Among other exquisite quirks of interpretation in the No. 87 above mentioned is the following. God himself employs reserve; he is said to be decked with light as with a garment (the old or prayer-book version of Psalm civ. 2). To an ordinary apprehension this would be a strong image of display, manifestation, revelation; but there is something more. "Does not a garment veil in some measure that which it clothes? Is not that very light concealment?"
This No. 87, admitted into a series, fixes upon the managers of the series, who permitted its introduction, a strong presumption of that underhand intent with which they were charged. At the same time it is honorable to our liberty that this series could be published: though its promoters were greatly shocked when the Essayists and Bishop Colenso[[74]] took a swing on the other side. When No. 90 was under discussion, Dr. Maitland,[[75]] the librarian at Lambeth, asked Archbishop Howley[[76]] a question about No. 89. "I did not so much as know there was a No. 89," was the answer. I am almost sure I have seen this in print, and quite sure that Dr. Maitland told it to me. It is creditable that there was so much freedom; but No. 90 was too bad, and was stopped.
The Tractarian mania has now (October 1866) settled down into a chronic vestment disease, complicated with fits of transubstantiation, which has taken the name of
Ritualism. The common sense of our national character will not put up with a continuance of this grotesque folly; millinery in all its branches will at last be advertised only over the proper shops. I am told that the Ritualists give short and practical sermons; if so, they may do good in the end. The English Establishment has always contained those who want an excitement; the New Testament, in its plain meaning, can do little for them. Since the Revolution, Jacobitism, Wesleyanism, Evangelicism, Puseyism,[[77]] and Ritualism, have come on in turn, and have furnished hot water for those who could not wash without it. If the Ritualists should succeed in substituting short and practical teaching for the high-spiced lectures of the doctrinalists, they will be remembered with praise. John the Baptist would perhaps not have brought all Jerusalem out into the wilderness by his plain and good sermons: it was the camel's hair and the locusts which got him a congregation, and which, perhaps, added force to his precepts. When at school I heard a dialogue, between an usher and the man who cleaned the shoes, about Mr. ——, a minister, a very corporate body with due area of waistcoat. "He is a man of great erudition," said the first. "Ah, yes sir," said Joe; "any one can see that who looks at that silk waistcoat.">[
OF THOMAS GEPHYRANDER SALICETUS.
[When I said at the outset that I had only taken books from my own store, I should have added that I did not make any search for information given as part of a work. Had I looked through all my books, I might have made some curious additions. For instance, in Schott's Magia Naturalis[[78]]
(vol. iii. pp. 756-778) is an account of the quadrature of Gephyrauder, as he is misprinted in Montucla. He was Thomas Gephyrander Salicetus; and he published two editions, in 1608 and 1609.[[79]] I never even heard of a copy of either. His work is of the extreme of absurdity: he makes a distinction between geometrical and arithmetical fractions, and evolves theorems from it. More curious than his quadrature is his name; what are we to make of it? If a German, he is probably a German form of Bridgeman. and Salicetus refers him to Weiden. But Thomas was hardly a German Christian name of his time; of 526 German philosophers, physicians, lawyers, and theologians who were biographed by Melchior Adam,[[80]] only two are of this name. Of these one is Thomas Erastus,[[81]] the physician whose theological writings against the Church as a separate power have given the name of Erastians to those who follow his doctrine, whether they have heard of him or not. Erastus is little known; accordingly, some have supposed that he must be Erastus, the friend of St. Paul and Timothy (Acts xix. 22; 2 Tim. iv. 20; Rom. xvi. 23), but what this gentleman did to earn the character is not hinted at. Few words would have done: Gaius (Rom. xvi. 23) has an immortality which many more noted men have missed, given by John Bunyan, out of seven words of St. Paul. I was once told that the Erastians got their name from Blastus, and I could not solve bl = er: at last I remembered that Blastus was a chamberlain[[82]] as well as Erastus; hence the association which
caused the mistake. The real heresiarch was a physician who died in 1583; his heresy was promulgated in a work, published immediately after his death by his widow, De Excommunicatione Ecclesiastica. He denied the power of excommunication on the principle above stated; and was answered by Besa.[[83]] The work was translated by Dr. R. Lee[[84]] (Edinb. 1844, 8vo). The other is Thomas Grynæus,[[85]] a theologian, nephew of Simon, who first printed Euclid in Greek; of him Adam says that of works he published none, of learned sons four. If Gephyrander were a Frenchman, his name is not so easily guessed at; but he must have been of La Saussaye. The account given by Schott is taken from a certain Father Philip Colbinus, who wrote against him.
In some manuscripts lately given to the Royal Society, David Gregory,[[86]] who seems to have seen Gephyrander's work, calls him Salicetus Westphalus, which is probably on the title-page. But the only Weiden I can find is in Bavaria. Murhard has both editions in his Catalogue, but had plainly never seen the books: he gives the author as Thomas Gep. Hyandrus, Salicettus Westphalus. Murhard is a very old referee of mine; but who the non nominandus was to see Montucla's Gephyrander in Murhard's Gep. Hyandrus, both writers being usually accurate?]
NAPIER ON REVELATIONS.