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ESSAYS

ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY

THE EIGHT HON.

SIR JAMES STEPHEN, KC.B.

FOURTH EDITION

LONDON
LONGMAN, GllEEN, LONGM.IN, AND EGBERTS

I860

PREFACE

THE SECOND EDITION.

Of the various criticisms on tlie original edition of this Book whicli
have reached me, there is one only to which, on republishing it, I
think it necessary to refer. This is the commendation which has
been bestov/ed on me of having exhibited extensive research and
learning in some of the earlier of these Essays. It is a praise
which I am bound and anxious to disclaim. To the utmost of my
leisure and opportunities I have, indeed, drawn what I have
written from the original authorities. But when leisure and
opportunity for the examination of them failed me, I was con-
tented to employ the best secondary sources, collated as carefully
as was in my power. For I wrote these papers not as an essayist
but as a reviewer, seeking only to meet an ephemeral demand and
to gain an ephemeral attention. I have already explained how it
happened that this original design gave place to what may appear
a more ambitious project. But it is totally foreign to that ambi-
tion to win for these volumes any applause to which they are not
justly entitled.

J. S.

CAMBRmGE, Oct. 1850.

A 4

PREFACE

THE FIRST EDITION.

I HAD destined my contributions to the Edinburgh Eeview to that
early forgetfulness which, with a very few remarkable exceptions,
attends and befits the w^hole mass of the periodical literature of our
age. But it has seemed good to certain American booksellers to
publish, with my name, repeated editions of a series of those con-
tributions. I am thus an author in my own despite.

In these circumstances I have had to make my choice between
publishing an enlarged and corrected edition of those papers, or
continuing to appear, to such persons in the United States as are
readers of such books, the author of a volume replete with defects
and errors. Some of those faults are the result of the mere want
of learning and ability to do better ; and are therefore incorrigible.
But some of them are the result of the haste with which our
periodical works are got up by most of the writers of them, and
especially by those who, like myself have been compelled to write
in the very scanty leisure of a life of almost ceaseless labour.
Such faults are corrigible; and I trust that, in the following
volumes, they are corrected. I am thus an author in my own
defence.

I prefix these few words to these volumes, not to deprecate
criticism, which is always a vain and is not always a sincere
attempt, but in order to explain that such censures as may justly
be due to what I have written, have not been provoked by any
inordinate solicitude of mine to appear before the world in my
own person as the writer of a book, nor by any wish to assume to
myself the character of a teacher on the sacred topics to which so

large a part of this book is devoted.

J. S.
Richjiond-on-Thames,
May 1849.

CONTENTS

I. HILDEBIIAND --.._. Pp. i_^7

Reprinted from an ai-ticle in tlie Edinburgh Review, No. 169., on
Gregoire VII., St. Francois (T Assize, St. Thomas d'Aquin. Par E. J.
DELfiCLUSE. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1844.

II. SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI . - . _ 58—99

Reprinted from an article in the Edinburgh Review, No. 173., on
L^Histoire cle St. Fran(^ois (T Assise (1182-122G). Par Emile Chavin
DE Malan. Paris, 1845. 2. St. Franqois (T Assise. Par E. J. DEii:-
CLUSE. Paris, 1844.

III. THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM - - - 100—187

Reprinted (with large additions) from an article in the Edinburgh
Re\-iew, No. 152., on Exereitia Spiritualia S. P. Ljnatii Loyolce, cum
Versione literali ex Autographo Hispanico. Prcemittuntur R. P. Joannis
RooTHMEN, Prcepositi Generalis Societatis Jesu, LitercB Fncyclice ud
Patres et Fratres ejusdem Societatis, de Spiritualium Exercitiorum, S.
P. N. Studio et Usu. Londini, typis C. Richards, 1837.

IV. MARTIN LUTHER ----- 188—231

Reprinted fr'om an article in the Ediubm'gh Review, No. 138., on The
History of the Great Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, in Germany,
Sivitzerland, ^-c. By J. H. INIerle D'AttbignI:, President of the Theo-
logical School of Geneva. 8vo. Vol. I. London, 1838.

V. THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES - - - - 232—272

Reprinted from an article in the Edinburgh Review, No. 179., on Corre-
spmidance itiMite de Mabillon et de Montfaucon avec V Italic. Par M.
Valery. Paris, 1846.

VI. THE PORT-ROYALISTS - - - - 273—335

Reprinted from an article in the Edinburgh Review, No. 148., on
Reuchlin, Geschichte vmi Port-Royal. Der Kampf des Reformirten nnd
des Jesuistischen Katholicisnms. Iter Band: bis zum Tode Anyclica
Amauld. {Reuchlin, History of Port Royal. Tlie Striujyh of the Re-
formed and the Jesuitical Catholicism. \st vol. to the death of Anyelique
Amauld.) 8vo. Leipsic, 1839.

X CONTENTS.

VII. RICHARD BAXTER Pp. 336—377

Reprinted from an article in the Ediub'urgli Review, No. 141., on Tlie
Practical Works of Richard Baxter, with a Preface, giving some account
of the Author, and of this Edition of his Practiced Works ; and an
Essay on his Genim, Works, and Times. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1838.

VIII. THE EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION - - - 378— 46G
Reprinted (with large additions) from an article in the Edinburgh Review,

No. 136., on The Life and Times of the Reverend Gem-ge Whitfeld. By
Robert Phixip. 8vo. London, 1838. Remains of the Reverend Richard
Hurrell Froude, 3I.A. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1838.

IX. WILLIAM WILBERFORCE . - - - 467—520

Reprinted (with many corrections and additions) from an article in the
Edinburgh Review, No. 135., on Tlie Life of William Wilberforce. By
his Sons, Robeet Isaac Wilberfokce, M.A., Vicar of East Farlough,
late Fellow of Oriel College ; and Samuel Wilberfokce, M. A., Rector
of Brighstone. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1838.

X. THE CLAPHAM SECT 521—582

Reprinted (with some additions) from an article in the Edinburgh
Review, No. 161., on 1. The Life of Isaac 3Iilner, D.D., F.R.S., Dean
of Carlisle, President of Queen'' s College, and Professor of 3Iathematics
in the University of Cambridge ; compi'ising a Portion of his Corre-
spondence and other Writings, hitherto unpuhlished. By his Niece Mart
MiLNER, 8vo. London. 2. Memoir of the Life and Correspondence of
John Lord Teignmouth. By his Son, Lord TEiGNMOUTn. 2 vols. 8vo.
London, 1843.

XI. THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM - - - 683—631

Reprinted (with numerous corrections and additions) from an article in
the Edinburgh Review, No. 143., on A Physical Tlieory of Another
Life. By the Author of 'Natural Histoiy of Enthusiasm.' 8vo.
London, 1839.

XII. THE EPILOGUE - 632—661

Now first published.

BIOGRArniCAL NOTICE

SIE JAMES STEPHEN.

As the connection of the author of these Essays with public
affiiirs though important was not conspicuous, it would be im-
pertinent to assume that any detailed account of him would be
interesting to the world at large. This preface has been written
solely from an apprehension that in the absence of a very short
statement of the principal events of his life, the readers of his
works might form a false estimate of them. They cannot be
criticised with justice if the circumstances under which they were
written are forgotten or unknown.

Sir James Stephen was the third son of the late James Stephen,
Esq., well known in the early part of the present century as one
of the most prominent opponents of the slave trade and slavery,
and one of the most conspicuous members of the well-known
society described in the Essay, contained in the present volume,
entitled " The Evangelical Succession." He was born at Lambeth,
on the 3rd January, 1789, and completed his education at Trinity
Hall, Cambridge, where he took the degree of LL.B., in the year
1812. Having kept his terms at Lincoln's Inn during his residence
at Cambridge, he was called to the bar in 1813, and was shortly
afterwards appointed by Lord Bathurst to be legal adviser to the
Colonial Office. This was the origin of his long connection with
the public service.

In the course of the eleven years during which Sir James
Stephen pursued his profession, he obtained a considerable share of
business at the equity bar, and would probably have risen to high
professional distinction if his health and his inclination had been

xii BIOGKAPIIICAL NOTICE.

such as to induce him to devote himself exchisively to that object.
This, however, was not the case. His taste for his profession was
not equal to his success in it, and he was greatly impeded in pur-
suing it by a very severe illness, and by a weakness of eye-sight,
which for many years limited his exertions. For these reasons he
retired from the bar in the year 1824, accepting the office of
Counsel to the Board of Trade, which he held together with that
of legal adviser to the Colonial Office. In 1834 he was appointed
Assistant Under-Secretary to the Colonial Office, and in 1836, on
the resignation of Mr. Hay, he was appointed Under-Secretary of
State. He filled this position till the jeax 1847, when he was
forced by illness to resign it. In the summer of 1849 he was
appointed Professor of Modern History at the University of Cam-
bridge, and he held this office till his death, which took place
at Coblentz, on the 14th September, 1859. He was also Professor
of Modern History and Political Economy at Haileybury from the
beginning of 1855 till the college was finally closed at the end of
1857.

The Essays contained in this volume were (with the exception
of the concluding one) originally contributed to the Edinburgh
Eeview ; and all the rest, except the account of the Benedictines,
were written whilst their author was Under-Secretary of State.
Considerable additions were made to them when they were first
published in a collective form in 1849. It would be improper to
criticise them here, bvit it should be remembered by any one who
draws inferences from them as to the powers of their author, that
their composition was his occasional amusement and relaxation
from pursuits of a more engrossing and laborious kind. A few
observations on the nature of those pursuits will set this in a clear
light.

The position which Sir James Stephen occupied in the Colonial
Office was a very singular one. The British colonies are a
collection of many separate states, of every degree of im-
portance, from nations like Canada and New South Wales down to
tlie rock of Heligoland, inhabited by a few Germans. The
authority of the Crown over these dependencies differs in its origin,
its extent, and its limitations. It has to be applied to very different
ol)jects, and to populations differing not merely in race, in religion,

BIOGEArillCAL NOTICE. XIII

in law, and in language ; but in all the other respects by which the
Cingalese, the Caffres, the New Zealanders, and the Hottentots are
distinguished from the English settlers of Canada and Australia,
the Dutch Boors at the Cape, the French of the Mauritius, and the
mongrel populations of Malta, Gibraltar, and the Ionian Islands-
In some of these communities the Crown exercises, through the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, powers of the most extensive
kind ; others, as Canada and New South Wales, are independent in
all but name ; and others are, or during Sir James Stephen's tenure
of office were, mere infant settlements, dependent, to a gi-eat
extent, on the central government for the very simplest elements of
civil society. To know exactly what were the powers and what the
rights of the English government in respect of each of these com-
munities, to know the history of all the relations between the
United Kingdom and each of its dependencies, and to be able to
give an account of the state of parties and local politics in every
one of them, was one part of what was required of the Under
Secretary of State for the Colonies. There was hardly any kind of
political question upon which he was not bound to be able to
advise the parliamentary head of the department when the occasion
arose, for the successive Secretaries of State of necessity laboured
imder a deficiency of special knowledge which it was his duty to be
jjrepared to supply.

It was also his duty to prepare the drafts of almost all the more
important despatches, and of the numerous Acts of Parliament
which were required by every colony in turn. Upon subjects which
were but little understood by the public at large, and which excited
but little general interest, this task was often hardly distinguishal)le
from that of government and legislation, and it would perhaps be
difficult to mention any man of his generation who could claim the
title of a legislator with more justice than Sir James Stephen.

The understanding upon which the permanent offices in the civil
service of the Crown are held is, that those who accept them shall
give up all claim to personal reputation on the one hand, and shall
be shielded from personal responsibility on the other. Though Sir
James Stephen was at one time the object of the most bitter per-
sonal attacks (often for measures to which he had opposed all the
resistance in his power,) he never complained of this compact, and

XIV BIOGKAPHICAL NOTICE.

his family have no wish to claim for him a reputation which he
never had a thought of claiming for himself. It matters little now
what share he individually took in the great questions which during
his tenure of office arose between the United Kingdom and the
colonies. Praise or blame can neither affect him nor change the
opinion which those who knew him best entertained of him ; but
without attempting to lift the veil with which official life must of
necessity cover those who enter upon it, it may be said that it fell
to his lot to assist in two of the most remarkable transactions even
of this century. The first was the abolition of slavery, the second
was the establishment of responsible government in Canada.
With each of these, and indeed mth all other public transac-
tions with which he was concerned, he was connected in the
same way. He prepared the measures which others advocated, and
furnished many of the arguments and much of the information
which they employed. He had, in addition to this, the wearisome
and laborious task of superintending the detailed application
of the principles which the legislature had established. This
was generally a very tedious and most unpleasant process. The
controversies which arose with the provincial legislatm^es of
the various West Indian Islands in relation to the arrangements
required by the abolition of slavery were as bitter as they were
obscure ; and the relations between this country and Canada were
confused and entangled in every possible way by personal and party
questions at home, and by the violent dissensions which existed in
Canada itself. The difficulty of the transaction of all this business
was aggravated by the fact that though great weight was attached
to Sir James Stephen's opinion and advice by his official superiors,
and though he held strong opinions of his own upon the subjects
which came before him, he had no real authority whatever. The
principles which he always advocated ultimately obtained complete
recognition and success, but he was constantly obliged to take part
in measures which he regretted, and of which he disapproved.

It will be readily perceived that such occupations as these in-
volved great labour, great anxiety, and occasionally severe mortifi-
cation. A single instance of the exertions which he was occasion-
ally called upon to make may be mentioned here. The preparation
of the bill for the abolition of slavery had, from various causes.

BIOGKAPHICAL NOTICE. XV

been deferred till the last moment. Sir James Stephen received
notice on a Saturday morning to prepare the draft of the hill in
time to enable the present Lord Derby to lay it before Parliament
early in the following week. He immediately went home, and
between Saturday afternoon and the middle of the day on INlonday
completed the task. The act (3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 73) contains
sixty-six sections, fills twenty-six pages in the 8vo edition of
the Statute Book, and creates a whole scheme of the most intricate
and elaborate kind. This exertion seriously affected his health
for many months. It was perhaps the most arduous task of the
kind that he ever had to discharge, but it was only one of a
series.*

The composition of the Essays contained in the present Volume
was almost the only relaxation which their Author enjoyed for many
years. He used to write them early in the morning and late at
night, or during the occasional holidays which his official occu-
pations afforded. These holidays were, however, very uncommon.
For many years he never left London for a month together, and
though this was not the case during the last five years of his official
life, he transacted business during the summer in the country with
exactly the same regularity as in London. It may, therefore, be

* The author of this sketch, distrusting his own recollection of his father's account
of this, and wishing to obtain independent e^-idence on the subject, applied to his father's
valued friend, Mr. Halksworth, the present librarian of the Colonial Office, upon the
subject, and receired from him an answer containing the following passage: — "I
am sorry that it is not in my power to afford you any information touching your
father's labours in preparing tlie Slavery Abolition Bill. The late Mr. Joseph was his
amanuensis at that time, and it was with his pen, not mine, that the draft was written.
I have often heard Joseph speak on the matter of the original draft being prepared
in the short space of time you mention. He used to tell the story not as an example
of your father's mental labours, but of his own physical exertions as his amanuensis.

" In my time it was no imusual thing for your father to dictate before breakfast
as much matter as would fill thirty sides of office folio paper, equal to about ten
pages of the Edinburgh Eeview. With a subject that pleased him I don't think he
ever knew what it was to feel tired. The words came from his lips in one continuous
stream, checked only by the inability of the writer sometimes to keep paca ■with
him. "Whatever the subject might be one soon became interested in it, and (speak-
ing for myself) I can say that at the longest sitting I never discovered that I was
wearied until I arose from my table, and the task was ended."

It shoidd perhaps be added, that this was the only instance in -wiuch Sir James
Stephen ever transacted official business on a Sunday, except once, when he p)a£sed the
same day of the week in writing despatches about the CafFre AVar.

XVI BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE.

faii^ said that the Essays must not be supposed to give the
full measure of the powers of their Author. They merely show
the amount of literary exertion of which he was capable, whilst the
powers of his mind were principally directed to other pursviits.

A similar observation may be made on the Lectures on the
History of France, which were delivered at Cambridge in the
summer of 1850 and 1851. They were written under the greatest
disadvantages. Sir James Steiahen was appointed Professor of
Modern History in the summer of 1849. He was prevented by
bad health from beginning his Lectures till the autumn. Most of
the Lectures which form the first of the two Volumes were written
between September, 1849, and April, 1850, and they were deHvered
during the months of April and May. In the summer of 1850
Sir James Stephen had a most severe and dangerous illness, which
threatened at one time to assume the form of a brain fever. His
physician ordered him to pass the winter in travelling abroad, and,
above all things, to abstain from mental labour. He accordingly
left England with the intention of visiting Italy, but finding him-
self stronger than he expected on his arrival at Paris, he passed
the rest of the winter there, and during his stay completed the
greater part of the second volume of the Lectiures, and delivered
them at Cambridge in the following summer. The first edition of
them was published in 1852.

These facts have been mentioned in order to enable those who
take an interest in the matter to form an opinion on the evidence
which Sir James Stephen's works supply as to his general capacity.
Their object would be entirely mistaken if they were supposed to
put forward any claim for posthumous fame on the part of a man
whose pursuits withdrew him from the public eye, and who wished
for nothing more ardently than for the privacy he enjoyed. There
are men who do not understand success in life to include of necessity
any very brilliant or general reputation either amongst their con-
temporaries or their successors. To such persons the opportunity
of exerting their powers vigorously, and in a worthy direction, is
its own reward, and the opinion which may be formed by others of
the result of their exertions is only valuable in so far as it proceeds
upon adequate information as to their character and extent.
Judged by this, which in his case was the true standard. Sir James

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. Xvii

Stephen was a happy and successful man. His life was passed in
pursuits which taxed his powers to the utmost, and the manner in
which he discharged the duties assigned to him obtained the appro-
bation, and in many instances the warm and generous recognition,
of those who were best entitled to have an opinion on the subject.
On his retirement from office he had the honour of being made,
without any solicitation on his own part, a mem])er of the Pri\y
Council and a Knight of the Bath, whilst both Lord John Russell
and the late Sir Kobert Peel bore the strongest testimony in the
•House of Commons to the importance of his public services.
Such evidence proves that he did his duty to the public fully and
faithfidly, and this is the only fact respecting him of which his
family wish to publish the proof. It was not the least of the many
instances of his prosperity that the retirement in which the busiest
part of his life was passed to a great extent protected him, and
will no doubt effectually protect his memory against unjust cen-
sure and ignorant praise.

Of Sir James Stephen's private life and personal character nothing
is said here, as these are matters with which the public has no
concern, and on which the evidence of his son would not be im-
partial.

JAMES FITZJAMES STEPHEN.

5, Fig-Tree Coiu't, Temple,
July 16, 1860.

ESSAYS

ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY

HILDEBRAND.

He had been a shrewd, if not a very reverent, observer of human
life, who bowed to the fallen statue of Jupiter, by way of bespeak-
ing the fa\^our of the god in the event of his being again lifted on
his pedestal. Hildebrand, the very impersonation of Papal arro-
gance and of Spiritual Despotism (such had long been his histori-
cal character^, is once more raised up for the homage of the faith-
ful. Dr. Arnold vindicates his memory. M. Gruizot hails him as
the Czar Peter of the Church. Mr. Voight, a professor at Halle,
celebrates him as the foremost and the most faultless of heroes.
Mr. Bowden, an Oxford Catholic, reproduces the substance of JNIr.
Voight's eulogy, though without the fire which warms, or the light
which irradiates, the pages of his guide. M. Delecluze, and the
Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve, are elevated by the theme into
the region where rhetoric and poetry are conterminous ; while M.
I'Abbe Jager absolutely shouts with exultation to witness the sub-
sidence, at the voice of Protestants, of those mists which had so
long obscured the glory of him by whom the pontifical tiara was
exalted far above the crowns of every earthly potentate. Wliolly
inadequate as are our necessary limits to the completion of such an
enquiry, we would fain explore the grounds of this revived worship,
and judge how far it may be reasonable to join in offering incense
at the shrine of this reinstated Jupiter ecclesiasticus.

Except in the annals of Eastern despotisms, no parallel can be
found for the disasters of the Papacy during the century and a

2 HILDEBRAND.

half which followed the extinction of the Carlovingian djmasty.
Of the twenty- four popes who, during that period, ascended the
apostolic throne, two were murdered, five were driven into exile,
four were deposed, and three resigned their hazardous dignity.
Some of these Vicars of Christ were raised to that awful pre-emi-
nence hy arms, and some by money. Two received it from the
hands of princely courtesans. One was self-appointed. A well-
filled purse purchased one papal abdication ; the promise of a
fair bride another. One of those holy fathers pillaged the treasury,
fled with the spoil, returned to Eome, ejected his substitute, and
mutilated him in a manner too revolting for description. In one
page of this dismal history, we read of the disinterred corpse of a
former Pope brought before his successor to receive a retrospective
sentence of deposition ; and in the next we find the judge himself
undei'going the same posthumous condemnation, though without
the same filthy ceremonial. Of these heirs of St. Peter, one
entered on his infallibility in his eighteenth year, and one before he
had seen his twelfth summer. One, again, took to himself a coad-
jutor, that he might command in person such legions as Eome then
sent into the field. Another, Judas-like, agreed for certain pieces
of silver to recognise the Patriarch of Constantinople as universal
bishop. All sacred things had become venal. Crime and de-
bauchery held revel in the Vatican ; while the afflicted Church,
wedded at once to three husbands, (such was the language of the
times,) witnessed the celebration of as many rival masses in the
metropolis of Christendom. It would be heretical to say that the
gates of hell had prevailed against the seat and centre of Catholi-
cism ; but Baronius himself might be cited to prove that they had
rolled back on their infernal hinges, to send forth malignant spirits
commissioned to empty on her devoted head the vials of bitterness
and wrath.

How, from this hotbed of corruption, the seeds of a new and
prolific life derived their vegetative power, and how, in an age in
which the Papacy was surrendered to the scorn and hatred of man-
kind, the independence of the Holy See on the Imperial Crown
became first a practical truth, and then a hallowed theory, are
problems over which we may not now linger. Suffice it to sa}^, that
in the middle of the eleventh century, Europe once more looked
to Eome as the pillar and the gi'oimd of the truth ; while Eome her-
self looked forth on a long chain of stately monasteries, rising like
distant bulwarks of her j^ower in every land which owned her
spiritual rule.

Of these, Clugni was the foremost in numbers, wealth, and piety,
and at Clngni, towards the end of the year 1048, BruDO, the

HILDEBRAND. 8

Bishop of Toul, arrayed in all the splendour, and attended by the
retinue, of a Pontiff elect, demanded at once the hospitality and
the homage of the monks. At the nomination of the Emperor
Henry the Third, and in a German synod, he had recently been
elected to the vacant Papacy, and was now on his way to Eome, to
take possession of the Chair of Peter. Hildebrand, the Prior of
Clugni, was distinguished above all his brethren by the holiness of
his life, the severity of his self-discipline, and by that ardent zeal
to obey which indicates the desire and the ability to command.
He was then in the prime of manhood, and his countenance (if his
extant portraits may be trusted) announced him as one of those
who are born to direct and subjugate the wills of ordinary men.
Such a conquest he achieved over him on whose brows the triple
crown was then impending. An election made beyond the precincts
of the Holy City, and at the bidding of a secular power, was re-
garded by Hildebrand as a profane title to the seat once occupied
by the Prince of the Apostles. At his instance, Bruno laid aside
the vestments, the insignia, and the titles of the pontificate ; and
pursuing his way in the humble garb of a pilgrim to the tomb of
Peter, entered Rome with bare feet, and a lowly aspect, and with
no attendant (or none discernible by human sense) except the
adviser of this politic self-abasement. To Bruno himself indeed
was revealed the presence of an angelic choir, who cli anted in
celestial harmonies the return of peace to the long-afflicted people
of Christ. Acclamations less seraphic, but of less doubtful reality
from the Roman clergy and jDopulace, rewarded this acknowledg-
ment of their electoral privileges, and conferred on Leo the Ninth
(as he was thenceforth designated) a new, and, as he judged, a
better title to the supreme government of the Church.

The reward of the service thus rendered by Hildebrand was
prompt and munificent. He was raised to the rank of a Cardinal,
and received the offices of sub-deacon of Rome, and superintendent
of the church and convent of St. Paul.

The Pope and the Cardinal were not less assiduous to soothe,
than they had been daring to provoke, the resentment of the
Emperor. Bruno became once more a courtier and a pilgrim,
while Hildebrand remained in Rome to govern the city and the
church. The Pontiff thrice visited the German court, bringing
with him papal benedictions to Henry, and papal censures on
Henry's rebellious vassals. So grateful and so effective was the aid
thus rendered to the monarch, that on his last return to Italy, Leo
was permitted to conduct thither a body of Imperial troops, to
expel the Norman invaders of the papal territory. At Civitella,
however, the axes of Humphrey and Robert, brothers of William of

B 2

4 IIILDEBRAND.

the Iron-hand, prevailed over the sword and the anathemas of
Peter. Whether Hildebrand bore a lance in that bloody field, is
debated by his biographers. But no one disputes that he more
than divided the fruits of it with the conquerors. To them were
conceded the three great fiefs of Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily. To
the Holy See was assigned the suzeraiute over them. Humiliated
and broken-hearted by his defeat, Bruno pined away and died.
Strong in this new feudal dominion, and in the allegiance of these
warlike vassals, Hildebrand directed his prescient gaze to the dis-
tant conflicts and the comin<]j ^lories in which these Norman
liegemen were to minister to his vast designs. The auspicious
hour was not yet come. His self-command tranquilly abided the
a])proach of it.

Grebhard, Bishop of Eichstadt, enjoyed the unbounded confidence
and affection of Henry. He had ever lent the weight of his per-
sonal advice, and the sanction of his episcopal authority, to sustain
his friend and master in his opposition to papal encroachments.
Yet Grebhard was selected by the discerning Cardinal, as of all men
the best qualified to succeed to the vacant Papacy. Hildebrand
represented to the Emperor that the choice had been made from
an anxious respect for his feelings, and with a loyal desire to pro-
mote his interest and his honour. The thoughtful Grerman per-
ceived tlie net spread for him by the wily Italian. He struggled
to avoid it, but in vain. He suggested many other candidates ; but
Hildebrand had some conclusive -objection to each of them. He
urged that Grebhard had been raised, by the favour of Henry him-
self, to an eminence unassailable by reproach, and beyond the
reach of suspicion, and that no other man could boast an equal or
a similar advantage. Importuned and flattered, his affections
moved but his understanding unconvinced, the emperor at length
yielded. If our own second Henry had studied this passage of
history, the darkest page of his own had perhaps never been
written.

Gebhard became Pope, assumed the title of Victor the Second,
adopted, even to exaggeration, the anti-imperial principles of Hilde-
brand, and rewarded his services by a commission to act as his
Legate a latere in the kingdom of France. By Victor, this high
employment was probably designed as an honourable exile for a
patron to whom he had contracted so oppressive a debt of grati-
tude. But the new Legate was not a man on whom any dignity
could fall as a mere unfruitful embellishment. He cited before
him the bishops and ecclesiastical dignitaries subjected to his
legantine power, and preferred against the whole body one com-
prehensive charge of simony. Of the accused, one alone stoutly

HTLBEBEAND. 5

maintained his innocence. *Believest thou/ exclaimed the judge,
* that there are three persons of one substance ? ' ' I do.' ' Then
repeat the doxology.' The task was successfully accomplished,
until the prelate reached the name of Him whose gift Simon JNIagus
had desired to purchase. That name he could not utter. The
culprit cast himself at the Legate's feet, confessed his guilt, and
was deposed. ]More than eighty of his brethren immediately made
the same acknowledgment. The rumour spread on every side,
that the papal emissary was gifted with a preternatural skill to dis-
cern the presence in the human heart of any thoughts of Satanic
origin. Popular applause followed the steps of the stern discip-
linarian ; and the wonder of the ignorant was soon rivalled by the
admiration of the learned and the great. Such was the fame of
his wisdom, that the claim of Ferdinand of Castile to bear the
title of Emperor of Spain, was referred to his arbitrament by the
Spanish and the Grerman sovereigns. He decided that the imperial
name and dignity belonged to Henry and to his heirs, to the ex-
clusion of every other Potentate. Ill had Henry divined the future !
Eashly had he consented to hold the honours of his crown by the
judicial sentence of a man, who, within twenty years, was to pluck
that crown, with every mark of infamy, from the brows of his only
son and successor !

When that son ascended the throne of his progenitors, and
assumed the kingly title of Htnry the Fourth, he was yet a child.
Agnes, his widowed mother, became the regent of his dominions,
and Victor the guardian of his person. But the Pope soon followed
the deceased Emperor to the grave, and another election placed the
vacant tiara on the head of Frederick of Lorraine.

Frederick was the brother of Godfrey, who, in right of his wife
Beatrice, and during the minority of her daughter Matilda, exer-
cised the authority and enjoyed the title of Duke of Tuscany. His
promotion to the Papacy cemented the alliance between the Holy
See and the most powerful of those Italian states by which the
northern frontier of the papal territories might be either defended
or assailed. The choice was, in appearance, the unpremeditated
result of a popular tumult. Frederick seemed to be borne to the
apostolic throne by the acclamations of a Eoman mob, and to be
seated there in a half-reluctant acquiescence in their good pleasure.
Some excuse was necessary for so flagrant a disregard of the rights
of the infant Emperor, and the turbulent enthusiasm of the people
was at least a specious apology. But by what informing spirit the
rude mass had been agitated, was sufficiently disclosed by the first
act of the new Pontiff. He had scarcely assumed the title of
Stephen the Ninth, before he conferred on Hildebraud the dignities

B 3

6 • IIILDEBRAND.

of Cardinal-Arclideacon of Eome, and of Legate at tlie Imperial
Court.

After a reign of eight months, Stephen, conscious of the approach
of death, left to the Eomans his last injunction to postpone the
choice of his successor until the return from Grermany of this great
dispenser of ecclesiastical promotions. The command was obeyed.
The Cardinal-Archdeacon reappeared, bringing with him the con-
sent of the Empress-Eegent to the choice of Grerard, Bishop of
Florence, another adherent of the ducal house of Tuscany. Grerard
accordingly ascended the chair of St. Peter. Like each of his three
immediate predecessors, he sat there at the nomination ofHildebrand,
and, like each of them, he called, or permitted, his patron to become
the one great minister of his reign and director of his measures.
At the instance of Hildebrand, Nicholas the Second (so was he now
called) summoned a council at which was first effected, in the year
1059, a revolution, the principle of which, at the distance of eight
centuries, still flourishes in unimpaired vitality. It, for the first
time, conferred on the College of Cardinals the exclusive right of
voting at papal elections. It set aside not only the acknowledged
rights of the Emperor to confirm, but the still more ancient privilege
of the Eoman clergy and people to nominate their bishop. For
Hildebrand was now strong enough in his Norman alliance to defy
that popular power before which so many churchmen had trembled.
At his summons Eobert Gruiscard broke down the fortresses of the
Eoman counts and barons, who, with their retainers, had been ac-
customed, in the coi nitia of papal Eome, to rival the exploits of
Clodius and his gladiators. Their authority was subverted for
ever, and from that period their name ceases to appear in the
history of pontifical elections. The title of Duke, and a recogni-
tion of his sovereignty over all the conquests which he had made,
or should ever make, rewarded the obedience of the Norman free-
booter.

After rendering this service to the cause of sacerdotal indepen-
dence, Nicholas died. It was a cause which, however much ad-
vanced by the profound sagacity and promptitude of Hildebrand,
could never finally triumph over its powerful antagonists by any
means less hazardous, or less costly, than that of open and pro-
tracted war. During the minority of Henry such a conflict could
hardly be commenced, still less brought to a decisive issue. The
rights of the royal child derived from his very weakness a sanctity
in the hearts, and a safeguard in the arms, of his loyal Grerman
subjects. The time of mortal struggle was not yet come. The
aspiring Cardinal judged that by again resigning to another the
nominal conduct, he could best secure to himself the real guidance,
of that impending controversy.

HILDEBEAND. 7

To obtain from the Empress-Regent an assent to the observance
by the Sacred College of the new electoral law, was the first ob-
ject of the conclave which assembled after the death of Nicholas,
at the command of Hildebrand. At his instance an envoy was
despatched to the Imperial Court, with the offer that the choice
should fall on any ecclesiastic Avhom Agnes might nominate, if she
would consent that the CarcUnals alone should appear and vote at the
ceremonial. The compromise was indignantly rejected. A synod
of imperialist prelates was convenetl at Basil, and by them Cado-
lous. Bishop of Parma, (the titular Honorius the Second,) was
elevated to the vacant Papacy. To this defiance Hildebrand and
his brother Cardinals answered by the choice of Anselm, Bishoj) of
Lucca, afterwards known in history as Alexander, the second of
that name. After a brief but sanguinary conflict in the open
field, each of the rival Popes, at the mediation of Godfrey, re-
tired from Rome to his diocese, there to await the judgment of a
future council on their pretensions. But Alexander did not quit
the city until he had acknowledged and rewarded the services of
the head and leader of his cause. Hildebrand now received the
office of Chancellor of the Holy See, the best and the highest re-
compense which he could earn by raising others to supreme eccle-
siastical dominion. Two successive councils confirmed the election
of Alexander, who continued, during twelve years, to rule the
Church with dignity, if not in peace.

The time had at length arrived when Hildebrand was to receive
the high and hazardous reward which his unfaltering hopes had so
long contemplated, and his self-controlling policy so often declined,
Leo, Victor, Stephen, Nicholas, and Alexander, had each been in-
debted to his authority for the pontificate, and to his councils for
the policy with which it had been administered. Successively
Cardinal-Deacon, Archdeacon, Legate, and Chancellor of the Apos-
tolic See, one height alone was yet to be scaled. In the great
church of the Lateran, the corpse of Alexander was extended on
the bier. A solemn requiem commended to the Supreme Judge the
soul of the departed, when the plaintive strain was broken by a
shout, which, rising, as it seemed, spontaneously and without con-
cert from every part of the crowded edifice, proclaimed that, by
the will of the Holy Peter himself, the Cardinal-Chancellor was
Pope. From the funeral procession Hildebrand flew to the pulpit.
With impassioned gestures, and in a voice inaudible amidst the
uproar, he seemed to be imploring silence ; but the tempest was
not to be allayed until one of the Cardinals announced, in the
name of the Sacred College, their unanimous election of him
wliom the Apostle and the multitude had thus simultaiuH)Usly

B 4

8 HILDEBRAND.

chosen. Crowned with the tiara, and arrayed in the gorgeous robes
of a Pope-elect, Gregory the Seventh was then presented to the
people. Their joyous exultation and the pomp of the inaugural
ceremonies blended and contrasted strangely with the studied
gloom and the melancholy dirge of the funeral rites.

That this electoral drama was a mere improvisation, may be
credited by those before whose faith all the mountains of impro-
bability give way. But thus to reach the summit of sacerdotal
dominion as if by constraint; and thus, without forfeiting the
praise of severe sanctity, to obtain the highest of this world's dig-
nities ; and thus to anticipate and defeat the too probable resistance
of the Imperial Court ; and thus to afford the Cardinals the oppor-
tunity and the excuse for the prompt exercise of their yet preca-
rious electoral privilege — was a combination and a coincidence of
felicities such as fortune, unaided by policy, seldom, if ever,
bestows even on her choicest favourites. He who had nominated five
Popes, was, assuredly, no passive instrument in his own nomina-
tion. His letters, written on the occasion, would alone be sufficient
to prove, if proof were wanting, that a career thus far guided by
the most profound sagacity, was not abandoned at its crisis to the
caprice of a dissolute multitude. To several of his correspondents
he addressed pathetic descriptions of his alarm and sorrow, but
with such a remarkable uniformity of terms as to force on the
reader of them the belief, that the elegiac strain was repeated as
often as necessary by his secretaries, with such variations as their
taste suggested. To the Emperor he breathed nothing but sub-
mission and humility. The most unimpeachable decorum presided
over the whole of the ceremonial that followed. Envoys passed and
repassed. Men of grave aspect instituted tedious enquiries. Solemn
notaries attested prolix reports ; and in due time the world was in-
formed that, of his grace and clemency, Henry, King of Germany
and Italy, calling himself Emperor, had ratified the election of his
dearly beloved father, Grregory the Seventh — the world, mean-
while, well knomng that, despite the Emperor's hostility, the Pope
was able and resolved to maintain his own ; and that the Emperor
would, if possible, have driven the Pope from Pome, as the most
dangerous of rebels and the most subtle of usurpers.

But Henry was ill prepared for such an effort. During the first
six years of his reign the affairs of his vast hereditary empire had
been conducted by his widowed mother. She was formed to love,
to reverence, and to obey. In an age less rude, or in a station less
exalted, her much long-suffering, her self-sustaining dignity, and
the tenderness of her gentle spirit, might have enabled her to win
the obedience of the heart. But her mind was ductile, her con-

IIILDEBRAND. 9

science enfeebled by a morbid sensibilit}^ and lier character Ibrnied
by nature and by habit for subservience to any form of superstitious
terror. She was surrounded by rapacious nobles whom no sacrifices
coidd conciliate, and by lordly churchmen, who at once exacted
and betrayed her confidence. Though severely virtuous, she was
assailed by shameless calumnies. Her female rule was resented by
the pride of Teutonic chivalry; and fraud and violence combined
to inflict the deepest wound on her rights as a sovereign and her
feelings as a mother.

At Kaiserworth, on the Rhine, Agnes and her son, then in his
thirteenth year, were reposing from the fatigues of an imperial pro-
gress. A galley, impelled by long lines of oars, and embellished
with every ornament which art and luxury could command,
appeared on the broad stream before them. Attended by a train of
lords and servitors. Anno, the ArchbisliojD of Cologne, descended
from the gallant barge, and pressed the royal youth to inspect so
superb a specimen of aquatic architecture and episcopal magnifi-
cence. Henry gladly complied, and, as the rowers bent to their
oars, he enjoyed with boyish delight the rapidity with which one
object after another receded from his view, till, turning to the
companions of what had hitherto seemed a mere holiday voyage, he
read in the anxious countenances of the commanders, and the
vehement efforts of the boatmen, that he was a prisoner, and more
than ever an orphan. "With characteristic decision, he at once
plunged into the water, and endeavoured to swim to shore ; but
the toils were upon him. A confederacy, formed by the Archbishops
of Cologne and Mentz, and supported by the Dukes of Bavaria and
Tuscany, consigned their young sovereign to a captivity at once
sumptuous and debilitating. They usurped the powers, and
plundered the treasures, of the crown. They bestowed on them-
selves and their adherents forests, manors, abbeys, and lordships.
But to the future ruler of so many nations they denied the dis-
cipline befitting his age, and the instruction due to his high
prospects. They encouraged him, and with fatal success, to
enervate by ceaseless amusement, and to debase by precocious
debauchery, a mind naturally brave and generous. Anno has Ijeen
canonised by the See of Rome. By the same ghostly tribunal, the
monarch whom he kidnapped, betrayed, and corrupted, was ex-
eluded from the communion of the Church when living, and from
her consecrated soil when dead. Impartial history will reverse
either sentence, and will pronounce her anathemas rather on St.
Anno, by whom the princely boy was exposed to the furnace of
temptation, than on him in whose young mind the seeds of vice, so
unsparingly sown, sprung up with such deadly luxuriance.

10 HILDEBRAND.

The heart of youth was never won by habitual indulgence. As
Henry advanced towards manhood, the Archbishops of Cologne and
Mentz discovered that they were the objects of his settled antipathy,
and that they had to dread the full weight of a resentment at once
just, vindictive, and unscrupulous. To avert that danger they
transferred tlie charge of the royal youth to Adalbert, Archbishop of
Bremen, rightly judging that his skill in courtly arts (for he had
lived on affectionate terms with the deceased emperor) might
enable him to win his pupil's regard, but erroneously believing that
his ecclesiastical zeal (for it seemed the master passion of his soul)
would induce him to employ that advantage in the defence and
service of the hierarchy.

Adalbert, whose life is written in the Church History of Adam
of Bremen, was a man whose character was so strangely composite,
and whose purposes were so immutably single, that he might have
suggested portraits to Scott, epigrams to Young, antitheses to Pope,
an analysis to Dryden, or to Shakspeare himself some rich and all-
reconciling harmony. According to the aspect in which he was
viewed, he might with equal justice be regarded as a saint or a man
of pleasure, as a scholar or a courtier, as a politician or a wit. Now
washing the feet of beggars, eloquently expounding Christian truth,
or indignantly denouncing the sins of the rich and the great, the
shifting scene exhibited him amidst a throng of actors, jugglers,
and buffoons, or as the soul and centre of a society where lords and
ambassadors, prelates and priests of low degree, met to enjoy his
good cheer, to partake of his merriment, and to endure his relent-
less sarcasms. At the very moment when, with irresistible address,
he was insinuating himself into the favour of some potent count or
bishop, the approach of another dignitary would rouse him to bitter
and unmeasured invective. From the laughing playfellow of his
companions he would pass at once into their fierce assailant, and
then atone for the extravagance of his passion by a bounty not less
extravagant. But whether he preached or gave alms, whether
philosophy, or fun, or satire, was his passing whim, he still enjoyed
one luxury which habit had rendered indispensable. Parasites
were ever at hand to confirm his own conviction, that Adalbert of
Bremen was an universal genius, and that, under his fostering care,
the see of Bremen was destined to become the northern capital of
the universal Church.

Nor was it strange that he believed them. Of the countless
victims of self-idolatry, few have had so many seductions to that
intoxicating worshijD. A military as well as an ecclesiastical prince,
he witnessed the extension of his archiepiscopal dominion far along
the shores of the Elbe and the Baltic. Kings solicited his personal

IIILDEBEAND. H

friendship. Sweden and the Empire accepted him as the mediator
of peace. Envoys from every state in Europe, not excepting
Constantinople, thronged his palace. He was at once the confi-
dential adviser of the Pope and the chief minister of the Emperor,
and even boasted (with whatever truth) that he had declined the
papacy itself. But this earlier Wolsey, like his great antitype,
longed for some imperishable monument of his glory. Bremen
was the Ipswich of Adalbert ; the site selected, but in vain, for
perpetuating to the remotest ages the memory of an ambition less
ennobled by the greatness of its aims, than debased by an insati-
able vanity. To aggrandise his diocese he builded and fortified,
negotiated and iutrigued ; became by turns a suitor and an op-
j)ressor ; conciliated attachments and braved enmities ; and lived
and died the imaginary patriarch of the imaginary jjatriarchate of
the German and Scandinavian nations.

Brightly dawned on the young Henry the day which transferred
the charge of his person and of his education from the austere
Anno to the princely Adalbert. The Archbishop of Cologne had
rebuked the vices he indulged. The stouter conscience of the
Archbishop of Bremen stood in need of no such self-soothing com-
promise. -He fairly threw the reins on the neck of his royal
charge, who invoked the aid of young and profligate companions
in the use or the abuse of this WBlcome indulgence. His tutors
had sown the wind ; his people were now to reap the whirlwind.
Of the domestic life of the young Emperor, the dark tale recorded
by the chroniclers of his age would not be endured by the delicacy
of our own. His public acts might seem to have been prompted
by the determination to exasperate to madness the national pride,
the moral sense, and the religious feelings of his subjects. Yet
even when they were thus provoked, their resentment slumbered.
A popular address, a noble presence, and the indulgence so liberally
yielded to the excesses of the great, the prosperous, and the
young, gave scope for the full expansion of his crimes and follies.
At the Lateran, the influence of his personal qualities was unfelt.
Eoused to a just indignation by the frequent intelligence of a life
so debauched and of a reign so impious, Alexander cited the Em-
peror to appear at Kome, there to answer in j)erson to the apos-
tolic throne for the simony and the other offences imputed to him.
The voice was Alexander's voice, but the hand was the hand of
Grregory.

Between the day on which Hildebrand had conducted Leo the
Ninth into Eome as a simple pilgrim, to the time of his o\\ti
tumultuary election, the quarter of a century had intervened.
During the whole of that period he had been tlie coiifidential

12 HILDEBRAND.

minister and guide of the papacy. In each of the five pontificates
which he nominally served, and really governed, the Holy See had
pursued the same aggressive policy, with a steadfastness indicating
the guidance of one far-seeing mind, gifted with patience to await,
with promptitude to discern, and with courage to seize, the moments
of successful advance. When, therefore, the citation of Henry was
issued in the name of the dying Pope, none doubted that this
audacious act, then without a parallel in history, had been dictated
by the same stern and unrelenting councillor. When tidings
reached the Imperial Court that the voice of the people and the
votes of the cardinals had placed in Grregory's hands the mysterious
keys and the sharp sword of Peter, none doubted the near approach
of the conflict which was to assign the supreme dominion over the
Christian world either to the Grerman sceptre or to the Roman
crosier. That, after ages of war and controversy, they should
peacefully exercise a concurrent yet divided rule, woul have
seemed an idle dream to a generation, whose feudal theory of
government had for its basis the principle of various gradations of
dependency on some one common head, or suzerain.

With a life stained by no sensual or malignant crime, (a praise
of which his contemporary and rancorous biographer, Cardinal
Benno, is the reluctant and unconscious witness,) and degraded by
the pursuit of no ends exclusively selfish (for, except as the champion
of the Church, he neither obtained nor sought any personal aggran-
disement), Pope Hildebrand yielded himself freely to the current
of those awful thoughts which have peopled the brain of each in
turn of the successors of Peter, the basest and the most impure of
them scarcely excepted. A mystery to himself, he had become the
supreme vicar of Christ on earth ; the predestined heir of a throne
among those saints who should one day judge the world ; the mor-
tal head of an immortal dynasty ; the depositary of a power dele-
gated yet divine ; the viceroy to whom had been entrusted by Grod
himself the care of interests, and the dispensation of blessings and
of curses, which, by comparison, reduced to inappreciable vanities
all the good and evil of this transitory world. Resolute as he was,
he appears to have trembled at the contrast between the weakness
of his human nature and the weight of these majestic responsi-
bilities. With the Abbots of Clugni and of Monte Cassino he
maintained a relation as much resembling friendship as was com-
patible with the austerity of his nature and of his habits ; and to
them he depicted the secret tumults of his mind, in terms of which
it would be impossible to deny either the sincerity or the eloquence.

Before his prophetic eye arose a vast theocratic state in
which political and religious society were to be harmonised,

HILDEBKAND. ig

or rather Avere to be absorbed iuto each other. At the ^ead of
this all-embracing polity, the Bishop of Eonie was to assert
his legitimate authority over all the kings and rulers of the
earth. In immediate dependence on him was to be ranged the
circle of his liege spiritual lords — some residing at the seat of
empire as electors, councillors, and ministers to the supreme poten-
tate ; others presiding over the fraternities, the provinces, and the
sees of which his empire was to be composed. At the capital of
this hierarchal state were to be exercised the various powers of
government — legislative, administrative, and judicial. There also
were to be held the occasional meetings of the extraordinary or
ecumenical legislature. To the infallible sovereign of this new
Jerusalem were to be assigned prerogatives limited only by his own
conscience, and restrained by no power but that of God himself.
To the Emperor, the Kings, the Dukes, and Counts, his feudatories,
was to be entrusted a ministry altogether subordinate and auxiliary
to his. They were to maintain order, to command armies, to col-
lect revenues, to dispense justice. But they were to hold their
crowns or coronets at the pleasure of the Autocrat, to justify to him
the use of their inferior authority, and to employ it in support of
his power, which, as it was derived from heaven itself, could acknow-
ledge no superior, equal, or competitor on earth. But woe — ■
such woe as vengeance, almighty and unrelenting, could inflict —
on him who, wielding the pontifical sceptre in the sacred name of
Christ, should impiously use it in any spirit, or for any ends, not
in accordance with these awful purposes which once made Christ
himself a sojourner among men ! Heathen Eome had been raised
up to conquer and to civilise. To Christian Eome was appointed
a far loftier destiny. It was hers to mediate between hostile
nations — to reconcile sovereigns and their people — to superintend
the policy, restrain the ambition, redress the injustice, and punish
the crimes of princes — and to render the Apostolic Throne the
source and centre of an holy influence, which, diffused through
every member of the social body, should inform, and animate, and
amalgamate the whole, and realise the inspired delineation of that
yet unborn age, when the lion and the lamb should lie down
together, with a little child their leader.

