humanity as the sacrificial ox. But Jerome’s distribution of the symbols prevailed and was represented
in poetry by Sedulius in the fifth century.
Among recent divines, Bishop Wordsworth, of Lincoln, who is in full sympathy with the
fathers and all their pious exegetical fancies, has thus eloquently reproduced the cherubic symbolism
(in his Com. on The New Test., vol. I., p. xli): "The Christian church, looking at the origin of the
Four Gospels, and the attributes which God has in rich measure been pleased to bestow upon them
by his Holy Spirit, found a prophetic picture of them in the four living cherubim, named from
heavenly knowledge, seen by the prophet Ezekiel at the river of Chebar. Like them the Gospels are
four in number; like them they are the chariot of God, who sitteth between the cherubim; like them
they bear him on a winged throne into all lands; like them they move wherever the Spirit guides
them; like them they are marvellously joined together, intertwined with coincidences and differences:
wing interwoven with wing, and wheel interwoven with wheel; like them they are full of eyes, and
sparkle with heavenly light; like them they sweep from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven,
and fly with lightning’s speed and with the noise of many waters. Their sound is gone out into all
lands, and the words to the end of the world." Among German divines, Dr. Lange is the most
ingenious expounder of this symbolism, but he exchanges the symbols of Matthew and Luke. See
his Leben Jesu, I., 156 sqq., and his Bibelkunde (1881), p. 176.
(2.) The pictorial representations of the four Evangelists, from the rude beginnings in the
catacombs and the mosaics of the basilicas at Rome and Ravenna to modern times, have been well
described by Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art, vol. I, 132–175 (Boston ed., 1865). She
distinguishes seven steps in the progress of Christian art: 1st, the mere fact, the four scrolls, or
books of the Evangelists; 2d, the idea, the four rivers of salvation flowing from on high to fertilize
the whole earth; 3d, the prophetic symbol, the winged cherub of fourfold aspect; 4th, the Christian
symbol, the four "beasts" (better, "living creatures") in the Apocalypse, with or without the
angel-wings; 5th, the combination of the emblematical animal with the human form; 6th, the human
personages, each of venerable or inspired aspect, as becomes the teacher and witness, and each
attended by the scriptural emblem—no longer an emblem, but an attribute—marking his individual
vocation and character; 7th, the human being only, holding his Gospel, i.e., his version of the
teaching and example of Christ.
(3.) Religious poetry gives expression to the same idea. We find it in Juvencus and Sedulius,
and in its perfection in Adam of St. Victor, the greatest Latin poet of the middle ages (about 1172).
He made the Evangelists the subject of two musical poems: "Plausu chorus laetabundo," and
"Jocundare plebs fidelis." Both are found in Gautier’s edition (1858), and with a good English
translation by Digby S. Wrangham in The Liturgical Poetry of Adam of St. Victor, London, 1881,
vol, II., pp. 156–169. The first has been well reproduced in English by Dr. Plumptre (in his Com.
on the Synoptists, in Ellicott’s series, but with the omission of the first three stanzas). I will quote
the third stanza of the first (with Wrangham’s version):
"
Circa thema generale,
Habet quisque speciale
Styli privilegium:
Quod praesignat in propheta
Forma pictus sub discreta
Vultus animalium."A.D. 1-100.