nostris in urbe Romo), while Pius, his brother, the bishop, sat in the chair of the church of the city of Rome, and therefore it ought to be read. But to read it publicly in the church to the people, is not admissible; either among the prophets, the number being complete, or among the apostles, their time having come to an end." This proves that the author of this list of the canonical books was a cotemporary of Hermas, and his brother Pius, bishop of Rome. The Pastor of Hermas has been referred to, that Hermas, to whom Paul sends greeting, in Romans xvi, 14; and the author himself professes to be a cotemporary of Clement, the disciple of Paul. But it is impossible to believe that a treatise so entirely vacant of the doctrine of gratuitous justification, aud laying so much stress upon works, can have proceeded from an immediate disciple of St. Paul. The testimony of the Muratorian fragment is rather to be taken than that of Origen, who was the first to suggest that the apostolical Hermas was the author of the Shepherd. This would make the date of its authorship to be somewhere near the middle of the second century. The date of the episcopate of

Pius has been variously stated from 127 to 157. Pearson gives good reasons for the earlier rather than the later date. If we adopt the mean, and place the episcopate of Pius about 140, we may reasonably assume that, inasmuch as the author of the Muratorian fragment states that the Shepherd was written "very recently" (nuperrime), "in his own day" (nostris temporibus), this list of the books of the New Testament may be placed about the year 160. It is therefore a very important testimony, because a very early testimony, respecting the writings that were received as inspired by the church of the second century.

The Muratorian Fragment first mentions the four gospels as canonical. Matthew and Mark are not directly named, because the fragment is mutilated. But it begins with saying, that the third gospel is that of Luke, and then designates John's gospel as the fourth, from which the inference follows that, in the portion that is lost, the writer had spoken of the first and second gospels. The writer remarks that Luke had not seen the Lord, and that some time after the Ascension, under the authority and with the assistance of the apostle Paul, he wrote the third gospel, commencing with the birth of John the Baptist. The origin of the fourth gospel he describes in the following peculiar manner: "The fellow disciples of St. John, together with the bishops of his region (episcopis suis cohortantibus), asked him to write the narrative of the life and teachings of Christ. In reply, he proposed that they should keep a fast of three days with himself, and whatever should be revealed to each should be related to all in common. In the same night it was revealed to the apostle Andrew, that John should write the whole narrative in his own name, and then it should pass under the survey of them all." The writer adds that it is not strange that St. John should relate minute particulars concerning Christ, even in his epistles (epistolis), since he wrote as one who had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears. Here is an evident reference to 1 John i, 1, and an implication, by the employment of the plural number, that St. John composed more than one epistle.