Church memorials ana characteristics CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS RIVINGTONS HonC on Waterloo Place SDjcforD High Street CamfcnBge Trinity Street [A— 1 1 8] Church Memorials AND Characteristics IBemg a <£i)urcf) pstorp of t&c jftrst %ix Centuries BY THE LATE WILLIAM ROBERTS, Esq., M.A., F.S.A. EDITED BY HIS SON ARTHUR ROBERTS, M.A. RECTOR OF WOODRISING, NORFOLK RIVINGTONS Ho no on, SD^forD, a no Cambridge MDCCCLXXIV * INTRODUCTORY NOTICE A BRIEF sketch of the literary career of the author of this work may not be unacceptable to the readers of its pages. He was born at Newington Butts in the county of Surrey, in the year 1767, and was sent successively to Eton and St. Paul's schools, in the former of which his father's cousin was the provost, and in the latter his uncle, Dr. Roberts, the head master. At the early age of fifteen he was a successful candidate for a scholarship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where, having passed his under- graduateship with considerable credit, he was elected fellow. In the year 1788, on attaining his B.A. degree, he won the English prize essay, the subject of which was "Refinement." The hi«ii opinion entertained of his abilities may be inferred from the words of Dr. Cooke, the then President of Corpus, who pro- nounced him the splendid ornament of his college ; and he was held in equal estimation by his tutor, Mr. Burgess, afterwards successively Bishop of St. Davids, and of Salisbury. In the year 1 79 1 he was selected by the University to bring out an edition of the ' Marmorum Oxoniensium Inscriptiones Graecae,' to which he prefixed a Latin preface. Shortly afterwards he set on foot, in conjunction with a friend, the Rev. J. Beresford, a periodical paper on the plan of the ' Spectator,' which was styled ' The Looker- On.' It extended to four volumes, and met with no little com- mendation from contemporary writers, one of whom affirms, that in his opinion there are few such " finished specimens of essay- writing." Having chosen the law for his profession, and been called to the bar, his next publications were all on legal subjects, and his ' Treatise on the Law of Wills and Codicils,' which went through three editions, was the standard work upon that branch of legislation till alterations in the law had made it obsolete. He was induced, after a while, to resume his literary pen, and, notwithstanding his avocations as a barrister and commissioner of bankrupts, he edited, for several years, a review on the scale of the Quarterly and Edinburgh, and which bore the title of the ' British.' In each successive number of this critical journal two vi INTRO D UC TOR Y NO TICE. or three of the principal articles were of his own composition. When it expired, he soon found fresh literary occupation in other ways. His ' Memoirs of Hannah More,' which extended to four volumes, and which he afterwards abridged, were much read, and much valued, by the friends of that distinguished lady, and passed through three editions. Of his subsequent productions, the principal were his ' Por- traiture of a Christian Gentleman,' in a small duodecimo volume, and his ' History of Letter-Writing.' He was the author also of two essays, entitled, ' The Call on the Church,' and ' The Call on the Great,' to the former of which " the Christian Influence Society " adjudged a prize. He died at an advanced period of life, in the year 1849, the posthumous work now presented to the public having been the last and most elaborate effort of his pen. If there should seem any abruptness in the conclusion of this work, it will be explained by the fact that the author was pre- vented by his death from making such closing observations as he might otherwise have added. He cannot, however, be con- sidered as having fallen short of his design, the boundary of which was the termination of the sixth century. No ecclesiastical writer of importance can be said to have flourished for some centuries beyond that limit ; but it will be found that none of the brighter lights within the period the author contemplated have been left unnoticed by him. This work may be regarded as a biographical Church History. Its distinguishing feature will be found to be that its views are based upon purely scriptural principles, whilst, as a composition, gracefulness and vigour will probably be allowed to be its characteristics. It is hoped that this volume will be found interesting and instructive to all who desire information respecting the early history of the Christian Church, and 'that it will prove of special service to the clergy, and to those who are preparing for the clerical office. ■ CONTENTS PAGES Various Uses of the Word "Church" in Holy Scripture .. 1-8 Apostolical Fathers .. 9-14 Early Heretics 15 Justin Martyr 18, 19 Platonising Christians of the School of Alexandria, Tatian, Athanagoras, Pant.enus 20-24 Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Antioch, Dionysius of Corinth 24-26 Iren^eus 26-30 Clemens Alexandrinus 30-33 Tertullian 33-44 Origen 44-56 Gregory Thaumaturgus 57, 58 Dionysius of Alexandria 58-60 Cyprian 60-64 Cyril of Jerusalem 64, 65 Eusebius (including a Notice of the Nicene Council, 69) .. 66-74 Lactantius 74-77 Athanasius (including Notices of Sabellianism and Arianism, 9 6 ) 77-102 Hilary of Poictiers 102-109 Basil .. 109-116 Gregory of Nyssa u6 Gregory Nazianzen (including a Notice of Apollinaris and his Error, 119) 117-134 Epiphanius 134-139 Chrysostom 140-156 Ephrem Syrus 156-160 Theophilus 160 Cyril of Alexandria (including a Notice of Nestorius and his Followers, 161-165) ..• 161-167 Synesius 167-173 Isidore of Pelusium 173-176 Theodoret 176-180 Ambrose 180-200 Jerom 200-236 Including Notices of — Rufinus 213 Jovinian and /Erius 215 VlGILANTIUS 217 Sulpicius Severus 219 Martin of Tours 220 Paulinus of Nola 225 vin CONTENTS. PAGES augustin 237-283 Including Notices of the — Manichees 240 donatists 252 Pelagians 258 Declining State of Things, both Moral and Political, at the close of the fifth century 283 Papal Encroachments 286 Leo 1 288-307 Including Notices of the — Priscillianists 292 eutychians 293 Auricular Confession 302 Episcopal and Theological Contentions TPI-Z 1 ^ The Henoticon of Zeno 313, 314 Sidonius Apollinaris 316-325 Characters of the Popes during the greater Part of the sixth Century 327 Sylverius 329 Justinian's Theological Edict 331 The Three Chapters 333 Idle Speculations as to Christ's Body 335 Justinian's Pandects and Institutes 337 His Character 339 Invasion of the Lombards 343 Cruel Deaths of the Emperor Maurice and his Family .. .. 347 Pontificate of Gregory 1 348 Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons under Augustin the Monk.. 351-354 Gregory's Strife with John Bishop of Constantinople .. .. 355 His Death and Character 357^ CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. THERE is hardly a phrase in the English language of more frequent use in the ordinary intercourse of life than " the Church," and yet there is no word in our whole vocabulary of more indefinite and uncertain application. The Greek word , 'EKK\T](xla, from eKKaXelv, evocare, to call out, implies an evoca- tion, or calling out, from the mixed mass or multitude of the people, of a special number for a special purpose ; and if that purpose be a sacred purpose, for the sake of which an union is to be formed, under a particular dispensation, it properly assumes the name and character of " church." x In the antediluvian period of' the world, the portion of mankind designated as " the sons of God " may be said to have constituted the Church, in its proper and holy sense, and by such demonstration to have been called out from the great mass or multitude who in contradistinction were called " the sons of men." The corruption derived from the first transgression at length so prevailed as to involve all alike in one general apostasy, save the family of Noah, and the Church, so reduced, was shut up in the Ark while it floated on the waters, and was afterwards, for three centuries and a half, obscurely traceable in the line of Shem, till it was divinely recognised and established by the covenant made with faithful Abraham. The reader will perceive that we are not here treating of " church " in its general and variable import, but of " The Church," in particular reference to the Christian Dispensation, with respect to which it had a primordial origin and commence- ment in the great Creator's word and promise, from which its ■ 1 Acts xix. 32. B 2 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. growth began as a tree from its root. Neither is the word " church," or £kkXt)gLcl, in its derivative, grammatical, or abstract signification proposed to be the subject of our consideration. The Greek word eiacXriaia is used in Scripture very variously : — for an assembly of persons lawfully or unlawfully 1 convened — for the whole Israelitish congregation 2 — for an assembly of Christians 3 — for the rulers and teachers collectively 4 — for the people or flock generally 5 — for particular congregations 6 — for the faithful in a particular family or house 7 — for buildings set apart for Divine worship 8 — for the elect of God in all times, past, present, and to come 9 — for the faithful in heaven, or Church triumphant. 10 Now without inquiring concerning these various uses and ap- plications of the word church, our purpose is only to consider in what sense the phrase " the Church " is to be understood when that sense is not limited and ascertained by the express words of the context, but is to be construed only in accordance with the spirit and scope of the subject matter with which it stands connected. Thus considered, the phrase " the Church " seems to be capable only of four distinct meanings. In a transcendental sense it may be considered as a mighty scheme or process passing on from stage to stage to its final accomplishment. It comprehends the economy of Redemption through its entire course and development. It is to be conceived as existing in the contemplation of the Divine intelligence, — a great work and achievement of power and beneficence, based upon the decree the performance whereof is "ordered in all things and sure." Taken in this compass, we must look for the beginning of this Church in the beginning of things, and proceed through all the periods of its militant state on earth to its consummate and seraphic state of triumph with the saints in glory. This is the Church, fear i^o^rjv, in which the attributes of perfect justice and perfect mercy are fully satisfied and balanced, the ravages of sin repaired, the omnipotence of grace illustrated, and the work of an inscrutable dispensation has been from the beginning, and 1 Acts xix. 39. 2 Acts vii. 38. 3 I Cor. xiv. 34. 4 Matt, xviii. 17. 5 Acts xii. 5. 6 Rev. ii. 1, 8, 12, 18; iii. 1, 7, 14. Rom. xvi. 1. 7 Philem. 2. 8 1 Cor. xi. 18 ; comp. v. 20 ; and Acts xi. 26. — [Ed.] 9 Matt. xvi. 18. 10 Eph. v. 27. " THE CHURCH"— ITS VARIOUS SENSES. 3 still is, travelling to its accomplishment through a series of types and promises and prophecies to an end beyond the scope of all created intelligence. This was the " Church " and the " Tabernacle of Witness " which Moses conducted through the Wilderness. In this comprehensive Church is included the whole commu- nity of saints living and departed in the faith, — the sanctified members of Christ, the children of God in all ages of the world, bound together in a spiritual corporation and mystical union. It is the "city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, the in- numerable company of angels, the general assembly of the first- born," and of "the spirits of the just made perfect." In this light we contemplate the Church as an enunciation and execution of the Divine will, relating to His own elect, as com- prising and unfolding an entire economy, from the first intimation of prophecy to the mature disclosures of grace ; as an amazing contrivance of love, whereby ruin and reconciliation have met in peace. It is the Invisible, Universal Church, of which all other churches, under whatever aspect they may be considered, are part and parcel, and to which they must be ministerial and subordinate. It is the Church under this hypothesis of its divine appropriation and workmanship whose beauty of holiness, espe- cially the theme of the Canticles and the forty-fifth Psalm, is hardly less traceable through the whole series of figures, allu- sions, images, and illustrations which elevate and enchant the Christian reader as he treads the poetic ground of Scripture. He must be indeed unsusceptible of what is most great and glorious in thought and description if, in his walk of faith through that scene of promise and of hope, he can fail to recognise the progress and development of the kingdom of Christ, the aggres- sion, increase, and triumph of saving mercy over the powers of darkness, and the prospective establishment of the mystical Israel. It is in this mirror that the Church we are considering is reflected ; the bride is attired before it in her odoriferous garments. Here we have presented to us the personification of the great subject of Grace, the sum and substance of faith and holiness and pardon, the perpetual theme of angelic research, and the pure emanation of seraphic love. Thus subjectively considered, the first aspect in which the Church presents itself to us is as a great and growing work, B 2 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. carried on in the Divine counsel, having no limit but in the perfection of its plan and its plenary accomplishment. A second aspect under which the Church may be considered is that which brings it before us objectively and in a more re- stricted and approachable character, as a society upon earth, not indeed locally circumscribed, but united in spirit, and bearing one and the same relation to their great Head, the Captain of our common salvation ; not a confused multitude, but united in vital communion and fellowship, and announced in its purity and sanctity under the supreme designation of "the Holy Catholic Church," 1 whose warrant and seal of incorporation is registered and reposited in Scripture among its muniments of grace and mercy. The members of this Church are the faithful, wherever they are found ; it is a spiritual edifice reared upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles, whose " corner stone " is Jesus Christ. Of the members of this Church none are nominal : all that belong to it are its component parts. Against it "the gates of hell " shall never " prevail." It is the instrument by which the unfathomable counsels of God are accomplished on 1 The term Catholic was not originally in the Apostles' Creed. It owes its in- troduction into that symbol to the Greeks. The first Creed wherein it is found was that of Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria. See on KaQoXiKiiv 'EKKX^ffiav apud Theodoret, ' Eccles. Hist.' lib. I., c. 14, p. 18. Thence it passed into both the Creeds of Epiphanius, in his book intituled ' Sermo Anchoratus,' and into those of several other Greeks, from whom it was adopted by the Latins ; denoting the one Holy Church, intended hereby to be that which is diffused throughout the whole world, ' ' from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same." The word forbids too straitened a conception of the Church, and checks the natural tendency to make the entrance into it narrower than the Founder intended it. The primitive Fathers were, in general, too much dis- posed, in favour of their own particular Churches, to narrow the range of this unity. To prevent this tendency the word catholic was adopted in the Creed, that the one Holy Church might not be considered as confined to any particular place, but as diffused throughout the whole earth. It was meant to imply, that, from one end of the world to the other, those who make profession of Jesus Christ with sincerity are the con- stituent members of this one Holy Church. Thus has Jesus one visible body or Church here on earth, comprehending all the sincere professors of His name, who maintain the purity of the faith, and the unity of the spirit in the bonds of charity. With which expanded Church we are bound by our profession to be in devout communion, and to which with the true homage of the soul we are loyally to adhere. The Donatists, though orthodox in matters of doctrine, yet by reason of a quarrel at the election of Cecilian to the bishopric of Carthage, commenced a long and violent schism, uncharitably affirming that their party was the one Holy Catholic Church, and that all others without its pale and limits had no right to administer any of its sacraments or offices ; that whatsoever the other Churches performed were nullities. And it seems that, in opposition to such pre- tensions, the clause of " The Communion of Saints " was inserted in the Creed. "THE CHURCH"— ITS VARIOUS SENSES. 5 His creatures ; and of this living structure all who are destined to a life of grace here and glory hereafter are the proper mate- rials. It is, in Scripture language, a body, of which the several parts are mystically united under one head. " No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth it and cherisheth it, even as the Lord does the Church ; for we are the members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones" 1 — a most interesting and awful exposition of the union of the members of the true Holy Catholic Church with the humanity of Christ, and, through His humanity, with His glorious Godhead. It is an indivisible communion and identification, of which all are partakers who belong to this elect community. This Holy Catholic Church comes before us also in the type and character of a Kingdom, of which Christ is " the blessed and only Potentate," with its laws inscribed in the tablet of the heart, and its discipline secured by an inseparable affinity between the sovereign and the subject. This is the Holy Catholic Church upon earth. Those who belong to it in spirit and in truth have the testimony of their adoption inscribed on their consciences, though their communion with it can only be indicated in the life and conversation. The Holy Catholic Church, in this pure sense of it, exults in the righteousness of the Redeemer's cha- racter, waits for the full manifestation of His glory, and for the triumph of that day of consummation, when the elect shall be numbered, and such as are written in the book of God's remem- brance shall be finally accounted of in the making up of " His Jewels." Thus are all the communicants of this Church indissolubly one, not by their own unity, which of itself would have no cer- tainty of continuance, but by their identification with the mystical body of their self-sacrificed Redeemer, who has made them in- tegrally one, and has sealed their incorporation with the assurance of an unchanging decree. It is an invisible Church, and those who are members of it are such only in spiritual communion. It claims for itself the title of universal on the ground of its exten- sion to all places, times, stations, and degrees, being no other than the great Spiritual House or Temple of which our Lord has laid in Himself the foundation or "chief corner stone" in Zion. This Church is to be found, and only to be found, with its 1 Eph. v. 29. 6 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. true description, signs, and attributes in the Book of God. It is gloriously visible in the Scriptures of Truth, though invisible in structural consideration ; visible to the eye of faith, but unseen by the eye of sense. It exists in Scripture as the model and exemplar of every true, visible church upon earth ; and whenever "the Church," in the full compass of the phrase, is proposed from the pulpit as our spiritual guide and resolver of our doubts or difficulties, it is to this Church that we are to raise our con- ceptions ; it is to this Church that the mind of the Christian worshipper is directed when the rubric of our National Service invites him to belief in "the Holy Catholic Church." It is no abstraction, but clothed in the substantial verities of a spiritual investiture, and speaking the language of the law and testimony. But if the Church is invisible, not so the membership with it ; where two or three are met together in a visible communion with this invisible Church, our Lord is there in performance of His infallible promise, and there He acknowledges the Church of which He condescends to be the Head to be represented in character and conformity. 1 Nor can human authorities shut us out from this Holy Communion, of which we may remain the happy members, though under a decree of excommunication from any visible church upon earth ; and whatever membership individuals may have with any visible church upon earth, unless they are members also of this pure, invisible Church, they come short of that faithfulness which is required to their salvation. They have no union with the mystical body of our Saviour Christ. Such is the Holy, Catholic, Invisible Church, and what- ever visible church is not within the circuit of its expansion is without the one thing needful to a Church of Christ — the righteous rule of its great High Priest and King. A visible Universal Church is the next subject of considera- tion. In local extension such a church has never existed ; but if, by the epithet " universal," we understand no more than unity, integrality, and singleness of doctrine and discipline, there was 1 Collectively understood, this Church thus brings before us, " The Holy Church is an invisible Church, but distributively throughout all the world doth acknow- it flourishes on earth in the faith and ledge Thee." That is, wheresoever upon piety of its spiritual adherents and com- earth the spiritual life of this Invisible municants. Of such that Church is Communion is made manifest in the composed, which the beautiful Hymn that walk of those whom grace has moulded casts so bright a lustre on our Liturgy into conformity with the image of Christ. "THE CHURCH"— ITS VARIOUS SENSES. 7 a time when there was one visible universal Church, co-extensive with the limits of the Christian commonwealth. The Apostolic period, which followed immediately on our Saviour's ascension, exhibited an universal Church if understood in relation to the bounds to which Christianity was then extended. It was universal within that circumscription. The several local con- gregations into which this Church was distributed, being under the inspired teaching of the Apostles, were, by their close affinity, but one in vocation, faith, and discipline, and might well be designated under the general name of " the Church." They were assimilated in the order and decency of worship. They drank of the same spiritual rock, " and that rock was Christ." All the Apostles taught the same things, and the whole college, having one Divine commission, spoke the same harmonious language. There was an universality in their teaching, and the Church over which their teaching extended was, in this sense, and to this extent, universal. The saving doctrines of our authentic Creed were the. precious deposit entrusted by the Saviour to His immediate followers ; and of this inestimable treasure the first faithful keepers were the first congregation to which belonged the name and distinction of a visible Church. It was the Ark of this Scriptural Israel which sanctified the host, and made the valour of the saints mighty above persecution, suffering, and death. Our Lord, while in the flesh, had sent His Apostles only to the chosen seed of the House of Israel ; but, after His ascension, their commission was to all nations, and thus the universal Christian Church, having not only one faith, one baptism, and the same hope and calling, but moved by one impulse, and regulated by one principle, had its beginning and primary constitution from Him who has fitly compared Himself to a Temple, and was the sure pledge of its stability. On the day of Pentecost, the preaching of St. Peter brought three thousand souls to the baptism of Christ, and the new converts " continued steadfast " in the doctrine and fellowship of the Apostles. The Christian Church was now one visible Church upon earth ; and while things were in this state, the words " the Church " had a clear meaning and reference ; and when those words, " The Church," were pronounced, none could doubt what church was intended. "The Church," or the spiritual Israel of God, which 8 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. had been prefigured under the literal and carnal Israel of the Old Testament, was announced in its missionary and social character by our Lord's commission to the twelve, and afterwards to the seventy, and in the subsequent ministry of the inspired Apostles, displaying its supernatural gifts on the day of Pen- tecost, when the dawn of its effulgence began to disperse the gloom of pagan darkness. Then was displayed its holy origin in its triumph over the tendencies of inveterate corruption, till the mysterious hand of Providence converted persecution into patronage, and changed the sceptred rulers of the world into " nursing fathers and nursing mothers." In this enlargement of the bounds of the Church to the dimensions of the Roman power, it cannot but be acknowledged that Christianity presented itself under the aspect, and was recognised under the form and title of a visible universal Church. Local churches and distinct congregations divided the Chris- tian community in the earliest period of its formation. But while these churches were under the inspired teaching of the Apostles, they could not but receive the same instruction and doctrine ; and "the Church" was a name and designation which still properly belonged to it. All the Apostles appeared to exercise an authority over all the infant churches ; and the scattered congregations were all assimilated in the decencies and forms of worship. In their Epistles General this unrestricted right of interference was plainly asserted. The first Epistle of St. Peter was "to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia ; " St. James addresses himself to the twelve tribes. Many churches were of the foundation of St. John, whose chief place of residence was Ephesus, where St. Paul had, many years before, established a church, and appointed Timothy the bishop thereof ; but to which, doubtless, the authority and ministry of St. John equally extended. In like manner, in the seventh chapter of 1st Corinthians, St. Paul expresses himself in terms which imply this general apostolical authority — "And so ordain I in all churches." The stream of consecration and ordination flowed bright and clear from its source. The Apostles had the power of imparting the graces and privileges of the Holy Spirit. They were con- ferred by Peter and John upon the converts of Philip the PRIMITIVE CHURCH WRITERS. 9 deacon, by the imposition of their hands. Of the undisputed existence of this apostolic government, the charge given by- Paul to the elders of Ephesus, whom he had summoned to Miletus, was another instance ; and so unquestionable was this authority of the immediate followers of the Saviour, that those who refused to submit to it were considered as disturbers of the Christian rule and subordination, as may be gathered from many places in Scripture, especially that relative to Diotrephes, 1 as well as from the denunciations of St. Paul, 2 and the strong passages to the same effect in the Epistle of St. Jude. " The Church " was an appellation proper to the great body of Christian worshippers only so long as it was one spiritual fraternity, acting in its local divisions under the guidance of the same Spirit, with an identity of doctrine and a partnership in suffering. Oppression and persecution without had a tendency to consolidate interior union ; and this tendency to union was, to a considerable degree, characteristic of Christian societies during the three first centuries. There are but few writings extant to bear testimony to the value and quality of the views and opinions of those whom we dignify by the title of the Fathers of that early period. Enough, however, has reached us of the fruits of their learning and thinking, to show that on many essential points very wide differences existed among them. Still, however, it can hardly be doubted that the times least remote from the Apostles are to be regarded as the purest in doctrine and discipline. The judgment and practice of the primitive Church carry, also, the greatest weight in all matters relating to apostolical usage, and the letter and spirit of institutions grounded on inspired authority ; nor can we refuse to the memories of the confessors, saints, and martyrs, who gave their living and dying testimonies to the truth in its inceptive and struggling state, our reverential and grateful homage. But the first ages of the Church, though freer from gross errors than those which succeeded, showed less and less of the simplicity of the Gospel, as the distance increased from the sources of pure instruction. With Justin, called the Martyr, the series of those Fathers began whose writings have not had the advantage of apostolical communication. His works are a specimen of the unsoundness which began to prevail in the religious opinions of 1 3 John 9, 10. 2 2 Cor. xi. 13. IO CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. the second century. Though entitled to the praise of great firmness and zeal in the Christian cause, yet in scriptural interpretation, and even in his practical divinity, he has no claim to be followed as a safe or useful guide. After his time, it would be difficult to find an entire visible communion answering to the conception of an universal Christian Church upon earth, so far separated were the various bodies of worshippers, and so various and licentious were the fanciful creeds, which in the. succeeding times were multiplied by ignorance, ambition, and superstition. We may safely presume that under those Fathers who are usually called apostolical, from their personal communication with the Apostles themselves, or their immediate disciples, the essence, if not the form, of a society in the various churches, however dispersed, was maintained in an union of spiritual membership. But still the writings of these Fathers have added little or nothing to improve our acquaintance with the Holy Scripture, or to bring the understanding heart more under the influence of its light and leading. Indeed, such of the works as have come down to us under the names and authorities of those holy men are some of them of doubtful ascription, and others greatly interpolated and corrupted. Clement, who was perhaps the person named by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, and who appears to have lived to the close of the first century, is historically presented to us as the author of two epistles to the Corinthians, of which the first only is generally admitted to be genuine, while several spurious productions have made a fraudulent use of his name and authority. According to Hegesippus, as cited by Eusebius, the Church continued in a sort of virgin state to Trajan's time ; but still he admits, with the inconsistency of a weak man, that after the disappearance of the last of the Apostles, the conspiracy of error began to show itself with open face. 1 There can be but little question that the theological teaching of the Christian Church was comparatively pure in its beginning and infancy, and that it grew less pure as it receded farther and farther from the days of the Apostles, till about the middle of the third century ; of the intellectual productions of which period, if time has envied us the posses- sion, truth and genius may be patient under the loss. Very 1 Euseb. ' Hist. Eccl.,' lib. III. c. 32. ST. IGNATIUS. II little remains to us but a long list of names and titles of books which belong to the three first centuries, enumerated in the pages of Eusebius, Jerom, and others. 1 The most important of the writers of those times, which have come down to us after the days of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp, are some discourses of Justin, called the Martyr ; the five books of Irenaeus, who followed but a little after him ; some learned pieces of Clemens Alexan- drinus, who wrote towards the end of the second century ; divers books of Tertullian ; the Epistles and other treatises of Cyprian of Carthage, martyred 261 A.C. ; the productions of Arnobius and LTactantius, and some few others. It was the praise of Clement and Polycarp that they reflected the graces of the apostolical model, and made new channels for the stream which issued from the sanctuary, through which it was transmitted and diffused without stain or admixture. It would be presumptuous in any pen to attempt the por- traiture of St. Ignatius. His character is lost in his greatness. No thought or sympathy can reach its altitude. The current of nature was turned back upon its springs till it accumulated a strength that bade defiance to all tyranny and torture. Unhappily forgery and fraud have stolen his name for con- troversial or superstitious ends. Some Greek epistles which have been sent forth, and are still extant under his name, and as many in Latin, whereof one is from the Virgin Mary to Ignatius, and his answer to the same, two from Ignatius to St. John, and 1 [It may be interesting to set before ricordia videri quod historiam multorum the reader the way in which two cele- Patrum veteris ecclesise Deus voluerit brated writers have accounted for the intercidere, ita ut nee ipsorum Apostol- fact here stated. " Indeed we have but orum (excepto libro Actor.) res gestas little left," says Thomas Fuller, "of the ullius historise certa veritate cognitas story of those times, wherein Christian habeamus. Ne scilicet, Christo neglecto, books were as much persecuted as men, magnitudinem sanctorum nimis admi- and but a few confessor-records, escaping raremur et adoraremus. Quanquam nee martyrdom, are come to our hands. Yea, eo consilio quicquamest profectum, cum, God may seem to have permitted the Satana diversum suadente, tot sanct- suppression of primitive history, lest men orum cultus invenerimus, ut tandem et should be too studious in reading, and confictis Sanctis, puta Catherinse, Barbara?, observant in practising, the customs of Margaretse, Ursulas, item Christophoro, that age, even to the neglecting and Georgio, Rochio, et multis aliis idolis undervaluing of His written word." — serviverimus, ita perdite, ut Judaeorum (' Holy State,' book ill. c. 24.) The ob- idololatrias magnifice justificaverimus." servations of Martin Luther, expressed — (Luther's ' Preface ' to Barnes's ' Vitce in his own vigorous and characteristic Romanorum Pontificum.') — Ed.] way, are not dissimilar : — " Potest mise- 12 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. one from Maria Cassibolita to Ignatius, have found little adoption or countenance. All the epistles which truly belong to him were those which he is stated to have written on his journey from Antioch to Rome, the scene of his suffering ; and the last of those was to intreat the Christians at Rome not to use any means, or in any way to interpose, to prevent his martyrdom. Of the two copies of these seven accredited epistles, one is of a larger, and the other of a smaller size, which latter has the superior character of genuineness. The immoderate exaltation of the dignity of the episcopal order has subjected these letters to the suspicion of being much interpolated. Thus, in his "Epistle to the Ephesians, we find, among other passages of the same tendency, the following : " Whomsoever the Master of the house sends to be over his own household, we ought to receive, even as we would Him that sent him. It is therefore evident that we ought to look upon the bishop as we would upon the Lord." And again, in his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans : " Be obedient to your bishop, as Jesus Christ was to the Father." " Whatever the bishop shall approve of, that is also pleasing unto God." To the Trallians he thus writes : " Let all reverence the deacons as the commandment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ." His letter to Polycarp has the following senti- ment : " My soul be security for those who submit to their bishop, presbyters, and deacons.. And my portion be together with theirs in God ! " This extravagant homage and reverence claimed by such authority for the dignitaries of the ecclesiastical order became soon after very generally insisted on and allowed through the whole Christian community ; and if the passages above cited are fairly chargeable upon him, his otherwise unsullied memory must bear at least some of the blame of the sacerdotal pride too generally characteristic of the first ages of Christianity, and which in later times was absorbed by the usurpation and insolence of papal Rome. 1 The principal, and indeed almost the only writers of estima- tion in this early period of the Church, commonly dignified by the name of the Apostolical Fathers, were Clemens Romanus, 1 [The important publication of Mr. are not to be found in the valuable Cureton has gone far to exonerate Igna- Syriac MS. of which he has presented tius from the authorship of such passages the public with a translation. — Ed.] as those above quoted, inasmuch as they PA PI AS. 13 Ignatius, and Polycarp, the last of whom finished at the stake his holy and faithful career in the year of our Lord 167. Hermas has little to entitle him to a place in this primitive class of writers on divine topics but his pious spirit and zeal in the cause in which he was engaged. He is wholly occupied with visions and revelations, the unsound products of a mind of warm and teeming fancy, uninformed by reason and unmatured by reflection. Of Papias, 1 Bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, who is said, but on no very good authority, to have been a disciple of the evangelist St. John, and who seems to have been the first propagator of the doctrine of a millennium, nothing now remains but some fragments of his five books, containing some traditional accounts of Christ and His Apostles, mentioned and partly pre- served by Irenaeus, Eusebius, and Jerom ; by whom he is set down as a man of piety and purity, but of mean abilities and weak credulity. That in the primitive period of the first and second century a greater purity of life and doctrine prevailed among those who, at the imminent peril of their lives, professed and maintained the Christian faith, cannot be brought into question. But the noble patterns which we have been considering were not without their contrasts even in this infancy of the Church. The lofty notions which seem to have been entertained by Ignatius of the elevation 1 The popular and much - cherished lectual capacities contested, but he is error of St. Peter's episcopacy in Rome charged with a fault which must deeply is grounded on the authority of this compromise him with every Christian Papias. Thus a modern author of no man, and that is neither more nor less small accuracy and discernment expresses than want of honesty. (See the transla- himself: — "Papias may be considered tion of a work by Augustus Scheler, as the author of this legend, who by his Doctor in Philosophy. London, 1846. forgeries, wilful or innocent, has led all Nisbet.) The work here referred to is the critics who have followed him into well worthy of the attention of the error ; thus laying, though perhaps scholar and the divine. That St. Peter unconsciously, the foundations of that was ever at Rome may be very reason- powerful system which, by its ideal ably doubted, but to believe that he was grandeur and material force, has alike a bishop of that city, after reading Mr. subjugated, during a series of ages, the Scheler's work, entitled, ' Was St. Peter mighty and the feeble of Christendom. ever at Rome ? ' would imply a very It is on the assertions of this saint that stubborn credulity. Can any one who Eusebius affirms the journey of St. Peter has the least acquaintance with litera- to Rome ; and it is on the authority of ture admit what is said concerning the the latter that the Romish Church bases journey of St. Peter to Rome, or his her claim to the successorship of the residence of twenty-five years in that Apostle. Unfortunately for those who city, or the martyrdom which he there place faith in him, not only are his intel- suffered ? 