.5-. 
 
 THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM LEE, D. D., 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 
 AND PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 
 
 DUBLIN: 
 HODGES, SMITH, & CO., 104, GRAFTON-STREET, 
 
 BOOKSELLERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 LONDON: RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO-PLACE. 
 1858.
 
 DUBLIN : 
 
 ^rintetf at ti)e SHnitoersitp Press, 
 
 BY M. H. GILL.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Mature of the subject illustrated, 1 
 
 I. The respective limits of Civil and Ecclesiastical History, 4 
 
 The relations of Church and State, 5 
 
 Examples: — 1. The Albigensian Crusade, .... 6 
 
 2. The Schism of the Non- Jurors, ... 7 
 The Study of Ecclesiastical History, thus understood, 
 
 alike important and attractive, 9 
 
 Nor does its extent render the task more arduous,. . . 15 
 
 The divisibility of Church History into distinct branches, 1 6 
 
 II. Ecclesiastical History, the History of Christianity, . . 17 
 
 The facts on which this depends, 18 
 
 The Aspect of the "World when Christianity was first pro- 
 claimed: — The Condition of the Eoman Slaye, . . 19 
 
 The Gladiator, 21 
 
 This state of Society, how encountered by the Church, . 25 
 
 Conclusion — The Catacombs, 27 
 
 LECTTTKE II. 
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Aspect of the World when Christianity was first pro- 
 claimed : — The Office of the Eoman Emperor, ... 33 
 
 The Deification of the Emperor, 37 
 
 " The first Christian Emperor," 40 
 
 The Church at the opening of the Eifth Century, .... 43 
 
 I. Preceding Events : — The Edict of Milan, 44 
 
 The Hostility of Julian, 45 
 
 Syncretism: — Elagabalus; Alexander Severus, ... 47 
 
 Neo-Platonism, 48
 
 JV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 II. Eome the stronghold of Paganism, 50 
 
 Eoman Society as described by Macrobius, .... 51 
 
 The Altar of Yictory, 59 
 
 S. Ambrose, 60 
 
 Did Theodosius refer to the Senate the question as to the 
 
 adoption of Christianity ? 61 
 
 The Capture of Eome by Alaric, 63 
 
 Paganism lingered in the East, 65 
 
 And still longer in the West, 66 
 
 From these details two leading facts emerge : — 
 
 1. Centuries elapsed before the triumph of the Church 
 
 was secured, 67 
 
 2. The Bishops of Eome were not her leaders in the 
 
 conflict, ib. 
 
 LECTUEE III. 
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 The Progress of Christianity necessarily slow, 71 
 
 The Study of Ecclesiastical History proves that there 
 
 is no ground here for despondency, 73 
 
 Two principles must be our guide in this Study, . . 74 
 The Aspect of the World when the triumph of the Church 
 
 was secured, 77 
 
 The function of the Church at this epoch, 79 
 
 1. The Preservation of Knowledge: — Alcuin; S. Co- 
 
 lumbanus, 81 
 
 2. The Civilization of the Barbarians : — The Con- 
 
 version of Germany, 82 
 
 The results to the Church of the Calamities of the Empire, . 87 
 
 The Conduct of the Barbarian Chiefs, 88 
 
 The dark pages of Ecclesiastical History illustrated : — 
 
 1. The Donatist Controversy, 91 
 
 2. The Spirit of Persecution, 96 
 
 The Inquisition, 100 
 
 Persecution has failed to extinguish error, 105 
 
 Subject of the future Course of Lectures denned, . . . .108 
 
 .uiuc A
 
 THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES, 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY — ITS CHARACTER AND ITS 
 PROVINCE. 
 
 THERE is an early legend of the Eastern Church 
 which, from its beauty no less than from the 
 truth which it embodies, has at all times exercised 
 a powerful fascination over minds the most variously 
 constituted. It is introduced as a divine revelation 
 by Mohammed into the Koran, — it has been adopted 
 and adorned by his followers from Bengal to Africa ; 
 it is embodied in the hagiology of the Abyssinian, 
 and vestiges of the story have been discovered in 
 the remote extremities of Scandinavia. It has even 
 stirred the imagination of Gibbon, who has traced 
 u the authentic tradition" to within iifty years of its 
 alleged date. " Among the insipid legends of Eccle- 
 siastical History," he writes, " I am tempted to distin- 
 guish the memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers" 1 . 
 
 1 Chap, xxxiii.
 
 2 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 The legend is as follows : — The middle of the third 
 century and the reign of the Emperor Decius are 
 memorable in the annals of the Church as the period 
 of the first general persecution. At this time there 
 lived in the city of Ephesus seven youths of noble 
 birth, who were Christians. As they refused to offer 
 sacrifice, they were accused before the tribunal ; but 
 they fled and escaped to Mount Cselian, where they 
 hid themselves in a cave. Being discovered, they 
 were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave or- 
 ders that the entrance should be firmly secured with 
 a pile of huge stones. They embraced each other, 
 and fell asleep: — and thus they miraculously slept 
 on, while years expanded into centuries. And it 
 came to pass, in the thirtieth year of the Emperor 
 Theodosius the Younger, that the slaves of Adolius, 
 to whom the inheritance of the mountain had de- 
 scended, removing the stones to build a stable for his 
 cattle, discovered the cavern, and when the light 
 penetrated therein, the sleepers awoke. Believing 
 that their slumbers had only lasted for a single night, 
 they rose up, and resolved that one of their number 
 should secretly return to the city to purchase food. 
 Advancing cautiously and fearfully, change every- 
 where meets his eye : he can no longer recognise the 
 features of the scene once so familiar, and his surprise 
 is increased by the appearance of a gilded Cross on 
 the city-gate by which he entered. He looks around 
 in vain for traces of the heathen worship ; he timidly 
 asks a passer-by whether there are any Christians
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 3 
 
 in Ephesus, and receives for answer, " We are all 
 Christians here." His singular dress and obsolete 
 language soon caused him to be brought before the 
 Pra3fect. His story told, the magistrates, the Bishop, 
 and the Emperor himself, followed him in haste to the 
 cavern of the Seven Sleepers, whose " faces had the 
 freshness of roses, and a holy and beautiful light 
 was about them." 
 
 The legend goes on to describe the feelings of 
 pious joy which replaced their previous fears, as the 
 Sleepers on re-entering the scenes of their youth be- 
 came gradually conscious of how the world had been 
 transformed. But, let us fancy them to have slum- 
 bered on for some ages longer, and the scene of their 
 reanimation to be some great city of modern Europe 
 — for example, the London of our own day ; let us 
 suppose the timid messenger to see before him the 
 stately Abbey, with the shadows of its centuries 
 around it ; and to have learned from every Cross- 
 surmounted pinnacle, from every answer to his won- 
 dering questions, " We are all Christians here," — we 
 shall the more readily conceive the nature of that 
 mighty change that has passed over the earth since 
 the days of the Caesars, the moving causes and the 
 events of which it is the province of Ecclesiastical 
 History*to describe. 
 
 To observe the manifestations of that Divine Power 
 by which this change has been effected ; to trace the 
 progress of Christianity as the regenerating element 
 of society ; to note the obstacles it has had to en- 
 
 b2
 
 4 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 counter ; to watch the vicissitudes of its conflict with 
 the powers of earth ; to mourn over its temporary 
 defeats; to rejoice over its ultimate, though often 
 long deferred, triumphs ; to deduce from the tangled 
 details which fill up this chequered scene lessons of 
 practical wisdom, required alike by every Christian 
 nation and by every Christian man ; — such is the 
 grand subject in the consideration of which I invite 
 you to accompany me. 
 
 It is usual, when approaching the present inquiry, 
 and I believe it to be necessary, to offer some ob- 
 servations as to the peculiar nature and limits of 
 the field over which our investigations must extend. 
 There is a class of questions, indeed, which I am not 
 solicitous to answer : — What is meant by Ecclesias- 
 tical History, in the strict sense of the phrase ? How 
 far is it to be identified with, how far distinguished 
 from, the general History of the world, the annals of 
 the rise and fall of nations ? I believe no judicious 
 writer has ever attempted to fix the boundary here, or 
 narrowly to define the landmarks which separate the 
 story of man's progress on earth, from the records of 
 that Society which guides his road to Heaven. It does 
 not require any nice judgment to discriminate the 
 prominent features characteristic of each; and when 
 I remind you of a parallel and well-known question, 
 I shall, I hope, have satisfied you that I am justified 
 in not desiring to draw a sharp line of distinction 
 between these two departments of historical research: 
 — I allude to the controversy as to the relation be-
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 5 
 
 tween Church and State, the two essential elements 
 of modern society. 
 
 In every theory as to the nature of this relation 
 which deserves notice, the interests of Church and 
 State are ever found so closely commingled, that to 
 attempt to treat of either apart from the other must 
 be found as impossible as it certainly is unphiloso- 
 phical. It has been truly said by a great statesman, 
 that " the highest duty and highest interest of a 
 body politic alike tend to place it in close relations of 
 co-operation with the Church of Christ" 1 . Whether 
 then, with Hooker, we believe " the Church and the 
 Commonwealth" to be "personally one Society," 
 which is thus variously named merely as we consider 
 its relation to the secular or the spiritual law; 
 whether, with Warburton and Paley, we deny a 
 conscience to the State, and regard considerations of 
 utility as the motive determining its necessary adop- 
 tion of a National Religion ; whether, with Burke, 
 we " think ourselves bound, not only as individuals 
 in the sanctuary of the heart to renew the memory 
 of our high origin and caste .... but also in our 
 corporate character to perform our national homage 
 to the Institutor, and Author, and Protector of Civil 
 Society ;" or, again, receiving the beautiful theory of 
 Coleridge, were we to look upon the Christian Church 
 as the soul which underlies and animates the body 
 politic, — as " the sustaining, correcting, befriending, 
 
 1 Gladstone, " The State in its Relations with the Church," 4th 
 ed., vol. i. p. 4.
 
 6 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTOKY, 
 
 opposite of the world, the compensating counterforce 
 to the inherent and inevitable defects of the State, as 
 a State ;" or, in fine, travelling beyond the theories 
 for which our own Church is more or less responsible, 
 were we to accept either the theory of Hobbes, ac- 
 cording to which the Church and her Religion are 
 mere creatures of the State, or the opposite extreme 
 of UltramontaneRomanists, which holds the temporal 
 power to be wholly dependent on, and subordinate 
 to the Church : — on each and all of these theories 
 we shall find the provinces of Civil and Ecclesiastical 
 History inextricably intertwined; and no one, whe- 
 ther speculative student or practical statesman, can 
 pretend to a philosophical knowledge of the annals, 
 or the constitution, or the laws of his country, who 
 does not assign, at each era of his country's progress, 
 due weight to the influence of the Church. 
 
 Two striking examples will illustrate what I de- 
 desire to express. 
 
 1. Perhaps the darkest page even in the story of 
 religious persecution is that which recounts the 
 crusade against the Albigenses at the opening of the 
 thirteenth century. We can easily comprehend the 
 zeal to crush the Manichgean heresy, which prompted 
 ecclesiastics of every rank to take up arms, under the 
 mistaken belief of their age, that the cause of Reli- 
 gion could be promoted by the sword; but it is not 
 so easy, at first sight, to discern the motives that 
 led the chivalry of France to wage a war of exter- 
 mination against the land of the Troubadours.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 7 
 
 DeMontfort was, no doubt, a ferocious soldier, and it 
 is not difficult to understand how the fair regions of 
 Languedoc and Provence may have excited his cu- 
 pidity ; but that the great barons of every province 
 of France should have combined in this enterprise, 
 and that the successive armies which moved from 
 Lyons along the Rhone should have assembled to 
 ravage the most beautiful portion of their own coun- 
 try, — the focus of that spirit of chivalry which was 
 absolutely a religion to the knights and warriors of 
 the age, — requires to be explained by some other 
 cause than their hatred of heresy. This explanation we 
 shall find in the civil History of the time. It was the 
 age in which European society attempted republican 
 organization. The towns of Provence, Languedoc, 
 and Aquitaine, aimed at forming themselves into 
 independent communities. In this fact we discern 
 the moving power which led on the army of Simon 
 De Montfort. Besides its character as a religious 
 crusade, the struggle was still more the contest of 
 the feudalism of the North against this attempt at 
 democratical organization by the cities of the South. 
 The religious element was eagerly made use of by 
 the feudal barons, and the crusade established the 
 feudal system in the south of France 1 . 
 
 2. My second illustration is taken from a critical 
 period in our own history. The schism of the Non- 
 Jurors forms one of the most striking and, I may 
 
 1 Guizot, " Histoire de la Civilization en Europe," 10 e Lecon.
 
 8 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 add, most romantic incidents of the Revolution of 
 1688. The men who sacrificed so much, in obe- 
 dience to the dictates of conscience, — although the 
 majority of the nation felt that their sense of duty 
 was a mistaken one, — exercised an influence on 
 public opinion which no writer of English History 
 has ventured to ignore. A great historian has, in- 
 deed, recently thought fit to envelop in a cloud of 
 ridicule the conduct of Sancroft and of those who 
 followed his example ; but few thoughtful men will 
 refuse assent to the following judgment of Mr, 
 Hallam : "The necessity of excluding men so con- 
 scientious, and several of whom had very recently 
 sustained so conspicuously the brunt of the battle 
 against king James, was very painful ; and motives 
 of policy, as well as generosity, were not wanting in 
 favour of some indulgence towards them. . . . The 
 effect of this expulsion was highly unfavourable to 
 the new government ; and it required all the influence 
 of a latitudinarian school of divinity, led by Locke, 
 which was very strong among the laity under Wil- 
 liam, to counteract it" 1 . 
 
 In thus concluding that the History of the Church 
 must be studied in connexion with general History, 
 I do not forget that the space through which I invite 
 you to accompany me is somewhat extensive; and I 
 feel that this may prove a discouragement to those 
 who enter upon the study for the first time. I can- 
 
 1 " Constitutional History of England," vol. ii. p. 455, 4to ed.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 9 
 
 not even promise that our progress will be free from 
 difficulty, or that we shall pluck only flowers along 
 our path. Where, indeed, shall you find knowledge 
 acquired without toil, or what aspect of human 
 History can you discern undistorted by human weak- 
 ness or human error? But I believe that no de- 
 partment of intellectual research can offer more 
 important or more attractive results to students of 
 every class. I speak not now of the professed theo- 
 logian, the very rudiments of whose science depend 
 upon this knowledge — each phrase and formula in 
 dogmatic theology being expressed in language ge- 
 nerated and moulded during those controversies 
 which form one of the most prominent features of 
 Ecclesiastical History ; — but I refer to the general 
 body of educated men, whose training is the duty of 
 our Universities, and whose thoughtful and intelli- 
 gent acceptance of her doctrines our Church has ever 
 invited. I refer to the statesman who draws the 
 maxims of political wisdom from " the philosophy 
 that teaches by examples" — the well-known defini- 
 tion of History in general, one of the most fertile 
 provinces of which is to be found in the History of 
 the Church. I refer to those who desire, from what- 
 ever motive of amusement or instruction, to trace 
 the fortunes of mankind; and who, in the great drama 
 performed by human beings on the world's wide 
 stage, during each period of time, will ever find the 
 History of the Church opening out scenes that stir
 
 10 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 the soul to its lowest depths, — depicting heroism 
 and endurance which elicit all the sympathies of our 
 nature ; genius and wisdom which command the ho- 
 mage of our understandings; holy lives which we 
 should all aspire to emulate ; lessons of duty which 
 we should strive, with prayer, to observe. 
 
 Nor can any one have failed to notice that those 
 portions of general History which involve a record of 
 the fortunes of the Church are ever the most attrac- 
 tive. We hear, again, in such episodes, the voice of 
 our common nature, which is drowned amid the crash 
 of arms or the fall of empires ; and the humanizing 
 influence of Christianity casts a cheering light across 
 the dark page that tells the story of political intrigue 
 or of national crime. The reading of any person of 
 ordinary education will furnish abundant proofs of 
 this. You are all aware, for example, how many 
 chapters of Gibbon's great work — throughout which 
 he studiously brings forward those facts that admit 
 of scenical treatment — are devoted to the affairs of 
 the Church ; and you surely have felt, when her 
 History is the theme, that his narrative possesses a 
 charm which neither the monotonous rhythm of his 
 rhetoric, nor the measured cadence of his sneer, can 
 weaken or dispel. Indeed, the records of the Church 
 are so necessarily and inseparably connected with all 
 the highest interests of man, that, though they were 
 regarded merely from a worldly point of view, they 
 naturally offer to the reflecting mind a degree of at-
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 11 
 
 traction which political details, or dynastic changes, 
 or even the " pomp and circumstance of war," can sel- 
 dom present. 
 
 Permit me to quote, in illustration of my general 
 meaning, the words of a well-known writer, which 
 forcibly describe a defect that has long characterized 
 general History, but of which the modern school of 
 historians has, at last, become conscious : — 
 
 "What good is it to me though innumerable 
 Smolletts and Belshams keep dinning in my ears 
 that a man named George III. was born and bred 
 up, and a man named George II. died ; that Walpole, 
 and the P'elhams, and Chatham, and Eockingham, 
 and Shelburne, and North, with their coalition or 
 their separation ministries, all ousted one another, 
 and vehemently scrambled for 'the thing they called 
 the rudder of government, but which was in reality 
 the spigot of taxation.' .... Mournful, in truth, is it 
 to behold what the business called ' History/ in these 
 so enlightened and illuminated times, still conti- 
 nues to be. Can you gather from it, read till your 
 eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an answer to 
 that great question : How men lived and had their 
 
 being ? For example, I would fain know the 
 
 History of Scotland : who can tell it me ? ' Kobert- 
 son,' say innumerable voices ; 'Kobertson against the 
 world.' I open Kobertson, and find there, through 
 long ages too confused for narration, and fit only to 
 be presented in the way of epitome and distilled es- 
 sence, a cunning answer and hypothesis, not to this
 
 12 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 question : By whom, and by what means, when and 
 how was this fair broad Scotland, with its arts and 
 manufactures, temples, schools, institutions, poetry, 
 spirit, national character, created and made arable, 
 verdant, peculiar, great, here as I can see some fair 
 section of it lying, kind and strong (like some 
 Bacchus-tamed lion), from the Castle-hill of Edin- 
 burgh ? — but to this other question : How did the 
 king keep himself alive in those old days ; and re- 
 strain so many butcher-barons and ravenous hench- 
 men from utterly extirpating one another, so that 
 killing went on in some sort of moderation ? In the 
 one little Letter of iEneas Sylvius, from old Scotland, 
 there is more of history than in all this. At length, 
 however, we come to a luminous age, of lasting im- 
 portance, and full of interest for us ; to the age of 
 the Reformation. All Scotland is awakened to a 
 second higher life ; the Spirit of the Highest stirs in 
 every bosom, agitates every bosom ; Scotland is con- 
 vulsed, fermenting, struggling to body itself forth 
 anew. To the herdsman, among his cattle in remote 
 woods ; to the craftsman, in his rude heath- thatched 
 workshop, among his rude guild-brethren; to the 
 great and to the little, a new light has arisen : in town 
 and hamlet groups are gathered, with eloquent looks, 
 and governed or ungovernable tongues; the great and 
 the little go forth together to do battle for the Lord 
 against the mighty. We ask, with breathless eager- 
 ness: How was it; how went it on? Let us under- 
 stand it, let us see it, and know it ! — In reply, is
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 13 
 
 handed us a really graceful and most dainty little 
 scandalous chronicle (as for some journal of fashion) 
 of two persons : — Mary Stuart and Henry Darnley" 1 . 
 The justice of Mr. Carlyle's complaint is now 
 fully recognised. The truth has, at length, been ac- 
 knowledged, that battles and sieges, the official acts 
 of governments, the changes of dynasties, are not the 
 only facts to which historical narrative should ex- 
 tend. The relation of events to each other, their 
 mutual connexion, their causes and their effects, all, 
 in short, that constitutes the philosophy of History, 
 are now universally received among the facts that 
 must be studied, narrated, described. Of the events 
 which make up History, thus understood, none have 
 had such influence on the universal interests of the 
 human family, none present such affinities with all 
 that concerns the welfare of man, as the spread 
 of the Christian Faith, the establishment of the 
 Christian Church. The Christian Clergy as a body 
 have ever been men of the people : and no surer 
 index can be found of a nation's civilization at any 
 stage of its progress, than the lives and the intel- 
 lectual culture of the ministers of Religion. The 
 term caste, you should remember, is a term wholly 
 inapplicable to the Christian priesthood. In Ori- 
 ental forms of Religion, as of civil government, the 
 individual was nothing — caste ruled all. Even the 
 Jewish priesthood was a caste, for the office was he- 
 
 1 tJ Samuel Johnson," by Thomas Carlyle.
 