Sublime as were the visions which thus thronged on the soul of
Gregory the Seventh, and which still shed a glowing light over his
three hundred and fifty extant letters, life was never, for a single
day, a state of mere visionary existence to him. Before Iiim lay
the approaching struggle with Henry, with Honorius, with the
ecclesiastics of Lombardy, with the German people, whose loyalty
had so long survived the sorest provocation, and even witli many of

14 HILDEEEAND.

the Grei;pian prelates, who ascribed to the successor of Charlemagne
and of Otho the same rights which these great monarchs had exer-
cised over the Pontiffs of an earlier generation. Nor was he
unconscious that the way for his theocracy must be paved by
reforms so painful, as to convert into inexorable antagonists a large
number of those on whose attachment to his person and his laws he
might otherwise have most implicitly relied.

Yet it was with no doubtful prospects of success that he girded
himself for the battle. His Norman feudatories to the south, and
his Tuscan alliance to the north, promised security to the papal
cit3^ Disaffection was widely spread among the commonalty of the
Empire. The Saxons were on the verge of revolt. The Dukes of
Swabia, Carinthia, and Bavaria, were brooding over insutferable
wrongs. From the young and debauched Emperor, it seemed idle
to dread any resolved or formidable hostility. From the other
powers of Europe Henry could expect no succour. From every
region of Christendom, the Church, in a voice which, though
inarticulate, was audible to the Supreme Pontiff, invoked a remedy
for the trafi&c in holy things, and for the fearful pollutions beneath
which she was groaning ; and that heavenly Bride assured him that
when he should have strangled the monsters of iniquity by whom
she was oppressed, he should be recompensed by every honour which
man could confer, and by every benediction which God bestows on
his most favoured servants. He heard, and he obeyed.

From the most remote Christian antiquity, the marriage of
clergymen had been regarded with the dislike, and their celibacy
rewarded by the commendation, of the people. Among the ecclesi-
astical heroes of the first four centuries, it is scarcely possible to
point to one who was not, in this respect, an imitator of Paul rather
than of Peter. Among the ecclesiastical writers of those times,
it is scarcely possible to refer to one by whom the superior sanctity
of the unmarried to the conjugal state is not either directly incul-
cated or tacitly assumed. This prevailing sentiment had ripened
into a customary law, and the observance of that custom had been
enforced by edicts and menaces, by rewards and penalties. But
nature had triumphed over tradition, and had proved too strong
for Councils and for Popes.

^^^len Hildebrand ascended the chair first occupied by a married
Apostle, his spirit burned within him to see that marriage held in
her impure and unhallowed bonds a large propoi'tion of those who
ministered at the altar, and w^ho handled there the very substance
of the incarnate Deity. It was a profanation well adapted to arouse
the jealousy, not less than to wound the conscience, of the Pontiff.
Secular cares suited ill with the stern duties of a theocratic ministry.

HILDEBEAND. 15

Domestic affections would choke or enervate that corporate passion
which might otherwise be directed witli unmitigated ardour towards
their chief and centre. Clerical celibac}', on the other haiid, would
exhibit to those who trod the outer courts of the great Christian
temple, the impressive image of a transcendental perfection, too
pure not only for the coarser delights of sense, but even for the
alloy of conjugal or parental love. It would fill the world with
adherents of Ivome, in whom every feeling would be quenched
which could rival that sacred allegiance. From every monastery
might be summoned a phalanx of allies to overpower the more
numerous, but dispersed and feeble antagonists of such an innova-
tion. In every mitred churchman it would find an active partisan.
The people, ever rigid in exacting eminent virtue from their teachers,
would be rude but effective zealots of a ghostly discipline from
which they were themselves to be exempt.

With such anticipations, Gregory, within a few weeks from his
accession, convened a council at the Lateran, and proposed a law,
not, as formerly, forbidding the marriage of priests, but command-
ing every priest to put away his wife, and requiring all laymen to
absent themselves from any sacred office which any wedded priest
might presume to celebrate. Never was legislative foresight so
verified by the result. What the great Council of Nicasa had
attempted in vain, the Bishops assembled in the presence of Hilde-
brand accomplished, at his instance, at once, effectually, and for
ever. Lamentable indeed were the complaints, and bitter the
reproaches, of the sufferers. ' Were the most sacred ties thus to
be torn asunder at the ruthless bidding of an Italian priest ? Were
men to become angels, or were angels to be brought down from
heaven to minister among men?' Eloquence was never more
pathetic, more just, or more unavailing. Prelate after prelate
silenced these remonstrances by austere rebukes. Legate after
legate arrived with papal menaces to the remonstrants. Monks
and abbots preached the continency which they at least professed.
Kings and barons laughed over their cups at many a merry tale of
compulsory divorce. Mobs pelted, hooted, and besmeared with
profane and filthy baptisms the unhappy victims of pontifical
rigour. It was a struggle not to be prolonged. Broken hearts
pined and died away in silence. Expostulations subsided into
niurmurs, and murmurs vv'ere drowned in the general shout of vic-
tory. Eight hundred years have since passed away. Amidst the
wreck of laws, opinions, and institutions, this decree of Hildebrand's
at this day rules the Latin Churcli, in every land where sacrifices
are still offered on her altars. Among us, but not of us, — valuing
their riglits as citizens, chiefly as instrumental to their powers as

] 6 IIILDEBEAJ^D.

churchmen — ministers of love, to whom the heart of a husband and
a father is an inscrutable mystery — teachers of duties, the most
sacred of which they may not practise — compelled daily to gaze on
the most polluted imagery of man's fallen heart, but denied the
refuge of nature from a polluted imagination — professors of a virtue
of which, from the death of the righteous Abel down to the birth
of the fervent Peter, no solitary example is recorded in Holy
^W^i-it — excluded from that posthumous life in remote descendants,
in the devout anticipation of which the patriarchs were enabled to
walk meekly, but exultingly, with their God — the sacerdotal caste
yet flourishes in every Christian land, the imperishable and gloomy
monument both of that far-sighted genius which thus devised the
means of papal despotism, and of that short-sighted wisdom which
proposed to itself that despotism as a legitimate and a laudable end.

With this Spartan rigour towards his adherents, Gregory com-
bined a more than Athenian address and audacity towards his
rivals and antagonists. So long as the monarchs of the West might
freely bestow on the objects of their choice the sees and abbeys of
their states, papal dominion could be but a passing dream, and
papal independency an empty boast. Corrupt motives usually
determined their choice; and the objects of it were but seldom
worthy. Ecclesiastical dignities were often sold to the highest bid-
der, and then the purchaser indemnified himself by a use no less
mercenary of his own patronage ; or they were given as a reward
to some martial retainer, and the new churchman could not
forget that he had once been a soldier. The cope and the coat-of-
mail were worn alternately. The same hand bore the crucifix in
the holy festival, and the sword in the day of battle. Episcopal
warriors and abbatial courtiers thus learned to regard themselves
rather as feudatories holding of their temporal lord, than as liege-
men owing obedience to their spiritual chief. In the hands of the
newly consecrated Bishop was placed a staff, and on his finger a
ring, which, received as they were from his temporal sovereign,
proclaimed that homage and fealty were due to him alone. And
thus the sacerdotal Proconsuls of Eome became, in sentiment at
least, and by the powerful obligation of honour, the vicegerents,
not of the Pontifex Maximus, but of the Imperator.

To dissolve this trinoda necessitas of simoniacal preferments,
military service, and feudal vassalage, a feebler spirit would have
exhorted, negotiated, and compromised. To Gregory it belonged
first to subdue men by courage, and then to rule them by reverence.
Addressing tiie world in the language of his generation, he pro-
claimed to every potentate, from the Baltic to the Straits of Caipe,
that all human authority being holdeu of the divine, and God him-

ITILDEBRAXD. 17

self having delegated his own sovereignty over men to the Prince
of the Sacred College, a divine right to universal obedience was the
inalienable attribute of the Eoman Pontiffs, of whom, as the
supreme earthly suzerain, emperors and kings held their crowns,
patriarchs and bishops their mitres ; and held them not mediately
through each other, but immediately, as tenants in capite, from
the one legitimate representative of the great Apostle.

In turning over the collection of the epistles of Hildebrand, we
are everywhere met by this doctrine asserted in a tone of the
calmest dignity and the most serene conviction. Thus he informs
the French monarch that every house in his kingdom owed to
Peter, as their father and pastor, an annual tribute of a penny, and
he commands his legates to collect it in token of the subjection of
France to the Holy See. He assures Solomon, the King of Hun-
gary, that his territories are the property of the Holy Eoman
Church. Solomon being incredulous and refractor}^ was dethroned
by his competitor for the Hungarian crown. His more prudent
successor, Ladislaus, acknowledged himself the vassal of the Pope,
and paid him tribute. To Corsica a legate was sent to govern the
demesnes of the Papacy in the island, and to recover the rest of it
from the Saracens. To the Sardinians an account was despatched
of Gregory's title to their obedience, with menaces of a Norman
invasion if it should be withheld. On Demetrius, Duke of Dal-
matia, we find him conferring the kingly title, reserving a yearly
payment of two hundred pieces of silver ' to the holy Pope Gre-
gory and his successors lawfully elected, as supreme lords of the
Dalmatian kingdom.' Among the visitors of Eome was a youth,
described in one of these epistles as son of the King of Eussia.
The letter informs the sovereign so designated, that, at the request
of the young Prince, the Pontiff had administered to him the oath
of fealty to St. Peter and his successors, not doubting that ' it
would be approved by the king and all the lords of his kingdom,
since the Apostle would henceforth regard their country as his own,
and defend it accordingly.' From Sweno the Dane he exacted a
promise of subjection. P^rom the recently converted Polanders he
demanded and received, as sovereign lord of the country, an annual
tribute of an hundred marks in silver. From every part of the
European continent Bishops were summoned by these imperial
missives to Eome, and there were either condemned and deposed,
or absolved and confirmed in their sees. In France, in Spain, and
in Germany, we find his legates exercising the same power ; and
the correspondence records many a stern rebuke, sometimes for
their undue remissness, sometimes for their misapplied severity.
The rescripts of Trajan scarcely exliibit a firmer assurance both of

18 HILDEBK.\ND.

the right and the power to control every other authority, whether
secular or sacerdotal, throughout the civilised world.

There was, however, in the case of the Normans, a memorable
exception. Eobert the Norman conqueror of Sicily, and William
the Norman conqueror of England, steeped in blood and sacrilege,
were the most shameless and cruel of usurpers. The groars and
curses of the oppressed cried aloud for vengeance against them.
But the apostolic indignation, though roused by the active vices of
the Emperor, and by the apathetic depravity of Philip of France,
had for these tjn-ants no menaces of wrath, no exhortations to repent-
ance. Eobert was embraced and honoured as the faithful ally of
Rome. William was addressed in the blandest accents of esteem
and tenderness. * You exhibit towards us' (such is the style) 'the
attachment of a dutiful son, yea, of a son whose heart is moved by
the love of his mother. Therefore, my beloved son, let your con-
duct be all that your language has been. Let what you have pro-
mised be effectually performed.' The injunction was not dis-
obeyed ; for even of promises the grim conqueror of the North had
been sufficiently parsimonious. As Duke of Normandy, he remitted
to the Pope the amount of certain dues. As King of England, he
indignantly refused the required oath of fealty. 'I hold my king-
dom of Grod and of my sword,' was his stern and decisive answer.
Something the papal legate dared to mutter of the worthlessness
of gold without obedience ; but the gold was accepted, and the dis-
obedience endured. These were not the days of John, surnamed
Lackland ; and for Innocent the Third was reserved, by his great
predecessor, the glory of receiving, from an English sovereign on
his bended knee, the cro^vn which, while it rested on the head of
William, challenged equal honours with the papal tiara. For con-
cessions more favom-able to his hopes of unlimited dominion, the
Pontiff turned to a -sovereign whose crimes no triumphs had sancti-
fied, and no heroism redeemed.

Alexander's citation had been despised by Henry, and was not
revived by Hildebrand. Every post from Germany brought fresh
proof that, without the use of weapons so hazardous, the Emperor
must, ere long, be reduced to solicit the aid of Rome on such terms
as Rome might see fit to dictate. Dark as were the middle ages,
the Grerman court had light enough (if we may credit the chroni-
clers) to anticipate our own enlightened Irish policy. The ancient
chiefs of Saxony were imprisoned, and their estates confiscated and
granted to absent lords and prelates. Tithe proctors hovered like
birds of prey over the Saxon fields. A project was formed for
driving the ancient inhabitants into a Saxon pale, and for convert-
ino- the land into a great Swabian Colony. Castles frowned on

IIILDEBRAXD. 19

every height. Their garrisons pillaged and enslaved the helpless
people. Alliances were formed with the Bavarian and the Dane
to crush a race hated for their former pre-eminence, and despised
for their recent sufiferings. Nothing was wanting to complete the
parallel but discord and dejection amongst the intended victims.

Grroaning under the oppressions, and penetrating the designs of
their sovereign, the Saxons solicited for their leaders an audience
at Groslar. The appointed day arrived. The deputies presented
themselves at the palace. Henry was engaged at a game of hazard,
and bade them wait till he had played it out. A stern and indig-
nant demand for justice repelled the insult. A second time, in all
the insolence of youth, Henry returned a contemptuous answer.
In a few hours he found himself blockaded at his castle of Hartz-
burg by a vast assemblage of armed men, under the command of
Otho of Nordheim ; the Tell or Hofer of his native land.

Escaping with difficulty, the Emperor traversed Western Grer-
many to collect forces for crushing the Saxon insurgents. But the
spell of his Imperial name, and of his noble presence, was broken.
The crimes of a defeated fugitive were unpardonable. His allies
made common cause with the Saxons, whom they had so lately
leagued to destroy. Long repressed resentment burst out in the
grossest indignities against the recreant sovereign. Unworthy to
wear his spurs or his crown, (so ran the popular arraignment,)
he descended at a step from the summit of human greatness, to the
condition of an outcast from human society. A diet had been
summoned for his deposition. His sceptre had been offered to
Rudolf of Swabia. A few days more, and his crown, if not his
life, would have been forfeited, when an opportune illness, and a
rumour of his death, awakened among his subjects the dormant
feelings of attachment and compassion. Haggard from disease,
abject in appearance, destitute, deserted, and unhappy, he pre-
sented himself to the citizens of Worms. The ebbingf tide of
loyalty rushed violently back into its wonted channels. Shouts of
welcome ran along the walls. Every house-top rang with ac-
clamations. Women wept over his wrongs. Men-at-arms devoted
their lives, and rich burghers their purses, to his cause. The diet
was dissolved, Rudolf fled, and it remained for Henry to practise,
on his recovered throne, the lessons he had leai'ned in the school of
adversity.

Those lessons had been unfolded and enforced by the parental
admonitions of Gregory. The royal penitent answered by promises
of amendment, ' full ' (as the Pope declared) ' of sweetness and
of duty.' Nor was this a mere lip homage. To prove his sin-
cerity, he abandoned to the Pope the government of the great see

c 2

20 HILDEBRAND.

and city of Milan, the strongest hold of the Imperialists in Italy.
A single desire engrossed the heart of Henry. No sacrifice seemed
too costly which might enable him to inflict an overwhelming ven-
geance on the Saxon people ; no price excessive by which he could
purchase the aid, or at least the neutrality, of Hildebrand in the
impending struggle. The concessions were accepted by the Pope,
the motive understood, and the equivalent rendered. With gra-
cious words to the Emperor and to Rudolf, with pacific councils
and vague promises to the Saxons, Hildebrand retired from all
further intervention in a strife of which it remained for him to
watch the issue, and to reap the advantage.

It was in the depth of a severe winter that Henry, hoping to
surprise the insurgents, marched from Worms at the head of forces
furnished by the wealth and zeal of that faithful city. Drifts of
snow obstructed his advance. The frozen streams could no longer
turn the mills on which he depended for subsistence. Meteors
blazed in the skies, and the dispirited soldiers trembled at such
accumulated omens of disaster. In that anxious host, one bosom
alone was heedless of danger, and unconscious of suffering. He,
who had hitherto been known only as a profligate and luxurious
youth, now ru-ged on his followers through cold, disease, and
famine, to the Saxon frontier. But there Otho awaited him at the
head of a large and well-disciplined army. The Imperialists
declined the unequal encounter. Again Henry was reduced to
capitulate. Humbled a second time before his subjects, he bound
himself to dismantle his fortresses, to withdraw his garrisons, to
restore the confiscated fiefs, to confirm their ancient Saxon pri-
vileges, and to grant an amnesty unlimited and universal.

The treaty of Gerstungen (so it was called) was dictated by
animosity and distrust, and was carried into execution by the con-
querors in the spirit of vindictive triumph. They expelled from
his residence at Groslar their dejected king and his household, and
destroyed the town of Hartzburg with his royal sepulchre, where
lay the bones of his infant son, and of others of his nearest kin-
dred. The graves were broken open, and their ghastly contents
exposed to shameful and inhuman contumelies — a wild revenge,
and a too plausible pretext for a fearful and not distant retribu-
tion.

Henry returned to his Rhenish provinces to meditate vengeance.
Reckless of any remoter danger in which the indulgence of that
fierce passion might involve him, he invoked the arbitrament of
the Pope, and called on him to excommunicate the sacrilegious
race who had burned the church, and desecrated the sepulchres,
of ^ is forefathers. Gregory watched the gathering tempest of

IIILDEBR.VXD. 21

civil war, received the appeals of the contending parties, and an-
swered both, by renewed injunctions of obedience to himself. To
the Saxons he sent homilies ; to the Emperor an embassy, graced
by the name and the presence of his mother, Agnes. She bore a
papal mandate to her son to enforce the celibacy of the clergy,
and to restore to its lawful channels the patronage of the Church.
Henry promised obedience. The legates then convoked a national
synod, to be held in Grermany under their own presidency. To
this encroachment also, Henry submitted. A remonstrance
against it from the Archbishop of Bremen was answered by a
legantine sentence suspending him from his see. Still the Em-
peror was passive. Another sentence of the papal ambassadors
exiled from the court and presence of Henry five of his councillors
whom Alexander had excommunicated. No signal of resistance
was given by their insulted sovereign. Edicts for the government
of the Teutonic Church were promulgated witliout the usual
courtesy of asking his concurrence. They provoked from him no
show of resentment. Their work accomplished, the legates re-
turned to Eome, the messengers of successes over the authority of
the Caesar, more important than any former Pope had ventured to
anticipate. Applause, honours, and preferments rewarded the
associates of Agnes ; while to herself were given assurances of
celestial joy, and of a distinguished place among the choristers of
heaven.

Her less aspiring son fed his mind with hopes of vengeance, ren-
dered as he thought more sure by all his concessions to the Eoman
Pontiff. Twice, indeed, he had recoiled ignominiously from the
Saxon frontier. But from defeat itself he might draw the means of
victory. By the great feudatories of the Empire, the spectacle of
armed peasants and wealthy burghers imposing terms of peace on
the successor of Charlemagne, had been regarded with proud scorn
and indignation. They resented the rising fame and influence of
Otho. He and his followers might become strong enough to re-
sume by arms the estates they had lost by confiscation. Eumours
were already rife of such designs. To fan these flames and deepen
these alarms, and thus to excite among restless chiefs and predatory
bands the appetite for war and plunder, became the easy and suc-
cessful labour of the impatient Emperor. At Henry's summons,
the whole strength of Germany was collected on the Elbe to crush,
in his quarrel, the power they had so lately aided to depose him.
There were to be seen the crucifix of the Abbot of Fulda, and
there the sacred banner of the Archbishop of Mentz. There
Gruelph, the Bavarian, raised his ducal standard to recou(juer the
broad lands restored to their former owners by the treaty of Ger-

c .3

22 HILDEBRAXD.

stimgen. There, surrounded by the chivalry of Lorraine, and re-
stored by the Emperor to that forfeited principality, Grodfrey
repaid the boon by the desertion of the alliance, conjugal as well
as political, which bound him to the House of Tuscany. There
appeared the King of Hungary, lured by the hope of new pro-
vinces to be assigned to him on the dismemberment of Saxony.
And there, in the centre of covmtless pennons, came Eudolf, to
prove his loyalty to the prince whose throne he had so recently
endeavoured to usurp.

The tide of war rolled on towards the devoted land. It had been
saved, if penitence, humility, and prayer were of the same power
in the courts of earth as in those of heaven. It had been saved,
if courage gathered from despair, and guided by patriotism, could
have availed against such a confederacy of numbers and of disci-
pline. But prayer was vain, and patriotism impotent. A long sum-
mer's day had reached its close, when, under the command of their
great leader Otho, the Saxon lines approached the Unstrut. On
the opposite banks of that stream the Imperialists had already
encamped. Neither army was aware of the vicinity of the other,
and Henry had retired to rest, when Rudolf roused him with the
intelligence that the insurgent forces were at hand, unarmed, and
heedless of their danger, the ready prey of a sudden and immediate
attack. The Emperor threw himself in a transport of gi-atitude
at the feet of his adviser, and, leaping on his horse, led forward
his forces to the promised victory.

In this strange world of ours, tragedies, of which the dire plot
and dark catastrophe might seem to be borrowed from hell, are not
seldom depicted by historical dramatists in colours clear and bril-
liant as those which may be imagined to repose over Paradise.
One of the mitred combatants has sung, and Lambert, the chroni-
cler of Aschafnaburg, has narrated the battle of the L^nstrut. The
Bishop's hexameters have all the charm which usually belongs to
episcopal charges. But Lambert is among the most graphic and
animated of historians. His picture of the field glows with his
own military ardour, and is thronged with incidents and with
ficfures which might well be transferred to the real canvass.
Among them we distinguish the ill-arranged Saxon lines broken,
flying, and again forming at the voice of Otho as it rises above the
tumult, and then rushing after him with naked swords, and naked
busoms, on the main battle of the triumphant invaders. And still
the eye follows Otho wherever there are fainting hearts to rally, or
a fierce onslaught to repel ; — and we seem almost to hear the
shrill war-cry of the Swabians from the van of the Imperial host,
where, by a proud hereditary right, they had claimed to stand ; —

niLDEBRAND. 23

and Eudolf their leader, the very minister of death, is ever in the
midst of the carnage, himself, as if in covenant with the grave,
unharmed; — and in the agony and crisis of the strife, Henry, the
idol to whom this bloody sacrifice is offered, is seen in Lambert's
battle-piece leaping at the head of his reserve on his exhausted
enemies, sweeping whole ranks into confused masses, and amid
shrieks, and groans, and fruitless prayers, and fruitless curses, im-
molating them to his insatiable revenge.

The sun went down on that Aceldama amidst the exultations of
the victorious allies. It rose on them the following morning
agitated by grief, by discord, and by disaffection. jNIany nobles
who had fought the day before under the Impeiial banner, were
stretched on the field of battle. The enthusiasm of the Saxons
had proved at how fearful a price, if at all, the selfish ends of the
confederacy must be attained. They mourned the extinction of
one of the eyes of Grermany. Silently but rapidly the armament
dissolved. Grodfrey alone remained to prosecute the war. With
his aid it was brought by Henry to a successful issue. A capitu-
lation placed Otho and the other leaders in the Emperor's power.
With their persons secured, their estates forfeited, and their re-
sources destroyed, he returned to join with the loyal citizens of
Worms in chanting the ' Te Deum laudamus.' The same sacred
strain had but a few days before celebrated at Eome a still more
important and enduring victory.

Gregory had rightly judged, that while the rival princes were
immersed in civil war, he might securely convene the princes of
the Church to give effect to designs of far deeper significance.
The long aisles of the Lateran were crowded with grave Canonists
and mitred Abbots, with Bishops and Cardinals, with the high
functionaries, and the humble apparitors, of the Papal State.
Proudly eminent above them all, sat the Vicar and Vicegerent of
the King of kings. Masses were sung, and homilies were deli-
vered, and rites were performed, of which the origin might be
traced back to the worship of the Capitoline Jove ; and then was
enacted, by the ecclesiastical Senate, a law, not unlike the most
arrogant of those which eleven centuries before had been promul-
gated in the Capitol. It forbade the kings and rulers of the earth
to exercise their ancient right of investiture of any spiritual dig-
nitary, and transferred to the Pope alone a patronage and an
influence more than sufficient to balance, within their own domin-
ions, all the powers of all the monarchs of Christendom. In the
darkest hours of Imperial despotism, the successors of Julius had
never enjoyed, or demanded, an authority so wide or so absolute.
Even the daring spirit by which the decree had been dictated, drew

c 4

24 HILDEBEAND.

back from the immediate publication of it. The Pope intimated
to the German court and prelates the other acts of the council, but
passed over in silence the great edict for which they had been as-
sembled, and by which they were to be immortalised. It reposed
in the Papal Chancery as an authority to be invoked at a more
convenient season, and, in the meantime, as a text for the rulers
of the earth to ponder, and for the learned to interpret. To Hil-
debrand it belonged neither to expound nor to threaten, but to
act.

The Bishop of Lucca was dead : the Pope nominated his suc-
cessor. The Bishop of Bamberg was accused of simony : the Pope
suspended him. The Archbishop of Bremen still denied the right
of Papal legates to preside in a Grerman synod : the Pope deprived
him of his see, and of the holy sacraments. The Bishops of Pavia,
Turin, and Placentia adhered to Honorius: the Pope deposed
them. Henry's five exiled councillors gave no signs of repentance :
the Pope again excommunicated them. The Normans invaded the
Eoman territory : the Pope assailed them by a solemn anathema.
Philip of France continued to indulge himself, and to jjillage
every one else : the Pope upbraided and menaced him. Thus
with maledictions, sometimes as deadly as the Pontine miasma,
sometimes as innocuous as the Mediterranean breeze, he waged
war with his antagonists, and exercised, in reality, the powers
which he yet hesitated to assert in words.

To the conqueror of Saxony these encroachments and anathemas
of the Pontiff appeared more offensive than formidable. He
retaliated rather by scorn than by active hostility. He heaped
favours on his own excommunicated councillors — sent one of bis
chaplains to ascend the vacant episcopal throne of Lucca — nomi-
nated an obscure and scandalous member of his own household
for the princely mitre of Cologne — and forbade his Saxon subjects
to appeal to Kome, even in cases exclusively ecclesiastical. To
Henry, the Pontiff seemed an angry, arrogant, vituperative, old
man, best to be encountered by contempt. To Gfregory, the
Emperor appeared as the feeble and unconscious agent in a provi-
dential scheme for subjecting the secular to the spiritual dynasty.
To such as could read the signs of the times, it was evident that,
on either side, this contempt was misplaced ; and that a long and
sanguinary conflict drew near, by which the future destinies of the
world would be determined.

Events hurried rapidly onward to that crisis. Complaints were
preferred to the Holy See of crimes committed by Henry against
the Saxon Church which cried for vengeance, and of vices practised
by him in private, which rendered him unfit for communion with

IIILDEBRAND. 25

his fellow-Christians. Gregory cited the Emperor to appear before
him to answer these charges. The Emperor, if we may believe
the papal historians, answered by an attempt to assassinate the
author of so presumptuous a citation.

On Christmas eve, in the year 1075, the city of Eome was
visited by a dreadful tempest. Not even the full moon of Italy
could penetrate the dense mass of superincumbent clouds. Dark-
ness brooded over the land, and the trembling spectators believed
that the day of final judgment was about to dawn. In this war of
the elements, however, two processions were seen advancing to the
Church of Santa Maria Maggiore. At the head of one was the
aged Hildebrand, conducting a few priests to worship at the shrine
of the Virgo Deipara. The other was preceded by Cencius, a
Eoman noble. His followers were armed as for some desperate
enterprise. At each pause in the roar of the tempest might be
heard the hallelujahs of the worshippers, or the voice of the Pontiff
pouring out benedictions on the little flock which knelt before
him — when the arm of Cencius grasped his person, and the sword
of some yet more daring ruffian inflicted a wound on his forehead.
Bound with cords, stripped of his sacred vestments, beaten, and
subjected to the basest indignities, the venerable minister of Christ
was carried to a fortified mansion within the walls of the city,
again to be removed, at daybreak, to exile, or to death. Women
were there with women's sympathy and kindly offices, but they
were rudely put aside ; and a drawn sword was already aimed at
the Pontiff's bosom, when the cries of a fierce multitude, threaten-
ing to burn or batter down the house, arrested the arm of the
assassin. An arrow, discharged from below, reached and slew him.
The walls rocked beneath the strokes of the maddened populace,
and Cencius, falling at his prisoner's feet, became himself a sup-
pliant for pardon, and for life.

In profound silence, and undisturbed serenity, Hildebrand had
thus far submitted to these atrocious indignities. The occasional
raising of his eyes towards heaven, alone indicated his consciousness
of them. But to the supplication of his prostrate enemy he
returned an instant and a calm assurance of forgiveness. He
rescued Cencius from the exasperated besiegers, dismissed him in
safety and in peace, and returned, amidst the acclamations of the
whole Eoman people, to complete the interrupted solemnities of
Santa Maria jMaggiore.

That Henry instigated this crime, is an accusation of which no
proof is extant, and to which all probabilities are opposed. But
such a belief was current at the time; and the contest thencefor-
ward assumed all the bitterness of personal animosity. To the

26 HILDEBEAND.

charges of sacrilege, impurity, and assassination, preferred against
the Emperor, his partisans answered by denouncing the Pope him-
self, at a Synod convened at Worms, as baseborn, and as guilty of
murder, simony, necromancy, and devil worship, of habitual,
thouo-h concealed, profligacy, and of an impious profanation of the
Eucharist. Fortunately for the fame of Gregory, his enemies
have written a book. Cardinal Benno, one of the most inveterate
of them, has bequeathed to us a compendium of all those synodal
invectives. The guilt of a base birth is established ; for Hilde-
brand's father was a carpenter in the little Tuscan town of Saone.
The other imputations are refuted by the evident malignity of the
writer, and by the utter failure, or the wild extravagance, of his
proofs.

Such, however, was not the judgment of the Synod of Worms.
A debate, of two days' continuance, closed with an unanimous vote
that Grregory the Seventh should be abjured and deposed. Henry
first affixed his signature to the act of abjuration. Then each
Archbishop, Bishop, and Abbot, rising in his turn, subscribed the
same fatal scroll. Scarcely was the assembly dissolved, before
Imperial messengers were on their way to secure the concurrence
of other Churches, and the support of the temporal princes. On
every side, but especially in Northern Italy, a fierce and sudden
flame attested the long smouldering resentment of the priests
Avhom the Pope had divorced from their wives ; of the lords whose
simoniacal traffic he had arrested ; of the princes whose Norman
invaders he had cherished ; of the ecclesiastics whom his haughty
demeanour had incensed; of the licentious whom his discipline
had revolted ; and of the patriotic whom his ambition had alarmed.
The abjuration of Worms was adopted with enthusiasm by another
Synod at Placenza. Oaths of awful significance cemented the
confederacy. Acts of desperate hostility bore witness to the de-
termination of the confederates to urge the quarrel to extremities.
Not a day was to be lost in intimating to Gregory that the apostolic
sceptre had fallen from his hands, and that the Christian Church
was once more free.

It was now the second week in Lent, in the year 1076. From
his throne, beneath the sculptured roof of the Vatican, Gregory,
arrayed in the rich mantle, the pall, and the other mystic vestments
of pontifical dominion, looked down the far-receding vista of the
sacred edifice on the long array of ecclesiastical Lords and Princes,
before whom ' Henry King of Germany and Italy, calling himself
Emperor,' had been summoned to appear, not as their sovereign
to receive their homage, but as a culprit to await their sentence.
As he gazed on that new senate, asserting a jurisdiction so majestic

HILDEBEiVND. 27

— and listened to harmonies which might not imfitly have accom-
panied the worship of Eden — and joined in anthems which in
far distant ages had been sung by blessed saints in their dark
crypts, and by triumphant martyrs in theu- dying agonies — and
inhaled the incense symbolical of the prayers offered by the
Catholic Chiu-ch to her eternal Head — what wonder if, under the
intoxicating influence of such a scene and of such an hour, the old
man believed that he was himself the apostolic Eock on which her
foundations were laid, and that his cause and person were sacred
as the will, and invincible as the power, of heaven itself! Tlie
' Veni Creator ' was on the lips of the papal choir, when Eoland,
an envoy from the Synods of Worms and Placenza, presented him-
self before the assembled hierarchy of Home. His demeanour
was fierce, and his speech abrupt. ' The King and the united
Bishops, both of Grermany and Italy,' (such was his apostrophe to
the Pope,) 'transmit to thee this command: — Descend without
delay from the throne of St. Peter. Abandon the usurped govern-
ment of the Roman Church. To such honours none must aspire
without the general choice, and the sanction of the Emperor.'
Then addressing the conclave — 'To you, brethren,' he said, 'it is
commanded, that at the feast of Pentecost ye present yourselves
before the King my master, to receive a pope and father from his
hands. This pretended pastor is a ravenous wolf.' A brief pause
of mute astonishment gave way to shouts of fury. Swords were
di"awn, and the audacious herald was about to expiate his temerity
with his blood. But Gregory descended from his throne, received
from the hands of Roland the letters of the Synods, and, resuming
his seat, read them, in a clear and deliberate voice, to the indig-
nant council. Again the sacred edifice rang with a tempest of
passionate invective. Again swords were drawn on Roland, and
again the storm was composed by the voice of the Pontiff. He
spake of prophecies fulfilled in the contumacy of the King, and in
the troubles of the faithful. He assured them, that victory would
reward their zeal, or divine consolations soothe their defeat ; but
whether victory or defeat should be their doom, the time, he said,
had come when the avenging sword must be drawn to smite the
enemy of God, and of His Church.

The speaker ceased and turned for approbation, or at least for
acquiescence, not to the enthusiastic throng of mitred or of armed
adherents, but to one who, even in that eventful moment, divided
with himself the gaze and the sympathy of that illustrious
assemblage. For by his side, though in an inferior station, sat
Agnes, the Empress-mother, brought there to witness and to ratify
the judgment to be pronounced on her only child, whom she had

28 HILDEBR-VXD.

borne amidst the proudest hopes, and trained for empire beneath
the o-riefs and anxieties of widowhood. She bore, or strove to bear,
herself as a daughter of the Church, but could not forget that she
Avas the mother of Henry, when, in all the impersonated majesty
of that holy fellowship, Hildebrand, raising his eyes to heaven,
with a voice echoing, amidst the breathless silence of the Synod,
through the remotest arches of the lofty pile, invoked the holy
Peter, prince of the apostles, to hear, and ' Mary the mother of
Grod,' and the blessed Paul, and all the saints, to bear witness,
while for the honoiu and defence of Christ's Church, in the name
of the sacred Trinit}^, and by the power and authority of Peter,
he interdicted to King Henry, son of Henry the Emperor, the
government of the w^hole realm of Grermany and Italy, absolved
all Christians from their oaths and allegiance to him, and bound
him with the bond of anathema, ' that the nations may know and
acknowledge that thou art Peter, and that, upon thy rock, the Son
of the living Grod hath built His church, and that the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it.'

When intelligence of the deposition of Henry first astounded
the nations of Europe, the glories of Papal Home seemed to the
multitude to have been madly staked on one most precarious issue.
Men foretold that the Emperor would promptly and signally punish
a treason so audacious, and that the Holy See would, ere long,
descend to the level of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Nor
did the wisest deem such anticipations unreasonable. They re-
flected that Henry was still in the very prime of life — that he
possessed a force of will which habitual luxury had not impaired,
and a throne, in the hearts of his people, which the wildest excess
of vice and folly had not subverted — that he reigned over the
fairest and the wealthiest portion of the Continent — that he com-
manded numerous vassals, and could bring into the field powerful
armies — that he had crushed rebellion among his subjects, and had
no rival to dread among his neighbom-s — and that the Papacy had
flourished under the shelter of the Imperial crown, the authority
of which had been so arrogantly defied, and the fierce resentment
of which was now inevitably to be encountered. But in the
seeming strength of the Imperial resources, there was an inherent
weakness; and in the seeming weakness of the Papal cause, a
latent but invincible strength. Even Teutonic loyalty had been
undermined by the cruelties, the faithlessness, and the tyranny, of
the monarch, and the doom of the oppressor was upon him. The
cause of Grregory was, on the other hand, in popular estimation,
the cause of sanctity and of truth, of primaeval discipline and
traditionaiy reverence, and the Pope himself a martyr, who, in all

HILDEBRAND. 09

the majesty of superhuman power, was resolved eitlier to repel
the spoiler from the Christian fold, or to lay down his life for the
sheep. That these high and lofty purposes really animated the
soul, or kindled the imagination, of him to whom they were thus
ascribed, it would be presumptuous to deny. But whatever may
have been his reliance on the promises of heaven, he certainly
combined with it a penetrating insight into the policy of earth.
He summoned to his aid his Norman feudatories, and invoked the
succour of his Tuscan allies. She who now reigned in Tuscany
might be supposed to have been called into being for the single
purpose of sustaining, like another Deborah or Judith, the faintin;.;;
hopes of another Israel.

On the death of Boniface, Duke and Marquis of Tuscany, in 1054,
his states descended to his only surviving child, who, under the title
of 'The Grreat Countess,' ruled there until her own death in 1116,
first in tutelage, then in conjunction with her mother Beatrice, and
during the last thirty-nine years of that long period, in her own
plenary and undivided right. Though she married Godfrey of
Lorraine in her youth, and Gruelph of Bavaria in her more mature
age, neither the wit and military genius of her first husband, nor
the wisdom and dignity of his successor, could win the heart of
Matilda. Her biographer has entered into an elaborate inquiry to
establish the fact, that, notwithstanding her nuptial vows with two
of the most accomplished princes of that age, she lived and died as
in a state of celibacy. Even they who cannot concur with him in
pronouncing the sacrifice sublime, will admit that it was at least
opportune. While persuading the clergy to put away their wives,
she herself repudiated both her husbands. The story, indeed, is
not very tractable. Schools for scandal preceded, as they have
survived, all the other schools of modern Italy ; and whoever has
read Groldasti's 'Eeplication for the Sacred Csesarean and Royal
Majesty of the Franks,' is aware that if Florence had then possessed
a comic stage and an Aristophanes, he would have exhibited no less
a personage than the great Hildebrand in the chains of no meaner
an Aspasia than the great Countess of Tuscany. But large as is
the space occupied by this charge, and by the refutation of it, in
the annals of those times, it may safely be rejected as altogether in-
credible and absm-d. At that period, the anatomists of the human
heart seemed not to have described, if indeed they had detected,
that hieropathic affection so familiarly known among ourselves, of
which the female spirit is the seat, and the ministers of religion the
objects — a flame usually as pure as it is intense, and which burned
as brightly in the soul of Matilda eight centuries ago, as in the
most ardent of the fair bosoms which it warms and animates now.

30 HILDEBKAND.

She was in truth in love, but in love with the Papacy. Six aged
Popes successively acknowledged and rejoiced over her, as at once
tlie most zealous adherent of their cause, and the most devoted
worshipper of their persons. And well might those holy fathers
exult in such a conquest. Poets, in their dreams, have scarcely
imaged, heroes, in the hour of their triumph, have rarely
attained, so illustrious a trophy of their genius or of their valour.

The life of Matilda is told by Donnizone, a member of her house-
hold, in three books of lamentable hexameters ; and by Fiorentini,
an antiquary and genealogist of Lucca in the seventeenth century,
in three other books scarcely less wearisome ; though his learning,
his love of truth, and his zeal for the glory of his heroine, secure
for him the respect and the sympathy of his readers. That she
should have inspired no nobler eulogies than theirs, may be ascribed
partly to her having lived in the times when the Boethian had sub-
sided into the Boeotian age of Italian literature, and partly to the
uninviting nature of the ecclesiastical feuds and alliances in which
her days were consumed. Otherwise, neither Zenobia, nor Isabella,
nor Elizabeth, had a fairer claim to inspire, and to live in immortal
verse. Not even her somnolent chaplain, as he beat out his Latin
doggerel, could avoid giving utterance to the delight with which
her delicate features, beaming with habitual gaiety, had inspired
him. Not even her severe confessor. Saint Anselm of Lucca, could
record without astonishment, how her feeble frame sustained all the
burdens of civil government, and all the fatigues of actual war ;
burdens indeed, which, but for a series of miraculous cures wrought
for her at his own intercession, she could not (he assures us) have
sustained at all.

Supported either by miracle, or by her own indomitable spirit,
Matilda wielded the sword of justice with masculine energy both
in the field, against the enemies of the Holy See, and in the tribunal,
against such as presumed to violate her laws. He who knew her
best, regarded these stern exercises of her authority but as the
promptings of a heart which loved too wisely and too well to love
with fondness. In the camp, such was the serenity of her demea-
nour, and the gi'aceful flow of her discourse, that she appeared to
him a messenger of mercy, in the garb of a Penthiselea. On the
judgment-seat he saw in her not the stern avenger of crime, but
rather the compassionate mother of the feeble and the oppressed.

Nor did she allow to herself any of the weak indulgence she
denied to others. In a voluptuous age she lived austerely, sub-
duing her appetites, and torturing her natural affections mth the
perverse ingenuity which her ghostly councillors inculcated and
extolled. In a superstitious age she subdued her desire for the

HILDEBRAND, 31

devotional abstractions of the cloister ; and with greater wisdom,
and more real piety, consecrated herself to the active duties of her
princely office. In an illiterate age, her habits of study were such
that she could make herself intelligible to all the troops anions
w^hom she lived, though levied from almost every part of Europe,
and especially to her Italian, French, and German soldiers, whose
tongues she used with equal facility. Donnizone assures us, that,
though he was ever at hand as her Latin secretary, she wrote with
her own pen all her letters in that language to the Pontiffs and
Sovereigns of her times — a proof, as his readers will think, of her
discernment no less than of her learning. On his testimony, also,
may be claimed for her the praise of loving, collecting, and pre-
serving books ; for thus he sings : —

' Copia librorum non deficit huic, re bonorum ;
Libros ex cunctis habet artibus atquc figuris.'

How well she understood the right use of them, may be inferred
from her employment of Werner, a jurist, to revise the ' Corpus
Juris Civilis ; ' and of Anselm, her confessor, to compile a collection
of the Canon Law, and to write a commentary on the Psalms of
David. Such, indeed, was her proficiency in scriptural knowledge,
that her versifying chaplain maintains her equality in such studies
with the most learned of the Bishops, her contemporaries.

Warrior, ascetic, and scholar as she was, the spirit of Matilda
was too generous to be imprisoned within the limits of the camp,
the cell, or the library. It was her nobler ambition to be the
refuge of the oppressed, the benefactor of the miserable, and the
champion of what she deemed the cause of truth. Mortifying
the love of this world's glory, she laboured with a happy incon-
sistency, to render it still more glorious. At her bidding, castles
and palaces, convents and cathedrals, statues and public monu-
ments, arose throughout Tuscany. Yet, so well w^as her muni-
ficence sustained by a wise economy, that to the close of her lono-
reign, she was still able to maintain her hereditary title to the ap-
pellation of ' the rich,' by which her father, Boniface, had been
also distinguished. She might, with no less propriety, have been
designated as ' the powerful ; ' since, either by direct authority, or
by irresistible influence, she ruled nearly the whole of Northern
Italy, from Lombardy to the Papal States, and received from the
other monarchs of the West, both the outward homage, and the
real deference, reserved for sovereign potentates.

Matilda attained to the plenary dominion over her hereditary
states at the very crisis of the great controversy of her age, when
Henry had procured, and promulgated, the sentence of the Synod

32 HILDEBRAND.

of Worms for the deposition of Gregory. Heedless, or rather un-
conscious, of the resources of that formidable adversary, he had
made no preparation for the inevitable contest ; but, as though
smitten by a judicial blindness, selected that critical moment for a
new outrage on the most sacred feelings of his own subjects. He
marched into Saxony ; and there, as if in scorn of the free Ger-
man spirit, erected a stern military despotism, confiscated the
estates of the people, exiled their nobles, imprisoned their bishops,
sold the peasants as slaves, or compelled them to labour in e.ect-
ino- fortresses, from which his mercenary troops might curb and
ravage the surrounding country. The cry of the oppressed rose on
every side from the unhappy land. It entered into the ears of the
Avenger.

As Henry returned from this disastrous triumph to Utrecht, the
Imperial banner floated over a vast assemblage of courtiers,
churchmen, vassals, ministers of justice, men-at-arms, and sutlers,
who lay encamped like some normad tribe round their chief; when
the indio-nant bearing of some of his followers, and the alarmed
and half-averted gaze of others, disclosed to him the awful fact that
a pontifical anathema had cast him down from his Imperial state,
and exiled him from the society of all Christian people. His heart
fainted within him at these dismal tidings as at the sound of his
own passing bell. But that heart was kingly still, and resolute
either to dare or to endure, in defence of his hereditary crown.
Shame and sorrow might track him to the grave, but he would
hold no comicil with despair. The world had rejected him — the
Church had cast him out — his very mother had deserted him.
In popular belief, perhaps in his own, God Himself had abandoned
him. Yet all was not lost. He retained, at least, the hope of ven-
geance. On his hated adversary he might yet retaliate blow for
blow, and malediction for malediction.

On Easter-day, in the year 1076, surrounded by a small and
anxious circle of prelates, William the Archbishop of Utrecht as-
cended his archiepiscopal throne, and recited the sacred narrative
which commemorates the rising of the Eedeemer from the grave.
But no strain of exulting gratitude followed. A fierce invective
depicted, in the darkest colours, the character and the career of
Hildebrand, and with bitter scorn the preacher denied the right of
such a Pope to censure the Emperor of the West, to govern the
Church, or to live in her communion. In the name of the assem-
bled Synod, he then pronounced him excommunicate.

At that moment the summons of death reached the author of
this daring defiance. While the last fatal struggle convulsed his
bod}^ a yet sorer agony affected his soul. He died self-abhorred.

IIILDEBRA^^D. 83

rejecting the sympathy, the prayers, and the sacraments witli wliit h
the terrified bystanders would liave soothed his departing spirit.
The voice of heaven itself seemed to rise in wild concert with the cry
of his tortm-ed conscience. Thunderbolts struck down both the
church in which he had abjured the Vicar of Christ, and the ad-
jacent palace in which the Emperor was residing. Three other of
the anti-papal prelates quickly followed William to the grave, by
strange and violent deaths. Grodfrey of Lorraine fell by the hand
of an assassin. These facts, though recorded by the contemporary
chroniclers, will of course be received in our own times with the
judicious scepticism which has been so deeply impressed on all
modern readers of historical marvels. But there can be no doubt
that the belief in these accumulated portents was everywhere dif-
fused and awakened universal hoiTor. Each day announced to
Henry some new secession. His guards deserted his standard ;
his personal attendants avoided his presence. The members of the
Synod of Worms fled to Kome, to make their peace with the justly-
irritated Pontiff. The nobles set free the Saxon prisoners who had
been confided to their custody. Otho appeared once more in arms
to lead a new insurrection of his fellow-countrymen. The great
Princes of Grermany convened a council to deliberate on the de-
position of their Sovereign. To every eye but his own, all seemed
to be lost. Even to him it was but too evident that the loyalty of
his subjects had been undermined, and that his throne was totter-
ing beneath him. A single resource remained. He might yet as-
semble the faithful, or the desperate, adherents of his cause — in-
spire dread into those whose allegiance he had forfeited — make
one last strenuous effort in defence of his crown — and descend to
the tomb, if so it must be, the anointed chief of the Carlovingian
Empire.

With a mind wrought up to such resolves, he traversed the
north of Grermany to encounter the Saxon insurgents — published
to the world the sentence of Utrecht — and called on the Lombard
Bishops to concur in the excommunication it denounced. He
reaped the usual reward of audacity. Though repelled hj Otho,
and compelled to retrace his march to the Rhine, he found every
city, village, and convent, by which he passed, distracted with the
controversy between the Diadem and the Tiara. Eeligion and
awakening loyalty divided the Empire. Though not yet combin-
ing into any definite form, the elements of a new confederacy were
evidently at work in favour of a Monarch who thus knew how to
draw courage and energy from despair.

