selves responsible. And we must deny our understandings the gratification of pronouncing on it as a whole, or of measuring it as such with another whole; but, contenting ourselves with private reformation of such matters as come within our sphere and responsibility, we must cherish the faith that, in answer to devout prayer, a general spirit of improvement will be awakened, and that her great head will enable the bishops and priests of his church, each in his measure and degree, to remove one by one the several evils which disfigure her, as one by one they come into notice, and as in regard to each his providence gives the opportunity. He, too, if his guidance be sincerely sought, will enable them in due time so to bring out the idea of the church, and so to enrich its system with supplementary developments, as best to meet the wants of these latter ages, and bring together all their susceptibilities of excellence, all their scientific and intellectual achievements, all their victories over external nature, all their inquiring and disquisitive energies, into the eternal home of mankind, the church of the living God, the communion of all saints, the shrine of heavenly glory.

Let me in conclusion bring together the several points on which I have touched in the course of these letters. In regard to the refining and raising humankind, in the subordinate, earthly, and, so to speak, accidental parts of their being, the Christian church had a task before her which could not be otherwise than very gradually accomplished. Whatever insight into God's word and will is dependent on such refining and raising must therefore have come gradually too. Moreover, we are to beware of believing that any age of her earthly history can supply the church with a standard of perfection, to keep in mind that such a belief is incompatible with due remembrance of that ideal and heavenly pattern to which she ought to be conforming herself. When we think of the primitive ages, we ought indeed to do full justice to the value of the relics they have bequeathed to us, and to the faith, self-denial, and heroism by which they were signalized, and to humble ourselves for our own deficiencies in these respects. At the same time we must, to say the least, suspect that a leaven of carnality and heathenism mingled with them from the first; and though we must be cautious how we condemn any particular point of their practice, as an instance of this, seeing we are not in a good position for understanding the case, yet we can at any rate abstain from judging. We must remember, too, that there are some great advantages which we enjoy over them-that we live in a state of society purified in very great measure from heathen pollutions; that no part of our lives has been passed in idolatry; that by reason of infant baptism the grand majority of us start from the goal which the ancient rejoiced after long expectation to reach; that with us much of the arts and graces of polished life, no less than the import of public laws and institutions, is moulded and in great measure impregnated by the spirit of the gospel; that the church has been taught many a deep lesson by experience; that family life has been brought much nearer in fact to the holy idea it was designed to realize than it could have been among the early Christians; and that matrimony presents itself to us

in a far purer and more refined aspect than it could often have done to them. To these I might have added the fresh spring given to men's moral and intellectual energies by the re-development of national life, which was extinguished at the time when the foundations of the church were laid. It would be most interesting to trace the bearings of this on the whole question; but, besides that I do not feel qualified for the task, my present undertaking has been merely to throw out hints for an inquiry of no ordinary importance indeed, but which nevertheless does not seem to me to have been as yet rightly prosecuted.

At the same time, I do not wish to part with the question of religious progression, as if I had arrived at no other conviction about it than that it is worth considering; as if I were merely persuaded that some changes have taken place in men's situation which may have had the effect of raising them in some respects above their fathers; but of which I am not sure that they actually have had this effect. There are points in which I feel bold to say that we have gained in wisdom. We have gained in an habitual manly estimate of things. Christians agreeing in other respects would hardly quarrel now on such a question as when Easter should be celebrated. The death of an unbaptized infant would not now cause most persons uneasiness, except on the score of their own, it may be, culpable neglect in the matter. We read the scriptures, too, on sounder principles of interpretation than formerly, not voiding their imagery of all poetry, and their facts of real import and significance, by a passion for mystical senses. We do not feel any such craving for wonders as can well expose us to the deceptions of the miracle-monger;* and if our interest in departed saints be too slight, as assuredly it is, we are at least preserved from the temptation of occupying the services of the sanctuary with idle panegyric. The catalogue of gains might, I doubt not, be easily swelled; and were it so to ever such an extent, the answer would probably be ready; "granting all these to be real advantages, yet are there not losses which at least counterbalance them ?" Be it so; still, let us not be thankless for what we have gained. Let us not treat it as valueless because it is not everything ; as if God shewed neither love nor wisdom in granting it to us. Let us not, for example, run down our Reformation, as some unhappily have been led to do, because the leaders in it, having had one great