 14 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 reditary ; and the chronicles of the sons of Aaron 
 but partially unfold the history of the children of 
 Abraham. The idea of the corporate body of the Chris- 
 tian Clergy, on the other hand, continually recruited 
 from the mass of the people, has replaced in the 
 Christian Church the idea and the limited spirit of 
 caste. It has rendered the writings of ecclesiastics 
 a faithful transcript of the national characteristics of 
 each country, and ecclesiastics themselves true repre- 
 sentatives of the civilization of each successive age. 
 From the writings of ecclesiastics alone can any 
 correct information now be gained as to the recon- 
 struction and development of society, from the fall 
 of the Empire to the close of the Middle Ages. At 
 the commencement of this period, in the towns where 
 municipal institutions survived, sole relics from the 
 wreck of Roman organization, the Bishops and Clergy, 
 by their influence over the people, served as the con- 
 necting link between them and their conquerors; and, 
 as time moves on, we find a member of the Clergy 
 everywhere present, from the cottage of the serf at 
 the foot of the feudal castle, to the court of the mo- 
 narch. Not only were the Clergy the sole possessors 
 of the erudition of their age, they were also, by 
 early association and by actual occupation, the per- 
 sons best fitted to transmit to us the character of their 
 times. This task they have faithfully performed. 
 Where, for example, shall you find such a picture of 
 the crisis in which the Roman Empire expired as 
 in the pages of an Ambrose, or an Augustine; a
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 15 
 
 Jerome, or a Gregory the Great? The questions which 
 they discussed are the very questions that still stir 
 the heart, and influence the practice of men : — how 
 moderation is to be suggested to rulers ; how the do- 
 mestic or public legislation of society is to be guided ; 
 how religious dissensions are to be calmed ; how 
 error is to be resisted ; how the heathen are to be 
 evangelized. 
 
 From the manner in which Ecclesiastical History is 
 thus essentially united with the general History of the 
 world, its study may, as I have said, at first sight 
 seem to present a hopeless task. It is, however, a 
 characteristic of all inquiries relating to the Church, 
 that each line of investigation may be pursued apart, 
 and with but slight reference to the others. The 
 ecclesiastical records of each country, for example, 
 have a separate department of their own ; the growth 
 and cessation of controversies form a distinct branch 
 of the general subject ; the ritualist has open to him 
 channels of information that can be followed undis- 
 turbed by other inquiries ; the proceedings of Coun- 
 cils, the deliberative assemblies which express the 
 sentiment of the Universal Church, may be con- 
 sulted without invading any of the kindred topics 
 which constitute Ecclesiastical History. That a di- 
 vision of the general subject under distinct heads 
 should be thus feasible, is an immediate consequence 
 of the fact which underlies the notion of the Catholi- 
 city of the Church. When entering upon the study 
 of ordinary History, we are encountered at the outset
 
 16 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 by a class of questions, in the case of each particular 
 branch of the human family, which do not arise at 
 all in the History of the Church — the questions, I 
 mean, which are involved in the title, "Constitu- 
 tional History." The origin and progress of govern- 
 ments, the modifications effected by time in the po- 
 lity of nations, these are questions which involve the 
 most delicate investigations, and demand long and 
 patient research ; but no such inquiry is necessary 
 on our part. The constitution of the Church Uni- 
 versal has been fixed from the first by its Divine 
 Founder. "It is evident unto all men," I quote 
 the Ordinal of the Anglican Church — " It is evi- 
 dent unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scrip- 
 ture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles' 
 time there have been these Orders of ministers in 
 Christ's Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons." This 
 was also, one may not unfairly argue, the essential 
 condition of the Church's triumph. Let us only con- 
 ceive Church-government not to have been fixed in 
 primitive times ; — let us imagine differences respect- 
 ing Ecclesiastical Polity, such as rend, at the present 
 day, the unity of Christian men, to have prevailed 
 when it was the task of Christianity to encounter the 
 civilization of the Roman Empire, and to tame the 
 barbarism of that Empire's destroyers, — and we shall 
 have pictured to our minds a state of things from 
 which God, in His good Providence, has shielded 
 mankind. 
 
 This reference to the idea of the "Universal"
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 17 
 
 Church suggests another preliminary topic. Having 
 stated the extent of the inquiry in which we are en- 
 gaged, it is necessary that I should also state the 
 point from which, in my opinion, Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory, properly so called, takes its rise. I know, in- 
 deed, that, in the Divine Scheme, the Christian 
 Church is but a continuation of the Jewish, and that 
 " the Church in the wilderness" 1 was the type of the 
 Church in the world ; but still, there are features 
 characteristic of Christianity, and of Christianity 
 alone among all religions, sufficient to justify our 
 restricting to it this department of History. The 
 very title, " Catholic," to the force of which I have 
 just referred, was abhorrent to the genius and essence 
 of the religion of the Jew : — Ave learn from Holy 
 Writ how he received the announcement, "That 
 many shall come from the East and West, and shall 
 sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in 
 the Kingdom of Heaven" 2 . But there is another 
 feature of Christianity which distinguishes it not 
 only from Judaism, but from all other forms of re- 
 ligion that the world has ever seen, and which, by 
 rendering the records of the Christian Church the 
 record of the greatest social revolution in the annals 
 of mankind, has traced out for it, in universal His- 
 tory, a distinct epoch of its own. 
 
 You remember our Lord's reply to the question, 
 "Art Thou He that should come, or look we for 
 
 l Acts, vii. 38. 3 S. Matt. viii. 11.
 
 18 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 another V " Go your way, and tell John what things 
 ye have seen and heard' 1 The proofs which evinced 
 that His Religion was Divine were not merely His 
 acts of supernatural power, but a fact which, to His 
 hearers, was no less astonishing : " The blind see, 
 the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
 the dead are raised, to the poor the Gospel is 
 preached" 1 . I do not know whether this colloca- 
 tion of proofs has ever struck you with surprise : — 
 the " preaching of the Gospel to the poor" is added to 
 the last and greatest of testimonies, that of raising 
 from the dead. Leavened as modern society has 
 been by the influence of Christianity, it may appear 
 somewhat superfluous even to particularize as a cha- 
 racteristic of any form of religion that the poor 
 should partake of its consolations. And yet the 
 Lord places in an equal rank of importance with the 
 miracles that manifested His Divine Glory, the fact 
 to us so familiar, so universally recognised as the 
 duty most incumbent on His Church, that " to the 
 poor the Gospel is preached." Consider the cha- 
 racter of the time. The philosophy of the age was 
 addressed to a chosen few. Christianity aimed at 
 making the knowledge of God the common property 
 of all. " The meanest Christian," wrote Tertullian, 
 "has found God, and shows thee practically what 
 thou seekest in God, although Plato 2 says that the 
 
 1 S. Luke, vii. 22. 
 
 2 Timseus, ed. Bipont,, vol. ix. p. 303 ; — tho words are frequently 
 quoted by the other Apologists of the time. In China, observes
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 19 
 
 Creator of the world cannot easily be found, and 
 that, when He is found, it is impossible to make 
 Him known to all" 1 . In this simple characteristic 
 of the Religion of Christ consists the power that has 
 changed the destiny of the world. The social revo- 
 lution which it effected renders the annals of the 
 Church unique among the histories of mankind, and, 
 of itself, makes the rise and progress of Christianity 
 the greatest crisis in the fortunes of the human race. 
 A brief survey of the state of society at the date of 
 the Birth of Christ will exhibit how great a moral 
 miracle was here performed. 
 
 The aspect of the world at this epoch presented 
 an antithesis the greatest that the imagination can 
 conceive : — the office of the Roman Emperor, and 
 the condition of the Slave. Each member of this 
 antithesis calls for some remark. The former, the 
 office of the Emperor, I reserve for my next Lecture ; 
 I shall confine myself, for the present, to some ob- 
 servations suggested by the latter. 
 
 The Roman world under Augustus was composed 
 of citizens, subjects, and allies, — whom alone the 
 law recognised as entitled to social and political 
 
 Dean Milman, " The early Jesuit missionaries assert that the 
 higher classes (the literate-rum secta) despised the idolatry of the 
 vulgar. One of the charges against the Christians was their teach- 
 ing the worship of one true God, which they had full liberty to 
 worship themselves, to the common people." — Hist, of Christianity, 
 vol. i. p. 15. 
 
 1 " Apologeticus," c. 46. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 rights. Beyond these, huddled together with goods 
 and chattels, lay the outer world of slaves, who were 
 allowed no part or interest in the law at all. The 
 mass of the provincial population belonged to the 
 class of dediticii — that is, those who had submitted 
 to the yoke of Rome without conditions, — the slaves, 
 as they may be termed, of the great Roman family 1 . 
 The civil wars had exhausted the centre of the Em- 
 pire more than the provinces ; and the rapid dis- 
 appearance of the free population had filled Roman 
 statesmen with alarm from the time of the Gracchi. 
 Notwithstanding the efforts of Julius Ca?sar and 
 others to check the evil, the lands continued to be 
 almost entirely cultivated by slaves. At a later pe- 
 riod domestic slavery attained an extent that may 
 appear fabulous. Athenams 2 states that many Ro- 
 mans had 10,000 and 20,000 slaves. Pliny 3 tells 
 us that a freedman of Augustus, who had lost much 
 property in the civil wars, left at his death so many 
 as 4116 ; and although some writers regard this as 
 an exaggeration, it has been calculated that for the 
 period between the conquest of Greece (b. c. 146) 
 and the reign of the Emperor Alexander Sever us 
 (a. d. 235), the proportion of three slaves to one 
 freeman is a sufficiently low estimate. According 
 to the principles of Roman law, a slave could not con- 
 
 1 See Merivale, " History of the Romans under the Empire," 
 2nd ed., vol. i. p. 24 ; 1st ed., vol. iv. p. 399. 
 
 2 "Deipnos.," lib. vi. ed. Bipont,, vol. ii. p. 544. 
 
 3 " Xat. Hist.," lib. xxxiii c. 47.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 21 
 
 tract a legal marriage ; he was incapable of acquir- 
 ing property ; his gains belonged to his master, who 
 had also power of life and death over his slave. These 
 powers of the master were declared by the celebrated 
 jurist Gaius to be part of the jus gentium. The se- 
 verity of this code was, no doubt, from time to time, 
 of necessity, relaxed, but the frequent revolts of the 
 slaves against their tyrants sufficiently attest the in- 
 tolerable nature of their oppression. 
 
 The class of gladiators, an institution purely Ro- 
 man in its origin and to its end, presents the social 
 condition of the slave in its saddest aspect. 
 
 The very highest pitch of intellectual culture at 
 Rome failed to perceive that the exhibitions of gla- 
 diators were an outrage on humanity. Cicero, to 
 use the words of Gibbon 1 , " faintly censures the 
 abuse, and warmly defends the use, of these sports." 
 Some centuries later, and long after the reign of "the 
 first Christian Emperor," Symmachus,one of the most 
 refined of pagans, and the last influential defender 
 of paganism, notices the impiety of some Saxon cap- 
 tives who, by strangling themselves in prison, es- 
 caped the ignominy of being thus " butchered to 
 make a Roman holiday" 2 . Tragedy, it has been well 
 observed, had no existence as a part of Roman liter, 
 ature. There was too much tragedy, in the shape 
 of gross reality almost daily before the eye, to allow 
 the natural sympathy that softens at another's woe 
 
 1 Chap. xxx. *Iib„. ii. Epist. xlvi.
 
 22 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 to retain a spark of sensibility. It was not until the 
 same year as the Council of Nicsea, and, it is stated 1 , 
 at the instance of the assembled Fathers, that " the 
 first Christian Emperor' 7 partially disapproved of 
 these exhibitions. So late as the year a. d. 404, 
 Honorius was in vain 2 solicited to suppress them ; 
 and his subsequent edict, which accompanied their 
 final cessation, was brought about by an act of 
 Christian heroism that merits a passing notice. 
 
 Of course the Church, from the first, raised her 
 voice in horror at such scenes of blood. S. Irenaeus, 
 and he is followed by S. Cyprian and Tertullian, 
 mentions as the widest departure from the life of a 
 Christian exhibited by the most fanatical sect of the 
 Gnostics, that some of them " did not even absent 
 themselves from these murderous spectacles" 3 . We 
 may well feel astonishment how any pleasure could 
 be felt by the Roman people in these games. The 
 very prince in whose reign Christ was born was so 
 devoted to this pastime, that Maecenas once reproach- 
 fully summoned him away with the words, " Surge, 
 tandem, carnifex." The story told by S. Augustine 
 in his " Confessions" 4 strikingly illustrates the strange 
 fascination with which such scenes were witnessed. 
 
 1 See Jac. Gothofredus, " Cod. Theodos.," lib. xv., tit. xii. 
 t. v. p. 397. 
 
 2 Prudentius, " Adv. Symmaclium," lib. ii. 1121. 
 
 3 " Coilt. Hser.," lib. i. C. 6 — T^s irapa Qeiv Kal av0pt»)7roi<i /utt/nta- 
 t)fievr)s; 7i^ twv Oijpio/nd^iv^^ Kal fiovofla^ia^ dvcpo(p6vov Ocas. 
 
 4 Lib. vi. c. 8.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 23 
 
 Alypius was the companion of his boyhood, — as 
 S. Augustine affectionately terms him, " the brother 
 of his heart." On a visit to Rome he had resolved 
 to refrain from such an unphilosophical recreation. 
 Compelled, however, by some fellow-scholars to ac- 
 company them to a spectacle of gladiators, Alypius 
 resolved to close his eyes while thus forced to be 
 present. " Though present in body," he said, " in 
 mind I will be absent." At a particular crisis of the 
 contest the fierce shouts of the multitude overcame 
 his resolution, and, " conquered by curiosity, he 
 opened his eyes." The spell was upon him: — the 
 sight of blood overcame his philosophical determi- 
 nation, and he became himself" one of the crowd." 
 He shouted with the rest, his eyes flashed fire, and 
 he was hurried away with wild delight in his enjoy- 
 ment of the butchery. 
 
 The event which led to the final suppression of 
 these exhibitions forms one of the most pleasing 
 episodes in the writings of the old ecclesiastical his- 
 torians. The occasion was the series of public games 
 lavished by Honorius on the Roman people, in 
 honour of the great victory of Pollen tia. A certain 
 monk, writes Theodoret 1 , named Telemachus, came 
 from the East to Rome, at a time when these cruel 
 spectacles were being exhibited. After gazing upon 
 the combat he descended into the arena, and tried to 
 separate the gladiators. The sanguinary spectators, 
 possessed by the demon of slaughter, were enraged 
 
 » "Hist, EccL," Lib. vi. 26.
 
 24 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 at the cessation of their savage sport, and stoned to 
 death the person who had caused the interruption l . 
 But this one death had lasting effects. The impres- 
 sion produced by the murder of Telemachus was so 
 profound as to call forth a prohibitory edict from 
 the Emperor, — which edict, stranger still when we re- 
 collect that that Emperor was the imbecile Honorius, 
 was obeyed. The turbulent populace of Rome ac- 
 cepted the mandate, and submitted without a mur- 
 mur to the law which abolished for ever the human 
 sacrifices of the amphitheatre. 
 
 I have paused upon this topic because it affords 
 strong confirmation of the progress of Christianity 
 among the mass of the people. The aristocracy of 
 Rome, as I propose on a future occasion to point 
 out, were, to the last, obstinate adherents of pagan- 
 ism. The abrupt abolition, therefore, of this favourite 
 Roman amusement, without protest or popular tu- 
 mult, seems to admit of but one explanation, — the 
 growing and widely spread influence, among the 
 lower classes, of the Religion of Christ. 
 
 To return, however, to the condition of the world 
 when Christianity was announced to mankind. 
 
 Throughout the whole extent of the Roman domi- 
 nions, every city, every mansion, was divided into 
 two hostile camps, of the masters and the slaves, the 
 tyrants and their victims. This is a fact in ancient 
 
 1 Gibbon's comment on this act of Telemachus is characteristic : 
 his death, he observes, " was more useful to mankind than his 
 life," — char, xxx,
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 25 
 
 society which it is essential to keep before the mind ; 
 not only as exhibiting one of the chief social evils 
 with which Christianity had to grapple, but also — 
 and this is my principal motive for dwelling upon 
 the subject — because it appears to me to have been 
 the chief human instrument through which the Gos- 
 pel gained its victory. Christianity first proclaimed 
 to the world that all men, of every colour, and every 
 social grade, are in the highest sense equal before their 
 Maker ; that all are alike interested in its benefits, 
 joint heirs of its promises. Guided by the Revela- 
 tion of Christ, Reason has at length perceived, and, 
 in modern Europe at least, has recognised the truth, 
 that the different members of the human family are, 
 by necessity of logic, equal before God, as joint par- 
 ticipators in the ruin and the restoration. It is not 
 my province to recount how both the sacred wri- 
 ters and the later Christian teachers treated the 
 question of slavery,— an institution so deeply em- 
 bedded in the structure of Roman society, and which 
 for so many centuries held its ground in Europe. 
 The story told by Bede of that sale of British slaves 
 at Rome, at the close of the sixth century, which 
 led to the mission of Augustine ; the pious zeal of 
 S. Germanus of Paris, at the same period, for the re- 
 demption of slaves, — are facts well known to the 
 student of Ecclesiastical History : and, although the 
 various classes of slaves were, in course of time, 
 merged into the " adscripti glebse," or serfs of the 
 Middle Ages, it is a fact that servitude remained in
 
 26 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 Italy down to the thirteenth century 1 . I may, how- 
 ever, remind you of the language, on this subject, of 
 inspired and uninspired preachers of the Gospel : how 
 "Paul the aged" besought Philemon for his "son 
 Onesimus f how the Alexandrine Clement reckoned 
 among the leading principles of the Faith that " we 
 should treat our domestics as ourselves, for they 
 are human beings as we are ; and God, bethink thee, 
 looks impartially upon all, whether they be bond 
 or free" 2 . In accordance with this principle, we find 
 the Church acting in each successive age. The im- 
 provement in the condition of the slave population 
 was a subject of constant solicitude to ecclesiastical 
 rulers, and to Councils ; and, from the hour that 
 Christianity enjoyed toleration, the highest festivals 
 were appointed as the seasons, and the churches as 
 the place, for manumission 3 . You will easily perceive 
 the important open here offered to the progress of 
 Christianity, and can understand how justly, under 
 social conditions such as I have endeavoured to de- 
 scribe, the " preaching the Gospel to the poor" could 
 be placed by Christ among the greatest miracles. 
 
 I shall conclude for the present with an illustration 
 of the principle which I wish to establish — namely, 
 that among the slave population of the Empire the 
 Church found some of her earliest and most nu- 
 merous triumphs. 
 