Yet the moral sentiment of the German people was as 3'et un-
equivocally against their Sovereign. The Imperialists mournfully

34 IIILDEBRAND.

acknowledged that their chief was justly condemned. The Papal-
ists indignantly denied the truth of the reproaches cast on their
leader. In support of that denial, Gregory defended himself in
epistles addressed to all the greater Teutonic prelates. Among
them is a letter to Herman, Bishop of Mentz, which vividly ex-
hibits both the strength of the writer's character and the weak-
ness of his cause. Although (he says) such as, from their exceed-
ing folly, deny the papal right of excommunicating kings, hardly
deserve an answer, (the right to depose kings was the real point in
debate,) yet, in condescension to their weakness, he will dispel
their doubts. Peter himself had taught this doctrine, as appeared
by a letter from St. Clement (in the authenticity of which no one
believes). When Pepin coveted the crown of Childeric, Pope
Zachary was invited, by the Mayor of the Palace, to give judg-
ment between them. On his ambiguous award the usurper had
founded the title of his dynasty. Saint Gregory the Great had
threatened to depose any monarch who should resist his decrees.
The story of Ambrose and Theodosius, rightly interpreted, gave
proof that the Emperor held his crown at the will of the Apostle.
Every king was one of the " sheep " whom Peter had been com-
manded to feed, and one of the " things " which Peter had been
empowered to bind. Who could presume to place the Sceptre on
a level Avith the Crosier, the one the conquest of human pride, the
other the gift of divine mercy : the one conducting to the vain
glories of earth, the other pointing the way to Heaven ? As gold
surpasses lead, so does the Episcopal transcend the Imperial dig-
nity. Could Henry justly refuse to the universal Bishop that pre-
cedence which Constantino had yielded to the meanest Prelate at
Nicsea ? Must not he be supreme above all terrestrial thrones, to
whom all ecclesiastical dominations are subordinate ?

To employ good arguments, one must be in the right. To make the
best possible use of such as are to be had is the ^jrivilege of genius,
even when in the wrong. Nothing could be more convincing to
the spiritual lords of Germany, nothing more welcome to her
secular chiefs, than this array of great names and sonorous au-
thorities against their falling Sovereign. To overcome the ob-
stinate loyalty of the burghers and peasantry to their young and
gallant King, religious terrors were indispensable ; and continual
reinforcements of pontifical denunciations were therefore solicited
and obtained. At length, in the autumn of 1076, appeared from
Eome a rescript which, in the event (no longer doubtful) of
Henry's continued • resistance to the sentence of the last papal
council, required the German princes and prelates, counts and
barons, to elect a new Emperor, and assured them of the Apos-

niLDEBRAND. 35

tolical confirmation of any choice which should be worthily made.
These were no idle words. The death-struggle could no longer Ije
postponed. Legates arrived from Rome to guide the proceedings
of the Diet to be convened for this momentous deliberation. It
met during the autumn at Tribur.

The annals of mankind scarcely record so solemn, or so dispas-
sionate, an act of national justice. Some princely banner waved
over every adjacent height, and groups of unarmed soldiers might
be traced along the furthest windings of the neighbouring Ehine,
joining in the pleasant toils, and swelling the gay carols, of the
mature vintage. In the centre, and under the defence, of that vast
encampment, rose a pavilion, within which were collected all
whose dignity entitled them to a voice in that high debate. From
the only extant record of what occurred, and of what was spoken
there, it may be inferred that Henry's offences against the Church
were regarded lightly in comparison with the criminality of his
civil government. Stationed on the opposite bank of the river, he
received quick intelligence of the progress and tendency of the
discussion. The prospect darkened hourly. Soldiers had already
been despatched to secure him ; and his person was in danger of
unknightly indignities ; which might for ever have estranged the
reverence borne to him by the ruder multitude, when he attempted
to avert the impending sentence of deposition by an offer to abdi-
cate all the powers of government to his greater feudatories,
stipulating for himself only that he should retain his Imperial title
as the nominal head of the Teutonic Empire.

Palpable as was the snare to the subtle Italian legates, the
simple-minded Germans appear to have nearly fallen into it. For
seven successive days, speech answered speech on this proposal,
and when men could neither speak nor listen more, the project of
a nominal reign, shorn of all substantial authority, was adopted
by the Diet ; but (in modern phrase) with amendments obviously
imposed by the representatives of the sacerdotal power. The Pope
was to be invited to hold a Diet at Augsburg in the ensuing spring.
He was meanwhile to decide whether Henry should be restored to
the bosom of the Church. If so restored, he was at once to
resume all his imperial rights. But if the sun should go down on
him> still an excommunicate person, on the 23rd of February, 1077,
his crown was to be transferred to another. Till then he was to
dwell at Spires, with the title of Emperor, but without a court, an
army, or a place of public worship.

The theocratic theory, hitherto regarded as a mere Utopian
extravagance, had thus passed into a practical and sacred reality.
The fisherman of Gralilee had triumphed over the con(iueror of

3G HILDEBRAND.

Pharsalia. The vassal of Otho had reduced Otho's successor to
vassalage. The universal monarchy which Heathen Rome had
wrung from a bleeding world, had been extorted by Christian
Rome from the superstition or the reverence of mankind. The
relation of the Papacy and the Empire had been inverted ; and
Churchmen foretold with unhesitating confidence the exaltation of
their order above all earthly potentates, and the resort to their
capital of countless worshippers, there to do homage to an oracle
more profound than that of Delphi, to mysteries more pure than
those of Eleusis, and to a pontificate more august than that of
Jerusalem. Strains of unbounded joy resounded through the
papal city. Solitude and shame and penitential exercises attested
the past crimes, and the abject fortunes, of the exile of Spires.

But against this regimen of sackcloth and fasting, the body and
the soul of Henry revolted. At the close of the Diet of Tribur,
he had scarcely completed his twenty-sixth year. Degraded, if not
finally deposed, hated and reviled, abandoned by man, and com-
pelled by conscience to anticipate his abandonment by Grod, he
yet, in the depths of his misery, retained the remembrance and
the hope of dominion. The future was still bright with the
anticipations of youth. He might yet retrieve his reputation,
resume the blessings he had squandered, and take a signal ven-
geance on his great antagonist. And amidst the otherwise uni-
versal desertion, there remained one faithful bosom on which to
repose his own aching heart. Bertha, his wife, who had retained
her purity unsullied amidst the license of his court, now retained
her fidelity imshaken amidst the falsehood of his adherents. Her
wrongs had been such as to render a deep resentment nothing less
than a duty. Her happiness and her honour had been basely
assailed by the selfish profligate to whom the most solemn vows
had in vain united her. But to her, those vows were a bond
stronger than death, and indissoluble by all the confederate powers
of earth and hell. To suffer was the condition — to pardon and to
love, the necessity — of her existence. Vice and folly could not
have altogether depraved him who was the object of such inalien-
able tenderness, and who at length learnt to return it with a de-
votion almost equal to her own, after a bitter experience had taught
him the real value of the homage and caresses of the world.

In her society, though an exile from every other, Henry wore
away two months at Spires in a fruitless solicitation to the Pope to
receive him in Italy as a penitent suitor for reconcilement with the
Church. December had now arrived ; and, in less than ten weeks,
would be fulfilled the term, when, if still excommunicate, he must,
according to the sentence of Tribur, finally resign, not the prerog-

II1LDEBII.\ND. :rr

atives alone, but with tliem the title and rank of Head of tlie
Emijire. No sacrifices seemed too great to avert tliis danger ; and
history tells of none more singular than those to which the heir
of the Franconian dynasty was constrained to submit. In the
garb of a pilgrim, and in a season so severe as, during more than
four months, to liave converted the Rhine into a solid mass of ice,
Henry and his faithful Bertha, carrying in her arms their infant
child, undertook to cross the Alps, with no escort but sucli menial
servants as it was yet in his power to hire for that desperate enter-
prise. Among the courtiers who had so lately thronged his palace,
not one would become the companion of Ms toil and dangers.
Among the neighbouring princes who had so lately solicited his
alliance, not one would grant him the poor boon of a safe-conduct
and a free passage through their states. Even his wife's mother
exacted from him large territorial cessions as the price of allowing
him, and her own daughter, to scale one of the Alpine passes ;
apparently that of the Great St. Bernard. Day by day, peasants
cut out an npward path through the long windings of the mountain.
In the descent from the highest summit, when thus at length
gained, Henry had to encounter fatigues and dangers from which
the chamois-hunter would have turned aside. Vast trackless wastes
of snow were traversed, sometimes by mere crawling, at other times
by the aid of rope-ladders, or still ruder contrivances, and not
seldom by a sheer plunge along the inclined steep ; the Empress
and her child being enveloped, on those occasions, in the raw skins
of beasts slaughtered on the march.

The transition from these dangers to security, from the pine
forests, glaciers, and precipices of the Alps, to the sunny plains of
Italy, was not so grateful to the wearied travellers as the change
from the gloom of Spires to the rapturous greetings which hailed
their advance along the course of the Po. A splendid court, a
numerous army, and an exulting populace, once more attested the
majesty of the Emperor ; nor was the welcome of his Italian sub-
jects destitute of a deeper significance than usually belongs to the
paeans of the worshippers of kings. They dreamed of the haughty
Pontiff humbled, of the see of Ambrose exalted to civil and
ecclesiastical supremacy, and of the German yoke lifted from their
necks. Doomed as were these soaring hopes to an early disappoint-
ment, the enthusiasm of Henry's partisans justified those more
sober expectations which had prompted his perilous journey across
the Alps. He could now prosecute his suit to the Pope with tlie
countenance, and in the vicinity of those zealous adherents, and
at a secure distance from the enemies towards whom Hildebrand
was already advancing to hold the Gontemplated Diet of Augsl)urg.

D 3

38 HILDEBKAND.

In the personal command of a military escort, Matilda attended
the Papal progress ; and was even pointing out to her guards their
line of march through the snowy peaks which closed in her
northern horizon, when tidings of the rapid approach of the Em-
peror at the head of a formidable force induced her to retreat to
the fortress of Canossa. There, in the bosom of the Apennines,
her sacred charge would be secure from any sudden assault ; nor
had she anything to dread from the regular leaguer of such
powers as could, in that age, have been brought to the siege
of it.

Canossa was the cradle and the original seat of her ancient race.
It was also the favourite residence of the Grreat Countess; and
when Gregory found shelter within her halls, they were crowded
with guests of the highest eminence in social and in literary rank.
So imposing was the scene, and so superb the assemblage, that the
drowsy muse of her versifying chaplain awakened for once to an
hyperbole, and declared Canossa to be nothing less than a new
Rome, the rival of that of Eomulus. Thither, as if to verify the
boast, came a long line of mitred penitents from Grermany, whoin
the severe Hildebrand consigned on their arrival to solitary cells
with bread and water for their fare ; and there also appeared the
German Emperor himself, not the leader of the rumoured host
of Lombard invaders, but surrounded by a small and unarmed
retinue — mean in his apparel, and contrite in outward aspect, a
humble suppliant for pardon and acceptance to the communion of
the faithful. Long centuries had passed away since the sceptre of
the West had been won by Italian armies in Italian fields, and
Henry declined to put the issue of this great contest on the swords
of his Milanese vassals. He well knew that, to break the alliance
of patriotism, cupidity, and superstition, which had degraded him
at Tribur, it was necessary to rescue himself from the anathema
which he had but too justly incurred, and that his crown must be
redeemed, not by force, but by submission to his formidable an-
tagonist. And Hildebrand ! fathomless as are the depths of the
human heart, who can doubt that, amidst the conflict of emotions
which now agitated him, the most dominant was the exulting sense
of victory over the earth's greatest Monarch. His rival at his feet,
his calumniator self-condemned, the lips which had rudely sum-
moned him to abdicate the Apostolic crown now suing to him for
the recovery of the Imperial diadem, the exaltation in his person
of decrepit age over fiery youth, of mental over physical power,
of the long-enthralled Church over the long-tyrannising world,
all combined to form a triumpli too intoxicating even for that
capacious intellect.

HILDEBRAXD. 89

The veriest sycophant of the Papal Court, even in that super-
stitious age, would scarcely have ventured to describe, as a serious
act of sacramental devotion, the religious masquerade which fol-
lowed between the high priest and the imperial penitent; or to
extol as politic and wise, the base indignities to which the Pontiff
subjected his prostrate enemy, and of which his owu pastoral
letters contained the otherwise incredible record. Had it been his
object to compel Henry to drain to its bitterest dregs the cup of
unprofitable humiliation — to exasperate to madness the Emperor
himself, and all who would resent as a personal wrong an insult to
the sovereign — and to transmit to the latest age a monument and
a hatred alike imperishable, of the extravagances of spiritual des-
potism, — he could have devised no fitter course.

Environed by many of the greatest Princes of Italy who owed
fealty and allegiance to the Emperor, Gregory affected to turn a
deaf ear to his solicitations. His humblest offers were spurned ;
his most unbounded acknowledgments of the sacerdotal authority
over the kings and kingdoms of the world were rejected. For
the distress of her royal kinsman, Matilda felt as women and as
monarchs feel ; but even her entreaties seemed to be fruitless.
Day by day, the same cold stern appeal to the future decisions of
the Diet to be convened at Augsburg, repelled the suit even of that
powerful intercessor. The critical point, at which prayers for re-
concilement would give way to indignation and defiance, had been
almost reached. Then, and not till then, the Pope condescended
to offer his ghostly pardon, on the condition that Henry would
surrender into his hands the custody of the crown, the sceptre, and
the other ensigns of royalty, and acknowledge himself unworthy
to bear the royal title. This, however, was a scandal on which
not even the proud spirit of the now triumphant priest dared to
insist, and to which not even the now abject heart of the Emperor
could be induced to submit. But the shame which was spared to
the Sovereign, was inflicted with relentless severity on the Man.

It was towards the end of January. The earth was covered
with snow, and the mountain streams were arrested by the keen
frost of the Apennines, when, clad in a thin penitential gar-
ment of white linen, and bare of foot, Henry, the descendant of so
many kings, and the ruler of so many nations, ascended slowly
and alone the rocky path which led to the outer gate of the for-
tress of Canossa. With strange emotions of pity, of wonder, and
of scorn, the assembled crowd gazed on his majestic form, and
noble features, as, passing through the first and the second gateway,
he stood in the posture of humiliation before the third, which re-
mained inexorably closed against his further progress. The rising

40 IIILDEBKAND.

sun found him there fasting ; and there the setting sun left him
stiff with cold, faint with hunger, and devoured by shame and ill-
suppressed resentment. A second day dawned, and wore tardily
away, and closed, in a continuance of the same indignities, poured
out on Europe at large in the person of her chief, by the Vicar of
the meek, the lowly, and the compassionate Eedeemer. A third
day came, and, still irreverently trampling on the hereditary lord
of the fairer half of the civilised world, Hildebrand once more
compelled him to prolong till nightfall this profane and hollow
parody on the real workings of the broken and contrite heart.

Nor was he imwarned of the activity and the strength of the
indignation aroused by this protracted outrage on every natural
sentiment, and every honest prejudice, of mankind. Lamenta-
tions and reproaches rang through the castle of Canossa. Murmurs
from Henry's inveterate enemies, and his own zealous adherents,
upbraided Grregory as exhibiting rather the cruelty of a tyrant,
than the rigour of an apostle. But the endurance of the sufferer
was the only measure of the inflexibility of the tormentor ; nor
was it till the unhappy monarch had burst away from the scene of
his mental and bodily anguish, and sought shelter in a neighbour-
ing convent, that the Pope, yielding at length to the instances of
Matilda, would admit the degraded suppliant into his presence.
It was the fourth day on which he had borne the humiliating garb
of an affected penitent, and, in that sordid raiment he drew near
on his bare feet to the more than imperial Majesty of the Church,
and prostrated himself, in more than servile deference, before the
diminutive and emaciated old man, " from the terrible glance of
whose countenance," we are told, " the eye of every beholder re-
coiled as from the lightning." Hunger, cold, nakedness, and
shame had, for the moment, crushed the gallant spirit of the
sufferer. He wept and cried for mercy, again and again renewing
his entreaties, until he had reached the lowest level of abasement
to which his own enfeebled heart, or the haughtiness of his great
antagonist, coidd depress him. Then, and not till then, did the
Pope condescend to revoke the anathema of the Vatican.

Cruel, however, were the tender mercies of the now exulting
Pontiff. He restored his fallen enemy at once to the communion,
and to the contempt, of his Christian brethren. The price of
pardon was a promise to submit himself to the future judgment of
the Apostolic See ; to resign his crown if that judgment should be
unfavourable to him ; to abstain meanwhile from the enjoyment
of any of his royal prerogatives or revenues ; to acknowledge that
his subjects had been lawfully released from their allegiance ; to
banish his former friends and advisers ; to govern his states, should

IIILDEBKAND. 41

lie regain them, in obedience to the papal couuselb; to enforce all
papal decrees ; and never to revenge his present humiliation. To
the observance of the terms thus dictated by the con([ueror, the
oaths of Henry himself, and of several Prelates and Princes as liis
sponsors, were pledged ; and then, in the name of Him who had
declared that His kingdom was not of this world, and as tlie suc-
cessor of Him who had forbidden to all Bishops any lordship over
the heritage of Christ, the solemn words of pontifical absolution
rescued the degraded Emperor from the forfeit to which he had
been conditionally sentenced by the confederates at Tribm-.

Another expiation was yet to be made to the injured majesty of
the Tiara. He in whom the dynasties of CiBsar, of Charlemagne,
and of Otho had their representative, might still be compelled to
endure one last and galling contumely. Holding in his hand
the seeming bread, which (as he believed) words of far more than
miraculous power had just transmuted into the very body which
died and was entombed at Calvary — "Behold!" exclaimed the
Pontiff, fixing his keen and flashing eye on the jaded countenance
of the unhappy Monarch, " behold the body of the Lord ! Be it
this day the witness of my innocence. May the Almighty Grod
now free me from the suspicion of the guilt of which I have been
accused by thee and thine, if I be really innocent ! May He this
very day smite me with a sudden death, if I be really guilty ! "
Amidst the acclamations of the bystanders, he then looked up to
heaven, and broke and ate the consecrated element. " And now,"
he exclaimed, turning once more on the awe-stricken Henry that
eye which neither age could dim nor pity soften ; " if thou art
conscious of thine innocence, and assured that the charges brought
against thee by thine o\^^l opponents are false and calumnious, free
the Church of God from scandal, and thyself from suspicion, and
take as an appeal to heaven this body of the Lord."

That, in open contradiction to his own recent prayers and pen-
ances, the penitent should have accepted this insulting challenge,
was obviously impossible. He trembled, and evaded it. At
length when his wounded spirit, and half-lifeless frame, could
endure no more, a banquet was served, where, suppressing the
agonies of shame and rage with which his bosom was to heave
from that moment to his last, he closed this scene of wretchedness,
by accepting the hospitalities, sharing in the familiar discourse,
and submitting to the benedictions, of the man who had in his
person given proofs, till then uniraagined, of the depths of ig-
nominy to which the Temporal chief of Christendom might be
depressed by an audacious use of the powers of her Ecclesiastical
head.

42 IIILDEBKAND.

The Lombard lords who had hailed the arrival of their Sovereign
in Italy, had gradually overtaken his rapid advance to Canossa.
There, marshalled in the adjacent valleys, they anxiously awaited,
from day to day, intelligence of what might be passing within the
fortress, when at length the gates were thrown open, and, attended
only by the usual episcopal retinue, a bishop was seen to descend
from the steep path which led to their encampment. He an-
nounced that Henry had submitted himself to the present dis-
cipline and to the future guidance of the Pope, and had received
his ghostly absolution ; and that on the same terms his Holiness
was ready to bestow the same grace on his less guilty followers.
As the tidings of this papal victory flew from rank to rank, the
mountains echoed with one protracted shout of indignation and
defiance. The Lombards spurned the pardon of Hildebrand — an
usurper of the Apostolic throne, himself excommunicated by the
decrees of German and Italian Synods. They denied the authority
of the Emperor, debased as he now was by concessions unworthy
of a king, and by indignities disgraceful to a soldier. They vowed
to take the crown from his dishonoured head, to place it on the
brows of his son, the yet infant, Conrad ; to march immediately to
Rome, and there to depose the proud Churchman who had thus
dared to humble to the dust the majesty of the Franconian line,
and of the T^ombard name.

In the midst of this military tumult, the gates of Canossa -vyere
a^^ain thrown open, and Henry himself was seen descending to the
camp, his noble figure bowed down, and his lordly countenance
overcast with unwonted emotions. As he passed along the Lom-
bard lines, every eye expressed contempt, and derision was on every
tono-ue. But the Italian was not the German spirit. They could
at once despise and obey. Following the standard of their de-
graded monarch, they conducted him to Reggio, where, in a con-
clave of ecclesiastics, he instantly proceeded to concert schemes for
their deliverance, and for his own revenge.

Within a single week from the absolution of Canossa, Gregory
was on his way to Mantua to hold a council, to which the Em-
peror had invited him, with the treacherous design (if the papal
historians may be credited) of seizing and imprisoning him there.
The vigilance of Matilda rescued her Holy Father from the real or
imaginary danger. From the banks of the Po she conducted him
back, under the escort of her troops, to the shelter of her native
mountain fastness. His faith in his own infallibility must have
undergone a severe trial. The Imperial sinner he had pardoned
was giving daily proof that the heart of man is not to be penetrated
even by Papal eyes. Henry was exercising, with ostentation, the

IIILDEBRAND. 43

prerogatives he had so lately vowed to forego. He had cast off the
abject tone of the confessional. All his royal instincts were in full
activity. He breathed defiance against the Pontiff — seized and
imprisoned his legates — recalled to his presence his excommuni-
cated councillors — became once more strenuous for his rights — and
was recompensed by one simultaneous burst of sympathy, enthu-
siasm, and devotedness, from his Italian subjects.

To balance the ominous power thus rising against him, Gregory
now received an accession of dignity and of influence on which his
eulogists are unwilling to dwell. The discipline of the Church, and
the fate of the Empire, were not the only subjects of his solicitude
while sheltered in the castle and city of the Tuscan heroine. The
world was startled and scandalised by the intelligence, that his
princely hostess had granted all her hereditary states to her Apos-
tolic guest, and to his successors for ever, in full allodial dominion.
By some sage of the law, who drew up the act of cession, it is as-
cribed to her dread of the Emperor's hostility. A nobler impulse
is ascribed to the mistress of Ligui-ia and Tuscany, in the hobbling
verses of her more honest chaplain. Peter, he says, bore the keys
of heaven, and Matilda had resolved to bear the Etrurian keys of
Peter's patrimony, in no other character than that of doorkeeper
to Peter. With what benignity the splendid inheritance was ac-
cepted, may also be learned from the worthy versifier. At this
hour Pope Gregory the Sixteenth holds some parts of his territorial
dominion in virtue of this grant. Hildebrand is one of the saints of
the Church, and one of the heroes of the world. He, therefore,
escapes the reproach of so grave an abuse of the hospitality of the
Great Countess, and of the confidence she reposed in her spiritual
guide. The coarser reproach in which it has involved them both
will be adopted by no one who has ever watched the weaving of
the mystic bonds which knit together the female and the sacerdotal
hearts. It was the age of feudalism, not of chivalry. Yet when
chivalry came, and St. Louis himself adorned it, would he, if so
tried, have resisted the temptation under which St. Gregory fell ?
•It is, probably, well for the fame of that illustrious prince that his
virtue was never subjected to so severe a test.

Canossa, the scene of this memorable cession, was, at the same
time, the prison of him to whom it was made. All the passes were
beset with Henry's troops. All the Lombard and Tuscan cities
were in Henry's possession. His reviving courage had kindled the
zeal of his adherents. He was no longer an outcast to be trampled
down with impunity ; but the leader of a formidable host, with
whom even the Vicar of Christ must condescend to temporise.

In the wild defiles of the Alps, swift messengers from the Princes

44 IIILDEBRAND.

to the Pope hurried past solemn legates from the Pope to the
Princes — they urging his instant appearance at Augsburg — he
exhorting them to avoid any decision in his absence. Mitred
emissaries also -passed from Gregory to the Emperor, summoning
him to attend the Diet within a time by which no one unwafted
by wings or steam could have reached the place, and requesting
from him a suicidal safe-conduct for his pontifical judge. The
Pope was now confined to the weapons with which men of the
gown contend with men of the sword. His prescience foreboded
a civil war. His policy was to assume the guidance of the
Grerman league just far enough to maintain his lofty claims, not
far enough to be irrevocably committed to the leaguers. A
plausible apology for his absence was necessary. It was afforded
by Henry's rejection of demands which were made only that they
might be rejected.

To Otho and to the aspiring Eudolf such subtleties were alike
imfamiliar and unsuspected. Those stout soldiers and simple
Germans knew that the Pope had deposed their King, and had
absolved them from their allegiance. They doubted not, therefore,
that he was bound heart and soul to their cause. Or if, in the
assembly which they held at Forcheim, a doubt was whispered of
Italian honour or of Pontifical faith, it was silenced by the presence
there of Papal legates, w^ho sedulously swelled the tide of invective
against Henry. At first, indeed, they dissuaded the immediate
choice of a rival sovereign. But to the demand of the Princes for
prompt and decisive measures, they gave their ready assent. They
advised them, it is true, to confer no hereditary title on the object
of their choice. Yet when, in defiance of that advice, the choice
was made, they solemnly confirmed it in the name, and by the
authority, of Gregory. They did not, certainly, vote for the elec-
tion of Eudolf ; but, when the shouts of the multitude announced
his accession to the Teutonic throne, they placed the crown on his
head. That Hildebrand did not disavow these acts of his repre-
sentatives, but availed himself of the alliances and aids to be derived
from them, appeared to these downright captains abundantly suffi-
cient to bind him in conscience and in honour. That the Pope
had not the slightest intention of being so bound, unless it should
chance to suit his own convenience, is, however, past dispute.
Even in the nineteenth century he has found, in M. I'Abbe Jager,
an apologist who absolves him from all responsibility for the acts
of his legates at the Diet of Forcheim, because they were adopted
without awaiting his own personal arrival. The Diet might just
as reasonably have awaited the arrival of the Millenniiim.

The decretals of Rome, of Tribur, of Canossa, and of Forcheim,

IIILDEBR^VND. 45

were now to bear their proper fruits — fruits of bitter taste, and of
evil augury. At the moment when the cathedral of jNIentz was
pouring forth the crowds who had just listened to the coronation
oath of Rudolf, the clash of arms, the cries of combatants, and the
shrieks of the dying, mingled, strangely and mournfully, with the
sacred anthems and the songs of revellers. An idle frolic of some
Swabian soldiers had kindled into rage the sullen spirit with which
the partisans of Henry had gazed on that unwelcome pageant ; and
the first rude and exasperated voice was echoed by thousands who
learned, from those acclamations, the secret of their niunbers and
their strength. The discovery and the agitation spread from city
to city, and roused the whole Grerman people from the Ehine to
the Oder. Men's hearts yearned over their exiled king. They
remembered that, but twelve short years before, he had been
basely stolen from his mother by churchmen, who had yet more
basely corrupted him. They commemorated his courage, his
courtesy, and his munificence. They pardoned his faults as the
excesses of 3-outh, and resented, as insults to themselves, the indig-
nities of Canossa, and the treason of Forcheim. In this reflux of
public opinion, the loyal and the brave, all who cherished the
honours of the crown, and all who desired the independence of the
state, were supported by the multitudes to whom the papal edicts
against simony and clerical marriages were fraught with disaster,
and by that still more numerous body who, at all times, lend their
voices and their arms to swell the triumph of every rising cause.
To this confederacy Rudolf had to oppose the alliance of the
princes, secular and ecclesiastical, the devoted zeal of the Saxon
people, and the secret support, rather than the frank and open
countenance of the Pope. The shock of these hostile powers was
near and inevitable.

In the spring of 1077, tidings were spread throughout Germany
of the Emperor's arrival to the northward of the Alps. From
Franconia, the seat of his house, from the fruitful province of
Burgundy, and from the Bohemian mountains, he was greeted with
an enthusiastic welcome. Many even of the Bavarians and
Swabians revolted in his favour. His standard once more floated
over all the greater citadels of the Rhine. He who, six months
before, had fled from Spires a solitary wanderer, was now at the
head of a powerful array, controlling the whole of Southern
Germany, laying waste the territories of his rivals, and threatening
them with a signal retribution.

Amidst the rising tempest the voice of Gregory was heard : but
it was no longer trumpet-tongued and battling with the storm.
The supreme earthly judge, the dread avenger, had subsided into

46 HILDEBRAND.

the pacific mediator. In the name of Peter he enjoined either
king to send him a safe-conduct, that he might, in person, arbitrate
between them and stop the effusion of Christian blood. A safe
but an impracticable offer; an indirect but significant avowal of
neutrality between the sovereign he had so lately deposed and the
sovereign whom, by his legates, he had so lately crowned ! Thus
ignobly withdrawing from the contest he had kindled, Hildebrand
returned from Canossa to the papal city. The Great Countess, as
usual, attended as the commander of his guard. Eome received in
triumph her new Grermanicus, and decreed an ovation to his ever
faithful Agrippina.

While the glories of Canossa were thus celebrated by rejoicings
in the Christian capital, they were expiated by blood in the plains
of Saxony. Confiding in the solemn acts of the Pope and his
legates, the Saxons had thronged to the defence of the crown of
Kudolf, and they had sustained it undauntedly. But the bravest
quailed at the intelligence that Gregory had disowned the cause of
the Church and of their native land ; and that, even in the palace
of the Lateran, the ambassadors of Henry were received with
honours, and with a deference denied to the humbler envoys of his
rival. Sagacity far inferior to that of Hildebrand could, at that
time, have divined that the sword alone could decide such a
quarrel — that the sword of Henry was the keener of the two — and
that, by the cordial adoption of the cause of either, the Pope
might draw on himself the vengeance of the conqueror. To pause,
to vacillate, and to soothe, had therefore become the policy of the
sovereign of the papal states ; but to be silent or inactive in such
a strife would have been to abdicate one of the highest prerogatives
of the Papacy. Pontifical legates traversed Europe. Pontifical
epistles demanded the submission of the combatants. Pontifical
warning denounced woes on the disobedient. But no pontifical
voice explained who was to be obeyed or who opposed, what was to
be done or what forborne. Discerning readers of these mandates
understood them as an intimation that, on the victorious side
(whichever that side might be) the pontifical power would ulti-
mately be found.

The appeal from these dark oracles to the unambiguous sword
was first made by the rival kings in the autumn of 1078. They
met on the banks of the Stren, on the plains of Melrichstadt.
Each was driven from the field vnth enormous loss; Henry by
his inveterate antagonist Otho; Eudolf by Count Herbard, the
lieutenant of Henry. Each claimed the victory. An issue so un-
decisive could draw from the circumspect Pontiff nothing more
definite than renewed exhortations to rely on the Holy Peter; and

IIILDEBRAND. 47

could urge him to 110 measure more hazardous than that of con-
vening a new Council at the Lateran. There appeared tlie Imperial
envoys with hollow vows of obedience, and Saxon messengers in-
voking some intelligible intimation of the judgment and purposes
of the Apostolic See. Again the Pope listened, spoke, exhorted,
threatened ; and left the bleeding world to interpret as it might
the mystic sense of the Infallible.

To that brave and truth-loving people from whom, at the distance
of four centuries, Luther was to rise for the deliverance of man-
kind, these subterfuges appeared in their real light. The Saxon
annalist has preserved three letters sent by his countrymen on this
occasion to Gregory, which he must have read with admiration and
with shame. " You know, and the letters of your Holiness attest
(such is their indignant remonstrance) that it was by no advice, nor
for any interest of ours, but for wrongs done to the Hoi}'' See, that
you deposed our king, and forbade us, under fearful menaces, to
acknowledge him. We have obeyed you at great danger, and at
the expense of horrible sufferings. Many of us have lost their
property and their lives, and have bequeathed hopeless poverty to
their children. We who survive are without the means of sub-
sistence, delivered over to the utmost agonies of distress. The
reward of our sacrifices is, that he who was compelled to cast
himself at your feet has been absolved without punishment, and
has been permitted to crush us to the very abyss of misery. After
our king had been solemnly deposed in a Synod, and another chosen
in virtue of the Apostolic authority, the very matter thus decided
is again brought into question. What especially perplexes us
simple folk is, that the legates of Henry, though excommunicated
by your legates, are well received at Rome. Holy Father, your
piety assures us that you are guided by honourable, not l)y subtle
views; but we are too gross to understand them. We can only
explain to you that this management of two parties has produced
civil war, murder, pillage, conflagration. If we, helpless sheep !
had failed in any point of duty, the vengeance of the Holy See
would have overtaken us. Why exhibit so much forbearance when
you have to do with wolves who have ravaged the Lord's fold ?
We conjure you to look into your own heart, to remember your
own honour, to fear the wrath of God, and for your own sake, if not
for love of us, rescue yourself from responsibility for the torrents
of blood poured out in our land."

To these pathetic appeals Gregory answered slowly and re-
luctantly, by disavowing the acts of his legates at Forcheim ; by
extolling his own justice, courage, and disinterestedness ; by in-
voking the support of all orders of men in Germany; and by

48 IIILDEBKAND.

assuring them, in scriptural language, of the salvation of such " as
should persevere to the end." But the hour for blandishments had
passed away. The day of wrath, and the power of the sword, had
come.

The snow covered the earth, and the frost had chained the rivers,
when, in the winter of 1079-80, the armies of Henry and Kudolf
were drawn up, in hostile lines, at the village of Fladenheim, near
Mulhausen. Henry was the assailant, but Rudolf, though driven
with great loss from the field, was the conqueror ; for in that field
the dreaded Otho again commanded, and by his skill and courage
a rout was turned into a victory.

The intelligence arrived at Rome at the moment when Grregory
was presiding there in the most numerous of the many councils he
had convened at the Lateran. Long-suppressed shame for his
ignoble indecision, the murmurs of the assembled prelates, a voice
from Heaven audible, as we are told, to his sense alone, and
above all the triumphant field of Fladenheim, combined to over-
come his long-cherished but timid policy. Rising from his throne
with the majesty of his earlier days, the Pope, in the names of
Peter and of Paul, " of God, and of his holy mother Mary," ex-
communicated Henry, took from him the government of his states,
deprived him of his royal rank, forbade all Christian people to
receive him as their king, " gave, granted, and conceded " that
Rudolf might rule the Grerman and Italian Empire ; and with
blessings on Rudolf's adherents, and curses on his foes, dissolved
the assembly. Then, moved, as he believed by a divine impulse,
he proceeded to the altar, and uttered a prediction that ere the
Church should celebrate the festival of the Prince of the Apostles,
Henry, her rebellious outcast, should neither reign, nor live, to
molest her.

A perilous prophecy ! Henry was no longer the exile of Tribur,
nor the penitent of Canossa. Yet his own rage, on hearing of this
new papal sentence, did not burn so fiercely as the WTath of his
adherents.

With the sanction of thirty bishops, a new Anti-Pope, Guibert
of Ravenna, was elected at Brixen ; and, at every court in Europe
Imperial embassies demanded support for the common cause of all
temporal sovereigns. In every part of Grermany troops were levied,
and Henry marched at their head to crush the one German power
in alliance with Rome. But that power was still animated by the
Saxon spirit, and was still sustained by the claims of Rudolf, and
by the genius of Otho.

On the bright dawn of an autumnal day his forces, drawn up on
the smiling banks of the Elster, raised the sacred song of the

niLDEBRAND. 49

Hebrews, — "God staiidetli in the congregation of princes; lie
is a judge among Gods ; " — and flung themselves on the far-
extended lines of Henry's army ; who, with emulous devotion, met
them with the hardly less sublime canticle, — " Te Deum laudamus."
Cries more welcome to the demons of war soon stilled these sacred
strains ; cries of despair, of anguish, and of terror. They first
rose from one of Henry's squadrons, which, alarmed by the fall of
their captain, receded ; and, in their retreat, spread through the
rest a panic, a pause, and a momentary confusion. That moment
was enough for the eagle glance of Otho. He rushed on the
wavering Imperialists ; and, ere that bright sun had reached the
meridian, thousands had fallen by the Saxon sword, or had perished
in the blood-stained river. The victory was complete, the exulta-
tion rapturous. Shouts of glory to the God of battles, thanks-
givings for the deliverance of Saxony, paeans of immortal honour
to Otho, the noblest of her sons, soothed or exasperated the agonies
of the dying ; when the triumph was turned into sudden and irre-
mediable mourning. On the field which had, apparently, secured
his crown, Eudolf himself had fallen. He fell by an illustrious
arm. Godfrey of Bouillon, the hero of the Jerusalem Delivered,
struck the fatal blow. Another sword severed the right hand from
the arm of Eudolf. " It is the hand," he cried, as his glazing eye
rested on it, " with which I confirmed my fealty to Henry my
lord." At once elevated by so signal a victory, and depressed by
these penitent misgivings, his spirit passed away, leaving his
adherents to the mercy of his rival.

The same sun which witnessed the ruin of Henry's army on the
Elster, looked down on a conflict, in which, on that eventful
morning, the forces of Matilda, in the Mantuan territory, fled
before his own. He now, once more, descended into Italy. He
came, not, as formerly, a pilgrim and an exile ; but at the head
of an army devoted to his person, and defying all carnal enemies,
and all spiritual censures. He came to encounter Hildebrand,
destitute of all Transalpine alliances, and supported, even in Italy,
by no power but that of Matilda ; for the Norman Duke of Apulia
was far away, attempting the conquest of the Eastern capital and
Empire, But Henry left in his rear the invincible Saxons, and the
hero who commanded them. To prevent a diversion in that
quarter the Emperor proposed to abdicate his dominion in Saxony
in favour of Conrad, his son. But Otho (a merry talker, as his
annalist informs us) rejected the project with the remark, that "the
calf of a vicious bull usually proved vicious." Leaving, therefore,
this implacable enemy to his machinations, the Emperor pressed
forward; and before the summer of 1080, the citizens of Rome saw,

50 IIILDEBEAND.

from their walls, tlie German standards in hostile array in the
Campagna.

In the presence of such danger the gallant spirit of the aged
Pope once more rose and exulted. He convened a Synod to attest
his last defiance of his formidable enemy. He exhorted the Ger-
man princes to elect a successor to Eudolf. In letters of impas-
sioned eloquence, he again maintained his supremacy over all the
kings and rulers of mankind. He welcomed persecution as the
badge of his holy calling ; and, while the besiegers were at the gates,
he disposed (at least in words) of royal crowns, and distant pro-
vinces. Matilda supplied him with money, which, for a while,
tranquillised the Roman populace. He himself, as we are assured,
wrought miracles to extinguish conflagrations kindled by their
treachery. In language such as martyrs use, he consoled the part-
ners of his sufferings. In language such as heroes breathe, he ani-
mated the defenders of the city. The siege, or blockade, continued
for three years uninterruptedly, except when Henry's troops were
driven, by the deadly heats of autumn, to the neighbouring hills.
Distress, and, it is alleged, bribery, at length subdued the courage
of the garrison. On every side clamours were heard for peace ; for
Henry demanded, as the terms of peace, nothing more than the
recognition of his Imperial title, and his coronation by the hands
of Grregory. The conscience, perhaps the pride, of Gregory re-
volted against the proposal. His invincible will opposed and
silenced the outcries of the famished multitudes ; nor could their
entreaties, or their threats, extort from him more than a promise
that, in the approaching winter, he would propose the question to
a Pontifical Synod. It met, by the permission of Henry, on the
30th of November, 1083. It was the latest council of Gregory's
pontificate. A few bishops, faithful to their chief and to his cause,
now occupied the seats so often thronged by mitred churchmen.
Every pallid cheek and anxious eye was turned to him who occu-
pied the loftier throne in the centre of that agitated assembly. He
rose, and the half-uttered suggestions of fear and human policy were
hushed into deep stillness as he spoke. He spoke of the glorious
example, of the light affliction, and of the eternal reward, of mar-
tyrs for the faith. He spoke, as dying fathers speak to their
children, of peace, and hope, and of consolation. But he spoke
also, as inspired prophets spake of yore to the Kings of Israel, de-
nouncing the swift vengeance of Heaven against his oppressor.
The enraptured audience exclaimed that they had heard the voice
of an angel, not of a man. Gregory dismissed the assembly, and
calmly prepared for whatever extremity of distress might await
him.

IIILDEBRAND. 51

It did not linger. In the spring of 1084 the garrison was over-
powered, the gates were thrown open to the besiegers, and Gregory
sought a precarious refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo. He left the
great Church of the Lateran as a theatre for the triumph of his an-
tagonist and his rival. Seated on the Apostolic throne, Gruibert,
the Anti-Pope of Brixen, was consecrated there by the title of
Clement the Third ; and then, as the successor of Peter, he placed
the crown of Grermany and of Italy on the brows of Henry, and of
Bertha, as they knelt before him.

And now Henry had, or seemed to have, in his grasp the author
of the shame of Canossa, of the anathemas of the Lateran, and of
the civil wars and rebellious of the Empire. The base populace of
Eome were already anticipating, with sanguinary joy, the humilia-
tion, perhaps the death, of the noblest si^irit who had reigned there
since the slaughter of Julius. The approaching catastrophe, what-
ever might be its form, Gregory was prepared to meet, with a serene
confidence in God, and a haughty defiance of man. A few hours
more, and the Castle of St. Angelo must have yielded to famine or
to assault ; when the aged Pope, in the very agony of his fate,
gathered the reward of the policy with which he had cemented the
alliance between the Papacy and the Norman conq\ierors of the
South of Italy. Eobert Guiscard, returning from Constantinople,
flew to the rescue of his Suzerain. Scouts announced to Henry the
approach of a mighty host, in which the Norman battle-axe, and
the cross, were strangely united with the Saracenic cimeter, and the
crescent. A precipitate retreat scarcely rescued his enfeebled
troops from the impending danger. He abandoned his prey in a
fever of disajspointment. Unable to slake his thirst for vengeance,
he might perhaps allay it by surprising the Great Countess, and
overwhelming her forces, still in arms in the Modenese. But he
was himself surprised in the attempt by her superior skill and vigi-
lance. Shouts for St. Peter and jNIatilda roused the retreating Im-
perialists by night, near the Castle of Sorbaria. They retired across
the Alps, with such a loss of men, of officers, and of treasure, as
disabled them from any further enterprises.

The Emperor returned into Germany to reign undisturbed l)y
civil Avar ; for the great Otho was dead, and Herman of Luxemburg,
who had assumed the Imperial title, was permitted to abdicate it
mth contemptuous impunity. Henry returned, however, to pre-
pare for new conflicts with the Papacy — to drain the cup of toil,
of danger, and of distress — and to die, at length, with a lieart
broken by the parricidal cruelty of his son. No prayers were said,
and no requiem sung, over the unhallowed grave which received
the bones of the excommunicated Monarch. Yet they were com-

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52 IIILDEBRAXD.

mitted to the earth with the best and the kindest obsequies. The
pity of his enemies, the lamentation of his subjects, and the un-
bidden tears of the poor, the widows and the orphans, who crowded
round the bier of their benefactor, rendered his tomb not less sacred
than if it had been blessed by the united prayers of the whole
Christian Episcopacy. Those unbribed mourners wept over a
Prince to whom Grod had given a large heart and a capacious mind ;
but who had derived, from canonised Bishops, a corrupting educa-
tion, and from a too early and too unchequered prosperity, the de-
velopment of every base and cruel appetite ; but to whom calamity
had imparted a self-dominion, from which none could withhold his
respect, and an active sympathy with sorrow, to which none could
refuse his love.

With happier fortunes, as, indeed, with loftier virtues, Matilda
continued, for twenty-five years, to wage war in defence of the
Apostolic See. After a life which might seem to belong to the
province of romance rather than of history, she died at the age of
seventy-five, bequeathing to the world a name second, in the
annals of her age, to none but that of Hildebrand himself.

To him the Norman rescue of the Papal city brought only a
momentary relief. He returned in triumph to the Lateran. But,
within a few hours, he looked from the walls of that ancient palace
on a scene of woe such as, till then, had never passed before
him. A sanguinary contest was raging between the forces of
Eobert and the citizens attached to Henry. Every street was bar-
ricaded ; every house had become a fortress. The pealing of bells,
the clash of arms, cries of fury, and shrieks of despair, assailed his
ears in dismal concert. When the sun set behind the Tuscan hills
on this scene of desolation, another light, and a still more fearful
struggle, succeeded. Flames ascended at once from every quarter.
They leaped from house to house, enveloping and destroying what-
ever was most splendid or most sacred, in the edifices of mediseval
Eome. Amidst the roar of the conflagration they had kindled, and
by its portentous light, the fierce Saracens, and the ruthless North-
men, revelled in plunder, lust, and carnage, like demons by the
glare of their native pandemonium. Gregory gazed with agony on
the real and present aspect of civil war. Perhaps he thought with
penitence on the wars he had kindled beyond the Alps. Two-thirds
of the city perished. Every convent was violated, every altar pro-
faned, and multitudes driven away into perpetual and hopeless
slavery.

Himself a voluntary exile, G-regory sought, in the Castle of
Salerno, and under the protection of the Normans, the secuiity he
could no longer find among his OAvn exasperated subjects. Age

HILDEBRAXD. 53

and anxiety weighed lieavily upon him. An unwonted lassitude
depressed a frame till now incapable of fatigue. He recognised
the summons of death, and his soul rose with unconquerable })ower
to entertain that awful visitant. He summoned round his bed the
Bishops and Cardinals who had attended his flight from Eome. He
passed before them, in firm and rapid retrospect, the incidents of
his eventful life. He maintained the truth of the great principles
by which it had been governed from the commencement to the
close. He named his three immediate successors in the Papacy.
He assured his weeping friends of his intercession for them in
heaven. He forgave, and blessed, and absolved his enemies,
though with the resolute exceptions of the Emperor and the Anti-
Pope. He then composed himself to die. His faltering lips had
closed on the transubstantiated elements. The final unction had
given assurance that the body, so soon to be committed to the dust,
would rise again in honour and incorruption. Anxious to catch
the last accents of that once oracular voice, the mourners were
bending over him, when, struggling in the very grasp of death, he
collected, for one last effort, his failing powers, and breathed out
his spirit with the indignant exclamation — "I have loved right-
eousness, and hated iniquity : and therefore I die in exile ! "

It was not permitted, even to the genius of Hildebrand, to con-
dense, into a single sentence, an epitome of such a life as his. It
was a life scarcely intelligible to his own generation, or to himself,
nor indeed to our age, except by the light of that ecclesiastical
history in which it forms so important an era.

It had ill beseemed the inspired wisdom of the tent-maker of
Tarsus, and of the Gralilean fishermen, to have founded on any other
than a popular basis, a society destined to encounter the enmity of
the dominant few, by the zeal of the devoted many. From the
extant monuments of their lives and writings, it accordingly appears
that they conceded to the lay multitude an ample share in the
finance, the discipline, and the legislation of the collective body.
The deacons were the tribunes of the Christian people. This was
the age of Proselytism.

In the sad and solemn times which followed, ecclesiastical autho-
rity became austere and arbitrary, and submission to it enthusiastic.
IVIartyrs, in the contemplation of mortal agonies, and of an opening
paradise, had no thoughts for the adjustment and balancing of
sacerdotal powers. They who braved the wild beasts of the amphi-
theatre, or the ascetic rigours of the wilderness, were the heroes
of the Church. The rest sank into a degraded caste. But all laid
bare their souls at the confessional. All acknowledged a dominion

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54 niLDEBEAND.

which, discountenanced by the state, sustained itself by extreme
and recondite maxims of government. In virtue of such maxims,
the Episcopal order encroached on every other. The vicarious attri-
butes of Deity were ascribed to those who ministered at the altar.
There, and at the font, gifts of inestimable price were placed, in
popular belief, at the disposal of the priest ; whose miracles, though
unattested by sense or consciousness, threw into the shade the
mightiest works of Moses and of Christ. This was the age of
Persecution.

Heretics arose. To refute them from the sacred text was some-
times difficult, always hazardous. It was easier to silence them by
a living authority. The Bishops came forth as the elect deposita-
ries of an unwritten code. Tradition became the rule of the
Christian world. It might crush the errors of Arius, but it might
sustain the usurpations of Ambrose. This was the age of Contro-
versy.

Constantine saw the miraculous cross, and worshipped. He
confirmed to the Christian hierarchy all their original, and all their
acquired, powers. This was the age of the Church and State
alliance.

The seat of empire was transferred from the Tiber to the Bos-
phorus. The Eoman bishop and clergy seized on the vacant inhe-
ritance of abdicated authorit}^ The Pope became the virtual
sovereign of the Roman city. The Greeks and Latins became
ecclesiastical rivals. Then was first heard the Roman watchword,
and rallying cry, of the Visible Unity of the Church. This was the
age of Papal Independence.

Groths, Vandals, Huns, Bulgarians, Franks, and Lombards, con-
quered the dominions of Csesar.» But they became the converts
and tributaries of Peter. The repulse of the Saracens by Charles
Martel gave to Europe a new empire, to the Church a second Con-
stantine. This was the age of Barbaric Invasion.

