spirit of the Scriptures, though with the continual help of the Vulgate, produced a number of popular Bibles, which were the same to the evangelical laity that the Vulgate had been for many centuries to the catholic clergy. This high place the Vulgate holds even to this day in the Roman church, where it is unwarrantably and perniciously placed on an equality with the original.'

The Commentaries of Jerome cover Genesis, the Major and Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, Job, some of the Psalms,' the Gospel of Matthew, and the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, and Philemon. Besides these he translated the

1 For particulars respecting the Vulgate, see H. HODY: De Bibliorum textibus originalibus, Oxon. 1705; Joн. CLERICUS: Quæstiones Hieronymianæ, Amsterd. 1719 (who, provoked by the exaggerated praise of the Benedictine editor, Martianay, subjected the Vulgate to a sharp and penetrating, though in part unjust criticism); LEANDER VAN Ess: Pragmatisch-kritische Geschichte der Vulgata, Tüb. 1824; the lengthy article Vulgata by O. F. FRITZSCHE in Herzog's Theol. Encycl. vol. xvii. pp. 422-460; an article on the same subject by B. F. WESTCOTT in W. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 1863, vol. iii. pp. 688-718; and ZÖCKLER: Hieronymus, pp. 99 ff.; 183 ff.; 343 ff.

The text of the Vulgate, in the course of time, has become as corrupt as the text of the Itala was at the time of Jerome, and it is as much in need of a critical revision from manuscript sources, as the textus receptus of the Greek Testament. The authorized editions of SIXTUS V. and CLEMENT XIII. have not accomplished this task. MARTIANAY, in the Benedictine edition of Jerome's work, did more valuable service towards an approximate restoration of the Vulgate in its original form from manuscript sources. Of late the learned Barnabite C. VERCELLONE has commenced such a critical revision in Variæ Lectiones Vulgatæ Latin. Bibliorum editionis, tom. i. (Pentat.), Rome, 1860; tom. ii. Pars prior (to 1 Regg.), 1862. WESTCOTT, in the article referred to, has made use of the chief results of this work, which may be said to create an epoch in the history of the Vulgate.

'His seven treatises on Psalms x.-xvi. (probably translated from Origen), and his brief annotations to all the Psalms (commentarioli) are lost, but the pseudo. hieronymianum breviarium in Psalmos, a poor compilation of later times (Opera, vii. 1-588), contains perhaps fragments of these.

3 Opera, tom. iii. iv. v. vi. and vii. Jerome dedicated his commentaries and other writings mostly to those high-born ladies of Rome whom he induced to embrace the ascetic mode of life, as Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, &c. He received much encouragement from them in his labors;-such was the lively theological inter est which prevailed in some female circles at the time. He was, however, censured on this account, and defended himself in the Preface to his Commentary on Zephaniah, tom. vi. 671, by referring to Deborah and Huldah, Judith and Esther Anna, Elizabeth, and Mary, not forgetting the heathen Sappho, Aspasia, Themista, and the Cornelia Gracchorum, as examples of literary women.

Homilies of Origen on Jeremiah and Ezekiel, on the Gospel of Luke, and on the Song of Solomon. Of the last he says: "While Origen in his other writings has surpassed all others; on the Song of Solomon he has surpassed himself."'

His best exegetical labors are those on the Prophets (par· ticularly his Isaiah, written A. D. 408-410; his Ezekiel, A. D. 410-415; and his Jeremiah to chap. xxxii., interrupted by his death), and those on the Epistles to the Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus (written in 388), together with his critical Questions (or investigations) on Genesis. But they are not uniformly carried out; many parts are very indifferent, others thrown off with unconscionable carelessness in reliance on his genius and his reading, or dictated to an amanuensis as they came into his head.' He not seldom surprises by clear, natural, and conclusive expositions, while just on the difficult passages he wavers, or confines himself to adducing Jewish traditions and the exegetical opinions of the earlier fathers, especially of Origen, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and Didymus, leaving the reader to judge and to choose. His scholarly industry, taste, and skill, however, always afford a certain compensation for the defect-of method and consistency, so that his commentaries are, after all, the most instructive we have from the Latin church of that day, not excepting even those of Augustine, which otherwise greatly surpass them in theological depth and spiritual unction. He justly observes in the Preface to his Commentary on Isaiah: "He who does not know the Scriptures, does not know the power and wisdom of God; ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ."'