 1 Blair, " The State of Slavery amongst the Romans," p. 16. 
 ? " Paedagogus," lib. iii. c. 12, cd. Potter, p. 307. 
 3 Blair, he. n't., p. 168.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 27 
 
 Eome, as you are aware, is undermined in every 
 direction by subterraneous excavations, forming a 
 maze of unknown extent, and with which we are 
 familiar under the name of the Catacombs. The 
 Romans had inherited from their Etruscan prede- 
 cessors these excavated labyrinths, formed, in remote 
 ages, in the process of quarrying tufo. We find al- 
 lusion to these sandpits in writers long before the 
 Christian era. The great increase of the city in the 
 latter days of the Republic led to the reopening of 
 the ancient excavations, in order to procure materials 
 for building ; and hence the whole subsoil on one 
 side of Rome was gradually perforated by a network 
 of quarries, which extended to a distance variously 
 estimated at fifteen and twenty miles. Here resorted 
 the " arenarii," or sand-diggers, who, as well as the 
 higher class of workmen, were slaves. Among the 
 Christian memorials represented in nearly all the 
 Catacombs are figures of men bearing instruments 
 of labour, often instruments for the purpose of exca- 
 vation, and clad in the dress peculiar to the slave 1 . 
 Here, then, among this despised class of the popula- 
 tion, the workmen in the Catacombs had provided 
 for themselves and their brethren in the Faith a 
 secure retreat — a retreat which became the estab- 
 lished refuge of the Roman Church. The number 
 of the Christian labourers in the Catacombs was in- 
 
 1 These are to be distinguished from the Christian Order of 
 "Fossarii" — see Bingham, " Antiquities," Book in. ch. viii. § 1.
 
 28 ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 creased, and this garrison of the Church continually 
 recruited from the ranks of those who were con- 
 demned, as was the practice at the time, to labour in 
 the sandpits as the punishment for abandoning the 
 ancient Roman faith 1 . If we read of a Christian 
 being dragged before the tribunal, or exposed to the 
 beasts in the Amphitheatre, we are apt to think of 
 him as one of a scattered community, few in number, 
 and politically insignificant. But all the while there 
 existed, literally beneath the surface of Roman so- 
 ciety, a population unheeded, uncared for, thought 
 of vaguely, vaguely spoken of, — a population strong- 
 hearted, of quick impulses, nerved alike to suffer or 
 to die ; and in numbers, resolution, and physical 
 force, sufficient to have caused their oppressors to 
 quail before them. But the sword had not yet been 
 enlisted in the cause of religion. Submissive, in 
 these a dens and caves of the earth," to the "powers 
 that be," for their Redeem ers sake, the early Chris- 
 tians lived and died ; and here they found their 
 sepulchre 2 . 
 
 In these numerous excavations slaves and persons 
 of the lowest class, who could not afford the cost of 
 a funeral pile, were usually buried. You remember 
 
 1 We read in the "Acts of the Martyrs" that the Emperor 
 Maximian (A. D. 294), in the persecntion of Diocletian, "con- 
 demned all the lloman soldiers who were Christians to hard la- 
 bour, some to dig stones, others sand. He also condemned Cyriacus 
 and Sisinnus to dig- sand, and to carry it on their shoulders." 
 
 8 See the remarks of Lord Lindsay, " Christian Art," vol. i. p. 4.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 29 
 
 how Horace compliments Maecenas on his having 
 rescued the pits left by the sand-diggers on the Es- 
 quiline Hill from so base a use as that of being "the 
 common sepulchre of the vilest of the people" 1 . Here, 
 too, we find again the influence of Christianity. The 
 records of the ancient world prove, what we still see 
 exhibited in the cemeteries of Egypt, that social dis- 
 tinctions survived even death, and that separate 
 burial-places were assigned to the different ranks of 
 society as well as to different families. It was re- 
 served for Christianity first to deposit side by side 
 persons unconnected with each other, except by the 
 profession of a common Faith 2 . For three hundred 
 years the Christians of Kome found sepulture in 
 these recesses ; and in the still extant memorials of 
 their trials and sufferings during persecution, we see 
 the purity and the depth of their religious convic- 
 tions. The very name "cemetery," " place of repose," 
 Koifx^T7]piov^ found for the first time in the inscrip- 
 tions of the Catacombs, points to a feeling of hope, 
 and a belief in immortality. Rude though the 
 mural pictures may be, they suggest all that is ex- 
 alted in heroism, and sublime in charity. We read 
 in the inscriptions no record of their sufferings, — for 
 death was hailed by them as the gate of everlasting 
 
 1 " Hue prius angustis ejecta cadavera cellis 
 Conservus vili portanda locabat in area, 
 Hoc miserse plebi commune sepulchrum." — Sat. i. viii. 
 3 See Maitland, " The Church in the Catacombs," p. 39. Of., 
 too, Bishop Kip's pleasing volume, " The Catacombs of Rome."
 
 3() ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 
 happiness, which they rejoiced to decorate with 
 pleasing symbols and flowers ; we can trace no 
 tokens of hostility against their persecutors, for they 
 had learned that the Christian must forgive : " There 
 is no sign of mourning, no token of resentment, no 
 expression of vengeance ; all breathes softness, be- 
 nevolence, charity" 1 . 
 
 Let me quote an inscription discovered by Ar- 
 inghi in the Cemetery of S. Agnes, which comprises 
 almost all that is affecting in the details of ancient 
 martyrdom, as well as the union of different so- 
 cial grades in the bonds of that Faith which drew 
 closely together the master and the slave : — 
 " Here lies Gordianus, Nuncius of Gaul, murdered 
 for the Faith with his whole family. They rest in 
 peace. The handmaid Theophila has erected this" 2 . 
 The uncouth Latinity and strange orthography of 
 these epitaphs afford the clearest proof as to the 
 rank and education of the persons who composed 
 and engraved them; while the same story, eloquent 
 in its simplicity, runs through them all — the story 
 which tells the hope of the Christian, the resignation 
 of the martyr. Enter the hall of the Vatican called 
 Lapidarian or "delle lapidi." On one side of this 
 long corridor you read the collected inscriptions that 
 have been taken from the Catacombs ; on the other 
 side are the monumental inscriptions of pagan Rome, 
 
 1 Cf. Seroux-D'Agincourt, "Hist, de l'Art," t. i. pp. 16-28. 
 
 2 " Roma Subterranea," lib. in. c. xxii. p. 337.
 
 ITS CHARACTER AND ITS PROVINCE. 31 
 
 gathered from the ruins of " the Eternal City." The 
 thought conveyed by each Christian epitaph, as con- 
 trasted with the almost unvarying language of the 
 heathen gravestones, forcibly strikes the mind. The 
 pagan inscription breathes the very accents of despair. 
 Beneath lie buried the love of the survivors, the 
 hopes of the departed ; there the dead enter the 
 portals of that tomb which to them is " an eternal 
 home" (" domus eternalis"). " relentless fortune," 
 wrote a mother over her infant child, " who de- 
 lightest in cruel death, why is Maximus so suddenly 
 snatched from me ?" On another gravestone we read : 
 " To the divine manes of Titus Claudius Secundus, 
 who lived fifty-seven years. Baths, wine, love, make 
 life what it is. Farewell! Farewell!" With such 
 sentiments as these contrast the faith and hope of 
 the following: — "In Christ. Alexander is not dead, 
 but lives beyond the stars. His body rests in this 
 tomb :" or compare the thought which, almost with- 
 out an exception, is expressed by each Christian 
 epitaph — " In Peace."
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 HPHE aspect of the world during the earlier cen- 
 -*- turies of the Christian era presented, as I stated 
 in my last Lecture, a contrast so striking as to 
 tax the utmost efforts of the imagination to con- 
 ceive it : — the condition of the Slave, and the office of 
 the Roman Emperor. I have already offered some 
 remarks on the relation to the spread of Christianity 
 of the former member of this antithesis ; and have 
 availed myself of the facts thence resulting, in order 
 to show that the Christian Church, by inaugurating 
 a complete revolution in the social organization of 
 mankind, has marked out for its History a new epoch 
 as its own. I now turn to the latter of these two 
 phenomena — the office of the Roman Emperor. 
 
 With this great institution, regarded politically as 
 expressing the voice of the State, was, of course, 
 deeply concerned the weal or the woe of the Chris- 
 tian as of every inhabitant of that broad belt around 
 the Mediterranean which constituted the Roman 
 Empire. But, if we regard it from another point of 
 view, which shall enable us to examine the claim to 
 divine honours advanced in that age by the Masters 
 
 D
 
 34 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 of the world,— a claim which so long and so sadly in- 
 fluenced the fortunes of the early Church, — we shall 
 be naturally led to the subject with which, on the 
 present occasion, I desire to engage your attention, — 
 I mean the slow, and painful, and difficult progress 
 of Christianity during the protracted period of five 
 centuries 1 . 
 
 In approaching the subject of the dawn of Chris- 
 tianity upon the earth, the facilities afforded for 
 the propagation of the new Religion by the settled 
 government and the tranquillity of the Roman Em- 
 pire, as well as the impetus which its growth received 
 from the failure of the ancient religions to satisfy the 
 vearnino-s of human nature, are features of the case 
 which naturally suggest themselves to the mind. 
 The finger of Prophecy had already pointed out the 
 great Western Monarchy as included in the Scheme of 
 Providence for the regeneration of the world: and no 
 portion of the History of mankind is more full of deep- 
 est interest than that which accompanies the growth 
 of the infant Church beside " the Decline and Fall" of 
 the colossal Empire of Rome. The harvest was at 
 length ripe for the reapers. The prolonged peace 
 over the earth, and the culmination of Roman great- 
 ness under Augustus, mark the epoch in which was 
 born in the manger of Bethlehem the Saviour of the 
 
 1 The leading facts referred to in the present Lecture are dis- 
 cussed by ."Beugnot, " Histoire de la Destruction duPaganisme en 
 Occident ;" and by Dean Milraan, in his " History of Chris- 
 tianity" and his notes on Gibbon.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 35 
 
 human race. Henceforward each step in the progress 
 of History is marked by the most startling vicissitudes. 
 The gorgeous ceremonial, with which Philip the Ara- 
 bian commemorated the thousandth anniversary of 
 the building of Rome, was soon followed by the 
 Church's great trial under Decius ; — it was also soon 
 followed by the first inroad of the Goths. Many years 
 of bitter persecution had yet to be endured until the 
 final triumph of Christianity succeeded the capture 
 of Rome by Alaric. The closing of the temple of 
 Janus was to a human eye the great event of the age. 
 The general cessation of war, thus symbolized, has 
 ever been referred to, as fitly marking the point of 
 time from which we date the reign of the Prince of 
 Peace. The Assyrian, and Persian, and Grecian Mo- 
 narchies had passed away. The Roman, as the fourth 
 Monarchy of the ancient world, had absorbed the three 
 great powers that had successively subjugated the 
 human race, and had brought them under the unity 
 of a single will. These withdrawn, neither prince, 
 nor king, nor potentate of any denomination, ap- 
 peared to break the universal calm which through 
 centuries surrounded the throne of the Csesars. The 
 barbarians, it is true, were accumulating in vast 
 hordes beyond the Danube and the Rhine : the tem- 
 pest, however, had as yet given but few tokens of its 
 approach. The frontiers of the Empire were guarded 
 by troops, or bounded by forest and desert ; and the 
 proud Roman little dreamed that foes more terrible 
 than Gaul or Carthaginian were slowly gathering 
 
 d 2
 
 36 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 around the borders. The Goth, the Vandal, and the 
 Frank, were still hidden behind a cloud of years ; 
 and centuries were yet to elapse ere those masses 
 were hurled on the hapless populations of Southern 
 Europe, — ere the storm had burst which swept away 
 the power of Rome, and the entire structure of 
 Roman society. 
 
 The authority, consequently, of the Roman Em- 
 peror, when Christianity was first preached to the 
 world, had neither hostility to apprehend from with- 
 out, nor opposition to encounter from within. His 
 position was one that overpowers the imagination 
 when we approach to contemplate it. Here, the 
 genius of Absolutism meets us in its most appalling 
 form. The Emperor's very title, " Imperator," marked 
 him as the sole representative of the military power, 
 the Stratocracy, as it has been happily termed, of 
 Rome. He was himself the great fountain of law, 
 of honour, of preferment, of civil and political regula- 
 tions. The nobles of every grade were under his im- 
 mediate censorship ; the lowest classes were linked, 
 in a connexion of absolute dependence, to the ruler 
 who provided their daily food. The character of 
 Roman Emperor was truly and mysteriously awful. 
 Gibbon has pictured with much force one of the fea- 
 tures of this character, its virtual ubiquity, by sup- 
 posing the case of a subject who should attempt to 
 evade the Emperor's vengeance. If we take the 
 case of a modern tyrant, he observes, " The object of 
 his displeasure, escaping from the narrow limits of his
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 37 
 
 dominions, would easily obtain, in a happier climate, 
 a secure refuge, a new fortune adequate to his merit, 
 the freedom of complaint, and, perhaps, the means 
 of revenge. But the Empire of the Romans filled" 
 the world, and when that Empire fell into the hands 
 of a single person, the world became a safe and 
 dreary prison for his enemies. 4 Wherever you are,' 
 said Cicero to the exiled Marcellus, ' remember that 
 you are equally within the power of the conqueror' " l . 
 What, then, was the natural and inevitable re- 
 sult produced on the minds of those subjected 
 to this power, thus palpable, as it were, and from 
 whose grasp there was no escape ? We find it in 
 the deification of the Emperor, that singular belief 
 of the Roman world, which, at first sight, appears to 
 us so incomprehensible. " Ye reverence Caesar," 
 wrote Tertullian, " with greater apprehension, and 
 more fervid timidity, than the Olympian Jove him- 
 self. Neither do ye this so much from the 
 
 dictates of reason, as from the respect which ye bear 
 to his immediate and intrinsic power. In fact, 
 among you, a man had better forswear himself by 
 all the gods than by the simple genius of Caesar" 2 . 
 These words represent one aspect of the case; — they 
 describe the natural impression produced on the 
 mind of the Roman people by the concentration of 
 all the powers of the State in subjection to a single 
 irresponsible will. The fact may also be regarded 
 
 1 Chap. iii. a " Apologeticus," c. xxviii.
 
 38 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. 
 
 under another aspect, not, perhaps, altogether so 
 material. 
 
 The religions of the world, transplanted from 
 their native soil to Rome, had lost all their signifi- 
 cancy : — the contact, too, of the various mythologies 
 was necessarily followed by their mutual hostility 
 and destruction. Their contradictions could not be 
 reconciled. The political spirit of each alone re- 
 mained ; and in each case was attracted, as if by an 
 irresistible impulse, to that one self-dependent power 
 which now filled the world. " The worship paid to 
 the genius of the Emperor," observes Ranke, " was, 
 perhaps, the only one common to the whole Empire. 
 All idolatries clung round this, as to a common 
 prop" 1 . Dean Milman, indeed, cannot prevail upon 
 himself to accept this conclusion. His comment on 
 the words of Ranke which I have quoted is : "I am 
 not disposed to think so ill of human nature" 2 . That 
 conclusion, however, of the German scholar I cannot 
 help regarding as both borne out by facts, and as the 
 natural inference from the causes which I have re- 
 capitulated. The various forms of religion united 
 in paying this worship. Temples were raised and 
 altars dedicated to the Emperor. Men swore by his 
 name ; they celebrated festivals in his honour ; his 
 statues afforded sanctuary. It seems impossible to re- 
 gard all this as mere excess of adulation, or asmain- 
 
 1 " History of the Popes," B. i. ch. i. Austin's transl., .vol. i. p. 7. 
 
 2 " History of Christianity," vol. i. p. 29, note.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 tained by hypocrisy. It was a belief that grew with 
 the growth and strengthened with the strength of the 
 Empire. Domitian (a. d. 95) caused his Epistles to 
 commence, "Dominus etDeus noster hoc fieri jubet" 1 . 
 Upon medals struck during the lifetime of Aurelian, 
 the Pannonian peasant (a. d. 270 ), we read the titles, 
 " Deo et Domino nostro Aureliano Aug." 2 Neither 
 the tragical fate of several of the emperors, nor 
 their short tenure of power, at all affected the belief 
 in their divinity. The corpse of the murdered Galba 
 was laid, within a few weeks, in the same cell which 
 had witnessed the suicide of Nero. The united reigns 
 of Nero's three successors amounted to no more than 
 eighteen months and twenty days. But the reverses 
 ascribed to the deities of the national religion had 
 prepared the minds of the Romans for such incon- 
 gruities ; — their faith in the divinity of the Em- 
 perors could not be shaken by events which were 
 merely parallel to the tragedies and revolutions of the 
 mythological Olympus. However this may be, the 
 fact is incontestable ; and the veneration paid to each 
 successive Csesar even increased in its intensity. To- 
 wards the opening of the fourth century, Diocletian 
 assumed the title of Jovius, Maximian of Herculius : 
 — the motion of the world (so said the panegyrists) 
 
 •Suetonius, "Domit.," 13. Gieseler writes: " Schon Casar 
 liess sich diese Ehren auch in Rom vom Senate decretiren (Suet., 
 Caes., 76), Augustus nahm in den Proyinzen Tempel und Priester- 
 collegien an (Taciti Ann., i. 10 ; Suet., Aug., 52), und so alle seine 
 Nachfolger nur mit Ausnahme des Vespasianus." — B. i. § 14, s. 37. 
 
 2 Eckhel, " Doctrina Kumorum Veterum," 1. vii. p. 482.
 
 40 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 was maintained by the all-seeing wisdom of Jupiter ; 
 the invincible arm of Hercules purged the earth from 
 monsters and tyrants 1 . Even when the Emperors 
 had openly professed Christianity, the belief in their 
 divinity still remained the Eoman Creed. Scarcely 
 had Constantine expired, when the Senate enrolled 
 him among the gods. The poet Claudian almost 
 completes the apotheosis of the great adversary of pa- 
 ganism, Theodosius, whose son and successor, Hono- 
 rius, he deifies from his birth — 
 
 " Non litora nostro 
 Sufficerent angusta Deo" 2 . 
 
 It is a kind of popular belief to date the final 
 triumph of Christianity from the accession of Con- 
 stantine. The condition of the Church from this 
 period, if contrasted with her cruel sufferings under 
 his immediate predecessors, renders, it is true, such 
 a belief not unnatural. But the unbending facts of 
 History sometimes reverse the verdict of a courtier's 
 panegyric ; and here, too, we are compelled to ask 
 how far " the first Christian Emperor" merits the 
 glory so commonly ascribed to him ? 
 
 The claims of Constantine to the very name of 
 Christian are something more than problematical ; 
 the question, at least, still admits of discussion. I do 
 not argue from the slight influence of the Christian 
 
 1 Lactantius, " De Mort. Persec," c. 52 j Gibbon, chap. xiii. 
 
 2 "De quarto Cons. Honorii," v. 136. Gibbon (chap, xxix.) 
 observes : "An old inscription gives Stilicho the singular title of 
 Pro-gener Divi Theodosii."
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 41 
 
 Religion upon his actions ; nor do I build any- 
 thing upon that record of domestic crime, which 
 renders the family of " the first Christian Em- 
 peror" a second family of the Atridae 1 : — human 
 nature is ever presenting inconsistencies too start- 
 ling to render such reasoning legitimate. But one 
 may fairly appeal to the evidence of facts. The 
 original adoption of the Christian cause by Constan- 
 tine appears to me simply to prove — and to prove 
 nothing more than this — that Christianity had now 
 attained an influence over the world which rendered 
 it a political power. The wide diffusion of the prin- 
 ciples of the new Religion — the subject on which I 
 dwelt in my last Lecture — among that class which 
 in modern times we significantly term " the people," 
 could not have escaped the eye of the practised 
 statesman. It seems to be a fact well attested, that 
 Maxentius had endeavoured to revive the spirit of 
 paganism in his own favour, before the decisive 
 battle at the Milvian Bridge. To enlist, there- 
 fore, the antagonism of the Christians on his side, 
 appears, from the subsequent history of Constan- 
 tine, to have been motive sufficient to determine 
 
 1 The well-known verses affixed to the palace gates, comparing 
 Constantine to Nero, exhibit the light in which his acts were re- 
 garded by his contemporaries at Rome : — 
 
 " Saturni aurea ssecla quis requirat? 
 Sunthgec gemmea, sed Neroniana." 
 Sidonius Apollinarius ascribes these verses to the Consul Ablavius, 
 Epist,, lib. v. 8, ed. Simond, p. 138.
 