Europe became one vast assemblage of military states. The
lands were everywhere partitioned by the conquerors among their
liegemen, who, having bound themselves to use their swords in
their lords' defence, imposed a similar obligation on their own
tenants, who, in turn, exacted it from their subordinate vassals.
This was the age of Feudalism and of Hildebrand.

He ascended the Apostolic throne, therefore, armed with pre-
scriptions in favour of the loftiest claims of the hierarchy, thus
reaching back almost to the apostolic times. But he found in the
Papal armoury other weapons scarcely less keen, though of a more
recent fabric. Of these the most effective were the intimate
alliance of the Roman See with the monastic orders, and the re-

IIILDEBRAND. 55

appearance, in theological debate, of that mystic word which, seven
centuries before, had wrought such prodigies at Nicasa. He wlio
first taught men to speak of an Hypostatic change beneath
unchanging forms, may have taught them to use words without
meaning. But though he added little or nothing to the received
doctrines of the Church, he made an incalculable addition to the
sacerdotal power.

To grasp, to multiply, and to employ these resources in such a
manner as to render the Eoman Pontiff the suzerain of the civilised
world, was the end for which Hildebrand lived — an unworthy end,
if contrasted with the high and holy purposes of the Gospel — an
end even hateful, if contrasted with the free and generous spirit in
which the primitive foimders of the Church had established and
inculcated her liberties — yet an end which miglit well allure a
noble spirit in the eleventh century, and the attainment of whicli
(so far as it was attained) may be now acknowledged to have been
conducive, perhaps essential, to the progress of Christianity and
civilisation.

To the spiritual despotism of Rome in the middle ages may,
indeed, be traced a long series of errors and crimes, of wars and
persecutions. Yet the Papal dynasty was the triumphant antago-
nist of another despotism the most galling, the most debasing, and
otherwise the most irremediable, under which Europe had ever
groaned. The centralisation of ecclesiastical power more than
balanced the isolating spirit of the feudal oligarchies. The Viissal
of Western, and the serf of Eastern Europe, might otherwise, at
this day, have been in the same social state, and military autocra-
cies might now be occupying the place of our constitutional or
paternal governments. Hildebrand's despotism, with whatever
inconsistency, sought to guide mankind, by moral impulses, to a
more than human sanctity. The feudal despotism with which he
waged war, sought, with a stern consistency, to degrade them into
beasts of prey, or beasts of burden. It was the conflict of mental
with physical power, of literature with ignorance, of religion with
injustice and debauchery. To the Popes of the middle ages was
assigned a province, the abandonment of which would have plunged
the Church and the World into the same hopeless slavery. To
Pope Grregory the Seventh were first given the genius and the
courage to raise himself and his successors to the level of that
high vocation.

Yet Hildebrand was the founder of a tyranny only less odious
than that which he arrested, and was apparently actuated by an
ambition neither less proud, selfish, nor reckless, than that of his

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56 IIILDEBKAXD.

secular antagonists. In the great economy of Providence, human
agency is ever alloyed by some base motives ; and the noisiest
success recorded by history, must still be purchased at the price of
some great ultimate disaster.

To the title of the Czar Peter of the Church, conferred on him by
M. Guizot, Hildebrand's only claim is, that by the energy of his
will, he moulded her institutions, and her habits of thought, to his
own purposes. But the Czar wrought in the spirit of an architect
who invents, arranges, and executes his own plan : Hildebrand in
the spirit of a builder, erecting by divine command a temple of
which the divine hand had drawn the design, and provided the
materials. His faith in what he judged to be the purposes and the
will of Heaven, was not merely sublime, but astounding. He is
everywhere depicted, in his own letters, the habitual denizen of
that bright region which the damps of fear never penetrate, and
the shadows of doubt never overcast.

To extol him as one of those Christian stoics whom the wreck of
worlds could not divert from the straight paths of integrity and
truth, is a mere extravagance. His policy was Imperial; his
resources and his arts Sacerdotal. Anathemas and flatteries, stern
defiances and subtle insinuations, invectives such as might have
been thundered by Grenseric, and apologies such as might have
been whispered by Augustulus, succeed each other in his story,
with no visible trace of hesitation or of shame. Even his professed
orthodoxy is rendered questionable by his conduct and language
towards Berengarius, the great opponent of transubstantiation.
With William of England, Philip of France, and Eobert of Apulia,
and even with Henry of Germany, he temporised at the expense of
his own principles as often as the sacrifice seemed advantageous.
" Nature gave horns to Bulls." To aspiring and belligerent Church-
men she gave Dissimulation and Artifice.

Our exhausted space forbids the attempt to analyse or delineate
the personal character of the great founder of the spiritual despo-
tism of Eome. His acts must stand in place of such a jDortraiture.
He found the Papacy dependent on the Empire : he sustained her
by alliances almost commensurate with the Italian Peninsula. He
found the Papacy electoral by the Eoman people and clergy : he
left it electoral by a college of Papal nomination. He found the
Emperor the virtual patron of the Holy See : he wrested that
power from his hands. He found the secular clergy the allies and
dependants of the secular power : he converted them into the
inalienable auxiliaries of his own. He found the higher ecclesiastics
in servitude to the temporal sovereigns: he delivered them from

IIILDEBRAXD. 57

that yoke to subjugate them to the Eoraau Tiara. He found the
patronage of the Church the mere desecrated spoil and merchandise
of princes : he reduced it within the dominion of the Supreme
Pontiff. He is celebrated as the reformer of the impure and
profane abuses of his age : he is more justly entitled to the praise
of having left the impress of his own gigantic character on the
history of all the ages which have succeeded him.

SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSIST.

It was a noble design which died with Eobert Southey. His
History of the Monastic Orders would not perhaps have poured a
laro-e tribute of philosophy, divine or human, into the ocean of
knowledo"e; but how graceful would have been the flow of that
transparent narrative, and how would it have reflected and enhanced
the beauty of every rich champaign, and of every towering pro-
montory, along which it would have swept ! Peremptory and
dogmatical as he was, he addressed himself to the task of instruct-
ino- his own and future generations, with a just sense of the dignity,
and of the responsibilities, of that high ofiice. He was too brave
a man, and too sound a Protestant, to shrink from any aspect of
truth ; nor would he ever have supposed that he could promote
a legitimate object of ecclesiastical history, by impairing the well-
earned fame of any of the worthies of the Church, because they
had been entangled in the sophistries, or the superstitions, of the
ages in which they flourished.

M. Chavin de Malan has adopted the project of our fellow-
countryman, and is publishing a Monastic History in a series of
frao-ments, among which is a volume on the founder and the pro-
o-ress of the Franciscan Order. Though among the most passionate
and uncompromising devotees of the Church of Rome, M. Chavin
de Malan is also in one sense a Protestant. He protests against
any exercise of human reason in examining any dogma which that
Church inculcates, or any fact which she alleges. The most
merciless of her cruelties affect him with no indignation, the
silliest of her prodigies mth no shame, the basest of her super-
stitions with no contempt. Her veriest dotage is venerable in his
eyes. Even the atrocities of Innocent the Third seem, to this all
extolling eulogist, but to augment the triumph and the glories of
his reign. If the soul of the confessor of Simon de Montfort,
retaining all the passions and all the prejudices of that sera, should
transmigrate into a Doctor of the Sorbonne, conversant with the
arts and literature of our own times, the result might be the pro-

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSTSI. 59

duction of such an Ecclesiastical History as that of wliich
M. de Malan has given us a specimen — elaborate in research,
o-lowing in style, vivid in portraiture ; utterly reckless and indis-
criminate in belief; extravagant, up to the very verge of idolatry,
in applause ; and familiar, far beyond the verge of indecorum,
with the most awful topics and objects of the Christian faith.

The episode of which M. Chavin de Malan disposes in his Life
of Francis of Assisi, is among the most curious and important in
the annals of the Church ; and the materials for svich a biography
are more than usually copious and authentic. First in order are
the extant writings, ■ — ■ consisting chiefly of letters, colloqiues,
poems, and predictions, — of the Saint himself. His earliest
biographer, Thomas of Celano, was his follower and his personal
friend. Three of the intimate associates of the Saint (one of them
his confessor) compiled a joint narrative of his miracles and his
labours. Bonaventura, himself a Greneral of the Franciscan Order,
wrote a celebrated life of the Founder, whom in his infancy he
had seen. And lastly, there is a chronicle called Fioretti di San
Francisco, which, though not written till half a century after his
death, has always been held in much esteem by the hagiographers.
Within the last thirty years a new edition of it has been published
at Verona. On these five authorities all the more recent narratives
are founded. Yet the works of Thomas de Celano, and of the
" Tres Socii," with the writings of Francis himself, are the only
sources of contemporary intelligence strictly so called ; although
Bonaventura and the chronicler of the Fioretti had large oppor-
tunities of ascertaining the reality of the facts they have related.
How far they availed themselves of that advantage, may be partly
inferred from the following brief epitome of those occurrences.

The city of Assisi, in Umbria, was a mart of some importance
in the latter half of the twelfth century. At that period it could
boast no merchant more adventurous or successful than Pietro
Bernadone di Mericoni. Happy in a thriving trade, and happier
still in an affectionate wife^ he was above all happy in the pros})ect
of the fixture eminence of his son Francisco. The foremost in
every feat of arms, and the gayest in every festival, the youth was
at the same time assiduous in the counting-house ; and though his
expenditure was profuse, it still flowed in such channels as to attest
the princely munificence of his spirit. The brightest eyes in
Assisi, dazzled by so many graces, and the most reverend brows
there, acknowledging such early wisdom, were alike bent with
complacency towards him ; and all conspired to sustain his father's
belief, that, in his person, the name of Bernadone would rival
the proudest of those whom neither Transalpine conquerors, nor the

60 SxVINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

Majesty of tlie Tiara, disdained to propitiate in the guilds of
Venice or of Pisa.

Uniform, alas ! is the dirge of all the generations of mankind,
over hopes blossoming but to die. In a combat with the citizens
of Perugia, Francis was taken prisoner ; and, after a captivity of
twelve months, was released only to encounter a disease, which, at
the dawn of manhood, brought him within view of the gates of
death. Long, earnest, and inquisitive was his gaze into the in-
scrutable abyss on which they open ; and when at length he
returned to the duties of life, it was in the awe-stricken spirit of
one to whom those dread realities had been unveiled. The world
one complicated imposture, all sensible delights so many polluting
vanities, human praise and censure but the tinkling of the cymbals,
— what remained but to spurn these empty shadows, that so he
might grasp the one imperishable object of man's sublunary
existence ? His alms became lavish. His days and nights were
consumed in devout exercises. Prostrate in the crowded church,
or in the recesses of the forest, his agitated frame attested the
conflict of his mind. He exchanged dresses with a tattered
mendicant, and pressed to his bosom a wretch rendered loathsome
by leprosy. But as he gradually gathered strength from these
self-conquests, or as returning health restored the tone and vigour
of his nerves, his thoughts, reverting to the lower world, wandered
in search of victories of another order.

Walter of Brienne was in arms in the Neapolitan States against
the Emperor ; the weak opposed to the powerful ; the Italian to
the Grerman ; the Gruelph to the Grhibelline ; and Francis laid him
down to sleep, resolved that, with the return of day, he would join
the " Grentle Count," as he was usually called, in resisting the
oppressor to the death. In his slumbers a vast armoury seemed
to open to his view ; and a voice commanded him to select from
the burnished weapons with which it was hung, such as he could
most effectually wield against the impious enemy of the Church.
The dreamer awoke; and in prompt submission to the celestial
mandate, laid aside the serge gown and modest bonnet of his craft,
and exhibited himself to his admiring fellow-citizens armed cap-a-
pie, and urging on his war-horse towards the encampment of his
destined leader. At Spoleto fatigue arrested his course. Again he
slept, and again the voice was heard. It annoimced to him that
the martial implements of his former vision were not, as he had
supposed, such as are borne beneath a knightly banner against a
carnal adversary, but arms of spiritual temper, to be directed, in
his native city, against the invisible powers of darkness. He
listened and obeyed ; and Assisi re-opened her gates to her re-

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 61

turning warrior, resolute to break a lance with a more fearful foe
then was ever sent by the Emperor into the field.

To superficial judges it probably appeared as if that dread an-
tagonist had won an easy triumph over his young assailant. For
Francis was seen once more the graceful leader of the civic revels,
bearing in his hand the sceptre of the king of frolic, and followed
by a joyous band, who made the old streets echo with their songs.
As that strain arose, however, a dark shadow gathered over the
countenance of the leader, and amid the general chorus his voice
was unheard. " Why so grave, Francis ? Art thou going to be
married? " exclaimed one of the carollers. " I am," answered Francis,
" and to a lady of such rank, wealth, and beauty, that the world can-
not produce her like." He burst from the jocund throng in search
of her, and was ere long in her embrace. He vowed to take her " for
his wedded wife, for better for worse, to love and to cherish till
death should them part." The lady was Poverty. The greatest
poet of Italy and the greatest orator of France have celebrated their
nuptials. But neither Dante nor Bossuet was the inventor of the
parable. It was ever on the lips of Francis himself, that Poverty
Avas his bride, that he was her devoted husband, and the whole
Franciscan order their offspring.

His fidelity to his betrothed lady was inviolate, but was not un-
assailed by temptation. Pleasure, wealth, ambition, were the syrens
who, with witching looks and songs, attempted to divert him from
his Penelope ; and when he could no longer combat, he at least
could fly, the fascination. Wandering in the Umbrian hills, he
wept and fasted, and communed with the works of Grod ; till raised
to communion with their Maker, he knelt in a rustic church which
the piety of ancient times had consecrated there to the memory of
St. Damiano.

The voice which directed his path in life was heard again.
" Seest thou not," it cried, " that my temple is falling into ruins ?
Eestore it." Again the spirit of interpretation failed him. Instead
of addressing himself to renovate the spiritual, he undertook the
repairs of the material fabric — an arduous task for the future
spouse of Poverty ! But obedience was indispensable. Eising
from his knees, he hastened to his father's warehouse; laded a
stout palfrey with silks and embroideries ; sold both horse and goods
at the neighbouring town of Foligno ; and laid down the money at
the feet of the officiating priest of St. Damiano. The more cautious
churchman rejected the gold. Francis indignantly cast it into tlie
mire ; and vowed that the building so solemnly committed to his
care should become his dwelling-place and his home, till the Divine
behest had been fulfilled.

G2 SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSISI.

During all this time hallucinations of his own, thougli of a far
different kind, had haunted the brain of the respectable Pietro
Bernadone. Grouping into forms ever new and brilliant, like
spangles shaken in a kaleidoscope, the ideas of bales and bills of
lading, of sea risks and of supercargoes, had combined with those of
loans to reckless crusaders and of the supply of hostile camps, to
form one gorgeous El Dorado, when intelligence of the loss of his
draperies, his .pack-horse, and his son, restored him to the waking-
world and to himself. The goods and the quadruped were gone
irrevocably. But as the exasperated father paced the streets of
Assisi, a figure emaciated with fasts and vigils, squalid with dirt,
and assailed by the filthy missiles of a hooting rabble, approached
him, and as it moved onwards with a measured tread, an uplifted
eye, and a serene aspect, it revealed to the old merchant, in this
very sorry spectacle of dignified suffering, the long-cherished
object of his ambitious hopes. What biographer even now can tell
the sequel without a blush ! Francis was hurried away from his
persecutors and his admirers, in the grasp of the elder Bernadone,
and, from his vigorous arm, received that kind of chastisement
under which heroism itself ceases to be sublime. The incensed
judge then passed a chain round the body of the youth, and left
him in a kind of domestic prison, there to satiate his love for
penances, until his own return from a journey to which the in-
exorable demands of his commerce had summoned him.

Wiser far and more gentle was the custody to which Francis was
transferred, and a voice was heard in his penitentiary full of a more
genuine inspiration than any of those by which his steps had been
hitherto guided. It was the voice of his mother, soothing her half-
distracted child in accents as calm and as holy as those which first
broke the silence of Eden. It spoke to him of maternal love, of
reconciliation, and of peace. But it addressed him in vain. He
was bound to leave father and mother, and to cleave to his be-
trothed wife, and to the duties of that indissoluble alliance. Con-
vinced at length of the vanity, perhaps trembling at the impiety,
of any further resistance, his mother threw open his prison doors,
and permitted him to escape to his sanctuary at St. Damiano.

In those hallowed precincts Francis found courage to oppose, and
constancy to disarm, the rage with which he was pursued by his
father. Gfradually, but surely, the mind of the old man embraced
the discovery, that, though dwelling on the same planet, he and
his son were inhabitants of different worlds. From that conviction
he advanced with incomparable steadiness to the practical results
involved in it. Why, he inquired, should a churchman, to whom
all earthly interests were as the fine dust in the balance, retain the

SAINT FKAXCIS OF ASSISI. 03

price of the pack-horse and of his pack ? The priest of St. Daini.-uio
immediately restored the scattered gold, which he had providently
gathered up. Why should a youth, Avho despised all treasures, hut
those laid up in heaven, retain his prospective right to a sublunary
inheritance? A renunciation of it was at once drawn up, si<nie(l,
and placed in his hands. Wliy should a candidate for cowl and
scapulary retain the goodly apparel in which he had reached his
place of refuge ? In a few moments the young probationer stootl
before him in his shirt. Carefully packing up the clothes, the
parchment, and the gold, the merchant returned to accumulate
more gold at Assisi. And here history takes her leave of him ;
without regret and without applause, but not without a sullen
acknowledgment that, after all, it was from the mortal Pictro that
the immortal Francis derived one inheritance which he could not
renounce — the inheritance of that inflexible decision of purpose
which elevated the father to distinction among the worshippers of
Mammon, and the son to eminence among the saints of Chris-
tendom.

It was indeed " an obstinate hill to climb.'" An orphan with
living parents, a beggar entitled to a splendid jiatrimony, he tra-
versed the mountains with the freedom of soul known only to
those for whom the smiles of fortune have no charm, and her
frowns no terror. Chanting divine canticles as he went, his voice
attracted the banditti who lurked in those fastnesses. They tossed
the w^orthless prize contemptuously into a snow drift. Half frozen,
he crawled to a neighbouring monastery, and was employed by the
monks as a scullion. He returned to the scene of his former
revels ; and obtained the cloak, the leathern girdle, and the staff,
of a pilgrim, as an alms from one who, in those brilliant days, had
confessed his superiority in every graceful art and in every feat of
chivalry. With the dress, he assumed the spirit, of a pilgrim ; and
devoted himself to the relief of the sorrows of those who like him-
self, though for a very different reason, were estranged from a cold
and a fastidious world.

The Crusaders had at this period introduced the Leprosy of the
East into all the countries embracing the Mediterranean Sea. A
ritual was compiled for the purpose of celebrating with impressive
solemnity the removal of the victims of that fearful malady from
all intercourse with their fellow Christians. It was a pathetic and
melancholy service, in which the sternest interdict was softened by
words of consolation and of pity. Nor were they words of empty
ceremonial. A sentiment of reverence towards those miserable
sufferers was widely diffused throughout the whole of Europe.
The obscurity which hung over the origin, the nature, and the

G4 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

cure of the disease, and the mysterious connexion in which it stood
to the warfare for the Holy Sepulchre, had induced that wonder-
loving age to invest it with a kind of sacred character. The
churchmen of the times availed themselves skilfully and kindly of
this popular feeling. They taught that Christ himself had re-
garded the leprous with peculiar tenderness ; and not content to
enforce this lesson from those parts of the evangelic narrative
which really confirm it, they advanced, by the aid of the Vulgate,
further still ; and quoted from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, a
prophecy in which, as they maintained, the Messiah himself was
foretold under the image of a leper. " Nos putavimus eum quasi
Leprosum, percussum a Deo, et humiliatum." Kings and princes
visited, countesses ministered to them, saints (as it was believed)
wrought miracles for their cure, and almost every considerable city
erected hospitals for their reception and relief.

Some time before his betrothment to Poverty, Francis, crossing
on horseback the plain which surrounds Assisi, unexpectedly drew
near to a leper. Controlling his involuntary disgust, the ridfer dis-
mounted and advanced to greet and to succour him ; but the leper
instantaneously disappeared. St. Bonaventura is sponsor for the
sequel of the tale. He who assumed this deplorable semblance
was, in reality, no other than the awful Being whom the typical
lanofuaofe of Isaiah had adumbrated. Little wonder, then, that
after his vows had been plighted to his austere bride, Francis had
faith to see, and charity to love, even in the leprous, the imperish-
able traces of the Divine image in which man was created, and the
brethren of the Divine sufferer by whom man was redeemed.

Yet, despite this triumph of the spiritual discernment over the
carnal sense, neither faith nor charity could subdue his natural
terror in the prospect of a continued and familiar intercourse with
such associates. Some distinct disclosure of the Divine will was
still requisite to such a self-immolation ; and such disclosures were
never long denied to him. The now familiar voice was heard
anew. " Hate what thou hast hitherto loved," it cried ; " Love what
thou hast hitherto hated." He listened, and became an inmate of
the Leprous Hospital at Assisi. With his own hands he washed
the feet and dressed the sores of the lepers; and once at least
reverently applied his lips to such a wound. The man (so says
St. Bonaventura) instantly became whole. "Whether shall we
most admire," he exclaims, " the miraculous power, or the courage-
ous humility of that kiss ? " A question to be asked of those who
believe in both. But even they who reject the miracle, will revere
the lovingkindness of such a sojourn among such unhappy out-
casts

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 65

In later days Francis became the father and the apostle of the
leprous; and when weightier cares withdrew him in person from
that charge, his heart still turned towards them with a father's
yearnings. Among his numerous followers, were some who, though
destitute of the higher gifts of intellect, were largely endowed
with the heroism of self-denying love. James, surnamed the
Simple, was amongst the most conspicuous of them ; and in those
abodes of woe he eai'ned the glorious title of steward and physician
of the leprous. It happened that, in his simplicity, James brought
one of his patients to worship at a much frequented church, and
there received from Francis the rebuke so well merited for his in-
discretion. The heart of the sick man was oppressed as he listened
to the censure pronounced on his benefactor; and the heart of
Francis was moved %\athin him to perceive that he had thus inad-
vertently added to the burden of the heavy laden. He fell at the
leper's feet, implored his forgiveness, sat down with him to eat out
of the same dish, embraced and dismissed him ! Had he grasped
every subtle distinction of the Summa Theologise itself, or had he
even built up that stupendous monument of the learning of his
age, it would have been a lower title to the honours of canonisation.

The church of St. Damiano still lay in ruins. The command to
rebuild it was still unrevoked. Ill success had followed the attempt
to extract the requisite funds from the hoards of the old merchant.
Plutus, his inexorable father, had been invoked in vain. Poverty,
his affianced wife, might be more propitious. He wooed her in the
form she loves best. In the dress and character of a beggar, he
traversed the city through which he had been wont to pass as at
once the gayest of her troubadours, the bravest of her captains,
and the most sumptuous of her merchants. Assisi had her witty
men who jeered, her wise men who looked grave, and her respect-
able men who were scandalised, as this strange apparition invoked
their alms in the names of the Virgin and of St. Damiano. Solemn
heads were shaken at the sight, in allusion to the supposed state
of the brain of the mendicant. But the sarcasms of the facetious,
and the conclusive objections of the sensible, fell on Francis like
arrows rebounding from the scales of Behemoth. His energy
silenced and repelled them all. Insuperable difficulties gave way
before him. The squalid lazar became the inspiring genius of the
architect, the paymaster of the builders, the menial drudge of the
workman. Sometimes he came with money in his hand, some-
times with stones and mortar on his back. At his bidding, nave,
chancel, arches, roof, and towers, rose from their foundations. The
sacred edifice appeared in renovated splendour. Tlie heavenly
precept was obeyed.

66 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

Prompt and decisive was the reaction of popular feeling. Instead
of debating whether this strange mortal was rogue or maniac, it was
now argued that he must be either a necromancer or a saint. The
wise and more charitable opinion prevailed. Near to the city was
a ruined church sacred to the prince of the apostles. Confident in
his late success, Francis rather demanded than implored contribu-
tions for rebuilding it. Purses were emptied into his hands, and
speedily the dome of St. Peter looked down in all its pristine dignity
on the marts and battlements of Assisi.

There were no church-building commissioners in those days. In
their stead, a half-starved youth in the rags of a bedesman moved
along the streets of his native city, appealing to every passer-by, in
quiet tones and earnest words, and with looks still more persuasive,
to aid him in reconstructing the chapel of La Porzioncula ; a shrine
of Our Lady of Angels, of which the remains may yet be seen, at
once hallowing and adorning the quiet meadow by which Assisi is
surrounded. " He wept to think upon her stones, it grieved him to
see her in the dust." Vows were uttered, processions formed,
jewels, plate, and gold were laid at the feet of the gentle enthusiast :
and Mary with her attendant angels rejoiced (so at least it was de-
voutly believed) over the number and the zeal of the worshippers
who once more thronged the courts erected in honour of her name.

From that devout company he was not often absent, by whose
pious zeal the work had been accomplished. As he knelt before
the altar, tVie oracular voice, so often heard before, again broke in
upon the silence of his soul. It cried, " Take nothing for your
journey, neither staves nor scrip, neither bread nor money, neither
have two coats a-piece." A caviller, in the plight to which
Francis was reduced already, might have evaded such an injunc-
tion. But Francis was no caviller. The poor fragment left to him
of this world's goods, his shoes, his staff, his leathern girdle, and his
empty purse, were abandoned ; and in his coarse cloak of serge,
drawn round him with, a common cord, he might defy men and
devils to plunge him more deeply in the lack of this world's wealth,
or to rekindle in his heart the jaassion for it.

And now were consummated his nuptials with his betrothed
spouse. Dante has composed the Epithalamium in the eleventh
Canto of the Paradiso : —

" Not long the period from his glorious birth,
When, with extraordinaiy virtue blest,
This wondrous Son began to comfort earth ;
Bearing, while yet a child, his father's ire,
For sake of her whom all as death detest,
And banish from the "-ate of their desire.

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. C7

Before the spiritual court, before

His father, too, he took her for his own :

From day to clay then loved her more and more.

* ♦ * *

But lest my language be not clearly seen,

Iviiow, that in speaking of these lovers twain,

Francis and Poverty henceforth I mean.
Their joyfid looks, with pleasant concord fraught.

Where love and sweetness might be seen to reign,

Were \mto others cause of holy thought." *

Nor did Bossuet himself disdain to emulate this part of the
"divine comedy." In the panegyric bestowed on the saint by the
great orator, Francis is introduced as thus addressing his bride : —

"Ma chere Pauvrete, si basse que soit ton extraction selon le
jugement des hommes, je t'estime depuis que mon maitre t'a
epousee. Et certes," proceeds the preacher, "il avait raison,
Chretiens ! Si un roi epouse une fille de basse extraction, elle de-
vient reine ; on en murmure quelque temps, mais enfin on la re-
connait : elle est ennoblie par le mariage du prince ." " Oh pauvres I
que vous etes heureux ! parce qu'a vous appartient le royaume de
Dieu. Heureux done mille et mille fois, le pauvre Franpois; le
plus ardent, le plus transporte, et, si j'ose parler de la sorte, le plus
desespere amateur de la pauvrete qui ait peut-etre ete dans I'eglise."

Art contributed her aid to commemorate this solemn union. In
one of the churches of Assisi may yet be seen a fresco, by Griotto, of
Francis and his bride ; he pla,cing the nuptial ring on her finger,
and she crowned with light and roses, but clothed in sordid apparel,
and her feet torn by the sharp stones and briars over which she is
passing.

As often as the rising sun had in former days lighted up the
spires of Assisi, it had summoned the hard-handed many to earn
their bread by the sweat of their brows ; and the prosperous few to
drive bargains, or to give them legal form ; to chant masses, or to
assist at them ; to confess, or to lay up matter for confession ; to
arrange their toilettes, or to sit in judgment on the dresses and
characters of others ; to sleep through the sultry noon, and to while
away the long soft summer nights with dice, music, scandal or
lovers' vows ; till after some few circuits through the Zodiac, the
same sun looked down on their children's children sauntering at
the. same listless pace, along the same flowery road, to the same
inevitable bourne. But no sooner had these prolific nuptials been
celebrated, than the inert mass of human existence at Assisi began
to heave with unwonted agitation. In her streets and public walks

* Wright's Dante.

F 2

68 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST.

and cliurches, might be daily encountered the presence of one,
most merciless to himself, most merciful to others. His few,
simple, and affectionate words, penetrated those cold and frivolous
minds ; for they were uttered in the soul-subduing power of a seer,
whose wide horizon embraces the sublime objects visible to the eye
of faith, though hidden from the grosser eye of sense.

Of the union of Francis and Poverty, Bernard de Quintavalle
was the first fruits. He was a man of wealth and distinction, and
had cherished some distrust of the real sanctity of his fellow-
townsman. Bernard therefore brought him to his house, laid
himself down to rest in the same chamber, and pretended to sleep
Avhile he watched the proceedings of his guest. He saw him rise
and kneel, extend his arms, weep tears of rapture, and gaze towards
heaven, exclaiming repeatedly, "My Grod, and my all ! " At this
sight all doubts w^ere dissipated. " Tell me," said Bernard to his
friend, when they met shortly afterwards, "if a slave should receive
from his master a treasure which he finds to be useless to him,
what ought he to do with it?" " Let him restore it," said Francis,
"to his master." " Lo then," replied Bernard, " I render back to God
the earthly goods with which He has enriched me." " We will go
together to church," rejoined the spouse of Poverty, " and, after
hearing mass, we will ascertain His will." In their way thither they
were joined by Peter of Catania, who, though a canon of the
cathedral church of Assisi, was another aspirant after the same
sublime self-sacrifice.

The three knelt together before the altar ; and when the mass
had been sung, the officiating jDriest, at their request, made the
sign of the cross over the missal, and then devoutly opened it.
Once on behalf of each of them were these sortes sanctorimi tried.
We are the humble transcribers, not the sponsors of the marvels
which followed. To the first inquiry, the response of the oracle
was, " If ye will be perfect, go and sell all that ye have." To the
second it answered, " Take nothing for your journey." To the third
and last was returned the admonition, " He that would come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me."
" Ye have heard, my brethren," exclaimed Francis, " what must be
our rule of life, and the rule of all who shall join us. Let us obey
the Divine command." It was obeyed implicitly. Bernard and
Peter sold all they had, and gave it to the poor ; and, having
stripped themselves of all temporal wealth as absolutely as their
leader, they assumed his austere dress, and avowed themselves his
disciples.

A great event had happened in an unconscious world. Though
but three had thus met together, yet the order of Minorites or

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 69

Franciscau brethren was constituted. Six centuries have since
passed away ; and it still flourishes, one of the elements of life, if
not of progress, in the great Christian commonwealth.

The grain of mustard-seed soon began to germinate. Francis,
Bernard, and Peter, retired together to a hut in the centre of the
plain of Rivo Torto ; so called from a serpentine stream which
wanders through it. With what authority the founder ruled even
these, his first followers, may be inferred from the fact, (attested
by the usual evidence,) that after the death of Peter, such prodigies
of healing were wrought at his tomb, as much disturbed the devout
retirement of his surviving friends. " Brother Peter, you always
obeyed me implicitly when you were alive," at length exclaimed
the much perplexed Francis — " I expect from you a similar
submission now. The visitors to your tomb annoy ns sadly. In
the name of holy obedience I command you to work no more
miracles." Peter at once dutifully desisted from his posthumous
works of mercy. " So obedient," observes M. Chavin de Malan,
writing in this nineteenth century, " were the family of Francis
even after death."

At Rivo Torto, Egidius, another rich citizen of Assisi, sought out
and joined the new society. Famous for many graces, and for not
a few miracles, he is especially celebrated for having received at
Perugia a visit from St. Louis in disguise, when the two saints long
knelt together in silence, embracing each other, in such a manner
as to bring their hearts into the closest possible contiguity. On
the departure of the King, Egidius was rebuked by his brethren
for his rudeness, in not having uttered a word to so great a
sovereign. " Marvel not," he answered, " that we did not speak. A
divine light laid bare to each of us the heart of the other. No
words could have intelligibly expressed that language of the soul,
or have imparted the same sacred consolation. So impotent is the
tongue of man to utter divine mysteries."

Sabbatini, of whom we read only that he was vir bonus et rectus
— Morico, a crusader, who had been miraculously cured by the
prayers of Francis — John de Capella, "who, like another Judas,
hanged himself at last" — Sylvester, who, in a dream, had seen the
arms of Francis extended to eitlier end of the world, while a golden
cross reached from his lips to heaven — with four other worthies,
of whom history has preserved only the names, followed the steps
of the mystic Egidius. In the dilapidated hut of Rivo Torto,
twelve poor men had now assembled. To a common observer they
might have passed for the beggar king and his tattered crew. To
the leader himself they appeared, more justly, an image of the

F 3

70 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST.

brotherhood of which the patriarchal family had been the type,
and the apostolic college the antitype.

The morning had dawned over the hills from which the river
Torto flows, and long had been the prayer of Francis, when, rising
from his knees, he called his brethren round him, and thus addressed
them : " Take courage, and shelter yourselves in Grod. Be not
depressed to think how few we are. Be not alarmed either at your
own weakness, or at mine. God has revealed to me that He will
diffuse through the earth this our little family, of which He is himself
the Father. I would have concealed what I have seen, but love
constrains me to impart it to you. I have seen a great multitude
coming to us, to wear our dress, to live as we do. I have seen all
the roads crowded with men travelling in eager haste towards
us. The French are coming. The Spaniards are hastening. The
English and the Germans are running. All nations are mingling
together. I hear the tread of the numbers who go and come to
execute the commands of holy obedience." — " We seem contemptible
and insane. But fear not. Believe that our Saviour, who has
overcome the world, will speak effectually in us. If gold should lie
in our way, let us value it as the dust beneath our feet. We will
not, however, condemn or despise the rich who live softly, and are
arrayed sumptuously. God, who is our master, is theirs also. But
go and preach repentance for the remission of sins. Faithful men,
gentle, and full of charity, will receive you and your words with joy.
Proud and impious men will condemn and oppose you. Settle it
in your hearts to endure all things with meekness and patience.
The wise and the noble will soon join themselves to you, and, with
you, will preach to kings, to princes, and to nations. Be patient in
tribulation, fervent in prayer, fearless in labour, and the kingdom
of God, which endures for ever, shall be your reward."

Such, we are assured by his " Three Companions," was the inau-
gural discourse of Francis to his first disciples. Then drawing on
the earth on which he stood a figure of the cross, each limb of which
was turned to one of the four cardinal points of the compass, and
arranging his brethren in the four corresponding lines, he dismissed
each of them with the solemn benediction — " Cast thy burden upon
the Lord, and He shall nourisli thee." The new missionaries
departed to their work of mercy, and Francis himself retired to the
solitude of the hut of Eivo Torto.

In that retirement an arduous duty awaited him. He drew up
there, in twenty-three chapters, the rule of his new monastic order,
the " Magna Charta of Poverty." It did not essentially differ from
the similar institutes of the Benedictines. To the vows of chastity
and obedience, was however to be added a vow of Poverty yet more

SAIXT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 71

stringent than theirs. His brethren were to labour with their
hands, and were to be maintained by alms. But they were to
solicit alms, not as suitors for a gi-atuitous favour, but as asserters
of a positive right, which Christ himself had bestowed on the poor.
A code of higher authority than any human laws, had imposed on
the rich the office, and the obligations, of stewards for such as had
need of sustenance. The indigent were the real proprietors of all
earthly treasures. The food on which Dives fared sumptuously,
belonged of right to Lazarus ; and Dives could acquire an equal
title to be fed, only by lying, in his turn, a beggar at the gate.

A doctrine always so welcome to the great body of mankind,
could never have been announced with a surer prospect of a wide
and cordial acceptance, by the people at large, than in the com-
mencement of the thirteenth century. But the establishment in
the chm'ch of a polity thus democratic, seemed no easy enterprise.
He who wore the Triple Crown, could, it seemed, be scarcely
expected to permit the creation of a new monastic institute on
principles so menacing to all sovereigns, whether secular or sj^iritual.
Yet without that permission, the founder might become an heresi-
arch as guilty as Peter Waldo, and his followers obnoxious to
punishments as terrible as those of the Albigenses. It was in the
summer of the year 1210 that Francis, accomjoanied by two or three
of his disciples, made a pilgrimage to Eome, to obtain, if possible,
from the formidable potentate, who then bore the keys and the
sword of Peter, a sanction for these startling novelties.

The splendid palace of the Lateran reflected the rays of the
evening sun as the wayworn travellers approached it. A group of
churchmen in sumptuous apparel were traversing with slow and.
measured steps its lofty terrace, then called " the Mirror," as if
afraid to overtake him who preceded them, in a dress studiously
simple, and with a countenance wrapt in earnest meditation.
Unruffled by passion, and yet elate with conscious power, that eagle
eye, and those capacious brows, announced him the lord of a dominion
which might have satisfied at once the pride of Diogenes, and the
ambition of Alexander. Since the Tugurium was built on the
Capitoline, no greater monarch had ever called the seven hills his
own. But, in his Pontificate, no sera had occurred more arduous
than that in which Innocent the Third saw the mendicants of Assisi
prostrate themselves at his feet.

Twelve years had elapsed since his elevation to the Pontifical
throne. In that period he had converted into realities the most
audacious visions of Hildebrand. He had exacted the oath of fealty
to himself from all the Imperial officers of the city. He had seized
on the marches of Ancona and Umbria. He had annulled the

F 4

72 SAINT FRANCIS OP ASSISI.

election of Frederick, tlie infant son of the deceased Emperor ; and,
as Vicar of Christ on earth, had substituted for him the young Otho
of Brunswick ; whom he afterwards excommunicated. He had laid
France under an interdict to punish the divorce of Philip Augustus.
He had given away the crowns of Bohemia and Bulgaria. He had
received homage from John for the crown of England ; and, availing
himself of Count Baldwin's capture of Constantinople, he had
become the arbiter of the fortunes of the Eastern Empire. So far
all had been triumphant. But dark clouds had now arisen, which
may well be supposed to have shaped and coloured the evening
reverie of this great conqueror ; when it was interrupted by the
sudden appearance of Francis and his companions.

The interrui^tion was as unwelcome as it was abrupt. As he
gazed at the squalid dress and faces of his strange suitors, and ob-
served their bare and unwashed feet, his lip curled with disdain,
and, sternly commanding them to withdraw, he seemed again to
retire from the outer world into some of the deep recesses of that
capacious mind. Francis and his companions betook themselves
to prayer; Innocent to his couch. There (says the legend) he
dreamed that a palm tree sprouted up from the ground between
his feet, and, swiftly shooting up into the heavens, cast her boughs
on every side, a shelter from the heat, and a refreshment to the
weary. The vision of the night (so proceeds the tale) dictated the
policy of the morning, and assured Innocent that, under his fos-
tering care, the Franciscan palm would strike deep her roots, and
expand her foliage on every side, in the vineyard of the church.

Never, however, was there a time when the councils of Eome
were less really under the influence of narcotics of any kind. It
must have been in the vigils, not in the slumbers, of the night,
that the Pontiff revolved the incidents of the preceding evening,
and perceived their full significance. Yet why deliberate at all
when it is impossible to err ? Infallibility should advance to truth
by one free intuitive bound, not hobbling on the crutches of in-
quiry and inference. It is among the mysteries which we are
bound to revere in silence, that, whether in solitude or in synods,
the inspired wisdom of Eome has always groped its way by the aid
of human reasonings. No record remains of those which now
governed the resolves of Innocent; but an obvious conjecture may
supply them.

The great traditional maxim of the Papal dynasty has ever been,
to direct the tendencies of each succeeding age, by grasping and
controlling those springs of action from which the spirit of each
successively derives its mould, and form, and fashion. From every
province of his spiritual empire, tidings had recently reached the

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 73

Pontiff of the appearance and rapid diffusion of a spirit, full of
menace to all thrones, and urgently demanding subjugation. It
might be called the fraternising spirit. It manifested itself in the
creation of brotherhoods as barriers against despotism, both feudal
and ecclesiastical. In all the chief cities of Europe, the merchants,
citizens, and workmen, were forming themselves into guilds, and
electing then- own syndics and magistrates. Already might be
discerned the active germs of the great commercial commonwealths
of Florence, Pisa, and Genoa; of Frankfort, Grhent, and Bruges;
of Hamburgh, Lubeck, and Bremen ; and those of the no less
great commercial corporations of London, Bristol, and Norwich.
Still more numerous were the religious associations which, in one
vast, though incoherent, alliance, opposed the pride and luxury of
their spiritual lords. From the Guadalquiver to the Elbe — from
the Thames to the Tiber — swarms of such socialists practised, or
seemed to practise, extreme austerities, and inculcated doctrines
abhorred of the orthodox and the faithful. Obscurely distinguished
from each other as Patarins, Cathari, Bons-Hommes, Poor Men of
Lyons, Josephins, Flagellants, Pul)licani, and Waldenses, or grouped
together under the general term of Albigenses, they rejected the
sacraments of marriage and penance, and disbelieved the magical
influence of baptism and the eucharist. They denied the lawful-
ness of oaths and of capital punishments. They maintained that
no Divine ordinance was valid if administered by a priest in mortal
sin. They taught that the successors of the Apostles were bound
to succeed to the apostolic jjoverty ; and, since none so well fulfilled
that hereditary obligation as themselves, they thought that none
were equally well entitled to discharge the apostolic office.

To refute these errors, Eome had employed her most irrefragable
arguments : the bitter curses of Lucius ; the cruelties, beyond
conception horrible, of Innocent. The brand, the scourge, and
the sword, had fallen from the wearied hands of the ministers of
his vengeance. Hundreds were cast alive into the furnace, and
not a few plunged into the flames with exulting declarations of
the faith for which they perished. The Vicar of Christ bathed the
banner of the cross in a carnage, from which the wolves of Romulus,
and the eagles of Csesar, would have turned away with loathing.
But the will of the sufferers was indomitable ; and this new scourge
of God was constrained to feel, that, from conquests which left the
immortal spirit unsubdued, he could derive no effectual security,
and no enduring triumph.

Such was the menacing aspect which Christendom presented to
her sacerdotal head at the moment, when, after having first re-
pulsed, he again summoned to his presence, the mendicants of

74 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

Assisi. The other monastic orders formed so many ramparts round
his throne. But neither the Benedictines with their splendid en-
dowments, nor the Carthusians with their self-immolations, nor the
Cistertians in their studious solitudes, nor the Templars and Hos-
pitallers with their sharp swords, nor the Beguines and Maturins
with their half-secular pursuits, could oppose any effective weapons
to the migratory gospellers, who in every land toiled, and preached,
and died ; at once the martyrs, and the devoted antagonists, of his
power. It was, then, in no dreaming phantasy, but in open vision,
that the palm-tree sprung up between his feet, as a new and a
welcome shelter. The fervid speech, the resolved aspect, the lowly
demeanour, the very dirt and wretchedness of those squalid va-
o-rants, gave to that penetrating eye assurance of a devotedness
which might rival and eclipse (and, perhaps, persuade) those whom
Simon de Montfort had in vain attempted to exterminate. And
as, in later days, Aristotelian innovations were neutralised by scho-
lastic subtleties ; — the all-emancipating press by the soul-subduing
miracles of art ; — the impassioned revolt of Luther by the ardent
allegiance of Loyola : — so now, the ill-organised confederacy of
the reformers of Western Europe might be counteracted by a zeal
as impetuous as their own, but directed by the unerring sagacity of
the Eoman conclave, to far more systematic and effective exertions.
The popular watchwords of Poverty, Continence, Lowliness, and
Self-Denial, would no longer be used as so many reproaches on the
Eoman hierarchy, but as the war-cry of the self-mortified adherents
of Eome. Her enthusiastic missionaries, commanding the sym-
pathy of the multitude, would cause it to flow in holy indignation
against the vices of the mitre and the coronet, but in pious loyalty
towards the Triple Crown which had rested for a thousand years on
the brows of the successors of Peter.

With such prescience. Innocent recalled into his presence the
mendicant whose first overtures he had so contemptuously rejected.
He now accepted them, cordially indeed, yet with characteristic
caution. The laws of the proposed order of Minorites were ex-
amined, discussed, and approved. Heedless of the sinister predic-
tions of the Sacred College, the Pope was willing to recognise, in
the severity of their discipline, the perfection which Christ himself
requires ; and Francis, having plighted solemn vows of obedience,
and having received in turn a no less solemn apostolic blessing,
departed from the Lateran with an umvritten aj^probation of his
rule.

Inflamed with holy ardour for the conversion of men, and for
the defence of the fortress and centre of the Catholic faith, he re-
turned to his native city. His toilsome march was a genuine

SAIXT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 75

ovation. His steps were followed by admiring crowds ; church
bells rang out their peals at his approach; processions chanting
solemn litanies advanced to meet him; enraptured devotees kissed
his clothes, his hands, and his feet; proselytes of either sex, and
of every rank and age, repeated the vows of poverty, continence,
obedience, and labour ; and, as the words passed from mouth to
mouth, other vows strangely mingled with them, devoting lands,
convents, and monasteries to the use of those whose abandonment
of all worldly wealth was thus enthusiastically celebrated. Superb
inconsistency ! No homage, however extravagant, is refused by
mankind to a will at once inflexible and triumphant ; so great is
the reverence unconsciously rendered, even by the least reflecting,
to the great mystery of our nature; — the existence in man of
volitions and of resolves, not absorbed in the Supreme Will, but,
in some enigmatic sense, distinct from it. The simple-hearted
Francis had a readier solution. " They honour God," he exclaimed,
" in the vilest of His creatures." Whatever may have been the
motive of the donors, the fact is certain, that, on his return from
Eome, the spouse of Poverty received, for the use of his spiritual
offering, a formal grant of the church of St. Mary of Angels, or
the Porzioncula, which his pious zeal had reinstated.

Among the saints of the Eoman calendar few enjoy a more ex-
alted renown than St. Clare, a scion of the noble house of Ortolana.
" Clara," so runs the bull of her canonisation, " claris proeclara
meritis, magnaB in coelo claritate glorige, ac in terra miraculorum
sublimium, clare claret." Even before her birth a voice from
heaven had announced that her course of life was to be a brilliant
one ; and, at the instance of her mother, to whom the promise had
been addressed, she therefore received at the baptismal font the
significant name on which, after her death. Pope Alexander the
Fourth was to play this jingle. From her childhood she had jus-
tified the appellation. Beneath her costly robes, and the jewels
which adorned them, she wore the penitential girdle ; and vain
were the efforts of countless suitors to win a heart already devoted
to the Heavenly Bridegroom. The fame of her piety reached the
ears, and touched the heart, of Francis. She admired the lustre
of his sanctity. The mutual attraction was felt and acknowledged.
They met, conferred, and met again. By his advice an elopement
from the house of her parents was arranged, and by his assistance
it was effected. They fled to the Porzioncula. Monks, chanting
their matins by torch-light, received and welcomed her there ; and
then, attended by her spiritual guide, she took sanctuary in the
neighbouring church of St. Paul, imtil arrangements could be made
for her recej^tion in a convent. The heroine of the romance was

76 SAINT FRANCIS OP ASSISI.

in her nineteenth, the hero in his thirtieth, year. Yet she was
not an Eloisa, but only one of those young ladies (all good angels
guard them !) by whom the ether of sacerdotal eloquence cannot
be safely inhaled in private. He was not an Abelard, but only one
of those ghostly counsellors (all good angels avert them !) who
would conduct souls to heaven, by the breach of the earliest and
most sacred of the duties which He who reigns there has laid upon
us. Such, indeed, was the superiority of Francis to any prejudice
in favour of filial obedience and parental authority, that, despite
the agony and the rage of her father, and the efforts of his armed
retainers, he induced her two sisters, Agnes and Beatrice, to follow
her flight, and to partake of her seclusion. The shears which
severed the clustering locks of Agnes, were held, we are assured, by
his own consecrated hands.

So bewitching an example was, of course, fatal to many other
flowing tresses, and to the serenity of the heads they covered. The
church of St. Damiano, which the zeal of Francis had reconstructed,
became the convent of the order of poor sisters. Monks cannot
cease to be men ; and, in their silent cells, the hearts of the Minor
brethren throbbed to learn that their cravings for woman's sympathy
were thus, at least, partially satisfied. Under the guidance of the
ladies of the house of Ortolana, and the legislation of their com-
mon founder, colonies of this devout sisterhood were rapidly settled
in all the chief cities of Em-ope ; and Clara, the disobedient and
the devout, being elected the first abbess of the order, performed,
as we are assured, miracles of self-conquest in her lifetime, and
miracles of mercy in her tomb.

