sacristy, and the circular wall behind the great altar, are reported to have belonged to the adjoining baths of Titus. The church contains, among other attractions, a picture of St. Augustine by Guercino, as well as his highly-wrought picture of St. Margaret; the Deliverance of St. Peter from prison, by Domenichino; and a Mosaic of St. Sebastian, of the year 680. The chains, from which the church takes its specific name, are exhibited only on the anniversary of the festival of St. Peter. But the object of supreme interest-that which takes almost every stranger to the church-and that which nearly every one is disposed to visit first when he enters, and last, when about to leave, is the Moses of M. Angelo. In every point of view the statue is impressive. But there are two views, especially, which seem to reveal aspects of character quite distinct, though perfectly in harmony. The front view is, at first, startling and oppressive from its appearance of excited severity. One cannot look at the face without blenching. I could have almost desired it to be covered with a veil. And on glancing around at the faces of those who accompanied me, they appeared to sympathise in the feeling, and to be put out of countenance. I could easily understand the feeling of one of them, who declared that he should not like to be left alone with the awful form. The lawgiver appears to be looking at you, rather than you at him, or to be literally absorbing you with his eyes. He is steadily and severely gazing, while you are only glancing at intervals. And, when, after a little time, I began to look at him more stedfastly, I felt as if I were becoming the marble, and he the living man-living, and about to descend and approach me. As for the horns, they were quite forgotten; and I think they would be overpowered and lost in the general effect, even if their number were doubled.

Then there is the side view, which is, in my judgment, decidedly the best. Here mind triumphs. If the front inspired you with fear by the show of fervid passion and indomitable will, the profile justifies that fear, and converts it into awe, by revealing the reason by which they are sustained; high, intelligent determination prevails. If the front is the countenance of one who was the fit organ for saying, with Divine authority, Thou shalt, or, Thou shalt not; the side view presents the inspired aspect of one who could at once penetrate the reasons of such commands, sympathise with the supreme Legislator, and actually enforce all that he enjoined. It is the intellectual embodiment of law. The gigantic size of the figure, the muscular developement, the flowing beard, the drapery, and "the twin beams that from his temples dart,' are all means to the attainment of this end-the personification of this sublime idea.

I will only add, that the visitor, if at all interested in ecclesiastical history, will look around the church containing this triumph of art, with a thoughtful air, on being reminded that, in 1073, Hildebrand was here crowned pope by the title of Gregory VII.

C.

EPISCOPAL EXTINCTION OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS.

"If the practice in any parish at present prevail of introducing prayers of private composition either before the sermon or elsewhere, such violation of the church's law must not lay claim to indulgence."-Bishop of Exeter's Letter.

WHAT "the church's law" may be on this subject, I do not know, but, certainly, Dr. Philpotts seems resolved to employ it completely to prevent the public exercise of the gift of prayer by any of his clergy. The remarks of John Milton in his Animadversions upon Bishop Hall on this point, deserve the attention of all thoughtful men. "It is great presumption in any particular men to arrogate to themselves that which God universally gives to all his ministers. A minister that cannot be trusted to pray in his own words without being chewed to, and fescued to a formal injunction of his rote-lesson, should as little be trusted to preach. Well may men of eminent gifts set forth as many forms and helps to prayer as they please, but to impose them upon ministers lawfully called and sufficiently tried, as all ought to be, ere they be admitted, is a supercilious tyranny, impropriating the Spirit of God to themselves." He further recites the reasons which influenced the Fathers to adopt and enjoin set forms of Liturgy. "First, least anything in general might be missaid in their public prayers, through ignorance or want of care, contrary to the faith: and next, least the Arians and Pelagians in particular should infect the people by their hymns and forms of prayer. By the leave of these ancient Fathers, this was no solid prevention of spreading heresy to debar the ministers of God the use of their noblest talent, prayer in the congregation, unless they had forbid the use of sermons and lectures too, but such as were ready made to their hands, as our Homilies; or else, he that was heretically disposed, had as fair an opportunity of infecting in his discourse as in his prayer or hymn. As insufficiently, and to say truth, as imprudently, did they provide by their contrived Liturgies, least anything should be erroneously prayed through ignorance or want of care in the ministers. For if they were careless and ignorant in their prayers, certainly they would be more careless in their preaching, and yet more careless in watching over their flock, and what prescription could reach to bound them in both these? What if reason, now illustrated by the word of God, shall be able to produce a better prevention than these Councils have left us against heresy, ignorance, or want of care in the ministry, that such wisdom and diligence be used in the education of those that would be ministers, and such strict and serious examination to be undergone ere their admission, as St. Paul to Timothy sets down at large; and then they need not carry such an unworthy suspicion over the preachers of God's word, as to tutor their unsoundness with the A B C of a Liturgy, or to diet their ignorance or want of care with the limited draught of a matin, and even song-drench."