 42 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 him as to the part he should take in this struggle : 
 and the well-known incident of the vision of the 
 Cross, with the suggested motto, " By this conquer," 
 seen, as he marched to the victory that gave him 
 the sovereignty of the world, well symbolizes the 
 political reasons which unquestionably influenced 
 his mind. After he attained the supreme power, 
 although he did not sacrifice to Jupiter, — in general 
 the first act of a victorious Emperor, — he attended 
 the sacred games, he restored the pagan temples in 
 Rome, and assumed among his imperial titles that 
 of Pontifex Maximus. How little influence, to the 
 last, Christian associations had over the mind of 
 Constantine, is illustrated by the curious and, for 
 that age, significant fact, that in the entire coinage 
 of his reign we find a complete absence of Christian 
 allusion, or symbol 1 . To what extent, however, 
 Constantine's subsequent profession of Christianity 
 was sincere, how far his original zeal in its cause 
 was simulated, — are questions beside my present 
 object, which is to bring before you the position of 
 
 1 " Si sacros infimi sevi scriptores audias, obvios esse oporteret 
 Constantini numos crucis, aut etiam ipsa Christi insignes imagine. 
 Testatus utrumque est Joannes Damascenus ("In Synod. ad Theo- 
 
 pliil.") Et refert Sozomenus (H. E. lib. i. c. 8) Constan- 
 
 tinum imaginem snam seu in numis expressam, seu pictam in 
 tabnlis jussisse semper divino crucis signo inscribi et consignari 
 
 Verum excute universam Constantini monetam, nunquam 
 
 in ea aut Christi imaginem, aut Constantini effigiem erace insig- 
 nem reperies." — Eckhel, loc. cit., t. viii. p. 88. 
 
 On this entire question see the first Excursus in Heinichen's
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 43 
 
 the Church at the opening of the fifth century, re- 
 specting which, I apprehend, there exists no small 
 amount of misconception. 
 
 As to the relative position of Christianity and 
 paganism at this epoch, M. Guizot observes : — " The 
 first condition in which the Church appears at the 
 fifth century is that of the Imperial Church — the 
 Church of the Roman Empire. When the Roman 
 Empire fell, the Church thought herself at the 
 term of her career, and that her triumph was ac- 
 complished. In a word, she had completely van- 
 quished paganism" 1 . And the learned writer goes on 
 to imply that the presence of the barbarians, Goths, 
 Yandals, Burgundians, and Franks, could alone, for 
 the future, occasion her any solicitude. Now, how- 
 ever partially correct this statement may be as to 
 the position of the Church at the close of the period 
 named, were we to suppose it to apply to the com- 
 mencement of the fifth century, we should form a 
 most erroneous idea of the actual history of the 
 time. I am inclined to think that most persons, on 
 
 edition ofEusebius, "De Vita Constantini," p. 505, where a view 
 favourable to the Emperor is taken. When Pagi (on Baronius, a. d. 
 321, No. 18) notes that Constantine's rescript toMaximus, Praefect 
 of Rome, decreeing that the haruspices are to be consulted, merely 
 amounts to a permission that others should consult them, adding 
 that in the same year the Emperor conferred benefits on the 
 Church, — this defence simply confirms what I have stated in the 
 text. Cf. Niebuhr, " Lectures on Eom. Hist.," Schmitz's transl., 
 vol. iii. p. 318, 2nd ed. 
 
 1 ''Hist, de la Civilization en Europe," 6 e Lec,on.
 
 44 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 reading the passage which I have quoted, would 
 picture to themselves the Church in full possession 
 of dignity and power, — the civilized world at her 
 feet, paganism a dream of the past, and the ob- 
 servance of Christian worship universal. It is my 
 present object briefly to show how far nearer the 
 truth is the reverse of such a portrait. 
 
 The reigns of Constantine and his successors were 
 professedly a season of equal toleration for both re- 
 ligions. The celebrated edict of Milan went no far- 
 ther than to recognise Christianity as one of the legal 
 forms by which the Divinity — Divinitas, to Qecov — 
 may be worshipped 1 . The respectful language in 
 which Constantine still spoke, in his public edicts, of 
 the established paganism has been noticed by writers 
 on this subject. We there read merely the terms — 
 " vetus consuetudo," "templorum solemnia," "consue- 
 tudinis gentilitise solemnia ;" while under his succes- 
 sors we find expressions such as the following — " de- 
 mentia," " superstitio damnabilis," " stolidus pagan- 
 orum error" 2 . The Theodosian code, indeed, in laws 
 bearing the respective dates of A. d. 353 and A. d. 
 356, attribute to the son of Constantine the forcible 
 suppression of paganism. The authenticity of these 
 
 1 See the form as given by Lactantius, "De Ifort. Persecut," 
 c. 48 : — " lit daremus et Christianis et omnibus liberam potesta- 
 tem sequcndi religionem quam quisque voluisset, quo quidem 
 Divinitas in sede coelesti, nobis placata ac propitia possit exis- 
 tere." 
 
 2 Beugnot, i. p. 80.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 45 
 
 laws, at least of the dates assigned to them, has been 
 questioned. They certainly were not enforced: for, in- 
 scriptions prove that during the reign of Constantius 
 not only were the heathen temples open without re- 
 striction, but that sacrifices were offered in Rome, in 
 Italy, and throughout the whole of the Western Em- 
 pire, in perfect freedom. Julian, though professing 
 toleration, avowedly employed every means to re- 
 store paganism to its former splendour. Like many 
 of the most refined among the Romans of that age, 
 Julian seems to have embraced paganism sincerely. 
 A devout and sincere attachment, writes Gibbon, 
 for the gods of Athens and Rome constituted his 
 ruling passion 1 . The cruelty of Constantius to him 
 in his youth filled him with hatred even to the Re- 
 ligion which Constantius professed; and his passions 
 led him on to acts of persecution unworthy of his 
 genius, and inconsistent with his professions of libe- 
 rality. The sophist remembered that he was an 
 Emperor, and forgot his philosophy. Brutal as had 
 been the persecution of Diocletian, it was open and 
 honest ; that of Julian was covert and perfidious. 
 By one act he plundered the churches, alleging that, 
 as the Gospel recommended poverty, he performed 
 thereby a service to the Christians, since he thus 
 
 1 Gibbon adds in a note : — " I shall transcribe some of his own 
 expressions from a short religious discourse which the Imperial 
 pontiff composed to censure the bold impiety of a Cynic (Orat. vii. 
 p. 212.) The variety and copiousness of the Greek tongue seems 
 inadequate to the fervour of his devotion." — Chap, xxiii.
 
 46 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 rendered them more worthy of the Kingdom of Hea- 
 ven 1 ; by another, he closed the schools of those 
 Christians who would not confine their teaching to 
 " the study of Matthew and Luke" 2 . Julian's ephe- 
 meral hostility passed away ; but his successors, al- 
 though professing Christianity, were not yet prepared 
 to exceed the limits of simple toleration. Valen- 
 tinian is extolled by Ammianus Marcellinus, and 
 Valens by Libanius, both of them pagans, for the 
 severe impartiality with which they stood between 
 the conflicting religions (a. d. 375). In the follow- 
 ing reigns of Gratian and Theodosius we at length 
 discern the beginnings of the triumph of Christianity. 
 Even Theodosius did not attempt to interdict the 
 private exercise of the old religion which still re- 
 tained so powerful an influence over his subjects, — 
 an influence which time only could overcome. 
 
 The ancient worship of Rome possessed a hold 
 over the minds of men, far more tenacious than one 
 who does not closely examine the History of the age 
 can readily bring himself to believe. The idea has 
 been thrown out 3 , and, I think, with great justice, 
 that the indiscriminate mockery of all that had been 
 so long held sacred, such as we find in the writings 
 of Lucian, would of itself provoke opposition. Lu- 
 cian had exhausted the philosophy of unbelief ; and 
 
 1 1 va •jrevofievoi atotfipovCoai, kcu [irj aiep^QCbaiv, ^s en e\7r/£- 
 
 ovaiv, ovpaviov (iaaiXeias; — Ep. xliii., Ad Ecebolum, ed Spanh. 
 
 2 Ep. xlii., ibid. 
 
 3 Cf. Tschirner, "Der Fall des Heidenthums " s. 401.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 47 
 
 absolute unbelief cannot remain the dominant senti- 
 ment. The inclination began gradually to develop 
 itself, to mingle together various religions, and to 
 seek in each different system some point of contact 
 with the philosophy of the time. Of this incli- 
 nation two remarkable examples are afforded by 
 the two Caesars, Elagabalus and Alexander Seve- 
 rus, who ruled the Empire from the year 218 to 
 235. 
 
 At Emesa, a city of Syria on the banks of the Oron- 
 tes, Bassianus, the first cousin once removed of the 
 Emperor Caracalla, had been consecrated, in his earlv 
 youth, high priest of the Sun. In the year 218 he 
 was declared Emperor by the army, and assumed the 
 name of Elagabalus, under which appellation the Sun- 
 god was worshipped at Emesa under the form of a 
 black round stone said to have fallen from heaven. 
 The new Emperor erected at Rome a temple for his 
 idol, in which he deposited the most hallowed pledges 
 of the early Roman religion, the Ancilia, the Palla- 
 dium, and the sacred fire of Vesta. A consort must 
 be chosen for the god of Emesa, and the Moon, adored 
 by the Africans under the name of Astarte, was 
 deemed a suitable companion for the Sun : — her 
 image was transported with solemn pomp from Car- 
 thage to Rome. The Syrian, the Roman, and the 
 African religions being thus mingled, Elagabalus 
 cherished the further idea of making the temple of 
 the Sun a point of reunion for the worship of the 
 Samaritans, the Jews, and the Christians; and thus,
 
 48 THE EAELY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 in a proper sense, a Pantheon 1 . This, it is true, was 
 merely the project of a dull fanatic ; but the same 
 spirit of syncretism appears in the more lofty con- 
 ception of Alexander Severus, who placed in his pri- 
 vate chapel, as objects of worship, Abraham the an- 
 cestor of the Jewish race, and Christ the Author of 
 Christianity, as well as Orpheus the founder of the 
 Grecian Mysteries, and Apollonius of Tyana the 
 teacher of Indian and Egyptian wisdom. 
 
 In these cases paganism does not come before us 
 as an aggressor : but direct opposition to the Church 
 was not long in appearing. 
 
 The foremost place among the hostile systems 
 must, without doubt, be assigned to that reaction 
 of Christianity upon heathenism, that gradual re- 
 finement of the old religions, which, by combining 
 certain principles of the Christian Faith with the 
 purer and more philosophical elements of the ex- 
 isting paganism, presented the sole adversary, in the 
 intellectual order, that the Church had to encoun- 
 ter — the Alexandrine Neo-Platonism. The hosti- 
 lity of this system of syncretism did not restrict 
 itself to the weapons of argument, on which phi- 
 losophy so proudly, and often so falsely, vaunts itself: 
 — the great hierophant of Neo-Platonism, Hieroeles, 
 is distinctly named as the author of the persecution 
 under Diocletian. Taking its rise with Ammonius 
 Saccas at the opening of the third century, Neo- 
 
 1 Lampridius, "Anton. Heliogab.," c. iii.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 49 
 
 Platonism continued to offer unceasing opposition to 
 Christianity, until Justinian closed the schools of its 
 professors at Athens, in the year 529 ; and long after 
 this its public suppression, the principles of this phi- 
 losophy continued to exert an injurious influence 
 on Christian literature 1 . The same spirit we find 
 once more in Manichaeanism, a form of religion 
 which about the year 270 was announced by the ad- 
 venturer Mani. The Christian element appears in 
 the titles " Apostle of Christ," and " Paraclete," which 
 he adopted ; Jewish traditions, too, and the Greek 
 philosophy, were not forgotten ; while the Zoroas- 
 trianism of Persia, and, apparently, the Buddhism 2 of 
 India, contributed certain of their principles. The 
 foundation of the creed of Mani was, as all know, 
 pure, original, irreconcilable dualism ; the two prin- 
 ciples of light and darkness, of good and evil, were 
 the eternal antagonists. It is hard, indeed, to un- 
 derstand how such a system could have had so lasting 
 and so powerful an attraction alike for the highest in- 
 tellects, and for the peasants of the Middle Ages: — S. 
 Augustine with difficulty avoided this belief; and it 
 possessed an influence over the mind of the West 
 even in the thirteenth century, and during the Al- 
 bigensian crusade. 
 
 1 See Guizot, "Hist, de la Civilization en France," tome iii. 
 p. 160, who traces its pantheistic principles in the writings of 
 Joannes Scotns Erigena, through the medium of (the so-called) 
 Dionysius the Areopagite. 
 
 2 Milman, " Hist, of Christianity," vol. ii., p. 325. 
 
 E
 
 50 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 At the beginning of the fifth century the strong- 
 hold of the ancient religion was Rome. In the East 
 its downfall took place at an earlier period ; and at 
 the close of the fourth century, like Christianity 
 under the Antonines, paganism, by the mouth of Li- 
 banius, makes its " apology" for its public worship. 
 To a stranger, Rome would still have offered all the 
 appearance of a pagan city. The Prefects were al- 
 most invariably pagans ; the heathen temples were 
 under their protection ; and in the time of Yalen- 
 tinian, there appear to have been in Rome 152 
 temples, and 183 smaller shrines ("sediculae"), which 
 bore the name of their tutelary gods, and were used 
 for the purposes of public worship. Some years after 
 the accession of Theodosius to the Eastern Empire, 
 sacrifices were performed as national rites at the pub- 
 lic cost ; and Libanius asserts, no doubt with perfect 
 truth, that the Emperor dared not endanger the 
 safety of the Empire by their abolition. The Em- 
 peror still bore the title and insignia of Pontifex Maxi- 
 mus, religious processions passed along the streets, 
 and the populace thronged to the festivals and the 
 theatres, which still formed part of the pagan wor- 
 ship. 
 
 The tone of literary society at this period may 
 be illustrated by a circumstance recorded of Am- 
 mianus Marcellinus. He wrote his history at Rome, 
 and recited in public its successive parts as he com- 
 posed them. This course of recitation was received 
 with much applause ; he was crowned and feted as
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 51 
 
 lie read aloud a narrative in which he compared the 
 Christians to " ferocious beasts." You will remem- 
 ber that Gibbon's account of the state of the Roman 
 Church, under Pope Damasus, is taken from the re- 
 port of Ammianus. 
 
 In order to give you an idea of the religious 
 sentiments of the Roman aristocracy at the close 
 of the fourth century after the birth of Christ, I 
 shall present to you a group of Roman nobles of the 
 highest rank. A selection of the representatives of 
 the most refined and most exalted grade of Roman 
 society, at this period, has been made in a work now 
 little known, — the " Saturnalia" of Macrobius. The au- 
 thor flourished at the opening of the fifth century; and 
 his treatise consists of a series of dissertations on his- 
 tory, mythology, criticism, and various points of an- 
 tiquarian research, supposed to have been delivered 
 during the holidays of the Saturnalia. The scene is 
 laid at the house of Vettius Praetextatus, who filled 
 the highest offices of the State under Yalentinian and 
 Yalens. Here, among other topics, for example, was 
 expounded the theory which deduces all modes of 
 worship from the worship of the Sun. There is one 
 remarkable feature, too, of the " Saturnalia" which 
 merits a passing notice, when we remember the sub- 
 jects discussed, and who the persons were, engaged 
 in the discussion. An absolute silence is observed 
 as to the very existence of Christianity. You re- 
 member the comments of Paley on the silence of Jo- 
 
 E 2
 
 52 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 sephus as to our Lord's history, and on the silence of 
 later Jewish writers as to the Christian Religion 1 . 
 The silence of Macrobius affords a still more forcible 
 illustration of this intentional reticence than that ad- 
 duced by Paley. During the fourth century it w r as 
 the policy of paganism to affect ignorance of the 
 progress of the Christian Faith. After the sack of 
 Rome by Alaric this silence ceased. Eunapius and 
 Zosimus commenced a fierce polemic against Chris- 
 tianity, of which it was the invariable theme that the 
 misfortunes which now befell the Empire Avere judg- 
 ments for neglecting the old worship, and tolerating 
 the strange Religion. S.Augustine's great work, "The 
 City of God," was the Christians' reply. Merobaudes, 
 a distinguished general and a poet in the first half of 
 the fifth century, adopts the same tone ; he even re- 
 news the old charge of atheism against the Christians, 
 when he closes a lament with the words — 
 
 " Omniaque haec sine mente Jo vis, sine 1ST amine summo" 2 . 
 
 " The first Christian Emperor" had preceded the pa- 
 gans in this line of argument. His own victories and 
 the disasters of his enemies were put forward by Con- 
 stantine as conclusive evidences of Christianity 3 . 
 Macrobius thus introduces us to the leading Roman 
 
 1 " Evidences," Part i. chap. vii. 
 
 2 See Milman's note, Gibbon, " Works," vol. iii. p. 20. 
 
 3 " It is remarkable in all the proclamations and documents which 
 Eusebius assigns to Constantine, some even written by his own
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 nobles : — If, he observes, " earlier writers have been 
 allowed to bring in the Cottas, the Lselii, the Scipios, 
 discussing questions of high import, I may be per- 
 mitted to introduce the Prsetextati, the Flaviani, the 
 Albini, the Symmachi" 1 . Let me say a few words as 
 to each of these personages, who were devoted pa- 
 gans, and bitter foes of Christianity. 
 
 Yettius Agorius Praetextatus, in whose house the 
 scene of his dialogues is placed by Macrobius, was the 
 leader of the Eoman aristocracy, the Praefect of Rome 
 under Yalentinian, and perhaps the most favourable 
 specimen of a character which one finds it so diffi- 
 cult to conceive, — that of a sincerely religious Roman 
 statesman, devoutly worshipping the gods 400 years 
 after the Birth of Christ. His death was mourned as a 
 public calamity, and he died without witnessing the 
 degradation of the religion which he loved. His re- 
 ligious sentiments were characterized by that spirit 
 of syncretism which I have already noticed. While 
 he was a member of the Pontifical College, " Ponti- 
 fex Major" as he is styled in inscriptions, all the re- 
 ligions of the Empire combined to pay him honour. 
 The epithet given him by Macrobius, " sacrorum om- 
 nium prsBSul," is confirmed by the fact that among 
 his titles we find included the highest rank in the 
 
 hand, how almost exclusively he dwells on this worldly superiority 
 of the God adored by the Christians over those of the Heathen, and 
 the visible temporal advantages which attend on the worship of 
 Christianity." — Milman, Hist, of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 397. 
 1 "Saturnalia," lib. i. c. 1.
 
 54 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Eleusinian, Phrygian, Syrian, and Mithriac mysteries. 
 His wife, Fabia Aconia Panlina, was no less zealous 
 for the ancient faith. She had been initiated in the 
 temples of Eleusis, Lerna, and iEgina; she was hiero- 
 phant of Hecate, and priestess of Isis. The anecdote 
 told by S.' Jerome has been often quoted, — that Prae- 
 textatus was in the habit of saying to Pope Damasus, 
 " Make me Bishop of Rome, and I will forthwith be 
 a Christian." Whether we take these words to con- 
 vey a sarcasm on the state of the Roman Church — as 
 they are understood by Gibbon, — or merely to repre- 
 sent the two religions maintaining towards each other 
 an attitude of outward amity, they afford, as uttered 
 by the pagan Governor of Rome, an instructive illus- 
 tration of the position of parties at this time. 
 