At the summit of his hopes, Francis surveyed the path which
yet lay before him ; but his spirit fainted at the prospect. Eenown,
influence, supremacy, had gathered round him ; but his soul was
oppressed with the responsibilities of trusts so weighty, and for
the use of which he was wholly unprepared by any literary or
theological education. In words which he ascribes to Francis him-
self, St. Bonaventura depicts the conflict of his mind on the grave
question, whether, by a life of solitary devotion, or by a life of
apostolic labours, he should best fulfil the Divine counsels. If the
quotation of his language be accurate, it is evident that he inclined
to the more active choice, but dreaded to oppose to tlie wisdom of
his age, the foolishness of such preaching as his untaught mind,
and unpractised tongue, coidd utter. If the difficulty itself is
characteristic of him, the escape from it is still more so.

Sylvester, one of his associates at the Eivo Torto, still remained
in the adjacent mountains, a hermit absorbed in devotion. To him,
and to Clara, Francis despatched injunctions to ascertain what was

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 77

the pleasure of the great Head of the Church on this momentous
question. The answers of the hermit and of the abbess were tlie
same. To each it had been revealed that the founder of their
order should go forth and preach the Gospel. God, they assured
him, would put words into his mouth. To receive their joint mes-
sage he knelt on the earth ; his head bare and bowed down, his
hands crossed over his breast. On hearing it he vaulted from the
ground, crying, " Let us go forth in the name of the Lord ! " At
his first appearance as a preacher, we are told that burning elo-
quence burst from his lips, diseases fled at his touch, sinners aban-
doned their vices, and crowds flocked into his order. Every day
witnessed the increase of the numbers and zeal of his proselytes ;
until, on the 30th of May, 1216, a goodly company, constituting
the first chapter of the order of the ]Minor brethren, had assembled
at the Porzioncula.

This convention was rendered memorable in their annals by the
apportionment which was then made of the Christian world into
so many Franciscan missions. For himself the founder reserved
the kingdom of France, as the noblest and most arduous province.
Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were assigned
to five of his principal followers. Such were now their numbers
that thirty-four departed for Provence, and no less than sixty foimd
their way to the Empire. The land of the Ghibellines, the future
birth-place of Luther, formed, however, even in the thirteenth
century, an exception to the welcome with which, in other parts
of Europe, these new emissaries of Eome were enthusiastically
received. Of the itinerants along the banks of the Ehine and the
Danube, not one could make himself intelligible in the German
tongue. Destitute of the ever ready resource of miracle (it is
difficult to conjecture why), they could not convince a people with
whom they could not communicate ; and were driven away with
ridicule and outrage.

The French mission received a yet more unexpected check. To
place this great undertaking under the Kspecial care of St. Peter and
St. Paul, Francis had commenced his missionary journey by visit-
ing their sepulchres. Rome had, at that time, received another,
and not less memorable, guest, since known in the calendar of the
saints by the name of Dominick. He was a Spaniard, the member
of a noble house, a man of letters, and a priest. Amid the horrors
of the crusade against the Albigenses, and while himself deejoly
stained with tiiat blood-guiltiness, ho had preached repentance,
and inculcated orthodoxy. And now, a sojourner in the metro-
polis of Christendom, he saw in a vision Christ himself possessed
with wrath against mankind (so well agreed bis sleeping and his

78 SAIXT FR.\Js'CIS OF ASSISI.

waking thoughts), and then appeared to him the Virgin mother,
appeasing her son by presenting to him two men, in one of whom
the dreamer saw his own image. The other was a stranger to
him. \NTien, with the return of light, he repaired to a neigh-
bom-ing church to worship, that stranger appeared there in the
garb of a mendicant. " My brother, my companion," exclaimed
the Spaniard, " let us unite our powers, and nothing shall prevail
against us;" and forthwith the founders of the Dominican and
Franciscan orders were in each other's arms. They met again at
the palace of the Cardinal Ugolino. He proposed to them the
elevation of some of their followers to the episcopacy, and even to
the Sacred College. The offer was declined by both. Another
ineffectual proposal was made by Dominick himself for the union
of their separate institutes ; and then, with earnest professions of
mutual regard, and assurances of mutual support, they parted to
divide the world between them.

To secm-e his share of that empire, Francis, however, found it
necessary to abandon his contemplated mission to France. The
sagacity of Ugolino had detected the intrigues and secret machina-
tions of the enemies of this new spiritual power ; and his authority
induced the founder of it to remain at Eome, to counteract them.
Subtlety, the tutelary genius of his country, and his natural ally
on such an occasion, abandoned Francis on this, as on so many
other exigencies, to the charge of the gentler power, Somnus ;
who, throwing open the ivory gates, exhibited to him, first a hen,
attempting in vain to gather her chickens under her wings, and
then a majestic bird, gently alighting to spread her far-extended
plumage over the unprotected brood. The interpretation was
obvious. The Pope must be persuaded to appoint Ugolino to the
ofiice of protector of the unfledged nestlings of the Franciscan
eyrie.

But Innocent was now dead ; and the third Honorius, a stranger
to Francis, and studiously prepossessed against him, filled the papal
throne. The cardinal proposed that the suitor for this new favour
should win it by preaching in the sacred consistory; persuaded
that the eloquence for which he was renowned must triumph over
all opposing prejudices. Grreat were the throes of preparation.
A sermon, composed with the utmost skill of the preacher, was
engraven, with his utmost diligence, on his memory. But at the
sight of that august audience, every trace of it departed from his
mind ; leaving him in utter confusion, and, as it seemed, in hope-
less silence. A pause, a mental prayer, and one vehement self-
conflict followed ; and then, abandoning himself to the natural
current of his own ardent emotions, he poured forth his soul, in an

SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSISE. 79

address so full of warmth and energy, as to extort from the Pope,
and tlie whole college, the exclamation that it was not he that
spake, but the divinity which spoke -witliin him. From such lips
no request could be preferred in vain ; and Ugolino was nominated
by Honorius to the high and confidential post of Protector of the
Minorite brethren.

In the month of INIay, 1219 (the tenth year of the Franciscan
£era), the inhabitants of Assisi looked from their walls on a vast
encampment surrounding the Porzioncula as a centre, and sj)read-
ing over the wide plain on which the city stands. Five thousand
mendicants had there met together to celebrate the second general
chapter of their Order. Huts of straw and mud atibrded them
shelter. The piety of the neighbouring towns and villages sup-
plied them with food. Each group, or company, of sixty or a
hundred, formed a distinct congregation, offering up prayers in
common, or listening to discourses of which the future conquest
of the world was the theme. Then, at the word, and under the
guidance, of their chief, the separate bands, forming themselves
into one long procession, advanced with solemn chants, or in still
more solemn silence, to the city of Perugia. There Ugolino met
them, and, casting off his purple mantle, his hat, and his shoes,
w^as conducted by his exulting clients, in the dress of a Minor
brother, to the place of their great assembly. " Behold," ex-
claimed the astonished patron, to the founder of the order, "behold
the camp of Grod ! How goodly are thy tents, Israel, and thy
dwellings, Jacob ! "

The words fell mournfully on the ear of Francis. As his ej^es
scanned the triumphs of that auspicious hour, sadness brooded
over his soul. He felt, like other conquerors, that the laurel
wreath is too surely entwined with cypress ; and drew dark fore-
bodings of decay even from the unexpected rapidity of his success.
Brief, therefore, and melancholy, was his answer to the Cardinal's
congratulations. " We have made," he said, " large promises ; we
have received yet larger. Let us accomplish the one ; and aspire
after the fulfilment of the other. These pleasures are brief. There
are pains which are eternal. Our sufferings are light ; but there is
a far more exceeding weight of glory. Many are called, few are
chosen. To each man there shall be a recompence according to
his works. Above all things, my brethren, love the holy Church,
and pray for her exaltation. But cling to poverty. Is it not
written, cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall nourish thee?"

Again the heart of Ugolino throbbed as he surveyed the multitude
devoted to works of mercy and of self-denial ; and he commended,
■while he blessed, them. Asrain was raised the sterner voice of their

80 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

spiritual father, rebuking the soft weakness with which they had
welcomed, and enjoyed such unmerited praise. Pained and mortified,
the Cardinal asked the motive of this ill-timed severity. " My
lord, I have reproved them," was the answer, " that they may not
lose the lowliness you have been extolling : and that humility may
strike her roots the more deeply into their hearts."

Unfamiliar as he was with the subtleties, scholastic or politic, of
his age, Francis was a keen observer of the characters and the ways
of men. He discovered that the zealous protector of his order was
a still more zealous member of the Roman conclave ; and that, to
attach the foremost of the Minor brethren to the cause and service
of the Papacy, he had dazzled their eyes with prospects of mitres,
and even of the purple. He also discovered that they had conferred
with the Cardinal on their own exclusion from the government of
the society, on the want both of health and of learning in their
head, and on the excessive rigoui* and singularity of his rule. He
saw in these Dathans and Abirams of his camp the rising spirit of
revolt, and he proceeded at once to subdue it with his accustomed
energy. The chapter of the Order was in session ; when, conducting
Ugolino thither, Francis addressed to them, and to him, these stern
and menacing words ; " My brethren, Grod has commanded me, in
foolishness and humility, to copy the foolishness of the cross. Let
me hear of no other rule than that which He has thus established.
Dread the Divine vengeance, all ye who abandon it, all ye who
seduce others to backslide." The silence which followed on this
apostrojDhe, and on the departure of the speaker, was at length
broken by the Cardinal. He exhorted the congregation to obey
implicitly their apostolic founder ; on whom, he declared, the Divine
influence was evidently resting. Evident, at least, it had become,
that the day of secular greatness could not dawn on the children of
Poverty till her spouse should have ceased to govern them.

To divert their minds from such disloyal thoughts, Francis
occupied them with the promulgation of rules respecting the
worship of the Virgin, of Peter and of Paul, and the structure of
their ecclesiastical edifices. To elicit their loyal affections, he laid
before them a project for the spiritual conquest of the whole
habitable globe. For himself he reserved the seat of the war
between the crusaders and the Saracens. To each of his foremost
disciples he assigned a separate mission ; and he dismissed them
with letters from the Pope, commending them to the care of all
ecclesiastical dignitaries, and with a circular epistle from himself,
bearing this superscription : " To all Potentates, Grovernors, Con-
suls, Judges, and Magistrates on the earth ; and to all others to
whom these presents shall come, brother Francis, your unworthy

SAINT FRANCIS OF .\SSISI. 81

servant in the Lord, seiidetli greeting and peace." Arn\ed with
these credentials the propagandists (f( Assisi dispersed ; some to
found monasteries in Spain, some to preach the Gospel in the
Empire, some to rival the socialists of France, some to become
professors at Oxford, and some to provoke martyrdom in INIorocco ;
but never again to be convened by their " General Minister " to
consult together in a deliberative chapter. It was an experiment
too hazardous for repetition ; a risk to be dreaded far more than
any which awaited him among the warriors of the crescent, or
the champions of the cross.

These were now drawn in hostile array under the walls of
Damietta, and there he joined them. The confusion of the camp
of Agramante was but a feeble image of that which he found in the
host of the titular King of Jerusalem, John de Brienne ; — cavaliers
and foot-men, all emulous of fame, all impatient of obedience, all
insisting on being led into action, all interchanging bitter contu-
melies, and all willing to cut each other's throats, if no better em-
ployment could be found for their swords. Like another Micaiah,
Francis foretold the disastrous results of a combat about to be
waged, under the shelter of holy names, but in the wanton inso-
lence of human passion. Like him he saw all Israel scattered like
sheep upon the mountains ; and like him he prophesied in vain.
The mutinous troops hurried their leader into the field ; and the
loss of six thousand of the Christians attested the foresight of thou-
unwarlike monitor.

In the midst of feats of arms, and agonies of toils and suffering,
admonition was, however, an office too humble to satisfy the de-
sires of a soul cast in a mould so heroic as his. He was a strategist
as well as a saint ; and, in this day of sorrow and rebuke, found a
meet occasion to exhibit the whole strength of his belligerent
resources. During many successive hours, he knelt and was
absorbed in prayer. Then rising with a countenance radiant with
joy and courage, he advanced towards the infidel camp; chanting
as he marched, " Though I walk through the valley of the shadow
of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." A gold besant
was the price of the head of a Christian. But what were such
terrors to an evangelist about to close the war by the conversion of
the Soldan himself ? From every incident he drew fresh confi-
dence. When he saw the flocks collected for the consumption of
the Saracens, " Behold," he cried, " I send you forth as sheep
among wolves." When seized by the Saracens themselves, and
asked by whom, and why, he had been sent to " their lines," he
answered, " I am not sent of man, but of God, to show you the
way of salvation." When carried before their chief, and courteously

82 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

invited to remain in his tent, " "i'es," he exclaimed, " I will remain,
if you and yom* people will become converts for the love of Jesus
Christ. If you hesitate, kindle a furnace, and I and your priests
will enter it together ; and the result shall show ytiu whether truth
is on my side or on theirs." The most venerable of the Imauns
shuddered and withdrew ; and the smiling Commander of the
Faithfid avowed his doubt whether he could find a priest to en-
counter the ordeal. " Only promise to become a Christian," re-
plied Francis, " and I will enter the furnace alone ; but if I should
be burnt, conclude, not that my message is false, but only that it
has reached you by one who, bearing it unworthily, is justly
punished for his sins." Still obdurate, but still courteous, the in-
fidel chief offered rich presents to his stout-hearted visitor ; and
then, with a guard of honour, and a safe conduct, dismissed him
to the Christian camp.

That the head of the missionary was neither bartered for a gold
besant by the soldiers, nor amputated by the scimitar of their
leader, may be explained either by the oriental reverence for sup-
posed insanity, or by the universal reverence for self-denying
courage, or by the motives which induced the lion to lie quietly
do\\T3, and turn his tail on the drawn sword, and eloquent taunts,
of the Knight of La Mancha. To the Eagle of Meaux, however,
this adventure presents itself in a more brilliant light. " Franpois,"
he excJaims, " indigne de se voir ainsi respecte par les ennemis de
son maitre, recommence ses invectives contre leur religion mon-
strueuse ; mais, etrange et merveilleuse insensibilite ! ils ne lui
temoignent pas moins de deference ; et le brave athlete de Jesus-
Christ, voyant qu'il ne pouvait meriter qu'ils lui donnassent la mort :
* Sortons d'ici, mon frere,' disait-il a son compagnon, ' fuyons,
fuyons bien loin de ces barbares, trop humains pour nous, puisque
nous ne les pouvons obliger, ni a adorer notre maitre, ni a nous
persecutor ; nous qui sommes ses serviteurs. Oh Dieu ! quand
meriterons-nous le triomphe de martyre si nous ne trouvons que
des- honneurs, meme parmi les peuples les plus infideles ? Puisque
Dieu ne nous juge pas dignes de la grace du martyre, ni de par-
ticiper a ses glorieux opprobes, allons-nous-en, mon frere ; aliens
achever notre vie dans le martyi-e de la penitence, ou cherchons
quelque endroit de la terre ou nous puissons boire a longs traits
I'ignominie de la croix.' "

Such places were readily found. In Spain, in Provence, and in
Northern Italy, Francis everywhere preached to crowds hanging on
his lips ; and though the ignominy of the cross may have been his
theme, it must be confessed that the admiration of mankind was
his habitual reward. But amidst the applauses of the world, his

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 88

lieart 3^earned after his native Unibria, wliere liis OriK'r liad first
struggled into sight, and where it was now to receive its final de-
velopment.

In his missions through Europe he had discovered tliat Ids insti-
stutes of Minor brethren, and of poor sisters, bound to celibacy, to
poverty, and to obedience, were erected on a basis far too narrow
for the universal empire at which he aimed. Marriage was incon-
sistent with the first of these vows, worldly callings with the second,
and secular dignities with the last. But though wives, and trades,
and lordships were incompatible with " perfection," they might be
reconciled with admission into a lower or third estate of his Order,
where, as in the court of the Gentiles, those might worship to
whom a nearer approach to the sanctuary was interdicted. Witli
the design of thus throwing open the vestibule of the temple to
the uninitiated, a supplemental code was promulgated, in the year
1221, for what was to be called " The Order of Penitence."

The members of it were to take no vows whatever. Engaging
to submit themselves to certain rules of life, it was agreed that tlie
breach of those rules should not involve the guilt of mortal sin.
They required the restitution of all unjust gains, a reconcilement
with all enemies, and obedience to the commands of God and of
the Church. The members of tlie Order were to wear a mean and
uniform dress. Their houses and furniture were to be plain and
frugal, though not without consulting the proprieties of their
social rank. All luxuriousness in animal delights, and all the lusts
of the eye, were to be mortified ; all theatres, feasts, and worldly
amusements eschewed. Their disputes were to be settled, with all
possible promptitude, by compromises or by arbitrament. Every
member of the Order was to make his will. They were never to
take a nonjudicial oath, nor to bear arms, except in defence of the
Church, the Catholic faith, or their native land.

The founder of such a confederacy must have had some of the
hiffher moral instincts of a legislator. It would be difUcidt even
now, with all the aid of history and philosophy, to devise a scheme
better adapted to restrain the licentiousness, to soften the manners,
and to mitigate all the oppressions of an iron age. Secular men
and women were combined with ardent devotees, in one great
society, under a code flexible as it addressed the one, and inex-
orable as it applied to the other, of those classes ; and yet a code,
which imposed on all the same general obligations, the same undi-
vided allegiance, the same vdtimate ends, and many of the same
external badges. Christianity itself, when first promulgated, must
to heathen eyes have had an aspect not wholly unlike that winch
originally distinguished the third estate of the Franciscan Orders ;

84 SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSISI.

and rapid as may have been the corruption and decline of that
estate, it would be mere prejudice or ignorance to deny that it
sustained an important office in the general advancement of civi-
lisation and of truth.

In. the times of Francis himself and of his immediate successors,
tbe Franciscan cord (the emblem of the restraint in which the
soul of man is to hold the Beast to which it is wedded) was to be
seen on countless multitudes ; in the market-place, in the universi-
ties, in the tribunals, and even on the throne. In the camp it was
still more frequent ; for there was much latent significance in the
exceptional terms by which the general prohibition of military
service had been qualified for the members of the Order of Peni-
tence. In the early part of the thirteenth century " the defence of
the Church, of the Catholic faith, and of their native land," was, to
Italian ears, an intelligible periphrasis for serving either under the
standard of the cross against the Albigenses, or under the standard
of the Gruelphs against the Ghibellines ; and the third estate of
the Minorites formed an enthusiastic, patriotic, and religious chi-
valry, which the Pope could direct at pleasure against either his
theological or his political antagonists.

And now it remained that Francis should receive the appro-
priate rewards of the services which he had rendered to Eome, to
the world, and to the Church — to Eome, in surrounding her with
new and energetic allies ; to the world, in creating a mighty cor-
poration formidable to baronial and to mitred tyrants; to the
Church, in supplying her with a noble army of evangelists, who
braved every danger, and endured every privation, to diffuse
throughout Christendom such light as they themselves possessed.
The debt was acknowledged and paid by each.

In the bitterness of his heart Francis was weeping over the sins
of mankind, in the shrine of St. Mary of Angels, when a revelation
was made to him, which, though described with ease and fami-
liarity by a host of Catholic writers, the weaker faith, or the
greater reverence, of Protestantism cannot venture to paint with
the same minuteness. All that can be decorously stated is, that
the Virgin mother, her attendant angels, her Divine Son, and
Francis their devout worshipper, are exhibited by the narrative
as interlocutors in a sort of melodramatic action ; which termi-
nates in a promise from the Eedeemer, that all who should visit
that church, and confess themselves to a priest there, should re-
ceive a plenary remission from the guilt and punishment of all
their sins; " provided " (such is the singular qualification of the
promise) " that this general indulgence be ratified by him whom I
have authorised to bind and to loose on earth."

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 85

On the following day, Francis was on his knees before the Pope
at Perugia. " Holy Father," he began, " some years ago I recon-
structed a little church on your domain. Grant, I implore you,
to all pilgrims resorting thither, a plenary indulgence, and exempt
the building from the imposts usually consequent on the grant
of such privileges." "For how many years," said the Pontiff,
" do you desire the indulgence to be given ? " " Give me not
years," replied the suitor, "but souls, (da mihi non annos, sed
animos,) and let all who enter the church of Saint Mary of Angels
in contrition, and who are there absolved by a priest, receive a full
remission of their sins in this life, and in the life to come." " A
vast gift, and contrary to all custom," observed the parsimonious
dispenser of salvation. " But, Holy Father, I make the request
not in my own name, but in the name of Christ, who has sent
me to you." " Then be it so," exclaimed the Pope ; " but I limit
to one day in each year the enjoyment of this advantage." The
grateful Francis rose, bowed low his head, and was retiring, when
the voice of the Pope was again heard. " Simpleton, whither are
you going ? ^^^lat evidence do you carry with you of the grant
which you have been soliciting ? " " Your word," replied the
single-hearted suitor. " If this indulgence be of God, let the
blessed Virgin be the charter, Christ the notary, and the Angels
the witnesses. I desire no other."

The traveller who in our own day visits Assisi, finds himself
surrounded by a population of about three thousand souls; and
amidst the thii'ty churches and monasteries which attract his eye,
he distinguishes, as pre-eminent above them all, the Sagro Convento,
where repose the ashes of Saint Francis. It is a building of the
sixteenth century, extending over the summit of a gentle eminence
at the base of the Apennines. A double row of gigantic arches,
resembling two vast aqueducts, the lower of which forms the basis
of the higher, sustains a sumptuous terrace, which stands out against
the evening sky, like the battlements of some impregnable fortress.
The luxuriant gardens, and the rich meadows below, watered by a
stream which gushes out from the adjacent mountains, encircle the
now splendid church of St. Mary of Angels ; where may still be
traced the Porzioncula in which Francis worshipped, and tlie crypt
in which his emaciated liody was committed to the dust. And
there also, on each returning year, may be seen the hardy
mountaineers of Umbria, and the graceful peasants of Tuscany,
and the solemn processions of the Franciscan orders, and the long
array of civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries, waiting till the chimes
of the ancient clocks of the holy convent shall announce the advent

G 3

86 SAINT FRANCIS OP ASSIST.

of the day in wliicli their sins are to be loosed on earth, and their
pardon sealed in heaven.

Why demand the reasons of this, or of any other part of a
religious system which presupposes the renunciation of all reason ?
The promise given to Francis by the Saviour, and ratified by His
Vicar, was precise and definite. It insured a plenary remission of
sin to all who should visit the hallowed Porzioncula with contrite
hearts, and there receive priestly absolution. The promise, as
interpreted by the eloquent Bourdaloue, seems equally absolute.
From his sermon, " Sur la fete de notre Dame des Anges," we learn
that indulgences granted by the Pope may, after all, turn out to be
worthless ; since the cause of the gift may be insufficient, or some
other essential condition may have been neglected. But in this
case, the indulgence, having been granted directly by Christ
himself, must, (says the great preacher,) be infallible ; for He must
have known the extent of His own power, and must have been
guided by eternal wisdom, and must be superior to all law in the
free dispensation of His gifts.

Pause, nevertheless, all ye who meditate a pilgrimage to Assisi,
in quest of this divine panacea ! Put not your trust in Bourdaloue,
but listen to the more subtle doctor of our own days, M. Chavin de
Malan. From him you will learn that to all these large and free
promises is attached yet another tacit condition ; and that unless
you renounce all sin, venial as well as mortal, unless the very
desire to transgress have perished in your souls, unless your hearts
be free from the slightest wish, the most transient voluntary
attachment, towards any forbidden thing, you may be members of
all religious orders, and join in all their pilgrimages and devotions,
but the plenary indulgence shall never be yours. Pilgrims to
Assisi ! if such be not your happy state, it boots not to go thither.
If such be yoiu' condition, why roam over this barren earth to find
the heaven whicli is yours already ?

Equivocal as the benefit of the papal reward may have been, the
recompence which the world rendered, by the hands of Orlando,
Lord of Chiusi de Casentino, was at least substantial. At a solemn
festival, at which the knight had made his profession of arms,
Francis had pronounced the usual benediction on the symbols of
his chivalry. Much discourse ensued on the spiritual state and
prospects of this militant member of the church, when the grateful,
and not improvident, Orlando, for the good of his soul, bestowed
on the founder and the companions of the order of Minor brethren,
Monte del Alvernia, a tract of land amidst the highest summits of
the Tuscan Apennines, now called Lavernia. It was a wild and
sequestered region, covered with heath and rocks, and the primaeval

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 87

forest, and eminently adapted for a life of penitence. It became
the favourite retreat of its new owners, and especially of tlieir
cliief. Yet even in these solitudes he was not exempt from some
grave incommodities. By night, malignant demons afflicted him,
dragging his defenceless body along the ground, and bruising him
with cruel blows. WHien the sun burnt fiercely over his head,
Orlando appeared with food, and with offers to erect cells and
dormitories for the hermits, and to supply all their temporal
wants, that they might surrender themselves wholly to prayer and
meditation. But neither the enmity of the demons, nor the allure-
ments of their unconscious ally, could seduce Francis from
his fidelity to his wedded wife. In her society he wandered
through the woods and caverns of Alvernia; relying for support
on Him alone by whom the ravens are fed, and awakening the
echoes of the mountains by his devout songs and fervent ejacu-
lations.

It remained only that the Church, in the person of her eternal
Head, should requite the services of her great reformer. The too
familiar legend must be briefly told; for every one who would
cherish in himself, or in others, the reverence due to the Holy and
the Awful, must shrink from the approach to such a topic, and be
unwilling to linger on it.

On the annual festival of Saint Michael the archangel, for the
year 1224, Francis and Leoni, a member of his order, went together
to worship at a church which had then been erected on Mount
Alvernia. The sortes sanctorum were again consulted, by thrice
opening the gospels, which lay upon the altar. On each occasion
the volume presented to their eyes the history of the passion ; and
the coincidence was accepted by Francis as ominous of some great
event which was about to happen to himself.

The hour arrived of the "holy sacrifice;" when, as though to
symbolise his disgust for earth, and his aspirations to heaven, the
body of the saint slowly ascended heavenwards. When it had
reached the ordinary height of a man, the feet were embraced and
bathed with tears by Leoni, who stood beneath. Grradually it
mounted beyond the range of human vision ; but even then his
voice was heard in discourse with the Invisible, and a bright
radiance attested the presence of the Redeemer. He was made
manifest to the eye of his enraptured worshipper, in the form of a
seraph moving on rapid wings, though fastened to a cross ; and
when the whole scene passed away, it was found that, by radiations
from this celestial figure, the body of Francis, like wax beneath the
pressure of a seal, had acquired the sacred stigmata — that is, on
either hand, and on either foot, marks exactly correspouding with

G 4

88 SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSISI.

the two opposite extremities of a rude iron nail ; and on the side,
a wound such as might have been inflicted by a spear.

This stupendous event happened on the 17th September, a day
still consecrated by the Church to the perpetual commemoration of
it. No Christian, therefore, may doubt it; for St. Thomas, and all
other theologians, assure us, that to doubt a " canonical fact," is
rash, scandalous, and open to the just suspicion of heresy. Yet
scepticism on the subject appears to have been of very early growth.
Within thirteen years from the date of the occurrence, a Dominican
preacher at Oppaw in Moravia, and the Bishop of Olmutz, had
both published their utter disbelief of the whole story, and had
condemned the propagation of it as sinful. For this audacious
presumption, however, Ugolino, who then filled the papal throne
under the title of Gregory the Ninth, addressed to both of
them reproachful letters, which sufficiently attest his own faith
in the prodigy. In the dense cloud of corroborative witnesses may
be distinguished his successor, Pope Alexander the Fourth ; who,
in a still extant bull, denounces the severest penalties on all
gainsayers. Indeed, if Saint Bonaventura may be believed,
Alexander went further still, and was used to declare that he had
with his own eyes seen and admired the stigmata. And INI. Chavin
de Malan is ready to abandon his reliance on all human testimony,
if any one can convince him of the insufficiency of that on which his
faith in this miracle reposes.

When the fishermen of Jordan shall have learnt how to stay her
swellings with their nets, it will be time to encounter the soaring
enthusiasm of M. Chavin de Malan by the cobAvebs of human logic.
When geometricians shall have ascertained the colour of the circle,
"we may hope to arrive at an understanding with him as to the
meaning of the terms in which he disputes. When critics shall
have demonstrated, from the odes of Pindar, the polarisation of
Light, he and we may be of one mind as to the laws by which our
belief should be governed. JNIeanwhile, his rebukes for the
hardness of our hearts shall not be repelled by any imputations
touching the softness of his head. He and his fellow-worshippers
regard it as eminentl}^ probable, that He by' whom this universal
frame of things has been created and sustained, should descend to
this earth, to act so strange a part as they assign to Him in so
grotesque a drama as that of Mount Alvernia. If we could adopt
the same opinion, we might, with them, give some heed even to
the scanty, and most suspicious, evidence on which these marvels
rest. One prodigy, indeed, connected with this tale, we receive
with implicit conviction and profound astonishment. It is, that in
the city in which Louis Philippe was then reigning, in which

SAINT FRAXCIS OF ASSISI. 89

Guizot and Thierry were writing, and in wliicb Cousin was di'li\'cr-
ing his lectures, there arose two learned historians, who, witli
impassioned eloquence, and unhesitating faith, reproduced a legend
which would have been rejected as extravagant by the novelists to
whom we owe the " Arabian Niglits," and as profane by the authors
with whom Don Quixote was familiar.

Francis did not long survive the revelation of Mount Alvernia.
Exhausted by vigils, by fastings, and by fatigue, he retired to
Assisi. Leoni accompanied him. As they approached the city,
the increasing weakness of the saint compelled him to seek the
unwonted relief of riding. But as his companion followed behind,
Francis divined his thoughts. In early life they had often
journeyed together over the same road; the one ever conscious of
his noble birth, the other never allowed to forget that his father
was but a merchant. The contrast of the past and the present
was too powerful to both of the travellers. Faint as he was,
Francis dismounted from the ass which bore him : declaring: that
he could not retain the saddle while one so much his superior in
rank was on foot.

He reached at length a hut near the convent of St. Damiano,
Avhere, under the care of Clara and her poor sisters, he found a
temporary repose. Twelve months of utter incapacity for exertion
followed. They were passed in the monastery of St. Mary of
Angels. The autumn brought with it some brief intermission of
his sufferings ; and again his voice was heard throughout Umbria,
preaching, as his custom was, in words few, simple, and jxathetic ;
and when unable to teach by words, he presented himself, and
gazed with earnest tenderness on the crowds who thronged to
receive his benediction and to touch his garments.

In this his last mission, a woman of Bagnarea brought to him
her infant to be healed. Francis laid his hands on the child, who
recovered; and who afterwards, under the name of Bonaventura,
became his biographer, the general minister of his order, a cardinal,
a theologian, and a saint.

At the approach of death, Francis felt and acknowledged the
horror common to all men, and especially to men of irritable nerves
and delicate organisation. But such feelings promptly yielded to
his habitual affiance in the Divine love, and to his no less habitual
affection for all in whom he recognised the regenerate image of
the Divine nature. Among these was the Lady Jacoba di Sette-
soli ; and to her he dictated a letter, requesting her immediate
presence with a winding-sheet for his body, and tapers for liis
funeral, and with the cakes she had been used to give him during
his illness at Rome. Then pausing, he bade his amanuensis tear

90 SAINT FKANCIS OP ASSISI.

the letter, expressing liis conviction that JacoLa was at hand.
She appeared ; and so deep was her emotion as to have suggested
to the bystanders (to whom apparently her existence had till then
been unknown) the vague and oppressive sense of some awful
mystery. It may, however, be reasonably supposed that the
anguish of Jacoba was nothing else than the natural expression of
that intense and perfect sympathy to which the difference of sex
is essential, to which none but the pure in heart can ever attain, and
which, with no failure of respect to so great a man, may therefore
be supposed to have glowed in his bosom as warmly as in hers.

Her cakes were again eaten by the sick man ; but without any
abatement of his malady. Elia, who, during his illness, had acted
as general minister of his order, and Bernard de Quintavalle, his
first proselyte, were kneeling before him. To each of them he
gave a part of one of the cakes of Jacoba ; and then crossing his
arms so as to bring his right hand over the head of Bernard,
(whose humility had chosen the left or inferior position,) he
solemnly blessed them both, and bequeathed to Bernard the
government of the whole Franciscan society. He then dictated
his last will, in which the rules he had already promulgated were
explained and enforced, and his followers were solemnly commended
to the guidance and the blessing of the Most High.

His last labour done, he was laid, in obedience to his own com-
mand, on the bare ground. The evening, we are told, was calm,
balmy, and peaceful; the western sky glowing with the mild and
transparent radiance which follows the setting of an autumnal sun
behind the lofty hills of central Italy. At that moment the
requiem for the dying ceased, as the faltering voice of Francis
was heard, in the language of David, exclaiming, "Voce mea ad
Dominum clamavi!" His attendants bent over him as he pursued
the divine song, and caught his last breath as he uttered, " Bring
my soul out of prison, that I may give thanks unto Thy name."

Some there are, total strangers to man's interior life, who find
for themselves in the objects of concupiscence a living tomb ; these
are the sensual and the worldly. Some, for whom the world
within is detached from the world without them by hard, sharp,
clear lines of demarcation ; these are the men of practical ability.
Some, who, from every idol of the theatre, fashion to themselves
some idol of the cavern ; these are the votaries of poetry or art.
Some, to whom all substantial things are permanently eclipsed by
the imagery of the brain ; these are the insane. And some, to
whom every cherished idea of their minds gives assurance of a
corresponding objective reality; these are the mystics and enthu-

SAINT FRAXCIS OF ASSISI. 91

siasts — men of an amphibious existence — inhabitants alternately
of the world of shadows, and of the workl of solidities — their
dreams passing into action, their activity subsiding into dreams —
a l)y\vord to the sensual and the worldl}'^, an enigma to the
practical, a study to the poet, and not rarely ending as fellow-
prisoners with the insane.

To this small section of the human family belonged Francis of
Assisi ; a mere self-contradiction to those who beheld him incuri-
ously ; in one aspect a playful child, in the next a gloomy Ancho-
rite ; an arch smile of drollery stealing at times across features
habitually sacred to sorrow and devotion ; passing from dark fore-
bodings into more than human ecstasies ; a passionate lover of
nature, yet living by choice in crowds and cities : at once an erotic
worshipper, and a proficient in the practical business of the
religious state ; outstripping in his transcendental raptures the
pursuit of criticism and conjecture, and yet drawing up codes and
canoDS with all the precision of a notary.

The reconcilement of all this was not, however, hard to find.
Francis was an absolute prodigy of faith ; and especially of faith
in himself. Whatever he saw in the camera lucida of his own
mind, he received implicitly as the genuine reflection of some
external reality. Every metaphor with which he dallied, became
to him an actual personage, to be loved or to be hated. It was
scarcely as a fiction that he wooed Poverty as his wife. Each
living thing was a brother or a sister to him, in a sense which
almost ceased to be figurative. To all inanimate beings he ascribed
a personality and a sentient nature, in something more than a
sport of fancy. At every step of his progress, celestial visitants
hovered round him ; announcing their presence sometimes in
visible forms, sometimes in audible voices. The Virgin mother
was the lady of his heart; her attendant angels but so many
knights companions in his spiritual chivalry ; the Church a bride
in glorious apparel ; and her celestial Spouse the object of a
passion which acknowledged no restraint either in the vehemence
of spirit with which it was cherished, or in the fondness of the
language in which it was expressed. It was inevitable that the
inhabitant of such a world as this, should have manifested himself
to the vulgar denizens of earth in ceaseless contrasts and seeming
iucongi'uities ; so essential were the differences between the ever-
varying impulses on which he soared, and the unvarying motives
in the strength of which they plodded.

Though Bonaventura was but a child at tlie death of Francis,
he possessed and diligently used the means of studying his
character, and has laboured in tlie following passage, with more
earnestness than perspicuity, to depict his interior life : —

92 SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSISI.

" Who can form a conception of the fervour and the love of
Francis, the friend of Christ? you would have said that he was
burnt up by Divine love, like charcoal in the flames. As often as
his thoughts were directed to that subject, he was excited as if the
chords of his soul had been touched by the plectrum of an inward
voice. But as all lower affections elevated him to this love of the
supreme, he yielded himself to the admiration of every creature
which God has formed ; and from the summit of this observatory
of delights he watched the causes of all things, as they unfolded
themselves to him under living forms. Among the beautiful
objects of nature, he selected the most lovely ; and, in the forms
of created things, he sought out, with ardour, whatever appeared
especially captivating ; rising from one beauty to another as
by a ladder, with which he scaled to the highest and the most
glorious."

Birds, insects, plants, and fishes, are variously regarded, according
to the temper of the observer, in a culinary, a scientific, a pic-
turesque, or a poetical point of view. To Francis of Assisi they
were friends, kinsmen, and even congregations. Doves were his
especial favourites. He gathered them into his convents, laid them
in his bosom, taught them to eat out of his hand, and pleased
himself with talking of them as so many chaste and faithful
brethren of the order. In the lark which sprung up before his
feet, he saw a Minorite sister, clad in the Franciscan colour ; who,
like a true Franciscan, despised the earth, and soared towards
heaven with thanksgivings for her simple diet. When a nest of
those birds fought for the food he brought them, he not only
rebuked their inhumanity, but prophesied their punishment. His
own voice rose with that of the nightingale in rural vespers ; and
at the close of their joint thanksgivings, he praised, and fed, and
blessed his fellow-worshipper. " My dear sisters," he exclaimed to
some starlings who chattered round him as he preached, " you have
talked long enough, it is my turn now; listen to the word of your
Creator, and be quiet." The very sermon addressed by the saint to
such an audience, yet lives in the pages of his great biographer.
"My little brothers," it began, "you should love and praise the
Author of your being, who has clothed you with plumage, and
given you wings with which to fly where you will. You were the
first created of all animals. He preserved your race in the ark.
He has given the pure atmosphere for your dwelling-place. You
sow not, neither do you reap. Without any care of your own. He
gives you lofty trees to build your nests in, and watches over your
young. Therefore give praise to your bountiful Creator."

The well-known instinct by which irrational animals discover

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 93

and attach themselves to their rational friends, was exliihited
whenever Francis came abroad. The wild falcon wheeled and
fluttered round him. The leveret sought rather to attract than
to escape his notice. The half-frozen bees crawled to him in
winter time to be fed. A lamb followed him even into the city of
Eome ; and Avas playfully cherished there by Jacoba di Settesoli
under the name of a Minor brother.

These natural incidents became, in the hands of his monkish
biographers, so many miracles lit only for the nursery. Let us not,
however, upbraid them. "Without apology, as without doubt, M.
Chavin de Malan, in the year 1845, and from the city of Paris,
informs us, that when Francis addressed his feathered congregation
they stretched out their necks to imbibe his precepts ; — that, at
his bidding, the starlings ceased to chatter while he preached ; —
that in fulfilment of his predictions, the naughty larks died
miserably; — that a falcon announced to him in the mountains
the hour of prayer, though with gentler voice and a tardier
summons, when the saint was sick ; — that Jacoba was aroused to
her devotions by her lamb with severe pxmctuality ; — that an
ovicidal wolf, being rebuked by this ecclesiastical Orpheus for liis
carnivorous deeds, placed his paw in the hand of his monitor in
pledge of his futiure good behaviour, and, like a wolf of honour,
never more indulged himself in mutton. YetM. Chavin de Malan
is writing a learned and an eloquent history of the monastic orders.
Such be thy gods, Oxford !

In common with all the great Thaumaturgists of the Church of
Eome, Francis had abstained from recording his own prodigies.
He was too honest and too lowly. No man could less be, to him-
self, the centre of his own thoughts. One central object occupied
them all. He was a Pan-Christian. He saw the outer world not
merely thronged with emblems, but instinct with the presence, of
the Eedeemer. The lamb he fondled was the Paschal sacrifice.
The worm he guarded from injury was, " the worm, and no man,
the outcast of the people." The very stones (on which he never
trod irreverently) were " the chief corner-stone " of the prophet.
The flowers were the " blossoms of the stem of Jesse, the perfume
of which gladdens the whole earth." The ox and the ass were his
guests at a Christmas festival, which he gave in the forest not long
before his death ; and while they steadily ate the corn provided for
them, processions of Minor brethren, and crowds of admiring spec-
tators, listened to his discourses on the manger and the babe of
Bethlehem, or joined with him in sacred carols on the nativity.

Among the Opuscula Sancti Francisci are four poems, in which
the same mystic spirit expands itself gloriously. It must not, in-

94 SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI.

deed, be concealed that tlie autlienticity of these canticles has been
enveloped by the critics in a chilling cloud of scepticism. The
controversy is not without its interest, but could be made intelli-
gible within no narrow limits. Suffice it then to say, that both
Tiraboschi and Ginguene acknowledge, without hesitation, the
poetical claims of the saint ; and that M. Delecluse, after review-
ing all the evidence with judicial impartiality and acumen, con-
cludes that the general sense, and many of the particular
expressions, are his, though, in the lapse of so many ages, the
style must have drifted far away from the original structure, into a
form at once more modern and more ornate. In this qualified
sense the following " Canticum Solis " may be safely read as the
work of the founder of the Franciscan order :

" ^ytissimo omnipoteiite bon' Signore, tiie son le laude, la gioiia, lo laonore, e
ogiii benedictioue. A te solo se confanuo, e nuUo homo e degno de nomi-
narti.

" Laudato sia Dio mio Signore con tntte le creature, specialmente niesser lo
Fratre Sole, il quale giorna e ilhmiiua noi per lui. E ello e bello e radiente con
gi'ande spleudore ; de te, SigTiore, porta significazione.

" Laudato sia mio Signore, per Suora Lima e per le stelle ; il quale in cielo le
hai formate cliiare e belle.

" Laudato sia mio Signore per Fratre Vento e per 1' Aire e Nuvole e sereno e
ogni tempo, per le quale dai a tutte creature sustentamento.

'' Laudato sia mio Signore per Suora Acqua, la quale e molto utile, e humile,
e pretiosa, e casta.

" Laudato sia mio Signore per Fratre Fuocbo, per lo quale tu allumiui la notte ;
e ello e bello, e jocondo, e robustissimo, e forte.

"■ Laudato sia mio Signore per nostra Madre TeiTa, la quale ne sostenta, governa
e produce diversi frutti, e coloriti fieri, e berbe.

" Laudato sia mio Signore per quelli cbe perdouano per lo tue amore, e soste-
neno infirmitade e tribulatione. Beati quelli che sostegnerauno in pace, cbe de
te Altissimo, serauno incoronati."

Another stanza vras added in his last illness, giving thanks for
" our sister, the Death of the body," the last of this strange cata-
logue of his kindred. Protestant reserve and English gravity
alike forbid any quotations of the canticles which follow. They
belong to that kind of anacreontic psalmody, in which Cupid
prompts the worship of Psyche. Such a combination of the lan-
guage of Paphos, with the chaste fervours of the sanctuary, can
never be rendered tolerable to those who have been familiar from
their childhood with the majestic composure of the Anglican
liturgy, or with the solemn effusions of our Scottish church, even
though it be recommended to them by the pathos of Thomas a
Kempis, or by the tenderness of Fenelon.

Whoever shall undertake a collection of the facetioe of Francis,
may console himself under the inevitable result, l)y remembering

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI. 95

that he has failed only where Cicero and Bacon had failed before
him. In the tragi-comedy of life, the saint, in common witli all
other great men, occasionally assumed the Luskin ; though not so
much to join in the dialogue as to keep up the Ly-play. His
joculai'ities were of the kind usually distinguished as practical ;
and, if not eminently ludicrous, were, at least, very pregnant jests.
Behold him, to the unutterable amazement of his unwashed and
half naked fraternity, strutting before them, on his return from
Damietta, in a tunic of the finest texture, with a hood behind
fashionably reaching to his middle, and a broad and rich frill in
front usurping the function of clerical bands : — his head tossed
up towards the sky — his voice loud and imperious — and his gait
like that of a dancing master. What this strange pantomime
might mean could be conjectured by none but brother Elia, whose
unsubdued passion for dress had been indulged during the absence
of the " general minister," and who now saw himself thus villau-
ously caricatured by the aid of his own finery. With his serge
cloak, his sandals, and his cord, Francis resumed his wonted
gravity ; and the unlucky Exquisite was degraded on the spot from
his charge as vicar-general. On the refusal, by another brother,
of the obedience due to his chief, a grave was dug, the offender
seated upright in it, and mould cast over him till it had covered
his shoulders. " Art thou dead ? " exclaimed Francis to the head,
which alone remained above ground. " Completely," replied the
terrified monk. " Arise, then," rejoined the saint, "go thy ways,
and remember that the dead never resist any one. Let me have
dead, not living followers."

These gambols, however, were as infrequent as they were un-
couth. They were but gleams of mirth, passing rapidly across a
mind far more often overcast by constitutional sadness. For
though Faith had reversed the natural springs of action in his
mind, and revealed to him the cheat of life, and peopled his imagi-
nation with many bright and many awful forms, yet she was not
attended by her usual handmaids, Peace and Hope. With a heart
dead to selfish delights, and absorbed in holy and benevolent affec-
tions, he possessed neither present serenity nor anticipated joy.
Cheerless and unalluring is the image of Francis of Assisi : his
figure gaunt and wasted, his countenance furrowed with care, his
soul hurried from one excitement to another, incapable of study,
incapable of repose, forming attachments but to learn their fragil-
ity, conquering difficulties but to prove the vanity of conquest,
living but to consolidate his Order of Minor brethren, and yet
haunted by constant forebodings of their rapid degeneracy. Under
the pressure of such solicitudes and of premature disease, he in-

96 SAINT FEANCIS OF ASSIST.

dulged his natural melancholy (his only self-indulgence), and gave
way to tears till his eyesight liad almost wholly failed him.

To his wondering disciples, these natural results of low diet,
scanty dress, and ceaseless fatigue operating on a temperament so
susceptible as his, appeared as so many prodigies of grace. But
the admiration was not reciprocal. He saw, and vehemently re-
proved their faults. WTaich of them should be the greatest — was
debated among the Minor brethren, as once among a more illus-
trious fraternity ; and, in imitation of Him who washed the feet of
the aspiring fishermen of Galilee, Francis abdicated the govern-
ment of the Order, and for awhile became himself nothing more
than a Minor brother. Which of them should gather in the
greatest number of female proselytes, and superintend their con-
vents — was another competition which he watched with yet
severer anxiety. He had learnt to regard his own abduction
of Clara from her father's house as a sublime departure from
rules which other zealots would do well to observe. " Alas ! " he
exclaimed, " at the moment when Grod forbade us wives, Satan has,
I fear, given us sisters." Which of them should build the most
splendid monasteries — was yet another rivalry in which he fore-
saw their approaching decline. " Now%" he said, " it is who shall
erect the finest religious edifices. The time is coming, when
others of us shall build mansions fit for the great and noble of the
earth. Eich and beautiful will be the dress of those architects I
Well ! if our brethren may but escape mortal sin, let us be satis-
fied." Which of them should first win the favour of ecclesiastical
patrons — was an inquiry which their protector, Ugolino, had sug-
gested ; but their rising ambition was energetically denounced, by
their prophet Francis, in fervent and projDhetic warnings, which
may be read among his yet extant predictions.

Saints and Satirists, of a day but little remote from his own,
emulate each other in recording the accomplishment of these
dark forebodings. At the distance of only thirty years from the
death of the founder, we find Bonaventura, the greatest of his
successors in the government of the Order, thus addressing his
provincial ministers: — "The indolence of our brethren is laying
open the path to every vice. They are immersed in carnal repose.
They roam up and down everywhere, burthening every place to
which they come. So importunate are their demands, and such
their rapacity, that it has become no less terrible to fall in with
them than with so many robbers. So sumptuous is the structure of
their magnificent buildings as to bring us all into discredit. So
frequently are they involved in those culpable intimacies which
our rule prohibits, tliat suspicion, scandal, and reproach have Ijeen

SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSIST. 97

excited against us." Listen again to the ardent admirer of Francis
in the 22nd book of the Faradiso: —

So soft is flesh of moi-tals, that on earth

A good beginiiin<i- doth no longer last

Than while an oak may bring its fruit to birth.
Peter began his convent without gold

Or silver, — I built mine by prayer and fast ; —

Humility for Francis won a fold.
If thou reflect how each began, then view

To what an end doth such beginning lead,

Thou'lt see the white assume the darkest hue,
Jordan driven backward, and the sea, that fled

At God's command, were miracles indeed

Greater than those here needful.