"Tis

Whatever "the church's law" may be now, it was doubtless the same in the days of Dr. John Wilkins, bishop of Chester. In his "Discourses concerning the Gift of Prayer," that able man did not hesitate to say-"For any one so to sit down and satisfy himself with this book-prayer, or some prescript form, as to go no further, this were still to remain in his infancy, and not to grow up in his new nature. the duty of every Christian to grow and increase in all the parts of Christianity, as well gifts as graces to exercise and improve every holy gift, and not to stifle any of those abilities wherewith God hath endowed them. *** What one says of counsel to be had from books may be fitly applied to this prayer by book; that 'tis commonly of itself, something flat and dead, floating for the most part too much in generalities, and not particular enough for each several occasion. There is not that life and vigour in it to engage the affections as when it proceeds immediately from the soul itself, and is the natural expression of those particulars whereof we are most sensible. And if it be a fault not to strive and labour after this gift, much more is it to jeer and despise it by the name of extempore prayer and praying by the Spirit: which expressions (as they are frequently used by some men by way of reproach) are for the most part a sign of a profane heart, and such as are altogether strangers from the power and comfort of this duty." B.

REVIEWS.

Hora Apocalypticæ, or a Commentary on the Apocalypse, Critical and Historical; including also an Examination of the Chief Prophecies of Daniel. Illustrated by an Apocalyptic Chart, and sundry Engravings from Medals, and other Extant Monuments of Antiquity. By the Rev. E. B. Elliott, A.M., late Vicar of Tuxford, and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 3 vols. 8vo. Seeley, Burnside, and Seeley.

"AMONGST the interpreters of the last age, there is scarce one of note who hath not made some discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries." So wrote Sir Isaac Newton,* one hundred and fifty years ago; and in truth ever since, light has gradually been shedding upon this obscure part of Scripture. Through many mistakes, through repeated failures, through much neglect and even opposition, its study and comprehension have progressed. From commentator to commentator it has passed on, receiving something from each: the mistakes of one have been beacons to another, and the acquisitions of each, points, both of rest and of advance, to all coming after him. At the same time, much of the prejudice against the study of this book has been gradually giving way. The celebrated passage of the eminent philosopher and commentator above quoted, so often adduced to frighten the biblical student from this portion of God's word, has lost much of its force; and in spite of the dead weight laid on it by its comparative neglect by all denominations of Christians, and its pointed exclusion by the Church of England, as a portion of Scripture, from its regular lessons, it is emerging from the depths of obscurity and neglect, and exciting to inquiry the minds of the intelligent and the pious, inclined thereto, as we would fain hope, by the Spirit who is to guide to all truth. It is impossible, in fact, not to discern that there is a growing spirit of inquiry into the purpose and meaning of this neglected book; that there is a more prevailing opinion that it may be worth looking into after all, that something may perhaps be got out of it suited to the circumstances of the times in which we live; and (which it might be conjectured was just now beginning to be admitted) that there is really some truth in the words, "Blessed is he that readeth, and they

N. S. VOL. IX.

* Observations on the Apocalypse, Chap. i.