 Praetextatus, as I have said, was "Pontifex Major," 
 or one of the fifteen members of the Pontifical College 
 presided over by the Emperor, for whom was reserved 
 the title of " Pontifex Maximus." This title had been 
 regularly assumed by the Christian Emperors down 
 to Gratian, who, on his accession, had been formally 
 arrayed in the robe of Sovereign Pontiff. But the 
 influence of S. Ambrose now began to be felt. In the 
 year 382, when Gratian was in Gaul, the Senate 
 sent a deputation from Rome to perform the cere- 
 mony of officially investing him with the insignia of 
 the Pontifical dignity. Gratian refused to accept 
 the symbols of paganism ; and the intelligence of 
 this act of the Emperor not obscurely announced to 
 the pagan party at Rome the first overt step in the
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 55 
 
 separation of the civil power and the ancient forms 
 of worship 1 . 
 
 Rome had for some time ceased to be the residence 
 of the Emperors. The chief supporters of pagan- 
 ism were now the Prasfects, who were almost inva- 
 riably devoted adherents of the old religion. The 
 necessity of removing the seat of government to a 
 position more central as regarded the Eastern fron- 
 tier, had been felt before Constantine had fixed it on 
 the shores of the Bosphorus. This idea was first 
 carried out by Diocletian, who selected Nicomedia, 
 on the Illyrian side of the Adriatic. In consequence 
 of this removal of the imperial residence, there arose 
 among the proud Roman nobility what we should 
 term an opposition party to that of the Court ; and 
 in the struggle between these parties we trace the 
 last public efforts of paganism. The abandonment 
 of the capital by the Emperors naturally inflamed the 
 animosity of the adherents of the old institutions, 
 while it concentrated their strength. Rome gra- 
 dually sank in political importance from the first to 
 the fourth or fifth city of the Empire. Even in Italy, 
 Milan and Ravenna enjoyed more of the presence of 
 the Emperor ; and the haughty Romans only clung 
 the more fondly to all that reminded them of their 
 former preeminence. The new Religion was gra- 
 dually associated with this new order of things ; and 
 the spirit of party, which ever rallies round what is 
 
 1 Zosimus, iv. 36.
 
 56 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. 
 
 ancient when menaced with ruin or decay, was evoked 
 with all its acrimony 1 . 
 
 The next members of the group particularized by 
 Macrobius are the Albini, of whom one was Prefect 
 of Rome from a. d. 389 to a. d. 391 , and another be- 
 tween A. d. 395 and a.d. 408. S. Jerome highly eulo- 
 gizes the former, Ceionius Rufius Albinus. The chief 
 labour of S. Jerome's life was to draw over to Chris- 
 tianity the Roman patricians, and to break the bonds 
 that still united them to the old religion. This we 
 learn from his numerous epistles, addressed chiefly to 
 Christian ladies, over whose minds he exerted a power- 
 ful influence. Albinus was devotedly attached to pa- 
 ganism, while his children were Christians. Among 
 them was that Lseta whose virtues and piety added 
 lustre to the Roman Church in the fifth century. 
 Laeta had been married to Toxotius, son of S. Paula, 
 and there is a charming letter from S. Jerome to 
 Lseta, now a widow, on the subject of her daughter's 
 education. Her father Albinus, he tells her, still 
 walks in darkness, and he applies to the case of the 
 pagan parent and the Christian child the counsel of 
 S. Paul to a wife united to an unbelieving husband : 
 "Thou art sprung," he writes, "from an ill-matched 
 union, and Paula is the daughter of thee and my Tox- 
 otius. Who would believe that the lisping accents 
 of thy little one should chant Alleluias to Christ, 
 
 1 See an article in the " Quarterly Review," September, 1886, 
 entitled, "Downfall of Paganism."
 
 THE EAELY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 57 
 
 while her grandsire Albinus looks on and rejoices ; 
 or that the old man would nurture a child of God 
 in his bosom ? A holy and believing family sancti- 
 fies an unbeliever. That man is alreadv a candidate 
 for the Faith, who is surrounded by believing de- 
 scendants. Let him scorn my letter, if he will: his 
 son-in-law did the same before he was a Christian" 1 . 
 The third member of our group is Virius Nicho- 
 machus Flavianus, whose family was noted for their 
 veneration of the gods. He was Praetorian Praafect of 
 Italy and Illyricum a.d. 382 and a.d. 392. "When, 
 in the latter of these years, on the murder of Va- 
 lentinian, Arbogastes the Frank proclaimed his pup- 
 pet Eugenius Emperor, Flavianus at once embraced 
 his cause ; and to him is ascribed the saying that, if 
 successful against Theodosius, he would stable his 
 war-horse in the church of Milan. He was in high 
 repute for his skill in divination ; and when Theo- 
 dosius, by forcing the passes of the Alps, had falsi- 
 fied his prediction of victory to Eugenius, Flavianus 
 judged himself worthy of death, — rather, observes 
 the historian 2 , for his blunder as a soothsayer, than 
 his crime as a rebel. For a brief period previous 
 to the defeat of Eugenius, idolatry was restored 
 throughout the West, The images of the gods were 
 painted on his banners, and the statues of Hercules 
 and Jupiter were carried at the head of his army. 
 Flavianus obtained from him the restoration of the 
 
 l Ep. cvii., ed. Vallars. 2 Ruffinus, " Eccl. Hist,," ii. 33.
 
 58 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Altar of Victory ; the mention of which brings me 
 to Symmachus, the last member of our group, and 
 also recalls the controversy respecting the Altar of 
 Victory itself, round which paganism fought its last 
 fight, and met its final defeat. 
 
 Foremost among his contemporaries as a scholar, 
 a statesman, and an orator, was Quintus Aurelius 
 Symmachus. In his youth he had accompanied his 
 father to Antioch when sent by the Senate, in the 
 year 360, on a mission to the Emperor Constantius. 
 Here he was placed under the charge of the cele- 
 brated Sophist, Libanius, the favourite of Julian, and 
 the teacher of S. Basil and S. Chrysostom. Libanius 
 sincerely believed that the national worship of the 
 Empire was superior to Christianity; he regarded 
 the old mythology of Greece as an inexhaustible 
 source of the beautiful and the sublime. From him 
 Symmachus imbibed a higher view of the ancient re- 
 ligion than that which was prevalent at Rome. He 
 returned to Italy convinced that there was still in 
 paganism a principle energetic enough to save so- 
 ciety. He would have nought to do with the prevalent 
 syncretism, which had led Prastextatus to combine 
 with the Roman faith the rites of Mithras and Cybele. 
 His devotion to the gods, unaccountable as it may 
 seem if we regard the Roman religion as Cicero and 
 others represent it, appears to have been unaffected 
 and sincere. A festival, a sacrifice, a religious cere- 
 mony celebrated with magnificence, were at all times 
 epochs in his life, and caused him to forget, for the
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 59 
 
 moment, all the evils of his country. One cannot 
 refrain from a smile at the solemnity with which the 
 statesman of the fourth century, the contemporary 
 of S. Jerome and S. Ambrose, writes to his friend 
 Praetextatus : — " My mind is overpowered with grief, 
 that manifold, and oft repeated sacrifices have not 
 yet publicly atoned for the portent at Spoletium. 
 Scarcely has the eighth immolation propitiated Jove ; 
 and the eleventh offering of numerous victims has in 
 vain been made to public fortune" 1 . He refers with 
 bitterness to the growing custom which led some of 
 the Roman nobles to absent themselves from the 
 public sacrifices, in the hope of thus gaining the fa- 
 vour of the Christian Emperor : " Nunc aris deesse 
 Romanos, genus est ambiendi" 2 . When accused of 
 cruelty to the Christians in his capacity of Prsefect of 
 Rome, he appeals in proof of the falsehood of the 
 charge to the letters of Pope Damasus 3 . This charge 
 of itself illustrates the misunderstanding, to which I 
 have already referred, which subsisted between the 
 Court and the pagan administration of the capital. 
 
 As we may easily conceive, Symmachus was ac- 
 tively engaged in the contest between the two reli- 
 gions. For ten years (a. d. 382-392) the struggle, 
 so far as its political aspect was concerned, centered 
 in the controversy respecting the Statue and Altar of 
 Victory which Augustus, after the battle of Actium, 
 had placed in the Senate-house. 
 
 1 Lib. i., Epist. xliii. 2 Lib. i., Epist. xlv. 3 Lib. x., Ep. xxxiv.
 
 60 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 History records how Constantius first removed 
 from the hall in which the Senate assembled this an- 
 cient monument, a solemn offering at which was the 
 ordinary prelude to their public deliberations ; how 
 it was restored by Julian; tolerated by Valentinian, 
 and once more banished by Gratian. Four deputa- 
 tions were voted by the Senate to successive Em- 
 perors soliciting its restoration 1 . By the advice of 
 PraBtextatus the conduct of this business was now 
 intrusted to Symmachus. Here, again, the influence 
 of S. Ambrose was felt : — his eloquence prevailed 
 in opposition to the rhetorical pleading of the Ro- 
 man advocate. The Christian party in the Senate 
 was strong enough to resolve upon a counter -petition 
 to the Emperor ; and Pope Damasus had forwarded 
 it to S. Ambrose. At an earlier stage in this con- 
 test Gratian not only rejected the petition of the 
 pagan envoys, he also withdrew from the temples 
 the public support which they had hitherto re- 
 ceived. On the renewal of the Senate's applica- 
 tion to Valentinian, in the year 384, the ancient 
 parts of the two religions were for the first time 
 openly reversed. Symmachus 2 invoked the spirit of 
 toleration, or rather of indifference, which Constan- 
 
 1 Gibbon notes : — " The Jlrst (a. d. 382) to Gratian, who refused 
 them andience. The second (a. d. 384) to Valentinian, when the 
 field was disputed by Symmachus, and Ambrose. The third 
 (a. d. 388) to Theodosius; and the fourth (a. d. 392) to Valenti- 
 nian." — Chap, xxviii. 
 
 2 Lib. x., Ep. liv.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 61 
 
 tine and Jovian had inscribed in their edicts : S. Am- 
 brose, in his celebrated reply, rejects this demand 
 as sacrilege. " You cannot," he tells the Emperor, 
 " serve two masters. They complain, forsooth, that 
 some paltry stipends are .withheld, they who never 
 spared our blood" 1 . The defeat of Symmachus gave 
 occasion to a poet of the time to say that Victory was 
 a very blind, or a very ungrateful goddess, since she 
 had so signally abandoned her defender. 
 
 The importance attached by the pagan party to 
 the removal of the Altar of Victory proves how well 
 aimed was this blow at the old religion. From the 
 first the importance of the act seems to have been un- 
 derstood on both sides. It was one of the measures 
 of Constantius in his overt hostility to heathenism. 
 Julian lost no time in restoring this symbol of the 
 ancient faith ; nor did subsequent Emperors venture, 
 for several years, to renew what paganism regarded 
 as the deepest insult at once to the glory and the re- 
 ligion of Rome. 
 
 I cannot leave this part of the subject without 
 saying a word on the well-known story, accepted as 
 historical by Gibbon 2 and not rejected by Gieseler 3 
 or Neander 4 , that Theodosius, subsequently to his 
 victory over Eugenius, placed before the Senate the 
 question, " Whether the worship of Jupiter or that 
 of Christ should be the religion of the Romans?" 
 This is one of those perplexing passages in History 
 
 1 Opp., t. ii. pp. 824, 833. 2 Chap, xxviii. 
 
 3 B. i. s. 360. 4 B. i. s. 449: Gotha, 1856..
 
 62 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 as to which it now seems hopeless to look for abso- 
 lute certainty. For myself, I cannot believe the 
 statement, Every element of probability is wanting; 
 and the evidence itself is contradictory. The two 
 authorities for the fact — the pagan historian Zosimus, 
 and the Christian poet Prudentius — give results ex- 
 actly opposite, each claiming the majority of the 
 Senate on the side of the religion which he wrote to 
 defend. It is almost impossible to persuade one's self 
 that Theodosius could have adopted such a measure; 
 whether we consider his sincere attachment to Chris- 
 tianity, or the fact that for many years the Senate had 
 ceased to exert any influence on public affairs. The 
 date, moreover, assigned by both Zosimus and Pru- 
 dentius (a. d. 394) heightens the improbability ; as 
 it seems to be capable of demonstration 1 that Theo- 
 dosius did not visit Rome subsequently to the defeat 
 of Eugenius. Gibbon, who after his peculiar manner 
 tells us that " Jupiter was condemned and degraded 
 by the sense of a very large majority," felt this dif- 
 ficulty ; and, accordingly, he has changed the date 
 to the year 388—389. But the fact that seems al- 
 most decisive of the question is the silence of S. 
 Ambrose and S. Jerome. Can we believe that S. 
 Ambrose would have remained inactive ? or that S. 
 Jerome, who directed the consciences of so many 
 members of the Senate, who so continually refers to 
 their conduct in matters of religion, would have 
 
 1 See the authorities quoted in Milman's note on Gibbon, 
 " Works," vol. iii. p. 7 ; and Beugnot, i. p. 483.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. 63 
 
 omitted all allusion to an incident so startling, and 
 so important? The only solution which can be 
 offered is, that some one of the debates in the Senate 
 on the subject of the Altar of Victory has supplied 
 the foundation for this story ; and that the facts 
 have been misrepresented by the pagan historian, 
 and embellished with wonted exaggeration by the 
 Christian poet. 
 
 On the final decision of the question respecting 
 the Altar of Victory, the struggle by degrees grew 
 fainter. Symmachus mourns, with hands upraised to 
 heaven, the growing neglect of the sacred rites : " Dii 
 patrii facite gratiam neglectorum sacrorum" 1 . The 
 ancient worship did not even expire with dignity. 
 One of the last acts of pontifical authority was the 
 capital punishment of an unchaste Vestal 2 . Reli- 
 gious hatred, moreover, now stifled in the breasts of 
 the old Roman party even the spirit of patriotism. 
 When Florence, in the year 406, was reduced to the 
 last extremity by the savage Rhadagaisus, " the op- 
 pressed votaries of Jupiter and Mercury respected, 
 in the implacable enemy of Rome, the character of 
 a devout pagan" 3 . 
 
 The day from which we may date the final 
 overthrow of paganism in its stronghold is the 24th 
 of August, a. d. 410 : — the occasion, the capture and 
 sack of Rome by Alaric. S. Jerome, in words ad- 
 
 1 Lib. ii. Epist. vii. 2 Symmachus, Lib. ix. Epistt. cxviii. cxix. 
 3 Gibbon, chap. xxx. 

 
 64 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 dressed to Eustochium 1 , thus describes the results 
 of " this awful catastrophe :" — " Who would have 
 believed that Rome, exalted so high by her con- 
 quests, should have thus fallen ! That having 
 been the mother, she should become the sepulchre 
 of her people ! That the shores of the Orient, of 
 Egypt, of Africa, once the possessions of the Imperial 
 City, should now be thronged with crowds of her sons 
 and daughters led away to slavery ! That holy Beth- 
 lehem should daily receive within its precincts those 
 once rich and noble, who now come to beg their 
 bread ! We have not the power to aid them ; we 
 can only mourn with them, and mingle our tears 
 with theirs." Historians usually illustrate the cala- 
 mities of the unhappy Romans by the case of " the 
 noble and pious Proba, the widow of the Praefect 
 Petronius" 2 , who was compelled to give up every- 
 thing she still possessed to Heraclian, Count of Africa, 
 in order to preserve her daughters from the fate of 
 other Roman ladies — that of being sold to the slave 
 merchants of Syria. The fugitives did not main- 
 tain their dignity. Despoiled of all their former 
 wealth, the proud Roman nobles wandered, in a state 
 of complete destitution, through provinces which 
 their ancestors had ruled as conquerors. History 
 presents few examples of a reverse of fortune so great 
 and so sudden. 
 
 1 "Comment, in Ezech.," lib. iii. Preef., ed. Vallars, t. v. p. 79. 
 * Gibbon, chap. xxxi.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. <lO 
 
 From this period, at length, we may date, as I 
 have said, the final triumph of Christianity. Hitherto 
 the laws which proscribed heathen rites and wor- 
 ship had no actual force in cities such as Rome or 
 Alexandria ; the name of pagan, which first appears 
 in a law of Yalentinian (a. d. 368), at length truly 
 expresses the fate of the old religion now banished 
 from the cities of the Empire 1 . At length had come 
 to pass before the eyes of the world, the event which 
 from the first had been inevitable, and which had 
 long been a reality. The saying ascribed to Julian, 
 when he received his fatal wound, was now openly 
 verified, — vevUrj/ca? Ta\i\a?e, " Thou hast conquered, 
 O Galikean !" 2 
 
 The final overthrow of heathenism in the East was 
 not accomplished until the same period. In the 
 year 389 the Serapeum at Alexandria was still re- 
 garded as one of the wonders of the world. When 
 the colossal idol of that magnificent temple was des- 
 troyed, even the Christians looked on with awe ; and 
 hopes were for some time cherished by the pagans 
 that the Nile would withhold his annual supply, in 
 token of the displeasure of the insulted Serapis. Op- 
 tatius, a pagan, governed Constantinople in the year 
 404 3 . At Alexandria the celebrated Hypatia still ex- 
 pounded, down to her death in the year 416, the 
 
 lu Q,ui ex loeorum agrestium compitis et paps pagani vocan- 
 tur." — Orosius (a. d. 416), Histor. Praf. 
 2 Theodoret, " Eccl. Hist.," iii. 25. 
 3 See Beugnot, ii. p. 55.
 
 G6 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 principles of the ancient philosophy, in the school of 
 Plato and Plotinus 1 :— her sad history is finely told 
 in the brilliant romance of Mr. Kingsley. The doc- 
 trines of Neo-Platonism were taught at Athens until 
 the edict of Justinian, A. d. 529. 
 
 Superstitions, however, which are the growth of 
 ages cannot be at once eradicated. The seeds of 
 heathenism had been too deeply planted in the po- 
 pular mind to be uprooted even by the convulsions 
 which now rent asunder every social bond. In the 
 last years of the fifth century the celebration of the 
 Lupercalia still lingered in Eome. In the middle 
 of the eighth century, Winifrid, the Apostle of Ger- 
 many, better known as S. Boniface, complains to 
 Pope Zachary, that his labours among the Franks 
 and the Alemanni had been in many cases neutra- 
 lized, by those barbarians having witnessed, even in 
 the vicinity of the Roman churches, pagan proces- 
 sions traversing the streets, and pagan customs 
 openly practised' 2 . More generally still in the rural 
 districts had the attachment to paganism survived 
 the fall of its idols, and the destruction of its temples. 
 In the middle of the fifth century Maximus of Turin 
 is forced to remonstrate with Christian landholders 
 for tolerating the idolatry of their serfs. He still 
 found it necessary to continue the old polemic 
 against heathenism; to advance arguments to prove 
 that the worship of Venus was immodest, of Mars, 
 
 1 Socrates, "Eccl. Hist.," vii. 15. 
 
 2 Epist. cxxxii., ap. Max. Bibl. Patrum, t. xiii. p. 125.
 
 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OE THE CHURCH. 67 
 
 barbarous, of Cybele, destitute of reason. We even 
 find the worship of Apollo lingering yet another 
 hundred years in Central Italy. Not until the year 
 529 was the Altar of Apollo on Monte Cassino de- 
 stroyed by Benedict of Nursia, and replaced by a 
 Christian church. Such was the origin of that re- 
 nowned Monastery; and this little mountain of Cam- 
 pania received the last sigh of paganism in Italy. 
 
 From the details on which I have dwelt in the pre- 
 sent Lecture two leading facts emerge, — facts which 
 those who approach the study of Ecclesiastical His- 
 tory should clearly represent to their minds : — 
 
 1. The first leading fact is the length of time that 
 elapsed before Christianity was finally triumphant. 
 For more than a hundred years longer than the 
 period which has now passed away since the Refor- 
 mation, paganism still held its ground. Even in the 
 fifth century the heathen Pontifex encountered the 
 Christian Bishop on equal terms in all but the truth 
 of his cause. The further consideration of this sub- 
 ject I must postpone until my next Lecture. 
 