'Præf. in Homil. Orig. in Cantic. Cant. tom. iii. 500. Rufinus, during the Origenistic controversy, did not forget to remind him of this sentence.

"He frequently excuses this "dictare quodcunque in buccam venerit," by his want of time and the weakness of his eyes. Comp. Preface to the third book of his Comment. in Ep. ad Galat. (tom. vii. 486). At the close of the brief Preface to the second book of his Commentary on the Ep. to the Ephesians (tom. vii. 586), he says that he often managed to write as many as a thousand lines in one day (“interdum per singulos dies usque ad numerum mille versuum-i. e., here σríxo-perveDire").

"Qui nescit Scripturas, nescit Dei virtutem ejusque sapientiam; ignoratio Seripturarum ignoratio Christi est."

Jerome had the natural talent and the acquired knowledge, to make him the father of grammatico-historical interpretation, upon which all sound study of the Scriptures must proceed. He very rightly felt that the expositor must not put his own fancies into the word of God, but draw out the meaning of that word, and he sometimes finds fault with Origen and the alle gorical method for roaming in the wide fields of imagination, and giving out the writer's own thought and fancy for the hidden wisdom of the Scriptures and the church.' In this healthful exegetical spirit he excelled all the fathers, except Chrysostom and Theodoret. In the Latin church no others, except the heretical Pelagius (whose short exposition of the Epistles of Paul is incorporated in the works of Jerome), and the unknown Ambrosiaster (whose commentary has found its way among the works of Ambrose), thought like him. But he was far from being consistent; he committed the very fault he censures in Eusebius, who in the superscription of his Commentary on Isaiah promised a historical exposition, but, forgetting the promise, fell into the fashion of Origen. Though he often makes very bold utterances, such as that on the original identity of presbyter and bishop, and even shows traces of a loose view of inspiration,' yet he had not the courage, and was too scrupulously concerned for his orthodoxy, to break with the traditional exegesis. He could not resist the impulse to indulge, after giving the historical sense, in fantastic allegorizing, or, as he expresses himself, "to spread the sails of the spiritual understanding.""

' Comp. particularly the Preface to the fifth book of his Commentary on Isaiah, and Ep. 53 ad Paulinum, c. 7.

In the Comm. on Tit. i. 5, and elsewhere, e. g., Epist. 69 ad Oceanum, c. 8, and Epist. 146 ad Evangelum, c. 1. Such assertions, which we find also in Ambro siaster, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, were not disputed at that time, but subsequently they gave rise to violent disputes between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. Comp. my History of the Apostolic Church, § 132, p. 524 f.

⚫ He admits, for instance, chronological contradictions, or, at least, inexplicable difficulties in the Gospel history (Ep. 57 ad Pammach. c. 7 and 8), and he even ventures unjustly to censure St. Paul for supposed solecisms, barbarisms, and weak arguments (Ep. 121 ad Alag.; Comment. in Gal. iii. 1; iv. 24; vi. 2; Comment. in Eph. iii. 8, 8, 13; Comment. in Tit. i. 3).

• "Spiritualis intelligentiæ vela pandere," or "spirituale ædificium super historis

He distinguishes in most cases a double sense of the Scrip tures: the literal and the spiritual, or the historical and the allegorical; sometimes, with Origen and the Alexandrians, a triple sense: the historical, the tropological (moral), and the pneumatical (mystical).

The word of God does unquestionably carry in its letter living and life-giving spirit, and is capable of endless application to all times and circumstances; and here lies the truth in the allegorical method of the ancient church. But the spiritual sense must be derived with tender conscientiousness and self-command from the natural, literal meaning, not brought from without, as another sense beside, or above, or against the literal.

