The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

1846 —850] Study of the Gospels-St. Paul

I43

long been in my mind: after which I shall expatiate in
boundless freedom.'
The letter to Dr. Greenhill appended to the last chapter 2
shows his resolution to 'consume his own smoke,' and
to keep his religious feelings to himself. The present
labour afforded an outlet in which some part of his
personal religious life became absorbed. He said long
afterwards to a friend who had purchased his book on
the Epistles, 'I am grateful to every one who reads
that book; I put so much of myself into it.' It should
be borne in mind that this work had been preceded
by a close study of the Gospels, which had been included
in the original scheme. In the autumn of I846 he
had written to Stanley:'I am still at work on the three Gospels, and am trying to
make a careful comparison of them throughout; a work of
much time with little to show. I think it may be proved that
there is no passage of four or five verses in length, where
there is not either discrepancy or over-close resemblance for
independent writers. If this can be brought home, it blows
away attempts at chronology, harmony, arguments from style,
&c. I mean to read over a part of the Septuagint, to examine
the variations in the MSS. and see whether anything analogous
can be detected.'
The first trace of the concentration of his labours on

will be in vain. Nothing but the
thought of this can make it so.
No one can tell what will be the
effect of these Sermons on the
minds of Heads of Houses and
country parsons, but it cannot be
irretrievable or make you "forfeit
beyond recovery the confidence
of the Church of England." Moreover the sort of ambiguous orthodoxy of Hare, Maurice, and Bunsen

must surely be a great evil.'
1 In these years he wrote much
which never saw the light, and
planned more:-for example, an
Edinburgh Review article on the
Hampden Controversy of I847.
An Essay on Pascal, which I remember seeing on his table about
I850, may have been published,
but I know not where.
2 p. o09.