14 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. of the clergy, and especially of the bishops, above other mortals, were too well received and improved by those who found in them so much that was agreeable to the natural heart. Magnificent titles in process of time were adopted and allowed as the ap- pendages of clerical offices and preferments, and bishops were addressed as apostles, princes, and popes, vicars of Christ and vicegerents of God. 1 The necessary consequence of these un- seemly usages was the rapid growth of a character but little in accordance with the teaching and examples of those who took their lessons from the Saviour's mouth, or first uttered them in the accents of the infant Church. Sacerdotal egotism, and the appetite for distinction, thus flattered by ignorance and servility, would not be long in producing a state of things the tendency of which was to disintegrate the Church and dissolve the harmony of its structure and discipline. Egotism and the excessive love of distinction, when furnished with the opportunities of exercise and display, even among Christian men, often lead to a state of things in which personal vanity seeks its gratification in the strife of opinion and the maintenance of conflicting dogmas. Factions and schisms begin to arise, and extravagant fancies, bred out of the corrupt admixture of Jewish fables and Gentile philosophy with the Divine teaching of the Gospel, became the fruitful source of unnumbered errors and heresies. No small number of the first converts to Christianity, most distinguished for their zeal and piety, brought with them into the bosom of the faith deep stains of their pagan learning ; and thus the " mystery of iniquity " began its work but too successfully with the help of these unsanctified elements. Some of these persons had been teachers in the schools of Alexandria and other places of academical instruction, and could not disen- cumber themselves of an erudition which had gained them so much distinction, and taken such hold of their thoughts and imaginations. It was their aim, therefore, if possible, to adjust the differences between the doctrines of Christianity and the presumptuous suggestions and inventions of human reason by a most incongruous intermixture ; and the effort soon disclosed its 1 [See Bingham's ' Antiq.' book II., c. He expresses in a note his admiration of 3, 4, 5, 6. Jerom absurdly renders the majesty of Holy Scripture in that it Isa. Ix. 17, "I will make thy princes calls those who were to be bishops in peace and thy bishops righteousness." future ages by the name of princes. — Ed.] EARL Y HERESIES. I 5 effects in a multitude of allegorical and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, tending to disguise and distort its plain meaning and majestic simplicity. Before the last of the Apostles had finished his labours, the opinions of the Gnostics or Docetae and the scholars of Cerinthus introduced their dangerous conceits and contentions into the Church in direct opposition to each other, the one maintaining the Saviour to be man in appearance only, the other to be truly man, and nothing more. And these heresies, sometimes in separation, and sometimes in a forced and preposterous union, disfigured for a considerable time the profession of Christianity while it was still fresh from the fountains of inspiration. From the foolish and fantastic notions of the Gnostics, mixed with the crudities of Rabbinical learning, Cerinthus appears to have borrowed his wild and blasphemous theories ; and although the date of those early assaults upon the Church is in some obscurity, there is much ground for the opinion not only that they were put forth in the lifetime of the Apostle St. John, but that it was a special object of that holy teacher of doctrinal divinity to encounter and confute them in all their inferences and tendencies ; and for this opinion we have the authority of Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, the friend of St. John. 1 Among the branches deducible from these germs are the doctrines of the Ebionites of the second century, and the Unitarians and Socinians of our own times. Thus the heresy denying the divinity of Christ was almost coeval with the Church itself, and was among the first- fruits of that evil proneness of the carnal heart to emancipate h^. ( itself from Scripture teaching, and to subject the deep things of God to the arbitrary exposition of human intelligence. To these first departures from Scripture we are to attribute the long cata- logue of heresies which in frightful succession have invaded the quiet of the Church, and poisoned the fountains of her pure doctrines. Even the sole Sovereignty of the Great Creator was, in this early age of the Christian dispensation, brought into dispute ; and the despicable reveries of Saturninus, Carpocrates, and Basilides found, among the converts of the beginning of the second century, numerous trains of deluded followers. Such was then, and such have ever been, the calamitous consequences of 1 See Lardner's Works, vol. iv., pp. 567-569 ; ib. IX. 325-327. Michaelis, vol. in. 385. 1 6 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. sowing the tares of human philosophy among the holy seed of the Word. It should be noticed, however, that of the first and second centuries of the Church we have very little contemporaneous history. Clement was the only one of the Apostolical Fathers who lived and wrote in the first century. The purport and aim of Clement's writings to the converts at Corinth was to revive in their minds the lessons of St. Paul ; and neither he nor the Apo- stolical Fathers of the second century bring before us the real predicament of the Church at that epoch of its history. The safest conclusion would probably be that individual professors appeared under very opposite extremes in worth and character, and that the state of the churches exhibited a variety similar to that under which the evangelical writer of the Revelation sets before us the excellences and defects of the Asiatic churches in the epistles which our Lord addressed to them. To Irenaeus and Epiphanius we are principally indebted for the accounts of the facts and transactions of the first age of the Church, and their frequent discrepancies deduct greatly from the conclusiveness of their relations. There is reason to think that sanctity of morals and religious knowledge went on declining as the times receded from the Apostolical period. Innocence and holiness could not well be on the advance while religion was drawing from sources independent of Scripture, and the Church in her externals was endeavouring to outrun even worldly ambition in the race of spurious glory. It is not to be doubted that, during the first and second centuries, a pure and orthodox faith was transmitted as the patri- mony of the saints by faithful adherents to the written Word, many of whom patiently suffered the loss of all things for the truth's sake, or sealed their confession with their blood. But yet the face of Christianity was greatly marred and obscured, even in this period of its juvenescence, by numerous sects, whose pre- judices and previous habits had so darkened their perceptions of Divine things as to lead them to degrade the mysteries of revela- tion by distorting them into union with their own corrupt imagi- nations. As there arose a great diversity among professors of a true faith, from this propensity to blend with its tenets the vain theories and vicious speculations of heathen philosophy, so from PHILOSOPHISING CHRISTIANS. 1 7 the same sources the principles of moral conduct were disturbed and perplexed, and very opposite systems found their pretexts in one or other of these discordant combinations. Severe morti- fication, or gross indulgence, was practised by different theorists as their unauthorised dogmas varied in the consequences and extremes in which they resulted. By these, and such-like interior disorders, the state of Christianity became less and less characterised by that unity of constitution and discipline through- out its local divisions which accords with the idea of a visible universal Church. In the second century Christianity in some measure changed its aspect and external bearing. In the first age it opposed to its adversaries only its abounding evidences and the Divine force, the iV^w ©eta, of its awful verities ; but, by the accession of some persons of great secular learning and inquiry to its growing cause, it rose to higher importance in the consideration of those who had hitherto looked contemptuously upon it, while it drew upon itself, in this new character, a more exasperated spirit of persecu- tion in the multitude, and provoked to greater hostility and hate the baffled philosophy of the schools. Yet this new alliance was far from being conducive to the interests of genuine Christianity. Pagan learning brought with it an infusion of pagan superstition. Many of the new converts had been teachers and professors of philosophy in the heathen schools, and judged it right and ex- pedient to give to Christianity the benefit of an advocacy which might put it upon a par with the sophistry of its most skilful oppo- nents. But this could only be done by the sacrifice of the purity of a faith which could suffer no intermixture with earth-born wisdom, or the suggestions of mere human reason, without injury to its holiness and honour. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius, surnamed Antoninus, was a person of eminent worth and dignity, the prince of philosophers in his day. But the dogmas and maxims of the ancient schools of morals and theology had so zealously engaged him in their defence and support, that the conversion of a heathen philosopher to the Christian religion not a little offended his prejudices; and thus it was that no reign, since that of Nero, was more distin- guished by the persecution of the Christians. But the Christians had now also a philosophy on their own side ; and though it cannot be said that its service was unaccompanied with injury to the C 1 8 CHURCH ME MORI A LS A ND CHA RA C TERIS TICS. cause in which it was engaged, yet neither can it be denied that the apologies for Christianity, which were composed by the philo- sophical converts during the reign of Marcus, and were followed by others towards the close of the second century, were important for their effect in turning the arms of the assailants against them- selves. The apologies of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, and Tatian were all produced in this reign. These works are still extant, and attest the unwholesome effect of the conjunction of heathen ethics with the pure and holy dictates of heavenly wisdom. They spread alarm, however, among the pagan philosophers and rhetoricians, and brought Celsus, and others on that side, into the field. The weapons of the Christian philosophers were not all of the true temper. They seemed not to know that the truth as it is in Jesus is not only the best philosophy, but the best logic of the Christian believer, and that to know Christ is to know Him as He is offered to us by the Father, invested with His Gospel, and immeasurably high above human conception. Justin, surnamed Martyr, was born in Syria, about the year of our Lord 103, at the very beginning of Trajan's reign, and finished his course by an illustrious martyrdom in the year 167. He was the first of the professors of heathen philosophy who became a convert to the teaching of the Gospel. His testimony to the truth is the more worthy of respect, as it was the fruit of a conviction that arose out of a candid and careful examination of the evidences and doctrines of the writings of inspiration, after a successive and unsatisfactory investigation of all that was taught in the several schools of the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, and the followers of Plato. His secession from the ranks of heathen philosophy, and his deliberate adoption of the simple but sublime faith of the Gospel, had the natural effect of inflaming the hostility of those whose opinions he had rejected. These con- sequences were no check upon the bold and persevering efforts of Justin to confute the errors which he had thrown aside. In the year 139 Justin came to Rome, and during his stay there composed his book agamst heresies, in which the impure errors of Marcion were exposed and confuted. In the year 140 his first apology for the Christians made its appearance, addressed to Antoninus Pius and his adopted sons. It is said to have had a salutary influence on the mind of that mild emperor, and to have led him to adopt a gentler treatment of his Christian JUSTIN MARTYR. 19 subjects. In the reign of his philosophical successor, when the flames of persecution were rekindled, the zeal of Justin led him to stand forth once more as the champion of the Cross, in his ' Second Apology for Christianity.' The malice of the philosophers in spreading calumnies against the lives and tenets of the Christians was met and defeated by this able and intellectual writer with great grace and effect. The ' Second Apology,' addressed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus proceeds in a strain of argument which ought to have disabused a mind, so generally wise and informed, of its antichristian prejudices ; but that mind was pre-occupied, and too confirmed in its errors by a long course of ill-directed study, to be set right by the clearest reasoning ; and perhaps the Emperor, as well as the whole corps of sophists and moralists, which were then in such great credit, was rendered the more resentful against the apologist by his retention of the lay character, and the garb and habiliments of a Gentile philosopher. It is impossible not to hold in great veneration the memory of this excellent man, and to admire his fearless integrity, strong sense, and candid disposition, and those other estimable qualities and attainments which added an especial grace and lustre to the constancy of his adherence to the faith he had embraced, and his courage in the last hour of mortal conflict. But the effects of his early educa- tion and intercourse survived his conversion, and drew him aside from the plain dictates of Divine teaching towards the dogmas of a vain philosophy. In this bias towards the theology and ethics of the schools in Alexandria, where these subjects were treated after the manner of the heathen philosophers, Justin was imitated by Tatian and Athenagoras, the former of these well-intentioned but unsound and indiscreet apologists having been a scholar of the Martyr, and the latter a philosopher of Athens, who became a Christian by name and profession about the year 179, when Marcus Aurelius, surnamed Antoninus, was still on the seat of empire. The error of these advocates of Christianity lay in their endea- vours to pick out from the philosophical books of the heathens whatever was deemed excellent in itself, and to make use of it in argument for the support and embellishment of the true religion. But the effect of these associations was to bring the two systems under a forced combination, in which the genius and character C 2 20 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. of each were misrepresented. The great medium through which this spurious learning of heathen origin found its way into the pure belief of the Gospel was an academy of eclectic philoso- phers, of which the celebrated Ammonius Saccas, if not the originator, was the distinguished and effectual promoter. But this was to bring no new or accessory light into the mazes and labyrinths of human inquiry, but rather to multiply its reflec- tions and refractions, so as to make things already sufficiently involved still more obscure and ambiguous. These matters were of very early occurrence in the history of the Church ; but they belong to a time of vast and incalculable importance in the influence of its events on all the subsequent predicaments in which that Church has been placed, and all the characters in which it has come forth to the world. The sanguine project, which, however truly romantic and wild, had yet the semblance and credit of candour and moderation, of thus sifting and sorting the doctrines, tenets, and maxims of the ancient philosophers, was in its first essays confined within its proper bounds ; but the principle was unfortunately adopted by the philosophical portion of the first converts to Christianity, and issued at length in a fond endeavour to make a sort of compromise between our holy faith and the metaphysical abstractions of presumptuous specu- lation. In these errors was laid the foundation of that un- scriptural system generally indicated by the title of the New Platonic Theology, which, to effect the harmony which it pre- tended was at the bottom of all the various systems of opinions received among men, resorted to the plan of reducing all into agreement by the force of allegorical explanation. The ridi- culous and revolting fables of the heathen mythology were shaded and veiled by the mystic fantasies deduced from Plato and his followers, and a theurgy operating by a demoniacal agency both on the creation and government of the world, brought a crowd of subordinates, under various names and offices, into the Christian dispensation. It would be long indeed to enumerate the various ramifica- tions of sottish error which this root of bitterness sent forth into the Christian world. Hardly had our Lord withdrawn from this earth — having finished His work — when the counterwork of Satan was already in operation. ALEXANDRINE THEOLOGY. 21 Alexandria, in Egypt, was the principal scene where vitiated understandings and licentious imaginations had their fullest scope and indulgence. The Gnostics and Docetae had already occu- pied this ground, and exerted themselves with too much success to make the schools of that city the means of presenting Chris- tianity to the world in a preposterous union with their vain and vicious reveries. Their wild and senseless dogmas, whereby the creative power was shared by beings whom their imaginations had called into existence, and the person of the Saviour reduced to a phantom, or degraded to mere humanity, wore away at last into something less revolting under the modifications of the Platonic systems, which towards the end of the first and through the second century, assumed the complete ascendency. The scholars of Ammonius, Plotinus, Porphyry, and other inheritors of the precepts of that specious philosopher, transmitted the dogmas of his school in a form with which, if Christianity was at all associated, it was the accessory, and not the principal. In Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, and Clemens Alexandrinus, the Gospel of Christ was received as the primary, veritable, and only solace and security of the soul, while the principles of a philosophy grounded in pagan superstition, and inheriting the stains of its vicious origin, were admitted to exer- cise a secondary influence on their tenets and opinions, and to lend their illusive light in the interpretation of the written word. When a considerate mind takes an impartial and compre- hensive view of the state and fluctuations of religion in the two first centuries, it will be led to the conviction that, at no epoch in Church history, has our holy faith been assailed by an array of heresies more numerous and various, or more vitally subversive of the whole evangelical record ; that to revert to this period as the pure age of antiquity, is to mistake its character, and that to look to those whom by custom and courtesy we call the Fathers of the Church, even in the first stage of its progress as our unerring guides and directors, is the dotage of credulous, or the craft of designing, men. And most clear it is that an Uni- versal Visible Church was not in existence upon earth during the period we have been contemplating. The Oriental and Egyptian philosophy poured forth at the beginning of the second century their turbid streams into the sanctuary, carrying with them all the various chimera's and con- 22 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. ceits of heresy and blasphemy to which the different forms of Gnostic extravagance gave birth. Of these vain and fantastic varieties of erratic absurdity, the principal professors and propa- gators were Saturninus, of Antioch ; Cerdo, a Syrian ; Marcion, the son of a bishop of Pontus ; Basilides, of Alexandria ; Carpo- crates, likewise of Alexandria ; and Valentinus, an Egyptian. All these agreed in the radical error of the Gnostics, the adop- tion of a complicated dynasty of deities, in the creation and control of the world, under whom a variety of supernatural beings had different provinces and superintendences assigned them, in all which matter and spirit were intermingled in strange confusion. Of these originators or patrons of nonsense, the most distinguished, by the success of their impostures, were Marcion and Valentinus. Of the former of these, the great lines of doctrine seemed to be that there were two first causes of all things, one good and the other evil ; with one of an intermediate character brought into nearer connection with this lower world, physical and moral, as its architect and legislator : and as the Jewish fables were a part of the foundation of these Gnostic systems, this god of the material world was considered as more imme- diately concerned with the Jewish economy. To complete the senseless profanity of this system — if system it could be called — this plurality of deities was a source of perpetual discord, " And gods met gods, and jostled in the dark." It was the crowning part of these wicked and foolish concep- tions, that, to terminate this conflict, Jesus Christ, the counterpart or Son of the Supreme, was sent to destroy His rivals, clothed with the mere umbration of a body, and incapable, therefore, of being hurt in the war He was to maintain with His enemies. Valentinus was, in no point of absurdity or profanity, outdone by Marcion. This sottish system had its beginning at Rome, and with great rapidity extended itself in all directions east and west. His fables, in their general character and substance, varied little from the common trash of the Gnostics. Something, how- ever, from the stock of his own vapid inventions, was added to the fund of their gross puerilities. His ./Eons, multiplied to thirty, included fifteen of either sex, and the Son of the Supreme, divided into Christ and Jesus, were, together with the Holy Spirit, the deities of the Divine pleroma, or heaven in contrast TA TIAN AND A THEN A GORA S. 23 with matter, whose bounds were in the keeping of a being on whom the name of Horus was bestowed, as importing the business of his department. It would be a waste of time and paper to spread before the reader the mysteries of iniquity which, soon after our Lord and His Apostles had left the earth, were forced into combination with their immaculate doctrines. Even the channels through which a purer teaching authentically flowed, in the life and lessons of those we dignify by the title of Fathers, partook too much of the leaven of these corruptions. Tatian, Athenagoras, Pantaenus, Clemens of Alexandria, and Origen, were more or less diverted by their subtle influence from the simplicity of the Gospel faith. Tatian, who had been an orator by profession in the city of Rome, and owed his acquaintance with the truths of Christianity to the instructions of Justin Martyr, had proceeded in a steady course while under the guidance of that good con- fessor ; but after his suffering for the faith, the opinions of Tatian betrayed a bias towards the heresies of Marcion and Valentinus. The common ground of superstition on which the Gnostics raised their ideal structures was in some measure assumed by Tatian. Omnipotence was divided into two divinities — a Supreme and a Creating God, and the Saviour represented under two forms, real and apparent, in conformity with some of the worst fancies of the Alexandrine philosophy. The excessive rigour of his tenets, excluding matrimony and all the social conveniences and com- forts of life, was a consequence of his regarding matter as the origin of evil, and helped to lay the foundation of a false construction of society at variance with the positive declara- tions and manifest designs of a merciful Providence. Such an apologist of Christianity was Tatian. Among the Platonising or philosophising Fathers of this time, who taught Christianity in the garb and character of a philo- sopher, was Athenagoras, a native of Athens, who, having visited the schools of Alexandria, was there converted to Christianity. The period in which he became distinguished as a teacher and catechist was about the middle of the second century — from 140 to 180. His intention at first being to write against the Chris- tians, he was induced, for the execution of his purpose, to make himself acquainted with Holy Scripture, which proved the means of his conversion, and suggested his principal work, an ' Apology 24 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. for the Christians,' which was succeeded by his ' Discourse on the Resurrection of the Dead.' His views of God and the Logos were full of the mystical philosophy of the day, and were as little characterised by sober thinking and submission to the Scripture warrant as were those of Tatian, or any other teacher or professor of the schools of the East. His reasoning, with the advantages of a graceful and elegant diction declarative of his Athenian culture, is lost in a cloud of dust and divinity — matter and spirit, angels and demons, religion and superstition, and the wisdom of revelation forced into fellowship with the vanity of the schools. Pantaenus was also one of the Fathers of the second century, and is numbered among the first who taught Christian divinity in the chair and dress of the philosopher — a man celebrated no less for his secular than for his sacred erudition, and distinguished as the instructor of Clemens Alexandrinus, but principally famous for his travels to carry the good news of the Gospel into the farthest east. He is said to have been remarkable for his pre- dilection for the dogmas of the Stoics, and, when arrived at great distinction as a Christian teacher, to have retained the name and credit of a Stoical philosopher. No fragment of his writings remains ; but, as Origen commends him highly for his skill and profundity in philosophical speculations and theological inquiries, we have sufficient grounds, on the whole, to suspect that his writings, had they been preserved to us, would have proved him to be no very safe conductor through the Christian Scriptures, in the interpretation of which his industry and talents are said to have been eminently displayed. His life was extended to the beginning of the third century, having finished his useful course some time in the reign of the Emperor Caracalla. The second century closed with some improvement in the learning and theology of the Alexandrine school of divinity, and it appears probable that the sounder views and more scriptural faith of Melito Bishop of Sardis, and Theophilus Bishop of Antioch, both of whom taught and wrote in the reigns of the Antonines, resisted the current of the Platonising philosophy, and threw some discredit on the wild theories of the Marcionites and Valentinians. The strenuous 'Apology or Defence of the Christians,' written by Melito. and dedicated to the Emperor MELITO AND THEOPHILUS. 25 Marcus Aurelius, of which only a fragment is preserved by Eusebius, appeared in the year after Christ 170. Melito holds a prominent place among these early Fathers, on account of a journey made by him to the Holy Land for the purpose of ascertaining what were the genuine books of the Old Testament, the result of which inquiry, the first made by any Christian writer, was to authenticate the catalogue received from the Jews, except the Book of Esther, which might have been brought into doubt on account of some apocryphal additions, and Nehemiah, because, as is said, it was then comprehended under the name of the Book of Ezra. He is stated to have proved the extent and depth of his learning and judgment in treatises composed by him on various subjects, moral, philo- sophical, and divine. Theophilus was the sixth, or, if we reckon St. Peter the first, the seventh Bishop of Antioch ; of pagan birth and education, well versed in Gentile philosophy, and in great esteem for his parts and learning. The period of his conversion is not recorded ; but it appears that he was ordained Bishop of Antioch about the year 170. His divinity was much freer from taint than that of many of his celebrated contemporaries. He was the author of several treatises written against the heresies of his times, especially those of Marcion and Hermogenes. Three books written by him with the design of confuting his friend Autolycus, a zealous champion of paganism, are still extant. They present us with a store of argument deduced from the phenomena of nature, de- monstrating the presiding and disposing Hand of one Almighty Being, and the unfathomable depth of Divine wisdom in the regular course of the celestial bodies, the changes and returns of times and seasons, the generation of animals, the renovation of vegetables from seeds and plants, and the whole stupendous order of creation. From all which considerations he turns to the sacred writings, urging upon his friend the same profitable course, where he would find a way open to an exact knowledge of the truth. The doctrine of the resurrection, which is intimated to have been the great difficulty with his friend, he illustrates by analogies supplied in the visible phenomena of nature, and de- clares himself, by these and similar reflections, to have been led to the sanctuary of the Church, which God had set in the world as an island in the midst of the sea, unto which all the lovers of 26 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. truth might fly as to a safe harbour, and escape the wrath and judgment to come. In the midst of much to tarnish this period of Christian history, it is a refreshing change to turn to the testimonies which remain to us relating to this venerable Bishop of Antioch, who presented an orthodox front to the many extravagant theories by which Christianity was traduced in his time. According to Eusebius, he composed several catechetical discourses for the instruction and confirmation of Christians defective in knowledge and faith, and zealously opposed the heresy of Marcion, who asserted two deities, and of Hermogenes, who maintained the eternity of matter, among other fancies unworthy of mention. St. Jerom also bears testimony to the value of the writings of Theophilus, of which only his discourses with Autolycus remain to confirm his report. After thirteen years devoted by him to the edification of the Church as Bishop of Antioch, Theophilus passed peaceably out of life, having left a name than which few more honourable have belonged to the early Church. Whether Autolycus was ultimately gained to the truth by the arguments of Theophilus we have no information ; but as he appears to have been desirous of further communication, we may reasonably incline to the favourable opinion. The name of the venerable Theophilus is rarely recorded without our being reminded that he was the first Christian author that applied the term Trinity to the triune Godhead. In the same modest and circumspect walk with Theophilus moved the excellent Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth. Some few fragments of his Catholic Epistles to the Churches in different provinces of the Roman Empire have been saved to us by the care of Eusebius, which help to confirm the testimony of the historian to the pastoral care and orthodox labours of the pious bishop ; to which testimony may be added that of Jerom, by whom he is represented as deserving, by his Christian spirit and the useful direction of his eminent abilities, the regards of the Christian world. It remains in uncertainty whether his end was peaceable, or whether the crown of martyrdom was the reward of his perseverance. We cannot better terminate this transient view of the school of Christ in the second century than with the character and labours of Irenaeus, the date of whose birth rests in some uncertainty, IREN^EUS. 27 but of whom it is well known that he lived through the greater part of the reigns of the Antonines, and that of Septimius Seve- rus, under whose persecution, being the fifth to which the Chris- tians had been exposed, he endured martyrdom, in the year 202, among a multitude of like sufferers, who perished at Lyons under the savage treatment of a lawless multitude, or by the hands of executioners. The numerous heresies, bewildering speculations, and impious fancies and inventions, which, in the first and second centuries, checked the progress of scriptural faith, and taught a Gospel which Christianity disowned, were by none more success- fully combated than by this genuine maintainer of the written testimony. In the judgment of Tertullian, Irenaeus was " omnium doctrinarum curiosissimus explorator," and Epiphanius calls him /nafcapLwrciTov /ecu dyioorarop YAprjvalov, and by Erasmus he is styled " magnus ille Ecclesitz propugnator ; pro sui nominis augur io, pacts Ecclesice vindex ; " but of his numerous works, his treatise against heretics, in five books, is almost the only one which has come down to us. The work was written in Greek ; but we have only a barbarous translation of it in Latin, except a few fragments of the original which have been saved from oblivion by Epiphanius, Eusebius, and some other writers of ecclesiastical history. Under this disadvantage, however, it is a most creditable and valuable relic. The Christian world is much indebted to it. The Gnostics and Valentinians were stripped of their disguises. Proarche, and Bythos, Ennoia and Nous, Aletheia and Zoe, and all the rabble of yEons were put to the rout, and made to abandon the field to that living record in which the law and the testimony are faithfully inscribed. 1 1 To this very venerable Father the our Lord, on His coming down from pure cause of Christianity was greatly Heaven to earth, gathered to Himself a indebted for many sound expositions of body from the four elements, in which doctrine ; and for none in a more emi- he was truly sacrificed, and afterwards nent degree, than for his maintenance of showed the same flesh to His disciples ; the Saviour's ascension in the body of and, having finished the dispensation of His flesh, identically the same with that His incarnation, He restored to every in which His work of redemption was one of the elements that which He had performed on this earth. This gracious received from them ; and so, dissolving truth, so full of consolation, and so sup- his fleshly body, He ascended into the ported and established by evidence, was Heaven from whence He came. Epi- assailed by heresy in various shapes of phan. 'Adv. Hneres. in Hseres. Apell.' error; but by none of a more extrava- p. 167. See ' Epiphanii Opera Grsece.' gant description than that of Apelles, a Fol. Basil. 1544. And Epiphanius him- scholar of Marcion, whose heresy, ac- self thus explains this article of our cording to Epiphanius, was this : — That faith : — " He ascended into Heaven, not 28 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. The persecution at Lyons was of the most lawless and sanguinary character. Twice was it allowed to riot unmitigated and unrestrained during the latter half of the second century ; in the reign of Marcus Antoninus, and again under the sterner sway of Septimius Severus. Irenaeus, who received his first instructions from Polycarp, became afterwards a presbyter of the Church of Lyons, under the episcopacy of Pothinus, and afforded his aid and counsel to that devout bishop till the year 178, when a brutal populace, excited to madness by their pagan priests, and left by the Emperor to the free exercise of their wanton and savage cruelty, were filling the streets of the city with spectacles of human suffering. Martyrdoms, memorable for their extreme barbarity, are recorded of this bloody persecution, and this under a philosophic prince, who permitted, without recoil or remorse, these tragedies and atrocities. At the age of ninety the venerable Pothinus was exposed to every species of insult and personal injury which his worn out and tottering frame could be made to endure, till, being thrown into prison, he was in a few days withdrawn by death from the rage of his tormentors. The sufferings of the Christians upon this occasion are too harrowing and revolting for the ear of humanity to endure. All that the curiosity of malice could invent for aggravating the sufferings of its victims was in full exercise at Lyons during the continuance of this persecution, which however seems to have lasted for no long time. The Emperor Marcus died in 180, but the persecution, which was local, appears to have originated in a popular tumult and col- lision between the heathen and the Christian inhabitants of the divesting Himself of His Holy Body, but gustin. 'Augustini Opera,' v. 10. Oct. uniting it to a spiritual one." Epiphan. Lugduni, 1563. And ' De Fide et Sym- 'Anacephal.' p. 531. bol.' p. 190. The session at the Father's From Theodoret we learn that Her- right hand is first found in the creeds of mogenes, an ancient heretic, placed the Tertullian, and was probably added body of the Saviour, after his leaving expressly to oppose those who owned the this earth, in the sun : Ovtos tov Kvpiov ascension of the Saviour's body, but trwfj.0. iv t<£ 7]\ieji elireu airoreOrjvai Theo- affirmed it to remain in an inert and doret, ' Dialog, et Haeres. Epitom. Grsece.' effete state as a scabbard without a Quart. Romae, 1547. All this is met sword. Such a doctrine is condemned by the clause in the Creed, "He by this article, which assures us that ascended into heaven ; " and there our Mediator lives not regardless or "sitteth on the right hand of God the inactive, but that He constantly exerts Father Almighty." See this subject His power for the prosperity of His well considered and explained by Au- Church. IRENAEUS. 29 city, and probably expended itself in the transports of its own unmitigated fury. The bishopric of Lyons, thus vacated by Pothinus, was con- ferred upon Irenaeus on his return from Rome, whither he had been sent to Eleutherius, the bishop, to encounter some errors which had found their way into that see, and especially the heresy of Montanus. He began his responsible career as bishop of Lyons in 178, and remained in the exercise of that authority to the year 202, when the fifth persecution, which had broken out under the Emperor Severus, in 197, removed him from the scene of which he had been the life and ornament. Between those periods, when the Church enjoyed an interval of comparative rest, Irenaeus made a signal display of zeal and learning in the cause of evangelical truth, and showed much ability in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. His efforts to restore Christian peace and unanimity in the controversy respecting the time for holding the festival of Easter, by his synodical epistle in behalf of the Gallican Churches to Victor, the Roman pontiff, gave the lustre of Irenaeus's name and virtue to the year of our Lord 197, and made him a conspicuous object of the persecution which was coming upon the wor- shippers of the Redeemer with renovated fury. After being twenty-four years bishop of Lyons, Irenaeus sealed with his martyrdom his faithful administration of his pastoral duties during a period of much peril and tribulation. The closing scene came upon him with all the terrific apparatus of menace and torture. His name, his life, and his death, were in har- monious agreement. In none of the primitive confessors was the heroism of humble perseverance more vitally set forth in practice. For the relation of the massacre of the Christians, which numbered among its victims this venerable bishop, we are indebted to the narrative of Gregory of Tours. It is the only record which we possess of a transaction demonstrating, on one side, the lowest depth of depravity to which our fallen nature can be further degraded by license and encouragement, and, on the other, the elevation above ordinary humanity to which a witness for the truth can be lifted up, when the eye of faith looks to Him that is invisible, and weakness is made valiant by the succours of grace in the struggle of the last conflict. 