* In reference to this point, and the one before it, I would be understood as condemning with caution. That the Old Testament may be applied to Christ, even where the application does not very readily strike us, we find from apostolic example. And it is plainly impossible to say how long the echo of the apostolic voice lingered in the church, and how much of patristic teaching and exposition may not be caught from it. At the same time it is, I think, undeniable that many of the fathers carried the search after mystical senses to a most extravagant pitch. Take, e.g., Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms, beautiful and precious as much of it is. Who would now be a gainer-who would enter better into the spirit of the Psalms by resolving always with that father to understand mountains to mean the apostles, and little hills the private members of the church? And in regard to miracles, while I deprecate rash judgments on alleged cases of them, in distant ages, yet we are surely gainers if we can keep up a lively faith in spiritual presence and power, without seeking after them.

and holy work appointed to them by the head of the church, do not strike us as having been equally qualified for every other. Let us not speak of it as of a great calamity, in which our only consolation is that, by the good providence of God, our connexion with the church catholic has not been altogether destroyed. Let us rejoice in it, in spite of the disasters, the turbulence, the schism, and the sacrilege, which undoubtedly accompanied it, as a mighty manifestation of spiritual life casting off corruption and decay, and a return of the church to comparatively fresh youth and health. Let us beware lest by heedless censure of it we blaspheme the wisdom and goodness which inspired, promoted, and protected it.

And finally, let us, as we learn to look on the church catholic as one in all space, though with different and varying members, whose difference and variety, instead of disturbing, promotes and adorns the living and majestic unity of the whole, view her also as one in all time, though each age of her existence has had, and each to the end of her earthly history shall have, a different work to do, and a different voice wherewith to address the sons of men; yet are they all one, deep calling unto deep, and combining into one wondrous harmony, which shall swell into the eternal song of praise and adoration, for ever magnifying the triune glory, that was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. F. G.

ON THE ÆGYPTO-TUSCAN PAPIRII.

SIR,-When the language of the Tuscans was falling into disuse under the dominion of their Roman conquerors, a custom arose of adding a Latin inscription to the native Tuscan epitaph, and eventually of writing it in Latin alone. It is from these bilinguar inscriptions that we derive our little knowledge of some formatives and inflections in Tuscan, but they have not yet thrown much light on the meaning of Tuscan words; for it is said that a correspondence between the two texts is hardly ever observable. Such is the statement of Lanzi and Muller; and of course there is some truth in the remark, but not to the extent which these writers supposed. In fact, as proper names are generally significant, and therefore can be rendered into another language, a want of agreement in such inscriptions would lead us to infer that the names were actually so translated; and in support of this opinion I might refer to well known instances in the New Testament: Cephas, Petrus; Thomas, Didymus; Tabitha, Dorcas.

To shew that the bilinguar inscriptions do not correspond, Lanzi brings forward and discusses the following epitaph (vol. ii. pp. 257, 271):

C. LICINI. C. F. NIGRI.

V. LECNE. V. PHAPIRNAL.

Now, although he maintains that Maffei was wrong in considering Niger as equivalent to Phapirnal, it is the conclusion to which a bare inspection of the monument most naturally leads; and in accordance

with this natural idea, I hope to shew that F. Nigri is the literal rendering of Phapirnal.

It is known from other monuments that the suffix al, like witz at the end of many Russian names, signifies son of; we may therefore strike off the Latin F. and Tuscan al, and confine our attention to to Niger and Phapirne. It is further, known that such a form as Phapirne signifies a Papirianus-i.e., a kinsman of Phapire or Papirius. With our present means, the form Phapirnal can be reduced no further than to Phapire, which therefore is the word we have to compare with the Latin Niger; and I conceive it to be the modification of some Cushite root used by Tirhakah's colony with that meaning. This root I find in Coptic, in which language the verb phiri signifies nigrescere. It is possible that Phapire is merely a variation of Pharpire: compare Mars, Mamers, Mamurius, and the Carmen Frat. Arval, in Lanzi.

I am here led to conjecture that the native or Cushite name of the river Niger was Phapir or Pharpir, especially as we meet with the name elsewhere: Pharpar and Abana were rivers of Damascus. Since the proper meaning of Pharpar is 'purpureus' rather than niger, the word in this sense must have been common in all that region, for Tyre was ever celebrated for the manufacture of purple. Also we may be certain, from the phrase тордурεоν кνμа of Homer, and the 'purpureum mare' of Virgil, that the ancients would have seen nothing unsuitable in the title Pharpar or Purpureus as the name of a river; and however strange the classical epithets applied to purple may at first sight appear, ardens,' 'fulgens,' &c., they in fact do nothing more than repeat the meaning of the word 'purpura' itself, for the Coptic verb phiri signifies splendere, fulgere, as well as nigrescere.