 2. The second leading fact which I desire to im- 
 press upon you is the position occupied by Rome in 
 this prolonged struggle with the forces opposed to 
 Christianity. To the last, as you will remember, the 
 metropolis of the world was the stronghold of the 
 ancient worship ; and when we seek for the cham- 
 pions of the Church in her conflict, and in her 
 triumph, our search must not be made at Rome. 
 We turn to the cell at Bethlehem, or to the Numi- 
 
 f 2
 
 C8 THE EARLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 dian seaport, for a Jerome, or an Augustine. When 
 his guilt is to be brought home to the conscience of 
 an Emperor, the prelate who asserts the broken 
 Christian law, and convinces a Theodosius of his sin, 
 is Ambrose of Milan. When the progress of the 
 Arian heresy is to be combated foot by foot, it is in 
 Alexandria that we meet an Athanasius. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to discern the reason. 
 
 So long as paganism had the mastery, there was 
 a natural obstacle which repelled the intellect of 
 the age from gravitating, so to speak, to Rome, the 
 acknowledged centre of the world's greatness. On 
 the other hand, when this obstacle was removed, 
 the spell which the very name of "the Eternal 
 City" exercised, as it still exercises, over men, as 
 naturally resumed its influence over the Christian 
 mind. Henceforward we find at Rome the fore- 
 most intellects of each generation, called forth by 
 the wants of the age, and the special circum- 
 stances in which the Church was placed. From 
 this period the series of great men who filled the 
 See of Rome from the First to the Seventh Gre- 
 gory, were the chief instruments in the maintenance 
 of Christianity, and the preservation of society itself, 
 during the dreary centuries that followed the disso- 
 lution of the Empire. The power thus called into 
 existence, and carried to its maturity by the legiti- 
 mate and inevitable operation of natural causes, was 
 one which produced, as I have said, in its season, an 
 amount of public benefit which no impartial stu-
 
 THE EAKLY STRUGGLE OF THE CHURCH. 69 
 
 dent of History desires either to deny, or to explain 
 away. It was a power which, had it been guided 
 by the spirit of the Gospel, or the principles of pri- 
 mitive times, needed not the authority of the False 
 Decretals for its assertion, or the subversion of the in- 
 dependence of National Churches, to give it strength. 
 But its work was accomplished : and then the Pa- 
 pacy, like other human institutions which have ful- 
 filled their task, began to degenerate. As the re- 
 sult, we peruse in the pages of History a record of 
 that struggle to attain both Spiritual and Temporal 
 Supremacy, the character of which has been fitly il- 
 lustrated, in each case, by its legitimate reductio ad 
 absurdum : — the life of John XXIIL, and the last 
 days of Boniface VIII.
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 T REMARKED at the close of my last Lecture, 
 -*- that some further consideration was required 
 in order to enable us to estimate aright one of the 
 leading facts which emerge from the details con- 
 nected with the final overthrow of paganism. 
 
 Four hundred and ten years had intervened be- 
 tween the Birth of Christ and the capture of Rome 
 by Alaric, — an event which may be regarded 
 as at length bringing to light the power which 
 Christianity had attained in the world. The 
 haughty Roman aristocracy, by whose influence the 
 old religion had so obstinately opposed the Chris- 
 tian Faith, was now swept away before the resistless 
 barbarian, never to resume its position, or again as- 
 sert its sway over men. Paganism, however, still 
 lingered in many districts ; and the actual area over 
 which the Church possessed authority was not very 
 extensive. To expect, indeed, that the triumph of 
 the Cross should have been more sudden, or more 
 widely diffused, betrays at once a forgetfulness of 
 the manner in which God interferes directly in the 
 course of His dispensations — for His miraculous in-
 
 72 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 terpositions are neither frequent, nor, when exerted, 
 of long continuance ; and also of the difficulty of 
 effecting a change in the opinions of mankind. We 
 should remember, too, how intimately connected 
 with the daily, nay, the hourly existence of the Ko- 
 man, whether in public or in private life, were the 
 rites of his national religion. The deliberations of the 
 Senate opened with sacrifice ; the centre of the camp 
 was a consecrated temple ; the domestic hearth was 
 guarded by the Penates. Each act of his life, from 
 his birth to his funeral, had its presiding deity ; and 
 the highest nobles, even the Emperors themselves, 
 aspired to fill the pontifical offices. Every de- 
 partment of rural life was no less pervaded by the 
 spirit of poly theism : — each feature of the landscape 
 was sacred to the Nymph, or the Faun ; each labour 
 of the agriculturist involved the worship of Ceres or 
 Pomona. Though paganism was banished from the 
 cities, centuries must pass away ere men would give 
 up all faith in those — 
 
 " Fair humanities of old religion, 
 That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, 
 Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
 Or chasms and wat'ry depths." 
 
 It is most important to dwell upon this fact. To 
 a human eye the progress of Christianity unques- 
 tionably appears slow ; in certain cases its success 
 even seems doubtful. For consider how we our- 
 selves stand in the middle of the nineteenth century.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 73 
 
 How vast is the field still before the missionary of 
 the Cross ! It is but as yesterday that the principles 
 of the religion of half the whole human race have 
 begun to be comprehended in Europe 1 . Scarcely yet 
 have we been brought face to face with Buddhism 
 and the religions of the East, I suppose there are 
 few to whom the subject has suggested itself who 
 have not, at times, felt dismay at this thought, and 
 despondency at this prospect. It is only by the 
 study of Ecclesiastical History that we can satisfac- 
 torily combat the influence of such feelings. With- 
 out entering upon the question as to when Miracles 
 ceased, it is plain that at a certain point the visible 
 intervention of supernatural agency was withdrawn. 
 The new element infused into human nature was 
 henceforward to encounter by its own Divine energy 
 the resistance of a heathen world : and the gradual 
 and tardy triumph of Christianity leads the student 
 of History to the inevitable conclusion, that it was 
 not the purpose of God to effect an immediate revo- 
 lution in the moral condition of man ; but to instil 
 those principles which, under His unceasing guid- 
 
 1 I take the following numbers from the " Colonial Church 
 Atlas" for 1850:— 
 
 Population of the world, . . . .860,000,000 
 
 Christians, 260,000,000 
 
 Jews, 4,000,000 
 
 Mahometans, 96,000,000 
 
 Idolaters, 500,000,000
 
 74 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 ance were, in due time, to work out His beneficent 
 design. The record of the progress of Christianity 
 proclaims on every page that " the Lord is not slack, 
 as some men count slackness ;" and we know that 
 here, as elsewhere, the only hope of mastering the 
 obstacles which we have to encounter, lies in our 
 thoroughly comprehending the difficulties of our 
 task. 
 
 I propose in the present Lecture to glance not 
 only at the progress of the Church, but also at some 
 of the impediments that have checked her growth 
 since the period of her public recognition by the 
 State. It is not within my province to do more 
 than remind you, as I pass on, of those events of our 
 time, which invest this whole subject with so thrilling 
 and universal an interest. Of course, any observa- 
 tions I can now make must be so brief as to be wholly 
 superficial. My object is to induce you yourselves 
 to penetrate beneath the surface ; and for this pur- 
 pose I desire to lay down, in the first instance, two 
 principles, which should, I conceive, be our guide 
 throughout every branch of this inquiry. 
 
 1. And, first of all, you must not apply the rules 
 of Logic to the facts of History. No amount of in- 
 consequence in events should perplex you ; no well- 
 attested result, however surprising or apparently 
 unreasonable, should render you sceptical as to the 
 matter of fact. If you remember, on the one hand, 
 that History involves the record of human passion 
 and human prejudice, you will cease to feel astonish-
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 75 
 
 ment if your anticipations are not always verified. 
 On the other hand, if you admit that the world is 
 the theatre of the acts of Providence, you cannot, as 
 you read the narrative of those acts, question the 
 marvels of the issue on account of the insignificance 
 of the means by which it has been brought to pass. 
 The special department of History with which we are 
 concerned, that of the growth and progress of Chris- 
 tianity, were we even to forget its miraculous source 
 and supernatural guidance, affords the most obvious 
 illustration. The "seed" was "cast into the ground ;" 
 it has " sprung and grown up," we " know not 
 how" 1 . Or, to turn to the ordinary records of the 
 world, what speculative inquirer, taking as his pre- 
 misses extent of territory and numerical population, 
 can safely predict the destiny of nations ? Though 
 you take statistical tables as your guide, and con- 
 struct your syllogisms in Barbara or Celarent, where 
 shall you obtain as your conclusions the battle-field 
 of Marathon, or the History of modern England? 
 
 2. The second principle which I would lay down 
 is of still greater importance. You must never study 
 the History of the past without making due allow- 
 ance, in your estimate of characters or events, for 
 
 1 S. Mark, iv. 26. This fact, as an argument for Christianity, 
 has been the theme of Apologists in every age : — 
 " Se 1 mqndo sirevolse al Cristianesmo, 
 Diss' io, senza miracoli, quest' uno 
 E tal, che gli altri non sono '1 centesimo." 
 
 Dante, Paradiso, xxir.
 
 76 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 the degree of civilization, and for the tone of opinion, 
 of the age in which you live. You cannot judge of 
 the motives that actuated men in the tenth century 
 by the spirit of the nineteenth. This simple truism, 
 so often and so strangely neglected, is, after all, but 
 the precaution necessarily taken in every branch of 
 scientific research. The historian must allow for the 
 social influences of each century in bending events, 
 no less than the astronomer must allow for the in- 
 fluence of refraction. Time is to the one, what the 
 atmosphere is to the other. The historian should 
 not suffer himself to be led into error by forgetting 
 how the tone of morality or of intellectual culture, 
 at any period, deviates from that of his own, any 
 more than the mariner should suffer himself to be 
 led astray by forgetting the variation of the compass. 
 In fine, the very instruments with which observers 
 must work, in every department of inquiry, are 
 themselves defective. The views of those writers on 
 whom the historian must rely as his authorities, may 
 be warped, or wrongly graduated, no less than the 
 material of the sextant, or the index of the barome- 
 ter ; and for this, due allowance must in both cases 
 be made, or the results will be alike affected with 
 inevitable error. I need scarcely impress upon you 
 the importance of this principle in regulating our 
 estimate of events and of men. By attending to it 
 we shall be the less liable to misinterpret actions, to 
 criticise the opinions of any period too harshly, to 
 condemn with undiscriminating censure faults whicli
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 77 
 
 should be imputed to the age, rather than to the in- 
 dividual. While, on the other hand, we can all the 
 better appreciate the moral grandeur of those great 
 men whom the Spirit of Christianity elevated above 
 the standard of their generation; and whose lives and 
 teaching shed around them a light, which all the 
 darkness of the times in which they lived was not 
 able to overwhelm. 
 
 Christianity has at length triumphed: — but far dif- 
 ferent is the aspect of society from that which pre- 
 sented itself to the first preachers of the Gospel. 
 When you remember that the theatre in which the 
 new Religion was proclaimed was the Roman Em- 
 pire, and that Augustus was its ruler when Christ 
 was born, you have before your minds a picture of 
 prosperity, and pride, and power, the colours of 
 which no description can heighten. When, on the 
 other hand, you remember that the event by which 
 the position of the Church was at length secured, 
 was the capture by the Goths of " the Eternal City," 
 you have again before your mind a picture no less 
 expressive. To form a conception of the fabric thus 
 overturned, we need only consider the light in which 
 the world has ever regarded its memory. Europe 
 still lingers on the idea of the Roman Empire ; and, 
 although this is but a shadowy sentiment now, there 
 were centuries throughout which the influence of 
 this idea was as beneficial as it was real. The His- 
 tory and even the legends of Rome had kept alive, 
 throughout the Middle Ages, the remembrance of
 
 78 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 its civilization and its grandeur. To comprehend 
 the power of this idea some five hundred years ago, 
 we need but turn to the great poem of Dante; in 
 whose mighty verse the Csesar who has transmitted 
 to all time the immortal laws of Rome relates the 
 course of the " sacred sign," — 
 
 " Beginning from that hour when Pallas died, 
 To give it rule," 
 
 till it had accomplished in Judea, 
 
 " Vengeance for vengeance of the ancient sin" 1 . 
 
 But what description can adequately represent the 
 condition of Europe subsequently to the death of 
 Theodosius the Great ? Take, for example, the reign 
 of his son and successor, Honorius. Events the 
 most unexpected succeed each other without appa- 
 rent cause or connexion. Commotions the most 
 fearful are followed by a calm no less fearful. Civi- 
 lization is gradually overpowered ; philosophy is 
 silent ; literature degenerates. The very life-blood 
 of society begins to stagnate. All throbs wildly, 
 and again is stilled, like the pulse of the dying. 
 Rome was captured by the barbarians ; and from 
 that hour we may date that complete dissolution of 
 national life, from the elements of which modern 
 Europe has arisen. The entire structure of govern- 
 ment was overthrown ; social order was swept away 
 
 1 " Paradiso," vi., Carey's transl.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 79 
 
 by the universal deluge, and the " fountains of its 
 great deep were broken up." For six hundred years 
 from this period the people groaned under that iron 
 yoke, which gradually assumed the form of the Feu- 
 dal System. Not until the tenth century do we see 
 the idea of Royalty, with government as its mission, 
 emerging from the tyranny of Feudalism ; and we 
 wait for three hundred years longer for the establish- 
 ment of regal authority and well-defined nationali- 
 ties 1 - 
 
 The rural population, whether slaves or a coloni," 
 suifered, after the fall of the Empire, more than any 
 others, from the chronic prevalence of violence and 
 anarchy. The condition of this class continued to 
 deteriorate 2 : witness the incessant revolts of the pea- 
 sants from the tenth century onwards. Among the 
 Clergy alone, under whose rule the people were ever 
 eager to place themselves, could the spirit of benevo- 
 lence or justice be found 3 . During those dreary 
 centuries, the one resting-place for the mind dis- 
 tracted and wearied with the narrative of war and 
 tumult is the History of the Church. Throughout 
 this age of anarchy and brute force, the one tie that 
 
 1 Guizot, "Hist, de Civilization en France," tome v., 13 e Legon, 
 et 14 e Lec,on. 
 
 2 Cf. Hallam's "Middle Ages," chap. i. part i. 
 
 3 See the letter, quoted by M. Guizot, he. cit., tome iv., 8 e Le<;on, 
 from Pope Gregory the Great to the Subdeacon Peter, regulating 
 the imposts to be exacted from the bond-labourers of the Church 
 in Sicily: — Lib. i. Ep. xliv., Opp., t. ii. p. 533.
 
 80 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 held society together was the principle of Christian 
 brotherhood ; —the one agency that had power to 
 build again its ruined fabric was that exerted by the 
 Christian Clergy. The decomposition of the Roman 
 Empire, and the foundation of the barbarous king- 
 doms into which Europe was now divided, left no- 
 thing almost remaining of what had constituted the 
 ancient world. The Church alone survived, and 
 gained power in the midst of so many ruins. " From 
 the bosom," observes M. Guizot, "of the most frightful 
 political confusion that the world has ever known, 
 arose, perhaps, the most extensive and the purest 
 idea that has ever rallied mankind, — the idea of Spi- 
 ritual Society" 1 . 
 
 The principle of Church authority is purely intel- 
 lectual. I do not mean to imply that the recognition 
 of this principle has not degenerated into supersti- 
 tion ; or that the exercise of the authority itself has 
 not been abused and perverted, s^> as to assume that 
 most irrational and repulsive form of power — a spi- 
 ritual despotism. Were I inclined so to misrepresent 
 facts, the stern voice of History would speedily pro- 
 claim the falsehood. But no one can have studied 
 the records of those dark ages of violence, and blood- 
 shed, and wrong-doing, without being compelled to 
 feel that, with all their faults, — and do not forget 
 that Churchmen are but men, — the individual mem- 
 bers of the Clergy, and the great Prelates, and the 
 
 1 Loc. cit., tome i. Loc.on 12 me , p. 424.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 81 
 
 Councils of the Church, were, in truth, the very "salt 
 of the earth," without which the total decomposition 
 of nations and communities could not have been 
 checked. 
 
 Consider the Clergy merely as the preservers and 
 maintainers of knowledge. 
 
 During most of the period which we are consi- 
 dering, profane literature had ceased to exist ; sa- 
 cred literature stands alone. Take the case of the 
 Englishman, Alcuin, at the opening of the ninth 
 century, whose labours, in the single point of rescu- 
 ing ancient manuscripts from the condition into 
 which they had fallen, demand the gratitude of every 
 scholar. Or, again, to touch upon a subject more 
 practically religious, of deep importance at all pe- 
 riods, — at the present day, as you are aware, it forms 
 a topic of much discussion, — I mean the subject of 
 preaching, we find in the sermons of the Clergy mo- 
 dels which no divine need scorn to imitate. Let me 
 read you the comment of M. Guizot, who had just 
 quoted a passage from a sermon delivered at the be- 
 ginning of the seventh century by our countryman, 
 S. Columbanus, reproving the want of sanctity and 
 faith amid outward monastic asceticism : — 
 
 "Open the sermons of modern times," he observes ; 
 " they have evidently a character more literary than 
 practical. There is nothing of this kind, nothing 
 literary, in the sermons of which I have just spoken ; 
 no preoccupation about speaking well, about artisti- 
 cally combining images, ideas. The orator goes to 
 
 G
 
 82 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 the facts. He desires to act ; he turns and returns in 
 the same circle. He does not fear repetitions, fami- 
 liarity, even vulgarity. He speaks briefly, but he 
 begins again each morning. This is not sacred elo- 
 quence ; it is religious power" 1 . 
 
 But the grand work of the Church, her special vo- 
 cation, and the chief means whereby she effected 
 that process of the restoration of Society to which I 
 have adverted, was her missionary labour. While 
 the last Emperors were sending against the barba- 
 rians armies demoralized and conquered beforehand, 
 the Church sent forth those bands of devoted men 
 who extended everywhere the doctrines of the Gos- 
 pel, and thus gained over to the cause of civilization 
 more adherents than Rome lost subjects. Let me 
 give a single illustration of how essential to the set- 
 tlement of society, and the re-organization of na- 
 tional life, was the dissemination of Christianity, 
 considered merely as a political agency 2 . 
 
 The introduction of the German race into Euro- 
 pean society — and the conquerors of the Empire 
 were nearly all Germans — was an event of the high- 
 est importance. It put an end to the perpetual 
 inroads of the barbarians, which rendered the re- 
 organization of States impossible. It closed the prin- 
 cipal route by which the nomad tribes of North- 
 
 1 Loc. cit., tome ii., 16 e LeQon, p. 148. 
 
 2 See Mignet, " Memoirs Historiques ; Introduction de l'an- 
 cienne Germanie dans la Societe civilisee."
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 83 
 
 ern Europe and of the plateaux of Asia had ad- 
 vanced from time immemorial to the shores of the 
 Ocean and the Mediterranean, overturning all that 
 they encountered on their passage. A barrier was 
 thus formed capable of casting back those savage 
 hordes, which, like a torrent increasing in volume as 
 it advanced, successively inundated the countries of 
 the West and of the South. 
 