30 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. If Irenaeus, as an interpreter of Scripture, was too addicted to the allegorical method, of which the early Christian writers were so enamoured, and which, doubtless, was a fruitful source of the errors of arbitrary interpretation, his service in defending truth from the inroads of a profane philosophy entitles him to a place, among the most faultless of those whom we honour with the title of Fathers. But this philosophising spirit, whatever check it may have received from the sober pen of Irenaeus, still occupied the school of Alexandria, wherein Clemens Alexan- drinus, a scholar of Pantaenus, the founder of that school as a channel of Christian doctrine, recommended it by his various learning, and the vivacity of his comprehensive research. It is due, however, to this patristical writer to admit that the use to which his philosophy was directed was the conversion of the heathen ; and for this purpose his ' Stromata,' or tapestry-work, was written, wherein his memory and his genius were both laid out in a varied tissue of expanded illustration and argument. The date of his birth does not so clearly appear ; but it seems that his book called ' Stromata ' was produced about the year 200, so that this Father may be said properly to belong to the third century, his life having extended to the reign of Helio- gabalus, or Alexander Severus, about the year of our Lord 220. A feeling of favour towards the heathen philosophy, and espe- cially to that of Plato, betrayed many of the ancient Fathers into the pernicious habit of perverting the meaning of Scripture to bring it to an accordance with their prejudices. They were thereby rendered both obscure and partial in their interpreta- tions. It happened, too, that the exposition of the sacred books fell principally into the hands of these philosophising Christians ; Pantaenus, the master of the Alexandrine school, and Clemens Alexandrinus, being reputed to be the first Christians who were occupied in this service. Clemens, in a work of which no copy has come down to these times, called ' Hypotyposes,' is said to have exercised himself in expounding detached passages from various parts of Scripture ; but the specimens which have reached us of the exegetical powers of the writers of the primitive ages forbid us to deplore the oblivion into which a large proportion of these early interpretations of the sacred oracles have fallen. When we make an unprejudiced estimate of the arguments CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS. 3 1 and opinions of antiquity on Scripture doctrines, the favour with which these early Fathers are regarded by the self-called Catholics of the present day ought not to surprise us. The ambiguous matter of their pages, with a little pains, may be borrowed to countenance almost any opinions. We are informed by Epiphanius that Clemens was called both an Athenian and an Alexandrian ; having, as some say, been born and bred in Athens, whence he derived his fondness for the Greek philosophy, and after much travelling, having settled chiefly at Alexandria in Egypt, where he dispensed the accumulations of his varied erudition. He appears to have sought instruction under a succession of teachers, and to have laboured, rather diffusively than profoundly, in the acquisition of knowledge. He succeeded Pantsenus, his last instructor, as catechist in the Christian school of Alexandria, a duty which his extensive learning enabled him to discharge with great success and celebrity ; and to him belonged the credit of being the preceptor of Origen, in whose capacious and excursive mind the multifarious learning of the master exhibited a growth per- haps somewhat too luxuriant. Clemens was, from a catechist in the school, raised to the dignity of a presbyter in the Church of Alexandria ; in which important character his ' Stromata,' composed with a loose play of hostility turning itself in all directions, assailed both Greeks and barbarians, heathens and heretics, with weapons borrowed from sources sacred and pro- fane. In this work his bias towards the commonplaces of the school philosophy was apparent, and his genius was often wasted in idle and unsound speculation. It does not appear that he attached himself to any peculiar sect ; but, asserting an eclectic freedom of choice, he picked out of various systems the dogmas which appeared to him to be most capable of an alliance with Christian verities. He had declared in his ' Stromata ' that to fly from impending danger was not only lawful, but justifiable on the ground of Christian prudence, and, in consistency with this opinion, he quitted his catechetical office, and fled from Alexandria into Asia Minor, during the persecution of 202, in the reign of Severus. Clemens was a man in great esteem throughout the learned and religious world, and is styled by Jerom the most learned of the ancients. We have three of his books extant to manifest 32 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS the extent of his industry and knowledge ; his ' Paedagogue, or Christian Instructor/ his ' Stromata,' and his exhortation or ' Admonition to the Greeks or Gentiles,' works in which, if there are many things to be admired, there are also many things which pure Christianity disowns. His great and misleading propensity to overrate the importance of the philosophy of Plato and the Stoics, led him, as has been already intimated, to a course of reasoning which made his performances of very dubious authority in matters of doctrine. His ' Stromata,' written with- out the smallest regard to method, is comprised in seven books ; the superadded book, called the eighth, being properly a treatise by itself, having for its title, Tt? 6 aco^6fM€vo aiidts i/j.o7cri \6yois, strophises his dear Anastasia : 2e?o fiiv ovSe Oav&v iiriX^irofxat GREGOR Y NAZIANZEN. I 3 1 At Nazianzus, in a sequestered spot, Gregory found the retreat he was in quest of, his own by inheritance, where he com- posed his celebrated oration on the merits of his departed friend, the great Basil, and several poems, which seemed to solace the last stage of his eventful life ; and in this repose he departed out of life in the year a.d. 389. Of the early editions of the works of Gregory Nazianzen that of Billius appears to have been the most esteemed, in two volumes folio. They consist of about fifty orations or sermons, some poems, and upwards of two hundred and forty epistles. Many epigrams, or short poems, ascribed to Gregory have been published by Muratori. His orations partly consisted of confuta- tions of the heresies of the Arians, or of those who borrowed from them or aggravated their errors, and partly of eulogies on his friends or monastic recluses. He has left us also a few discourses on practical subjects. Of his poems, as specimens of his genius, we cannot speak in the language of admiration. They are very defective in the nerve, simplicity, and grace, without which poetry sinks below prose ; and yet it cannot be said that they are without pathos or imagination. Two or three of these poems are addressed to himself, and reflect his own experiences and impressions with a pleasing fidelity. 1 His orations are charac- terised by spurious ornament, though composed in general with brilliance of language and a vivid force of expression. After completing his studies at Athens, the most vigorous period of his life, from 355 to 361, was passed in studious and elegant retirement, during which interval he may be supposed to have laid up that knowledge and matured those powers which qualified him for taking the field against all the enemies of the Catholic faith. From 361 to the death of his father, in 374, his life was public, and engaged in the services of the Church ; then again he sequestered himself from general commerce, till his coming to Constantinople in 379. There his concluding destiny exhibited him first in the chair of theology, and afterwards on the archi- episcopal throne, soon to descend from thence into the vale of 1 His crrixoi rifitia/jL^oi els tt\v kavTov whom it was governed, and its rites and iJ/uxV are very lively and vigorous; and offices administered, in the fourth century ; his verses eis 'Etthtkoitovs are well worthy a period in which some of our modern of perusal, as containing a sad picture theologians consider Christianity to have of the state of the Church as affected by been displayed in its greatest beauty, the character and habits of those by K 2 132 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. solitude, and to pass his remaining days in the company of his own thoughts, which not unfrequently found their entertainment and solace in the exercises of religious poetry. His discourses on practical subjects contain many detached sentiments of great worth and solidity ; but of none of this writer's productions in illustration of moral precepts and verities, nor perhaps of any of the ethical lucubrations of the Fathers of the fourth century, can it be affirmed that they furnish much authentic or effectual aid towards the discharge of our domestic duties, or the various vocations of active life. For the right apprehension of moral duties the early Christian writers were apt to content themselves with the cold term philosophise {<\>(Xo- ao(f)e(o). Gregory uses it in apologising to Basil for not returning to Pontus, being detained by the duty of attending upon his aged parents. " Do you take it amiss that I am acting the part of a philosopher?" "On cfuXocrocpovfxev cvyavaKreis ; To give this force to the term philosophising was in the spirit of those principles which entered into the Christianity of very many of the most learned professors and teachers of the fourth century. Of the writings of Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustin upon moral subjects, Mosheim gives the following opinion : " They are neither worthy of high encomiums, nor of entire contempt, as they contain a strange mixture of excellent reflections, and insipid details, concerning the duties of the Christian life." " They neglect deducing the duties of mankind from their true principles, and even sometimes derive them from doctrines and precepts, either manifestly false, or whose nature and meaning are not determined with any degree of accuracy." This censure to some may seem somewhat over- charged ; but few who are acquainted with the theology of the fourth century can help seeing that it was greatly adulterated, and that the philosophy of the Alexandrian schools sent forth a multitude of amphibious disciples of Christ and of Plato, and gave existence to a double doctrine of morals, compounded of two systems, divine and human, to the great injury of true religion. In the works of Gregory some passages are found which are of a highly exceptionable character. Thus in his funeral oration in honour of Basil, he migrates not a little from the written word in the following strain : — " Now, indeed, he is in heaven, and is there offering up, as I think, sacrifices for us, and praying for the GREGORY NAZIANZEN. 1 33 people." • And a little after occurs the following statement : — " From whom I am even now receiving counsel, and am cor- rected in nightly visions, if at any time I fall from my duty." It would, however, be doing great injustice to this eminent Father, not fully to admit his claims to our admiration and gratitude for the eloquence and piety diffused over all the pro- ductions of his pen, and his great service to the cause of truth and orthodoxy. His religion was of an ascetic character. Watchings and fastings, with the bare ground for his bed, seemed to hold too high a rank among Christian duties in the mind of Gregory. They were the outward practices of an age in which specious claims to meritorious self-denial had little or no effect in chastening or controlling the vices and corruptions which, by the testimony and confession of the gravest writers of that epoch, had become notoriously prevalent even among the ecclesiastics of the fourth century. This decay of true religion may in some measure account for the tendency to multiply miracles and tales of wonder to keep up the credit and influence of a priesthood who, in proportion as they sunk in moral estimation, were induced to avail themselves of the support of superstition. Thus, although the sanctity of the character of Gregory Nazianzen acquired for him the surname of Theologus, his theology was not in all respects above comment, but contained the germs of antichristian error and delusion. In some of his encomiastical orations he addresses departed saints ; and espe- cially in his eulogy on St. Cyprian, he makes him introduce Justina entreating the help of the Virgin Mary, and concludes with a supplication to that saint and martyr to aid him in governing his flock. 2 Upon the whole he was an excellent 1 Kal vvv 6 i*iv iffriv iv oupavo7s, Ka.Kt7 be clearly discerned in that century. The Tas vnep fi/J-^v, ws ol/xai, irpo(T€va/cia/j,b<;, among the early oracles of the Church ? Still the name of Ambrose has been transmitted to us as entitled to our veneration, for the support it has lent to the cause of orthodoxy. He has always been regarded as one of the pillars of a pure faith, though not exempt from the puerilities and hallucinations by which the age was characterised. Augustin, who received baptism at his hands, and his early lessons from his lips, and was his great admirer and follower, has spoken of the matter and manner of his teaching, in language peculiar, and not easy to be translated : " Ejus eloquia strenue ministrant adipem frumenti divini, et lastitiam olei, et sobriam vini ebrietatcmr x Though some of his opinions and interpretations were luxu- riant and fanciful, and not of the safest tendency, his' moral and social character was amiable and exemplary. The play upon his name by Erasmus was in many respects supported by the tenor of his conversation among men, no less than by the correctness of his great doctrines. "Ambrosius," says Erasmus, " doth truly, accord- ing to his name, flow with heavenly ambrosia ; he is worthy of his title, i. e. immortal, not with Christ only, but also among men." 1 In his discourse on the cxviii. psalm safety, or sobriety, and which may serve some strange notions occur respecting as an exposition of the phrase used by a baptism by fire at the end of the world. Augustin in characterising his eloquence, " Quando per caminum ignis iniquitas " Sobriam vini ebrietatem." In his exuretur ; " in which imagination he treatise, consisting of three books, ' On appears to have followed Hilary. In the Offices of Ministers,' he has imitated his books, ' De Virginitate,' ' De Institu- the plan of Cicero's 'Offices,' substi- tione Virginis,' and his ' Exhortatio Vir- tuting the duties of Christian obligation ginitatis,' the estate of matrimony is for the precepts of heathen morality. Of placed in a light for which he has no which work Augustin says, in a letter to warrant in Holy Scripture, or founda- Jerom, " Nisi forte nomen te movet, tion in human experience. Some opi- quia non tarn usitatum est in ecclesias- nions, too, of a peculiar character seem ticis libris, vocabulum officii, quod Am- to have been entertained by this Father brosius noster non timuit, qui suos quos- on the subject of adultery, which cannot dam libros utilium prseceptionum plenos, be commended for their soundness, De Officiis voluit appellare." — Epist. xix. AMBROSE. 193 In piety, charity, and humanity, he was surpassed by few within the Christian pale. His eloquence was always devoted to the purposes of kindness, virtue, and justice. Of truth, eternal truth, he was a fearless assertor ; save that his addiction to Origen made him a partaker of some of his less dangerous aber- rations. This appears principally in his expositions of Scripture, which have often the sickly hue of allegory and enigma. 1 His general learning does not seem to have been either deep or ex- tensive, and his theology was in some particulars vague and confused. But in holy affections, zeal, charity, pastoral labour, and care for the Church, he was a bright example to the age in which he lived ; and he has bequeathed, together with that example, very just and valuable delineations of practical morality to succeeding ages. In respect of his behaviour and personal bearing towards the Emperor Theodosius, at the guilty crisis of his reign, above noticed, though, on the whole, the conduct of Ambrose was great in character and effect, it was not without a stain of prelatical presumption and self-homage, little consistent with sanctified affections. He who sees in his dictation, and remission of the amount of formal contrition to be exercised by Theodosius, no usurpation of arbitrary authority, must entertain very high ideas of sacerdotal privileges ; he who perceives no danger or mistake in the reliance which in this instance was placed on the virtue of penance and self-castigation, must solace himself with very secondary grounds of pardon and acceptance ; and he who con- siders the charge of pride and arrogance to be refuted by an outward carriage of holiness and humility, must be but little observant of the pliant policy of ambition, and have but a slight acquaintance with the treachery and deceivableness of the heart inflated by homage and unexercised by disappointment. In no action of his life was Ambrose displayed in greater lustre before men than in his contest with Symmachus, on the eve of the final triumph of Christianity over the polluted system of heathen idolatry throughout the Roman world. Symmachus at this period was not only a man of reputation for knowledge 1 [Jerom appears to have entertained nugas, and applies to him the not very no very high opinion of his ability as a respectful epithets of " corvus" and commentator upon Scripture. His com- " cornicula." — See Jewel's 'Works,' mentary upon Luke he characterises as vol. in. p. 176 (P. S. ed.). — Ed.] O 194 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. and learning, but was possessed of great influence as a senator, pontiff, and augur, to which were added the dignity of proconsul of Africa, and prefect of the city. Ambrose, therefore, when he took the field against him in this great and final contention between long-established error and incipient truth, was engaged in no easy undertaking. The Christians were not the majority at this time in the Senate, and its decrees, pagan as they were, had still the stamp of legal authority. It was resolved that great efforts should be made to restore the ancient constitution, and with it the freedom of former times. Four deputations were voted to the imperial court, to represent the grievances of the priesthood and the Senate, and to solicit, as the most decisive indication of a return to the ancient grandeur, the restoration of the altar of Victory. Symmachus was entrusted with the prosecution of this im- portant object. He was inflamed with zeal in the cause of expiring paganism, and seemed to be eminently qualified for the task. His petition to the Emperor Valentinian is extant, in which every argument was used to seduce the imagination of the young prince by a gorgeous display of the attributes of the Goddess of Victory. The celestial genius who presided over the fates of the city is introduced by the orator to plead its own cause before the imperial tribunal. The calamities of the empire were imputed to the religion of Christ and Constantine, and the fears of the people were enlisted on the side of custom, history, and ex- perience. But the hopes of Symmachus and all his expedients were repeatedly baffled by the firm and dextrous opposition of Ambrose, who effectually answered all the advocates of heathen Rome. In this controversy the saint condescended to speak the language of the philosopher, and to ask, with ironical contempt, why it should be thought necessary to introduce an imaginary and invisible power as the cause of those victories, which were sufficiently explained by the valour and discipline of the legions. He derides the absurd reverence for antiquity, which could only tend to discourage the improvements of art, and to replunge the human race into their original barbarism. From thence, gra- dually rising to a more lofty and theological tone, he pronounces Christianity alone to contain the doctrines of truth and salvation, and that every form of polytheism conducts its deluded votaries ABOLITION OF PAGANISM. 195 through the paths of error to eternal perdition. At a full meet- ing of the Senate of Rome the Emperor propounded the great question, "Shall the worship of Jupiter, or that of Christ, be the religion of the Romans ?" Christianity triumphed. By the suffrages of a large majority of the Senate, the gods of Olympus were disclaimed and rejected ; and the year of this great event, which took place in t,S8 A.D., may be considered the date of the complete establishment of a Christian polity in the government of the Caesars. Up to this epoch, the cause of truth, though far in the ascendant, had proceeded with a fluctuating progress. Till the time of Gratian, the Christian emperors had permitted themselves to be invested with the dress and dignity of supreme pontiff. Gratian put an end to all these symbols of the ancient superstition, and abolished a long train of rites, ceremonies, and offices, which had still maintained in existence a large portion of the external fabric of heathenism. The augurs, the vestals, the flamens, the fraternity of the Salians, and many other sacerdotal and civil institutions, which had been continued from the reign of Numa to that of Gratian, terminated with the accession of that Emperor, the early days of whose government were marked by a zeal beyond that of any of his predecessors for the Christian cause. But paganism was still, in name and structure, the constitutional religion of the empire. Until the page of history opened at the aera at which we are now arrived, in the chamber or hall where the Roman Senate assembled, still in marble pomp stood the stately figure of a female on a globe with a crown of laurel on her head ; and at this Altar of Victory, which was its consecrated name, the senators were sworn to obey the laws of the empire. The statue and altar had been removed by Constantius, re- stored by Julian, and again ejected by Gratian. Still, however, as paganism, in the whole or in part, was the religion of the majority of the Senate, that majority continued to petition for the restoration of the cherished monument. The glory of establishing the Christian worship on the ruins of the ancient superstition, in Rome and her provinces, was reserved for Theo- dosius the Great. His decrees were peremptory and decisive against the auguries, the sacrifices, the services and ceremonies of the heathen temples. The' throng of deities with which the heavens had so long been peopled by superstition was discarded, o 2 196 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. and allowed a place only in the machinery of poetry and the provinces of fiction. Thus was the old superstition with its gross mythology expelled by human authority from the limits of Roman domi- nation. But its effect was ejection, not eradication. It still lives in seminal vitality in the subsoil of our nature, and often shows itself on the surface in forms to captivate consent, or to elude suspicion. In opposition to that spiritual change and renewal which Christianity and the Bible require, it makes its court to the senses, and offers to the weak and unstable a tangible and attractive support. Its pomps, processions, and gorgeous rites and celebrations were seducing models for Chris- tian imitation long after the originals were withdrawn. A secret commerce and good understanding continued and continues to be kept up between a large portion of the world, who hold the truth in unrighteousness, and the spirit of heathenism under its multiform disguises. This commerce still exists between pagan and papal Rome. A treacherous compromise has restored to repudiated idolatry a partnership in the services and solemnities of the temple. " The carnal professors of Christianity, who were most numerous, were not content to part with their pagan rites ; wherefore," says the author of ' The Court of the Gentiles,' " to compromise the matter, they turned the pagan rites into Chris- tian solemnities, and so christened their daemon festivals under the name of some Christian martyr or saint ; and what made this design more plausible was this — some groundless hopes, by such symbolising with the pagans, to gain them over to embrace the Christian religion ; which vain attempt was so far blasted by God, as that it proved but a door to let in Antichrist and all his idol worship jnto the Church of Rome." 1 Thus the Roman Church may, indeed, boast of great anti- 1 [Such was the policy of Pope Gre- into St. Paul's Church, London, and gory when he gave instructions to the laid on the altar ; and this custom sub- missionaries whom he sent into this sisted until the Reformation." " No- country for the conversion of the Saxons. thing," says Burke, in stating this, "could He appears to have ordered many con- have been more prudent than these regu- cessions to be made to the superstitions lations ; they were, indeed, formed from of that rude people. " Whatever popular a perfect understanding of human nature." customs of heathenism were found to be An enlightened Christian would be apt absolutely not incompatible with Chris- to view this policy very differently.— See tianity were retained, and some of them Burke's ' Abridgment of English His- were continued to a very late period. tory' (Works, vol. X. p. 265).— Ed.] Deer were, at a certain season, brought ANTICHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 197 quity ; for its derivation is direct from that deep well-spring of human error and human depravity — heathen idolatry. And, again, we must beg the reader to allow us to exhibit another passage from the preface of the learned Thcophilus Gale to his ' Court of the Gentiles.' " The last branch of Antichris- tianism I shall here mention is the canonist's theology, touching the canonisation and worship of saints, which stands in such a compliance with the pagan aTroOecocris and Daemonolatrie as seems not to have been accidental and casual, but studied and contrived. The very popish directory of the inquisitors sticks not to call the canonisation of saints their apotheosis, i. e. deifica- tion. And that the whole papal ajLoXarpela, or saint worship, is but an imitation of the pagan SeiaiSaifiovia, or daemon wor- ship, is excellently explicated and demonstrated by judicious Mede on I Tim. iv. I, 2, touching the ' Apostasie of these latter times.' This we may demonstrate by a parallel betwixt the papal saints and pagan daemons — (1) in their origin ; (2) in their formal apotheosis ; (3) in their mediatorial offices ; (4) in their festivals ; (5) in their images and reliques ; (6) in the offerings made to them ; (7) in their exorcisms and miracles ; (8) in the invocation of them ; (9) in the sacred rites and ceremonies per- formed to them ; (10) in that hierarchy and supremacy assumed by the Pope, that great daemonarch. In all these regards there seems to be an intimate symbolisation between the papal dyio- Xarpela and pagan SeiaiSatfAovLa, which was the great figment of the philosophers." Neither ought we to forget, among the sources of an Anti- christian theology, the pagan philosophy, by the monks and schoolmen distorted and appropriated, till out of it has been formed an artificial system of reasoning and disputation. Thus, through the modern Aristotelians, has the masonry been furnished of a new temple of Baal in Babylonish Rome. The Fathers of the early Church of Christ, down to the fourth century, which, though distinguished by great men, was distinguished also by the growth of numerous corruptions, re- sisted the influx of pagan superstition ; but Rome has looked for its model and type in the rankest ages of ethnical extrava- gance, and her triple crown expresses the threefold combination of fable, idolatry, and philosophical fiction. Had Rome and her votaries, when they were about it, copied 198 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. the dogmas of more remote antiquity, they could have arrived at sources of far purer divinity than that which they have so grossly mixed with the genuine revelation of Scripture. The Divine worship, as instituted by Pythagoras and adopted by his ad- herents, was such as might well put to shame the Romanist, with his material symbols and his spurious calendar of saints ; and from Numa Pompilius they might learn to entertain higher notions of the invisible God than are consistent with their unspiritual forms and inventions, and to acknowledge the re- proachful fact that in heathen Rome no image of God, either o-raven or painted, disgraced the capital for the space of one hundred and seventy years. 1 Conformable whereto is the great Pythagorean symbol, forbidding to grave the image of God ; and what Ludovicus Vives, a writer of the Romish communion, says on this subject is worthy to be recorded in modern Rome. 2 1 " Outos 5e 5ifKci>\v(T(u avdponroeifiri Ka\ (ai6fj.opcpov eilt6va 0eov 'Pco^aTois vofjii&iv. Oil 8' -f\v irap' avro7s ovre ypairrbv uvre -KXambv elSos ®eov irp6repov, a\A' eKarbv ef35o/j.riKOVTa, roh irpdrois ereffi vaovs uev oikoSoixovjj.svol StereAow, Kal KaXiddas lepas IffTWVTes, &ya\ixa 5e ouSef eixfx.op4>ov -KOiovjxtvoi SiereAovv. 'fts ovre ocnov acpo/xoiovv ra /3eA.Ti'oi/a ro7s x el p6 fflv t 0J/T6 taj/Teos ment, has not the beautiful passage 'fls Kal ok. Afas. 679. Ajax brought to his mind ? 2l6 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS,, feeling towards the same person when afterwards elevated to the bishopric of Sebaste, to which promotion /Erius was said to have himself aspired. If envy suggested the charges of avarice and misappropriation of the funds of the poor which he brought against his former friend, we cannot bespeak for ^Erius a favourable interpretation of his general conduct ; but whatever reflections may be cast upon his motives, the points he contended for cannot be reasonably condemned or reproved by the Chris- tian who bases his belief on Scripture and Scripture alone. iErius maintained that, at the time of the Apostles, there was no substantial difference, by Divine appointment, between a bishop and a presbyter, and, without denying the rights or jurisdiction of bishops, grounded on human authority, he ven- tured to publish his doubts whether a bishop, under that name and designation, had any special superiority vested in him by Scripture over the other elders of the Church. Prayers and alms of the living for the dead he held to be without use or warrant ; and some of the ceremonies in practice among Christians, as the slaying of a lamb at Easter, he considered as open to great objection. That he urged his opinions with a zeal too indis- criminate has been observed by his opposers on very probable grounds ; but his aims at reducing religion to a state more in accordance with its primitive simplicity, and to strip it of many of its ostentatious rites and formalities, entitled him to much more regard than the temper of the times was disposed to allow him. In the same thin school of early reformers followed Jovinian, whose efforts in the defence of simple worship and scriptural sobriety exposed him, as was natural, to the severest censures of a Church that had already begun to base its authority on forms and superstitions which had no ground in Scripture or apostolical practice. He was an Italian monk, whether a native of Rome or Milan is uncertain, but signalised at both those places by doctrines of the same tendency with those of ^Erius, which he maintained with equal, perhaps superior, power and success. He appears to have been so strenuously opposed by the union of the sacerdotal authorities, that probably his name would have been scarcely known to posterity had not Jerom by his invectives associated him with his own celebrity. Though living in single life himself, he taught that if men kept their baptismal vows, J0VINIAN—V1GILANTIUS. 2iy and lived godly lives, neither celibacy nor maceration of the body by fasting was required to perfect the Christian character. To live in wedlock, and nourish the body with temperance and moderation, were in his opinion neither opposed to Scripture nor repugnant to the spirit of Christianity. Other doctrines were taught by him which, if not kept under due limits and main- tained with their proper qualifications, might issue in excess and error ; but which, if rightly enforced and understood, might have operated as wholesome corrections to the fanaticism and spiritual pride too characteristic of the ecclesiastical body towards the end of the fourth century. His sentiments were condemned at Rome by Siricius, and especially at Milan in a council convened there by Ambrose in the year 390. Those holding his opinions were penally visited by imperial edicts, and Jovinian himself was banished to the little Isle of Boa, in the Adriatic Sea, by a decree of Honorius. The opinions of Jovinian were published by him in a book which was encountered by Jerom in a treatise wherein he poured forth his bitterest invectives, and which is still in beino- to show in their proper colours the sentiments and characters of the parties to the dispute. But the reformer of most importance in the fourth century, and most signalised by the vituperative pen of Jerom, was Vigilantius, who, even in the inauspicious times we are now contemplating, appears to have sown some seeds which, though they lay pressed down by the feet of superstition, ignorance, and imposture for many centuries, were not destroyed, but in after times were quickened into fecundity, and responded to the culture of evangelical labourers. The birth of Vigilantius is usually assigned to the period between 360 and 370 A.D. He was born in a village called Calagorris, situated at the foot of the Pyrenees, within the limits of Gaul, in the district of the ancient Convenae, the present Comminges. His father appears to have derived no inconsider- able revenue from the charge of the station at Calagorris, where accommodation for travellers, and relays of horses and mules, were regularly provided. His early opportunities of acquiring knowledge must have been but scanty, as he is said to have passed his first years in the service of his father, as a waiter upon travellers, and a driver and guide across the Pyrenees. Difficulties are the provocations of strong capacities. To struggle through 218 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. obstructions in the way to knowledge is a lot which genius has seldom to regret in tracing the progress of its attainments. The latter part of the fourth century was a period of much travelling among the great and learned, especially of the dignitaries of the Church, whose attendance on synods and assemblies was of frequent necessity, so as to occasion the borders of the two great kingdoms of France and Spain to be very frequently tra- versed ; and this was an advantage of which the son of the postmaster of Calagorris was probably not slow to avail himself. It would be quite natural to the juvenile curiosity of his inquiring mind to profit by these occasions of intercourse. The numerous topics in agitation, at a period when the Creed of the Church was floating in so much controversy, laid the beginning of that know- ledge in his youthful mind which was accumulated by subsequent communications with men of talent and experience resting under his roof on their way to their various destinations. But to the society and friendship of Sulpicius Severus he seems to have been indebted, if not for his conversion to the Christian faith, at least for guidance and encouragement in the Christian walk and life. The estates of Sulpicius were on either side of the Pyrenees, and having on that account frequent occasion to cross the border by way of Calagorris, he became well acquainted with the merits of Vigilantius, whom he employed first as a simple domestic, and afterwards in the more confidential capacity of his bailiff and the receiver of his rents. Whatever may have been the first step of Vigilantius towards the favour and confidence of Sulpicius, the fact of his having attained to a place among the intimate friends of that distin- guished man speaks strongly for his personal recommendations. It was his advantage to witness, during his familiar intercourse with Sulpicius Severus, the changes which took place in his manners and opinions ; and these changes he was well qualified by his natural discernment to contrast and compare. For a considerable period after his connection with Vigilantius had commenced, Sulpicius appears to have been characterised in an eminent degree by qualities which reflect dignity on wealth. He had also the superadded recommendation of classical learning. While no one in his day was more correct in Christian morals, none exceeded him in purity and elegance of composition. Un- i" ULPICIUS— VIGIL A NTIUS. 2 1 9 happily, the current which at this period ran so strongly towards the monastic life in its most unmitigated and bigoted form, carried along with it the judgment and moderation of Sulpicius. His friendship with Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, amicable as it was, tended to foment the enthusiasm which betrayed both their judgments. This friendship stands recorded in a correspon- dence which, had it not been for a monkish extravagance of opinion and deportment, would have associated their names in an intercourse extremely interesting, and transmitted their cha- racters to their posterity as well deserving to be honoured and imitated. Vigilantius, in his youthful days, was often the bearer of these communications, in the course of which he had abundant oppor- tunities of observing the habits and propensities which led these noble friends from their first position, on the safe ground of Christian moderation, to those excesses in which human pride too often seeks its gratification in ostentatious humility and uncalled-for sacrifices. Sulpicius Severus, at the period of his ability to do most good in his generation, and most effectively to serve the cause of truth and orthodoxy, being at the maturity of his under- standing and at the height of his reputation, was infected with the prevailing admiration of the monkish profession, and the still more imposing sequestration and solitude of the hermit's cell. He became an enthusiastic admirer of Martin, the Bishop of Tours, whose life he wrote with all the ridiculous legends which gave to that inflated figure its preternatural dimensions. The pen of Sulpicius was thus degraded to the office of giving to fables, too foolish and absurd for the entertainment of the most childish credulity, the recommendations of a style which belonged to the dignity of truth and virtue. The late Doctor Gilly has favoured the world with a most interesting and instructive view of the life and times of Vigilan- tius, and I cannot refrain from extracting for my readers a short passage from his work in which the character of Sulpicius is very feelingly and appropriately set forth. " I dwell," says this man of like Christian spirit with that of the subject of his praise, " with delight on the lovely traits of the character of Sulpicius ; and, as I would rather leave him in light than in shade, I will not dismiss him without some further notice of his good actions. 220 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. His virtues were those of the man and of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; his faults were those of a defective and erroneous view of Christianity, seen through the medium of a vicious ecclesias- tical system." The downward tendency of the virtuous mind of Sulpicius to the depths of a deluding and degrading superstition marred all his amiable qualities, and robbed them of their beneficial effect. The discipline which he imposed upon himself, and which he regarded it an indispensable duty to observe, exacted from him a sort of outrage upon his own person, and a form of pe- nance and self-infliction which involved the necessary acts of scourging the flesh and macerating the frame by robbing it of its necessary support — a course of proceeding growing much into adoption in the fourth century. The solitary enthusiast built his claims to veneration among men and his title to heaven on the merits of these mortifications, as of essential and even sacramental efficacy. In those days of excitement and excess, Sulpicius made frequent visits to Martin, Bishop of Tours, a man whose early career as a soldier was distinguished by many benevolent acts and splendid qualities, but whose character in the Christian Church, however, by the appearance of sanctity and self-denial, it attracted the homage of his contemporaries, has hardly credit for sound principles, or even honest purposes, in the deliberate judgment of a better-informed generation. The violences com- mitted by himself upon his own body, and his utter renunciation as well of all the gifts of Providence as of all the comforts and even the decencies of life, wrought successfully upon ignorance and superstition. To this source we may trace the fame of his miraculous powers and performances, and that monstrous and disgusting accumulation of silly marvels, which, if not stained with fraud and imposture, have at least all the most glaring characteristics of fanatical and frantic delusion. It is possible that the great wonder-worker was enchanted by his own wand, and transported, by his own disordered imagination and the vehement credulity of others, into the belief of his being what he seemed to be. A healthy state of the understanding is all that is required to reduce the wonders related of Martin to the level of the lowest births of superstition. They may take their proper place among the cheats of that great impostor, who, in S UL PICT US— VI GILA NTIUS. 2 2 1 the legends and traditions of men, apart from the Scriptures of truth, finds his best allies, and the fittest vehicles for his fatal frauds. The visits of Sulpicius above alluded to probably took place between the years 390 and 394 A.D. If Vigilantius was some- times his companion, we may be allowed to conjecture that what was acted before him in and near the monastery of Martin at Marmontier, in the neighbourhood of Tours, may have had a contrary effect to what they were expected to produce. Being blessed with a direct and honest mind, aided by that good sense and probity which is generally more favourable to the operations of the judgment than capacities better adapted to shine among men, the scene of the monastery, the show of sanctity around it, the multitudes of sick and diseased coming to be healed by the holy man, or returning from the sacred spot having left their maladies behind them, were not things of a character to bring conviction and satisfaction to a mind like that of Vigilantius. Arrived at this focus of scenical superstition and supernatural agency, Vigilantius, with his mind disposed to see things through a cautious medium, and with a sober distrust, would be likely rather to have his suspicions awakened than his imagination excited by the appearance of Martin, and the strange symbols of an unearthly ministry which surrounded his dwelling. The monks and hermits in their caverns and cells, uttering their penitential cries and pious ejaculations, some in the attitude of prayer, some prostrate before a cross, some embracing holy relics, and some inflicting on themselves the penalties of their sins by scourging and lacerating their bodies ; Martin himself with a coarse and dirty garment, threadbare, and scarcely cover- ing his emaciated and corpse-like figure — spectacles like these must, if viewed, as probably they were, by Vigilantius, have been lost upon him. Lost, too, upon his indocile disposition must have been the communication made by the saint to Sulpicius, and probably to Vigilantius also, of the secret discourses held by the holy man with Agnes, and Thecla, and Mary, not forgetting the frequent visits of Paul and Peter. Vigilantius was Vigilantius still, in the undisturbed possession of himself in the midst of this spectacular sanctity. But I correct myself; this debasing mummery was not lost upon him ; for it was probably the medium through 222 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. which a salutary conviction was brought to his mind of the vanity of those works of supererogation which man has wrought out o^liis own invention to be the supplement of that which the dying words of the Saviour declared to be finished. The miracles recorded to have been achieved by Martin of Tours are very difficult of digestion, and probably the stomach of Vigilantius felt the duty oppressive. 