Wright'' s Dante.

The Franciscan Order has, however, not only survived the
denunciations of Bonaventura and of Dante — the banter of Erasmus
— the broader scoffs of "The Letters of some Obscure Men" —
the invectives of WiclifF and Luther — the tavmts of jNIilton — the
contemptuous equity of Bayle — and the eloquence, the wit, the
scorn, and the resentment of half the pens of Europe ; but has
outlived the egregious crimes and follies of its own degenerate sons ;
and after six centuries still lives and flourishes ; a boast of the
Papal and a problem for the Protestant world. What is the prin-
ciple of this protracted vitality ? Whence the buoyancy, which,
amidst so many storms and wrecks, has so long sustained the institute
of the unlearned, half-crazy fugitive from the counting-house at
Assisi ?

Not even the idolaters of his name ascribe to him any profound
foresight, or intuitive genius, or bold originality of thought.
The eloquence for which he was renowned was no ignited logic,
but a burst of contagious emotion, guided by no art, fed by no
stores of knowledge, and directed by no intellectual prowess. It
was the voice of a herald still repeating the same impressive
tidings, not the address of an orator subjugating at once the
rational and the sensitive faculties of his audience. He was
rather the compiler than the inventor of the Franciscan code ;
and, as a legislator, is famous for only two novelties — the vow of
absolute poverty, which was made but to be broken ; and the
reconcilement of the religious with the secular state in his Order
of Penitence, which died away with the feudal oppressions and
the social exigencies which, at first, sustained and nourislied it.

If considered only as a part of the general system of Monasticism,
the success of the Franciscan rule is, however, readily explicable.
Men become monks and women nuns, sometimes from vulgar

98. SAINT FRANCIS OP ASSISI.

motives ; such as fashion, the desire of mutual support, the want
of a maintenance, inaptitude for more active duties, satiety of the
pleasures of life, or disgust at its disappointments, parental au-
thority, family convenience, or the like ; — sometimes from super-
stitious fancies; such as the supposed sanctity of certain relics,
or the expiatory value of some particular ceremonial ; — sometimes
from nobler impulses ; such as the conviction that such solitude
is essential to the purity of the soul of the recluse, or to the
usefulness of his life ; — but always, in some degree, from other
causes of still deeper root and far wider expansion. Such are,
the servile spirit, which desires to abdicate the burden of free
will and the resj)onsibilities of free agency ; — and the feeble
spirit which can stand erect, and make progress, only when sus-
tained by the pressure and the impulse of a crowd ; — and the
wavering spirit, which takes refuge from the pains of doubt in
the contagion of monastic unanimity.

Neither is the success of the Franciscan institute, if viewed
as distinct from all other conventual orders, involved in any real
obscurity. So reiterated, indeed, and so just have been the
assaults on the Mendicant Friars, that we usually forget that,
till the days of Martin Luther, the Church had never seen so
great and effectual a reform as theirs. During nearly two cen-
turies, Francis and his sj)iritual descendants, chiefly, if not
exclusively, directed the two great engines of the Christian warfare
— the Mission and the Pulpit. Nothing in the histories of
Wesley or of Whitfield, can be compared with the enthusiasm
which everywhere welcomed them, or with the immediate and
visible results of their labours. In an age of oligarchical tyranny
they were the protectors of the weak ; in an age of ignorance the
instructors of mankind ; and in an age of profligacy the stern vindi-
cators of the holiness of the sacerdotal character, and the virtues
of domestic life. While other religious societies withdrew from
the world, they entered, studied, and traversed it. They were
followed by the wretched, the illiterate, and the obscure, through
whom, from the first, the Church has been chiefly replenished;
but not by them only. In every part of Europe, the rich, the
powerful, and the learned, were found among their proselytes.
In our own land Duns Scotus, Alexander Hales, Robert Grrostete,
and Roger Bacon, lent to this new Christian confederacy the lustre
and the authority of their names. And even when, by the natural
descent of corruption, it had fallen into well-deserved contumely,
still the jNIission and the Pulpit, and the tradition of the great
men by whom it was originally organised and nurtured, were
sufficient to arrest the progress of decay, and to redeem for the

SAINT FRANCIS OP ASSISI. 99

Franciscan Order a permanent and a conspicuous station among
the " Princedoms, Dominations, Powers," which hold their
appointed rank, and perform their appropriate offices, in the
great spiritual dynasty of Rome.

The tragedy of Hamlet, leaving out the character of the Prince
of Denmark, the biography of Turenne, with the exception of his
wars, may, perhaps, be but inadequate images of a life of St.
Francis, omitting all notice of the doctrines he taught, and
excluding any account of the influence of his theology on him-
self or his contemporaries, and on the generations which have
succeeded him. This, however, is not a biography, but a rapid
sketch put forth by secular men to secular readers. It would be
indecorous to sup'pose that our profound divines, Scottish or
English, would waste the midnight oil over so slight an attempt
to revive the memory of a once famous Father of the Church,
now fallen into unmerited neglect and indiscriminate opprobrium
among us. Yet if, indeed, any student of Jewell or of Knox
should so far descend from his Bodleian eminences as to cast a
hasty glance over these lines, let him, if he will, first heartily
censure, and then supply, their too palpable omissions. Let him
write the complete story of St. Francis, and estimate impartially
his acts, his opinions, his character, and his labom's ; and he will
have written one important chapter of a History of the Monastic
Orders, and will have contributed to supply one great deficiency
in the ecclesiastical literature of the Protestant world.

H 2

100

THE FOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

On the dawn of the day on which, in the year 1534, the Church
of Rome celebrated the feast of the Assumption of Our Blessed
Lady, a little company of men emerged in solemn procession from
the deep shadows cast by the towers of Notjre Dame over the
silent city below them. In a silence not less profound, except
when broken by the chant of the matins appropriate to that sacred
season, they climbed the Hill of Martyrs, and descended into the
Crypt which then ascertained the spot where the Apostle of France
had won the crown of martyrdom. With a stately though halting
gait, as one accustomed to military command, marched at their
head a man of swarthy complexion, bald-headed, and of middle
stature, who had passed the meridian of life; his deep-set eyes
glowing, as with a perennial fire, from beneath brows which, had
phrenology then been born, she might have portrayed in her
loftiest style, but which, even without her aid, announced to every
observer a commission from on high to subjugate and to rule
mankind. So majestic, indeed, was the aspect of Ignatius Loyola,
that, during the sixteenth century, few, if any, of the books of
his Order appeared without the impress of that imperial coun-
tenance. Beside him, in the chapel of St. Denys, knelt another
worshipper ; whose manly bearing, buoyant step, clear blue eye,
and finely chiselled features, contrasted strangely with the solemni-
ties in which he was engaged. Then, in early manhood, Francis
Xavier united in his person the dignity befitting his birth as a
grandee of Spain, and the grace which should adorn a page of the
Queen of Castile and Arragon. Not less incongruous with the
scene in which they bore their parts, were the slight forms of the
boy Alphonso Salmeron, and of his bosom friend lago Laynez,
the destined successor of Ignatius in his spiritual dynasty. With
them Nicholas Alphonso Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriguez — the
first a teacher, the second a student, of philosophy — prostrated
themselves before the altar, where ministered Peter Faber, once
a shepherd in the mountains of Savoy, but now a priest in holy
orders. By his hands was distributed to his associates the seeming

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 101

bread, over which he had uttered words of more than miraculous
efficacy ; and then were lifted up their united voices, uttering in
low but distinct articulation, an oath, at the deej) significance of
which the nations might have trembled or rejoiced. Never did
human lips pronounce a vow more religiously observed, or pregnant
with results more momentous.

Ignatius Loyola was born in the year 1491, at Guipuscoa, in the
province of Biscay. His mother, who had already borne to her
hwsband ten children, resolved to bring forth this her youngest son
in a stable, in memory of the birth-place of the Eedeemer at
Bethlehem. A few years later his father, a wealthy Hidalgo, in-
troduced the boy as a page into the service of Ferdinand the
Catholic, by whose command he was trained up in the graces of
the court, the exercises of chivalry, the discipline of the camp, and
the observances of religion. The traditions of his youth represent
him as one in whom seeming contradictions met and were recon-
ciled : — as, at the same time, a voluptuary revelling in sensual
delights, and a knight of surpassing hardihood ; — as a profligate in
his habits, and yet edifying his companions by his modest speech
and decorous manners ; — as quickly roused to fierce anger, and
as quickly subdued to gentleness and peace ; — as at once desti-
tute of learning, and an ardent cultivator of poetry ; — as a captive
in the chains of vice, while aspiring after the highest franchises of
virtue ; — as habitually distracted by conflicting aims, though living
under the constant dominion of one master passion — the passion
for controlling the wills and directing the conduct of other men.

At the siege of Pampeluna, by the forces of Francis the First,
in the year 1521, Ignatius, in scorn of the alarm which had induced
the garrison to capitulate, retired with a single follower into the
citadel ; and, while defending a breach in the walls, was struck
down by a cannon ball, which broke and splintered one of his legs.
His gallant enemies, raising him on their arms, bore him to the
tent of their general, Andre de Foix ; who, filled with admiration
of his undaunted valour, placed him under the care of a French
surgeon, and then sent him home to the adjacent castle of Loyola,
with all the honours of war, and with the fracture apparently re-
duced. The operation had, however, been ill-performed, and the
cure was imperfect ; and, to repair the error, it was thought neces-
sary that the bone should be broken anew. The fever which fol-
lowed nearly brought to a j^remature grave the future restorer of
the Papacy.

Thus far we have trodden on ground over which no prodigy
hangs ; but our path now lies through the land of miracles. While
the patient slept, the Prince of the Apostles laid his venerable hand

H 3

102 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

on the limb, and at once the fever ceased, the pains passed away,
and the fractured bones resumed their natural position. Yet the
therapeutic skill of St. Peter was less perfect than might have been
expected from so exalted a chirurgeon. A splinter still protruded
through the skin, and the wounded leg was shortened, shrunken,
and disfigured. To regain his fair proportions, Ignatius submitted
to tortures from which a martyr might have shrunk. The fragment
of his bone was violently wrenched away, and his limb placed in a
rack which, during several days, was strained to draw back t^e
nerves, sinews, and dislocated parts into their proper places. This
frightful sacrifice at the shrine of Comeliness was, however, offered
in vain. Her votary was long confined to his couch, oppressed by
the sad conviction that, whether the lute should breathe a summons
to the gaillard, or the trumpet ring out an alarm to the battle, the
sound would henceforth be but as a mockery to him. Nor (if the
tale be true) was he unhaunted by the still sorer misgiving that
the bright eyes of his Angelica (for our Orlando was of course also
Innamorato) might henceforM^ard be turned with greater favour on
some Medoro of unimpeachable symmetry of form, than on himself,
halting at every step on a leg misshapen, mutilated, and contracted.

Books of knight-errantry soothed these anxieties, and relieved
the lassitude of sickness ; and, when these tales were exhausted, the
disabled soldier betook himself to a series of still more marvellous
romances. In the legends of the saints he discovered a new field
of emulation and of glory. When contrasted with their self-con-
quests and their high rewards, the achievements and the reno"vvn of
Eoland and of Amadis waxed dim. When compared with those
peerless damsels, for whose smiles Paladins had fought and died,
the awful image of feminine loveliness and angelic purity which
had irradiated the hermit's cell and the path of the way-worn pil-
grim, presented itself to his mental vision in a glory transcendent
and unapproachable. Far as the heavens are above the earth
would rise the plighted fealty of the knight of the Virgin Mother
over the noblest devotion of mere human chivalry. He would cast
his shield over the Church which ascribed to her more than celestial
dignities, and would bathe in the blood of her enemies the sword
once desecrated to the mean ends of earthly ambition.

These ardent vows were not unheeded by her to whom they
were addressed. Environed in light, and clasping her infant to
her bosom, she revealed herself to the adoring gaze of her cham-
pion. At that heavenly vision, all fantasies of worldly and sensual
delight, like exorcised demons, fled from his soul into an eternal
exile. Arising from these erotic dreams, he suspended at her
shrine his secular weapons, performed his nocturnal vigils, and.

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 103

with retui'ning day, retired from the chapel, to consecrate his
future life to the glory of the Virgo Deipara.

Restored to health the knight once more vaulted into his saddle,
and, guiding his war-horse toward the altar of Our Lady of Mont-
serrat, caricoled in advance of the throng of ignobler pilgrims,
who, like himself, had made a solemn vow to worship there. A
Moor from Grranada encountered and accosted him ; hut from
com-teous greetings the two cavaliers soon passed to fierce and
thorny controversy. If they had graduated at Salamanca, they
could not have fallen upon a logomachy setting more triumphantly
at defiance every imaginable attempt to resolve it. The infidel
affirmed, and the Christian denied, that Mary had ceased to be a
virgin when she became a mother; and the clashing of sword and
scimitar seemed about to succeed to the war of words, when, at the
point of intersection of several roads, the Mahometan (so runs the
story) gave spm-s to his horse and fled. The champion of the
Madonna followed; but, throwing the rein on the neck of his
steed, he left it to the animal's discretion either to follow or to de-
cline the road which the fugitive had taken. To the observance of
this law or custom of chivalry, the Paynim was indebted that day
for an uncloven skull — an advantage which his most Catholic
Sovereign did not probably allow him long to enjoy.

At Montserrat, Ignatius performed such acts of devotion as might
best beseem so illustrious a sanctuary and so zealous a worshipper ;
and then betook himself to the adjacent town of Manreza, as a
place admirably suited to the austerities with which he proposed to
celebrate his self-dedication to Our Lady of the Serried Mount.
Seven hours were daily given to prayer, during which he remained
silent and motionless as a statue. His week-day diet was bread
and water, to which on Sundays he added a condiment of herbs
and ground ashes boiled together. Next to his skin he wore alter-
nately an iron chain, a horse-hair cloth, and a sash of prickly
briars. Three times each day he laid the scourge resolutely on his
naked back. The bare earth was his bed. He became one of the
fraternity of beggars who frequented the hospital of Manreza,
exaggerated in his own person whatever was most revolting in
their habits and appearance, revelled in filth, and rendered to the
. sick, and especially to such as were afflicted with ulcers, services of
which it is impossible to read the account without a strong disposi-
fion to sickness.

It has long been known how fluently "the devil can quote
Scripture for his purpose ; " but to Ignatius belongs the discovery,
that Satan can present his temj^tations to mankind in the form of
excellent sense and sound reasoning. The Evil Spirit was, we ai'e

H 4

104 THE FOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

told, afflicted by his excessive humility, and consequent happiness;
and therefore assailed him with the following catechetical seduction :
— " Is it not possible to be holy without being filthy ? Is it essen-
tial to the purity of your soul that vermin should crawl over your
person ? Does it become a knight, of a lineage so noble as yours,
to appear among men as a Lazar ? Would not your virtues yield
a brighter and more effective example in the court or in the camp,
than in this mean hospital ? "

To escape these diabolical suggestions, Ignatius quitted Manreza
for a neighbouring cavern. It was in the centre of a wilderness,
and could not be approached except by forcing the body through
thorns and briars. At the extremity it was dark as the grave;
though a fortunate crevice or loophole near the entrance enabled
the hermit to gaze at the distant church of Our Lady of Mont-
serrat. In this dismal cell, he delivered over his mind and body to
pains which entirely eclipsed those of his hospital at Manreza.
Five times each day he bruised and tore his flesh with a blimt iron
scourge, beating his bosom at intervals with sharp flint stones, and,
with diseased ingenuity, perverting every act of adoration into a
penance and a torture. At one time he would commune with the
Virgin Mother; at another he would wrestle with the Spirit of
Evil ; and so abrupt were his vicissitudes of rapture and despair,
that in the storm of turbid passions his reason had nearly given
way. Friendly hands dragged him from his hiding-place, and
other hands, in intention at least, not less friendly, recorded his
feverish ravings. At one time, he conversed with voices audible to
no ear but his. At another, he sought to propitiate Him before
whom he trembled, by expiations that would have been more fitly
offered to Moloch. Spiritual doctors ministered to his relief, but
they prescribed in vain. The simple truth was too simple for
them. They could not perceive that in revealing Himself to man-
kind in the character of a Father, that awful Being has claimed, as
peculiarly His own, the gentlest, the kindest, and the most confid-
ing affections of our nature.

At the verge of madness Ignatius paused. That noble intellect
was not to be whelmed beneath the tempests in which so many
have sunk ; but neither was he to be rescued by any vulgar methods.
Standing on the steps of a Dominican church, he was reciting the
office of Our Lady, when (as all his biographers assure us) Heaven
itself was laid open to the eye of the worshipper. That ineffable
mystery which the author of the Athanasian Creed has laboured to
enunciate in words, was laid bare to him as an object, not of faith,
but of actual sight. The past ages of the world were rolled back in
his presence ; and he beheld the material fabric of things rising into

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 105

being, and discerned the motives which had prompted this exercise
of the creative energy. To his spiritualised sense was disclosed the
mysterious process by which the Host is transubstantiated : and
those other Christian verities, which it is permitted to common men
to receive only as exercises of belief, now became known to him by
immediate inspection and direct consciousness. During eiglit
sviccessive days his body reposed in an unbroken trance, while his
spirit thus imbibed disclosures for which the tongues of men have
no appropriate language. He attempted, indeed, to impart them
in a volume of fourscore leaves ; but, dark with excess of light, his
words held the learned and the ignorant alike in speechless wonder.

Ignatius returned to this sublunary scene with a mission not
unmeet for an envoy from the empyrean world of which he had
thus become a temporary denizen. He returned to establish on
earth a theocracy of which he should himself be the first admi-
nistrator, and to which multitudes of every tribe and kindred of
men should be the subjects. He returned, no longer a sordid
half-distracted anchorite, but a kind of Swedenborg-Franklin ;
distinguished alike by designs of gigantic magnitude and of super-
human audacity ; and by the clear good sense, the profound
sagacity, the calm perseverance, and the flexible address with which
he was to pursue them. He returned to show how the delirious
enthusiasm of the cloister may be combined and reconciled, in the
heroic nature, with j:he shrewdness of the exchange.

Neither in the hospital and cavern of Manreza, nor in his
paroxysms of disease, nor in the ecstasies of his recovery, had the
mind of Ignatius been really drifting without aim or anchorage.
Among the saintly prodigies which had first amused his sick bed,
and had then entranced the student of them, he had seized with
peculiar fervour on the marvellous acts of Benedict, of Francis, and
of Dominick ; and the idea of founding a new monastic dynasty
became at first a plaything of the imagination ; then a settled desire
of the heart; and then a vast project revolved in his understanding
from day to day, until it had at length become a probable, a
consistent, and a comprehensive whole. He once more took his
place in human society in the garb and with the exterior aspect of
other men ; but labouring with a pm-pose which had already placed
in his visionary grasp the sceptre with which, in yet distant years,
he was destined to rule his spiritual family, and through them, to
agitate tlie nations of the earth, from the Granges to La Plata.

The first fruits of the labours of Ignatius in the execution of this
stupendous design was the Book of Spiritual Exercises. It was
originally written in Spanish ; and, by the command of the Pope,
Paul the Third, was rendered into two Latin versions — the first

106 THE FOUNDEES OP JESUITISM.

severely literal, the other exhibiting the sense, not only with greater
elegance, but with more substantial accuracy. Paul then published
a bull, dated the 31st July, 1548, in which he commended the
latter of those translations to the study of the faithful. A new
version of the Spiritual Exercises from an original Spanish MS.,
corrected in the handwriting of Ignatius himself, was published at
Eome, in 1834, by the Rev. Father John Eoothaan, the present
Greneral of the Order of Jesus. On collating that MS. with the
text of 1548, M. Roothaan discovered that the former translators
had, in many passages, not only misrepresented, but impaired the
sense of the great author ; and his supposition is, that the humility
of Ignatius had constrained him altogether to abandon his own
literary composition to the disposal and to the mercy of others.
Whatever may be the truth of this strange hypothesis, it is at least
clear, that, till the year 1834, the world had never possessed a
trustworthy edition of the single literary work of the great founder
of Jesuitism.

The Spiritual Exercises form a manual of what may be termed
" The Art of Conversion." It proposes a scheme of self-discipline
by which, in the course of four weeks, passed in entire seclusion
from the world, that mighty work is to be accomplished. In the
first, the penitent is conducted through a series of dark retrospects
to abase, and of gloomy prospects to alarm him. Those ends
attained, he is, during the next seven days, to enrol himself in the
army of the faithful, studying the biography of the Divine Captain
of that elect host, and choosing with extreme circumspection that
plan of life, religious or secular, in which he may best be able to
tread in His steps, and to bear His standard, emblematical at once
of suffering and of conquest. To sustain the soldier of the cross in
this protracted warfare, his spiritual eye is to be directed, during
the third of his solitary weeks, towards that unfathomable abyss of
woe into which the Redeemer descended to rescue the race of Adam
from the power of Satan and of death : and then seven suns are
to rise and set while the disenthralled spirit is to chant triumphant
hallelujahs, elevating her desires heavenwards, contemplating glories
till then unimaginable, and mysteries never l:)efore revealed : when,
at length, the spiritual exercises close by an absolute surrender
of all the delights and interests of his sublunary state, as an holo-
caust, to be consumed by the undying flame of Divine love on the
altar of the regenerate heart.

This book is at once a momentous chapter in the autobiography
of Ignatius, and the earliest of his canons for the government of his
future society. It discloses his own spiritual state during the
penances and ecstasies of Manreza ; and explains what is the con-

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. I07

dition of mind into wliicli he desired to bring his expected associates
in the anticipated labours then lying in dim and shadowy prospect
before him. The book would be full of interest, if regarded merely
as tlie one extant devotional production of a man of such com-
manding genius. It is yet more so, when considered as the one
insight we possess into the early religious character of him whom
the Papacy honours as the greatest of her champions, and the
Reformation dreads as the most formidable of her antagonists.

As if to disappoint the expectations raised both by the subject
and the object of the book, it is neither pathetic, nor impassioned,
nor profound, nor learned ; but, from one end to the other, inva-
riably dry and didactic, even when it delineates and enjoins the
highest raptures of devotion. It lays down rules for the conduct of
what Bunyan calls the " siege of Mansoul," in the precise and
peremptory style in which Vauban might have prescribed the plan
of an attack on Mentz or Courtray. A series of operations is given
for each, in order, of the twenty-eight days of devotional retirement.
Each day has its preparatory prayer, and each one 'prelude, or
more,- a prelude being an effort of the imagination, by which the
recluse is to call up before his mental sight the persons or the places
with which his thoughts are about to be engaged ; or, if he is pre-
paring to meditate on things not sensuous (as, for example, his own
sinfulness), he is to conceive of such things in parable. Thus, he
may represent to himself his body as a prison, and his soul as a
prisoner ; or the world as a desolate valley thronged with wild beasts,
among whom he is condemned to wander as an exile.

After offering the prayer, and portraying to himself the " pre-
lude " of the day, the penitent is required to traverse a prescribed
line of contemplation, in which a certain number of indispensable
points are marked for his guidance. The diurnal course has usually
seven such stations. Take as a specimen the second day of the
first week. On that day the exercitant is first to make a general
survey of his past sins ; secondly, to ponder over the malignity of
each class of offences ; thirdl}^, to compare his own baseness with
the sanctity of the superior orders of intelligences ; fourthly, to
contrast them with the moral attributes of Deity ; fifthly, to consi-
der (not without articulate exclamations) how his sins are aggravated
by the providential bounties and the longsuffering of Grod ; sixthly,
to offer, in a divine colloquy, vows of amendment ; seventhly, to
repeat the Lord's Prayer.

In the same manner the neophyte has to perform, throughout
the month, a daily series of penitential or eucharistic evolutions ;
not as his own heart, or as a higher influence may dictate, but at
the word of command of his General. For even in the cavern of

108 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

Manreza, Ignatius was still internally gazing on the encampment and
siege of Pampeluna. In the lowest depths of his contrition he could
never forget that he was a soldier. Although he had finally quitted
the service of Ferdinand for that of the Madonna, visions of mortal
enemies, of well-disciplined followers, and of glorious victories, still
continued to haunt his fancy, and to guide his pen. He crowded
his pages with military images long after he had laid aside the
carnal weapons of a merely secular warfare.

Thus, on the fourth day of the second week, the performer of the
spiritual exercises is to direct his mind's eye towards two vast
champaigns. One is near Jerusalem ; where, in a pleasant valley,
the belligerent Redeemer, resplendent in form, and, in aspect, of
surpassing loveliness, erects His standard as the chief commander of
all the holy and the wise, and from that noble army sends forth
detachments of apostles, disciples, and ministers to rescue the
inhabitants of every land from ruin, and to improve and bless every
condition of human life. The other plain is a battle-field in the
province of Babylon ; where, seated on a fiery throne, surrounded
by foetid vapours, horrible in shape, and of terrific countenance,
stands Lucifer, the generalissimo of a malignant host — inveterate
adversaries of Christ, and inexorable foes of the race of Adam, who,
traversing the world at the bidding of their leader, propagate guilt,
and lamentation, and woe in every abode of man, and pollute and
sadden every soul which still retains any trace of her divine
origin.

Throughout the book Ignatius prolongs this attempt to subju-
gate all the other faculties of the mind to the imagination. With
that view the penitent is commanded to descend, like Dante, into
the infernal regions, and there to look steadfastly on the mighty
conflagration, and on the bodies of living fire in which the souls
of the wicked are pent up. He is to listen to their bowlings and
blasphemies. He is to smell the smoke, the sulphur, and the
putrescent odours, of the place of torment. He is to taste the
bitter tears which are shed there; and to handle the undying
worm; and to feel the scorching of the inextinguishable flame.
At another time he is to visit the abode to which the Virgin
Mother, when wounded in her own soul, retired from Calvary ; and
is to examine the plan, the chambers, the cells, and the oratory of
her humble dwelling. This ideal vision is to rise higher still.
The Deity himself is to be seen as actually present in all the ele-
ments — in the vegetation of plants — in the sensation of animals
— in the intelligence of man. He is to be actually beheld in every
creative and conservative energy, and in every sanctifying influence ;
until the divine omnipresence shall become, not a mere truth

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 109

abiding in the reason, but an object of direct, though spiritual
perception.

Closely interwoven with these revelations of what is to pass in
the hidden chambers of imagery, are precepts of plain sound sense,
like so many solid rocks breaking through the dazzling unrealities
of the Fata Morgana. Thus Ignatius teaches, that he who would
wisely choose his plan of life, must determine with himself what
are the great ends of his existence ; so that to those ends all means
may be subordinate, instead of rendering the ultimate design sub-
ordinate to what is merely instrumental. He directs us to sup-
pose ourselves, not the persons by whom the choice of a calling
is to be made, but the advisers of some very dear friend, whose
circumstances exactly resemble our own : and he bids us to follow
the advice which we should give to that imaginary friend. We
are taught to suppose the hour of death actually arrived, and are
to choose our calling, as though in the actual presence of that
awful antagonist of all self-indulgent sophistry. And to those who
are meditating matrimony are prescribed a series of judicious re-
flections respecting the kind of household and establishment they
ought to maintain ; respecting the right methods of governing
them; respecting the means of rendering their conversation and
example instructive to their families ; and respecting the appropria-
tion of their income between the several classes of expenditure,
personal, domestic, and eleemosynary.

He must have been deeply read in the nature of man, who
should have predicted such first fruits as these from the restored
health of the distracted visionary, who, in the hospital and cavern
of Manreza, and in the long delirium which followed, had alter-
nately sounded the basest strings of humility on earth, and the
living chords which vibrate with spontaneous harmonies along the
seventh heavens. His plan of transmuting profligates into con-
verts by a mental process, of which, during any one of her evolu-
tions round our planet, the moon is to witness the commencement
and the close, may possibly pass for a plagiarism from the acade-
mies of Laputa. But Ignatius Loyola had his eyes open, and his
attention awake, even when most absorbed in dreams. By force
of an instinct with which such minds as his alone are gifted, he
could rival the shrewd, the practical, and the worldly wise, even
when abandoning himself to the current of emotions which they
are alike unable to comprehend or to endure. His mind resembled
the body of his great disciple, Francis Xavier ; which; as he
preached or baptized, rose majestically towards the skies, while his
feet (the pious curiosity of his hearers ascertained the fact) re-
tained their firm hold on the earth below. The object of the

110 THE FOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

Spiritual Exercises was at once to excite and to control religious
sensibilities. While aiming to exalt the soul above terrestrial ob-
jects, he was intent on disenchanting his followers of the self-
deceits which usually wait on that exaltation. Though most re-
mote from the tone of feeling which animates the gay and busy
scenes of life, the book everywhere attests the keen scrutiny with
which he had observed those scenes, and the profound discernment
with which he had studied the actors in them. To his Protestant
readers the Evangelical spirit of the writer must have been the
occasion of great, and perhaps unwelcome surprise. It would,
indeed, be easy to extract from his pages many propositions which
the Synod of Westminster would have anathematised; but that
grave assembly might have drawn from them much to confirm the
chief article of their own confessions and catechisms. If he yielded
an idolatrous homage to some of the demigods of Eome, his
supreme adoration was strictly reserved for Him to whom alone
adoration is due. If he ascribed to ritual expiations a false and
imaginary value, all his mighty powers were bowed down in a sub-
missive affiance in the Divine nature, as revealed to us under the
veil of human infirmity, and of more than human suffering.
Philip Doddridge, one of those who have breathed most freely on
earth the atmosphere of heaven, produced, at the distance of two
centuries, a work which the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola
might have suggested, and of many parts of which it might have
afforded the model ; so many are still the points of contact between
those who, ranging themselves round the great common centre of
the faith of Christians, occupy the most opposite positions in that
expanded circle.

The nine years of the life of Ignatius which immediately fol-
lowed the production of his book were worn away in pilgrimages,
in feats of asceticism, in the working (as it was believed) of miracles,
and in escapes, all but miraculous, from the dangers which his
devout and martial spirit induced him to encounter. It is a steep
path by which the heroes of the Church have scaled the sublime
heights of " Perfection ; " and his vows constrained him thus to
pursue it. But the same vows obliged him to conduct his fellow-
pilgrims from the City of Destruction to the Land of Beulah. In
prison and in shipwreck, fainting with hunger or wasted with
disease, his inflexible spirit brooded over that bright, though as yet
shapeless vision ; until at length it assumed a coherent form as he
knelt on the Mount of Olives, and traced there the last and the
indelible foot-print of the ascending Eedeemer of mankind. At
that hallowed spot had ended the weary way of Him who had
bowed the heavens, and come down to execute on earth a mission

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. Ill

of unutterable love, and of thought-siu-passing self-denial. There
also was revealed to the proj^hetic eye of the founder of the Order
of Jesus (no Seer like genius kindled by high resolves'.) the long
line of missionaries who, animated by his example, and guided by
his instructions, should proclaim that holy name from the rising to
the setting sun. It was indeed a futurity perceptible only to tlie
telescopic eye of faith. At the mature age of thirty, possessing no
language but his own, no science but that of the camp, and no
literatm'e beyond the biographies of Saints and Paladins, he be-
came the self-destined teacher of the future teachers of the world.
Hoping against hope, he returned to Barcelona ; and there, as the
class-fellow of little children, commenced the study of the first
rudiments of the Latin tongue.

Among the established facetias of the stage, is the distraction of
some dramatic Eloisa attempting to conjugate the verb Amo^
under the guidance of her too attractive Abelard. Few play-
wrights probably have been aware that the jest had its type, if not
its origin, in the scholastic experience of Ignatius Loyola. His
advance in the grammar was arrested by a malignant spirit at the
same critical point, and in much the same manner. Assuming the
garb of an angel of light, the demon succeeded in driving from
his memory the inflections of the verb, by suggesting at each some
corresponding elevation of his soul heavenwards. To baffle his in-
sidious enemy, the harassed scholar implored the pedagogue to
make a liberal use of that discipline, the pain or the efficacy of
which, who that has endured it can ever forget ? The exorcism
was complete. Atiio became familiar to his recollection in all her
affectionate moods, and in all her changeful tenses. Then began
Thomas a Kempis to speak to him intelligibly ; and then Erasmus
disclosed to him treasures of wisdom and of wit formerly buried
in the impenetrable recesses of an unknown tongue. Energy won
her accustomed triumphs; and in the year 1528 he entered the
University of Paris as a student of the Humanities, and of what
was then called Philosophy.

The fourth of the ten decades of human life (those ten golden
years in which other men achieve, or most strenuously laboiu- for
distinction), was devoted by Ignatius to the studies preparatory to
his great undertaking. At one time he listened to the preelections
of grave professors ; at another he traversed England and the
Netherlands as a beggar, soliciting the means of subsistence. But,
whether he sat at the feet of the learned, or sued for the alms of
the rich, he was still maturing more lofty designs than the most
ambitious monarch of the house of Valois, or of Plantagenet, had
ever dared to cherish. At Paris he at length found the means of

112 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

carrying into effect the cherished purposes of so many years. It
was the heroic age of Spain ; and there was no field of adventure,
secular or spiritual, into which the countrymen of Gonsalvo and of
Cortes feared to follow any adventurous leader.

We have partly seen how Ignatius proposed to convert men into
Jesuits by a course of solitary devotional exercises ; and we are not
wholly unable to explain the method by which he rendered his
own personal intercom'se with them conducive to the same end.
On the contemplative and the timid, he imposed severe exercises of
active virtue. To the gay and ardent, he appealed in a spirit still
more buoyant than their own. He presented himself neck deep in
a pool of frozen water, to teach an otherwise obdurate debauchee
how to subdue the appetites of the flesh. To a hard-hearted priest
he made a general confession of his own sins, with such agonies of
remorse and shame, as to break up, by force of sympathy, the
fountains of penitence in the bosom of the confessor. He en-
gaged at billiards with a joyous lover of the game, on condition that
whichever of the two might be defeated should serve his antagonist
during the following month in whatever manner the conqueror
should prescribe ; and the victorious saint consigned his adversary
to the performance of the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises.
He encouraged and shared the wildest ascetic extravagances of his
disciples. His countenance was as haggard, his self-flagellations as
cruel, and his couch and diet as sordid as the rest. "WTien he saw
them faint with the extremity of their sufferings, he would assume
the prophetical character, and promote, by predicting, their re-
covery. Eodriguez, one of the gentlest and most patient of them,
fled for relief to a solitary hermitage ; but found his retreat ob-
structed by a man whom he described as of terrible aspect and
gigantic stature, armed with a naked sword, and breathing menaces.
Hosez, another of his followers, happening to die at the moment
when Ignativis, prostrate before the altar, was reciting from the
Confiteor the words " Et omnibus Sanctis," that countless host was
(as the Saint assured the survivors) revealed to his eye, and, among
them, resplendent in glory, appeared his deceased friend, to sustain
and animate the hopes of his still militant brethren.

Thus making himself all things to all men, he constrained his
companions in study to become first his pupils, and then his asso-
ciates in religion. Many of them, indeed, yielded at once, and
without a struggle, to the united influence of his sanctity and his
genius ; and, from these more docile converts, he selected no less
than eight of the ten original members of his infant order. After
performing the initiatory spiritual exercises, they all swore, on the
consecrated Host in the crypt of St. Denys, to accompany their

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 113

spiritual father on a mission to Palestine ; or, if that should Ije
impracticable, to submit themselves to the Vicar of Christ to be
disposed of at his pleasure.

Impetuous as had been the temper of Ignatius in early life, lie
had now learnt to be patient of the tardy growth of great designs.
Leaving his disciples to complete their studies at Paris, under the
care of Peter Faber, he returned to Spain to recruit their number,
to mature his plans, and perhaps to escape from a too familiar
intercourse mth his future subjects. In the winter of 1536, they
commenced their pilgrimage to the Eternal City. At Venice they
were joined by Ignatius. They who would conquer crowns, whe-
ther secular or spiritual, must needs tread in slippery places. As
he journeyed to Eome, accompanied by Laynez, but in advance of
the rest, he saw a vision, the account of which, derived from his
own lips, it is painful to transcribe. It exhibited that Being
whom no eye hath seen, and whom no tongue may lightly name ;
and with Him the Eternal Son, bearing a heavy cross, and uttering
the welcome assurance, " I will be propitious to you at Eome."

There can be no doubt that Ignatius made this statement, and
that he made it with a conviction of its truth. But they must be
in servitude to a party, and to a name, who can ascribe a due
reverence for what is most high and most holy, to the mind which
could admit such a conviction, and to the tongue which could give
it utterance.

Notmthstandiug this supposed divine promise, Ignatius foimd it
no easy task to obtain the requisite papal sanction for the esta-
blishment of his order. In that age the regular or monastic clergy
had to contend with an almost universal unpopvdarit}''. With the
bishops aiid secular priests they had longbeen waging a bitter war-
fare. They had now to encounter the additional hostility of the wits,
the Eeformers, and the Vatican itself. A large share of the disasters
under which the Church of Eome was suffering was not unreason-
ably attributed to their laxity of manners and dissoluteness of life.
To oppose his formidable antagonists in every part of Europe, the
Pope had given his confidence and encouragement to the Theatins,
and other isolated preachers, who were labouring at once to pro-
tect and to pm'ify the fold, by diffusing among them their own
deep and genuine spirit of devotion. At such a moment it seemed
an equivocal or dangerous policy to call anotlier religious order
into existence. Both the new and zealous allies, and the ancient
supporters, of the Papacy, might be expected to regard such an
institution with extreme jealousy and disfavour. Neither did the
morbid foresight of the Vatican fail to perceive, that the chief of

114 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

a society projected on a plan of such stupendous magnitude, might
become a dangerous rival even to the successors of St. Peter.

Ignatius, therefore, consumed three years in unprofitable suits
for a bull of incorporation. He endeavoured, by lavish promises,
to propitiate not mere mortal man only, but the Deity himself.
He engaged to offer three thousand masses, if so his prayer might
be granted. Earth and heaven seemed equally deaf to his offers,
when at length terror extracted from Paul the Third the con-
cession which no entreaty and no prayers had been able to extort.

The Reformation had crossed the Alps, and made an alarming
progress in the very bosom of Italy. Ferrara seemed about to fall
away from the Church of Rome, as Grermany, England, and Swit-
zerland had fallen. The death-struggle between the contending
powers could no longer be averted or postponed. The Consistory
then became enlightened to see the Divine hand in a scheme
which they had, till then, regarded as the suspicious device of an
ambitious and formidable man. They could no longer refuse the
gratuitous and devoted services of a host, called, as it might seem,
into existence, for the express purpose of defeating their hitherto
invincible enemies — a host animated by an enthusiasm as ardent
as that of the Reformers themselves, informed by a learning not
less profound than theirs, and guided by that singleness of wdll
and fixedness of purpose in which Luther and his associates were
so eminently defective.

On the 27th of September, 1540, Paul the Third, therefore,
affixed the papal seal to the bull of " Regimini," the Magna
Charter of the Order of Jesus. Admirable as was the foresight
which dictated this grant, it was made with undisguised reluctance,
with painful misgivings, and with an anxiety of which the instru-
ment itself aff"ords the clearest evidence. It places in the lips of
the new society the following emphatical profession of their future
subjection to the power from which they were to derive their cor-
porate existence : —

" Quamvis Evaugelio doceamur, et fide orthodoxa cognoscamus,
ac firmiter profiteamur, omnes Christi fideles Romano Pontifici
tanquam capiti, ac Jesu Christi vicario, subesse; ad majorem tamen
nostrte societatis humilitatem, ac perfectam unius cuj usque mortifi-
cationem, et voluntatum nostrarum abnegationem, summopere
conducere judicavimus, singulos nos, ultra illud commune vincu-
lum, special! voto abstringi, ita ut quicquid Romani Pontifices
pro tempore exist entes jusserint, quantum in nobis fuerit exequi
teneamur."

So wrote the Pope in the person of his new Pra=>torians. The
The first care of Jo-natius was the election of a Gfeneral of that

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 11. ^i

formidable band. For that purpose he summoned the chief mem-
bers of his company to Eome. They all concurred in choosing
himself. He declined the proffered honour, and was a second time
unanimously elected. Again he refused to govern, unless his con-
fessor, to whom, as he said, all his bad dispositions were known,
should command him, in the name of Christ, to submit to the hard
necessity. The confessor accordingly pronounced that solemn
injunction, and then Ignatius Loyola ascended the throne of
which he had been so long laying the foundations. It will be
credible that he seriously contemplated the renunciation of that
high reward, when it shall be ascertained that Julius became Dic-
tator, Cromwell Protector, and Napoleon First Consul, in their
own despite ; but not till then.

When finally invested with sovereignty, Ignatius wielded the
sceptre as best becomes an absolute monarch, magnanimously and
with imfaltering decision ; reverenced, but exciting no servile fear ;
beloved, but permitting no rude familiarity: declining no enter-
prise which high daring might accomplish, attempting none which
headlong ambition might suggest ; self-multiplied in the ministers
of his will ; yielding to them a large and generous confidence ; trust-
ing no man whom he had not deeply studied ; assigning to none a
province beyond the range of his capacity.

Though not in books, yet in the school of active, and especially
of military life, Ignatius had learnt the great secret of government,
at least of his government. That secret is, that the social affec-
tions, when concentrated within a well-defined circle, possess
an intensity and an endurance unrivalled by those passions of
which self is the immediate object. He had the sagacity to
perceive that emotions like those with which a Spartan or a Jew
had yearned over the land and the institutions of their fathers —
emotions stronger than appetite, vanity, ambition, avarice, or
death itself — might be kindled in the members of his order, if he
could grasp those mainsprings of human action of which the Greek
and the Hebrew legislators had obtained the mastery. Nor did he
make the attempt in vain.

He legislated at once in the spirit of his early and of his late
profession — as a soldier and as a spiritual champion of the Church
of Rome. Obedience, prompt, absolute, blind, and unhesitating
— the cardinal virtue of both — Avas the basis of his religious
institute. Such submission, however arduous in appearance, is
in reality the least irksome of all self-sacrifices. The mysterious
gift of free will is the heaviest burthen of the vast multitude of
mankind. The free subjects, and the heavenly appointed ministers,
of the Jewish theocracy, took refuge from that service in the des-

116 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

potism of a man whose sole praise it was to be taller by the head
and shoulders than any of them." In the same spirit men every
where desire to walk by sight, not by faith — to obey the stern
command of a superior, if so they may be absolved from listening
for the still small voice of conscience — to bear the yoke of spiritual
bondage, if so they may escape the fatigue of study, the labour of
meditation, the pains of doubt, and the anxieties of mental free-
dom. Ignatius had well observed this propensity of the human heart,
and he framed the Jesuit code with a constant reference to it.

He ordained that his order should be an elective absolute mon-
archy for life. The Sovereign, or Greneral, was to be chosen by a
small senate or aristocracy. He was, of course, to possess every
divine grace, and every human virtue. But he was also to possess
middle age, good health, good looks ; and, if to these gifts could
be added former rank and consideration in the world, so much the
better.

Christendom was to be divided into provinces, over each of
which a president or provincial was to rule. To control the powers
of the monarch, each of the five chief provincials was to have at
Eome a representative, called an assistant ; and the five assistants
were to form a council, who should at once advise the general and
watch over his conduct. The general, and each of his provincials,
was to have attached to him a functionary called a monitor ; whose
office may be best described as being that of an external conscience.

Such securities as tliese were, however, totally inadequate to
restrain the high prerogatives of Ignatius and his successors. They
were to inspect the secrets of the soul of each member of the
society, which, for that purpose, were to be disclosed to the general
by the provincial in letters written as frequently as once a week.
All employments and dignities of which any Jesuit was capable,
were reserved for the patronage of the general, and of him alone.
He was to assign to each member his duty and his station. Tlie
whole property of the order was to be at his absolute disposal.
He might alter the law, or, in particular cases, dispense with the
observance of it.

To the vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, common to a.11 the
monastic orders, the professed Jesuit was to add an oath to proceed
instantly to any part of the world to which the Pope might send
him for the advancement of religion ; and every Jesuit was to bind
himself to reject all secular or ecclesiastical dignities, except such
as the society itself might have to bestow. But it was provided
that if the Pope should constrain any member to accept a bishopric,
he would, in that capacity, give heed to the advice of his general.

None might be admitted into the society without some remark-

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 117

able endowments of intellect and piety, nor without good health,
an agreeable person, and attractive manners. The novice was to
renounce to the societ}'' all his worldly possessions. He must be
exempt from all fetters of betrothment, or of any other contract
which might bring him within the reach of the civil tribunals.

The process of what maybe called "breaking in" a young
Jesuit, was prescribed with great minuteness and severity. The
objects of this discipline were to subdue all habits of indolence, to ex-
tinguish every sentiment of aristocratic rank, to eradicate the pride
of personal independence, to infuse into the soul a spirit of instant,
unscrupulous, unhesitating obedience, and to fasten on it the con-
viction that from the lips of the Superior were to be gathered the
very oracles of Grod. To accomplish these ends, the appointed
system of education was to be pursued with an intensity of pur-
pose never to be relaxed. The Superior was never to shrink from
the infliction of any necessary or wholesome pain. The Pupil was
never to decline to apply himself to any useful arts, however mean,
humiliating, or offensive.

In the science of social Dynamics it is written, that he is the
king of men, jure divino, who, with the sublimest purposes and
the most inflexible will, exacts the most absolute submission
and the most painful sacrifices. To him are drawn the feeble-
minded by the instinct of obedience, the audacious by the force
of sympathy, the torpid by the craving for stimulants, the sceptical
by the thirst for certainties, and the unoccupied by the desire to
employ their ineffectual energies. By this title reigned Lycurgus
and Mahomet over nations, Zeno in the schools, Benedict in the
cloister, Columbus in exploration, Cortes in the camp, and Ignatius
Loyola over the host which, at his summons, gathered round him
to extend the dominion of the Church of Kome over the heretical
and the heathen nations of the earth.

It was with a sublime audacity that he demanded their obedience.
It was to be rendered, not merely in the outward act, but by the
imderstanding and the will. He spoke to them, not with the
timidity of a fallible teacher, but as one invested with the delegated
prerogatives of the divine Eedeemer himself. " Non intueamini
in persona superioris, hominem obnoxium erroribus atque miseriis,
sed Christum ipsuni.''^ " Superioris vocem ac jussa non secus ac
Chrlstl vocem accipite." " Ut statuatis vobiscum quicquid superior
prsecipit ipsius Del praeceptum esse ac voluntatem."

He who WTote thus had not lightly observed how the spirit of
man exults in bondage, if permitted to believe that the chain has
been spontaneously assumed.

Neither had he inattentively examined the motives which will

I 3

118 TIIE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

sometimes stimulate the most submissive to revolt. He granted
to his followers the utmost liberty in outward things, which could
be reconciled with their spiritual servitude. The enslaved soul
was not to be rudely reminded of her slavery. There was to be
no peculiar dress, — no routine of prayers and canticles, — no pre-
scribed system of austerities, — no monastic seclusions.

Ignatius knew well how awful is the might of folly in all sub-
lunary affairs. Therefore no frivolous, fickle, or feeble-minded
proselyte was to find a place in his brotherhood.

He must be served by virgin minds, who could be ruled by
prejudices of his own engrafting. Therefore no one could be
admitted who had worn, though but for a single day, the habit of
any other religious order.

Stern initiatory discipline must probe the spirits of the pro-
fessed ; for both scandal and danger would attend the faintness of
any leader in the host. Grentler probations must suffice for co-
adjutors, whether lay or spiritual ; for no host is complete without
a body of irregular partisans.

The general himself — the centre and animating spirit of the whole
company — he must rule for life, because ambition and cabal will
fill up the intervals between frequent elections, and because the
reverence due to royalty is impaired by the aspect of dethroned
sovereigns. He must be absolute, because human authority can
on no other terms exhibit itself as the image of the Divine.
He must reign at a distance, and in solitude, because no govern-
ment is effective in which imagination has not her proper work to
do. He must be the ultimate depository of the secrets of the
conscience of each of his subjects, because power can be irresistible
only when guided by unlimited knowledge. No subject of his
might accept any dignity, ecclesiastical or civil, beyond the
precincts of the order, because the general himself must be
supreme in rank as in dominion, and must alone possess the means
of gratifying the ambition, and attracting to himself the homage,
of his dependents.