Q

that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand." It will be granted to us that we have not been amongst the foremost to encourage a speculative and unprofitable study of the prophetic Scriptures. But may there not be some danger of erring on the side of neglect, as well as of presumption? Is it in nowise probable that circumstances may arise, or that the time may come, in which this omission may be no longer guiltless? How much we may have lost by the particular neglect above adverted to; to how much light thrown by this book upon both the history and prospects of the church, we may have shut our eyes, it is perhaps impossible for any of us yet to know. But for the reader's encouragement in the investigation, there will be no harm in suggesting that the blessing above promised may, possibly, have a special reference to the present, or quickly-coming times; and that it may be discovered that this investigation may lead to a better understanding of the agencies, spiritual, civil, and ecclesiastical, now at work, and described in this very book; of our own position and prospects; and of the duties arising out of such knowledge. Thus far even the historical portions of the Apocalypse, that is, such parts in the chronological series as have been fulfilled, or are in course of fulfilment, may lead us. But so inseparably interwoven in this book are the past and present with the future, that without presumptuously lifting the veil which yet hangs between the revealed and the unrevealed, the future will still burst upon us, sometimes resonant with the choruses of the redeemed, and, at others, suffused with the glare of fiery judgments.

These reflections have been forced upon us by the perusal of the work at the head of this article; and from some or all of the above considerations, we doubt not but our readers who have not read the work itself, will be gratified with an analysis of its contents. But so wide is the field entered upon by the author, and so multitudinous the critical, illustrative, and historical references, that no analysis consistent with our limits, can do it justice.

Mr. Elliott tells us, in his preface, that his work originated ten or twelve years since, in the rejection, by the Rev. S. Maitland and his followers, of the year-day theory of prophetic time, and with it of the whole scheme of Protestant interpretation of the Apocalypse. This he has laboured to restore to the stronghold from which none but Romanists hitherto had attempted to displace it; and we believe that we shall have the concurrent voice of almost the entire Protestant world with us in asserting that most triumphantly has he done it. He further informs us, that amongst the difficulties which met him in the outset of his work, in the explanation of the seals more particularly, and the utter untenableness of the several solutions given of them by the best-known Protestant expositors, he felt himself positively compelled to seek a truer solution.

"And in commencing his researches after it, there were two preliminary presumptions on which he judged that he might safely proceed. The one presumption was, that on the hypothesis of the fortunes of the Roman world and Christendom, from St. John's time down to the consummation, being the subjects of Apocalyptic figuration, the eras successively chosen by the Divine Spirit for delineation must have been the most important and eventful in the history of Christendom :-the other, that the emblems introduced into and constituting each prefigurative picture, must have been emblems in every case suitable to the era and subject, and in considerable measure characteristic and distinctive. Were the problem proposed to any student or artist of competent attainments to depict a nation's history in a series of pictures, what should we think of him were he to choose other than its most important eras for delineation? What, if in the delineations themselves, he were to introduce emblems or costumes inappropriate to the era; or so to generalise in them as that the pictures might equally well refer to twenty other eras and subjects, as to those intended? And if by any superior human artist such a handling of the subject would be deemed incredible, how much rather should the idea be rejected as incredible of the Divine Spirit having so handled the subject of the Apocalyptic prophecy!"-p. vii.

This explanation the reader of Mr. Elliott's work will find it important to keep in mind throughout.

The author having in a preliminary notice gone through the evidence of the genuineness of the Apocalypse, and fixed its date, satisfactorily, as we think, in the reign of Domitian, about the year 95 or 96, in opposition to the theories of Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Tilloch, and others, who would place it in that of Nero, enters on the body of his work. The principal feature of this, and that which most distinguishes it from others which have gone before it, is its more strictly continuous and uninterruptedly progressive chronological character. Certain parts, indeed, as will be seen, must be taken as parenthetical, supplementary, or retrogressive. Still the whole is to be viewed as a continuous chain of scenic representations, running in regular order through the long intervening ages from the time of St. John's visit to Patmos, to the general resurrection and the glories of the heavenly Jerusalem. The leading and more recent commentators of our own country, as Woodhouse, Cuninghame, Frere, Keith, Bickersteth, &c., in the structure and relative chronological position of the seals, trumpets, and vials, have advocated other schemes; of which the common principle is, that the seals do not precede, but run in chronological parallel with the trumpets and vials, so as that the sixth, or as with some, the seventh seal, shall have its termination, as well as the seventh vial, in the final consummation. Mr. Elliott's more simple and natural structure is that which supposes each of the latter series of sevens consecutive on the former: the seventh seal comprehending within it the seven trumpets, and the seventh trumpet the seven vials; the trumpets. carrying on the history chronologically from that of the sixth seal, and the vials from that of the sixth trumpet.

Agreeably with this succession, the sacred prefigurative drama is