1 Being bound, however, to his friend 1 The miraculous stories told by Sul picius Severus in his ' Life of Martin ' and his ' Dialogues on the Virtues of the Saints and of the Eastern monks,' are degrading to the Christian character, and affronting to common understand- ing. They could only have found a reception where a vicious training had silenced the voice of inquiry, and pre- pared the mind to submit to any imposi- tion upon the senses to escape the pains of research and discrimination. In ex- patiating on the virtues of the Egyptian monks, we are gravely told by Sulpicius that a wolf which regularly visited a certain hermit at his supper, of which he was permitted to partake, happening to come when the hermit was absent, helped himself to the moderate share of one out of five loaves. On the return of his wronged benefactor, the grief and re- pentance of the wolf were shown by such evident signs, that no other proof of his guilt was needed. The restoration of sio-ht to five cubs of a lioness, at the suit of another hermit, is from the same treasury of wonders ; nor ought the gratitude of the lioness to be unrecorded, in presenting a skin to her benefactor for his clothing. I am about to relate, says Sulpicius, a surprising instance of obedience in these monks to their superiors. One of them declared that if his Abbot should com- mand him to go into fire, into fire he would go. His obedience was put to the test. He cast himself into the flames ; the flames retired from him "as they did from the three Hebrew children." He came out unhurt, and as cool as if covered with the dews of the morning. The marginal synopsis in the ' Biblio- theca Patrum ' of the great things related by Sulpicius Severus to have been per- formed by Martin, among others gives the following heads. He restores a cate- chumen to life — also restores to life a man who had hanged himself — compels a mob of rustics to stand still, and renders them powerless — stops the fall of a tree — arrests, by his presence, the progress of a fire — exposes himself with impunity to the stroke of a sword — cures a de- moniac— eludes the stratagems of devils — heals a leper with a kiss — heals an eye with a touch — often in the company of angels — is cured by an angel — the devil invades his cell — various forms assumed by the devil — Martin tempted by the devil assuming the appearance of Christ. Such is the disgusting enumeration of the fables recorded of St. Martin. The reader will think that enough of such a tissue of fraud and folly has been spread before him, but the narrative of the re- storation to life of the catechumen al- luded to in the above list, as it reaches the highest pitch in the climax of pro- fanity and absurdity, shall not be with- held. " He (the catechumen) used to tell us," says Sulpicius, "that his spirit was conducted before the tribunal of the Judge eternal, and was about to receive his sentence, when two angels suggested that this was the soul for whom Martin had been praying. Upon which he was ordered back to be restored to life and to St. Martin." These despicable inventions not only load with suspicion and ob- loquy the memory of all the parties to them, both dupes and impostors, but cast reproach upon the age in which such unvarnished falsities could find re- ception and currency. They were re- ceived by those whom we call Fathers contemporary with the wonder-working saint himself ; and, in times long posterior, the tomb of St. Martin was visited by those whose consciences could be quieted, and their spirits refreshed, by the odour of a sanctity which could not, it was pro- bably considered, be less available in the grave than during life. ^ UL PIC I US— VIGIL A NTIUS. 223 and patron by so many ties, and under the prevailing influence of his example, he was probably not altogether unmoved by the pretensions and performances of the Bishop of Tours, and the imposing apparatus of miraculous power which filled others with awe and astonishment. He could not at once throw off the fascination to which the mind of Sulpicius himself had so fully surrendered itself. Nor was it easy at once to repudiate stories, however fabulous and foolish, which had been so avouched and accredited by the testimony of one so esteemed. That stories fabricated with so little of the semblance of truth should have been honoured with the testimony of Sulpicius Severus, will cease to be matter of wonder when we look without prejudice at the character of the fourth century, apart from the spurious credit which a class of writers has bestowed upon it in furtherance of a system of divinity resting chiefly on the authority of man. It is to the contemporary narrative by Sulpi- cius Severus that we owe the documents of the marvellous biography of Martin of Tours. They are curious and instructive specimens of the gross credulity of the times to which they belong, and of the fatal tendency of superstition to suspend the operations of intelligence and common sense. The greater portion of the youth of Vigilantius appears to have been passed in an alternate intercourse with Sulpicius and Paulinus, and during that period, however his judgment might raise him above the practice and opinions of his age, his qualifications for a reformer could not expand while under an influence so calculated to repress his independent thoughts. The biography of Vigilantius is only to be collected from scattered sources. He has left us no information concerning himself or his principles and opinions. But the controversies in which he was engaged, and the reproaches which he earned by a conduct which rebuked the bigotry, the superstition, and will- worship of his own times, entitles him to be recorded with honour. He shared with Jovinian the happy distinction of em- bracing a Christianity deduced from the oracles of God, rather than from the corrupt fountains of human dictation and authority. In or about the year 395, Vigilantius seems to have set out on a journey to Palestine and Egypt, having succeeded to the pro- perty acquired at the posting-house at Calagorris under his father's conduct and management. In his way he appears to 224 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. have paid another visit to Paulinus, then Bishop of Nola, in Campania. Here he found his friend encompassed with his imaginary saints, martyrs, and mediators, enriching his sanc- tuaries with pictures and relics, and labouring to secure his salvation by acts of penance and self-mortification. Rigorous abstinence, periodical fastings, night watchings, coarse vestments, the accumulation of bones and rags of saints, and especially the hourly prostrations at the shrine of St. Felix, 1 left him neither time nor talent for other thoughts or occupations, and absorbed all the capacities of a mind once distinguished by the graces and refinements of the scholar, the poet, and the rhetorician. The saint worship of Paulinus had become by degrees little short of direct idolatry, and the ready reception which his mind afforded to every idle and ridiculous tale of wonder, to which fanaticism or imposture had given birth, clouded his judgment, and gave him up to the leading of a wandering and distempered fancy. The church of Nola was at this time decorated with pictures, peopled with images, and polluted with a variety of vain and superstitious ceremonies in honour of St. Felix, for whom, and for whose relics, an apparatus of idolatrous worship was main- tained by the credulous and deluded prelate. A multitude of idle ceremonies and pagan forms of adoration, smoking incense, and lights burning before the sepulchre of the saint, hymns in honour of his nativity, and recording the miracles by which his name and sanctuary were still illustrated after the lapse of a century, had become the sole entertainment and delight of Paulinus, when Vigilantius stopped at his residence to draw instruction from his lips, and encouragement from his example. In these expectations he was sadly disappointed ; but there is reason for supposing that the specimens exhibited both by 1 Who this St. Felix was we have no guished in legendary story. They are so certain information. He seems to have contemptibly absurd as to be unworthy suffered much from the persecution under of being related even to amuse childish the Emperor Decius ; which, however, curiosity. But it is a fact, too singular to he survived to spend his days with the be omitted, that one of the most futile and highest reputation for sanctity at Nola, in foolish of these stories is told in verse by voluntary poverty and self-mortification. the accomplished but infatuated Paulinus. To honour the memory of this patron His enthusiastic veneration for his patron saint the utmost range was given to reli- saint made him the willing auditor of gious romance. The wonders ascribed every marvel related concerning the mi- to his supernatural agency were little, if racles wrought at his tomb, or in answer at all, inferior to those which have made to prayers made at his shrine, the name of Martin of Tours so distin- PAULINUS. 225 Sulpicius and Paulinus of the degrading and deforming effects of superstitious credulity, self-authorised observances, and ascetic austerity, might operate to determine the bearings and convic- tions of the sober mind of Vigilantius towards the path of prudence, moderation, and Scriptural authority. There was so much, however, in the manners of the upright and amiable prelate of Nola to retain the homage and affection of his younger friend, that probably the struggle was severe between the rising convictions of Vigilantius and his habitual reverence. The Bishop of Nola was one of the most unexcep- tionable of the Fathers. His history is soon given, but the im- pression of his life and example was vivid and lasting. His early companion was Ausonius, the tutor and friend of the Emperor Gratian, to whom, as his senior in age, he always acknowledged, with lively gratitude, his obligations in the conduct of his early studies. They were equally devoted to the cultivation of general literature, and more especially to the graces of poetical composi- tion, being in the constant habit of corresponding in verse, and submitting to each other their respective performances. But their habits, principles, and propensities were much at variance. Ausonius was a man of pleasure and of the world. He passed his vigorous years in the courts of Gratian and Theodosius, in a gay and ambitious course, half heathen and half Christian, and at length retired to literary ease and privacy, in his native city, Bordeaux. Paulinus, who was also born at Bordeaux, in the year 353, sought preferment at Rome, and rose so rapidly in his political career, that, while young, he was promoted to the consular rank. In middle life he became so deeply impressed with the truths of Christianity that he determined to enter the Church. Having been accordingly baptized and ordained a presbyter, he was soon distinguished by his piety, charity, and self-denial. Not long after his entering the Church, he was con- secrated bishop of Nola, in Campania. His retiring from Rome and secular employments occasioned his separation from his friend and instructor Ausonius, who appears to have considered the loss of his society and correspondence as a heavy misfortune, which he makes the subject of bitter complaint in his poems and letters. Paulinus, as we may infer from some of his parting epistles, was as much affected as his friend by the necessity of a separation, to which he submitted as the necessary consequence of Q 226 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. his conversion. He died in the year 431 A.D., at the advanced age of seventy-eight. Such was Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, at whose residence Vigi- lantius rested for an interval on his way to the Eastern Churches ; where the secluded and melancholy aspect of the homes both of Sulpicius and Paulinus was to be succeeded by a scene more animated by scholastic controversy, but exhibiting habits and manners in no degree characteristic of a purer piety. That the moderate and sober mind of Vigilantius contemplated the reli- gious excesses and extravagancies of either Sulpicius Severus, or Paulinus of Nola, with approbation or even satisfaction, is not to be presumed ; and indeed there is a letter 1 of Jerom which inti- mates the contrary ; but the urbanity and simple manners which were combined with the austerities of both his kind patrons would probably, during the periods of his residence with them, tend much to soften his objections, if not to reconcile him alto- gether, to a system of piety and devotional exercises so supersti- tious, unsound, and distorted. In the year 396 A.D. Vigilantius paid his visit to Jerom, then in the full career of those practices of self-mortification, and quarrel with domestic happiness and the charities of social life, which raised so high the reputation of his sanctity, and added so much to the weight and authority of his great abilities, as the champion of Church discipline and orthodoxy. To this celebrated man Vigilantius carried the recommendation of an epistle from Paulinus of Nola. At Bethlehem, in the cell of his monastery, Jerom was at this time located, amidst the charms of Nature, the delights of a luxuriant scenery, and the gifts of a bounteous Providence, all which were robbed of their blessings and comforts by the interposition of voluntary sufferings and self-imposed interdicts. Here, sequestered in a gloomy chamber, with a countenance devoid of all tenderness or complacency, eyes sunk in the sockets, cheeks channelled with tears, and a wasted figure, wrapped in a sordid vestment, Jerom came forth to receive the visit of Vigilantius. While all externally presented the character of a mortified man, alike indifferent to worldly vanities, pomps, and interests, with all the marks of penance and abstinence on his brow, yet, under the dejection of that brow, a vehement and 1 Hieron. ' Opera,' 4, part ii. p. 277. MONASTIC LIFE IN PALESTINE. 227 vivid expression betrayed the irritable character of a mind wrought up to the most sensitive extreme of self-value, and imperiously claiming the homage he denounced. The sad symbols of a religion entrenched in its own deserv- ings, glorying in its humiliations, and self-satisfied with its self- sacrifices, spread their gloom over the monastery and surrounding territory. All the sacred localities, consecrated by innumerable legends, resounded with dirges and the notes of penitential mourning. All wore the face of sorrow, — a community without the social principle, without reciprocity of feeling, without the commerce of benevolence, wherein each was challenging the other in the strife of self-renunciation, to issue in the triumphs of living, dying, and posthumous fraud. Here in this sacred region, once the scene of transactions far transcending all else which has been witnessed upon earth, but of which few were the traces which then presented themselves, amongst the shrines and chapels of saints, the credulity of Vigilantius was severely taxed. He was to take upon trust the identities of things which local legends, testimonies without proof, and unsupported tradition proposed to him for the exercise of his faith, and as the objects of such honour as was little short of adoration. The remains of the Cross, 1 of the wood of the manger, and of the bones of apostles or saints, with a hundred other similar curiosities equally valuable and equally authentic, were obtruded on the stranger, whose credulity was made to stagger under the mass of these supposititious baubles. The same absurdities had been witnessed by him with suspicion and distaste in the devotional extrava- gancies of Paulinus before the shrine of St. Felix, and amidst the fragments accumulated by him in his cabinet of relics ; but reverence for the man, coupled with a sense of great personal obligation, had held him in a respectful forbearance. Jerom had 1 [Four celebrated writers, Ambrose, still attached to it ; whilst Sulpicius as- Sulpicius, Sozomen, and Theodoret, all scribes the ascertainment of it to a mi- vouch for what was styled the "the in- racle ; for, according to him, a dead vention " or discovery of the Cross on man was restored to life by being touched which the Saviour suffered. The three with it. Well may Salmasius exclaim, crosses of our Lord and of the malefac- in his note upon Sulpicius, " Fudeat tors were, according to their story, ex- miseros tandem Christianos tarn stulta? humed from underground. St. Ambrose credulitatis et superstitionis tarn vanae." — gravely tells us that our Lord's was as- Ed.] certained at once by the inscription being Q 2 228 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. nothing, either in the disposition or qualities of his mind, or in outward recommendation, to reconcile the sound and sober apprehensions of Vigilantius to these practices on the confidence of the determined believer. It seems probable, from a letter which followed him on his leaving Bethlehem or Jerusalem, that the commencement of the serious rupture which in the sequel converted this half-matured friendship into a very decided and notorious variance, had declared itself very soon after their first interview. Vigilantius had seen in the severe and captious monk much of the exercises and services of the body, with little, very little, of the fruits of the Spirit. On his visit to Jerusalem he was thrown into the company of Rufinus, and seems to have been confirmed, by a communication with him, in the aversion with which he had already begun to regard the sentiments and dogmas of Jerom, whose irritable qualities and acrimonious habits had been sharpened in his controversial attackson Hel- vidius and Jovinian. One visit more of Vigilantius to Jerom before he finally left the Holy Land settled and decided their dissatisfaction with each other, which, though it did not break out into an open rupture until some time afterwards, was sufficiently indicated by their abrupt separation. The travels of Vigilantius after his departure from Bethlehem, and the places visited by him on his way to his own country, are known only through the medium of Jerom's correspondence. From this source of information we collect with some certainty that he visited Egypt, and, after sojourning awhile in Alexandria, proceeded to the shores of Italy, and from thence by the Cottian Alps. There is reason to suppose that during his stay in Alexandria, in which all the con- troversies then agitating the Christian world were in a manner concentred, and in his whole journey by land and sea, he was endeavouring to qualify himself by study and inquiry to main- tain his opinions as an antagonist of Jerom. These opinions were, no doubt, soon carried to the ears of the angry monk while concocting his revenge in the cell of his monastery. After land- ing at some Italian port, Vigilantius paid a transient visit to Paulinus at Nola, to whom he was the bearer of a letter from Jerom, In this letter the total abdication by Paulinus of all his worldly possessions was urged with so little moderation as to call for the sort of apology from the same unsparing censurer, VIGILANTIUS AND JEROM. 229 which was made in a subsequent letter. 1 From Nola Vigilantius proceeded, through the Cottian Alps, to the spot of his nativity on the Gallic side of the Pyrenean mountains, in the year 397 ; as we gather from Jerom's notable epistle to Riparius, written a few years afterwards, in which he complains of the clamour raised by his opponent inter Adrice flitctus Cottiique regis A /pes. In the country bordering on the Cottian Alps and extending into Southern Gaul and the plains of Lombardy, lived probably the ancestors of the Waldenses ; nor is it unlikely that Vigilan- tius had ground to expect to find a people inhabiting those parts who held opinions opposed to those maintained by Jerom on the celibacy of the clergy, and other subjects of external obligation enforced by the rigid dogmas of that ascetic recluse. To con- verse with persons reputed to lean to sentiments in accordance with the sacred Scriptures on these practical points, Vigilantius might not improbably have determined to go to his own country by way of the Cottian Alps ; nor has it with less likelihood been conjectured that the tenets, then in such prevalence, on clerical vows, relic and saint worship, and prayers to and in behalf of departed men, were sifted and rejected in the various colloquies which detained the traveller among these inquiring people ; and further, that this intercourse with them, though transient, may very possibly have laid the foundation, deep and strong, of the truths maintained by their persecuted posterity against the tyranny and frauds of papal Rome. It has even been asserted by Romish writers, that to Vigilantius may be, in great part, attributed the nonconformity of the Alpine heretics. After his return from his visit to Palestine and Alexandria, Vigilantius appears to have sat down, in the place of his nativity, to his sacred studies ; and here the letter from Jerom finds him, in which, with his accustomed, or more than his accustomed severity, that overbearing disputant defends himself from the imputation of having adopted some of the opinions of Origen ; 1 " Ego enim tanta volumina, prse legends impediant, non mihi debes im- frequentia commeantium et peregrinorum putare, sed tuis, et imperitise notariorum turbis, relegere non potui ; et ut ipsi pro- librariorumque incurise ; qui scribunt non bavere praesentes, longo tentus incom- quod iuveniunt, sed quod intelligunt, et modo, vix diebus quadragesimae, quibus dum alienos errores emendare nituntur, ipsiproficiscebantur, respirareccepi. Unde ostendunt suos." — Hier. ' Op.' 4, part ii. si paragrammata repereris, qua; sensum p. 57§. 230 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. and wherein, after telling him that his tongue deserved to be torn in pieces for some of his opinions, he recommends him to repent in sackcloth and ashes, and to wash out his wickedness with perpetual tears ; if such impiety could hope to be forgiven, and might obtain pardon when, according to the error of Origen, the devil should obtain his. 1 The various letters of Jerom to Helvidius, Jovinian, Vigilan- tius, and even to Augustin, leave the fact unquestionable that he was a man of great infirmity of temper, disposed alike to depre- ciate the merits of others, and unduly to exalt his own. To the exercise of his vituperative talents it must be owned that we are indebted for some of his most vigorous productions. Few of his corresponding friends were without some experience of the rough discipline of his pen. Rufinus says he spared none, neither monk nor maiden. Ambrose, and Didymus, and Chrysostom him- self, shared his reproaches. To the Father last mentioned he ascribes flagitious proceedings, and visits with the severest cen- sure his receiving Origenists into his confidence. Paulinus had not made sacrifices enough to satisfy him, nor could his equability of temper exempt him from the reprimands of the general censor. Those who submitted to the obligation of celibacy on the ostensible ground of religious abstinence were among the rare objects of his eulogy. The marriages of ecclesiastics, and the second marriages of any, under any circumstances, fell equally under his stern rebuke — " Defaming, as impure, what God declares Pure ; and commands to some ; leaves free to all." Provoked by the moderate and rational views of Jovinian, he breaks out, in his writings against him, into gross and unwar- ranted sallies against the matrimonial estate ; charging it with a degree of corruption and pollution, and exalting, above all comparison with it, the felicity of virgins. His opinions on this subject appear to have arisen out of the self-sufficiency of his own brain, which led him to consult his own fervid impressions and prejudices rather than the teaching of divine wisdom. There has existed no more fertile source of dishonour to the Church of God than this violence offered to the provisions of his providence for the construction of society among his rational creatures. The unnatural interdict, where it has prevailed in the Church of 1 Hieron. Ep. xxxvi. ■ CLE RICA L CELIBA CY. 2 3 1 Christ, has been fatally subversive of the character of his ministers. The annals of ecclesiastical history are replete with the most revolting proofs of these degrading consequences. " We see," said Luther in his Commentary on Genesis, " that the papists are nothing moved by what is there told us — that God created them male and female ; for they so bind and entangle themselves by their vows as not to acknowledge them- selves to be male and female. They are no ways affected by what is written, that God led Eve to Adam, and Adam said, ' This is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh ;' ' therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.' Nothing moved are they by the promise and benediction, ' Increase and multiply ;' or by the precept, ' Honour thy father and thy mother.' Nor does the consciousness of their origin, as springing from the union of the sexes, weigh anything with them. But passing by all these considerations with neglect and contempt, they compel their priests, their monks, and their nuns, to live in perpetual celibacy, as if the connection of marriage were condemned by the writings of Moses. The Holy Spirit looks with purer eyes on these things than the pope. He has no shame in recording the coupling of husband and wife, which these saints condemn as foul and impure." In the opinion of our great reformer, the popish injunction of celibacy in the clergy shows the devil's malice towards the creatures of God : and this malice is well attested in its fruits. The traces and examples of its horrid results are very plain to observation. They come before us in the clear testimonies of books and documents, among which that of Udalric, Bishop of Augsburg, referred to by Luther, has a strong claim to the credit of impartiality, he having been enrolled by Pope John XV. among those to whom the Christians might lawfully address prayers and worship. 1 1 The passage in Luther on Genesis in eo esse amplius sex mille capitum (c. iv. 1) is thus expressed in the original. infantilium. Scribit autem idem Udalri- " Testatur Sanctus Udalricus, Episco- cus vehementer consternatum eo specta- pus Augustanus, postquam cselibatum culo Gregorium, impiam de caelibatu Gregorius Pontifex stabilitum vellet, et sanctionem iterum sustulisse. Sed suc- interdixisset usu conjugum etiam illis, cessores Gregorii facile et fceditatem hu- qui jam ante decretum de crelibatu con- jus rei et piam abolitionem decreti de juges essent facti, cum forte piscari vellet czelibatu suppresserunt, cum ipsi quoque in vivario quod Romaa habebat, inventa existimarcnt non ad opes solum parandas 232 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. Jerom appears to have learned in the schools of heathen philosophy to use the artifices of rhetoric, as well as other dis- guises of speech, in which he not unfrequently violated the sanctity of truth. He defends himself by the examples of Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others of heathen celebrity, and seems to think himself more fully justified by the similar prac- tice of Christian controversialists, as Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris, and others, who made use, as he says, of " proble- matibus lubricis" and hesitates not to bring Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, and Hilary into the same category of writers, who often allowed themselves to advance what they knew to be not true when necessary to promote the success of their argument. This laxity concerning truth, which passed under the name of oiKovofjbia in the Greek, and dispensatio in the Latin language, and sometimes officiosum mendacium, where it was conceived to be for the good of the Church, was practised and even defended by many eminent Christian writers of the fourth century. It had chiefly footing in the Greek Church, and even Chrysostom was not afraid to maintain that a falsehood was to be justified where it was to promote a good and sacred end. It was considered a pious fraud, and sanctified by its object. The principle of dis- simulation propagates itself and assumes a variety of forms. There was claimed under it a licence of citing passages from authors, with little or no regard to the correctness of citation or appropriation. And this we find to be chargeable on Jerom cselibatum aptum esse, sed etiam ad teria, quorum pontifex pater dicitur, et dignitatem conciliandam. Simile exem- antecedunt eum proximi in processionibus plum," adds Luther, " nostra setate acci- publicis. Taceo infinita alia, quae dicere dit, cum monialesin Austrisevico Closter animus reformidat." Neumburg propter turpem vitam coge- In his exposition of Genesis xix. Luther rentur mutare locum, et monasterium thus speaks : " Vidi ego Romse tanquam Franciscanis habitandum concessum esset, sanctos adoratos quosdam Cardinales, qui atque illi pro sua commoditate qusedam consuetudine mulierum fuerunt contenti. aedificia mutarent, inventae sunt in funda- Non igitur ibi occulte nee privatim, sed mentis novis duodecim ollne, quarum sin- publice, infanda flagitia committuntur, ex- gulae cadaver infantis habebant. emplo et auctoritate principum, et totius " Hujusmodi infinita alia passim acci- civitatis." Luth. Exeget. Opera Lat., derunt. Recte igitur Gregorius, qui, sicut Tom. III. Erlang, 1529. Episcopus Udalricus refert, verbum Pauli The English reader will find an ac- eleganter mutavit : Paulus inquit, melius count of the like discoveries made in the est nubere quam uri ; sed ego addo, melius monasteries of this country in 1535. — est nubere quam mortis occasionem prae- Burnet, ' Reform.,' book HI. [See also bere. ' Hallam's Middle Ages,' vol. 11. Part 1, " Romae quoque propter copiam pue- e.g., and his extract from ' Clemangis.' — rorum exposititiorum erecta sunt monas- Ed.] PA TRIS TIC D O UBLE-DEA LING. 233 by his own confession. In the lectures given to catechumens the texts of Scripture are often strained and tampered with, or disguised under mystical, allegorical, or symbolical interpreta- tion, to suit a special purpose. But although these unworthy habits had principally a footing in the Greek Church, it is due to the great Basil to record his decided disapproval of them, expressed in his monastic rules. " Christ," says that eminent Father, " declares that a lie is of the devil, 1 and makes no distinction between lies." It is thus that Jerom argues on this subject in one of his epistles to Augustin on the difference between them as to St. Paul's reproof of St. Peter : 2 "You assert, in opposition to my opinion, that the Apostle's rebuke was genuine, and not a mere feint for promoting their common object — the dispensation of the truth of the Gospel ; and that I ought not to teach that the Scriptures ever authorise a falsehood : to which I answer, ^that it became your discretion and candour to read the humble pre- face to my ' Commentaries,' which speaks my sentiments on this subject. If anything appeared to you, in the exposition I have attempted to give in this matter, to be censurable, it would have been in better accordance with your erudition to inquire whether what I have written was to be found in the Greek commentators ; that if none of them should be found maintaining the same opinion with myself, it might be justly condemned as one for which I stand solely responsible." What has been above produced must appear to plain men very strange reasoning, involving a confession which throws great ambiguity over all the statements and declarations of Jerom. Thus to retreat upon others, when pressed by strong objections to any of his positions or expositions, was too much the habit of this very erudite Father. If we are never to be certain whether Jerom is delivering his own judgment or the judgment of others until the Greek commentators are looked through, the authority of this learned man must, indeed, lose much of its weight, and be impaired in its power of producing conviction in the minds of his readers. The licence which Jerom asserts to belong to disputation — of adopting almost any argu- ment for the sake carrying a point — was frequently exhibited in his own practice. It was one thing, as he says in a letter to 1 John v. 44. 2 Gal. ii. II, 12. 234 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. Pammachius, to write SoyfAarifca)?, and another to write yvfivaa- tikox. After such an avowal, he had hardly a right to complain of Augustin's treatment of his opinions on this subject as lending colour to plausible mendacity ; nor is the conclusion to be drawn from his statement sufficiently avoided by the words in which he repels the imputation in his letter to Augustin — " Do not think me to be the patron of a lie, who am, indeed, the follower of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It can never be that I, who have so long been a worshipper of truth, could so suddenly change my character, and enter into the service of falsehood." We have it from the express avowal of Jerom himself that he was accustomed to make free use of the works of Origen, Didymus, Apollinaris, and others in the tissue of his own com- positions, without naming the authors themselves. And in borrowing from Origen he is chargeable with no small incon- sistency. He was the great ally of Epiphanius and Theophilus in the war maintained by those prelates against the opinions of Origen, and quarrelled irreconcileably with Rufinus, once distin- guished by his special favour and friendship, for promulgating in a Latin translation what were regarded by him as the most dan- gerous of Origen's writings. Such a vacillating and incongruous practice one cannot but regard as being part of that unsound and infirm structure of the moral principle observable among many of the Fathers, degradingly contrasting with their high Christian profession. By Jerom in particular was assumed the licence of interlacing with his own the opinions of other men if conducing to the point for which he was contending, without holding himself responsible for their unsoundness when brought into question. But after making all necessary deductions from the dignity and deserts of Jerom on the score of prejudice and passion, our obligations to him remain very great, not only for his admir- able contributions to the stores of sacred learning in all its departments, but for his strenuous and efficacious advocacy of the truth, as it is set forth in the oracles of God. Lessons of practical piety and discriminating Christian prudence not seldom flowed from his able pen. Nor is there a deficiency of counsel dispersed through his works, to restrain presumptuous men from rearing an edifice of theology on a foundation not laid on the Bible, with the wood, hay, and stubble of vain traditions JEROfiPS WRITINGS. 235 and their own vainer devices. " Do not suffer yourselves," says this erudite Father, in the spirit of prophetic warning, "to be seduced by pretended apostolical traditions." " If hypocritical priests say to you, ' Listen to us, and follow us,' answer them, ' It is not astonishing that you should wish us to worship your tradi- tions and your statutes as other nations worship their idols ; but to us God has given the law and the testimony of the Scrip- tures.' " " It is the first mark of a heretic that he requires you to believe him on all points and on his word alone." In a letter to Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, he says, " I place the Apostles in a light of distinction from all other writers ; they always speak the truth : the others err like men." ' " Others, both Greeks and Latins, have erred in points of faith." 2 In another place, speaking of ecclesiastical writers generally, and of their faults and errors, he says, " It may be, they have erred out of mere ignorance ; or, they may have written in some other sense than that in which we understand them ; or, their writings may have been corrupted through the ignorance of transcribers ; or, before the appearance of Arius, they let some things fall from them innocently and with less caution than they might have used, and in such terms as must needs have exposed them to the calumny of perverse men." 3 In another place, "We ought not, according to the example of the scholars of Pytha- goras, to have regard to the prejudicated opinion of the teacher, but to the weight and reason of the thing taught." Observations of the same sensible cast are of frequent occur- rence throughout the writings of Jerom. In a letter to Paulinus he takes occasion to pass his judgment on the qualities of the works composed by the most eminent Latin ecclesiastical writers, in which he brings characteristically before us Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and others, and manifests much critical dis- cernment ; and a similar obligation has been conferred by his pen on ecclesiastical literature in his catalogue of illustrious writers — an historical compendium of such as have distinguished themselves as authors from the earliest age of Christianity, translated into Greek by Sophronius. Many of the letters of Jerom are worthy to be consulted by him who desires to draw from the wells of Christian experience 1 Hier. Ep. 62. 3 Hier. 1. 2, § 7, Apol. contra Rufinum. - Ep. ad Pammach. et Ocean., 34 § 3- 236 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. truths of practical value ; nor will the labour of travelling through Jerom's works be unrewarded, where the heart and understanding are sincerely engaged in searching the Scripture and gathering the fruits of Divine instruction. His letter to Nepotian, the nephew of Heliodorus, his early associate, on his entering upon the sacred ministry, is a composition marked by much sound judgment and solid piety. He reminds him of the import of the Greek word cleros, or clergy, signifying either their own dedica- tion to God as His lot or [portion, or their claiming God as their own lot or portion ; and, upon the strength of that lofty desig- nation, he charges him to rise above worldly interests, and to consider well the service in which he has engaged himself. His precepts are well calculated to exalt the standard to which both the preaching and life of a servant of God should be conformed ; the aim of the one being wholly directed to the exposition of the mysteries and morals of religion, and of the other, by the light of example, to give grace and attraction to the sacerdotal cha- racter. The motive which suggested the letter to Nepotian was frustrated by the immature death of the young man ; but the letter remains a testimony to the wisdom of Jerom, and an instructive gift to after ages. The death of Nepotian drew from the pen of Jerom a letter of consolation to the uncle Helio- dorus, wherein he recalls the many instances in pagan story of the dread of death overcome by men living in spiritual ignorance, to stimulate those to exercise a superior philosophy who have imbibed the lessons of eternal truth. The uncertainty and un- satisfactoriness of our mortal state is enlarged upon with an elegance of pathos which, in the balance of conflicting qualities, may be weighed against the errors of an impetuous temper. His dialogues against the Pelagians exhibit in the main very sound doctrine, and may be considered, in conjunction with the arguments and expositions of Augustin, as comprising a com- plete defence of Catholic doctrine from a heresy more in league than any other with those imaginary holds which hide from the heart its real danger and only dependence. We now take leave of Jerom, with a ready acknowledgment of the debt of gratitude we owe to his memory for the entire dedication of his great learning and accomplishments to the sound exposition of the Scriptures, and the illustration and defence of saving truth. AUGUSTIN. 