And the ultimate object of this scheme of government, — it
must be vast enough to expand the soul of the proselyte to a full
sense of her own dignity ; and practical enough to provide in-
cessant occupation for his time and thoughts ; and difficult enough
to bring all his powers into strenuous activity ; and dangerous
enough to teach the lessons of mutual dependence. There must
also be conflicts for the brave, and intrigues for the subtle, and
solitary labours for the studious, and offices of mercy for the
compassionate. To all and to each must be offered both a
temporal and an eternal recompence, — in this life, the reward

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 119

of a commimiou and a sympathy intense in proportion to the
narrowness of its range, and stimulating in proportion to the
mysterious secrecy in which it was to he exercised ; in the life to
come, felicities of which the anxious heart was not permitted to
doubt : for the promises of the wise, the fellowship of the holy,
and the assurances of men whose claims to the Divine favour it
would seem to them impious to question, formed the present
earnest of that celestial inheritance.

If there be in any of our universities a professor of moral
philosophy initiating his pupils into the science of human nature,
let him study the constitutions of Ignatius Loyola. They were
the fruit of the solitary meditation of many years. His midnight
lamp threw its rays on nothing but his crucifix, his manuscript,
his Thomas a Kempis de Imitatione, and the New Testament.
Any other presence would have been a profane intrusion ; for the
work (so, at least, he believed and taught) was but a transcript of
thoughts imparted to his disembodied spirit, when in early manhood
it had been caught up into the seventh heavens. As he wrote, a
lambent flame, in shape like a tongue of fire, is said to have
hovered about his head ; and, as may be read in his own hand in
a still extant paper, the hours of composition were passed in tears
of devotion, in holy ardour, in raptures, and amidst celestial
apparitions.

Ignatius was not less admirable as an administrator, than as a
giver, of laws. Taking his own immutable station at the seat and
centre of spiritual empire, he committed to each of his pro-
consuls his province, to each of his ministers his function, and
to the humblest of his agents his task, according to the natural
or acquired aptitude of each for the work assigned him. He
was intimately acquainted with the effects on human character
of self-knowledge — of strenuous activity — and of protracted
suffering. He therefore required his disciples to scrutinise
the recesses of their own hearts until they turned for relief from
the wonders and the shame within to the mysteries and the glories
of the world of spirits. He exercised them by ceaseless employ-
ment, until the transmutation of means into ends was complete,
and efforts, at first the most irksome, had become spontaneous and
even grateful to them. He disciplined them by every form of
privation and self-inflicted pain, until fortitude, ripening into habit,
became the source of delights which, however incomprehensible
to the self-indulgent, are far more real and enduring than their
own. He rendered them stoics, mystics, and enthusiasts; and
then employed them in duties emphatically practical, to the
purpose, and to the time.

1 4

120 THE FOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

Ignatius was not merely a legislator and a statesman, but to the
last breath he drew, a soldier also. He was a general, whose
authority none might question, — a comrade on whose cordiality
-all might rely, — a leader, who partook in every danger and hard-
ship of his followers, — a strategist of consummate skill and of all-
embracing survey. In his religious campaigns his policy was
always aggressive. However inadequate might be the force at his
command for defensive operations, he never hesitated to weaken
it by detachments on a distant service, if he could so strike terror
into nearer foes, and animate the courage of irresolute allies.
In this spirit he encountered Lutheranism in Europe by address-
inof himself to the conversion to the faith of Eome of the barbarous
or half-civilised nations of the earth. His searching eye long
scanned the characters of his lieutenants to discover which of them
was best qualified for that difficult and hazardous office. Even to
him it was not easy to discover such men. They must not he
only superior to all the allurements of appetite and the common
infirmities of our nature, but superior also to those temptations
which beset inquisitive minds, and men of the highest order of
ability. His missionaries must be prepared to do and dare, but
not much disposed to speculate. They must burn with an inex-
tinguishable zeal, but must be insensible to the impulse for con-
verting a subordinate into an independent command. He long
weighed this perplexing choice, and decided it at length with the
utmost sagacity and success. It fell on many who well fulfilled
these conditions, but on none in whom all the requisites combined
so marvellously as in the young Spanish noble who had borne
himself so gallantly in the crypt of St. Denys, and had conducted
the pilgrimage to Rome of the first little company of the proselytes
of Ignatius.

It was in the year 1505, that Francis Xavier, the youngest child
of a numerous family, was born in the castle of his ancestors, in
the Pyrenees. Kobust and active, of a gay humour and ardent
spirit, the young mountaineer listened with a throbbing heart to
the military legends of his house, and to the hopes which spoke
of days to come when his illustrious lineage should derive new
splendour from his own achievements. But the hearts of his
parents yearned over the son of their old age, and the enthusiasm
which would have borne him to the pursuit of glory in the camp,
was directed by their counsels to the less hazardous contest for
literary ennnence at the University of Paris. From the embrace
of Aristotle and his commentators, he would, however, have been
prematurely withdrawn by the failure of his resources (for the
lords of Xavier were not wealthy), if a domestic proi^hetess (liis

Till'; FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. ]-2l

elder sister) bad not been inspired to foretell bis marvellous career
and immortal recompeuce. His family acknowledged tliat all
pecuniary sacrifices would be wisely made for a cbild destined to
liave altars raised to bis name tbrougbout tbe Catholic Church,
and masses cbanted to his bonour till time sbould be no longer.
He was tbus enabled to struggle on at the College of St. Barbara,
until be bad become qualified to earn his ow^n maintenance as a
public teacher of philosophy.

The chair of Xavier was crowded by the studious, and his
society courted by the gay, tbe noble, and the rich. It was courted
also by one who stood aloof from the admiring multitude, — among
them, but not of them. Sordid in dress, but of lofty bearing ;
unimpassioned, though intensely earnest; abstemious in speech,
yet uttering occasionally, in deep and most melodious tones,
words of strange significance, Ignatius Loyola was gradually
working over the mind of his young companion a spell which no
difference of taste, of habits, or of age, was of power to repel.
Potent as it was, the charm was long resisted. Hilarity was tbe
native element of Francis Xavier, and his grave monitor afforded
him an inexhaustible theme of mirth and raillery. Armed with
satire, which was not always playful, the light heart of youth
contended as best it might against the solemn impressions which
be could neither welcome nor avoid. WTiether Xavier j^brnged
into the amusements in which he delighted, or engaged in the
disquisitions in which he excelled, or traced the windings of the
Seine through the forest which then lined its banks, Ignatius was
still at band, ready to discuss with him the charms of society, of
learning, or of nature ; but whatever had been the subject of their
discourse, it was still closed by the same awful inquiry, "What
shall it profit the man if he gain the whole w^orld and lose his
own soul ? "

Tbe world which Xavier had sought to gain was already ex-
hibiting to him its accustomed treachery. It had given him
entertainment and applause, but it had stolen from him first his
self-control, and then his pupils and emoluments. Ignatius was
still at hand to repair bis losses. He became the eulogist of the
genius and the eloquence of his friend. He presented to him
the scholars attracted to his chair by these panegyrics. He
repeated them in the hearing of the delighted teacher, but then,
when the kindling eye of Xavier attested the sense of conscious
merit and of well-established renown, be would check the rising
exultation by the ever-recurring inquiry, — " What shall it
profit ? "

Improvidence squandered these new resources, but iiothing

122 THE FOUXDEES OF JESUITISM.

could damp the zeal of Ignatius. There he was again, himself
the poorest of the poor, yet ministering to the wants of Xavier
from a purse filled by the alms he had solicited ; but there again
was also the same unvarying demand urged in the same rich
though solemn cadence, — " What shall it profit ? "

In the unrelaxing grasp of the strong man, at once forgiven
and assisted, beloved and rebuked by his stern associate, Xavier
gradually yielded to the fascination. He became, like his monitor,
impassive, at least in appearance, to all sublunary pains and
pleasures, performed the initiatory rite of the Spiritual Exercises,
and joined with his brethren in the vows of Muntmartre, surpassed
them all in the fervour of his devotion and the austerity of his
self-discipline, and, in the winter of 1536, became the leader of
their march to the Eternal City.

Accomplished in all courtly exercises, he prepared for his
journey by binding tight cords round his arms and legs, in holy
revenge for the pleasure which their graceful agility had once
afforded him, and so pursued his way with Spartan constancy, till
the corroded flesh closed obstinately over the ligatures. Miracle,
the ever promjjt handmaid of the energetic children of the Church
of Kome, burst the bands Avhich no surgeon could unloose, and
her friendly presence was then attested by the toils which his
unfettered limbs immediately endured in the menial service of
his fellow-travellers.

At Venice they rejoined Ignatius, and there employed them-
selves in ministering to the patients in the hospitals. Foremost
in every act of intrepid self-mortification, Xavier signalised his
zeal by exploits, the mere mention of which the stomachs of our
feebler generation could not endure. While thus courting all
the physical tortures of purgatory, his soul inhaled the anticipated
delights of Paradise. These penances and raptures brought him
twice to the gates of death ; and then, in what he supposed to be
his last extremity, he caused himself to be borne to places of
public resort, that his ghastly aspect might teach the awful lessons
which his tongue was no longer able to pronounce.

Such prodigies, whether enacted by the saints of Eome, or by
the saints of Benares, exhibit a sovereignty of the spiritual over the
animal nature, which can hardly be contemplated without some
feelings akin to reverence. But, on the whole, the hooked Faqueer,
spinning round his gil^bet, is the more respectable suicide of the
two. His homage is at least meet for the deity he worships. But
that gracious Being, whose name had been assumed by Xavier
and his associates, was equally victorious over the stoical illusions
and the lower desires of our nature. When He made himself of no

THE FOU.tDEKS OF JESUITISM. 1-23

reputation, and took on Him tlie form of a servant, He yet souglit
repose amongst the domestic charities of life, and condescended to
accept those blameless solaces which life has to offer to the weary
and heavy laden. No services were ever offered to Him less in
harmony with His serene self-reverence, than the vehement emotions,
the squalid filth, and the lacerated frames of the first members of
the Society of Jesus.

Whatever might have been the reward of Xavier's self-mortifi-
cations in another life, his name would probably have left no trace
in this world's records, had it not happened that John III. of
Portugal, resolving to plant the Christian faith in the Indian
territories which had become subject to the dominion or influence
of his crown, petitioned the Pope to select some fit leader of this
peaceful crusade. The choice first fell on Bobadilla, who, however,
was immediately seized with a fever of such violence as disqualified
him for the enterprise. Then it was, as we are told, that Ignatius
was enlightened from on high to perceive in Xavier the vessel of
election. The Holy Father ratified the choice.

A hajDpier selection could not have been made ; and never was a
summons to toil, to suffering, and to death, so joyously received. In
the visions of the night, he had often groaned beneath the incumbent
weight of a wild Indian, of ebon hue and gigantic stature seated on
his shoulders. In those dreams he had often traversed temjaestuous
seas, enduring shipwreck, famine, and persecution, in their most
ghastly forms ; and, as each peril was encountered, his panting soul
had invoked yet more abundant opportunities of making such
glorious sacrifices for the conversion of mankind. And now, when
the clearer sense and the approaching accomplishment of these
dark intimations were disclosed to him, passionate sobs attested the
rapture which his tongue was unable to speak. He fell on his
knees before Ignatius, kissed the feet of the holy father, repaired
his tattered cassock, and, with no other provision than his breviary,
left Eome on the 15th of March, 15-10, for Lisbon, his destined
port of embarcation for the East.

Light of heart, and joyful in discourse, he travelled from Rome
across the Alps and Pyrenees. As he descended the southern
slopes of his native mountains, there rose to his sight the venerable
towers, beneath which he had enjoyed the sports of childhood, and
woven the day-dreams of youth ; where still lived the mother, who,
during his first eighteen years, had day by day watched over him,
and blessed him, and the saintly sister, whose inspired voice had
foretold his present high vocation. But it was all too high for
even a momentary intrusion of the holiest of those feelings whicli
are merely human. He was on his way with tidings of mercy to a

124 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

perishing world, and had not one hour to waste, nor one parting
tear to bestow, on those whom he best loved and most revered,
and whom, in this life, he could never hope to meet again.
We are not left to conjecture in what light his conduct was
regarded. Martin D'Aypilcueta, surnamed the Doctor of Navarre,
a grave and well-beneficed divine (a shrewd, thriving, hospit-
able, much respected man, no unlikely candidate for the
mitre, and a candidate, too, in his own drowsy way, for amaranthine
crowns, and celestial blessedness), was the maternal uncle of Xavier,
and very plausibly believed his nephew mad. He favoured his
enthusiastic kinsman with much judicious remonstrance against
his suicidal project. Half sportive, half indignant, was Xavier's
answer : — " I care little, most illustrious Doctor, for the judgment
of men, and least of all for their judgment, who decide before they
hear and before they understand." Mad or sober, he was at least
impelled by a force, at the first shock of which the united
judiciousness and respectability of mankind must needs fall to
pieces,— the force of will, concentrated on one great end, and
elevated above the misty regions of doubt to that unclouded
atmospliere, where Faith, attended by her Sister Grraces, Hope and
Courage, Joy and Fortitude, converts the future into the present,
and casts the brightest hues over objects the most repulsive to
sense, and the most painful to our feeble nature.

As the vessel in which Xavier embarked for India fell down the
Tagus, and shook out her reefs to the wind, many an eye was
dim with unwonted tears, for she bore a regiment of a thousand
men to reinforce the garrison of Goa ; nor could the bravest of
that gallant host gaze on the receding land without foreboding that
he might never see again those dark chestnvit forests and rich orange
groves, with the peaceful convents and the long-loved homes
reposing in their bosom. The countenance of Xavier alone
beamed with delight. He knew that he should never tread his
native mountains more ; but he felt that he was not an exile. He
was to depend for food and raiment on the bounty of his fellow-
passengers ; but no thought for the morrow troubled him. He was
going to convert nations of which he knew neither the langiiage
nor even the names : bvit his soul was oppressed with no misgivings.
Worn by incessant sickness, with the refuse food of the lowest
seamen for his diet, and the cordage of the ship for his couch, he
rendered to the diseased services too revolting to be described, and
lived among the dying and the profligate, the unwearied minister
of consolation and of peace. In the midst of that floating throng
he knew both how to create for himself a sacred solitude, and how
to mix in all their pursuits in the free spirit of a man of the world.

THE FOUNDEKS OF JESUITISM. 125

a gentleman, and a scholar. With the viceroy and his officers, he
talked as pleased them best, of war or trade, of politics or navigation.
To restrain the common soldiers from gambling, he invented for
their amusement less dangerons pastimes, or even held the stakes
for which they played, that, by his presence and his gay discourse,
he might at least check the excesses which he could not entirely
prevent.

Five weary months (weary to all but Iiim) brought the ship to
Mozambique, where an endemic fever threatened a premature grave
to the apostle of the Indies. But his was not a spirit to l)e
quenched or allayed by the fiercest paroxysms of disease. At
each remission of his malady he crawled to the beds of his fellow-
sufferers to soothe their terrors, or assuage their pains. Just
thirteen months after his departure from Lisbon, he reached Goa ;
the most wretched of mankind to the eye of any casual oljserver,
but, in the esteem of his shipmates, the happiest and the most holy.

At Goa Xavier was shocked, and, had he been susceptible of
fear, would have been dismayed, by the almost imiversal dejjravity
of the inhabitants. It exhibited itself in those revolting forms
which characterise the crimes of civilised men, when settled among
a feebler race, and released from the restraints and conventional
decencies of civilisation. Swinging a huge bell in his hand,
Xavier passed along the streets of the city, imploring the astonished
crowd to send their children to him to be instructed in the religion
which they continued at least to profess. Though he had never
been addressed by the soul-stirring name of father, he knew that
there is one chord which can never be wholly out of tune in the
hardest and the most dissolute heart which has once felt the
I^arental instinct. A crowd of little ones were quickly placed under
his charge. He lived among them, at once the most laborious of
teachers and the gentlest and gayest of friends ; and then returned
them to their homes, that, by their example, they might there
impart, with the unconscious eloquence of filial love, the lessons of
wisdom and of piety which they had been taught.

No cry of human misery reached him in vain. He took up his
abode in the hospitals ; selecting that of the lejorous as the object
of his peculiar care. Even in the haunts of debauchery, and at
the tables of the profligate, he was to be seen an honoured and a
welcome guest. He delighted that most unmeet audience with
the vivacity of his discourse; and spared neither pungent jests to
render vice ridiculous, nor sportive flatteries to allure the fallen
back to the paths of soberness and virtue. These were hazards not
to be incurred, even by Francis Xavier, with impunity. Suspicion
and reijroach followed, and still pursue, these deviations from the

1-26 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

highways of Christian instruction ; nor would it perhaps be possible
to make a successful defence of all the freedoms into which his
ardent zeal occasionally urged him. But strong in purity of pur-
pose, and stronger still in one sacred remembrance, he was content
to be called " the friend of publicans and sinners." He had long
since deserted the standard of Prudence, the offspring of Fore-
thought, for the banners of Wisdom, the child of Love, and fol-
lowed them through perils not to be braved with impunity under
any less triumphant leaders.

Rugged were the ways along which he was thus conducted. In
those times, as in our own, there was a pearl fishery on the western
shores of the Strait of Manaar, and then, as now, the pearl divers
formed a separate and a degraded caste. It was not till after a
residence of many months at Goa that Xavier heard of these
people. He heard that they were ignorant and miserable, and he in-
quired no farther. On that burning shore his bell once more rang
out an invitation of mercy, and again were gathered around him
troops of inquisitive and docile children. He lived long among
these abject fishermen ; his only food their rice and water, their
huts his only shelter, and a sleep of three hours during the four
and twenty the measure of his repose. He became at once their
physician, the arbiter in their disputes, and their advocate with the
Governor of Goa for the remission of their annual tribute.

He became also their teacher in the doctrines and precepts of
Christianity. Destitute as he was, at first, of any acquaintance
with their language, the undertaking would have daunted any
spirit less ardent than his ; and it is, indeed, to this day, disputed,
between the members of his order and their antagonists, whether
he acquitted himself of it in anything more than outward sem-
blance and unmeaning form.

"VMien the inhabitants of Cape Comorin were delivered by the
Portuguese from their Mahomedan invaders, they did homage to
their new masters by submitting their persons to the baptismal ab-
lution, though their minds remained as dark as before, and their
course of life not less licentious. To these Paravas (so they were
called) Xavier proceeded; taking with him two interpreters, ap-
pointed to that service by the Bishop of Goa. In a letter to his
brethren of the Society of Jesus, dated in January 1544, he thus
describes his method of introducing these people to the knowledge
of the Christian faith : —

Having carefully selected some of the more intelligent of their
numbei', and especially such of them as could converse both in the
Spanish and the Malabar tongues, he laboriously accomplished, by
their aid, translations of the Catechism, of the Apostles' Creed, of

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. Ij7

the Ten Commandments, of the Lord's Prayer, and of some of the
devotional oflfices of the Church of Kome. After committing these
versions to his own memory, he undertook a circuit through tlie
country; summoning the natives to gather round him ateacli town
and village by the sound of his bell, which he rang out on his
arrival there. To these assemblages he recited his formularies,
repeating them again and again, until they had learnt them by
heart. The children, as usual, proved the aptest scholars ; and
when they were perfect in their tasks, he despatched them tu teach
what they had thus acquired, to their parents and neighbours.

On every Sunday he preached on the texts thus impressed before-
hand on the minds of his hearers ; employing, of course, at first,
the intervention of his interpreters. These sermons opened with a
comment on the Creed ; to each article of which his hearers, and
especially the candidates for baptism, gave their audible assent.
The Commandments were then repeated and explained; each
Commandment being succeeded by a prayer (in which the whole
assembly joined) for grace to observe it. The Lord's Prayer fol-
lowed; and the series of congregational oflfices was closed by
Xavier's reciting, in the language of his hearers, an epitome of the
Christian faith, and an exhortation to lead a Christian life. Then
came the baptism of the catechumens ; after which the assemljly
was dismissed.

In every heathen land which he subsequently visited, Xavier
pursued the same method of propagating the faith. A most inef-
fectual method, in the judgment of his Protestant censors. They
have no respect or forgiveness for his barbarous translations into
semi-barbarous tongues, of formularies and S3^mbols which the
most profound scholars have but imperfectly succeeded in transfus-
ing into the most polished dialects of modern Europe. They find
much occasion for mirth in the grotesque accents in which the
missionary's unpractised tongue must have preached in a foreign
idiom, and in the darkness in which an impromptu interpretation
must have involved his sermons. To inject into imcultivated minds
thoughts so remote from their antecedent knowledge and concep-
tions, is pronounced a desperate enterprise ; and it is not without a
compassionate smile that these critics refer to the prejudice which
has ventured to claim the reverence of mankind for such delirious
zeal, and so much impotent benevolence.

If this judgment be just, it must at least be acknowledged to be
a notable and curious occurrence, that such a man as Francis
Xavier first abandoned himself to a life of reli<aous extravagance,
and then became the unconscious chronicler of his own folly. He
who had taught the learning of his times with high applause at

128 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

Paris, was certainly no prating sciolist. The friend and cliosen
companion of Ignatius Loyola and of lago Laynez, could not be
destitute of that wisdom which is to be gained by converse with
the wise. He who had associated with every class of society, from
the hospital to the throne, could not be unprovided with the know-
ledge which the world has to impart. The author of such mis-
sionary journals as his could not be wanting in clear good sense;
for in that respect they may well challenge comparison with the
best performances of the most sober-minded of those who, in our
own days, have described their own labours in the same field. Nor
could Xavier have been betrayed, as so many are betrayed, into
foolishness by knavery; for the most jealous eyes have searched
his reports and letters in vain for one wilful deviation from truth,
or for so much as a solitary proof that he was actuated by any in-
direct or sinister designs. Strange then is it, if such a man drew
a self-portraiture, full of glaring absurdity, without perceiving it.

It is not improbable that these or some similar censures mfty
have reached his own ears. The sleek, worldly-wise traders of
Goa, can scarcely have failed to anticipate them ; and as in that
case the despised herald of the Grospel can hardly have held his
peace, we may, with some plausibility, suppose him to have made
to the scorners some such answer as the following : —

" However feeble may be the means by which I endeavour to
bring the natives of India into the fold of Christ, they are at least
the best means at my command ; and woe unto me if I preach not
the Grospel ! They are also the only means at present taken by any
one who calls himself a Christian, to atone for the wrongs inflicted
on them by their Christian rulers. If the contumelies cast on my
teaching reached me only, they would be insignificant ; but let it
be well considered whether they will not glance aside from me, and
strike against ministrations incomparably higher and holier than
mine. When in one day Peter called three thousand converts out
of the world — when Philip admitted the Ethiopian into the Church
— or when Paul acknowledged the gaoler of PhilipiDi as a brother
in Christ — neither Peter, nor Philip, nor Paul had imparted to
those proselytes any instruction beyond the first and elementary
articles of the faith. When the same great Apostle of the Gren-
tiles wrote his pastoral letters to the Gfreeks, he employed what to
them must have appeared an uncouth and barbarous dialect. When
he spoke to the Corinthians, it was not with excellency of speech,
but in the foolishness of preaching. When others addressed them
in unknown tongues, Paul did not command that the stranger
should be silenced, but that his discourse should be interpreted.
When He who spoke as never man spake, condescended to appear

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 129

on our earth. His mightiest eloquence — that b}^ which He moved,
subdued, and penetrated the heart — was the eloquence, not of
speech, but of a life of which each painful step was taken at the
bidding of love, and under the giiiduuce of wisdom. Be it then
the care of myself and of my fellow-labourers to tread, however
feebly, and at however great a distance, in the footsteps of our
adorable Master. Let us hiunbly endeavour to evangelise these
outcasts of the Inunan family chiefly by our loving-kindness, our
self-denial, and our personal sanctity. But with our words also,
though spoken with a stammering tongue, and through an imper-
fect medium, we will endeavour to make known to them the com-
mands delivered by God himself on Sinai, the prayer dictated by
Christ himself to His disciples, and the earliest confession of the
faith transmitted to us by His Church. The truths we thus speak
may indeed appear to the natural man to be foolishness, but by the
spiritual man they may be spiritually discerned ; for there are
truths which, though man's wisdom teach them not, are yet effec-
tually taught by Him Avithout whose present aid all teaching is
vain, and all wisdom is folly."

It is not a merely gratuitous conjecture that such would have
been the substance of Xavier's apology. It is the burthen of his
letters, that the living exhibition of the Christian character is the
first great instrument of Christian conquests over idolatry ; and that
the inculcation of elementary truth is the second. But while he is
thus ever mindful of his own responsibility for the souls of the
heathen of his own times, he presses with even painful importunity
on his correspondents, the importance of providing for a succession
to himself of missionaries eminent for holiness and for learninjr ;
and, amidst all his fatigues and anxieties, his eye is ever fixed upon
the prospects opened by the college which he had established at
Gfoa, for training up natives of India as the future teachers of their
countrymen.

It is, indeed, true (though the truth be uttered in the contempt-
uous tone best calculated to provoke contradiction), that a Chris-
tianity, nominal, formal, and external, was, after all, the best fruit
to be gathered, or to be rationally expected, from the rude efforts
of Xavier for the conversion of the Paravas. But where is that
country, and wha,t is that time, in which Christianity has been more
than this amongst the great multitude of those who have called and
professed themselves Christians ? The travellers in the narrow
path, who are guided by her vital spirit, have ever been the
" chosen few." The travellers along the broad way, wearing her
exterior and visible badges, have ever been the " many called."
And yet he who should induce any heathen people to adopt the

130 THE FOUNDEKS OF JESUITISM.

mere ceremonial of the Church, to celebrate her ritual, and to
recognise, though but in words, the authority of her Divine Head,
would confer on them a blessing exceeding all which mere human
philanthropy has ever accomplished or designed. For such is the
vivifying influence of the spirit of the Grospel, that it can never
long be otherwise than prolific of the highest temporal benefits to
all, and of the highest spiritual benefits to some, in every land
which acknowledges it as a rule of life and receives it as a system
of worship. If Xavier had succeeded so far only as to diffuse through
the East that kind and that degree of Christianity which at this
day exists amongst the formalists of Europe, such a success would
almost justify the papal apotheosis which has assigned to him a
throne in heaven and a perennial homage on earth.

It is not without exultation, or indeed without truth, that we are
reminded that even to this extent Xavier did not eventually succeed.
The triumph over his failm-e would be abated if due attention were
given to the causes of it. His mantle never fell on any of his
successors. His place was taken by men of worldly minds and of
worldly policy. They recited his formularies, but did not imitate
his holiness, and found (as how could they but find ?) that with the
spirit of his apostolate the power of it had departed. Ere long the
Portuguese were expelled from India. They had conquered there,
but had not colonised ; and in these later ages colonisation has been
the habitual, perhaps the indispensable, forerunner of the Grospel
among barbarous or half civilised tribes. "WTien Christianity
becomes the religion of the highest caste, as in the transatlantic
continents and colonies, in Western and in Southern Africa, and in
the great Australian islands, converts from heathenism are to be
counted by millions. For idolatry, being not a principle, but a
mere habit, has ever fallen, and will ever fall down in the presence
of Truth, when Truth presents herself sustained by power and
arrayed in dignity. We shall christianise India in proportion as we
Anglicise her. If in Xavier's days England had been sovereign of
the East, that renovating process would ere now have been complete ;
and by this time Brahma and Veeshnu would have retired in the
peninsula into the same position which Odin and Woden are now
occupying in Scandinavia.

Doubtless the superstitions with which the creed of the Church of
Eome has disfigured the Grospel, contributed largely to prevent or
to impair Xavier's success. Yet if they who followed him had been
men of a like spirit with his, as well as of the same creed, and if
his nation had retained and colonised her Asiatic dominion, that
which has happened in the transatlantic conquests of the great
Roman Catholic powers, would also have happened in the Eastern

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 131

empire of the House of Bragiiuza : and India would at present be
overspread with Christian churches, acknowledging the Pope as
their supreme earthly head, and revering Francis Xavier as their
great spiritual progenitor.

Between the eulogists and the censors of Xavier it is still further
debated Avhether the ultimate ill-success of his missions is or is not
to be ascribed to his ignorance of the languages of India. His
friends maintain that the miraculous gift of tongues fell upon him
while residing near Cape Comorin. His opponents deny that he
ever acquired the vernacular speech of that country at all. The
real diflficulty is to determine which of these two opinions is the
more extravagant. His imputed ignorance of the native tongue of
those amongst whom he so long lived, and for whom he laboured with
such fervent zeal, is hardly less incredible than the supposed mira-
culous intervention to impart it to him. If, at the end of several
years, he had not acquired the power of conversing intelligibly with
his followers, the idlest lad from the East India College at Hayley-
bury, now stationed in those regions, may boast of an energy and of
talents surpassing those of Francis Xavier ; and he who was at once a
Spanish Cavalier and a devoted missionary, must have deliberately
and repeatedly suggested in his letters falsehoods enough to rack
the conscience of a Christian with remorse, and to crimson the
cheek of a gentleman with self-reproach. The fact seems to be
that Xavier was at best but a moderate linguist, and that he never
acquired the perfect command of any language except his own. At
the commencement of each of his successive missions he acknow-
ledges and bewails his inability to make any colloquial use of the
tongues spoken by the people amongst Avhom he had arrived. Yet,
from the commencement of each, he recited to wondering crowds
such translations as he could obtain of the creeds and formularies
of the faith ; aiding the defects of his discourse by tones and gestures
which spoke to the imagination and to the hearts of his hearers.
Ere long, however, he seems to have learnt to converse, to argue,
and to preach among every new assemblage of his Asiatic disciples
at least intelligibly, though perhaps never with elegance or correct-
ness. But among such a people, and on such topics, a man of fei'-
vent spirit, of natural eloquence, and of high rank, need not be
either correct or elegant in order to be impressive.

Whatever may have been the ultimate fate of Xavier's missions,
or the cause of their decay, it is nothing more than wanton scepti-
cism to doubt that, in his own lifetime, the apparent results were
such as to jiLstify the most sanguine of his anticipations, Near
Cape Comorin he appointed thirty different teachers, who under
himself were to preside over the same number of Christian churches.

K 2

132 THE FOUXDERS OF JESUITISM.

Many an humble cottage there was surmounted by a crucifix, the
mark of its consecration to public worship, and many a rude
countenance reflected the sorrows and the hopes which they had
been taught to associate with that sacred emblem.

In reporting these labours to his society, the habitual calmness
of Xavier's style is once, at least, interrupted by passionate excla-
mations. *' I have left myself," he says, " nothing to add on this
subject, except that so intense and abundant are the delights which
God is accustomed to bestow on those w^ho labour diligently in His
service in the vineyard in this barbarous land, that if there be, in
this life, any true and solid enjoyment, T believe it to be this and
this alone. There is one among those who are so employed," (he
is obviously referring to himself), " whom I frequently overhear
saying, ' Overwhelm me not, my God, with such happiness in
this life ! or if, of Thine infinite beneficence and mercy. Thou shalt
be pleased still to bestow it ujjon me, then take me hence to the
abode of the blessed ; for he whose inward sense has once tasted of
these delights, must needs regard existence as a heavy burden so
long as it is passed without the beatic vision of Thyself.' "

This prayer for some mitigation of his happiness was not un-
answered. A hostile invasion from the kingdom of Bisnagore
swept before it the poor fishermen of Cape Comorin, destroyed
their simple chapels, and drove them for refuge to the barren
rocks and sand banks on the western shores of the Strait of Manaar.
The tidings brought their good father Xavier, on the wings of love,
to share and solace their affliction, to procure for them food and
succour from the viceroy at Goa, and to direct their confidence to
an infinitely better Father, whose presence they might acknowledge,
and whose goodness they might adore, even amidst the wreck of all
their earthly possessions.

To teach the same salutary lesson to those on whom such pos-
sessions had been bestowed in far more ample abundance, Xavier
crossed the peninsula to Travancore, in the hope of converting the
Eajah and his courtiers. His anxious friends earnestly dissuaded
a journey so full of peril ; and the language in which he repels
these timid counsels might pass for a quotation from one of the in-
dignant letters of Martin Luther. " There are moments,'' he says,
" when I am weary of life, and when I think that it would be better
to die in the cause of God than to witness such a contemptuous
disregard of his authority as I am at once constrained to observe
and unable to prevent. To escape from the sight and the report
of such iniquity, how gladly would I migrate into Ethiopia, or
into the dominions of Prester John, where, without meeting oppo-
sition from any one, I might render so many services to the JMost

THE FOUNDERS OP .(ESUITlS^f. 13:1

High. For uotliiug afflicts me so acutely as my want of power l.j
make an effectual resistance to those who are insulting the majesty
of Heaven. May God pardon them, abide with you, and accom-
pany me."

If any reliance may be placed on his own statements, his suc-
cess at Travancore justified his daring and surpassed his highest
expectations. He reported in February, 1545, that God had
brought many of the inhabitants to the faith, and had, by liis
means, converted more than ten thousand men in a single month.
Passing from one village to another, he repeated the same formu-
laries which he had recited among the Paravas, and founded on
them the same instructions. He baptized till liis hands dropped
with weariness and his voice became inaudible ; experiencing, as
he says, in his whole soul, a joy which it WDuld lie vain to at-
tempt to express either in writing or by speech.

It is difficult, or rather impossible, to determine what deduction
would have been made from Xavier's estimate of the results of his
mission to Travancore, if tried by those sober tests which he was
himself too deeply agitated to employ. Some part of his success
may have been a mere hallucination of his own overwrought feel-
ings. Something may be ascribed to the terror with Avhich the
Portuguese arms had at that time affected the native powers of
India, and disposed them to conciliate their European invaders.
The ancient traditions of Christianity which had lingered in that
part of the peninsula from remote days (the traditions of St.
Thomas's residence there is a modern fable), may have given
the appearance of a conquest to Avhat was, at least to some ex-
tent, a mere restoration. But when every abatement which these
and similar considerations may suggest shall have l)cen made,
we must reject testimony the most unambiguous, and opposed by
no conflicting evidence, if we deny the general truth of Xavier's
statement. A solitary, poor, and unprotected stranger, he had
burst through the barriers which separate men of different races
and of different tongues. His meaning may have been ill under-
stood, but by some mysterious force of sympathy his hearers quickly
caught his ardour. Idols and their temples fell beneath the blows
of their former worshippers. Christian churches rose at his bid-
ding ; and Travancore was j)ossessed with new ideas, and agitated
by unwonted controversies.

Amongst the triumphs of the Gospel thus vrrought by his own
agency, Xavier refers, with expressions of intense delight, to the
vast multitude of infants whom he had baptized, and whom deatli
had transferred to Paradise, in the untarnished bloom of their bap-
tismal innocency; and he vehemently implores his general and

K 3

134 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

associates to increase the number of the missionaries in the same
field, from which, by this simple process, so vast a harvest of these
tender plants might be continually gathered into the heavenly
garner. Those who believe, with him, in this astounding efficacy
of the sacrament of baptism, must needs number him among the
greatest benefactors of his species ; for no other man ever brought
down, by his ministration, a blessing of such unutterable magni-
tude on so vast a multitude of babes and sucklings. It is, indeed,
a subject of curious inquiry, why the adherents of that doctrine do
not arise to the more than human, and yet easy, office of love
which invites them? By emplojdng a few active emissaries to
baptize infant Hindoos, they would confer, on the race of man,
benefits infinitely eclipsing all the results of all the labours of all
the philanthropists who have trodden this earth from the days of
Adam to our own. Why, then, is this mighty work of benevolence
unattempted ? It is because they who are driven by a tyrannical
logic to these most marvellous consequences, escape the pressure of
them by something which is superior to all logic and proof against
all argumentation ; even by those indestructible instincts of our
nature, and by that free spirit of the Grospel, which will dash to
pieces the inference and the belief, that the Almighty Father of us
all has really made the eternal weal or woe of our children to
depend on the observance or neglect of an ablution to be sprinkled
by the hands, and of a benediction to be pronounced by the lips,
of mortal man.

Against these innovations of Xavier, the Brahmins argued — as
the Church by law established has not seldom argued • — with fire
and sword, and the interdict of earth and water to the enemies of
their repose. A foreign invader threw a still heavier sword into
the trembling scales. From the southward appeared on the borders
of Travancore the same force which had swept away the poor
fishermen of Malabar. Some embers of Spanish chivalry still
glowed in the bosom of Xavier. He flew to the scene of the ap-
^proaching combat, and there, placing himself in the van of the
protecting army, poured forth a passionate prayer to the Lord of
Hosts, raised on high his crucifix, and, with kindling eyes, and far-
resounding voice, delivered the behests of Heaven to the impious
invaders. So runs the tale, and ends (it is almost superfluous to
add) in the rout of the astounded foe. It is a matter of less ani-
mated, and perhaps of more authentic history, that for his services
in this war Xavier was rewarded by the unbounded gratitude of
the Eajah, was honoured with the title of his Grreat Father, and
rescued from all further Brahminical persecution.

Power and courtly influence form an intoxicating draught even

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 185

when raised to the lips of an ascetic and a saint. Holy as he was,
the Gfi-eat Father of the Rajah of Travancore seems not entirely
to have escaped this feverish thirst. Don Alphonso de Souza, a
weak though amiable man, was at that time the Viceroy of Por-
tuguese India ; and Xavier (such was now his authority) des-
patched a messenger to Lisbon to demand rather than advise his
recall. For within the limits of his high commission (and what
subject is wholly foreign to it?) the ambassador of the King of
Kings may owe respect but hardly deference to any mere earthly
monarch. So argued Francis, so judged King John, and so fell
Alphonso de Souza, as many a greater statesman has fallen, and
may yet fall, under the weight of sacerdotal displeasure.

Weakness, however, was not the only recorded fault of De Souza.
Towards the northern extremity of Ceylon lies the Island of
Manaar, a dependency, in Xavier's day, of the adjacent kingdom of
Jaffna, where then reigned a sort of Oriental Philip II. The
islanders had become converts to the Christian faith, and expiated
their apostasy by their lives. Six hundred men, women and chil-
dren fell in one royal massacre ; and the tragedy was closed by the
murder of the eldest son of the King of Jaffna, by his father's
orders. Deposition in case of misgovernment, and the transfer to
the deposing power of the dominions of the offender, was no inven-
tion of Hastings or of Clive. It is one of the most ancient consti-
tutional maxims of the European dynasties in India. It may even
boast the venerable suffrage of St. Francis Xavier. At his in-
stance, De Souza equipped an armament to hurl the guilty ruler
of Jaffna from his throne, and to subjugate his territories to the
most faithful King. In the invading fleet the indignant saint led
the way, with promises of triumphs, both temporal and eternal.
But the expedition failed. Cowardice or treachery defeated the
design. De Souza paid the usual penalties of ill success. Xavier
sailed away to discover other fields of spiritual warfare.

On the JNIalabar coast, near the city of Meliapor, might be seen
in those times an oratory in which St. Thomas, the first teacher of
Christianity in India, was supposed to have worshipped, and a
tomb in which it was believed that his body had been laid. It
was in a cool and sequestered grotto that, according to this local
tradition, the Apostle had been wont to pray ; and there yet ap-
peared on the living rock, in bold relief, the cross at which he was
said to have knelt, with a crystal fountain of medicinal waters
gushing from the base of it. In a church on the neighbouring
height was a marble altar, on which (according to the same legend)
might still be traced, after the lapse of fifteen centuries, indelible
blood-stains, ascertaining the sacred spot at which the Apostle had

K 4

13G THE. FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

won the crown of martyrdom, and wliere his bones had been com-
mitted to the dust. To this venerable shrine Xavier retired to
learn the ^^^ll of Heaven concerning his future progress. If we
may believe the oath of one of his fellow-pilgrims, he maintained,
on this occasion, for seven successive days, an unbroken fast and
silence — no unfit preparation for his approaching conflicts. Even
round the tomb of the Apostle malignant demons prowl by night ;
and, though strong in the guidance of the Virgin, Xavier not
only found himself in their obscene grasp, but received from them
blows, such as no weapons in human hands could have inflicted,
and which had nearly brought to a close his labours and his life.
Baffled by a superior power, the fiends opposed a still more subtle
hindrance to his designs against their kingdom. In the garb, and
in the outward semblance of a band of choristers, they disturbed
his devotions by such soul-subduing strains, that the very har-
monies of Heaven might seem to have been awakened to divert the
Christian warrior from his heavenward path. All in vain their
fury and their guile ! He found the direction he implored ; and
the first bark which sailed from tlie Malabar shore to the city of
jNIalacca, bore the obedient missionary to that great emporium of
eastern commerce.

Thirty years before the arrival of Xavier, Malacca had been
conquered by Alphonso Albuquerque. It was a place abandoned
to every form of sensual and enervating indulgence. Through her
crowded streets a strange and solemn visitor passed along, pealing
his accustomed bell, a,nd earnestly imploring the prayers of the faith-
ful for that guilty people. Curiosity and alarm soon^gave way to
ridicule ; but Xavier's panojjly was complete. The messenger of
divine wrath judged this an unfit occasion for coui'ting aversion or
contempt. He became the gayest of the gay, and, in address, at
least, the very model of an accomplished cavalier. Foiled at their
own weapons, his dissolute countrymen acknowledged the irresis-
tible authority of a self-devotion so awful, relieved, and embel-
lished, as it was, by every social grace. Thus the work of
reformation prospered, or seemed to prosper. Altars rose in the
open streets, the confessional was thronged by penitents, transla-
tions of devout books were multiplied ; and the saint, foremost in
every toil, applied himself with all the activity of his spirit to
study th structure and the graceful pronunciation of the JNIalayan
tongue. But the plague was not thus to be stayed. A relapse
into all their former habits filled up the measure of their crimes.
With prophetic voice Xavier announced the impending chastise-
ments of Heaven ; and shaking off from his feet the dust of the
obdurate city, pursued his indefatigable wa}- to Amboyna.

TlIK FOUNDEES OF JESUITIS^f. I;j7

That island, then a part of the vast domiuions of Purtiij^al in
the east, had scarcely witnessed the commencement of Xavier's
exertions, when a fleet of Spanish vessels ajjpeared in hostile array
on the shores. They were invaders, and even corsairs ; for their
expedition had been disavowed by Charles V. Pestilence, how-
ever, was raging among them ; and Xavier was equally ready to
hazard his life in the cause of Portugal, or in the service of her
afflicted enemies. Day and night he lived in the infected ships, .
soothing every spiritual distress, and exerting all the magical influ-
ence of his name to procure for the sick whatever might contribute
to their recovery or soothe their pains. Tlie coals of fire thus
heaped on the heads of the pirates, melted hearts otherwise steeled
to pity : and to Xavier belonged the rare, perhaps the unrivalled
glory of repelling an invasion by no weapons but those of self-
denial and of love.

But glory, the praise of men, or their gratitude, what were these
to him ! As the Spaniards retired peacefully from Amboyna, he,
too, quitted the half-adoring multitude, whom he had rescued
from the horrors of a pirate's war, and, spurning all the timid
counsels which would have stayed his course, proceeded, as the
herald of good tidings, to the half-barbarous islands of the neigh-
bouring Archipelago. " If those lands," such was his indignant
exclamation, " had scented woods and mines of gold. Christians
would find courage to go there; nor would all the perils of the
world prevent them. They are dastardly and alarmed, because
there is nothing to be gained there but the souls of men ; and
shall love be less hardy and less generous than avarice ? Tfiey
v;ill destroy me, you say, by poison. It is an lionour to which
such a sinner as I am may not aspire ; but this I dare to say, that
whatever form of torture or of death awaits me, I am ready to
suffer it ten thousand times for the salvation of a single soul."
Nor was this the language of a man insensible to the sorrows of
life, or really unaffected by the dangers he had to incur. " Be-
lieve me, my beloved brethren," (the quotation is made from a
letter written by him at this time to the Society at Eome), " it is
in general easy to understand the evangelical maxim, that he who
will lose his life shall find it. But when the moment of action
has come, and when the sacrifice of life for God is to be really
made, oh then, clear as at other times the meaning is, it becomes
deeply obscure ! so dark, indeed, that he alone can comprehend it,
to whom, in His mercy, God himself interprets it. Then it is we
know how weak and frail we are."

Weak and frail he may have been ; but from the days of Paid
of Tarsus to our own, the annals of mankind exhibit no other

138 THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM.

example of a soul borne onward so triumphantly through distress
and danger in all their most appalling aspects. He battled with
hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and assassination ; and pursued
his mission of love, with even increasing ardour, amidst the wildest
war of the contending elements. At the island of Moro (one of
the group of the Moluccas) he took his stand at the foot of a vol-
cano ; and as the pillar of fire threw up its wi'eaths to heaven, and
the earth tottered beneath him, and the firmament was rent by
falling rocks and peals of unintermitting thunder, he pointed to
the fierce lightnings, and the river of molten lava, and called on
the agitated crowd which clung to him for safety, to repent, and
to obey the truth ; but he also taught them that the sounds which
racked their ears were the groans of the infernal world, and the
sights which blasted their eyes an outbreak from the atmosphere
of the place of torment. Eepairing for the celebration of mass to
an edifice which he had consecrated for the purpose, an earth-
quake shook the building to its base. The terrified worshippers
fled, but Xavier, standing in meek composure before the rocking
altar, deliberately completed that mysterious sacrifice, with a faith
at least in this instance enviable, in the real presence ; rejoicing,
as he states in his description of the scene, to perceive that the
demons of the island thus winged their flight before the archangel's
sword, from the place where they had so long exercised their foul
dominion. There is no schoolboy of our days who could not
teach much, unsuspected by Francis Xavier, of the laws which go-
vern the material and the spiritual worlds. But we have not many
doctors who know as much as he did of the nature of Him by whom
the worlds of matter and of spirit were created ; for he studied in
the school of protracted martyrdom and active philanthropy,
where are divulged secrets unknown and unimagined by the wisest
and the most learned of ordinary men. Imparting everywhere such
knowledge as he possessed, he ranged over no small part of the
Indian Archipelago ; and at length retraced his steps to Malacca, that
he might learn whether his exhortations and his prayers might
even yet avert her threatened doom.

It appeared to be drawing nigh. Alaradin, a Mahomedan chief
of Sumatra, had laid siege to the place at the head of a powerful
fleet and army. Ill provided for defence by land, the Portuguese
garrison was still more unprepared for a' naval resistance. Seven
shattered barks, unfit for service, formed their whole maritime
strength. Universal alarm overspread the city, and the governor
himself at once partook and heightened the general panic. Al-
ready thoughts of capitulation had become familiar to the
besieged ; and European chivalry had bowed in abject silence to

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 139

the insulting taunts and haughty menaces of the INIosleni. At
this moment, in his slight and weatherbeaten pinnace, the mes-
senger of peace on earth effected an entrance into the beleaguei'ed
harbour. But he came with a loud and indignant summons to
the war ; for Xavier was still a Spanish cavalier, and he " thought
it foul scorn " that gentlemen, subjects of the most faithful King,
should thus be bearded by barbaric enemies, and the worshippers
of Christ defied by the disciples of the Arabian impostor. He as-
sumed the direction of the defence. By his advice the seven dis-
mantled ships were promptly equipped for sea. He assigned to
each a commander ; and, having animated the crews with promises
of both temporal and eternal triumphs, despatched them to meet
and conquer the hostile fleet. As they sailed from the harbour,
the admiral's vessel ran aground, and instantly became a antccU.
Returning ho2oe and exultation as promptly gave way to terror ;
and Xavier, the idol of the preceding hour, was now the object of
popular fuiy. He alone retained his serenity. He upbraided the
cowardice of the governor, revived the spirits of the troops, and
encouraged the multitude with prophecies of success. Again the
flotilla sailed, and a sudden tempest drove it to sea. Day after
day passed without intelligence of its safety, and once more the
hearts of the besieged failed them. Rumours of defeat were rife.
The Mahomedans, it was said, had effected a landing within six
leagues of the city, and Xavier's name was repeated from mouth to
mouth with cries of vengeance. He knelt before the altar, though
the menacing people were scarcely restrained by the sanctity of the
place from immolating him there as a victim to his own disastrous
counsels. On a sudden his bosom was seen to heave as with some
deep emotion ; he raised aloft his crucifix, and with a glowing
cheek, and in tones like one possessed, breathed a short yet
passionate prayer for victory. A solemn pause ensued ; the
dullest eye could see that within that now fainting, pallid, agitated
frame, some power more than human was in communion with the
weak spirit of man. What might be the ineffable sense thus
conveyed from mind to mind, without the aid of symbols or of
words ! One half hour of deep and agonising silence held the awe-
stricken assembly in breathless expectation — when, bounding on
his feet, his countenance radiant with joy, and his voice clear and
ringing as with the swelling notes of the trumpet, he exclaimed,
" Christ has conquered for us ! At this very moment his soldiers
are charging our defeated enemies ; they have made a great
slaughter — we have lost only four of our defenders. On Friday
next the intelligence will be here, and we shall then see our fleet
again." The catastrophe of such a tale need not be told. Malacca

140 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

followed her deliverer and the troops of the victorious squadron, in
solemn procession to the church ; where, amidst the roar of cannon,
the pealing of anthems, and hymns of adoring gratitude, his inw^ard
sense heard and reverenced that inarticulate voice which still
reminded him, that for him the hour of repose and triumph might
never come, till he should reach that state where sin would no
longer demand his rehuke, nor grief his sympathy. He turned
from the half-idolatrous shouts of an admiring people, and retraced
his toilsome way to the shores of the Indian peninsula.