Jerome goes sometimes as far as Origen in the unscrupulous twisting of the letter and the history, and adopts his mischievous principle of entirely rejecting the literal sense whenever it may seem ludicrous or unworthy. For instance: By the Shunamite damsel, the concubine of the aged king David, he understands (imitating Origen's allegorical obliteration of the double crime against Uriah and Bathsheba) the ever-virgin Wisdom of God, so extolled by Solomon;' and the earnest controversy between Paul and Peter he alters into a sham fight for the instruction of the Antiochian Christians who were present thus making out of it a deceitful accommodation, over which Augustine (who took just offence at such patrocinium mendacii) drew him into an epistolary controversy characteristic of the two men.'

fundamentum extruere," or "quasi inter saxa et scopulos" (between Scylla and Charybdis), "sic inter historiam et allegoriam orationis cursum flectere."

1 Ep. 52 ad Nepotianum, c. 2-4. He objects against the historical construction, that it is absurd, inasmuch as the aged David, then seventy years old, might as well have warmed himself in the arms of Bathsheba, Abigail, and the other wives and concubines still living, considering that Abraham at a still more advanced age was content with his Sarah, Isaac with his Rebeccah. The Shunamite, therefore, must be "sapientia quæ numquam senescit" (c. 4, tom. i. 258). Nevertheless, in another place, he understands the same passage literally, Contra Jovinian. 1. i. c. 24 (tom. i. 274), where he mentions this and other sins of David, "non quod sanctis viris aliquid detrahere audeam, sed quod aliud sit in lege versari, aliud in evangelio."

• Comp. Jerome's Com. on Gal. ii. 11-14; Aug. Epp. 28, 40, and 82, or Epp. 56, 67, and 116 among the Epistles of Jerome (Opera, i. 300 sqq. ; 404 sqq.; 761 sqq.)

It is remarkable that Augustine and Jerome, in the two exegetical questions, on which they corresponded, interchanged sides, and each took the other's point of view. In the dispute on the occurrence in Antioch (Gal. ii. 11-14), Augustine represented the principle of evangelical freedom and love of truth, Jerome the principle of traditional committal to dogma and an equivocal theory of accommodation; while in their dispute on the authority of the Septuagint Jerome held to true progress, Augustine to retrogression and false traditionalism. And each afterwards saw his error, and at least partially gave it

up.

In the exposition of the Prophets, Jerome sees too many allusions to the heretics of his time (as Luther finds everywhere allusions to the Papists, fanatics, and sectarians); and, on the other hand, with the zeal he inherited from Origen against all chiliasm, he finds far too little reference to the end of all things in the second coming of our Lord. He limits, for example, even the eschatological discourse of Christ in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, and Paul's prophecy of the man of sin in the second Epistle to the Thessalonians, to the destruction of Jerusalem.

Among the exegetical works in the wider sense belongs the book on the Interpretation of the Hebrew Names, an etymological lexicon of the proper names of the Old and New Testaments, useful for its time, but in many respects defective, and now worthless; and a free translation of the Onomasticon of Eusebius, a sort of biblical topology in alphabetical order, still valuable to antiquarian scholarship.'

1

After defending for a long time his false interpretation, Jerome gave it up at last, A. D. 415, in his Dial. contra Pelag. 1. i. c. 22. Augustine, on the other hand, yielded his erroneous preference for a translation of the Old Testament from the Septuagint instead of the original Hebrew, although he continued to entertain an exaggerated estimate of the value of the Septuagint and the very imperfect Itala. Besides these two points of dispute the Origenistic errors were a subiect of correspondence between these most distinguished fathers of the Latin Church.

'Liber de interpretatione nominum Hebraicorum, or De nominibus Hebr. (Opera, tom. iii. 1-120). CLERICUS, in his Quæstiones Hieronymianæ, severely criticised this book.

'Liber de situ et nominibus locorum Hebraicorum, usually cited under the titl Eusebii Onomasticon (urbium et locorum S. Scripturæ). Opera, tom, iii. 121-290