237 In turning from Jerom to Augustin the Christian character is seen under a different aspect ; not essentially variant, for the principles furnished by a religion of heavenly origin and perfect holiness must be substantially the same in all its genuine pro- fessors, though complexionally and practically varied by the circumstances of life, and altered in form and exterior by the in- fluence of habit and temperament. But, interesting as it may be to compare Augustin with Jerom, more important instruction may be gathered by comparing Augustin with himself. The contrarieties observable in the constitution of the mind of man, on which Pascal has reasoned with so much solidity of judgment, disclosing the vestiges of primitive excellence in conjunction with the fatal effects of the fall by transgression, were affectingly exemplified in the person of Augustin — throughout the vigorous period of his life the slave of his concupiscence, and at the same time suffering under the severest chastenings of an awakened conscience ; breathing, in the midst of pollution, the aspirations of his better nature and the sighs of a self-condemning spirit. The struggles of an accusing conscience with the prevalence of inward impurity, made him more experimentally sensible than others of the weakness of the human will, and of its inadequacy to the requirements of the soul, unless grace be its precursor and prompter. He was born on the 13th of November, in the year 355, at Tagaste, now a poor little village hardly noticed in modern geo- graphy, but, at the time of Augustin's nativity, a city and bishopric of Numidia in Africa. His father, whose name was Patricius, was a person of some distinction, whose habits, if we judge of him by what occurs respecting him in the Confessions of the son, were far from regular and correct ; nor does his temper appear to have been under better control. To his wife, Monica, the virtuous mother of him whose life and character we are now en- tering upon, he was the author of frequent troubles and trials till a short time previous to his death, when he received baptism as a convert to the Christian faith and commenced a better course. Augustin was put to school at an early age by his father at Madauris, from which place, after making there, a considerable progress in the rudiments of grammatical learning, he was re- moved to Carthage, the metropolis of the province, where he was 238 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. instructed in rhetoric, the aim of his father being principally to accomplish him as a pleader and orator. His education was, how- ever, very desultory, and often intermitted from the difficulty felt by the father of supporting the necessary expenses of his school- ing. Of the habits of his juvenility we are copiously informed by that extraordinary book entitled the ' Confessions of St. Augustin,' which has every attestation, as well as every internal characteristic, of genuineness, and may on the whole be regarded as the most honest piece of autobiography extant. He begins with the original stain on his nature, and unveils all the sins of his childhood. That all the evil propensities which he imputes to himself did exist in him in all their absolute corruption, is esta- blished upon his own testimony ; but it is probable the self- corrective purity of his later years aggravated his own sentence on his early delinquencies, and induced him to place himself, perhaps with no sufficient reason, below the standard of his con- temporaries. He seems to have been naturally of a very sanguine temperament, subject to impulses so difficult to keep under due control and management, as to yield only to the mastery with which his spirit was endowed by his entire conversion to the true faith. He describes the characteristics of his childhood in these expressive words : " I sinned in doing contrary to the precepts of my parents and masters ; for I might afterwards have made good use of my learning, which they were desirous I should obtain, whatsoever purpose they had in it. I disobeyed them, not out of the desire of choosing better courses, but out of the love of play, aspiring to be the proud winner at all sports, and to have my ears tickled with fictitious fables ; a perilous curiosity sparkling through my eyes as to the shows and plays frequented by my elders, the exhibitors whereof are esteemed to gain so much honour by it that almost all wish the like to their own children." In the Confessions of Augustin we have an autographic history of his early life, 1 minutely told as to all his fluctuations of thought 1 In lib. 11. c. 6, of his ' Retractations' viderint ; multis tamen fratribus eos he writes thus of his Confessions. "Con- multum placuisse, et placere, scio. A fessionum mearum libri xin., et de primo usque ad decimum de me scripti malis et de bonis meis, Deum laudant sunt ; in tribus caeteris de Scripturis justum et bonum, atque in eum excitant Sanctis, ab eo quod scriptum est ' in humanum intellectum et affectum : in- principio fecit Deus caelum et terram ' terim, quod ad me attinet, hoc in me ege- usque ad Sabbati requiem. In quarto, runt cum scriberentur, et agunt cum le- cum de amici morte animi mei miseriam guntur ; quid de i.'lis alii sentiant, ipsi confiterer, dicens quod anima nostra AUG US TIN. 239 and feeling during the long period which preceded his conversion and baptism. His infancy was characterised by his love of play in a degree beyond his young companions ; and to gratify this propensity he appears by his own account to have suffered few scruples to stand in the way. To deceive his parents and tutors he was often guilty of falsehood, and he acknowledges himself to have committed an act of theft, in robbing, in company with some of his idle associates, a neighbour's orchard of some pears, which was probably a solitary case, as it appears to have made a deep impression on his memory, and to have been always viewed by him with great self-reproach. He relates the anecdote in his Confessions with every circumstance of aggravation, particularly insisting upon the pleasure he felt in the mere act of thieving, without any gratification derived from the thing stolen, of which he was in no want, having plenty and better at home. Bad as is the account which he gives of his boyhood, his maturer age gave no indications of a higher degree of moral rectitude. His youth was passed much in the society of the sensual and pro- fligate ; and yet a conflict between these evil propensities and a clear percipience of what was honest and becoming, accom- panied with an awful apprehension of the Divine displeasure, kept his mind in a perpetual struggle, and mingled many bitters in his cup of pleasure. The young lawyers or pleaders at the bar were among the worst of his associates, from whom he learned to speak lightly of the Holy Scriptures on account of the sim- plicity of their style and expression. But the companions most fatal to his principles and his peace were the Manicheans, to whose gross and dangerous superstition he surrendered his reason during the first stage of his mature existence. His sanguine mind was in constant vibration between his better nature and his pro- pensity to gross indulgences ; and the consciousness he felt of the inward struggle between these opposite attractions disposed him to listen with favour to the hypothesis of two contending powers of light and darkness, to whom all the good and evil that prevailed on earth were respectively to be considered as owing their origin. quodammodo facta fuerat ex duabus, ' et eo quod additum est, forte. Et in libro ideo,' inquam, ' forte mori metuebam, ne tertio decimo quod dixi firmamentum totus ille moreretur, quern multum ama- factum inter spiritales aquas superiores, veram ;' quae mihi quasi declamatio levis et corporales inferiores, non satis con- quam gravis confessio videtur, quamvis siderate dictum est ; res autem in abdito utcunque temperata sit h?ec ineptia in est valde." 240 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. It was towards the end of the third century that Manes, a Persian or Chaldean of a very wild and eccentric genius, and said by some to have been one of the Magi, adventured to be the founder of a new religion by blending the principles of the Persian theology with the doctrines of Christianity ; grounding his pre- tensions upon the assertion that the way of salvation was incom- pletely set forth in the Gospel, it being the design of Christ to leave it to be more fully explained and expanded by the Para- clete, by which name he himself and his office were designated. Viewed in the pure light of Bible Christianity, the Manichean system seems so grossly absurd as to be altogether unworthy of attention, much less of investigation ; but immoral associations, desultory studies, long familiarity with the Gentile philosophy, and the habits of a teacher of rhetoric, acting with their joint influence upon a mind naturally ardent, eager, and ambitious, rendered Augustin too open to vague and visionary impressions. According to the wild theory of Manes, the Prince of Darkness prevailed so far in his struggle with the Author of Good, as, notwithstanding the defeat which he finally sustained, to have brought away, and blended with his own grosser element of depraved matter, such a portion of the Divine light and moral excellence as was sufficient to become the stock out of which the human race was formed and compounded, being of two characters or souls, the one sensitive and concupiscent, the other rational and immortal. And this was the creed which the mind of Augustin could, for a season, condescend to embrace. It is probable he gave but a doubting assent to the morbid fancies into which that creed was expanded. It is difficult to imagine that his intelligent and inquiring capacity could ever have been in accordance with opinions such as the following : The Great Author of Good has only a divided empire with the Author of Evil, to whom especially the human race and the earth they inhabit owed their creation, and who, by mingling contaminating matter with so much of the pure substance of celestial origin as had been captured by him in his wars with heaven, or, in other words, by immuring heavenly souls in material bodies, had given to the Most Holy One the task of separating the good from the bad, the pure from the impure, the captive souls from their bodily prisons — a work delegated to two Transcendent Beings produced from Himself, Christ and AUG US TIN. 241 the Holy Spirit. Christ, not joined to a real body, but having the form and appearance of a man, is sent clown to complete this rescue — appears among the Jews, by whom, instigated by the Prince of Darkness, He is crucified, that is, appears to be cruci- fied, for so, in reality, He was not. His mission being accomplished He returns to heaven, leaving it to His Apostles to propagate His religion, and to the Paraclete especially to expound and ex- tend His doctrines, and this Paraclete was Manes, the Persian sage. The twofold process of purification after death, by the sacred fire and sacred water, consummates the scheme of man's salvation according to the Manichean method. And we cannot wonder that Augustin, after his conversion to the true faith, should have felt himself called upon for the fullest exposure of a blasphemous apostasy which had led him so far out of the way in his early studies in divinity. In the midst of his Manichean follies he records the dream of his mother, in one of those passages of his ' Confessions ' wherein his mind seems to be in converse with God, in that secret tabernacle of his bosom wherein his petitions were so frequently preferred. It was when his mother had withdrawn herself from and refused to dwell or sit at the same table with him, on account of the heresy into which he had fallen, that she saw in her sleep herself standing on a certain battlement, a beautiful young man coming towards her with a cheerful countenance and smiling upon her, while she was reflecting with a sorrowful heart on her son's aberrations. He demanded the cause of her sadness and daily weeping. " It is," she answered, " for the perdition into which my son is falling." Whereupon he bade her to rest con- tented, directing her to raise her eyes and look ; and behold, where she herself was, there was her son also, and turning her look aside, she saw him standing by her on the same battlement. It was a dream not to be forgotten, and the account of his conversation with his mother upon it follows in the form of an apostrophe to his Maker. To this vision the mother and son gave contrary interpreta- tions. To the son it appeared to indicate that his mother's opinions would one day coincide with his own ; but the mother drew a contrary inference, and the joy of the conviction in which her mind rested was not unaccompanied by sympathetic emo- tions in the bosom of the young Augustin, though it was not till R 242 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. about nine years after this incident that Augustin was able entirely to shake off the fetters of this false belief. His thoughts, however, during all this period, were in a fluctuating state between truth and error. He felt an increasing dissatisfaction with the Manichean teachers \ and when at length he broke loose from their trammels, the gross absurdities of their tenets were seen and felt by none with greater abhorrence. His gradual emanci- pation was not unobserved by his mother, and among the inci- dents by which her mind was cheered was what occurred in an interview with a certain bishop, who, being importuned by her entreaties to discourse with her on the subject nearest her heart, and witnessing her much weeping, " Go," said he, " and God bless thee ; for it is not possible that the son of tears like these should perish." His profession of a teacher of rhetoric and forensic advocate was not unstained with the practice which has always in certain degrees been imputable to it, of postponing the obligations of truth and justice to the success of the cause in hand. His mind was long wavering and vibrating between various impulses and attractions ; and among the causes of his discomposure was his addiction to the delusions and deceits of astrology. Circum- stances, however, in the meantime, recalled him in some degree from his infatuation. His sorrow for the loss of a friend, aggra- vated by remorse for having unsettled his mind with his own unsatisfactory opinions (which produced only a temporary injury, for his friend died in the Catholic faith), was not without its proper sanatory effect. From the nineteenth to the twenty- eighth year of his age, he represents himself to have been under gross delusions, and to have been active in deluding others. But as years and experience advanced, his maturer judgment began to emerge from his Manichean infatuation. His discussions with the great oracle of that false system tended greatly to dis- abuse him. Faustus was a shallow advocate with an imposing verbosity, and the more strenuously he argued in support of his creed, the more it lost its power over the understanding of Augustin. During these struggles of his vigorous mind with the shackles of an heretical creed, Augustin acquired great reputation at Carthage as a teacher of rhetoric. His school was the most celebrated in that quarter. Many of his scholars became his AUGUSTIN. 243 attached friends, and in particular Alipius, whom he favoured with his especial confidence, and who afterwards, as bishop of Tagaste, became eminent in the Church of Christ. It appears, however, that the general habits of his scholars were such as to make him weary of his profession in the city of Carthage, and to determine him to leave that place for Rome, where he ex- pected his school to be better attended, and his learning and ability to be more adequately appreciated. The success of his teaching at Rome brought him a great accession of fame ; but in the description of his scholars the change does not seem to have been much for the better. His labours were robbed of their due reward by deceit and stratagem, and Rome gave him so little contentment that the professorship of rhetoric at Milan, where the Emperor Valentinian then kept his court, becoming vacant, he was easily induced to offer himself as a candidate for that chair, to which, having given a specimen of his talents before Symmachus, the Governor of Rome, he was duly promoted. This was the turning point of his life ; for at Milan he soon became as much distinguished as at Carthage and Rome, and there availed himself of every opportunity of cultivating the regard of Ambrose, and attending his far-celebrated discourses. Under this ministry the heresy of the Manichees gradually lost its hold of his mind, and receded before the truth as scripturally expounded by the learned Archbishop. His opinions, however, continued for some time to fluctuate between the orthodox faith and his long-cherished misconceptions. It is remarkable that the great impediment in the way of a purer belief was the difficulty which he had in conceiving of God as a spiritual Essence, without corporeal extension. 1 His mind could not for some time appre- hend Him but as invested with material shape and substance. After some study as a catechumen, these gross images were driven from his thoughts, 2 together with the doctrine of ascrib- 1 This gross conception of Deity was still : " Quis enim negabit Deum corpus a stumbling stone in the way of others esse, etsi Deus Spiritus est ? Spiritus among the early Fathers. Thus Ter- enim corpus sui generis in sua effigie." — tullian : " Omne quod est, corpus est sui ' Adv. Prax.' c. 7. generis ; nihil est incorporale nisi quod 2 When his opinions became settled non est." — Tertull. ' De Came Christi.' on the side of orthodox Christianity, he " Ut concedam interim esse aliquid in- was strenuous in the assertion of an op- corporale, de substantiis duntaxat ; quum posite theory. In his dialogue, ' De ipsa substantia corpus sit rei cujusque." — Quantitate Animae,' he strongly affirms ' Adv. Hermogen.' c. 35. And further its immateriality. In writing to Jerom R 2 244 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. ing sin to a necessary independent cause, and an eternal evil principle. While the sentiments of Augustin were in the process of purification, his mother, having ventured herself on the sea, and encountered a stormy voyage, came first to Rome, and after- wards to Milan, where her son received her with great joy, hers being equally great to find him no longer a Manichee, though not yet a baptized Catholic. What she now desired, and wept and prayed for, was that he should settle his belief on the doc- trines preached by Ambrose. Still, however, the conversion of Augustin was incomplete ; he yet stumbled at the doctrine of the incarnation. He acknowledged the perfect man in Christ ; not the body of a man only, but very man, with a rational soul ; but that it was God who thus became perfect man, was for a time a matter of offence to him. In this particular he was more advanced, however, than his friend Alipius, who was for some time halting in the error of Apollinaris, till these eminent friends finally met together, after their several difficulties were overcome, in the unclouded atmosphere of evangelical truth. Augustin, however, did not reach this consummation until, having perused some of the works of the most celebrated Platonists, he was exercised by their philosophy in the contemplation and study of invisible things, and was enabled to make a due comparison between the divinity taught in their dry discourses, and the soul- comforting doctrines of the blessed Gospel. On the results of this comparison he has left us his spiritual comments, in chapter xxi. of book VII. of his ' Confessions,' which may be expressed in English in the following terms : " What shall wretched man do ? Who shall deliver him from the body of this death? 1 but only Thy grace through Jesus Christ our Lord, whom Thou hast begotten co-eternal with Thy- self, and possessedst in the beginning of Thy ways ; 2 in whom the prince of this world found nothing worthy of death, yet killed he Him ; whereby the handwriting was blotted out which was contrary to us. None of all this do these Platonic writings contain. Those pages can show nothing of this ; nothing of this face of piety, those tears of compassion, that sacrifice of Thine ; he says, " Incorpoream quoque esse persuasum." — Augustini 'Opera,' torn, animam, etsi difficile tardioribus per- II. fo. 30. 1 Rom. vii. 24. suaderi potest, mihi tamen fateor esse 2 Prov. viii. 22. 3 Col. ii. 14. A UGUSTIN. 245 a troubled spirit, a broken and contrite heart; 1 the salvation of Thy people, the spouse, the city, the earnest of the Holy Ghost, the cup of our Redemption. No man sings there/ Shall not my soul wait upon God, seeing that from Him cometh my salvation ? He only is my rock and my salvation ; He is my defence ; I shall not be greatly moved.' No man in those books hears Him calling, ' Come unto Me all ye that labour.' 2 They scorn to learn of Him, because He is 'meek and lowly in heart' {v. 29) ; for ' these things hast Thou hid from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.' It is one thing from the woody top of a mountain to see the native land of peace, not finding the way thither, 3 and another to keep on the way conducting to it." In this state of near approach to what was holy and true, and on the very threshold of his complete conversion, he sought the encouragement and aid of Simplicianus, a venerable Christian, to whom Ambrose himself was indebted for his first instructions. To Simplicianus it was matter of rejoicing that the Platonic school, rather than others so full of the vain deceits and entice- ments of the world, had engaged his studies ; inasmuch as with the Platonists God and His Word were at least obscurely kept in view. By him Augustin was informed of the confession of the truth by the celebrated Victorinus, one of the most accom- plished orators of his time at Rome, and who had been honoured with a statue in the Forum. After some conversations with Simplicianus, Augustin proceeded, with vacillating steps, but with gradual approaches, to the blessedness of a full assurance of the truth. The work of grace was now conspicuous in his sentiments, and a happy consummation was near at hand. Alipius, his companion in his inquiries, was at this juncture living under the same roof with him, in the country house of their common friend Verecundus. Here they were joined by Nebridius, who had also lately embraced the truth, and of whose amiable character and discreet bearing Augustin speaks in great admiration, as being very diligent in the pursuit of the best studies and objects, and then occupied, in compliance with the wishes and persuasions of the party assembled at the house of Vere- cundus, in giving private instructions in Christian doctrine to that distinguished person, and in adding him to the society of recent converts with whom Augustin had associated himself. 1 Psalm li. 2 Matt. ii. 28. 3 Deut. xxxii. 49. 246 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. While this party were thus exercising themselves in pious con- ference at the house of Verecundus, they received an unexpected visit from Pontitianus, lately arrived from the African coast, having received baptism as a Christian convert, who entertained them with an account of Anthony, the celebrated monk of Egypt, and brought before them many particulars concerning the nume- rous monasteries which had grown under his encouragement and example. By these communications they were greatly surprised and captivated ; for it seems they had known nothing of these institutions before, although without the walls of the city of Milan there was at the same time a monastery, under the patronage of Ambrose. The story of St. Anthony, thus related by Pontitianus, is confessed by Augustin to have been greatly instrumental in determining him upon the change of his studies and employ- ments. Chapter viii. of book vill. of his ' Confessions ' exhibits him in the happy crisis in which all his thoughts and affections are turned into the current of pure Christianity, and entirely pledged and surrendered to its saving and immortal truths : — " There was a garden," says Augustin, " belonging to our lodging, which we had the liberty of using when it pleased us, for the master of the house, our host, lived not there. Thither the tempest within my bosom now hurried me, and thither Alipius followed me. We sat down as far from the house as was possible." In this conference Augustin describes, in earnest and glowing language, the conflict maintained in his bosom between his con- tending wills ; the one disposing him to the self-denials and humbling truths of the dispensation of Gospel grace, and the other continuing to be bent by the force of habit towards objects which yet had too much power in dividing his affections. " The trifles of trifles, the vanities of vanities (those ancient favourites), were still withholding me. They shook me by this fleshly garment, and spake softly in my ear, ' Canst thou part with us ? and shall we no more accompany thee from this time forth for ever f ' " Alipius was sitting beside him, perceiving the struggle within him, and expecting the issue. He thus proceeds : " I rose from Alipius ; for I conceived that solitariness was more fit for a state of weeping. I removed so far from him that his presence might not interrupt me. ... I flung myself down under a certain fig tree, giving full freedom to my tears, whereupon the floods of AUG US TIN. 247 my eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice unto Thee ; and to this effect I spoke : ' And Thou, O Lord, how long ? how long wilt Thou be angry ? for ever? Be not mindful of my former iniquities ;' for I felt myself to be still enthralled by them. Yea, I sent forth these miserable exclamations : • How long ? how long ? Still to-morrow, and to-morrow ? Why not now ? Wherefore, even this very hour, is there not an end put to my uncleanness ? ' Thus much I uttered, weeping in the bitter contrition of my heart, when I heard a voice from a neighbouring house, as it had been of a boy or a girl, I know not which, in a singing tone saying, and often repeating, ' Take up and read ! Take up and read ! ' I began to bethink myself whether children were wont, in any kind of play, to sing any such words, nor could remember ever to have heard the like. Thereupon I gat me up, and went hastily to the place where Alipius was sitting ; for there had I laid the book of St. Paul's Epistles. I snatched it up and opened it, and in silence read that chapter which I first cast my eyes upon : ' Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wanton- ness, not in strife and envying ; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof! No farther would I read ; nor needed I ; for instantly with the end of this sentence, by a light, as it were, of security, darting into the heart, all the darkness of doubting vanished away. Shutting up the book, and putting my fingers between, with a quieted countenance, I discovered all this to Alipius." After this incident, and an interesting interchange of senti- ments with his friend, they left the garden together and went into the house, where all that had happened was communicated to the mother of Augustin, whose joy was proportioned to the magnitude of an event, in which the complete conversion of her son to the Christian Catholic faith was considered, by herself and others, as effectually accomplished. His occupation as a teacher of rhetoric was now relinquished, and some time was spent in communion with his believing and devoted friend Nebridius, to whose amiable qualities he bears a pleasing testi- mony, with Verecundus, at whose place of residence the decisive change in the mind of Augustin had taken place, and with Alipius, the faithful partner of his happy conversion. Disengaged from all secular cares, Augustin, and his friend Alipius, sojourned together in the same country house, as catechumens in prepa- 248 CHURCH ME MORI A LS A ND CHA RA C TERIS TICS. ration for the rite of baptism. Monica, the mother of Augustin, was their inseparable companion ; " in woman's habit truly," says her pious son, " but with a masculine faith : void of worldly care, as a woman in her years should be, yet employed in matronly charity and Christian piety." When the time for being baptized drew near, Augustin, with his friend Alipius, and his natural son, of whose excellent endowments and Christian graces he speaks with delight, and in whom, he says, with a deep spirit of humility, he had no part but the sin, left their pleasant abode in the country for the city of Milan, where Ambrose performed the holy initiative rite, whereby three believing souls, separated from the world, were given to Christ, and placed under the banner of His love. About a year after this event an Arian persecution was begun at Rome, by the influence and persuasions of Justina, the mother, of the Emperor Valentinian, by which the fortitude of Ambrose, as the head and leader of the Catholic party, was principally exercised. It was upon this occasion that the bones of Gervasius and Protasius, the martyrs discovered by a vision to Ambrose, were made available to the consecration of his church. In the account hereinbefore given of that Father, these relics, and their miraculous properties, have been introduced to the reader : I need not renew the story further than to say that it seemed to have the full assent of Augustin. With trusting con- fidence he observes that not only they who were vexed with unclean spirits were cured, but that one who had been blind many years (a well known inhabitant of the city) having touched the repository of the relics with his handkerchief, and applied it to his eyes, was forthwith restored to his sight. A visit was now paid him at Milan by Euodius, his fellow citizen, who had not long before him been converted to the faith, and baptized. The company of this young man was so agreeable to him, and they became so joined in heart and purpose, that Augustin was desirous of accompanying him back to Africa, with full purpose to devote himself to a life of solitude, in which resolution he was confirmed by the acquiescence of his mother, Monica, who declared her readiness to return with him and his friend. At this stage of his ' Confessions ' Augustin pauses to take a short retrospect of his mother's life, in which his filial affection induced him to set before his readers some particulars which, if AUG US TIN. 249 to some they might come recommended by their simplicity, to others they might seem unworthy to be recorded. Early intimations of future eminence may lead to the subsequent disclosures of character, as the dawn to the maturity of the day ; but the petty delinquencies of childhood are only the ordinary signs of our fallen nature and common corruption. There is a simple and touching tenderness in the picture he gives us of his mother, which places his own character in a very amiable light. Her erring husband put her value as a wife to the severest test. He was a man, as it appears, of a kind, but choleric disposition ; and withal a violator of his nuptial bonds. All this provoked neither quarrel nor reproach on her part, but, to borrow the words of her devoted son, she preached Christ unto him by her conversation. When he lost his temper, which appears to have been a frequent case, she patiently endured the storm, waiting the return of reason and moderation as the time for rendering him an account of her actions. She had a school in her breast, says Augustin ; and, finally, regulating her life and manners by the discipline of that school, she gained her husband to his God, to himself, and to his duty. Towards the end of his life Patricius was converted and baptized, having ceased to be the cause of uneasiness to his wife, and was brought, it may be hopefully presumed, within the happy influence of her Christian example. After passing about four months at Rome, where he wrote his two books on the manners of the Church and of the Mani- chees, he proceeded with his mother to the port of Ostia, there to embark for Africa. During their stay there, on a certain day, they leant together on a window which looked into the garden of the house, and enjoyed a sweet and private colloquy, "for- getting those things which were behind, and reaching forward to the things which were before." * Here, indulging in those rapturous elevations of thought, which were doubled by harmo- nious interchange, they were raised above all earthly things, and enjoyed the foretaste of seraphic joy. 2 In a few days 1 Phil. iii. 13. Christian before my death. My God 2 [The conversation ended, on the part has granted to me this in the most ample of Monica, with the following emphatic measure, so that I see thee now His words: "On one ground only did I servant, even holding in contempt all desire to stay a little in the present life, earthly happiness. What do I here that I might see thee an enlightened then?" — Ed.] 250 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. after this little incident, Monica fell ill of a fever, and, in one of its paroxysms, she sunk into a swoon, from which, being again brought to her senses, she looked wistfully upon Augustin and his brother standing by her, saying, " Here shall you bury your mother ; " and, on its being intimated to her that it were better her remains should rest in her own country, she seemed displeased at the suggestion, and desired they would bury her body any- where ; which they remarked with some surprise, as she had always been anxious about the place of her interment, having a strong wish to be laid by the body of her husband. This conceit, as Augustin, thankfully observes, had now entirely left her ; and when some one of her friends inquired whether she was not afraid to have her body left at such a distance from her native country, she replied, " Nothing is far from God, nor is it to be feared that He will not know, at the end of the world, the place from which He is to raise me up." On the ninth day of her sickness, the fifty-sixth year of her age, the thirty-third of Augustin, that religious and holy soul, says her pious son, was discharged from the prison of the body. Augustin' s sorrow for his departed mother was of long dura- tion. His assurance of her constant growth in grace under the quickening influences of the Spirit filled him with cheerful views of her eternal welfare, and yet, as it seemed, some awful appre- hensions disturbed his confidence, and placed him often upon his knees in prayer for her soul, betokening some infirmity in his creed, which may possibly have been corrected by subsequent reflection. 1 1 It must be confessed that many of tortions by which a distempered cre- the Fathers of the early Church were in dulity could vary its aspect. Whether the practice of offering prayers for the this posthumous expiation was to be the dead, this being supposed to be for the work of fire or water, vapour or steam, good of their souls ; but without any were questions for the entertainment of notion of a purgatory, as held by the free conjecture and private opinion. No Roman Church, which existed only as a positive system or theory on the sub- mere floating superstition, without body ject could be considered as settled till or consistency, till the end of the sixth the Council of Trent pronounced it an century, when it assumed something af article of faith, having the warrant of the form in which it now appears among infallibility and the penalty of a curse the dogmas of the Church of Rome. To to enforce its acceptance. Gregory I. is generally ascribed the As the ancient liturgies, composed by honour of inventing the purgatorial ex- the most venerable Fathers of the primi- piation for venial transgressions. The tive Church, contained prayers for the doctrine, during the long night of the souls of prophets, apostles, martyrs, middle ages, passed through all the dis- confessors, preachers, and evangelists, AUG US TIN. 251 Augustin, having buried his mother, proceeded on his voyage to Carthage, at which place he arrived in safety A.D. 3 88. For a short time he continued at Carthage ; but, wishing for a season of retirement and meditation, he went first to Tagaste, his native place, and, to be at more perfect liberty to devote himself to study and prayer, he retreated to a country house, which was his own property, where he resided about three years, seques- tered entirely from the interruptions of worldly concerns. He lost his son Adeodatus in the year 391, while he was living in and even for the Blessed Virgin Mary, they could not have had for their object the deliverance from purgatory, or the abridgment of its expiatory pains. Am- brose prayed for the Emperors Valen- tinian, Gratian, and Theodosius ; Gre- gory Nazianzen for his brother Csesarius. Eusebius informs us of the prayers of- fered for the soul of Constantine ; and we cannot suppose that in these instances there was any reference to the pains of purgatory. The Fathers had not only no warrant for the practice in the Holy Scriptures, but they never pretended any such warrant. It was a dangerous cus- tom, leading to superstition and will- worship, and very gravely and properly rebuked in the homily of our Church on the subject : " Let these and such other considerations be sufficient to take away the gross error of purgatory out of our heads ; neither let us dream any more that the souls of the dead are anything at all holpen by our prayers ; but, as the Scripture teaches us, let us think that the soul of man, passing out of the body, goeth straightways either to heaven or else to hell : where the one needeth no prayer, the other is without redemption. The only purgatory wherein we must trust to be saved is the death and blood of Christ ; which, if we apprehend with a true and steadfast faith, it purgeth and cleanseth us from all our sins, even as well as if He were now hanging upon the cross This is that purgatory wherein all Christian men put their whole trust and confidence, nothing doubting but, if they truly repent them of their sins and die in perfect faith, that then they shall forthwith pass from death to life. If this kind of purgation will not serve them, let them never hope to be released by other men's prayers, though they should continue therein until the world's end. He that cannot be saved by faith in Christ's blood, how shall he look to be delivered by man's intercessions? Hath God more respect to man on earth than He hath to Christ in heaven ? "If any man sin, " saith St. John, "we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the right- eous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." (1 John ii.) But we must take heed that we call upon this Advocate while we have space given us in this life, lest, when we are once dead, there be no hope of salvation left unto us. For as every man sleepeth with his own cause, so every man shall rise again with his own cause. And look, in whatsoever state he dieth, in the same state he shall also be judged, whether it be to salvation or damnation. " Let us not, therefore, dream either of purgatory, or of prayer for the souls of them that be dead ; but let us earnestly and diligently pray for them which are expressly commanded in Holy Scripture, namely, for kings and rulers, for mi- nisters of God's Holy Word and Sacra- ments, for the saints of this world, other- wise called the faithful : to be short, for all men living, be they never so great enemies to God and His people, as Jews, Turks, Pagans, Infidels, and Heretics. Then shall we truly fulfil the command- ment of God in that behalf, and plainly declare ourselves to be the true children of our Heavenly Father, Who suffereth the sun to shine upon the good and bad, and the rain to fall upon the just and unjust."— (Third part of the Homily con- cerning Prayer.) 252 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. this solitude. And in the same year, at the request of a person of eminence and virtue residing at Carthage, who, being of un- settled opinions, was desirous of profiting by his converse and instruction, he was induced to repair to that city. Hither the reputation of his great learning and piety went before him, and prepared the way for his elevation to situations of dignity and influence. Having been ordained to the sacred ministry, he was soon promoted to the office of presbyter under Valerius, the Bishop of Hippo, who, being in declining years, and incapable, from his little acquaintance with the Latin language, of preaching with profit to the people, was glad to employ in that duty the abilities of a man, the fame of whose eloquence, piety, and zeal had now begun to be sounded through the Christian universe. Various were his writings, his discourses, and his disputations while he held the office of presbyter under Valerius, who at length, after obtaining the consent of the Bishop of Carthage, as the Primate of Africa, associated him with himself in the see with the title of bishop ; an irregular appointment, but confirmed by the suffrages of the clergy and people of the diocese, as well as by the bishops of the whole province. This promotion of Augustin took place in the year of our Lord 395, and for a period of thirty-five years from that date the life of this great bishop was a continuous labour in the defence of truth, the exposition of doctrine, and the confutation of heresies ; Arians, Donatists, Pelagians, and Manicheans suffering defeat in their turns under his indefatigable pen. The following may serve for a brief exposition of the rise and progress of the Donatists. This sect had its origin in the contest for the vacant chair of the bishopric of Carthage. Mensurius, the bishop of that see, died in the year 311, and the greater part of the clergy and the people elected Caecilian, the archdeacon, in his place ; but the Numidian bishops, not having been called in to take part in the appointment or consecration, were greatly offended. Caecilian was summoned to appear before them, and refused to acknow- ledge their authority. Greatly incensed at this contumacy, the bishops of Numidia, with the concurrence of a considerable party in Carthage itself, proceeded to pronounce Caecilian unduly ap- pointed, and declared Majorinus, his deacon, the Bishop of Carthage. The partisans of the rival bishops divided the Car- THE DONA TIS TS. 253 thaginian Church into two factions, adhering respectively to Caecilian and Majorinus, which soon spread their effects in the most malignant forms of discord and mutual hostility through the whole of Christian Africa. The character of Caecilian was loaded with opprobrious charges, and none among the Numidian bishops, who were the great promoters of the quarrel, was so distinguished by the vehemence of his invectives as Donatus, from whom the party on the side opposed to Caecilian received the name of Donatists. At length most of the African cities were divided between the supporters of Caecilian and Majorinus. The controversy raged with such fury that in 313 it was brought before the tribunal of the Emperor Constantine, on which Caecilian was acquitted of the charges brought against him ; but the dis- satisfied Donatists considered the decision as grossly partial and unjust. In the year following the dispute was brought before a much larger tribunal at Aries, which was attended by bishops from all the provinces of Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Germany. Still the Donatists lost their cause, and, appealing to the Emperor himself, met with a similar discomfiture. Exasperated by these successive defeats, the Donatists were unsparing in their attacks upon their opponents, from which the Emperor himself was not exempted. In the year 316 the Em- peror, inflamed by this opposition, ordered the bishops appointed by the Donatists to be banished, and some of their number were punished capitally for their rebellious obstinacy and invectives. This severe treatment had not the desired effect. Their conten- tious spirit was more excited by punishment, and the whole of Africa was thrown into the utmost disorder by their determined spirit and defiance of the imperial mandates. The Circumcel- liones, 1 a set of sanguinary enthusiasts, spreading themselves over the country, having no fixed residences, and assuming the cha- racter of combatants against the devil, acted as the champions of the Donatists, and spread dismay and slaughter around them. Such was the terror inspired by their numbers and audacity, that Constantine, influenced by his alarms and by the suggestions of 1 It has been considered that the Cir- were collected into bodies, having no cumcelliones took their name from the fixed residence. They called themselves (cellae) cottages of the peasants, round Agonistici, or combatants, giving out which these violent and lawless people that they were combating with Satan. 