 The physical characteristics of the central and 
 northern regions of ancient Europe presented no at- 
 traction to a population disposed to settle on its 
 soil, and desirous of advancing to a state of civili- 
 zation. Barren steppes, extensive plains covered 
 with marsh and forest, an ungenial climate, afforded 
 a gloomy contrast to the luxuriant vegetation and 
 smiling skies of the South. United to the Eastern 
 Continent along the chain of the Oural for many 
 hundred miles, Europe was exposed, lower down, to 
 the invasion of the inexhaustible wandering tribes 
 of Asia, on the side of the Caspian, and by the gates 
 of the Caucasus. For many ages Europe could op- 
 pose but a feeble resistance to the assaults of a Con. 
 tinent of which the mass is nearly four and a half 
 times its own. Besides, it received the nomad po- 
 pulation of Asia on the least defensible portions of 
 its frontiers. Two great roads lay open to the in- 
 vaders: — that which leads by the North, in the valley 
 of the Rhine, and that which leads by the East, in 
 the valley of the Danube. The weight thus cast 
 upon Europe gravitated towards its extremities, the 
 
 g2
 
 84 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 peninsulas of Greece, of Italy, and of Spain,— defended 
 though these countries were by the natural ramparts 
 of the Balkan, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. On 
 these barriers, concentric layers, as it were, of barba- 
 rous populations pressed irresistibly, as they moved 
 onward from the Wall of China to the Alps. Each 
 tribe, as it felt the shock, communicated the impulse 
 to those in contact with it, and the result was a con- 
 stant advance of invader after invader. Horde after 
 horde was gradually forced on to the maritime fron- 
 tier of Europe, and was there overwhelmed by the 
 pressure of those that followed. 
 
 The Romans had extended the frontiers of their 
 Empire to the banks of the Ehine and the Danube. 
 They advanced no farther, although they had 
 reached this limit nearly five hundred years before 
 the fall of their power. They had tried in vain to 
 penetrate the compact mass which extended to the 
 North of these two great rivers. The loss of the Le- 
 gions of Yarus had proved the warlike genius of the 
 population, and denoted too surely the disasters 
 which were still future. But a new power was at hand 
 to accomplish the task which ancient Rome had 
 failed to execute. 
 
 Christianity was now the sole bond that united 
 the western world, — the sole principle by which it 
 was animated, the sole force which placed it in 
 action. By means of the Church, having converted 
 the barbarians its conquerors, the old world was 
 enabled to transform the countries which were
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 85 
 
 the seat of barbarism itself. The Rhine and the 
 Danube ceased to be the limits of civilization. Two 
 great movements took place. The one bore on Chris- 
 tianity, with often checked, but never wearied course, 
 from South to North; the other, from North to South 
 urged successively the Gauls on Italy and Greece, 
 the Germans on Gaul and the Eoman world, the 
 Sclaves on Germany, the Tartars on Russia and Po- 
 land. The same instinct of self-defence which had 
 drawn the Romans to the Rhine and the Danube had 
 led the Merovingian kings to the same policy, in order 
 to preserve Italy from invasion, and to intercept the 
 passes of the Alps. But " the Merovingian Franks," 
 observes the historian, " had not taken Christianity 
 as the auxiliary of their conquests ; they had em- 
 ployed the arms which subdue, they had not availed 
 themselves of the civilization which transforms" 1 . 
 Their efforts proved vain : their zeal fpr adventure 
 subsided ; and their vassals shook off their yoke. 
 In the year 719, the Austrasian Franks having re- 
 sumed the warlike spirit of their ancestors, S. Boni- 
 face offered himself as the Missionary of Germany. 
 Ecclesiastical History tells the story of his labours ; 
 of his success; of his martyrdom, in the year 755, by 
 the barbarians of Saxony. The years that followed 
 present a mournful contrast to the peaceful conquests 
 of Boniface ; and the History of Charlemagne re- 
 
 1 Migriet, loo. cit., p. 52.
 
 86 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 counts the obstinate resistance and the final subju- 
 gation of the Saxons. 
 
 Since the year 7 9 2, after a bloody struggle of thirty- 
 two years, Saxony has formed an integral portion of 
 civilized society. Within the line of civilization 
 which Charlemagne pushed forward on the Conti- 
 nent, were now comprised all the peoples of Ger- 
 manic race, speaking the same language, holding the 
 same creed, governed by the same laws. Christian 
 Germany, at first bounded by the Elbe and the 
 Danube, by degrees exerted an influence on the 
 tribes which roamed to the Oder, or even to the 
 Vistula ; and prepared them for the gradual re- 
 ception of the Gospel. The chiefs of those very 
 Saxons who were still barbarians in the year 789, and 
 who had been the determined foes of the Christian 
 name, were, a century later, at the head of the move- 
 ment of civilization towards the North, became the 
 rulers of Germany, and the Emperors of the West. 
 In the ninth century Saxony proved the rampart of 
 Western Europe against the Danes and Norwegians ; 
 in the tenth century, it converted them to Christia- 
 nity. In the same tenth century, Otho the Great 1 
 defeated, on the banks of the Danube, the Magyars 
 of the Kama and Volga. The Mongols, who had 
 invaded the vast space between the frontiers of China 
 and the Vistula, who had subjugated all the tribes 
 
 1 Gibbon, chap. lv.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 87 
 
 of the Sclave race, and threatened, by covering Eu- 
 rope with their hordes, to re-establish their nomad 
 life on its surface, were, for the first time, vanquished 
 in the year 1241 by Conrad, King of the Romans, and 
 Henry, son of Frederic II. 1 The Tartar conquests did 
 not pass the German frontier. In fine, in the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, Germany arrested the pro- 
 gress of the last invasion, andhurled back theTurkish 
 armies, whose advance had filled Europe with ter- 
 ror. And thus, the German race, amalgamated 
 by Christianity, spread civilization through the 
 North, and repelled on the South the inroads of the 
 barbarians; thus deciding, in favour of Europe and 
 of the world, the question so long at issue between 
 civilization and barbarism 2 . 
 
 But to return to a somewhat earlier period. 
 
 The calamities of the Empire were not altogether 
 fraught with evil to the Church. The invaders were 
 more willing to embrace Christianity than had been 
 the subjects of the Roman Empire. In the middle of 
 the third century the first invasion of the Goths inter- 
 rupted Decius in his career of persecution. In the 
 year 251 he lost his army and his life in Maasia, the 
 modern Bulgaria, at the great battle of Forum Tere- 
 bronii ; and historians are careful to tell us that 
 the great disgrace of the convention made by his 
 successor Gallus with the conquerors, consisted in 
 his consenting to leave in the hands of the Goths " a 
 
 1 Gibbon, chap. lxiv. 2 Mignet, he. cit., p. 162.
 
 88 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 great number of prisoners of the highest merit and 
 quality" 1 . Within a few years, under the reign of 
 Gallienus, occurred repeated inroads of the same 
 barbarians, who overran the Eastern Empire ; and 
 in their third naval invasion perished the pride of pa- 
 ganism, the famous temple of Diana at Ephesus. On 
 their retreat they again carried away captives, of 
 whom many were Christians. Here, too, the slaves 
 subdued their conquerors; and the gentle doctrines of 
 the Christian Religion seem to have touched to some 
 extent the hearts of these barbarous warriors. The 
 families of the captives supplied the priesthood of 
 this young Christian community; and we find a 
 Gothic bishop with a Greek name, Theophilus, at the 
 Council of Nicsea. 
 
 Though professing Christianity, the invaders were, 
 speaking generally, for many years, devoted to the 
 Arian heresy. Of this fact we have not far to 
 seek the reason. Instruct a child, — and the under- 
 standing of the untutored warrior from isolated 
 Scandinavia, or the Hercynian forest, was not more 
 developed than that of a child, — Instruct, 1 say, a 
 child in the transcendental mystery of the Christian 
 Faith, and the difficulties which the child invari- 
 ably starts, and the doubts which he proposes, will 
 account, without need of further explanation, for 
 the side taken by the barbarians in the great contro- 
 versy of the fourth century. A no less simple ac- 
 
 Clibbon, chap. x.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 89 
 
 count may be given of another feature in the History 
 of the invaders. As soon as they had passed the 
 Rhine or the Danube, they feel no disinclination to 
 become Christians : — did they remain in their father- 
 land, the missionary must toil for centuries before 
 they would abandon the worship of Thor and Odin. 
 The absence of a sacerdotal caste among the German 
 races — for their chiefs were at once their military 
 leaders and their priests — explains this fact. The 
 chiefs maintained or abandoned their former creed, 
 according as it promoted or opposed their warlike 
 designs. The Germans followed their leaders as faith- 
 fully to baptism as to war. In Gaul, Clovis led with 
 him the majority of the Frank warriors to the Ca- 
 thedral "of Eh eims : and, with Sigismund, the Bur- 
 gundians passed from Arianism to the Catholic Faith, 
 with as much facility as they had abandoned pagan- 
 ism for Arianism. The motives that induced the 
 barbarian chiefs thus to embrace Christianity when 
 once they had settled down within the Empire may, 
 I conceive, be explained as follows. Christianity had 
 now penetrated the mass of the rural population. It 
 was clearly the policy of the conquerors to conciliate 
 the inhabitants of the districts where they settled ; 
 to win to their side those who provided the harvests 
 which must support the invading army, or who, if 
 provoked to hostilities, could intercept its supplies, 
 and carry on that most harassing species of opposition, 
 — a guerilla warfare. In the dissolution of all ordi- 
 nary social ties, Christianity was the one uniting
 
 90 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 principle now remaining in the world. To profess 
 themselves Christians, therefore, at once created a 
 common sentiment between the invaders and that 
 class of the Roman population of which alone they 
 need fear the hostility. 
 
 It is, perhaps, unnecessary to remark that the 
 course of events which I have endeavoured to illus- 
 trate, however ultimately beneficial to the progress 
 of Christianity, was attended with dire disasters to 
 the Church of the time. Countless instances might 
 be adduced; and they constitute the normal state of 
 what I cannot call the society of this epoch. But the 
 mere mention of a single individual will convey the 
 substance of volumes. 
 
 The lapse of ages has not lessened the impres- 
 sion produced on the minds of men by the name 
 of Attila. All have heard the saying, so worthy 
 of his ferocious pride, that the grass never grew 
 where his war-horse had trod; nor can the character 
 of the savage Hun be more tersely described than 
 in the words so unjustly applied to a great Roman: 
 " Gaudensque viam fecisse ruina." As regards the 
 Church, one need not travel beyond the epithet 
 which he was pleased to insert among the titles of 
 his royal dignity, — " The Scourge of God." 
 
 But however opposed to her rapid extension were 
 the evils with which the Church had to contend from 
 without, the evils which sprang up within her own 
 bosom had a still greater tendency to retard her pro- 
 gress. This is the page of Ecclesiastical History over
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 91 
 
 which we must blush, while we sigh. It is the page, 
 however, from which the most salutary lessons are 
 to be inferred. I will touch upon two of those dark 
 spots upon what should be the Church's unsullied 
 garment, — internal divisions, and the spirit of per- 
 secution. 
 
 The former may be fitly illustrated by the Dona- 
 tist Controversy. 
 
 In the days of the Church's early trials a question 
 of great practical moment had arisen, which gave 
 occasion for the development of an error that has 
 exhibited itself, under some form or other, in every 
 age of Christianity down to our own time. There 
 were many in the Christian community whose con- 
 stancy was not proof against the horrors of perse- 
 cution ; who, in a greater or less degree, had fallen 
 from the Faith. When the storm had passed by, 
 numbers mourned over their weakness, and sought, 
 with penitence, to be restored to the Church. Hence 
 the question, How should the Church treat such 
 cases ? This question, which in its own nature was 
 but temporary, was merged in another, which has 
 ever been a fruitful source of dissension amonof 
 Christians : — the question as to the characters by 
 which the True Church is to be known. Is there 
 any, or what, distinction between the Visible and the 
 Invisible Church ? Can that community claim the 
 title of "the Body of Christ" which tolerates in any 
 of its members the commission of a single sin ? 
 
 The Novatianists would show no mercy in such
 
 92 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 cases ; they excluded a fallen brother for ever from 
 Church communion. The title which they assumed of 
 Cathari, or Puritans, is significant of the many points 
 of resemblance that may be traced throughout this 
 entire controversy between the stern Novatianist of 
 the third or the fiery Donatist of the fourth centuries, 
 and the Fifth Monarchy men of the seventeenth. 
 Let me mention, in passing, one trifling point of ana- 
 logy, which shows that human nature is in all ages 
 the same. One of the best-known traits of the Puri- 
 tanism of the Great Rebellion is the array of gro- 
 tesque names assumed by the Roundheads. In 
 Africa, in the fourth century, among the names of 
 Donatists preserved in the records of Councils, or in 
 the inscriptions of letters of that period, we meet 
 with names no less grotesque : — "Quodvult Deus," 
 " Deo Gratias," " Habet Deum." The principles of 
 Montanism had prepared the fervid mind of the 
 Africans for the Puritanism of the Novatianists. 
 Novatus of Carthage, no less than Novatian of Rome, 
 was the moving spirit of this party; which, again, 
 was but the prelude of the melancholy strife which, 
 under the name of the Donatist Schism, rent the 
 Church of Africa for one hundred years, and did not 
 wholly cease till the African Church was swept away 
 by the Saracenic invasion. 
 
 In the course of this controversy blood was first 
 shed in strife between Christians. Africa had long 
 been the granary of Rome. The wild tribes of whom 
 we read in the pages of Sallust, and still read in the
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 93 
 
 despatches of French Marshals, had become industri- 
 ous agriculturists. Christianity had spread among 
 them ; and their numerous rural settlements had 
 become Christian bishoprics. But the savage was 
 only half tamed ; and no sooner had religious dis- 
 cord invaded these peaceful districts than the Chris- 
 tian was lost in the fierce child of the desert. The 
 severities exercised towards them by the imperial 
 officers enabled the Donatists to inflame the enthu- 
 siasm of this fiery peasantry ; and gave rise to those 
 cruel ravages of the " Circumcelliones," as their ad- 
 versaries called them, from their scattered cottage 
 life, — or,' as they styled themselves, " Soldiers of 
 Christ," " Agonistici" 1 . When the Vandal Genseric 
 desolated Africa, the " Circumcelliones" were among 
 his most efficient allies ; and " the calamities of war," 
 to borrow the words of Gibbon, " were aggravated 
 by the licentiousness of the Moors, and the fanati- 
 cism of the Donatists" 2 . 
 
 A fatal blow had been inflicted from within on the 
 great and flourishing Church of Africa. It was the 
 Church of Tertullian, of Cyprian, of Augustine. Her 
 martyrs had been the first to confess the Faith in sea- 
 son of persecution ; in days of heresy her orthodoxy 
 had ever been unshaken ; her Councils commanded 
 universal respect; her great Prelates had ever asserted 
 the independence of the African Church against the 
 
 1 S. Augustine, "Enarr. in Psalm, cxxxii.," § 6, t.iv., p. 1487. 
 2 Chap, xxxiii.
 
 94 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 attempts at usurpation by the bishops of Rome : — 
 and now her own dissensions prepared the way for 
 her fall. The close of the seventh century witnessed 
 the conquest of Africa by the Saracens. Mohammed- 
 anism, as you know, dates its rise from the 20th of 
 September, a. d. 622 1 . At the beginning of the next 
 century it had inundated the south of Italy, nearly 
 the whole of Spain, the south of Gaul. On Gaul its 
 assault was even more impetuous than had been 
 that of the German nations on the borders of the 
 Rhine. It was repelled from the gates of the West 
 by Charles Martel, in the year 732, at the great battle 
 of Tours. Africa alone continues to bear the yoke 
 of the false prophet. 
 
 In the year 698, Carthage yielded to the arms 
 of Hassan. Its very ruins have perished ; and the 
 History of Carthage is the History of the African 
 Church. The Nestorian and Jacobite communities 
 in Persia and Syria ; the Greek Church in modern 
 Turkey ; the Copts in Egypt ; notwithstanding their 
 subjection to the rule of the Moslem, have all main- 
 tained their Faith. Of the countries wrested from 
 Christendom by the Mohammedans, in North Africa 
 alone has Christianity ceased to exist. In the ele- 
 venth century, three bishops could not be found to 
 proceed to a canonical Consecration 2 . At the present 
 
 1 This is the date assigned by Dr. Weil, in his " Mohammed der 
 Prophet." 
 
 2 See Milman, "Latin Christianity," vol. iii. p. 122.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 95 
 
 day even this remnant of the African Church has 
 disappeared. You seek in vain for some trace of 
 Christianity in the land of Cyprian and Augustine ; 
 or you are startled at meeting such a passage as the 
 following in the columns of the " Times" 1 : — 
 
 " I have passed several days at Batna, partly 
 tempted by the beauty of the scenery, partly by the 
 frank hospitality of the camp at Lambessa, but even 
 still more by the wonderful ruins of the Roman city. 
 .... I may say, however, that, under the shadow of 
 the forest hills, upon which the lion, the panther, and 
 the wild boar, range, a Roman city, which once held 
 50,000 inhabitants, and where ninety bishops assem- 
 bled in council, lies in ruins. . . . This beautiful 
 city, in a beautiful plain, is worth a pilgrimage. It 
 was only discovered twelve years since" 2 . 
 
 Now remember that Donatism was no heresy that 
 assailed a doctrine of the Creeds 3 ; no protest against 
 the ritualism or government of the Church ; no re- 
 fusal to accept Scripture as its guide or its rule ; — 
 it was merely one of those systems with which the 
 history of modern times has made us so familiar. 
 
 1 Oct. 31, 1856 : " The French in Africa. From an occasional 
 Correspondent." 
 
 2 Cf. Pellissier, " Exploration Scientifique de l'Algerie," vol. vi. 
 p. 388 ; S. Augustine, " Cont. Donat.," lib. vi. c. 13, t. ix. 
 p. 169. S. Cyprian writes: " Significavi tibi Privatum veterem 
 haereticum in Lambesitana Colonia nonaginta Episcoporum sen- 
 tentia condemnatum." — Ep. lv. p. 84. 
 
 S. Augustine, indeed, writes of Donatus: " Apparet eum non 
 Catholicam de Trinitate habuisse sententiam :" but he is careful
 
 96 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 You have seen the result of its separation from the 
 Church. In perusing its History, we read the lite- 
 ral fulfilment of the warning in the Apocalypse : — 
 "I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy pa- 
 tience, and how thou canst not bear them which are 
 evil. Thou hast borne, and for My Name's sake hast 
 laboured. Nevertheless thou hast left thy first love. 
 Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen; 
 or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will re- 
 move thy Candlestick out of his place 7 ' 1 . I know no 
 lesson more fearful, or more pregnant with warn- 
 ing; — no lesson that so forcibly impresses upon 
 every Christian man the appeal of S. Augustine when 
 he dwells upon the disunion of Christians, as con- 
 trasted with the power which the pagans of his day 
 gained from their being united : — "They have many 
 gods who are false ; we have but One who is the 
 True : and yet they remain united, while we cannot 
 maintain concord. my brother, return to 
 unity !" 2 
 
 The history of religious persecution comes next 
 before us. 
 
 to add: "In hunc ejus errorem Donatistarum multitude* intenta 
 non fuit ; nee facile in eis quisquam, qui hoc ilium sensisse no- 
 verit, invenitur." — Lib. de Hceres., c. lxix. t. viii. p. 21. While 
 he defines heresy to be " schisma inveteratum" ("Contr. Cres- 
 eon.," lib. ii. c. 7, t. ix. p. 413), he also says of the Donatists : 
 " Qui se negabant haereticos." — Lib. ad Bonifac, c. vii., t. ii. 
 p. 654. 
 
 1 Rev. ii. 2-5. 2 " De TJtilitate Jejunii," t. vi. p. 619.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 97 
 
 It would be easy to dilate upon this topic : 
 to show that the employment of force by a Reli- 
 gious Society is in its very nature unlawful — for the 
 exclusive territory of Religion is the human con- 
 science ; and that unity, if effected by force, cannot 
 but be factitious and fraudulent. " The conduct of 
 God," writes Pascal, "Who disposes all things with 
 gentleness, is to place Religion in the understand- 
 ing by reasons, and in the heart by Grace. But to 
 wish to place it in the understanding, and in the 
 heart, by force and by menaces, this is not to place 
 Religion there, but terror" 1 . 
 