The various, or rather the discordant uses of the word purpureus can be reconciled and explained only by a reference to the original Cushite root, of which the different meanings are given in the following scheme :

Pheri, phiri, and pire, phori.

1. Fulgere, dealbare, candidum reddere. Horace describes Venus as 'Purpureis ales oloribus.' These were 'rare aves;' but Albinovanus surprises us still more with Brachia purpureâ candidiora nive.*

2. Germinare, florescere. In the sense of blooming, Virgil says, 'Lumenque juvente purpureum.' 'Purpureus veluti cùm flos succisus aratro languescit moriens.' 'Appodɩrn πoppupa, Anacreon.

3. Nigrescere, as grapes in ripening. Hence the family name Phapire or Niger; the river Pharphar or Niger; purpureum mare. Another bilinguar inscription given by Lanzi is

From which we learn that the Tuscan vile is equivalent to the Latin sextus. I add from Bopp and Lepsius the numeral six in all the better known languages.

INDO-EUROPEAN: Sanskrit, shash; Zend, csvas; Lithuanian, szeszi ;

*See Horace, Ode, 4, i. 10, and the Delphin note.

Sclavonian, shesti; Gothic, sails; Erse, se; Welsh, chwech. SEMITIC: Hebrew, shish-ah; Arabic, sitt-atun; Æthiopic, sedese-tu; Coptic, soou. Here the Coptic fails us. As I consider the Tuscans to be a colony settled by Tirhakah, king of Cush, I was led to consult the vocabularies at the end of Salt's Abyssinia. The numeral six is thus given in the three languages of Abyssinia: Amharic, sedis-t; Tigre, sedish-te; Agow, wal-ta. The Agow walta shews some affinity with the Tuscan vile; these vocabularies, however, do actually contain some genuine old Ethiopian and Egyptian words, and they may be turned to good account in illustration of ancient history, as I hope to shew in my next communication.

Bedford.

W. B. WINNING.

"ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY."-No. VI.

8. ISIDORE OF PELUSIUM.

SIR,-I will next call the attention of your readers to the use which our author has made of S. Isidore of Pelusium, whom he introduces in the following manner :—

"There yet remains, however, one other point of view, whence the same subject may be regarded, and that is the bearing of the institute of celibacy upon the religious principle, which was appealed to for giving it support: now without anticipating what will more properly find a place, a little way on, I will state the fact that, at a very early time, a false maxim of spiritual computation had become so inveterate, as that the most sedate and judicious divines, without hesitation, employ it, in the estimates they form of the comparative excellence of different religious conditions. That is to say, a rule of spiritual eminence is appealed to, which discards, or overlooks all reference to what is truly spiritual, or, in any genuine sense, moral; and puts in its room what is formal, visible, or ecclesiastical. I will refer, in this instance, to the sober-minded Isidore of Pellusium, also, a bishop, and the personal friend of Chrysostom, and whose expositions of scripture are frequently such as to deserve respectful attention. We have seen in what way Tertullian, Cyprian, and, with not more absurdity, St. Bernard, pervert the plain sense of scripture, for the purpose of hitching the virgins of Christ upon the loftiest pinnacle of the ecclesiastical structure. Now for Isidore, who, to do him justice, inserts a frequent axays, when there appears to be a danger lest, in bis recommendation of celibacy, matrimony should be despoiled of its due honours."-p. 102.

To advert first to things of lesser moment, (which might be passed over in silence, had the author's pretensions to accuracy not been so high,) Suidas calls 'St. Isidore a presbyter,* and no one, I believe, has before discovered that he was a bishop; and there is nothing to shew that he was the "personal friend," or, as the author says, p. 196, "intimate friend," of St. Chrysostom, otherwise than as a disciple of his. Neither was he among the writers of the fourth century, as the author's language implies, p. 103; he wrote during the former half of the fifth century, and so was the contemporary of Cassian.

There are extant two thousand and twelve letters of St. Isidore, (our author says, p. 196, two thousand one hundred and eighty-three,) and in twelve of these, and, so far as I am able to find, in twelve only,

• "All the ancients give him no other distinction; and it appears by his letters that he had not any other."-(Du Pin.)

VOL. XVIII.-July, 1840.

G