254 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. his African prefects, repealed the laws against the Donatists, who exceeded numerically the Catholics themselves. One of their councils exhibited an array of two hundred and seventy bishops. At length the Donatists were overcome in a battle with the troops of the Emperor Constantius in 348, and the majority fled, while others were sent into banishment or subjected to very severe punishments. They found some favour in the eyes of the Emperor Julian, and were permitted to return and assume their ascendency in 362, from which time they increased in power and presumption till 387, when Gratian commanded all their temples to be taken from them, and all their assemblies to be broken up. But such was the vitality of this determined sect, with the military aid of the Circumcelliones, that towards the conclusion of the fourth century they were represented by no less than four hundred bishops in council. Their community, however, at this period began to be weakened by schisms, and their great and powerful opponent, the subject of our present meditation, encountered them with all the vigour of his pen and the weight of his character. We are constrained to confess that, in his controversy with the Donatists, Augustin tarnished his Christian reputation and forfeited something of his character for moderation in the maintenance of his Catholic opinions. In his letters to Vincentius and to Boniface — the forty-eighth and fiftieth in the collection — he makes very subtle but unsatisfac- tory excuses for the change of his opinions on the subject of the interference of the magistrate to coerce and punish heretical doctrines. In the case of Donatus and his followers, he is not ashamed to justify the intervention of the civil authority to compel all separatists from the Catholic Church to return to her jurisdiction and discipline. The letters above referred to are curious specimens of sophistical disputation, and savour strongly of the habits which Augustin had brought with him from his rhetorical schools and forensic associations. In the notable epistle to Boniface, to give, as he seems to think, a decisive force to his arguments, he does not scruple to adduce the conversion of St. Paul as a proof of the sanatory effects of force in producing sincere conviction. 1 That a man so amiable, so reasonable, and so humble in his general carriage and intercourse, should, on a 1 " Quis enim non potest amplius amare et alios Apostolos solo verbo vocasset, quam Christus ; qui animam suam posuit Paulum prius Saulum ecclesice suae postea pro ovibus suis ? Et tamen cum Petrum magnum aedificatorem, sed horrendum THE DONA TIS TS. 255 subject so conspicuously belonging to the province of Divine teaching, and calling so peculiarly for the exercise of Christian charity, entertain an opinion so opposed to the obvious duties of love and forbearance, is a most striking and affecting instance of the pernicious results of setting the Church above the Gospel, and allowing human authority to lord it over God's heritage. That the Donatists were sound in doctrine their adversaries have not denied, and, unless we consider the Circumcelliones as incorporated with them, there seems to be no particular ground for censuring their moral conduct. Their offence lay in their contempt for the authority of the African Church, and their de- nial of the privileges of the Holy Spirit to all churches except, their own. But in the beginning of his letter to Boniface, Augustin, in explaining to that general the state of the contro- versy, thus distinguishes the Donatists from the Arians. The error of the Arians consists " in their ascribing divers substances to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost : the Donatists confess the one substance of the Trinity, although there are some among them who say that the Son is less than the Father, while they deny not that He is of the same substance ; but the greater part declare that they hold the same doctrine as the Catholic Church concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." It too distinctly appears that it was the deliberate opinion of this Father that the Donatists were to be brought back to the communion of the Church by compulsive measures; 1 and for this he thinks that we have a sufficient warrant in the various instances recorded in antea vastatorem, non sola voce com- solo verbo vocati sunt in evangelio labo- pescuit, verum etiam potestate prostra- ravit. Et quem major amor compulit vit ; atque infidelitatis tenebris saevien- ad charitatem ejus perfecta charitas foras tem, ad desiderandum lumen cordis ut misit timorem. Cur ergo non cogeret surgeret, prius corporis csecitate per- ecclesia perditos filios ut redirent, si per- cussit. Si poena ilia non esset non ab ea diti filii coegerunt alios ut perirent?" — postmodum sanaretur. Et quando apertis ' Epist. ad Bonif.' 50. oculis nihil videbat, si eos salvos haberet, ' In the second book of his ' Retracta- non ad impositionem manus Ananise, ut tions ' he retracts what he had before eorum aperiretur obtutus, tamquam squa- said on this subject. "Sunt duo libri mas, quibus clausus fuerat, inde ceci- mei, quorum titulus est ' Contra partem disse, Scriptura narraret. Ubi est quod Donati,' in quorum primo libro dixi, non isti clamare consueverunt, liberum est mihi placere ullius ssecularis potestatis credere, vel non credere? Ecce habent impetu schismaticos ad communionem Paulum Apostolum ; agnoscant in eo violenter arctari ; et vere tunc mihi non prius cogentem Christum et postea do- placebat, quia nondum expertus eram, centem : prius ferientem, et postea con- vel quantum mali, eorum auderet impu- solantem. Mirum est autem quomodo nitas, vel quantum eis in melius mutandis ille qui pcena corporis ad evangelium conferre posset diligentia disciplinse." — coactus intravit, plus illis omnibus qui Cap. 5. 256 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. Scripture of Divine chastisements for the sins of disobedience, when inflicted to reclaim the offender. "An non pertinet (he says), ad diligentiam pastoralem, etiam illas oves quae non vio- lenter ereptae, sed blande leniterque seductae a grege aberraverint, et ab alienis cseperint possideri, inventas ad ovile dominicum, si resistere voluerint, flagellorum terroribus, vel etiam doloribus revocare." Towards the termination of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, the Donatists, who by their persevering energy had acquired, in the face of much rebuke from the Church, a formidable ascendency throughout Christian Africa, were brought into direct collision with imperial power. The theory of coer- cion, so colourably maintained by Augustin in his elaborate epistles to Vincentius and Boniface, was practised, principally at the instigation of that zealous Father, against the whole body of recusants. The Emperor began by imposing a fine upon all of that sect who should refuse to return to the Catholic Church, and ordered into banishment all their bishops and clergy who should stand in the way of the imperial edict. When these measures were found to fail of success, severer methods were enforced ; and the Bishop of Hippo, in every effort to scatter and subvert the Donatists, was always ready to lend his whole weight and concurrence. The Council of Carthage, which was held in 404, sent to the Emperor Honorius for his aid in accomplishing this end, and, as far as regarded the Circumcelliones, there seemed to be a justi- fiable ground for using physical force for the purpose. 1 To secure the execution of these laws, the Fathers of the Council of Carthage, held in 407, were made by the Emperor, at their own request, the special functionaries to carry them into effect. But in the succeeding year the obnoxious sect rose into some favour with Honorius, and, before the expiration of the year 409, there issued a decree from that Emperor which put a temporary stop to compulsory proceedings in matters of religion. This liberal law was, however, withdrawn at the instance of the Council of Carthage, held in the year 410, and the Emperor's secretary 1 The severer laws against the Dona- gione ;' and in the ' Decree of the Council tists were usually called Edicts of Uni- of Carthage,' 407. In ' Cod. Eccl. formity. They are mentioned in the African.,' and by Du Pin, 220. 'Codex Theodos.,' lib. 11. ' De Reli- THE DONA TIS TS. 257 Marcellinus was sent in the following year into Africa, with full power to terminate the protracted contest by a full investigation and final decision. The examination occupied some days of inquiry, and resulted in a sentence in favour of Augustin and the Catholics. 1 Before this court there was a very numerous attendance of bishops on either side — two hundred and eighty-six Catholics and two hun- dred and seventy-nine Donatists. An appeal was in vain resorted to by the defeated party, and the Donatists, though in after periods they were in strength sufficient to give much disturbance, seemed to have irrecoverably lost their credit. The Vandals, under Genseric, showed them considerable countenance, but were not able to revive their lost reputation. The Circumcelliones had no longer any compact or aggregate power. They were com- pelled to fly before the imperial forces ; but, in the exercise of a vagrant hostility, were still able to spread consternation and slaughter throughout the province. With fluctuating success the Donatists lingered long in the North of Africa, and some- times extended a revived influence into some parts of Europe. The reign of the Vandals was favourable to their continuance, though this was an alliance not creditable to the reputation of their doctrines, and was shared with other condemned opinions of more general prevalence. The Donatist cause maintained itself, however, through the whole of the sixth century, till the vigorous opposition of Gregory the First, commonly styled Gregory the Great, was at length successful in repressing it altogether. The sect and heresy seem to have expired under his edicts, aided by the penal laws enacted against them by the Emperor Mauricius in 595 ; after which time they cease to have any marked existence in ecclesiastical history. 1 By this law all Donatists, without and no ecclesiastical authority was then distinction, if they refused to unite with regarded as invested with the capacity of the orthodox, were fined in proportion definitively deciding the conflicting claims to their substance. All the goods of of the Church. The reader may con- those who continued contumacious were suit ' Augustini Breviculum Collationum forfeited; and those who concealed or cumDonat. Opp.,' torn. ix. p. 371, etseq.; harboured them were subjected to similar Harduin, ' Coll. Concil.,' torn. 1. p. 1043, punishment. The bishops and clergy ct seq. The writings of Augustin against were banished to various places out of the Donatists fill the entire ninth volume the province, and all their churches were of his works, and it cannot be denied transferred to their opponents. that they have helped to furnish reli- It is worthy of remark that this court gious persecution with a name and au- of Marcellinus was a secular court, and thority which may have had some ten- that the trial was a legal proceeding ; dency to diminish its odium. S 258 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. The powers of Augustin's mind were kept in full exercise, from his promotion to the see of Hippo to the end of his exis- tence, by his contests with the Donatists. The weapons of controversy were never out of his hands. The Manicheans had received from him, while only a presbyter of Hippo, a great defeat in the person of Fortunatus, a presbyter of the Manichean sect, celebrated for his eloquence and learning, who, after his discomfiture, had left the city with shame. The conflicts of Augustin with the Arians and the Donatists were no hindrance to his exertions in the defence of orthodoxy against the other predominant errors of his time. The efforts of Pelagius and Caelestius, which began now greatly to dis- turb the Church, kept the powers of his indefatigable mind in unceasing exertion. Of the Pelagian heresy it would be difficult to enumerate all the various branches of controversy to which it gave birth. It may suffice to mention some two or three of the leading dogmas of an apostasy which involved the denial of the very ground and origin of Christianity itself. Pelagius was a monk of Britain, said to have been born in Wales, having originally the name of Marigena, which was corrupted into Morgan, and translated into Pelagius. In the year 400 he appears to have settled at Rome, and, in about five years afterwards, to have begun to inculcate his heretical opinions concerning original sin and the doctrine of free grace. 1 These opinions were embraced by Caelestius, then a student at Rome, who accompanied him to Africa in 411. There Caelestius remained for a few years at Carthage, but Pelagius proceeded to Egypt to communicate with the monks of that country. The history of these men is of no other impor- tance than as it involves the fate of their heretical dogmas. 1 The doctrines of Pelagius were for held in 418 at Carthage made applica- some years possessed of a fluctuating tion to the Emperor Honorius to obtain influence upon the Churches. John, the sanction of his imperial decrees for Bishop of Jerusalem, and even, in some the condemnation of this heresy ; and at measure, the Roman pontiffs, Innocent, length Zosimus joined in the sentence of and his successor Zosimus, afforded to the African bishops, which had also the them at first a sort of protection ; and it earnest support of Jerom and Augustin. was pronounced orthodox at a synod Still, however, Pelagianism maintained a held at Diospolis, in Palestine, a.d. 416. considerable footing in the Churches. Zosimus was at first disposed to favour Eighteen bishops refused to subscribe Cselestius, and even received him into the condemnation of Pelagius ; and even the communion of the Church. This in Africa it was upheld by the voices of was in the year 417. But a council many of the clergy. PEL A GIANISM. 259 They were both, after some fluctuations in their credit and re- ception, denounced by successive councils in all parts of the Christian world. Pelagius was condemned by the Councils of Carthage, Milevi, and Antioch, as well as by the Popes Innocent and Zosimus, and afterwards banished from Rome, together with his followers and avowed adherents, by the Emperor Honorius. His doctrines were far diffused, and long survived his banishment from Rome and condemnation at Antioch ; but nothing seems to be recorded of him personally after that last event. Cselestius, after being banished from the empire, and pronounced a heretic by several councils, ceased likewise to be known to history. Of Pelagius and his adherents, the leading opinions appear to have been the following. Adam was created a mortal man, and would have died though he had not sinned ; and men as they now come into the world, are, as to their powers and capacities, in the same state in which Adam was created. Whereas Augustin taught that death, tem- poral and eternal, with all the diseases of the body, are only the consequences and penalty of sin. According to Pelagius, the sin of Adam was the occasion of injury to mankind, not by propaga- tion and transmission, but by the moral influence of example ■ death, as well as diseases, the pains of childbirth, and all outward evils, are inseparable from our nature, and not attributable to the first transgression ; there was, therefore, no need of baptism to save infants from eternal death : while, according to Augustin and his followers, as the consequence of original sin, infants became obnoxious to eternal punishment ; for the prevention of which consequence they had need to be baptized. 1 That the 1 In his famous letter to Marcellinus prseter Christi corpus, cui ut ineorpo- will be found his opinions on this subject rentur Sacramento baptismatis imbu- fully set forth. After quoting the fol- untur ? " — Ep. ccxxii. In chapter xv. of lowing texts, " Nisi quis renatus fuerit his ' Retractations ' he relates that he had ex aqua et Spiritu non potest intrare in put a question to Terom, " de origine regnum Dei" — "Nisi manducaverint animre hominis." To which question homines carnem ejus, (hoc est, participes Jerom gave no solution, but declared facti fuerint corporis ejus,) non habebunt himself to have no leisure to frame an vitam," he draws his inferences from answer. But Augustin would not publish them thus — " His, atque hujusmodi aliis that book of his in which this subject was quae nunc pnetereo testimoniis, divina treated of during Jerom's life, hoping luce clarissimis, divina auctoritate certis- that he might be able to record Jerom's simis, nonne Veritas sine ulla ambiguitate opinion. But Jerom being dead, he proclamat non solum in regnum Dei non issued his book, that, as he declares, the baptizatos parvulos intrare non posse, reader might be admonished "non sed nee vitam aternam posse habere quaerere omnino an detur anima nascen- S 2 260 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. inveteracy of the sinful taint was insufficiently set forth in the doc- trines of Pelagius, Scripture and experience declare and testify ; while the argument of his extreme opposers lay perhaps too near the hypothesis of a mere physical and material propagation. Perhaps the conflicts of Augustin with the Pelagians threw him into some extreme opinions or statements, to which his sanguine temperament rendered him too propense. But on these subjects both Pelagius and Augustin have occa- sionally stated their opinions with qualifications which, if properly attended to, would show that the great ground of difference in this matter between Augustin and Pelagius was this — that the one adopted as his creed the express authority of Scripture, and that alone ; the other mixed the hypotheses of his reason with the dictates of Scripture, and placed the law and the testimony in subservience to them. The denial of all hereditary sin was the direct and immediate consequence of this presumptuous dogma. That Adam was in a certain sense the author of sin, Pelagius appears not to have denied ; but the propagation of sin by generation was the doctrine against which, putting Revelation aside, he reasoned, with the force of moral prejudice and practical impressions of justice in his favour. Nothing in the Pelagian system was more earnestly opposed by Augustin than its theory of grace and free will. Pelagius contended that, as man had ability to discern good from evil, so tibus, aut certe de re obscurissima earn the period of Scholasticism. Both Pela- solutionem quaestionis hujus admittere gius and Cselestius maintained the neces- quae contraria non sit apertissimis rebus, sity of baptism. The orthodox differed quas de originali peccato fides Catholica from them in asserting that, without novit in parvulis nisi regenerentur in baptism none could be saved. It was Christo sine dubitatione damnandis. allowed, indeed, by the schoolmen that And see Aug. lib. I., ' De Peccat. Mor. the wish (votum) to receive baptism et Remiss.' In the seventh ' Bampton might avail in the case of impediment to Lecture ' of Dr. Hampden we find the the actual reception of it : as also in following remarks (see p. 327) :— "The regard to the Eucharist. The blood of doctrine of baptism was what naturally martyrdom was supposed to flow with attracted the attention of the Church in regenerating efficacy : for thus had the the early ages. Its connection with the Holy Innocents been baptized in blood : doctrine of original sin brought it into the sword of the murderer consecrating prominent notice during the Pelagian them to the Saviour, for whom they controversies. And, before the rise of unconsciously suffered. But as no wish these controversies, we see the extrava- or vow of receiving the rite could have gunt opinion entertained of its sacra- been conceived by the infant, it was im- mental power, in the practice of delaying possible that, dying unbaptized — (hu- the reception of it until the approach of manity may shrink at the recital of such death ; so that the indispensable necessity a tenet)— it could escape the punishment of baptism had been established before due to original sin." PELAGIANISM. ! 26 1 had he likewise power to will and to work what is good ; and that his will was essentially and operatively his own. Of grace he had confused apprehensions. It was sometimes used by him for the propounding of the law, sometimes for the manifestation of the truth, sometimes for the influence of Christ's example, and sometimes for the help of the Holy Spirit ; but of prevent- ing grace, the grace of illumination, of unction, of utterance, of supplication, of godliness, of perseverance, and of joy and com- • fort in believing, the notions of Pelagius and his followers came exceedingly short. And, indeed, the possibility of performing good works by our own natural powers, and the practicability of perfect obedience by the right use of our wills, depreciated, if it did not disown, the distinct office of the Holy Ghost. The opinions of Augustin on this great and important topic, are so well expressed in his letter to Valentinus, that the reader will not be sorry to have it set before him. 1 To Valentinus, my much loved and honoured Lord, and Brother in the Lord. "We have been visited by two young men, Cresconius and Felix, belonging, as they say, to your congregation ; who reported to us that your monastery was agitated by a disagreement in opinion which provoked much discussion ; some entertaining such exalted views of grace as wholly to deny to man the possession of free will ; and, what is of worse consequence, main- taining that, in the day of judgment, God will not render to everyone according to his works. But they said that most of you held another opinion, maintaining that free will is assisted by the grace of God, and thereby disposed to what is right in thought and act ; and that when the Lord shall come to render to everyone according to his works, He will pronounce those works only to be good, which God has prepared that we should walk in them. And this I pronounce to be the right opinion For, in the first instance, our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is written in the Gospel of the Apostle John, did not come to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him ; but afterwards, as writes the Apostle Paul, God shall judge the world, when He shall come, as the Church confesses in 1 Epist. xlvi. 262 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS, its creed — to judge the quick and the dead. If, therefore, there be no grace of God, how does He save the world ; if there be no free will, how does He judge the world ? Accordingly the book or epistle of mine which the persons above-mentioned brought to you I wish you to understand agreeably to this belief — that you neither deny the grace of God, nor so maintain the doctrine of free will, as separating it from the grace of God, as though without it we were able to think or do anything well pleasing to God ; for this is impossible. It is for this reason that our Lord, when He speaks of the fruit of righteousness, says to His disciples, ' Without Me you can do nothing.' On which sub- ject I would have you to understand that the letter above alluded to was written to Sixtus, a presbyter of the Church of Rome, and was intended against the new Pelagian heretics, who say that the grace of God is bestowed according to our merits ; in which case he who glorieth is not to glory in the Lord, but in himself — that is, in man, not in the Lord. " Let no one say that for the merits of his own works, or for the merits of his prayers, or for the merits of his faith, the grace of God was given to him ; nor let that be believed which those heretics affirm — that the grace of God is given to us according to our deservings, which is altogether a most false assertion ; not because there is nothing meritorious or good belonging to the pious, and no evil in the impious, for if it were so, how shall God judge the world ?" In another letter to Valentin, 1 concerning the same persons, he says : — " I have read to them the book composed by the most blessed martyr Cyprian, on the prayer of our Lord, and have shown them how He taught that all things which relate to the govern- ment of our lives are to be asked for from our Father which is in heaven, lest, presuming upon our own free will and power of choice, we fall from our dependence on Divine grace. We have also clearly shown them in what manner the same most glorious martyr has instructed us to pray for our enemies who are as yet unacquainted with the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, that they may become believers ; which would be an unavailing precept, unless the Church believed that the bad and faithless wills of ' Epist. xlvii. AUGUSTINS VIEWS ON GRACE AND FREE WILL. 263 men might be turned, by the converting grace of God, to what is good and profitable." The above passages from his letters to Valentin explain the views of Augustin on the propositions, standing in apparent opposition to each other, of sovereign grace and free will. They leave the province of the understanding, and the power of choice, which it embraces, undenied and unimpaired. To know our ignorance, to feel our wants, to be sensible of our weakness, and to discern the source from which help is to be sought for, is left to the competency of the natural mind, and may be said to actuate the movements of the free agent ; but to covet the best gifts, to dread the wrath and appreciate the love of God, to know the precious value of the Saviour's Cross, to have the heart engaged in the utterance of prayer, and to seek and ask with the proper importunity, are the specific effects of grace, and the blessed Spirit's work alone. And such appear to have been the views of Augustin. The above sentiments of Augustin are full of Scriptural sanction and discriminating moderation ; but it must be owned that he did not always set forth, with their necessary guards and qualifications, his views on this subject. The ambiguity of the terms which he sometimes used in explaining himself on this difficult subject gave occasion to persons precipitate and extreme in their interpretations to carry out his propositions, far beyond their real meaning, to a dangerous and anti-scriptural excess. " That God had predestinated the wicked, not only to suffer eternal punishment, but also to commit sin, and to incur the guilt deserving that punishment ; and, as a consequence, that the good and sinful actions of men were alike predetermined by an unavoidable necessity " — such were the notions of the persons to whom the name ' Predestinarians ' was applied in its unquali- fied sense. At the Councils of Aries and Lyons Augustin declared his disapprobation of these excessive opinions ; and it appears, from the general spirit and effect of his writings, that his ultimate sentiments lay far on this side of the rigorous doctrines respecting the Divine decrees by which the Predestinarians were distinguished. Yet that he maintained a theory nearer to their views than any of the Fathers which preceded him, is plainly deducible from his works. The doctrine of conditional election was the limit beyond which no theory adventured before the 264 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. question fell under the strong handling of the Bishop of Hippo. All the doctors of the fourth century appear to have rested in the persuasion of a conditional election, or an election grounded on the Divine foreknowledge of the good works to be done by- individuals, and with this was coupled the opinion of the possible falling from grace of such as had experienced its influence. That the atonement was not made for the elect alone, but that the Saviour died for all, was likewise the conviction of the Fathers anterior to Augustin, and even Augustin's early persuasion was characterised by similar views, till his theory of grace, its per- severing efficacy, and its necessity as the basis of all good works, forced on him a further recognition of the doctrine of the Divine decrees ; till the election of some to everlasting life, by the inscrutable will of God predestinating them from all eternity to repentance, faith, and good works, and finally to salvation, and leaving others to perish through their sins everlastingly, became the comprehensive dogma of Augustin's creed respecting the disposition and destiny to which man and his immortal interests are made unchangeably subject. To bring these topics to an adjustment agreeable to the dictates of human reason was not within the competency of Augustin, or, indeed, of man's understanding. In the endeavour to reduce them to system and theory, the mind is involved in the perplexities of apparent contradiction, and driven upon pro- positions liable to be impugned, misstated, and distorted in a thousand ways. Thus Augustin has been made, in after ages, to sustain the imputation of maintaining the doctrine of un- conditional decrees in all their extent, and in all their con- sequences. The various branches of opinions entertained by the persons known under the designation of Semipelagians, entering into conflict with the disciples of Augustin, multiplied disputes which, for several centuries, divided and subdivided the believing world, and distracted the Church. The system of Augustin, which ascribed everything to the grace of God, and to human sufficiency nothing, has been adopted as sound doctrine in all ages, with countless varieties in shade and degree. The modified Augustinianism of the Massilians, though this has also assumed various aspects, established itself in a somewhat syste- matic consistency throughout Europe, and especially among the schools of the Gallic monks ; but their doctrines often shared THE SEMIPELAGIANS. 265 the reproach of the Pelagian and Semipelagian heresies. The writings of those times in which the tenets espoused by the Massilians are most systematically set forth are those of John Cassianus, a monk who settled a monastery at Marseilles about the time of Augustin's decease, 430. The opinions of the Massilians, or rather of the Semipelagians, promoted by the writings of Cassianus, were extended over a considerable part of both Gallic and Greek Churches ; and so much in favour were these doctrines during the fifth century that Lucidus, a presbyter, having professed the pure adoption of Augustin's opinions on predestination and the Divine decrees, was brought to account by Faustus, a bishop of Gaul, before the council held at Aries, A.D. 475, where those assembled censured the presbyter for his Augustinianism, and encouraged Faustus to oppose it, which he did in his two books, ' De Libero Arbitrio.' But the tide was turned again in favour of unmodified Augustinianism in the following century. So unstable is human reasoning when it affects a wisdom beyond the powers conceded to it, and the disclosures vouchsafed to it by Him who hath said unto man, " Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding." x How and by what appointment evil has become mixed with God's creation, it does not necessarily concern us to know, and know we cannot, if we would. The fact that evil exists, and the fact that free will exists, as far as we can have evidence of the existence of anything, are both apparent. That God is om- niscient, and governs the world by His Providence, are truths which no well-constituted mind finds it possible to doubt. There may be difficulty in reconciling these propositions, but they are distinctly manifest. Whatever may be said by some on the subject, who delight in abstract views of practical things, it is most clear that all mankind think, and speak, and act, as if their wills were free, and that to think and act upon a contrary prin- ciple is impossible, without opposing the whole scheme of society, abandoning all motives to action, and disclaiming all distinctions of right and wrong. As God deals with us, so in effect we are ; and nothing can be more absurd and presumptuous than to deduce any theory as to the nature and condition of man from speculations concerning the nature and attributes of God ; or to 1 Job xxviii. 28. 266 CHURCH MEMORIALS AND CHARACTERISTICS. begin with determining what God is as the foundation for our conclusions respecting our own capacities and relations. Free will and predestination are both maintained by Augustin, because they distinctly appear in the Bible. And if there is an apparent incongruity between them, it is not within the province or the competency of a finite understanding to adjust and accommodate them to each other. They are to be distinctly believed by us, unless they are contradictory and exclusive of each other. Their apparent incongruity signifies nothing. We may safely infer that, as they are both found in the Word of God, there is a congruity between them, though concealed from our view. Let a man be ever so firm in the belief of a controlling Providence, who foresees the issues of all our contests with evil, and yet convinced of the freedom of his own will, such two persuasions would have no tendency to produce a vacillating conduct or contradictory practice. Propositions which are contradictory cannot both be believed, for they are exclusive of each other ; neither can any proposition which includes contradictory terms be believed, for such are self-destructive ; they import nothing ; they offer nothing to the belief: it is as if we were told of a circle whose radii are unequal. ■ The two conditions which we have been supposing to exist are both distinctly conceivable ; our difficulty is in comprehend- ing how they can work together. The subject is only to be relieved of its embarrassment by directing our thoughts to the difference between things above, and things contrary to, reason. A thing is above reason when we do not perceive how it can be ; it is contrary to reason when we do perceive that it cannot be. In things properly said to be above reason, the understanding decides nothing as to the object, but simply as to its own inca- pacity. In things contrary to reason, the intellect decides as to the object, that it cannot be. A thing that is above reason is, with respect to reason, neither true nor false ; of a thing contrary to reason we assert it to be false. To be above reason is a relative, to be contrary to reason is an absolute, predicament. It may be above human reason, but not above angelical reason. It may be above the scrutiny of angels, and yet known to be true in the Divine intelligence. But a thing that is contrary to reason must stand equally opposed to all reason, Divine and human. The result of all which is this : that what is above GOD'S FOREKNO WLEDGE AND MAN'S FREE A GENCY. 267 reason may be well believed ; whereas, what is contrary to it must be at once, absolutely and universally, discredited and rejected. If, therefore, the two propositions of God's foreknow- ledge and man's free agency are both equally to be collected from Scripture, we ought, in no case, to doubt their being respec- tively true. As the case really stands, to disbelieve them, because we cannot perceive how they are to be reconciled, or in what way their congruity is to be manifested, would amount to a renunciation of the infallible Word of God, being equally a revolt against positive testimony and sound philosophy ; for man may be free to will and to act, though God may know what he will choose and what he will execute. What are the essential perfections of His infinite nature we cannot know, and therefore we cannot give the whole moral explanation of this difficult problem. But of how many phenomena of the natural and moral world are we constrained to remain in profound ignorance ! Of this we may be sure, as has been well said, " That God cannot make one false step in the moral or natural world ; that ' right- eousness and judgment are the habitation of His seat,' though 1 clouds and darkness are round about Him.' W1 In pursuing this great subject, the lines of which are so strongly traced in the theology of Augustin, we are led by his reasonings to acknowledge that in the conjunct consideration of the freedom of man's will with an universally-disposing Provi- dence as abstract doctrines, there are great and unmanageable difficulties ; while the whole constitution of the natural and moral world suggests and forces them upon us, as propositions to 1 It is by these references to our Se, '6n Kal 6 irii.cn cpavepbs 5ok&v that fj\ios natural experience in the way of ana- ovKiTriTpeireiroTs avOpunrois kavrbv aKpiftws logy that our Saviour answers the diffi- opav, &AA' edv tis aurbv avaiSus iyxetpv culties which Nicodemus confessed him- dtaadat, tt/j/ 6\piv a(paipe?Tai. Kal robs self to feel in understanding the doctrine vTrriperas Se rwf 6ewv evpr) &voodev "The wind bloweth where it listeth, acplerai Srj\oy, Kal on oTs av evrvxv and thou hearest the sound thereof, but -rrdvTwv Kparel, bparai 5' ovr iwtwv, ovre canst not tell whence it cometh, and KaracrKrityas, oijre airiwv Kal &ve/j.ot avrol whither it goeth ;" and again, "If I fJ-ev ovx opwvrai, a Se woiovat cpavepa ripuv have told you earthly things, and ye «v avOpunrivwv,) rod 6eiou gracious words remind the scholar of the jueTe'xei - Srt fxev yap fiac, we do not mean to imply that all the prayers are not excellent in themselves, but only to express a doubt whether in some cases they may not be a little too elaborate for children. Of course it by no means follows that "when you use a book you are to use equally every portion of it: "what does not suit one )>tay suit a score of others, and this book is clearly compiled on the comprehensivepr iuciple. But to giz>e a veracious verdict on the book it is needful to mention this. We need hardly say that it is well worth buying, and of a very ■high order of merit." — Literary Churchman. " Messrs. Rivington have sent us a manual of prayers for children, called ' The Star of Childhood,' edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter, a very fill collection, including instruction as •well as devotion, and a judicious selection of hymns." — Church Review. " The Rev. T. T. Carter, of Clewer, has put forth a much needed and excellent book of devotions for little children, called ' The Star of Childhood.' We think it fair to tell our readers, that in it they will find that for children who have lost a near relative a short commemorative prayer is -provided; but we most earnestly hope that even by those who are not willing to accept this usage, the book will not be rejected, for it is a most valuable one. " — Monthly Packet. "One amongst the books before us deserves especial notice, entitled ' The Star of Child- hood' and edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter: it is eminently adapted for a New Year's Gift. It is a manual of prayer for children, with hymns, litanies, and instructions. Some of the hymns are illustrative of our Lords life ; and to these are added reduced copies from en- gravipigs of Fra Augelico." — Penny Fost. " Supposing a child to be capable of using a devotional manual, the book before us is, in its general structure, as good an attempt to meet the want as could have been put forth. In the first place it succeeds, where so many like efforts fail, in tlie matter of simplicity The language is quite within tlie compass of a young child; that is to say, it is such as a young child can be -made to understand ; for we do not suppose that the book is intended to be put directly into his hands, but through the hands of an instructor." — Church Bells. " To the same hand which gave us the ' Treasury of Devotion ' we are indebted for this beautiful little manual for children. Be- ginning with prayers suited to the comprehen- sion of tlie youngest, it contains devotions, litanies, hymns, and instructions, carefully proportioned to the gradually increasing pow- ers of a child 's mind from the earliest years, until confirmation. This little book cannot fail to influence for good the impressible hearts of children, and we hope that ere long it will be in tlie hands of all those who are blessed with Catholic-minded parents. It is beautifully got up, and is rendered more attractive by the capital engravings of Fra Angelica's pictures of scenes of our Lord's childhood. God-parents could scarcely find a more appropriate gift for their God-chilttreu than this, or one that is more likely to lead tliem to a knowledge of the truth." — Church Union Gazette. " ' The Star of Childhood' is a first book of Prayers and instruction for children, coin- piled by a Priest, and edited by the Rev. T. T. Carter, rector of Clewer. It is a very care- ful compilation, and the name of its editor is a warrant for its devotional tone." — Guardian. "A handsomely got up and attractive volume, with several good illustrations from Fra Augelico's 7iwst fatuous paintings." — ■ Union Review. BY THE SAME COMPILER AND EDITOR. THE TREASURY OP DEVOTION: A Manual of Prayers for Gene- ral and Daily Use. Sixth Edition. Imperial 32mo, 2s. 6d. ; limp cloth, 2s. Bound with the Book of Common Prayer, 3s. 6d. THE WAY OP LIFE : A Book of Prayers and Instruction for the Young (at School). Imperial 32mo, is. 6d. THE GUIDE TO HEAVEN : A Book of Prayers for every Want. For the Working Classes. New Edition. Imperial 32010, is. 6d. ; limp cloth, is. The Edition in large type may still be had. Crown 8vo, is. 6d. ; limp cloth, tt. THE PATH OP HOLINESS: A First Book of Prayers, with the Service of the Holy Communion, for the Young. With Illustrations. Crown i6mo, is. 6d. ; limp cloth, is. LECTURES ON THE REUNION OP THE CHURCHES. By John J. Ign.Von Dollinger, D.D., D.C.L., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Munich, Provost of the Chapel-Royal, &c. &c. Authorized Translation, with Preface by Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, M. A., late Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford. Crown 8vo. $s. ". . . Marked by all the author's well- a host of 'others equally important and equally known, varied learning, breadth of view, and -well discussed." — Standard. outspoken spirit. The momentous question " fn tlie present state of thought respecting •which tlie Doctor discusses has long occupied the union of the Churches, these Lectures will the thoughts of some of the most earnest and be welcomed by very many persons of different enlightened divines in all branches of the schools of religious thought. They are not the Christian communion, though wide apart in hasty words of an enthusiast, but the calm, other points of belief and practice. On tlie in- well-considered , and carefully prepared writ- finite importance of reunion among Christian ings of one whose soul is profoundly moved by Churches in tlieir endeavour to evangelize the his great subject. They form a contribution yet remaining two-thirds of the human race — to the literature of this grave question, valu- st rangers to any form of Christianity — the able alike for its breadth of historical survey, autlwr enlarges with power and eloquence ; its fairness, the due regard paid to existing and this topic is one of unusual and lasting obstacles, and the practical character of its interest, though, of course, only one among a suggestions." — London Quarterly Review. BRIGHSTONE SERMONS. By George Moberly, D.C.L., Bishop of Salisbury. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. THE SAYINGS OF THE GREAT FORTY DAYS, Between the Resurrection and Ascension, regarded as the Outlines of the Kingdom of God. In Five Discourses. With an Examination of Dr. Newman's Theory of Development. By George Moberly, D.C.L., Bishop of Salisbury. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. WARNINGS OF THE HOLY WEEK, &C. Being a Course of Parochial Lectures for the Week before Easter and the Easter Festivals. By the Rev. W. Adams, M.A., late Vicar of St. Peter's-in-the-East, Oxford, and Fellow of Merton College. Seventh Edition. Small 8vo. 45-. 6d. SELF-RENUNCIATION. From the French. With Introduction by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M.A., Rector of Clewer. Crown 8vo. 6s. "ft is excessively difficult to review or treatise of 'Guillore, a portion oj "which is now criticise, in detail, a book of this kind, and for the first time we believe, done into English. yet its abounding merits, its practicalness, its .... Hence the suitableness of such a searching good sense and thoroughness, and book as this for those who, in the midst of their its frequent beauty, too, make us wish to do families, are endeavouring to advance in the something more than announce its publication. spiritual life. Hundreds of devout souls . . . . The style is eminently clear, free living in the world have been encouraged and from redundance and prolixity.''' — Literary helped by such books as Dr. Neale's 'Sermons Churchman. preached in a Religious House.' For such the "Few save Religious and those brought into present work will be found appropriate, while immediate contact with them are, in all for Religious themselves it will be invaluable." probability, acquainted with the French — Church Times. THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF. By S. Baring-Gould, M.A., Author of "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages." Vol. I. MONOTHEISM and POLYTHEISM. Second Edition. 8vo. 1 5 j. Vol. II. CHRISTIANITY. Svo. 15*. Mtssxs. JLibrngtott's fJublixattons THE HIDDEN LIFE OP THE SOUL. From the French. By the Author of " A Dominican Artist," " Life of Madame Louise de France," &c. Crown 8vo. 5s. '"The Hidden Life -of the Soul,' by the author of ' A Dominican Artist,' is from the •writings of Father Grou, a French refugee priest of ijg2, who died at Lulworth. It well deserves the character given it of being 'ear- nest and sober,' and not ' sensational.' " — Guardian. " There is a wonderful charm about these readings — so calm, so true, so thoroughly Christian. We do not know where they would come amiss. As materials for a consecutive series of meditations for the faitliful at a series of early celebratiofis they would be excellent, or for private reading during Advent or Lent." — Literary Church- man. " From the French of Jean Nicolas Grou, a pious Priest, whose works teach resignation to the Divine will. He loved, we are told, to inculcate simplicity , freedom from all affecta- tion and unreality, the patience and humility which arte too surely grounded in self-know- ledge to be surprised at a fall, but withal so allied to confidence in God as to make re- covery easy and sure. This is the spirit of the volume which is intended to furnish advice to those who would cultivate a quiet, meek, and childlike spirit." — Public Opinion. A DOMINICAN ARTIST ; a Sketch of the Life of the Rev. Pere Besson, of the Order of St. Dominic. By the Author of the " The Tales of Kirkbeck," "The Life of Madame Louise de France," &c. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. "The author of the Life of Pere Besson writes with a grace and refinement of devo- tional feeling peculiarly suited to a subject- matter which suffers beyond most otliersfrom any coarseness of touch. It would be difficidt to find ' the simplicity and purity of a holy life' more exquisitely illustrated than in Fatlier Besson' s career, both before and after his joi7iing the Dominican Order under the auspices of Lacordaire. . . . Certainly we have never come across what could more strictly be termed in the truest sense ' the life of a beautiful soul.'' The author has done well in presenting to English readers this singularly graceful biography, in which all who can appreciate genuine simplicity and nobleness of Christian c/taracter will find muck to admire and little or nothing to con- demn." — Saturday Review. ' ' // would indeed have been a deplorable omission had so exquisite a biography been by any neglect lost to English readers, and had a character so perfect in its simple and com- plete devotion been withheld from our admira- tion. . . . But we have dwelt too long already on this fascinating book, and must now leave it to our readers." — Literary Churchman. "A beautifod and most interesting sketch of the late Fere Besson, an artist who forsook the easel for the altar." — Church Times, "A book which is as pleasant for reading as it is profitable for meditation." — Union Re- view. " Wtiatever a reader may think of Pere Besson's profession as a monk, no one will doubt his goodness ; no one can fail to profit who •will patiently read his life, as here written by a frietid, whose sole defect is in being Slightly unctU07tS."—ATHENMVM. "The life of the Rev. Pere Besson, who gave up an artist's career, to which he was devotedly attached, and a mother whose affec- tion for him is not inaptly likened to that of Monica for St. Augttstine, must be read in its entirety to be rightly appreciated. And the •whole tenour of tlie book is too devotional, too full of expressions of the most touching de- pendence on God, to make criticism possible, even if it was called for, which it' is not." — John Bull. " The story of Fere Besson's life is one of piuch interest, and told "with simplicity, can- dour, and good feeling." — Spectator. "A beautiful book, describing the most saintly and very individual life of one of the companions of Lacordaire." — Monthly Packet. " We strongly recommend it to our readers . It is a charming biography, that will delight and edify both old and young." — Westmin- ster Gazette. THE LIFE OF MADAME LOUISE DE FRANCE, daughter of Louis XV. Known also as the Mother Terese de St. Augustine. By the Author of " Tales of Kirkbeck." Crown 8vo. 6s. "On the 15th of July 1737, Marie Leczin- ska, the wife of Lotas XV., and daughter of the dethroned King of Poland, which Prussia helped to despoil and plunder, gave birth to her eighth female child, Louise Marie, known also as the Mother Terese de St. Angus tin. On the death of the Queen, the princess, who had long felt a vocatioti for a religions life, obtained the consent of her royal father to wit/idrazu from the world. The Carmelite convent of St. Denis was the chosen place of retreat. Here the novitiate was passed, here the final vows were taken, and here, on the death of the Mere Julie, Madame Louise be- gan and terminated her experiences as prior- ess. The little volume which records the simple incidents of her pious seclusion is designed to edify those members of the Church of England in whom the spirit of religious self-devotion is reviving." — Westminster Review. " The annals of a cloistered life; under ordinary circumstances, would 'not probably be considered very edifying by the reading public of the present generation. When, however, such a history p)-esents the novel spectacle of a royal princess of modern times voluntarily re- nouueing her high position and the splendours of a court existence, for the purpose of en- during the asceticism, poverty, and austerities of a severe monastic rule, the case may well be differejit" — Morning Post. iftcssrs. glibtngtcm's Jhtbltmticms HENRI PERREYVE. By A. Gratry, Pretre de l'Oratoire, Professeur de Morale Evangelique a la Sorbonne, et Membre de 1'Academie Francaise. Translated, by special permission, by the Author of "A Dominican Artist," "Life of S. Francis de Sales," &c, &c. With Portrait. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. " . . . A most touching' and powerful piece of biography, interspersed -with profound reflections on personal religion, and on the frospects of Christianity. . . . For priests tin's look is a treasure. The moral of it is the absolute necessity of ' rccollectedness' to tlie higher, and especially the true priestly life." — Church Review. " The ivories of the translator of Henri Ferreyve form, for the most part, a series of saintly biographies which have obtained a larger share of popularity than is generally accorded to books of this description. . . . The description of his last days will probably be read with greater interest than any other part of the book ; presenting as it does an ex- ample of fortitude under suffering, and rcsig- ndiio n , when cut off so soon after en tering upon a much-coveted and useful career, of rare occurrence in this age of self-assertion. This is, in fact, the essential teaching of the entire volume. . . . The translator of the Abbe Gratry' 's work has done well in giving English readers an opportunity of profiting by its les- sons." — Morning Post. " Those who take a pleasure in reading a beautiful account of a beautiful character would do well to procure the Life of 'Henri THE LAST DAYS OF PERE GRATRY. By Pere Adolphe Perraud, of the Oratory, and Professor of La Sorbonne. Translated by special permission. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. Ferreyve.' . . . We 7uould especially re- commend the book for the perusal of English priests, who may learn manyaholy lessonfrom the devoted spirit in which the subject of the memoir gave himself up to the duties of his sacred office, and to the cultivation of the graces withwhich he was endowed." — Church Times. " It is easy to see that Henri Ferreyve, Pro- fessor of Moral Theology at the Sorbonne, was a Roman Catholic priest of no ordinary type. With comparatively little of what Protestants call superstition, with great courage and sin- cerity, toith a nature singularly guileless and noble, his priestly vocation, although pursued, according to his biographer, with unbridled zeal, did not stifle his human sympathies and aspirations. He could not believe that his faith compelled him ' to renounce sense and reason,' or that a priest was not free to speak, act, and think like other men. Indeed, the Abbe Gratry makes a kind of apology for his friend's free-speaking in this respect, and en- deavours to explain it. Ferreyve was tlie be- loved disciple of Lacordaire, whe left him all his manuscripts, notes, and papers, and he himself attained tlie position of a great pulpit orator." — Pall Mall Gazette. S. FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND PRINCE OF GENEVA. By the Author of " A Dominican Artist," " Life of Madame Louise de France," &c, &c. Crown 8vo. 9^. "// is written with the delicacy ,freshness,and absence of all affectation which characterised the former works by the same hand, and which render these books so very much more pleasant reading than are religious bio- graphies in general. The character of S. Francis de Sales, Bishop of Geneva, is a charming one; a more simple, pure, and pious life it would be difficult to conceive. His unaffected humility, his freedom from dogmatism in an age when dogma was placed above religion, his freedom from bigotry in an age of persecution, were alike admirable." — Standard. " Tlie author of 'A Dominican Artist,' in writing this new life of tlie wise and loving Bishop and Prince of Geneva, has aimed less at histoi-ical or ecclesiastical investigation than at a vivid and natural representation of the inner mind and life of tlie subject of his biography, as it can be traced in his own writings and in those of his most intimate and affectionate friends. The book is written -with the grave and quiet grace which charac- terizes the productions of its autlwr, and can- not fail to please those readers who can sympathize with all forms of goodness and devotion to noble purpose." — Westminster Review. " A book which contains tlie record of a life as sweet, pure, and noble, as any man by divine help, granted to devout sincerity of soul, has been permitted to live upon earth. The example of this gentle but resolute and energetic spirit, wholly dedica ted to the high- est conceivable good, offering itself, with all the temporal uses of mental existence, to the service of infinite and eternal beneficence, is extremely touching. . . . It is a book worthy of acceptance." — Daily News. " It is not a translation or adaptation, but an original-work, and a very charming portrait of one of the most -winning characters in the long gallery of Saints. And it is a matter of entire thankfulness to us to find a distinctively A nglican -writer setting forward the good Bishop's work among Protestants, as a true missionary task to reclaim souls from deadly error, and bring tliem back to the truth." — Union Review. THE SPIRIT OF S. FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND PRINCE OF GENEVA. Translated from the French by the Author of "The Life of S. Francis de Sales," "A Dominican Artist," &c, &c. Crown Svo. 6s. A SELECTION PROM THE SPIRITUAL LETTERS OP S. FRANCIS DE SALES, BISHOP AND PRINCE OF GENEVA. Translated by the Author of "Life of S. Francis de Sales," "A Dominican Artist," &c. &c. Crown 8vo. 6s. "Itisacollectionofepistolarycorresponde7icc from his Spiritual Letters' 1 then announced: of rare interest and excellence. With those who — and a great boon it will be to many. The have read the Life, there cannot but have been Letters are addressed to people of all sorts: — a strong desire to know more of so beautiful a to men and to women: — to laity and to character as S. Francis de Sales. He was a ecclesiastics, to people living in the world, model of Christian saintliness and religious or at court, and to the inmates of Religious virtue for all time, and one everything relating Houses. And what an idea it gives one of the to whom, so great were the accomplishments of widely ramifying influence of otic good man. his mind as well as the devotion of his heart, and of the untiring diligence of a man, who in has a charm which delights, instructs, and spite of all his external duties, could find or elevates.'" — Church Herald. make the time for all these letters. We hope "A few months back we had the pleasure that with our readers it may be totally need- of welcoming the Life of S. Francis de Sales. less to urge such a volume on their notice." — Here is the promised sequel: — the 'Selection Literary Churchman. CONSOLATIO ; or, Comfort for the Afflicted. Edited by the Rev. C. E. Kennaway. With a Preface by Samuel Wilbekforce, D.D., Lord Bishop of Winchester. New Edition. Small 8vo. 3^. 6d. "A charming collection from the best " We are bound to admire the extreme writers of passages statable in seasons of beauty and the warm devotion of the majority sickness and afflictions." — Church Review. of passages here collected to smooth the soul "A very valuable collection of extracts that sorrows, even though penned by men from writers of every school. The volume is from ■whom we differ so much in doctrine." — an elegant one ." — Church Times. Rock. "A very useful collection of devotional ex- "A work which we feel sure will find a tracts from the histories of good men of very welcome and also prove a soothing guest in various schools of thought." — John Bull. the chamber of many an invalid." — Record. A BOOK OP FAMILY PRAYER. Compiled by Walter Farquhar Hook, D.D., Dean of Chichester. Eighth Edition. iSmo. 2s. FAMILY PRAYERS. Compiled from various Sources (chiefly from Bishop Hamilton's Manual), and arranged on the Liturgical Principle. By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., Dean of Norwich. New Edition. Large type. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. Cheap Edition, 161110. I J. A MANUAL OP CONFIRMATION, Comprising— 1. A General Account of the Ordinance. 2. The Baptismal Vow, and the English Order of Confirmation, with Short Notes, Critical and Devotional. 3. Meditations and Prayers on Passages of Holy Scripture, in connexion with the Ordinance. With a Pastoral Letter instructing Catechumens how to prepare themselves for their first Communion. By Edward Meyrick Goulburn, D.D., Dean of Norwich. Ninth Edition. Small 8vo. is. 6d~. DIRECTORIUM PASTORALE. The Principles and Practice of Pastoral Work in the Church of England. By the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A., F.S. A., Editor of "The Annotated Book of Common Prayer," &c. &c. Third Edition, revised. Crown 8vo. "js. 6d. "This is the third edition of a work which clergy is proved by the acceptance it has al- has become deservedly popular as the best ready received at their hands, and no faithful extant exposition of the principles and practice parish priest, who is working in real earnest of the pastoral work in the Church of Eng- for the extension of spiritual instruction land. Its hints and suggestions are based on amongst all classes oj his flock will rise from practical experience, and it is further re- the perusal of its pages without having ob- commended by the majority of our Bishops at tained some valuable hints as to the best mode the ordination of priests and deacons." — of bringing home our Church's system to the Standard. hearts of his people." — National Church. "Its practical usefulness to the parochial THE SHEPHERD OP HERMAS. Translated into English, with an Introduction and Notes. By Charles H. Hoole, M.A., Senior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. Small 8vo. 4s. 6d. iVtcssrs. Jlibington's -publication' HYMNS AND POEMS FOR THE SICK AND SUFFER- ING. In connexion with the Service for the Visitation of the Sick. Selected from various Authors. Edited by T. V. Fosbery, M.A., Vicar of St. Giles's, Reading. New Edition. Small Svo. 3-f. 6d. THE "DAMNATORY CLAUSES" OF THE ATHANASIAN CREED RATIONALLY EXPLAINED, IN A LETTER TO THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P. By the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., Rector of St. George, Botolph Lane. Crown Svo. 6s, A GLOSSARY OF ECCLESIASTICAL TERMS. Containing Brief Explanations of Words used in Theology, Liturgiology, Chronology, Law, Architecture, Antiquities, Symbolism, Greek Hierology and Mediaeval Latin ; together with some account of Titles of our Lord, Emblems of Saints, Hymns, Orders, Heresies, Ornaments, Offices, Vestments and Ceremonial, and Miscellaneous Subjects. By Various Writers. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M. A. Crown Svo. iSs. ANCIENT HYMNS. From the Roman Breviary. For Domestic Use every Morning and Evening of the Week, and on the Holy Days of the Church. To which are added, Original Hymns, principally of Commemora- tion and Thanksgiving for Christ's Holy Ordinances. By Richard Mant, D.D., sometime Lord Bishop of Down and Connor. New Edition. Small 8vo. $s. " Real poetry wedded to words that breathe have no hesitation in awarding the palm to tlie the purest and tlie sweetest spirit of Christian latter, the former are an evidence of the earli- devotion. The translation from the old Latin est germs of that yearning of the devout mind Hymnal are close and faithful 7-enderings." — for something better than Tate and Brady, Standard. and which is novo so richly supplied.'" — Church "Asa Hymn writer Bishop Mant deserv- Times. edly occupies a prominent place in the esteem " '/'his valuable manual will be of great of Churchmen, and we doubt not that many assistance to all compilers of Hymn-Books, will be the readers who will welcome this neiv The translations are graceful, clear, and edition of his translations and original com- forcible, and tlie original hymns deserve tlie positions." — English Churchman. highest praise. Bishop Mant has caught the "A new edition of Bishof A/ant's 'Ancient very spirit of true psalmody, his metre flows Hymns from the Roman Breviary' forms a musically, and there is a tuneful ring in his handsome little volume, and it is interesting verses which especially adapts tltem for con- to compare some of these translations with the gregational singing." — Rock. more modern ones of our own day. While we YESTERDAY, TO-DAY, AND FOR EVER : A Poem in Twelve Books. By E. H. Bickersteth, M.A., Vicar of Christ Church, Hamp- stead. Seventh Edition. Small Svo. 6s. " The most simple, the richest, and the most "In these light miscellany days there is a perfect sacred poem which recent days have spiritual refreshment in the spectacle of a man. producid." — Morning Advertiser. girding up the loins of his mind to the task of "A poem worth reading, worthy of at ten- producing a genuine epic. And it is true tive study: full of noble thoughts, beautiful poetry. Tliere is a defniteness, a crispness diction, and high imagination." — Standard. about it, which in these moist, viewy, hazy "Mr. Bickersteth writes like a man who days in no less invigorating than 7iovel." — cultivates at once reverence and earnestness of Edinburgh Daily Review. thought. " — Guardian. THE TWO BROTHERS, and other Poems. By Edward Henry Bickersteth, M.A., Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead, and Chaplain to the Bishop of Ripon, Author of " Yesterday, To-day, and for Ever." Second Edition. Small Svo. 6s. A HANDY BOOK OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL DILAPI- DATIONS ACT, 1S71. With the Amendment Act, 1872. With Remarks on the Qualification and Practice of Diocesan Surveyors. By Edward G. Bruton, F.R.I.B.A., and Diocesan Surveyor, Oxford. Crown Svo. 5j. STONES OP THE TEMPLE ; OR, LESSONS FROM THE FABRIC AND FURNITURE OF THE CHURCH. By Walter Field, M.A., F.S.A., Vicar of Godmersham. With numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 7^. 6d. "Any one who wishes for simple information on the subjects of Church-architecture and furniture, cannot do better than consult ' Stones of the Temple.' Mr. Field modestly disclaims any intention of supplanting the existing regular treatises, but his book shows an amount of research, and a knowledge of what he is talking about, which make it prac- tically useful as well as pleasant. The wood- cuts are numerous and some of them very pretty. " — Graphic. "A very charming book, by the Rev. Walter Field, who was for years Secretary of one of the leading Church Societies. Mr. Field has a loving reverence for the beauty of the domus mansionalis Dei, as the old law books called the Parish Church Thoroughly sound in Church feeling, Mr. Field has chosen the medium of a tale to embody real incidents illustrative of the various portions of his subject. There is no attempt at elabora- tion oj the narrative, which, indeed, is rather a string of anecdotes than a story, but each chapter brings home to the mind its own lesson, and each is illustrated with some very interesting engravings. . . . The work will properly command a hearty reception from Churchmen. The footnotes are occasion- ally most valuable, and are always pertinent, and the text is sure to be popular with young folks for Sunday reading." — Standard. "Mr. Field's chapters on brasses, chancel screens, crosses, encaustic tiles, mural paint- ings, porches and pavements, are agreeably written, and people with a turn for Ritualism •will no doubt find them edifying. The volume, as we have said, is not without significance for readers who are unable to sympathize with the object of the writer. The illustrations of Church-architecture and Church ornaments are very attractive." — Pall Mall Gazette. A SHADOW OP DANTE. his World, and his Pilgrimage. Illustrations. Crown 8vo. ior. Being an Essay towards Studying Himself, By Maria Francesca Rossetti. With 6d. " The 'Shadow of Dante' is a well-con- ceived and inviting volume, designed to re- commend the ' Divina Commedia ' to English readers, and to facilitate the study and com- prehension of its contents." — Athenaeum. " And it is in itself a triie work of art, a whole finely conceived, and carried out with sustained fewer, — one of those reproductions and adumbrations of great works, in which mere servile copying disapfears, and which are only possible to a mind which, however inferior to its original, is yet of the same order and temperament, with an unusual faculty for taking the impressions of that original and reflecting them undimmed. It is much to say of a volume like this. But it is not too much to say, when, after going through it, we consider the thorough knowledge of the subject shown in it, the patient skill with which the intricate and puzzling arrange- ments of the poem, fill of what we call the conceits and puzzles of the cotitemporary philosophy, are unravelled and made intel- ■ ligible ; the discrimination and high principle with which so ardent a lover of the great poet blames his excesses; the high and noble Christian faith which responds to his ; and, lastly, the gift of eloquent speech, keen, rich, condensed, expressive, which seems to have passed into the writer from the loving study of the greatest master in his ozun tongue of all the inimitable harmonies of langztage — the teuderest, the deepest, the most awful." — Guardian. " The work introduces us not merely to the author's life and the political atid ecclesiastical conjunctures under which he lived, but to the outlines of the Catholicised systems of ethics, astronomy, and geography which he inter- preted in classifying his spirits and assigning them their dwellings ; as also to the drift of his leading allegories; and finally, to the general conduct of his poem — which is amply illustrated by citations from the most literal verse translations. We find the volume furnished with useful diagrams of the Daut- esque universe, of Hell, Purgatory, and the ' Rose of the Blessed,' and adorned with a beautiful group of the likenesses of the poet, and with symbolic figures {on the binding) in which the taste and execution of Mr. D. G. Rossetti will be recognised. The exposition appears to us remarkably well arranged and digested; the author's appreciation of Dante's religious sentiments and opinions is peculiarly hearty, and her style refreshingly independent and original." — Pall Mall Gazette. " It bears traces throughout of having been due to a patient, loving and appreciative study of the great poet, as he is exhibited, not merely in the ' Divina Commedia,' but in his other writings. The result has been a book which is not only delightful in itself to read, but is admirably adapted as an encouragement to those students whowislito obtain a prelimi- nary sttrvey of the land before they attempt to folhnv Dante through his long and arduous pilgrimage. Of all poets Dante stands most in need of such assistance as this book offers'' — Saturday Review. PARISH MUSINGS; OR, DEVOTIONAL POEMS. By John S. B. Monsell, LL.D., Rural Dean, and Rector of St. Nicholas, Guildford. Fine Edition. Small Svo. 5-r. Cheap Edition, i8mo, limp cloth, u. 6d~. ; or in Cover, is. MtBS$t&. Jlitrington's Publications THE LIFE OF JUSTIFICATION. A Series of Lectures delivered in Substance at All Saints', Margaret Street, in Lent, 1 870. By the Rev. George Body, B.A., Rector of Kirkby Misperton. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. " On the whole we /uive rarely met with a more clear, intelligible and persuasive state- ment 0/ the truth as regards the important topics on which the volume treats. Sermon II. in particular, will strike every one by its eloquence and beauty, but we scarcely like to specify it, lest in praising it we should seem to disparage the other portions of this admirable little work." — Church Times. " These discourses show tluit their authors position is due to something more and higher than mere fluency, gesticulation, anil flexi- bility of voice. He appears as having drunk deeply at the fountain, of St. Augustine, and as understanding how to translate the burn- ing words of that mighty genius into the current language of to-day." — Union Re- view. " There is real power in these sermons: — power, real power, and plenty of it. . . . There is such a mora I voraciousness about hint, such a profound and over-mastering belief that Christ has proved a bona-fde cure for un- holiness, and such an intensity of eagerness to lead others to seek and profit by that means of attaining the true sanctity which alone can enter Heaven — that we wonder not at the crowds which liang upon his preaching, nor at the success of his fervid appeals to the human conscience. If any one doubts our verdict, let him buy this volume. No one will regret its perusal." — Literary Churchman. SERMONS ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS. By Daniel Moore, M.A., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, and Vicar of Holy Trinity, Pad- dington; Author of Hulsean Lectures on "The Age and the Gospel," "Aids to Prayer," &c. Crown Svo. "]s. 6d. "Sermons like those of Mr. Moore are, howezier, still of comparative rarity — sermons in which we meet with doctrine which cannot be gainsaid ; with a knowledge of the peculiar circumstances of his hearers, which nothing but accurate observation and long experience can secure, and a peculiar felicity of style which many will any, but to which it is tlie lot of few to attain."— Christian Observer. We have had real pleasure, however, in reading t/iese sermons. Here are most of the elements of a preacher 1 s power and usefulness : skilful arrangement of the subject, admirable clearness of style, earnestness, both of thought and language, and the prime qualification of all, 'in doctrine, uucorruptuess.'" — London Quarterly Review. " We do not wonder at Mr. Moore's long continued popularity with so many hearers; tltere is so much painstaking and so much genuine desire to discharge his duty as a preacher visible .through all the volume. What we miss is the deeper theology, and the spontaneous flow of teaching as from a spring •which cannot help flowing, which some of our preachers happily exhibit. But the Sermons may be recommended, or we would not notice them."— Literary Churchman. " Rarely have we met with a better volume of Sermons. . . . Orthodox, affectionate, and earnest, these Sermons exhibit at the same time much research, and are distinguished by an elegance and finish of style often wanting in these days of rapid writing and continual preaching." — John Bull. THE KNIGHT OF INTERCESSION, AND OTHER POEMS. By the Rev. S. J. Stone, M. A., Pembroke College, Oxford. Second Edition. Small Svo. 6s. "Mr. Stone has now given to the public a collection of poems, widely different in form, which enable us to measure more accurately his powers, not merely as a hymnist, but as a poet; and though we would not injure a giowing reputation by overstating his merits, yet we can safely say that his volume contains much genuine poetry which will be read with unqualified pleasure. . . . It would be ungrateful of us to put down this volume without expressing the great pleasure it has afforded us, and our high appreciation of the valuable services which its author is rendering to the Church." — Church Bells. " . . . We all know him so well as the author of the beautiful pi ocessional hymn ' The Church's One Foundation,' the Lenten hymn ' il'eary of Earth,' and other favourites, that we "mere fully prepared for the pleasure that i us in perusing this volume." — Church Opinion. '" The extracts we have thus given, differing do alike in subject and in style, present fair specimens of the varied interest of the volume, and of the poetic powers of its author. Most of our readers, 7ve think, will agree with us that the publication is well-timed, and that it has much in it that is both pleasant and profitable /coding." — Church Herald. "In the 'Knight of Intercession' and other poems we have the outpourings of a pure and ■•al spirit, in language of unassuming : genuine poetry, rising at times, natur- ally and without effort, to a quiet but real beauty. " — Scotsman. '■ Mr. Stone, it is clear, has studied all the best models, and has been influenced by them ; but he maintains through all a distinctly individual-note, and gives us real music. . . . There are true touches in the Idylls, and f the poems on pictures are remarkably expressive and skilful, though nothing is more difficult than the proper working out of such themes. We like some of the sonneti of them are exceptionally sweet and /.'. , — Nonconformist. 10 iflcsstjs. yibmgtoit's -publications THE ANNUAL REGISTER : A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad, for the Year 1872. Svo. I&r. %* All the Volumes of the New Series from 1863 to 1872 may be had, i8j-. each. " Well edited, excellent type, good paper, and in all respects admirably got up. Its re- view of affairs. Home, Colonial, and Foreign, is fair, concise, and complete" — Mining Quarterly. " Solidly valuable, as well as interesting." — Standard. "Comprehensive and well executed." — Spectator. ',' The whole work being well-written, and compiled with care and judg7nent, it is inter- esting reading for the presetit day, will be ■more useful as a work of refere7tce in fttture years, and will be most valuable of all to readers of another generation. Every student of history knows the worth, for the time that it covers, of the old 'Annual Register,' and this new series is better done and more com- prehensive than its predecessor." — Examiner. " This volume of the neiu series of the ' Annual Register' seems well and carefully compiled. The narratire is accurate, and it is obvious that the writers fiave striven to be impartial." — Athenaeum. " The whole of the compilation, however, is readable, and some of its more important par ts are very -well done. Suck is, among other historical portions, the account of the situation in France before and at the beginning of the war. The narrative of the military events is clear, comprehensive, and attractive." — Nation (New York). HISTORICAL NARRATIVES. From the Russian. By H. C. Romanoff, Author of "Sketches of the Rites and Customs of the Greco- Russian Church," &c. Crown Svo. 6s. PRAYERS AND MEDITATIONS FOR THE HOLT COM- MUNION. With a Preface by C. J. Ellicott, D.D., Lord Bishop of Glouces- ter and Bristol. With rubrics and borders in red. Royal 32mo. 2s. 6d~. " Devout beauty is the special character of this new manual, and it ought to be a favour- ite. Rarely has it happened to us to meet with so remarkable a combination of thorough practicalness with that almost poetic warmth which is the highest flower of genuine devo- tion. It deserves to be placed along with the ■manual edited by Mr. Keble so shortly before his decease, not as superseding it, for the scope of the two is different, but to be taken along with it. Nothing can exceed the beauty and fulness of the devotions before communion in Mr. Keble's book, but we think that in some points the devotions here giz>en after Holy Communion are even superior to it." — Liter- ary Churchman. " Bishop Ellicott has edited a book of ' Prayers and Meditations for the Holy Communion,' which, among Eucharistic man- uals, has its own special characteristic. The Bishop recommends it to the newly confirmed , to the teuder-liearted and the devout, as having been compiled by a youthful person, and as being marked by a peculiar 'freshness.' Having looked through the volume, we have pleasure in seconding the recommendations of the good Bishop. IV e know of 710 7/zore suit- able 7uauual for the newly C07ifir77ied ', and nothing more likely to e7igage the sy>/ipathies of youthful hearts. There is a n7iio7i of the deepest spirit of devotio7i, a rich expressio/i of experi/7ie7ital life, "with a due recog7iition of the objects of faith, sitch as is 7iot always to be found, but which characterises this 7>ia7iual i/i a/i eminent degree." — Church Review. " The Bishop of 'Gloucester 's i/nprii/iatur is attached to 'Prayers and Meditations for the Holy Communion' i7ite7ided as a i/ia7iualfor the rece7itly co7ifir~/ned, 7iicely printed, a/id theologically sou7id." — Church Times. " A?7i07ig the supply of Eucharistic Manu- als, 07ie deserves special attentio7i a/id co7/t- mendation. 'Prayers and Meditations' z/ierits the Bishop of Gloucester's epithets of ' war7n, devout, a7id fresh.' A 7id it is thoroughly Eng- lish Church besides." — Guardian. " We are by 710 means surprised that Bishop Ellicott should have bee/i so 7/iuch struck with this little work, o/t accidentally seei/ig it in 7>ianuscript, as to urge its publica- tiou, a7id to preface it with his co/n/ne/idaiiozi. The devotio7i which it breathes is truly fervent, and the la/iguage attractive, and as proceed- i7igfro}/i a young person the work is altogether not a little striking." — Record. THE PRAYER BOOK INTERLEAVED ; With Historical Illus- trations and Explanatory Notes arranged parallel to the Text. By the Rev. W. M. Campion, D.D., Fellow and Tutor of Queen's College, and Rector of St. Botolph's, and the Rev. W. J. Beamont, M. A., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. With a Preface by the Lord Bishop of Ely. Sixth Edition. Small Svo. 7.5-. 6d. Jptosr& JLtbrngton's $ ubUcaticms ii EIGHT LECTURES ON THE MIRACLES. Being the Bampton Lectures for 1865. By J. B. Mozley, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Third Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. CATECHESIS; OR, CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION PRE- PARATORY TO CONFIRMATION AND FIRST COMMUNION. By Charles Wordsworth, D.C.L., Bishop of St. Andrew's. New Edi- tion. Small 8vo. 2s. A THEORY OP HARMONY. Founded on the Tempered Scale. With Questions and Exercises for the Use of Students. By John Stainer, Mus. Doc, M.A., Magd. Coll., Oxon., Organist to St. Paul's Cathedral. Royal Svo. "js. 6d. " It is the first zvork of its class that needs -with the thorns and briars of perplexing no apology for its introduction, as it is really technicalities." — Morning Post. much needed especially by teachers, who "Dr. Stainer is a learned musician, and would fail without the aid of its principles to his book supplies a manual of information as account for many of the effects in modem well as a rich repository of musical erudition music, used in direct opposition to the teaching in the form of classical quotations from the of the schools. It is diffiadt, if not impossible, great masters." — John Bull. to give a more elaborate description of a book " Dr. Stainer, in his thoughtful book, sees destined to effect an entire change in musical clearly of amalgamating opposing systems in teachitig without entering into details that order to found a theory of harmony. He bases could not but prove uninteresting to the his work on the tempered scale, and he devel- general readers, while to tlie musician and opes and illustrates his theory by questions and amateur, t/te possession of the book itself is exercises for the use of students. His opening recommended as a valuable confirmation of exposition of the rudiments of music is clear : ideas that exist to a large extent in the minds when he reaches the regions of harmony he of every one who has ever thought about comes on debateable ground." — Athenaeum. music, and who desires to see established a "To the student perplexed and chained more uniform basis of study. The great and down by the multitudinous rules of the old leading characteristic of the work is its logical theorists, we cannot give better comfort than reasoning and definitions, a character not to advise him to read forthwith Dr. Stainer's possessed by any previous book on the subject, ingenious and thoughtful book. It is exceed- andfor this Dr. Stainer's theory is certain to ingly well got up, and fro7n the clearness gain ground, and be the means of opening an of the type used, very easy and pleasant to easy and pleasant path in a road hitherto beset read." — Choir. CHURCH ORGANS : their Position and Construction. With an Appendix containing some Account of the Mediteval Organ Case still existing at Old Radnor, South Wales. By Frederick Heathcote Sutton, M.A., Vicar of Theddingworth. With Illustrations. Imperial folio. 