 One leading maxim which History inculcates, 
 and of which the records of Christianity afford 
 the fullest illustration, is the length of time that 
 must elapse before Truth can be recognised, or 
 its principles acted upon. There are two such 
 principles which Christianity has proclaimed to the 
 world, — that all men are brethren, and that con- 
 science is free. I have already touched upon the 
 former, when alluding to Slavery as an institu- 
 tion of ancient society. It was not till our own age 
 - — and the honour has been reserved for our own 
 country — that a nation has proclaimed the emanci- 
 pation of the Slave. For our own age also has been 
 reserved the recognition — at least the practical re- 
 cognition — of liberty of conscience. The history of 
 intolerance, it has been said, is the history of the 
 
 1 " Pensees," 2 e partie, chap, in., ed. Faugere, tome ii. p. 178. 
 
 H
 
 98 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 world ; for human nature unceasingly tends to 
 compel others to share either its belief or its scep- 
 ticism : — even in the classic land of freedom, the fate 
 of Socrates proves how universal is this tendency. 
 
 The principle of freedom of thought first announced 
 by Christianity was comprehended by its early fol- 
 lowers 1 ; but the season came when the principle was 
 forgotten. In the year 385 occurred an event which 
 the Christian must mourn to the end of time. In 
 that year Priscillian, a noble Spaniard, with some 
 others, was tortured and beheaded as a heretic at the 
 instance of certain bishops of Spain. This was the 
 first death inflicted, in the name of Christianity, as 
 the penalty of religious error. 
 
 In this transaction two circumstances deserve our 
 notice : — 
 
 ( 1 ) Firstly, the indignant protest of the leading 
 prelates of the day, S. Martin of Tours and S. Amb- 
 rose (whose conduct has extorted the praise even of 
 Gibbon), and Pope Siricius. 
 
 (2.) The second noteworthy particular is the 
 country with which religious persecution origi- 
 nated, — the country of the Inquisition and of Phi- 
 lip II. From that hour the genius of religious into- 
 lerance has brooded over Spain. We have seen how 
 religious disunion has destroyed a Church ; we here 
 see how religious intolerance has destroyed an Em. 
 
 1 Cf. Tertullian, "Apol." c. xxviii.; S. Chiysostom, " De S. 
 Babyla," t. ii. p. 540. For further authorities see Limborch, 
 " Hist. Imjuisitionis," ed. 1692, c. v. p. 16.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 99 
 
 pire. " The witnesses of History are events examined 
 by the light of ages." Let us then summon before 
 our mind Father Yalverde beseeching the hapless 
 Inca to embrace the Cross and submit to Baptism, 
 promising that by so doing his death at the stake 
 should be commuted for death by the garotte, — 
 while, to complete the picture of such a conversion, 
 " the Spaniards," we are told, " stood around mut- 
 tering their credos for the salvation of his soul" 1 ; let 
 our imagination recall the scenes once enacted at 
 Valladolid or Seville; and let us follow that sad pro- 
 cession styled, as if in hideous mockery, " an Act of 
 Faith ;" let us read over once more the biography of 
 Alva ; — and we need feel small surprise at the con- 
 trast between the monarchy of Charles Y. and the 
 Spain of 1857. 
 
 The example of the execution at Treves was not 
 lost on after times. Let us pass on to the thirteenth 
 century and the Albigensian crusade — the bloodiest 
 drama ever enacted in either civil or religious warfare. 
 Here the highest prelates led on their divisions ; they 
 took part in the battle and the siege. It was in this 
 war, at the storm of Beziers where the number of 
 the slain is set down at fifty thousand, that Abbot 
 Arnold, Legate of the Pope, issued the command 
 " Slay them all ; God will know His own :" — words 
 which worthily inaugurated the foundation of the 
 
 1 Prescott, " History of the Conquest of Peru," vol. ii. p. 131, 
 ed. 1850. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Order of S. Dominic, no less than its natural and 
 speedy sequel, the Inquisition 1 . 
 
 The name of the Inquisition calls up associations 
 which one does notloveto dwell upon. Each feature of 
 that institution is alike abhorrent to every sentiment 
 of Christian charity and every honourable impulse 
 of human nature. The honest bigot who persecutes 
 because " he thinks he does God service," has, after 
 all, something lofty in his character, which we feel 
 while we condemn. He does not shrink from acting 
 on his convictions. If the victim is to perish, " he 
 will keep the raiment of them that slay him." Such 
 a bigot once was Saul of Tarsus ; such a bigot lived 
 and died S. Louis. But, in the laws of the Inqui- 
 sition, as if cruelty, and treachery, and espionage, 
 were not characteristics sufficiently odious, it was 
 ordained that hypocrisy also should signalize its pro- 
 
 1 Count Joseph de Maistre condemns this mode of stating the 
 connexion between the Order and the Inquisition: — " Quelques 
 incredules modernes, echos des Protestants, veulent que saint 
 Dominique ait ete l'auteur de l'lnquisition, et ils n'ont pas man- 
 que de declamer contre lui d'une maniere furieuse. Le fait est 
 cependant que saint Dominique n' a jamais exerce aucun acte d' 
 inquisiteur, et que l'lnquisition, dont l'origine remonte au 
 Concile deVerone, tenu en 1184, ne fut confiee aux Dominicains 
 qu' en 1233, c'est-ii-dire douze ans apres la mort de saint Do- 
 minique." — Lettres sur L'lnquisition Espagnole, p. 3. The term 
 " Inquisitio" may, indeed, be traced to a date anterior to the foun- 
 dation of the Order; but, in the sense in which all the world 
 understands the word, the statement in the text will, I apprehend, 
 be found correct. See Du Cange in voc.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 101 
 
 ceedings. The Church must not be soiled with 
 blood. The civil power becomes its executioner : and 
 the Inquisitor, as he delivers the luckless heretic to 
 " the secular arm," gravely assures him that the ma- 
 gistrate has been " earnestly entreated that he would 
 be pleased to mitigate the severity of the laws with 
 regard to the punishment of your person ; that it 
 may be effected without danger of death, or mutila- 
 tion of limb" 1 . 
 
 When such was the practice of the Church, can 
 we feel surprise that the noblest spirits of their 
 age did not rise above her example ? I have 
 mentioned the name of S. Louis. " He had kingly 
 qualities," Dean Milman writes, " of the noblest 
 order : gentleness, affability, humanity towards all 
 his believing subjects ; a kind of dignity of justice, 
 a loftiness of virtue, which prevented the most re- 
 ligious of men from degenerating into a slave of the 
 clergy" 2 . And yet what does the admiring chronicler 
 select as the trait which best exhibits his devotion 
 to Religion ? — " If, as a laic, he heard a man to be 
 an unbeliever, he should not dispute with him," the 
 King said, " he should at once run that sword into 
 his entrails, and drive it home" 3 . 
 
 1 I take these words from, the registered memorial of the final 
 proceedings against Fulgentio Manfredi, as given by Mr. R. 
 Gibbings in his learned tract, entitled : ' ' "Were ' Heretics' ever 
 burned alive at Rome ? A Report of the proceedings in the Roman 
 Inquisition," p. 50. 
 
 2 " Latin Christianity," vol. v. p. 4. 
 
 3 Joinville, " Histoire du Saint Louis," l e partie, § 27.
 
 102 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 I pass on two centuries, and see Huss and Je- 
 rome before the Council of Constance. By whom, 
 we ask, was Sigismund forced to violate his pledged 
 safe-conduct, and the Church led on to imbrue her 
 hands once more in blood ? It was John Gerson, 
 the philosopher, " the very Christian Doctor," the 
 man whom Bossuet could pronounce worthy of being 
 the author of" that universal work," the " De Imita- 
 tione Christi," and whose claims to its authorship are 
 to this day vigorously maintained. It was a sight 
 to make the angels weep. It is to us some consola- 
 tion to remember that Religion even here had her 
 champions ; and that the prelate who strove to turn 
 the Council from its unholy course was the English- 
 man, Robert Halam 1 . 
 
 I need not pause on the sixteenth century, and the 
 reign of Charles IX. : that reign, it has been well said, 
 has but a single date, the night of S. Bartholemew 2 . 
 I pass on once more to a period nearer our own 
 time, to the age of Louis XI Y. The History of this 
 
 1 " Ungcachtet einige Pralaten versucht, die Yater des Conci- 
 liums zu einem mildern Yerfahren gegen die Ketzer zu stiminen 
 und der englische Bischof Eobert Halam mit bedeutungsvollen 
 "Worten sich gegen die Verdamnmng der Ketzer zum Scheiter- 
 haufen ausgesprochen hatte : ' Gott will nicht den Tod des S tin- 
 ders, sondern, dass er sich bekehre und lobe.' " — Aschbach, 
 Geschichte Kaiser SigmuncVs, s. 202. 
 
 Robert Halam was Bishop of Salisbury in the year 1407, was 
 elected Cardinal in 1411, and died at Constance in 1417: see 
 Godwin, "De Praesulibus Anglice." 
 
 2 Jules Simon, " La Liberte de Conscience," p. 121.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 103 
 
 era presents the narrative of the Dragon ades, and the 
 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Nothing, I sup- 
 pose, can show more clearly how deeply the prin- 
 ciples of persecution still continued to darken the 
 intellects of Christian men, than the fact that a Bos- 
 suet could select the author of those deeds as the 
 theme of a panegyric, and those deeds themselves as 
 the subject of his eulogium 1 . 
 
 The Reformation had intervened : but the lessons 
 of intolerance, enforced by the practice of centuries, 
 were not to be at once unlearned. The finger of 
 History points sternly to facts which should neither 
 be dissembled nor forgotten. I shall read you a few 
 lines from the simple narrative of the chronicler of 
 the reign of Elizabeth: — " a. d. 1575. The two-and- 
 twentith of Julie two Dutchmen, anabaptists, were 
 burned in Smithfield, who died in great horror, with 
 roring and crieng." "a. d. 1579, Matthew Hamont, 
 by his trade a plough Avrite, ofHetharset, thrae miles 
 from Norwich, was convented before the bishop of 
 Norwich, for that he denied Christ our saviour. . . . 
 For the which heresies he was condemned in the 
 consistorie, .... and afterwards, to wit, on the 
 twentith of Maie, he was burned in the castell dich 
 of Norwich" 2 . 
 
 " Oraison funebre de Le Tellier," (Euvres, torn. xvii. p. 504. 
 — "Touches de tant de merveilles, epanchons nos cceurs sur la 
 piete de Louis. Poussons jusqu' au ciel nos acclamations, et 
 disons a ce nouveau Constantin, a ce nouveau Theodose," &c. &c. 
 The passage is quoted by Jules Simon, he. cit., p. 98. 
 2 Holinshed, vol. ii. pp. 1261, 1299.
 
 104 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Let us leave England, and turn to Geneva. In 
 that city Servetus was burned alive on the 27th of 
 October, 1553. Under the date A. D. 1546, Calvin 
 thus wrote to Farel :— "Servetus lately wrote to me, 
 and coupled with his letter a long volume of his de- 
 lirious fancies, with the thrasonic boast, that I should 
 see something astonishing and unheard of. He takes 
 it upon him to come hither, if it be agreeable to 
 me. But I am unwilling to pledge my word for his 
 safety, for if he shall come I shall never permit him 
 to depart alive, provided my authority be of any 
 avail" 1 . 
 
 To the present hour, the laws of Sweden with re- 
 ference to the exercise of Religion — and here I shall 
 use an expression the most forcible that language can 
 supply or History suggest — are scarcely to be ex- 
 ceeded in intolerance by even the laws of Spain. 
 
 The facts which I have thus rapidly glanced at 
 clearly show that, after a certain period in the 
 Church's progress, the spirit of intolerance is not pe- 
 culiar to any age, or to any stage of civilization. " A 
 sort of fatality," it has been truly said, " urges on 
 those who wish to conquer reason without enlighten- 
 ing it. When men do not know how to be apostles, 
 they must resign themselves, sooner or later, to 
 become executioners" 2 . The most fiendish deeds 
 which the history of persecution records can plead 
 
 1 " Letters of John Calvin," compiled from the Original MSS. 
 by Dr. Jules Bonnet, vol. ii. p. 19. Edinburgh, 1857. 
 3 Jules Simon, he cit., p. 75
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 105 
 
 in excuse the hideous sophism — Let the body perish, 
 that the soul may be saved. Eeligious persecution, 
 to apply a well-known saying, " is worse than a 
 crime ; it is a blunder." Picture to your minds 
 Galileo in his cell, and the Inquisition invoking 
 against him the words of Revelation ; and yet, where 
 is the theologian now, where the Inquisitor, who re- 
 gards the earth as immovable, and as the centre of 
 the universe ? 
 
 All the rigours of persecution have failed to 
 banish schism or heresy. I have already spoken of 
 Donatism: — for centuries it maintained its ground 
 in spite not only of the arguments of the Church, 
 but of all the severities of the civil power. The 
 descendants of the Arian barbarians perpetuated 
 their heresy in Italy : — Arianism was still prevalent, 
 in the tenth century, in the districts of Padua, Ve- 
 rona, and Vicenza 1 . The execution of Priscillian 
 did not convince the Manichseans of the falsehood of 
 their principles: — the kindred views of thePaulicians 
 again crept into Europe from the East ; and after 
 the year 1000 this heresy had spread over Germany, 
 France, and Italy 2 . The Crusade against the Albi- 
 genses attests its tenacity, and its prevalence. Nay, 
 in this same thirteenth century the idea not of he- 
 resy merely, but of infidelity, was quite a familiar 
 one in Italy ; and, side by side with Aquinas and 
 
 1 TJghelli, " Italia Sacra/' t. v. pp. 429-33. 
 
 2 Gibbon, chap. liv. ; Muratori, " Script. ItaL," Dissert, lx., 
 t. v. p. 82.
 
 106 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 Bonaventura, there was working among the learned 
 of the day, among those who influenced fashion and 
 opinion, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion which 
 found countenance and sympathy in the refined and 
 enlightened Court of Frederick II. A hundred 
 years passed away, and the memory of the Albi- 
 £ensian massacres did not restrain the fanaticism of 
 the " Apostolic Brethren ;" or warn from their fate 
 Fra Dolcino and the fair Margarita. The deaths of 
 Huss and Jerome did not stay the wild war-chariots 
 of Ziska, or quench the ardour of Procopius ; and 
 when, at length, the Hussite war came to an end, and 
 the hopes of Bohemia perished with Procopius on 
 the field of Lepan, the Reformation was distant but 
 a hundred years. 
 
 The fact of these schisms and heresies repeated 
 and multiplied from age to age, the very ex- 
 istence of the Inquisition three centuries before the 
 Reformation, are the answers which Ecclesiastical 
 History gives to the taunt, so untruly cast on the 
 great religious movement of the sixteenth century, 
 that sectarianism and heresy are its special charac- 
 teristics, its peculiar and legitimate offspring. 
 
 Persecution, then, has failed to establish Truth. 
 Men have, at length, begun to recognise, and par- 
 tially, at least, to act upon the great principles that 
 Thought isfree, and that, in the domain of Conscience, 
 there is no ruler but God. The practical exercise 
 of these principles may justly be taken to indicate 
 that Civil Government is in possession of power;
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 107 
 
 and that a Church is in possession of Truth. There 
 is no surer test of our belief in the Divine origin of 
 our Religion, than the conviction that it can conquer 
 by its own unaided strength. Truth may be op- 
 pressed, maligned, almost extinguished ; but its final 
 triumph is certain. It were an insult to Reason 
 to question this ; as it is an outrage against Reason 
 to employ force to insure it. This is a maxim pro- 
 claimed by the voice of Inspiration itself : — " Thy 
 people shall be willing in the day of Thy power." 
 
 Having offered at the outset some general remarks 
 on the nature of Ecclesiastical History, its extent and 
 its limits, the attractions which the study presents, 
 and the profit to be gained from pursuing it, I next 
 proceeded to point out some of the chief impedi- 
 ments which have obstructed the progress of Chris- 
 tianity, which have either originally checked the 
 rapidity of its advance, or subsequently wasted its 
 power. I have indicated some of the lessons that 
 may be gathered from the History of the Church, 
 and glanced at their practical importance :— to mo- 
 ralize upon this topic, however, is not the province 
 of the historian. His duty is restricted to the im- 
 partial statement of facts. I have already explained 
 how extensive, according to my view of the relation 
 of Ecclesiastical to Civil History, is the field which 
 such facts occupy ; and since, as you are aware, my 
 tenure of this Professorship is limited 1 , I am com- 
 
 1 The Professorship of Ecclesiastical History in this University 
 is held for five years.
 
 108 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 pellecl to mark out for myself some special branch of 
 the general subject. 
 
 I propose, therefore, to enter with you upon a 
 topic of much interest, — a topic which, from its very 
 nature, illustrates that divisibility of Ecclesiastical 
 History into separate departments, to which I al- 
 luded in my opening Lecture: — I propose to con- 
 sider the causes remote and proximate of the Refor- 
 mation. Commencing from the fifth century — that 
 epoch in the annals of the Church which I have 
 pointed out as determining the contest of Christia- 
 nity with heathenism, — I propose to examine, one 
 by one, the chief evils which gradually sprang up 
 corrupting the purity of the Faith ; as well as the 
 changes produced by time in the aspect of the world, 
 and in the tone of its civilization. 
 
 Many of the particulars embraced by this defini- 
 tion of the subject which I have marked out for our 
 consideration, will readily suggest themselves to your 
 minds : — the growth of superstition ; the gradual ac- 
 cretion of doctrines unknown in primitive times; the 
 tyrannical exercise of Church authority ; the unholy 
 Interdict— which, perhaps more than any other eccle- 
 siastical abuse of the Middle Ages, raised up a spirit of 
 opposition against the Clergy ; the usurpation of the 
 Papacy. Nor shall we, I trust, forget to dwell upon 
 the standing protest maintained, from the earliest 
 period, against the supremacy of the Bishops of 
 Rome, by our predecessor and present companion 
 in the same controversy — the great Oriental Church.
 
 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 109 
 
 I would neither palliate nor deny the deviations 
 from the purity of the primitive Faith, which now 
 characterize that Communion. But, we should re- 
 member, on the one hand, the proverbial tenacity 
 of the Eastern mind ; and, on the other, how the 
 working of its restless spirit was arrested, during the 
 darkest season in the History of civilization, by the 
 incessant assaults of the Moslem. Imagine the storm- 
 tossed waves to become frozen on a sudden, and the 
 turmoil of waters to be transformed into an ice- 
 bound sea, and you shall have formed some concep- 
 tion of the condition of the Greek Church, since the 
 day when Mohammed the Second alighted from his 
 war-horse before the gates of S. Sophia 1 . You 
 should remember, too, the maxim long since uttered 
 by the poet of all time, — 
 
 "Ylfiiav <yap t' apery? aTroaivviai zvpvoira Zeh's 
 'Avepos 6i)t' av fitv Kara <5ov\iov rjfxap eXrjOiv. 
 
 The various influences to which I have thus slightly 
 alluded had long fermented in the minds of men. 
 A new impulse was now added to the growing spirit 
 of opposition to the authority which the Church 
 had, for some ages, claimed. On a sudden, on 
 the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the 
 sources of ancient learning were thrown open to the 
 world. The Kepublics of ancient Greece are the un- 
 dying witnesses of the cause of Liberty. The place 
 
 1 See Gibbon, chap, lxviii.
 
 110 THE LESSONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 
 
 which Greece once filled in Universal History at 
 length received its explanation ; and the remains of 
 her immortal literature now taught Europe the great 
 lessons of freedom. The enthusiasm with which those 
 lessons were caught up, how the discovery of print- 
 ing fanned the rising flame of knowledge, — these 
 are topics to which I hope, at a fitting time, to return. 
 All, in short, served to prepare for, and to inaugu- 
 rate, the great Religious Revolution which was ap- 
 proaching : — a New World even now opened its 
 shores, to transmit to the yet untrodden regions of 
 the West the rekindled torch of Truth. 
 
 THE END.
 
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 THE INSPIRATION OF HOLY SCRIPTURE, 
 
 ITS NATURE AND PROOF: 
 
 (Hgbt discourses, 
 
 PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN. 
 
 Second Edition. 8vo, 14.?.
 
 
 lii 
 
 
 
 
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