6.r. 6d. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. By Henry Francis Lyte, M.A. New Edition. Small Svo. $s. BIBLE READINGS FOR FAMILY PRAYER. By the Rev. W. H. Ridley. M.A., Rector of Hambleden. Crown Svo. Old Testament — Genesis and Exodus. 2s. , T ™ . , ( St. Luke and St. Tohn. 2s. New Testament, j ^ Matthew and g t Mark> The Four Gospels, in one volume. 3^. 6d. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM'S LITURGY. Translated by H. C. Romanoff, Author of " Sketches of the Rites and Customs of the Greco- Russian Church," &c. With Illustrations. Square crown Svo. 4s. 6d. 12 JUXzssxs. JUbiitgton's Publications NOTITIA EUCHARISTICA. A Commentary, Explanatory, Doctrinal, and Historical, on the Order of the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion, according to the Use of the Church of England. By W. E. Scudamore, M.A., Rector of Ditchingham, and formerly Fellow of S. John's College, Cambridge. 8vo. 2$s. WORDS TO TAKE WITH US. A Manual of Daily and Occasional Prayers, for Private and Common Use. With Plain Instructions and Coun- sels on Prayer. By W. E. Scudamore, M.A., Rector of Ditchingham, and formerly Fellow of S. John's College, Cambridge. New Edition. Revised. Small 8vo. is. 6d. " 'Words to Take -with Us,' by W. E. Scudamore, is one of the best manuals of daily and occasional prayers we have seen. A t once orthodox and practical, sufficiently personal, and yet not perplexingly minute in its details, it is calculated to be of inestimable value in many a household." — John Bull. " We are again pleased to see an old friend on the editorial table, in a third edition of Mr. Scudamore's "well-known Manual of Prayers. The special proper collects for each day of the week, as well as those for the sever a I seasons of the Christian year, have been most judiciously selected. The compiler moreover, while recognizing the fill benefits to be derived from the Book of Common Prayer, has not feared to draw largely from the equally inval- uable writings of ancient Catholicity. The preface is a systematic arrangement of instruc- tions in prayer and meditation." — Church Review. THE HOME LIFE OP JESUS OP NAZARETH AND OTHER SERMONS. By the Rev. Augustus Gurney, M.A., Vicar of Wribbenhall, Kidderminster. Crown 8vo. 5-r. A CHURCH HISTORY OP THE FIRST SEVEN CEN- TURIES, to the Close of the Sixth General Council. By MlLO Mahan, D.D., sometime S. Mark's-in-the Bowery Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the General Theological Seminary, New York. 8vo. 15s. OUR MOTHER CHURCH : being Simple Talk on High Topics. By Anne Mercier. Crown 8vo. "]s. bd. " We have rarely come across a book dealing with an old subject in a liealthier and, as far as may be, 7>wre original manner, while yet thoroughly practical, than 'Our Mother Church^ by Mrs. Jerome Mercier. It is in- tended for and admirably adapted to the use of girls. Thoroughly reverent in its tone, and bearing in every page marks of learned re- search, it is yet easy of comprehension, and explains ecclesiastical terms "with the accuracy of a lexicon without the accompanying dulness. It is to be hoped that the book will attain to the large circulation it justly merits." — John Bull. " We have never seen a book for girls of its class which commends itself to lis more particularly than 'Our Mother Church' by Mrs. Jerome Mercier. The author, who is the wife of an earnest parish priest of the Anglican school, near London, calls her work 'simple talk on great subjects,' and calls it bv a name that describes it almost as completely as we could do in a longer notice than we can spare the volume. Here are the /leadings of the chapters: — 'The Primitive Church, 'Primitive Places and Modes of Worship,' ' The Early English Church,' ' The Monastic Orders? ' The Friars' ' A Review of Church History,' ' The Prayer Book,' (four chapters), 'Symbolism,' 'Church Architect lire," Windows and Bells,' 'Church Music,' 'Church Work' No one can fail to comprehend the beautifully simple, devout, and appropriate language in which Airs. Mercier embodies what she has to say; and for the facts with which she deals she has taken good care to have their accuracy assured." — Standard. " The plan of this pleasant-looking book is excellent. It is a kind of Mrs. Markka m on the Church of England, written especially for girls, and we shall not be surprised to find it become a favourite in schools. . . . It is really a conversational hand-book to the English Church's history, doctrine, and ritual, complied by a very diligent reader from some of the best modern Anglican sources." — Eng- lish Churchman. Mt$BX8. JLibington's ^Publications THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST ; being the Bampton Lectures for 1866. By Henry Parry Lid- don, D.D., D.C.L, Canon of St. Paul's, and Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. $s. SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of St. Paul's, and Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford. Fifth Edition, revised. Crown Svo. $s. SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. By Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., Canon of St. Paul's, and Ireland Professor of Exegesis in the University of Oxford. Crown Svo. $s. HOUSEHOLD THEOLOGY : A Handbook of Religious Information respecting the Holy Bible, the Prayer Book, the Church, the Ministry, Divine Worship, the Creeds, &c, &c. By John Henry Blunt, M.A. New Edition. Small Svo. 3-r. 6d. LIBER PRECUM PUBLICARUM ECCLESLE ANGLI- CAN/E. A Gulielmo Bright, A.M., et Petro Goldsmith Medd, A.M., Presbyteris, Collegii Universitatis in Acad. Oxon. Sociis, Latine red- ditus. New Edition, with all the Rubrics in red. Small 8vo. 6s. THE PSALMS. Translated from the Hebrew. With Notes, chiefly Exegetical. By William Kay, D.D., Rector of Great Leighs ; late Princi- pal of Bishop's College, Calcutta. 8vo. 12s. 6d. "Like a sound Churchman, he reverences ing, with the power to make use of it." — Scripture, upholding its authority against British Quarterly Review. sceptics; and he does not denounce such as " The execution of the work is careful and differ from him in opinion with a dogmatism scholarly." — Union Review. ■unhappily too common at the present day. " To mention the name of Dr. Kay is Hence, readers "will be disposed to consider his enough to secure respectful attention to his conclusions worthy of attention ; or perhaps new translation of the Psalms. It is en- to adopt them without inquiry. It is super- riched with exegetical notes containing a fluous to say that the translation is better wealth of sound learning, closely occasionally, and more accurate on the whole than our perhaps too closely condensed. Good care is received one, or that it often reproduces taken of the student not learned in Hebrew ; the sense of the original happily." — Athen- we hope the Doctor's example will preve?it any iEUM. abuse of this consideration, and stimulate "Dr. Kay has profound reverence for those who profit by ittofollow him into the very Divine truth, and exhibits considerable read- text of the ancient Revelation." — John Bull, THE ANNOTATED BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER ; being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England. Edited by the Rev. John HENRY Blunt, M. A., F.S.A., Author of "The History of the Reformation," " Directorium Pas- torale," Editor of "The Dictionary of Theology," &c. Sixth edition, re- vised. Imperial Svo. 36^., or half-bound in morocco, 48^. H iftcssrs. JUbington's Publication* A COMPANION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT. Being a Plain Commentary on Scripture History, down to the Birth of our Lord. Small 8vo. $s. 6d. "A most admirable Companion to the Old Testament, being far the most concise yet com- plete commentary on Old Testament history ■with which we have met. Here are combined orthodoxy and learning, an intelligent and at the same time interesting summary of the leading facts of the sacred story. It should be a text-book in every school, and its value is immensely enhanced by the copious and complete index." — John Bull. " This will be found a z>ery valuable aid to the right understanding of the Bible. It throws the "whole Scripture narrative into one from the creation downwards, the author thus condensing Ptideaux, Shuckford, and Russell, and in the most reverential manner bringing to his aid the writings of all modern annotators and chronologists. There are no lengthy comments, no visionary theories, no- thing speculative ; all is plain matter of fact, intelligibly stated. The book is one that should have a wide circulation amongst teachers and students of all denominations.'''' — Bookseller. " Is a z>ery compact summary of the Old Testament narrative, put together so as to explain the connection and bearing of its con- tents, and written in a very good tone ; with a final chapter on the history of the Jews be- tween the Old and New Testaments. It will be found very useful for its purpose. It does not confine itself to merely chronological difficulties, but comments briefly upon the religious bearing oj "the text also." — Guardian. " The handbook before us is so full and satis- factory, considering its compass, and sets forth the history of the old covenant with such conscientious minuteness, that it cannot fail to prove a godsend to candidates for examination in the Rudimcnta Relig!oms as well as in the corresponding school at Cam- bridge. In one of our dioceses the Scripture subjects for diocesan inspection this year included 'the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve Patriarchs,' and teachers were warned that the higlier classes in the schools would be expected to evince a knowledge gathered from the source and not any secondary channels. But really we have tested the second book of this work with an eye to ascertaining whether a mastery of it would have served the teacher or pupil's purpose ; and our deliberate opinion is that it would, so careful is the survey, and so very rare the omission of a single point that is of any historical or doctrinal importance. . . . ■ Througliout his work the writer of this 'companion,' 'commentary,' or 'handbook,' exhibits at the same time extensive research into the best sources of information and en- lightenment as to the sacred history, and an independent, though cautious, judgment in his choice between conflicting theories and ex- planations." — English Churchman. FABLES RESPECTING THE POPES OF THE MIDDLE AGES. A Contribution to Ecclesiastical Histoiy. By John J. Ign. Von Dollinger. Translated, with Introduction and Appendices, by Alfred Plummer, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. 8vo. 14^. SKETCHES OF THE RITES AND CUSTOMS OF THE GRECO-RUSSIAN CHURCH. By H. C. Romanoff. With an Intro- ductory Notice by the Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe." Second Edition. Crown 8vo. Js. 6d. " The twofold object of this work is ' to present the English with correct descriptions of the ceremonies of the Greco-Russian Church, and at the same time with pictures of domestic life in Russian homes, especially those of the clergy and the middle class of nobles ; ' and, beyond question, the author's labour has been so far successful that, whilst her Church scenes may be commended as a series of most dramatic and picturesque tableaux, her social sketches enable us to look at certain points be- neath the surface of Russian life, and ma- terially enlarge our knowledge of a country concerning which we have still a very great deal to learn." — Athenaeum. " The volume before us is anything but a formal liturgical treatise. It might be more valuable to a few scholars if it were, but it would certainly fail to obtain perusal at the hands of the great majority of those whom the •writer, not unreasonably, hopes to attract by the narrative style she has adopted. Wha t she has set before us is a series of brief outlines, which, by their simple effort to clothe the information given us in a living garb, reminds us of a once-popular childs' book which we remember a generation ago, called 'Sketches of Human Manners'" — Church Times. THE ARGUMENT DELIVERED BEFORE THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL. By Archibald John Stephens, LL.D., one of Her Majesty's Counsel in the case of Thomas Byard Sheppard against William Early Bennett, Clerk. With an Appendix containing their Lordships' Judgment. 8yo. gs. Jftcssrs. JUbmgtott'js publications 15 SERMONS ON CERTAIN OP THE LESS PROMINENT FACTS AND REFERENCES IN SACRED STORY. By Henry Melvill, B.D., late Canon of St. Paul's, and Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. New Edition. Two vols. Crown 8vo. 5-r. each. " We are glad to see this new edition of what we have a/ways considered to be Melvill s best sermons, because in them we have his best thoughts. . . . Many of these sermons are the strongest arguments yet adduced for in- ternal evidence of the veracity of the Scriptu- ral narratives." — Standard. "Many who admire elegant phraseology, and the other now rarely exhibited consti- tuents of pulpit eloquence, •will be glad to have in a convenient shape a judicious selection of Canon MelvilVs sermons. Mr. Melvill was one of the few really successful preac/urs of our day." — Examiner. " Tlie sermons of the lamented Melvill are too well known to require any commendation from us. We have here all the power oj 7-lietoric, and the grace and beauty of style, for which the author has been distinguished, and which have contributed to render him a model to preachers, and given him a represen- tative position in the history of the English pulpit." — Weekly Review. "Polished, classical, and winning, these sermons bear the marks of literary labour. A study of them will aid the modern preacher to refine and polish his discourses, and to add to the vigour which is now the fashion the graces of chastened eloquence and winning rhetoric." — English Churchman. SELECTION FROM THE SERMONS PREACHED DUR- ING THE LATTER YEARS OF HIS LIFE, IN THE PARISH CHURCH OF BARNES, AND IN THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. PAUL'S. By Henry Melvill, B.D., late Canon of St. Paul's, and Chap- lain in Ordinary to the Queen. Two vols. Crown 8vo. 5^. each. " Two other volumes of the late Canon Mel- vill's sermons containforty discourses preached by him in his later years, and they are pre- faced by a short memoir of one of the worthiest and most impressive preachers of recent times. " — Examiner. " Melvill s chief characteristic was humility, that truest mark of real nobility of soul and of genuine genius ; and his sole actuating prin- ciple in life was devotion to duty — duty to God and duty to tnan, and never were the two i7iore beautifully blended together than in him. ' While the pure truths of the Gospel,' 1 obserriaiuf acts and incidents connectedwith Church History." — Rock. " // will be excellent, eitJier for school or home use, either as a reading or as a reference book, on all the main facts and names and controversies of the first fifteen centuries. It is both well arranged and well written." — Literary Churchman. Mzbbxb. Jlibington's ^publications 21 KEYS TO CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE— Continued. A KEY TO THE KNOWLEDGE OP CHURCH HISTORY (Modem). Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A. Small 8vo. 2.s. 6d. A KEY TO THE NARRATIVE OP THE FOUR GOSPELS. By John Pilkington Norris, M. A., Canon of Bristol, formerly one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. Small 8vo. 2s. 6d. " This is very much the best book of its kind we have seen. The only fault is its shortness, •which prevents its going into tlie details which would support and illustrate its statements, and which in the process of illustrating than would fix them upon tlie minds and memories of its readers. It is. hcnvever, a great im- provement upon any book of its kind we know. It bears all the marks of being the condensed work of a real scholar, and of a divine too. The bulk of the book is taken up with a 'Life of Christ' compiled from tlie Four Gospels so as to exhibit its steps and stages and salient points. The rest of the book consists of inde- pendent chapters on special points." — Liter- ary Churchman. " This book is no ordinary compendium, no mere ' cram-book'; still less is it an ordinary reading book for schools ; but the schoolmaster, the Sunday-school teaclier, and the seeker after a comprehensive knowledge of Divine truth will find it "worthy of its name. Canon Norris writes simply, reverently, without great dis- play of learning, giving the result of much careful study in a slwrt compass, and adorn- ing the subject by tlie tenderness and konestv with which he treats it. . . . We hope that this little book will have a very wide circulation and that it will be studied ; and we canpromise that those wlw take it up will not readily put it down again." — Record. ' ' This is a golden little volume. Having often to criticise unsparingly volumes pub- lished by Messrs. Rivington, and bearing tlie deep High Church brand, it is the greater satisfaction to be able to commend this book so emphatically. Its design is exceedingly modest. Canon Norris writes primarily to help 'younger students' in studying the Gospels. But this unpretending volume is one which all students may study with advantage. It is an admirable manual for those who take Bible Classes through the Gospels. Closely sifted in style, so that all is clear and weighty ; full of unostentatious learning, and pregnant ■with suggestion ; deeply reverent in spirit, and altogetlier Eva?igelical in spirit; Canon Norris' book supplies a real want, and ought to be welcomed by all earnest and devout students of the Holy Gospels." — London Quarterly Review. A KEY TO THE ACTS OP THE APOSTLES. By John Pilkington Norris, M.A. Small 8vo. 2s. 6d. "It is a remarkably well-written and interesting account of its subject, ' The Book of the Acts,' giving us the narratizie of St. Luke with exactly what we want in the way of connecting links and illustrations. One most notable and praiseworthy characteristic of the book is its candour. . . . The book is one which we can heartily recommend." — Spectator. " Of Canon Norris 's ' Key to the Narrative of the Tour Gospels,' we wrote in high appre~oal not many months ago. The present is not less carefully prepared, and is full of tlie unosten- tatious results of sound learning and patient thought." — London Quarterly Review. " This little volume is one of a series of ' Keys ' of a more or less educational character, which are in the course of publication by Messrs. Rivington. It gives apparently a very fair and tolerably exhaustive resume of the contents of the Acts, with which it deals, not chapter by chapter, but consecutively in the order of thought." — School Board Chron- icle. " Few books have ever given us more un- mixed pleasure 'than this. It is faultlessly written, so that it reads as pleasantly anil enticingly as if it had not the least intention of being an ' educational' book. It is complete and exhaustive, so far as the narrative and all its bearings go, so that students may feel that they need not be hunting up other books to supply the lacunse. // is the work of a classical scholar, and it leaves nothing wanting in the way of classical illustrations, which in the case of the Acts are of special importance. And, lastly, it is tlieologically sound."— Liter- ary Churchman. " This is a sequel to Canon Norris' s ' Key to the Gospels' which was published two years ago, and which has become a general favourite "with those who wish to grasp the leading features of the life and word of Christ. The sketch of the Acts of the Apostles is done in the same style; there is the same reverent spirit and quiet enthusiasm running through it, and the same instinct for seizing the lead- ing points in the narrative." — Record. *** Other Volumes are in preparation. 22 Jte>stjs. Jlibmgtotfs ^Publication* RIVINGTON'S DEVOTIONAL SERIES, Elegantly printed with red borders. i6mo. 2s. 6d. each. THOMAS A KEMPIS, OF THE IMITATION OP CHRIST. Also a Cheap Edition, without the red borders, Is., or in Cover, 6d. "A very beautiful edition. We commend it to tlie Clergy as an excellent gift-book for teacliers and other workers ." — Church Times. " This -work is a precious relic of tnedueval times, and will continue to be valued by every section of the Christian Church." — Weekly Review. " A beautifully printed pocket edition of this ma? vellous production of a man, who, out of the dark mists of popery, saw so much of experimental religion. Those who are well grounded in evangelical truth may use it with profit." — Record. "A very cheap and handsome edition." — Rock. " This new edition is a marvel of cheapness." — Church Review. "Beautifully printed, and very cheap edi- tions of this long-used Itand-book of devotion" — Literary World. THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY LIVING. By Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Bishop of Down and Connor, and Dromore. Also a Cheap Edition, without the red borders, is, THE RULE AND EXERCISES OP HOLY DYING. By Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Bishop of Down and Connor, and Dromore. Also a Cheap Edition, without the red borders, is. The ' Holy Living' and the ' Holy Dying ' may be had bound together in One Volume, 5-r. ; or without the red borders, 2s. 6d. "An extremely well-printed and well got up edition, as pretty and graceful as possible, and yet not too fine for real use. We wish the devotions of this beautiful book were more commonly used."— Literary Church- man. " We must admit that there is a want of helps to spiritual life amongst us. Our age is so secular, and in religious movements so bustling, that it is to be feared the inner life is too often forgotten. Our public teacliers may, we are sure, gain by consulting books which show how contentedness and self-renun- ciation ?nay be increased ; and in which the pathology of all human affections is treated with a fulness not common in our theological class rooms " — Freeman. " The publishers have done good service by the production of these beautiful editions of works, which will never lose their preciousness to devout Christian spirits. It is not necessary for us to say a "word as to their intrinsic merits ; we have only to testify to the good taste, judgment, and care shown in these editions. They are extremely beautiful in typography a>id in the general getting up." — Knglish Independent. " We ought not to conclude our notice oj recent devotional books, witlwut mentioning to our readers the above new, elegant, and clieap reprint, which we trust will never be out of date or out of favour in the English branch of t/ie Catholic Church." — Literary Churchman. " These manuals of piety written by the pen of the most beautiful writer and tlie most impressive divine of the English Church, need no commendation from us. They are known to tlie world, read in all lands, and translated, we have heard, into fifty different languages. For two centuries they have fed the faith of thousands upon thousands of souls, novo we trust happy with their God, and perhaps medi- tating in Heaven with gratitude on their celestial truths, kindled in their souls by a writer who was little short of being inspired." — Rock. " These little volumes will be appreciated as presents of inestimable value." — Public Opinion. " Either separate or bound together, may be had these two standard works of tlie great divine. A good 'edition very tastefully printed and bound. " — Record. A SHORT AND PLAIN INSTRUCTION FOR THE BETTER .UNDERSTANDING OF THE LORD'S SUPPER; to which is annexed the Office of the Holy Communion, with proper Helps and Directions. By Thomas Wilson, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Sodor and Man. Complete Edition, in large type. Also a Cheap Edition, without the red borders, is., or in Cover, 6d. " The Messrs. Rivinglon have published a new and unabridged edition of that deser-nedly popular work, Bishop Wilson on tlie Lord's Supper. The edition is here presented in three forms, suited to the various members of tlie houselwld." — Public Opinion. Mzbbxb, Pttttttgttm'jg publications RIVINGTON'S DEVOTIONAL SERIES— Continued. " We cannot withlwld the expression of our admiration of the style and elegance in which this work is got up." — Press and St. James' Chronicle. "A departed author being dead yet speak- etli in a way which will never be out of date ; Bislwp Wilson on the Lord's Supper, pub- lished by Messrs. Rivington, in bindings to suit all tastes and pockets." — Church Re- view. " We may here fitly record that Bishop Wilson on the Lord's Supper has been issued in a ?iew but unabridged forth" — Daily Telegraph. INTRODUCTION TO THE DEVOUT LIFE. From the French of Saint Francis of Sales, Bishop and Prince of Geneva. A New Translation. " A very beautiful edition of S. Francis de Sales' ' Devout Life : ' a prettier little edition for balding, type, and paper, of a very great book is not often s««*."— Church Review. " The translation is a good one, and the volume is beautifully got up. It would sen'e admirably as a gift book to those who are able to appreciate so spiritual a writer as St. Francis." — Church Times. " // has been the food and Iwpe of countless souls ever since its first appearance two cen- turies and a half ago, and it still ranks with Scupoli's ' Combatlimento Spirituale,' and Arvisenet's ' Memoriale Vitce Sacerdotalis,' as among the very best works of ascetic theology. We are glad to commend this care- ful and convenient version to our readers. — Union Review. " We should be curious to know by Iww many different hands ' The Devout Life' of S. Francis de Sales had been translated into English. At any rate, its popularity is so great that Messrs. Rivington have just issued another translation of it. The style is good, and tlie volume is of a most convenient size." —John Bull. " To readers of religious treatises, this volume will be highly valued. The ' hitro- duction to the Devout Life'' is preceded by a sketch of the life of the author, and a dedica- tory prayer of the author is also given." — Public Opinion. PRACTICAL TREATISE CONCERNING- EVIL THOUGHTS : wherein their Nature, Origin, and Effect are distinctly con- sidered and explained, with many Useful Rules for restraining and suppressing such Thoughts ;' suited to the various conditions of Life, and the several tem- pers of Mankind, more especially of melancholy Persons. By William Chilcot, M.A. "An elegant edition of an old devotional manual by a clergyman who was a rector in Exeter at the beginning of the last century. It seems to contain a great deal of valuable truth as to the sources of evil thoughts and the mode in which they may be expressed." — English Independent. " T/ie book is worthy of a careful perusal, and is one which once ktiown is likely to be recurred to again and again, a characteristic not always to be met with in works of our own day. " — Record. "Messrs. Rivington have done all that publishers could do to give strengthening matter a cheerful form." — Church Review. THE ENGLISH POEMS OP GEORGE HERBERT, together with his Collection of Proverbs, entitled Jacula Prudentum. " This beautiful little votume will be found specially convenient as a pocket manual. The 'Jacula Prudentum' or proverbs, deserve to be ?nore widely knoivn than they are at present. In many copies of George Herbert's writings these quaint sayings have been un- fortunately omitted." — Rock. " George Herbert is too much a household name to require any introduction. It will be sufficient to say that Messrs. Rivington have published a most compact and convenient edition of the poems and proverbs of this illus- trious English divine." — English Church- man. "An exceedingly pretty edition, the most attractive form we have yet seen from this de- lightful author, as a gift-book." — Union Review. "A very beautiful edition of the quaint old English bard. All loiters of the ' Holy' Her- bert will be grateful to Messrs. Rivington for the care and pains they have bestoived in supplying them with this and withal conveni- ent copy of poems so well known and so deservedly prized." — London Quarterly Review. "A very tasteful little book, and will doubtless be acceptable to many." — Record. " We commend this little book heartily to our readers. It contains Herbert's English poems and the 'Jacula Prudentum,' "in a very neat volume which does much credit to the publishers ; it will, rue Iwpe, meet with extensive circulation as a choice gift-book at a moderate price." — Christian Observer. 2 4 ittcssrs. Jlibington's fttblicattoiti NEW THEOLOGICAL DICTIONARY. DICTIONARY OF DOCTRINAL AND HISTORICAL THEOLOGY. By various writers. Edited by the Rev. John Henry Blunt, M.A., F.S.A. Editor of the Annotated Book of Common Prayer. Second Edition. Coytiplete in one volume of 833 pages, imperial $vo {equal to six Svo volumes of 400 pages each), and printed in large readable type, 42s., or half -bound in morocco, $2s. 6d. 1. Nature of the work. This Dictionary consists of a series of original Essays (alphabetically arranged, and 575 in number) on all the principal subjects connected with the Doctrines of the Christian Church. Some idea of the subjects, and of the length of the articles, may be formed from the following titles of those which occupy the work from page 700 to page 72a. Sign. Simony. Sin. Sinaitic Codex. Socinianism. solifidianism. Soul. Spinozism. Spirit. Spirit, The Holy. Sponsors. subdeacons. sublapsarianism. Substance. Suffragan. Sunday. Supererogation. Supernatural. Superstition. Supralapsarianism. Supremacy, Papal. 1. Object of THE Work. The writers of all the Essays have endeavoured to make them sufficiently exhaustive to render it unnecessary for the majority of readers to go further for information, and, at the same time, sufficiently suggestive of more recondite sources of Theological study, to help the student in following up his subjects. By means of a Table prefixed to the Dictionary, a regular course of such study may be carried out in its pages. 3. Principles of the Work. The Editor and his coadjutors have carefully avoided any party bias, and consequently the work cannot be said to be either "High Church," "Low Church," or "Broad Church." The only bias of the Dictionary is that given by Revelation, History, Logic, and the literary idiosyn- cracy of each particular contributor. But the Editor has not attempted to assist the circulation of the book by making it colourless on the pretence of impartiality. Errors are freely condemned, and truths are expressed as if they were worth ex- pressing ; but he believes that no terms of condemnation which may be used ever transgress the bounds of Christian courtesy. 4. Part of a Series. The Dictionary of Theology is complete in itself, but it is also intended to form part of a Series, entitled, "A Summary of Theology," of which the second volume, "A Dictionary of Sects, Heresies, and Schools of Thought," is in the press. " Taken as a whole the articles are the work of practised writers, and well informed and solid theologians. . . . We know >io book of its size and bulk which supplies the in formation here given at all ; far less which supplies it in an arrangement so accessible, with a completeness of information so thorough, and with an ability in the treatment of pro- found subjects so great. Dr. Hook's most useful volume is a work of high calibre, but it is- the work of a single mind. We have here a wider range of thought from a greater variety of sides. We have here also the work of men who evidently know what they write about, and are somewhat more profound (to say the least), than the writers of the current Dictionaries of Sects and Heresies." — Guar- dian. " Mere antiquarianism, however interesting, has little place in it. But for all practical purposes its historical articles are excellent. They are of course, and of necessity, a good deal condensed, yet they are wonderfully complete ; see for example such articles as ' Atluism,' 'Cabbala' 'Calvinism,' 'Can- onization,' 'Convocations,' 'Evangelical,' ' Fatlurs,' 'Infant Baptism,' &c, &° s - 6d. " We cordially welcome a new edition of Dr. surrender of Bristol by Prince Rupert, afford Neale' s 'Herbert Tresham.' Thescene is laid prooj 'of the versatility of his genius." —Church in the time of the great civil war, and vivid Times. fict ii res are drawn of some of the startling- "A pleasant Christmas present is Dr. events that then disgraced the history of this Ncale's 'Herbert Tresham.' 1 Such a book is country. The martyrdom of Archbishop) Laud well calculated to correct current viewsofiyth is described in a manner few besides its author century history." — Church Review. could equal, while the narration of the disas- "Nothing' could be more admirable as a trous battle of Naseby, and the disgraceful Christmas present." — Church News. THE MANOR FARM : A TALE. By M. C. Phillpotts, Author of " The Hillford Confirmation. " With Illustrations. Small Svo. y. 6d. " The Manor Farm, by Miss Phillpotts, and gentle daughter. 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HAMLET. Edited by the Rev. Charles E. Moberly, M.A. 2s. 6d. ; in paper cover, 2s. THE TEMPEST. Edited by J. Surtees Phillpotts, M.A., Assistant Master in Rugby School, formerly Fellow of New College, Oxford. [In preparation. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. Edited by the same. \Iu preparation. %* Other Plays are in preparation. LATIN PROSE EXERCISES. Being Easy Graduated English Sentences for Translation into Latin, with Rules, Explanations, a Vocabulary, and Index. Intended for the Use of Beginners and Junior Forms of Schools. By R. Prowde Smith, B.A., Assistant Master at the Grammar School, Henley-on-Thames. Crown 8vo. is. 61. SELECTIONS FROM LUCIAN. With English Notes. By Evelyn Abbott, Assistant Master in Clifton College. Small 8vo. $s. 6d. SCENES FROM GREEK PLAYS. Rugby Edition. Abridged and adapted for the Use of Schools, by Arthur Sidgwick, M.A., Assistant Master at Rugby School, and formerly Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. ARISTOPHANES. The Clouds. The Frogs. The Knights. Plutus. EURIPIDES. Iphigenia in Taurus. The Cyclops. Ion. Small Svo. is. 6d. each, or is, in paper cover. MESSRS. RIVINGTON'S COMPLETE SCHOOL CATA- LOGUE, with Press Notices and Specimen Pages, may be had on appli- cation. INDEX Abbott (Evelyn), Selections from Lucian, Adams (W.), Holy Week, . Sacred Allegories, A Kempis, Imitation of Christ, Alford (Henry), Greek Testament, New Testament for Eng- lish Readers, .... Andrewes (Bishop Lancelot), Manual for the Sick, ..... Annotated Prayer Book, By J. H. Blunt, Annual Register, .... Aristophanis Comoedise, by W. C. Green, Aristophanes (Scenes from), by Sidgwick, Avancini, Vita et Doctrina Jesu Christi, Bickersteth (E. H), Two Brothers, Yesterday, To-Day etc., .... Bigg (Chas), Thucydidis Historia, Blunt (J. H.) Directorium Pastorale, 1 Household Theology, ■ Key to Bible, Key to Church Catechism, Key to Church History (Ancient), (Modern), . Key to Church History Key to Common Prayer, Reformation, . and Norris (J. P.), Keys to Christian Knowledge, and Phillimore (G. F.) Book of Church Law, Body (George), Life of Justification, . 9 Book of Lessons, . . . .26 The, of Church Law, Brewer (J. S.), Athanasian Creed, . Bright (A. W.), and Medd (P. G.), Liber Precum Publicarum, . . 13 Bruton(E. G), Ecclesiastical Dilapidations, 7 Campion (W. M.) and Beamont (\V. J.), Prayer Book Interleaved, Catena Classicorum, Chilcot (William), Evil Thoughts, . . 23 Church Builder, . . . .26 Common Prayer and Ordinal, 1549, . 16 Companion to Old Testament, . 14 Consolatio, by C. E. Kennaway, . . 6 Demosthenis Orationes, by Arthur Holmes, . . . . .28 — — Publicae, by G. H. Heslop, . . . .28 Dictionary of Theology, . . . 24 page Dollinger (John J. Ign. Von.), Fables re- specting the Popes, &c, . . . 14 ! Lectures on Reunion, . . . -3 Dominican Artist (A), . . -4 Edward VI., First Book of Common Prayer of, . . . . .16 Euripides, Scenes from, by Sidgwick, . 30 Field (Walter), Stones of the Temple, . 8 Fosbery (T. V.), Hymns and Poems, &c, 7 Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terms, by Orby Shipley, .... Goulburn (Dean), Manual of Confirmation, Family Prayers, Pursuit of Holiness, Thoughts on Personal Religion, .... Gould (S. B.), Curious Myths, &c, Religious Belief, Gratry (Pere) Henri Perreyve, Last Days of, Greek Testament, by Dean Alford, Green (W. C), Aristophanis Comcediae, Guide to Heaven, Gurney (Augustus), Home Life of Jesus of Nazareth, .... Haddan (A. W.), Apostolic Succession, Help and Comfort for the Sick Poor, Herbert (Georgel, Poems and Proverbs, Herodoti Historia, by H. G. Woods, Heslop (G. H.), Demosthenis Orationes Publicae, .... Hidden Life of the Soul, Hodgson (Chris.), Instructions for the Clergy, .... Holmes (Arthur), Demosthenis Orationes, Homeri Ilias, by S. H. Reynolds, . Hook(W F.), Family Prayers, . Hoole (Chas. H.), Shepherd of Hermas, Hymns and Poems, by T. V. Fosbery, Imitation of Christ, . . .22 Isocratis Orationes, by John Edwin Sandys, 28 Janus, Pope and Council, . . . 17 Jebb (R. C), Sophoclis Tragoedia;, . 28 Juvenalis Satirae, by G. A. Simcox, . 28 Kay (W.) on the Psalms, . . . 13 Keys to Christian Knowledge, . 19, 20 Kennaway (C. E.), Consolatio, . . 6 32 Ittbcx Letters from Rome on the Council, by Quirinus, . . . . . 17 Liber Precum Publicarum, . . . 13 Liddon (H. P.), Bampton Lectures, . 13 Elements of Religion, . 13 University Sermons, . 13 Louise, Life of Madame, de France, . 4 Lyte (Henry F.), Poems, . . .11 MacColl (M.)» Damnatory Clauses, etc., 7 Mahan (Milo), Church History, . . 12 Mant (Richard), Ancient Hymns, . . 7 Happiness of the Blessed, 26 Melvill (Henry), Sermons, . . . 15 Latter Sermons, 15 Sermons on Less Promi- nent Facts, . . . .15 Mercier (Anne), Our Mother Church, . 12 Moberly (George), Brighstone Sermons, . 3 Great Forty Days, . 3 Monsell (John S. B.), Parish Musings, . 8 Moore (Daniel), Aids to Prayer, . . 26 Sermons, . . -9 Mozley's (J. B.) Lectures on the Miracles, 11 Neale (J. M.), Herbert Tresham, . 27 Newman (J. H.), Sermons, . . 27 Sermons, Oxford Uni- versity, . . 27 Sermons, Subjects of the Day, . . . . .27 New Testament by Henry Alford, . 16 Norris (J. B.), Key to the Acts, . . 21 Key to the Four Gospels, . 21 Papillon (T. L.), Terenti Comoediae, . 28 Path of Holiness, . . . .2 Perraud (Pere A.), Last Days of Pere Gratry, . . . . .5 Perreyve (Henri), Life of, . . .5 Persii Satira;, by A. Pretor, . . 28 Phillpotts (M. C), Hillford Confirmation, 18 Manor Farm, . . 27 Pope, The, and the Council, by Janus, . 17 Prayer Book Interleaved, . . .10 Prayers and Meditations for Holy Com- munion, . . . . .10 Quirinus, Letters from Rome, . . 17 Reynolds (S. H.), Homeri Ilias, . . 28 Ridley (W. H.), Bible Readings, . . 11 Rivington's Devotional Series, . . 22 Mathematical Series, . . 29 Roberts (John), English Nursery Rhymes, 27 Romanoff (H. C), Historical Narratives, . 10 Rites and Customs of the Greco-Russian Church, . . 14 Romanoff (H. C), S. John Chrysostom' Liturgy, .... Rossetti (Maria F.), Shadow of Dante, Sales (S. Francis de), Devout Life, Letters, : Life, Spirit, Sandys (J. E.), Isocratis Orationes, Scudamore (W. E.), Manual of Prayers. Notitia Eucharistica, Self-Renunciation, . Services of the Church, Shakspere's As You Like It, Coriolanus, Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing, ■ Tempest, Shepherd of Hermas, Shipley (Orby), Glossary of Ecclesiastical Terms, .... Sickness ; Its Trials, &c, . Sidgwick's Scenes from Greek Plays, Simcox (G. A.), Juvenalis Satirae, . Smith (J. H.), Algebra, Part I. . Algebra, Exercises on, Geometry, . Hydrostatics, Statics, Trigonometry, (R. Prowde), Latin Prose Exercises Sophoclis Tragoediae, by R. C. Jebb, Stainer (John), Theory of Harmony, . Star of Childhood, . Stephens (A. J.), Argument : Sheppard v Bennett, .... Stone (S. J.), Poems, Sutton (Fred. H.), Church Organs, Taylor (Jeremy), Holy Dying, Hoi}' Living, Terenti Comoediae, by T. L. Papillon, Thucydidis Historia, by Chas. Bigg, Treasury of Devotion, Trelawny, (C. T. C), Perranzabuloe, Walton (H. B.), and Medd (P. G), Common Prayer and Ordinal, 1549, Way of Life, .... Williams (Isaac), Devotional Commentary, Female Scripture Char acters, ..... Old Testament Char acters, .... Wilson (Bishop), Lord's Supper, Woods (H. G.), Herodoti Historia, Wordsworth (Charles), Catechesis, / Date. Due • BW921 .R64 Church memorials and characteristics Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00065 4972