He returned to Groa a poor and solitary, but no longer an obscure
man. From the Indus to the Yellow Sea, had gone forth a vague
and marvellous rumour of him. The tale bore that a stranger had
appeared in the semblance of a wayworn, abject beggar, who, by
some magic influence, and for some inscrutable ends, had bowed
the nations to his despotic will, while spurning the Avealth, the
pleasiu-es, and the homage which they offered to their conqueror.
Many w^ere the wonders which travellers had to tell of his progress,
and without number were the ingenious theories afloat for the
solution of them. He possessed the gift of ubiquity; he could at
the same moment speak in twenty different tongues on as many
dissimilar subjects ; he was impassive to heat, cold, hunger, and
fatigue ; he held hourly intercourse wdth invisible beings, the
o-uides or ministers of his designs ; he r^^ised the dead to life, and
could float, wdien so it pleased him, across the boiling ocean on the
wings of the typhoon. Among the listeners to these prodigies had
been Auo-er, a native and inhabitant of Japan. His conscience was
burdened with the memory of great crimes, and he had sought
relief in vain from many an expiatory rite, and from the tumults
of dissipation. In search of the peace he could not find at home
he sailed to Malacca, there to consult with the mysterious person
of whose avatar he had heard. But Xavier was absent; and the
victim of remorse was retracing his melancholy voyage to Jajmn,
when a friendly tempest arrested his retreat, and once more brought
him to Malacca. He was attended by two servants, and with them,
by Xe.vier's directions, he proceeded to Groa. In these three
Japanese his prophetic eye had at once seen the future instruments of
the conversion of their native land; and to that end he instructed them
to enter on a systematic course of training in the college, which he
had established for such purposes, at the seat of Portuguese empire
in the east. At that place Xavier, ere long, rejoined his converts.
Such had been their proficiency, that, soon after his arrival, they
were admitted not only into the Church by baptism, but into the
Society of Jesus by the performance of the spiritual exercises.
The history of Xavier now reaches a not unwelcome pause. He

THE FOUNDEKS OF JESUITISM. 141

pined for solitude and sileuce. He had been too long in constant
intercourse with man, and fovind that, however high and holy may
be the ends for which social life is cultivated, tlie habit, if unbroken,
will impair that inward sense through which alone the soul can
gather any true intimations of her nature and her destiny. He
retired to commune with himself in a seclusion Avliere the works of
God alone were to be seen, and where no voices could be heard
but those which, in each varying cadence, raise an imconscious
hymn of praise and adoration to their Creator. There for a while
reposing froni labours such as few other of the sons of men liave
undergone, he consumed days and weeks in meditating prospects
beyond the reach of any vision unenlarged by the habitual exercise
of beneficence and piety. There, too, it may be (for man must
still be human), he surrendered himself to dreams as baseless, and
to ecstasies as devoid of any real meaning, as those which haunt
the cell of the maniac. Peace be to the hallucinations, if such they
Avere, by which the giant refreshed his slumbering powers, and from
which he roused himself to a conflict never again to be remitted
till his frame, yielding to the ceaseless pressure, should sink into a
premature but hallowed grave.

Scarcely four years had elapsed from the first discovery of Japan
by the Portuguese, when Xavier, attended by Auger and his two
servants, sailed from Groa to convert the islanders to the Christian
faith. Much good advice had been, as usual, wasted on him
by his friends. To Loyola alone he confided the secret of his
confidence. " I cannot express to you " (such are his words) " the
joy with which I undertake this long voyage ; for it is full of
extreme perils, and we consider a fleet sailing to Japan as eminently
prosperous in which one ship out of four is saved. Though the
risk far exceeds any which I have hitherto encountered, I shall
not decline it ; for our Lord has imparted to me an interior
revelation of the rich harvest which Avill one day be gathered from
the cross when once planted there." Whatever may be thought of
these voices from within, it is at least clear, that nothing mag-
nanimous or sublime has ever yet proceeded from those who have
listened only to the voices from without. But, as if resolved to
show that a man may at once act on motives incomprehensible to
his fellow-mortals, and possess the deepest insight into the motives
by which they are habitually governed, Xavier left behind him a
code of instructions for his brother missionaries, illuminated in
almost every page by that profound sagacity which results from
the union of extensive knowledge with acute observation, melh^wed
by the intuitive wisdom of a compassionate and lowly heart. The
science of self-conquest, with a view to contjuer tlie stidjl.xtrn will

142 THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM.

of others — the art of winning admission for painful truth — and the
duties of fidelity and reverence in the attempt to heal the diseases
of the human spirit — were never taught by uninspired man Avith an
eloquence more gentle, or an authority more impressive.

A long voyage, pursued through every disaster which the male-
volence of man and demons could oppose to his progress (for he
was constrained to sail in a piratical ship, with idols on her deck
and whirlwinds in her path), brought him, in the year 1549, to
Japan, there to practise his own lessons, and to give a new example
of heroic perseverance. His arrival had been preceded by what
he regarded as fortunate auguries. Certain Portuguese merchants,
who had been allowed to reside at the principal seaport, inhabited
there a house haunted by spectres. Their presence was usually
announced by the din of discordant and agonising screams; but
when revealed to the eye, they exhibited forms resembling those
which may be seen in pictures of the infernal state. Now the
merchants, secular men though they were, had exorcised these
fiends by carrying the cross in solemn procession through the
house ; and anxious curiosity pervaded the city for some explanation
of the virtue of this new and potent charm. There were also
legends current through the country which might be turned to
good account. Xaca, the son of Amida, the Virgo Devpara of
Japan, had passed a life of extreme austerity to expiate the sins of
men, and had inculcated a doctrine in which even Christians must
recognise a large admixture of sacred truth. Temples in honour of
the mother and child overspread the land, and suicidal sacrifices
were daily offered in them. The Father of Lies had further
propped up his kingdom in Japan by a profane parody on
the institutions of the Catholic Church. Under the name of the
Saco, there reigned in sacerdotal supremacy a counterpart of the
holy father at Rome, who consecrated the Fundi or Bishops of this
Japanese hierarchy, and regulated at his infallible will whatever
related to the rites and ceremonies of public worship. Subordinate
to the Fundi were the Bonzes, or Priests in holy orders ; who, to
complete the resemblance, taught, and at least professed to practise,
an ascetic discipline. But here the similitude ceases ; for, adds the
Chronicle, they were great knaves and sad hypocrites.

With these foundations on which to build, the ideas which Xavier
had to introduce into the Japanese mind, might not very widely jar
with those by which they were preoccupied. Auger, now called
Paul of the Holy Faith, was despatched to his former friend and
sovereign, with a picture of the Virgin and the infant Jesus ; and
the monarch and his courtiers (we are told) admired, kissed, and
worshipped the sacred symbols. Xavier himself (to use his own

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. I43

words) " stood by, a mere mute statue ; " but there was Promethean
fire within, and the marble soon found a voice. Of all his philolo-
gical achievements this was the most marvellous. He wlio, in the
decline of life, bethinks him of all that he once endured to unlock the
sense of yEschjdus, and is conscious how stammering has been the
speech with which, in later days, he has been wont to mutilate the
tongues of Pascal and of Tasso, may think it a fable that, in a few
brief weeks, Xavier could converse and teach intelligibly in the
involved and ever-shifting dialects of Japan. If the sceptic had
ever studied to converse with living men under the impulse of some
passion which had absorbed every faculty of his soul, he might
perhaps relax his incredulity ; but whatever be the solution, the
fact is attested on evidence which it would be folly to discredit —
that within a very short time Xavier began to open to the Japanese,
in their own language and to their clear understanding, the com-
mission with which he was charged. Such, indeed, was his facility
of speech, that he challenged the Bonzes to controversies on all the
mysterious points of their and his conflicting creeds. The arbiters
of the dispute listened as men are apt to listen to the war of words ;
and many a long- tailed Japanese head was shaken, as if in the hope
that the jumbling thoughts within would find their level by the oft-
repeated oscillation. It became necessary to resort to other means
of winning their assent ; and in exploits of asceticism, Xavier had
nothing to fear from the rivalry of Bonzes, of Fundi, or of the great
Saco himself. Cangoxima acknowledged, as most other luxurious
cities would perhaps acknowledge, that he who had such a mastery
over his own appetites and passions, must be animated by some
power wholly exempt from any such debasing influence. To fortify
this salutary though not very sound conclusion, Xavier betook him-
self (if we will believe his historian) to the working of miracles.
He compelled the fish to fill the nets of the fishermen, and to fre-
quent the bay of Cangoxima, though previously indisposed to do so.
He cured the leprous, and he raised the dead. Two Bonzes became
the first, and indeed the only fruits of his labours there. The hearts
of their brethren grew harder as the light of truth glowed with
increasing but ineffectual brightness around them. The King also
withdrew his favour ; and Xavier, with two companions, carried the
rejected messages of mercy to the neighbouring states of the Japa-
nese empire.

Carrying on his back his only viaticum, the vessels requisite for
performing the sacrifice of the mass, he advanced to Firando, at
once the seaport and the capital of the kingdom of that name.
Some Portuguese ships riding at anchor there, announced his arrival
in all the forms of nautical triumph : — flags of every hue floating

144 THE I'OUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

from the masts, seamen clustering on the yards, cannon roaring
from beneath, and trumpets braying from above. Firando was
agitated with debate and wonder ; all asked, but none could afford,
an explanation of the homage rendered by the wealthy traders to
the meanest of their countrymen. The solution of the enigma was
given by the humble pilgrim himself, surrounded, in the royal pre-
sence, by all the pomp which the Europeans could display in his
honour. Grreat was the effect of these auxiliaries to the work of an
evangelist; and the modern, like the ancient Apostle, ready to
become all things to all men, would no longer decline the abase-
ment of assuming, for a moment, this world's grandeur, when he
found that such puerile arts might allure the children of the world
to listen to the voice of wisdom. At Meaco, then the seat of empire
in Japan, so useful a discovery might be reduced to practice with
still more important success ; and thitherwards his steps were
promply directed.

Unfamiliar to the ears of us barbarians of the North-Western
Ocean are the very names of the seats of Japanese civilisation through
which his journey lay. At Amanguchi, the capital of Nagoto,
he found the hearts of men hardened by sensuality ; and his exhor-
tations to repentance were repaid by showers of stones and insults.
" A pleasant sort of Bonze, indeed, who would allow us but one Grod
and one woman ! " was the summary remark with which the luxu-
rious Amanguchians disposed of the teacher and his doctrine.
They drove him forth half naked, with no provision but a bag of
parched rice, and accompanied only by three of his converts — men
prepared to share his danger and his reproach.

It Avas in the depth of winter ; dense forests, steep mountains,
half-frozen streams, and wastes of untrodden snow, lay in his path
to Meaco. An entire month was consumed in traversing the wilder-
ness; the cruelty and scorn of man not seldom adding bitterness to
the rififours of nature. On one occasion the wanderers were over-
taken in a thick jungle by a horseman bearing a heavy package.
Xavier offered to carry the load, if the rider would requite the
service by pointing out his way. The offer was accepted ; but hour
after hour the horse was urged on at such a pace, and so rapidly-
sped the panting missionary after him, that his tortured feet and
excoriated body sank in seeming death under the protracted effort.
In the extremity of his distress no repining word was ever heard to
fall from him. He performed this dreadful pilgrimage in silent
communion with Him for whom he rejoiced to suffer the loss of all
things ; or spoke only to sustain the hope and coiu'age of his asso-
ciates. At length the walls of Meaco were seen, promising a repose
not ungrateful even to his adamantine frame and fiery spirit. But

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. 145

repose was no more to visit him. He found the city in all the
tumult and horrors of a siege. It was impossible to gain attention
to his doctrines amidst the din of arms ; for even the Saco, or Puj)e
of Japan, could give heed to none but military topics. Chanting
from the Psalmist — " When Israel went out of Egypt, and the house
of Jacob from a strange people,'' the Saint again plunged into the
desert, and retraced his steps to Amauguchi.

Xavier describes the Japanese very much as a Roman miglit have
depicted the Grreeks in the age of Augustus ; as at once intellectual
and sensual voluptuaries, on the best possible terms with themselves,
a good-humoured but faithless race, equally acute and frivolous,
talkative and disputatious. — " Their inquisitiveness," he says, " is
incredible, especially in their intercourse with strangers, for whom
they have not the slightest respect, but make incessant sport of
them." Surrounded at Amanguclii by a crowd of these babblers,
he was plied with innumerable questions about the immortality of
the soul, the movement ot the planets, eclipses, the rainbow, sin,
grace, paradise, and hell. He heard and answered. A single re-
sponse solved all these problems. Astronomers, meteorologists,
metaphysicians, and divines, all heard the same sound ; but to each
it came with a different and an appropriate meaning. So wrote from
the very spot Father Anthony Quadros, four years after the event ;
and so the fact may be read in the process of Xavier's canonisation.
Possessed of so admirable a gift, his progress in the conversion of
• these once contemptuous people is the less surprising. Their city
became the principal seat of learning in Japan, and therefore, of
course, the great theatre of controversial debate. Of these polemics
there remains a record of no doubtful authenticity, from which
disputants of higher name than those of Amanguchi might take
some useful lessons in the dialectic art. Thrusts better made, or
more skilfully parried, are seldom to be witnessed in the schools of
Oxford or of Cambridge.

In the midst of controversies with men, Xavier again heard that
divine voice to which he never answered but by instant and
unhesitating submission. It summoned him to Fucheo, the capital
of the kingdom ofBungo. It was a city near the sea, which had
for its port a place called Figer, where a rich Portuguese merchant
ship was then lying. At the approach of the Saint (for such he
was now universally esteemed) the vessel thundered from all her
guns such loud and repeated discharges, that the startled sovereign
of Bungo despatched messengers from Fucheo to ascertain the
cause of so universal an uproar. Nothing could exceed the
astonishment with which they received the explanation. It w.os
impossible to convey to the monarch's ear so extravagant a tale. A

146 THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM.

103^11 salute for the most abject of lazars ! for a man (to use their own
energetic language) " so abhorred of the earth that the very vermin
which crawled over him loathed their wretched fare ! " If mortal
man ever rose or sunk so far as to discover, without pain, that his
person was the object of disgust to others, then is there one form
of self-dominion in which Francis Xavier has been surpassed.
Yielding, with no perceptible reluctance, to the arguments of his
countrymen, and availing himself of the resources at their command,
he advanced to Fucheo, preceded by thirty Portuguese clad in rich
stuffs, and embellished with chains of gold and precious stones.
" Next came, and next did go," in their gayest apparel, the servants
and slaves of the merchants. Then appeared the apostle of the
Indies himself, resplendent in green velvet and golden brocade.
Chinese tapestry, and silken flags of every brilliant colour, covered
the pinnace and the boats in which this brilliant procession was
rowed up to the city ; and the oars rose and fell to the sound of
trumpets, flutes, and hautboys. As they drew near to the royal
presence, the commander of the ship marched bareheaded, and
carrying a wand as the esquire or major-domo of the Father. Five
others of her principal officers, each bearing some costly article,
stepped along, as proud to do such service ; while he, in honour of
whom it was rendered, moved onwards with the majestic gait of
some feudal chieftian marshalling his retainers, with a rich
umbrella held over him. He traversed a double file of six hundred
men-at-arms drawn up for his reception ; and interchanged com-'
plimentary harangues with his royal host, with all the grace and
dignity of a man accustomed to shine in courts, and to hold inter-
course with princes.

His Majesty of Bungo seems to have borne some resemblance to
our own Henry the Eighth, and to have been meditating a revolt
from the Saco and his whole spiritual dynasty. Much he said at
the first interview, to which no orthodox Bonze could listen with
composure. It drew down, even on his royal head, the rebuke
of the learned Faxiondono. " How," exclaimed that eminent
divine, " dare you undertake the decision of any article of faith
without having studied at the university of Fianzima, where alone
are to be learned the sacred mysteries of the gods I If you are
ignorant, consult the teachers appointed to direct you. Here am
I, ready to impart to you all necessary instruction." An university
still more renowned than Fianzima has, in our own times, given
birth to many a learned doctor who might pass for nothing more
than a servile imitator of the pretensions of the sage Faxiondono.
But the replies which the great "Tractarian" of Bungo provoked
were most unlike those by which his Oxonian successors are usually

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 147

assailed. Never ^Yas King surrouiiikd L}'- a ga3'cr circle than tliat
which then glittered at the court of Fucheo. The more the Bonze
lectured on his own sacerdotal authority, the more laughed tlioy.
The King himself condescended to aid the general merriment ; and
congratulated his monitor on the convincing proof he had given of
his heavenly mission, by the display of an infernal temper. To
Xavier he addressed himself in a far different spirit. The triple
crown might have lighted on his head without allaying the thirst of
his soul for the conversion of mankind ; and the European pomp
with which he was, for the moment, environed, left him still the
same living martyr to the faith which it was the one object of his
life to propagate. His rich apparel, and the blandishments of the
great, served only to present to him, in a new and still more im-
pressive light, the vanity of all sublunary things. He preached,
catechised, and disputed with an ardoiu* and a per severance which
threatened his destruction, and alarmed his affectionate followers.
" Care not for me," was his answer to their expostulation ; " think
of me as a man dead to bodily comforts. INIy food, my rest, my
life, are to rescue from the granary of Satan, the souls for the sake
of whom Grod has sent me hither from the ends of the earth." To
such fervour the Bonzes of Fucheo could offer no effectual resist-
ance. One of the most eminent of their number cast away his
idols, and became a Christian. Five hundred of his disciples
immediately followed his example. The King himself, a dissolute
unbeliever, so far was moved (and the smallest concessions of the
rulers of the earth in such cases must be handsomely acknowledged)
as to punish in others the crimes which he persisted in practising
himself; and as to confess that the very face of the Saint was as a
mirror, reflecting by the force of contrast all the hideousness of his
own vices. Revolting, indeed, they were ; and faithful were the
rebukes of the tongue, no less than of the countenance, of Xavier.
The royal offender was at length touched and awed. His conversion
was about to crown the labours of his monitor ; and the worship of
Xaca and Amida in the kingdom of Bungo seemed waning to its
close. It was an occasion which demanded from their priesthood
every sacrifice ; nor was the demand unanswered.

For thirty years the mysteries of the faith of the Bonzes had been
taught in the most celebrated of their colleges, by a doctor who had
fathomed all divine and human lore ; and who, except when he
came forth to utter the oracular voice of more than earthly wisdom,
withdrew from the sight of men into a sacred retirement, tliere to
hold high converse with the immortals. Fucarondono, for so he
was called, announced his purpose to visit the city and palace of
Fucheo. As when, in the agony of Agamemnon's camp, the son of

L 2

148 THE FOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

Thetis at length grasped his massive spear, and the trembling sea-
shores resounded at his steps — so advanced to the war of words the
o-reat chieftain of Japanese theology, and so rose the cry of antici-
pated triumph from the rescued Bonzes. Terror seized the licen-
tious King himself, and all foreboded the overthrow of Xavier and
Christianity. " Do you know, or rather, do you remember me ? "
was the inquiry with which this momentous debate was opened.
" I never saw you till now," answered the Saint. " A man who has
dealt with me a thousand times, and who pretends never to have
seen me, will be no difficult conquest," rejoined the most profound
of the Bonzes. " Have you left any of the goods which I bought
of you at the port of Frenajona ? " — " I was never a merchant," said
the missionary, " nor was I ever at Frenajona." — " What a wretched
memory ! " was the contemptuous reply ; " It is precisely five hun-
dred years to-day since you and I met at that celebrated mart ;
when, by the same token, you sold me a hundred pieces of silk, and
an excellent bargain I had of it." From the transmigration of the
soul the sage proceeded to unfold the other dark secrets of nature —
such as the eternity of matter ; the spontaneous self-formation of
all organised beings ; and the progressive cleansing of the human
spirit in the nobler and holier of om- race, at each successive change,
until they attain to a perfect memory of the past, and are enabled
to retrace their wanderings from one body to another through all
preceding ages ; looking down, from the pinnacles of accumulated
wisdom, on the grovelling multitude, whose recollections are con-
fined within the narrow limits of their latest corporeal existence.
That Xavier refuted these perplexing arguments we are assured by
a Portuguese bystander who witnessed the debate ; though unhappily
no record of his arguments has come down to us. "I have," says
the historian, " neither science nor presumption enough to detail
the subtle and solid reasonings by which the Saint destroyed the
vain fancies of the Bonze."

Yet the victory was incomplete. Having recruited his shattered
forces, and accompanied by no less than 3000 Bonzes, Fucarondono
returned to the attack. On his side Xavier appeared in the field
of controversy attended by the Portuguese officers in their richest
apparel. They stood uncovered in his presence, and knelt when
they addressed him. Their dispute now turned on many a knotty
point ; — as, for example. Why did Xavier celebrate masses for
the dead, and yet condemn the orthodox Japanese custom of
giving to the Bonze bills of exchange payable in favour of the
dead ? So subtle and difficult were their inquiries, that Xavier
and his companion, the reporter of the dispute, were compelled
to believe that the spirit of evil had suggested them ; and that

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITlSiNf. 149

they were at last successfully answered, is ascribed to the incessant
prayers which, during the whole contest, the Christians offered
for their champion. Of this second polemical campaign we have
a minute and animated account. It may be sufficient to extract
the conclusion of the royal Moderator. " For my own part," he
said, " as for as I can judge, I think that Father Xavier speaks
rationally, and that the rest of you don't know what you are
talking about. Men must have clear heads or less violence than
you have to understand these difficult questions. If you are
deficient in faith, at least employ your reason, which might teach
you not to deny truths so evident ; and do not bark like so many
dogs." So saying, the King of Bungo dissolved the assembly.
Royal and judicious as his award appears to have been, our Portu-
guese chronicler admits that the disputants on either side returned
with opinions unchanged ; and that, from that day forward, the
work of conversion ceased. He applies himself to find a solution
of the problem, why men who had been so egregiously refuted
should still cling to their errors ; and wh}' any one should ob-
stinately adhere to practices so irrefragably proved to be alike
foolish and criminal. The answer, let us hope, is, that the
obstinacy of the people of Bungo, was a kind of lusus naturce, a
peculiarity exclusively their own ; that other religious teachers
are more candid than the Bonzes of Japan ; and that no Professor
of Divinity could elsewhere be found so obstinately wedded to his
own doctrines as was the learned Fucarondono.*

In such controversies, and in doing the work of an evangelist
in every other form, Xavier saw the third year of his residence at
Japan gliding away, when tidings of perplexities at the mother
church of Goa recalled him thither, across seas so wide and stormy,
that even the sacred lust of gold durst hardly brave them in that
infancy of the art of navigation. As his ship drove before the
monsoon, dragging after her a smaller bark which she had taken
in tow, the connecting rojjes were suddenly burst asunder, and in

* It seems necessary to state, that the Portuguese traveller by whom this dcT)atc
is reported, is Ferdinando Meudez Pinto ; on whom Cougreve, in " Love for
Love," has confen-ed an imenviable immortality. " Capricorn in your teeth "
(exclaims Foresight to Sir Samson Legend)/ " thou modern Mandeville ! Fer-
dinando Mendez Pinto was but a t\^ie of thee, thou liar of the first magnitude."
The -wits have ever been at war with the travellers ; and Abyssinian IJruce sus-
tained, and has suiTived, still ruder shocks than Pinto the Orientalist sullered
at the hands of Cougi-eve. There can be no doubt that he was present witii
Xavier at Japan ; nor is it easy to discover any reason for distrusting tliis part
of his nan-ative. The text contains only a brief extract from it. If the story 1)C
really fictitious, Pinto must have possessed far gi-eater knowledge and talents
(especially dramatic talents) than have hitherto been ascribed to him.

L 3

150 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

a few minutes the two vessels were no longer in siglit. Thrice
the sun rose and set on their dark course ; the unchained elements
roaring as in mad revelry around them, and the ocean seething
like a cauldron. Xavier's shipmates wept over the loss of friends
and kindred in the foundered bark ; and shuddered at their own
approaching doom. He also wept ; but his were grateful tears.
As the screaming whirlwind swept over the abyss, the present
Deity was revealed to his faithful worshipper, shedding tranquillity,
and peace, and joy over the sanctuary of a devout and confiding
heart. '• Mourn not, my friend," was his gay address to Edward
de Gama, as he lamented the loss of his brother in the bark;
*' before three days, the daughter will have returned to her mother."
They were weary and anxious days ; but, as the third drew towards
a close a sail appeared in the horizon. Defying the adverse winds,
she made straight towards them ; and at last dropped alongside, as
calmly as the sea-bird ends her flight, and furls her ruffled
plumage on the swelling surge. The cry of miracle burst from
every lip ; and well it might. There was the lost bark, and not
the bark only, but Xavier himself on board her ! What though
he had ridden out the tempest in the larger vessel, the stay of
their drooping spirits, he had at the same time been in the
smaller ship, performing there also the same charitable office ; and
yet, when the two hailed and spoke each other, there was but one
Francis Xavier, and he composedly standing by the side of
Edward de Gama, on the deck of the " Holy Cross." Such was
the name of the commodore's vessel. For her services on this
occasion, she obtained a sacred charter of immunity from risks of
every kind ; and as long as her timbers continued sound, bounded
merrily across seas in which no other craft could have lived.

During this wondrous voyage, her deck had often been paced
in deep conference by Xavier and lago de Pereyra, her commander.
Though he pursued the calling of a merchant, he had, says the
historian, the heart of a prince. Two great objects expanded the
thoughts of Pereyra — the one, the conversion of the Chinese
empire ; the other, his own appointment as ambassador to the
celestial court of Pekin. In our puny days, the dreams of traders
in the east are of smuggling opium. But in the sixteenth century
no enterprise appeared to them too splendid to contemplate, or
too daring to hazard. Before the " Holy Cross " had reached
Goa, Pereyra had pledged his whole fortune, Xavier his influence
and his life, to this gigantic adventure. In the spring of the
following year, tiie apostle and the ambassador (for so far the
project had in a few months been accomplished) sailed from Goa
in the " Holy Cross," for the then unexplored coasts of China.

THE FOUXDEES OF JESUITISM. IJI

As tliey passed Malacca, tidings came to Xavier of tlie tard}',
thougli complete, fulfilment of one of his predictions. Pestilence,
the minister of Divine vengeance, was laying waste that stiff-
necked and luxurious people ; but the woe which he had foretold
he was the foremost to alleviate. Heedless of his own safety, he
raised the sick in his arms and bore them to the hospitals. He
esteemed no time, or place, or office, too sacred for this work of
mercy. Ships, colleges, churches, all at his bidding became so
many lazarettos. Night and day he lived among the diseased and
the dying, or quitted them only to beg food or medicine, from
door to door, for their relief. For the moment, even China was
forgotten ; nor would he advance a step, though he were to convert
to Christianity a third part of the human race, so long as one
victim of the plague demanded his sympathy, or could be directed
by him to an ever-present and still more compassionate Comforter.
For the career of Xavier (though he knew it not) was now drawing
to a close ; and with him the time was ripe for practising those
deeper lessons of wisdom which he had imbibed from his long and
arduous course of discipline.

With her cables bent lay the " Holy Cross " in the port of
INIalacca, ready at length to convey the embassage to China,
when a difficulty arose, which not even the prophetic spirit of
Xavier had foreseen. Don Alvaro d'Alayde, the governor, a
grandee of high rank, regarded the envoy and his commission
with an evil eye. To represent the crown of Portugal to the
greatest of earthly monarchs was, he thought, an honour more
meet for a son of the house of Alayde, than for a man who had
risen from the very dregs of the people. The expected emolu-
ments also exceeded the decencies of a cupidity less than noble.
He became of opinion that it was not for the advantage of the
service of King John III. that the expedition should proceed.
Pereyra appeared before him in the humble garb of a suitor, with
the offer of 30,000 crowns as a bribe. All who sighed for the
conversion, or for the commerce of China, lent the aid of their
intercessions. Envoys, saints, and merchants, united their pra3'ers
in vain. Brandishing his cane over their heads, Alvaro swore
that, so long as he was governor of Malacca and captain-general
of the seas of Portugal, the embassy should move no further.
Week after week was thus consumed, and the season was fast
wearing away, when Xavier at length resolved on a measure to be
justified, even in his eyes, only by extreme necessity. A secret
of high significance had been buried in his bosom since his
departure from Europe. The time for the disclosure of it had
come. He produced a Papal Brief, investing him with the

L 4

152 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

dignity and the powers of apostolical nuncio in the east. One
more hindrance to the conversion of China, and the Church would
clothe her neck with thunders, Alvaro was still unmoved ; and
sentence of excommunication was solemnly pronounced against
him and his abettors. Alvaro answered l)y sequestrating the
" Holy Cross " herself. Xavier wrote letters of complaint to the
king. Alvaro intercepted them. One appeal was still open to
the vicar of the vicar of Christ. Prostrate before the altar, he
invoked the aid of Heaven ; and rose with purposes confirmed
and hopes reanimated. In the service of Alvaro, though no
longer bearing the embassy to China, the " Holy Cross " was to
be despatched to Sancian, an island near the mouth of the Canton
river, to which the Portuguese were permitted to resort for trade.
Xavier resolved to pursue his voyage so far, and thence proceed to
Macao to preach the Gospel there. Imprisonment was sure to
follow. But he should have Chinese fellow-prisoners. These at
least he might convert ; and though his life would pay the forfeit,
he should leave behind him, in these first Christians, a band of
missionaries who would propagate through their native land the
faith which he might only be permitted to plant.

It was a compromise as welcome to Alvaro as to Xavier himself.
Again the " Holy Cross " prepared for sea ; and the Apostle of
the Indies, followed by a grateful and admiring people, passed
through the gates of Malacca to the beach. Falling on his face
on the earth, he poured forth a passionate, though silent, prayer.
His body heaved and shook with the throes of that agonising hour.
What might be the fearful portent none might divine, and none
presumed to ask. A contagious terror passed from eye to eye,
but every voice was hushed. It was as the calm preceding the
first thunder peal which is to rend the firmament. Xavier arose ;
his countenance no longer beaming with its accustomed grace and
tenderness, but glowing with a sacred indignation, like that of
Isaiah when breathing forth his inspired menaces against the King
of Babylon. Standing on a rock amidst the waters, he loosed
his shoes from off his feet, smote them against each other with
vehement action, and then casting them from him, as still tainted
with the dust of that devoted city, he leaped barefooted into the
bark, which bore him away for ever from a j)lace from which he
had so long and vainly laboured to avert her impending doom.

She bore him, as he had projected, to the island of Sancian.
It was a mere commercial factory ; and the merchants who passed
the trading season there, vehemently opposed his design of pene-
trating further into China. True he had ventured into the
forest there, against the tigers which infested it, with no other

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. 153

weapon tliau a vase of holy water ; and the savage beasts, sprinkled
with that sacred element, had for ever fled the place ; but the
Mandarins were fiercer still than they, and woiild avenge the
preaching of the Saint on the inmates of the factory ; though
most guiltless of any design but that of adding to their heap of
crowns and moidores. Long years had now passed away since
the voice of Loyola had been heard on the banks of the Seine,
urging the solemn inquiry, "What shall it profit?" But tlie
words still rung on the ear of Xavier, and were still repeated,
though in vain, to his worldly associates at Sancian. They sailed
away with their cargoes, leaving behind them only the " Holy
Cross," in charge of the officers of Alvaro, and depriving Xavier
of all means of crossing the channel to Macao. They left him
destitute of shelter and of food, but not of hojDe. He had heard
that the King of Siam meditated an embassy to China for the
following year ; and to Siam he resolved to return in Alvaro's
vessel; to join himself, if possible, to the Siamese envoj's; and
so at length to force his way into the empire.

But his earthly toils and projects were now to cease for ever.
The angel of death appeared with a summons, for which, since
death first entered our world, no man was ever more triumphantly
prepared. It found him on board the vessel on the point of de-
parting for Siam. At his own request he was removed to the
shore, that he might meet his end with the greater composure.
Stretched on the naked beach, with the cold blasts of a Chinese
winter aggravating his pains, he contended alone "vvith the agonies
of the fever which wasted his vital power. It was an agony and a
solitude for which the happiest of the sons of men might well have
exchanged the dearest society and the purest of the joys of life. It
was an agony in which his still -uplifted crucifix reminded him of a
far more awful woe endured for his deliverance. It was a solitude
thronged by blessed ministers of peace and consolation, visible in
all their bright and lovely aspects to the now unclouded eye of
faith ; and audible to the dying martyr through the yielding bars of
his mortal prison-house, in strains of exulting joy till then unheard
and unimagined. Tears burst from his fading eyes, tears of an
emotion too big for utterance. In the cold collapse of death his
features were for a few brief moments irradiated as with the first
beams of approaching glory. He raised himself on his crucifix ;
and exclaiming. In te, Domine, speravi — non confundar in
wternu7n ! he bowed his head and died.

Why consume many words in delineating a character which can
be disposed of in three ? Xavier was a fanatic, a Papist, and a
Jesuit. Comprehensive and incontrovertible as the climax is, it

154 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

yet does not exhaust the censures to which he is obnoxious. His
vinderstanding, that is the mere cogitative faculty, was deficient in
originality, in clearness, and in force. It is difficult to imagine a
religious dogma which he would not have embraced, at the com-
mand of his teachers, with the same infantine credulity with which
he received the legends and the creeds which they actually imposed
upon him. His faith was not victorious over doubt ; for doubt
never for one passing moment assailed it. Superstition might
boast in him one of the most complete as well as one of the most
illustrious of her conquests. She led him through a land peopled
with visionary forms, and resounding with ideal voices — a land of
prodigies and portents, of ineffable discourse and unearthly melo-
dies. She bade him look on this fair world as on some dungeon
un^dsited by the breath of heaven ; and on the glorious face of
nature, and the charms of social life, as so many snares and pitfalls
for his feet. At her voice he starved and lacerated his body, and
rivalled the meanest pauper in filth and wretchedness. Harder
still, she sent him forth to establish among half-civilised tribes a
worship which to them was but little more than a new idolatry ; and
to inculcate a morality in which the more arduous virtues of the
Christian life were made to yield precedence to ritual forms and
outward ceremonies. And yet, never did the polytheism of ancient
or of modern Eome assign a seat among the demi-gods to a hero of
nobler mould, or of a more exalted magnanimity, than Francis
Xavier.

He lived among men as if to show how little the grandeur of the
human soul depends on mere intellectual power. It was his to de-
monstrate with what vivific rays a heart imbued with the love of
Grod and man may warm and kindle the nations, however dense
may be the exhalations through which the giant pursues his com-se
from the one end of heaven to the other. Scholars criticised, wits
ridiculed, prudent men admonished, and kings opposed him ; but
on moved Francis Xavier, borne forward by an impulse which
crushed and scattered to the winds all such pimy obstacles. In ten
short years, as if mercy had lent him wings, and faith an impene-
trable armour, he traversed oceans, islands, and continents, through
a track equal to more than twice the circumference of our globe ;
everywhere preaching, disputing, baptizing, and founding Christian
churches. There is at least one well-authenticated miracle in
Xavier's story. It is, that any mortal man should have sustained
such toils as he did ; and have sustained them too, not merely
with composure, but as if in obedience to some indestructible exi-
gency of his nature. " The Father Master Francis " (the words are
those of his associate, Melchior Nunez), " when labouring for the

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 155

salvation of idolaters, seemed to act, not by any acquired power,
but as by some natural instinct; for he could neither take pleasure
nor even exist except in such employments. They were his re-
pose ; and when he was leading men to the knowledge and the
love of Grod, however much he exerted himself, he never appeared
to be making any effort."

Seven hundred thousand converts (for in these matters Xavier's
eulogists are not parsimonious) are numbered as the fruits of his
mission ; nor is the extravagance so extreme if the word " conver-
sion " be understood in the sense in which they used it. Kings,
rajahs, and princes were always, when possible, the first objects of
his care. Some such conquests he certainly made ; and as the
flocks would often follow their shepherds, and as the gate into the
Christian fold was not made very strait, it may have been entered
by many thousands and tens of thousands. But if Xavier taught
the mighty of the earth, it was for the sake of the poor and
miserable, and with them he chiefly dwelt. He dwelt with them
on terms ill enough corresponding with the vulgar notions of a
saint. " You, my friends," said he to a band of soldiers who had
hidden their cards at his approach, " belong to no religious order,
nor can you pass whole days in devotion. Amuse yourselves. To
you it is not forbidden, if you neither cheat, quarrel, nor swear
when you play." Then good-humouredly sitting down in the midst
of them, he challenged one of the party to a game at chess ; and
was found at the board by Don Diego Noragua, whose curiosity had
brought him from far to see so holy a man, and to catch some
fragments of that solemn discourse which must ever be flowing
from his lips. The grandee would have died in the belief that the
saint was a hypocrite, unless by good fortune he had afterwards (as
we are told) chanced to break in on his retirement, and to find him
there suspended between earth and heaven, in a rapture of devo-
tion, with a halo of celestial glory encircling his head !

No mention will be found in the letters of Xavier of any such
miraculous visitations, or of any other of the supernatural perfor-
mances ascribed to him by his Church. Such at least is tlie result
of a careful examination of the whole of the five books into which
his Epistles are divided. He was too humble a man to think it
probable that he should be the depositary of so divine a gift ; and
too honest to advance any such claims to the admiration of man-
kind. Indeed he seems to have been amused with the facility
with which his friends assented to these prodigies. Two of them
repeated to him the tale of his having raised a dead child to life,
and pressed him to reveal the truth. " What !" he replied, " I
raise the dead ! Can you really believe such a thing of a wretch

156 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

like me?" Then smiling, he added, " They did indeed place be-
fore me a child. They said it was dead, which perhaps was not the
case. I told him to get np, and he did so. Do you call that a
miracle ? " But in this matter Xavier was not allowed to judge for
himself. He was a Thaumaturgus in his own despite ; and this
very denial is quoted by his admirers as a proof of his profound
hiuniUty. Could he, by some second sight, have read the Bull of
his own canonisation, he would doubtless, in defiance of his senses,
have believed (for belief was always at his command) that the
Church knew much better than he did, and that he had been re-
versing the laws of nature without perceiving it ; for at the dis-
tance of rather more than half a century from his death. Pope
Urban VIII., with the unanimous assent of all the cardinals,
patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops, in sacred conclave assembled
pledged his papal infalli])ility to the miracles already recorded,
and to many more. And who will be so sceptical as to doubt their
reality, when he is informed that depositions, taken in proof of
them, were read before that august assembly ; and that the apo-
theosis was opposed there by a learned person, who, as usual in
such cases, appeared at their bar in the character, and with the
title, of " the Devil's advocate ?" A scoffer might indeed suggest
that if the lawyer really laboured to refute falsehood, he must
have betrayed the interests of his clients ; and that the Father of
Lies probably instructed his counsel to make a sham fight of it, in
order that one lie the more might be established among men in
the form of a new idol worship. Without exploring so dark a
question, it may be seriously regretted that such old wives' fables
have been permitted to sully the genuine history of so many men
of whom the world was not worthy, and of none more than Francis
Xavier. They have long obscured his real glory, and degraded
him to the low level of a vulgar hero of ecclesiastical romance.
Stripped of these puerile embellishments, — with no title to the
homage due to genius and to learning, — and not included in the
number of those who have aided the progress of speculative truth,
— he emerges from those lower regions, clad with the mild bril-
liancy, and resplendent in the matchless beauty, which belong to
the human nature, when ripening fast into a perfect union with
the divine. He had attained to that childlike affiance in the
Author of his being, which gives an unrestrained play to every
blameless impulse, even when that awful presence is the most
habitually felt. His was a sanctity which, at fitting seasons, could
even disport itself in jests and trifling. No man, however abject
his condition, disgusting his maladies, or hateful his crimes, ever
turned to Xavier without learnino: that there was at least one

THE FOUNDEKS OF JESUITISM. 157

human heart on which he niiglit repose with all the confidence of
a brother's love. To his eye the meanest and the lowest reflected
the image of Him whom he followed and adored : nor did he sup-
pose that he could ever serve the Saviour of mankind so acceptal)ly
as by ministering to their sorrows, and recalling them into the
way of peace. It is easy to smile at his visions, to detect his
errors, to ridicule the extravagant austerities of his life, and even
to show how much his misguided zeal eventually counteracted his
own designs. But with our philosophy, our luxuries, and our
wider experience, it is not easy for us to estimate or to comprehend
the career of such a man. Between his thoughts and our thoughts
there is but little in common. Of our wisdom he knew nothiiifr,
and would have despised it if he had. Philanthropy was his
passion; reckless daring his delight; and faith, glowing in meridian
splendour, the sunshine in which he Avalked. He judged or felt
(and who shall say that he judged or felt erroneously ?) that the
Church demanded an illustrious sacrifice, and that he was to be the
victim ; — that a voice which had been dumb for fifteen centuries
must at length be raised again, and that to him that voice had
been imparted ; — that a new Apostle must go forth to break up
the incrustations of man's long-hardened heart, and that to him
that apostolate had been committed. So judging or so feeling, he
obeyed the summons of him whom he regarded as Christ's vicar
on earth, and the echoes from no sublunary region, which the
summons seemed to awaken in his bosom. In holding up to re-
verential admiration such self-sacrifices as his, slight, indeed, is the
danger of stimulating an enthusiastic imitation. Enthusiasm !
our pulpits distil their bland rhetoric against it ; but where is it to
be found ? Do not om- share markets, thronged even by the de-
vout, overlay it — and our rich benefices extinguish it — and our
pentecosts, in the dazzling month of May, dissijDate it — and our
stipendiary missions, and our mitres, decked, even in heathen lands,
with jewels and with lordly titles — do they not, as so many light-
ning conductors, effectually divert it ? There is indeed the lacka-
daisical enthusiasm of devotional experiences, and the sentimental
enthusiasm of religious bazaars, and the oratorical enthusiasm of
charitable platforms, and the tractarian enthusiasm of certain well-
beneficed ascetics ; but in what, except the name, do they resemlile
the " Grod-in-us " enthusiasm of Francis Xavier — of Xavier the
magnanimous, the holy, and the gay; the canonised saint, not of
Eome only, but of universal Christendom ; who, if at this hour
there remained not a solitary Christian to claim and to rejoice in
his spiritual ancestry, should yet live in hallowed and everlasting
remembrance, as the man who has bequeathed to these later ages,

158 THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM.

at once the clearest proof and the most iUustrious example, that
even amidst the enervating arts of our modern civilisation, the
apostolic energy may still burn with all its primaeval ardou.r in
the human soul, when animated and directed by a power more than
human.

Xavier died in the year 1552, in the forty-seventh year of his
age, and in the eleventh year of his absence from Europe. During
his residence in the East, he had maintained a frequent corre-
spondence with the Greneral of his order. Their letters breathe the
tenderness which is one of the indispensable elements of the
heroic character. But it was a grave though an intense affection,
never degenerating into fondness, but chastened by filial reverence
on the one side, and by parental authority on the other.

It was, indeed, as a father, or rather as a patriarch, exercising a
supreme command over his family, and making laws for their future
government, that Ignatius passed the last twenty years of his life.
No longer a wanderer through the world, captivating or overawing
the minds of men by marvels addressed to their imagination, he
dwelt in the ecclesiastical capital of the West, giving form and sub-
stance to the visions which had first fallen upon him at the Mount
of Ascension, and which had immovably abided with him through
every succeeding pilgrimage.

Of the projects of his later days, the most cherished was that of
training, at the Central College of the Jesuits at Eome, the pupils
who were to propagate his society throughout the world. All lan-
guages and all sciences were taught there. The scholars contended
with each other in public for literary honours, and exhibited before
the learned and the great their skill in dramatic recitation. Such
was the solicitude of Ignatius for their improvement, that he
invited them to criticise his own colloquial Italian ; for, having
acquired that language late in life, he spoke it imperfectly ; and was
willing to compromise even his own habitual and well-sustained
dignity, if so he might impress on his neophytes the importance of
excelling in those vernacular tongues, by the use of which they
were destined to encounter and rival their Protestant adversaries.

He was not, however, permitted to devote his declining years to
such peaceful pursuits as these ; but yielded to the law which con-
signs to the life-long hostility of mankind every innovator who
either breaks up their inveterate habits, or discredits their cherished
maxims.

In Spain, Ignatius was assailed by Melchior Cano, a Dominican
monk, by the Archbishop of Toledo, and by the Vicar-General of
Saragossa ; all of whom appear to have braved his power, in the
secret assurance of support from the Emperor Charles V. Mel-

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 139

cliior denounced the Jesuits and their General as impostors. Their
influence, it is said, consigned him to an honourable banishment as
Bishop of the Canaries. Eut he quickly resigned his mitre, and,
resuming his invectives, continued them Avitli impunity till death
itself silenced him. The Arclibishop launched against the new
order hot thunderbolts of interdicts and excommunications, as
usurpers of his archiepiscopal privileges ; and, though Ignatius met
the storm with papal briefs and edicts from the royal council, he
was compelled to propitiate his powerful antagonist by humiliating
submissions. Encouraged perhaps by this success of his neighbour,
the Vicar-General of Saragossa brought into the field against the
same enemies the same spiritual artillery of mandates and anathe-
mas. Alarmed to find themselves thus cut off from all Christian
offices, and from all the sacraments of the Church, the citizens first
furiously drove away the Jesuits ; and then, with true popular con-
sistency, as fm-iously drove away the Vicar-General and his clergy.
The intrusive order triumphed, and established themselves at Sara-
gossa, both as ministers of religion, and as teachers of youth. It
was a triumph doomed to a late, but lamentable expiation.

In France, Ignatius contended long and without success for the
reception and settlement of his society. Though the Cardinal of
Lorraine was his advocate, and Henry II. issued letters patent,
authorising the establishment of a Jesuit house and college in Paris,
the Parliament refused to register the grant; and, when urged by
the royal commands to obedience, opposed to them an angry
remonstrance. The University seconded the Parliament. The
Sorbonne promulgated a " conclusion " in their support. The
Archbishop poured down a pitiless storm of declarations, prohibi-
tions, and censures upon the heads of the suspected and unpopular
Jesuits. Neither the King, the Cardinal, nor the General could
make head against the thick flight of these ecclesiastical missiles.
So the churchmen and the professors of Paris retained their mono-
poly of preaching and lecturing ; the Jesuits taking refuge at St.
Germains, where, beyond the reach of the metropolitan jurisdiction,
they waited the arrival of more propitious days.

In Portugal still more formidable disasters exercised the fortitude
of Ignatius. Under the genial beams of royal favour, liis institution
had thriven but too luxuriantly in that kingdom, and was already
exhibiting symptoms of corruption and decay. The Jesuit College
at Coimbra was crowded with youths of family and fortune, who
had rapidly degenerated into the lawless and self-indulgent habits
of secular collegians. Kodriguez, the provincial of Portugal, a
ruler of a gentle nature and too easy compliance, had been unable
to restrain their petulance, or to punish their vices ; and was dls-

160 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

placed by the indignant Greneral to make way for Miron, a man
renowned for austerity, and endowed with an inflexible sternness.
But tlie severities of Miron were followed by an open revolt of
the students ; and so formidable was their resistance, that even
Ignatius was compelled to temporise. It was not, however, in his
nature to make a permanent sacrifice of any part of his authority.
He subjugated the rebels at length ; but it was by a method
which, at any other time, and in any other hands, might pass for
the fabulous.

The rector of the college of Coimljra magnanimously resolved to
make a public and painful expiation in his own person for the
offences of his pupils. With his back and shoulders bare, and
wielding in his hand a scourge, he traversed the city, inflicting on
his naked back a succession of well-aimed and formidable stripes,
and explaining to the astonished multitude the vicarious nature of
this self-inflicted punishment. The example was of course irresis-
tible. Other Jesuits quickly followed the rector, lashing themselves
with emulous severity. The fascination spread. The refractory
students themselves at length joined the expiatory procession, till
they reached the college ; where they arrived soundly whipped,
excoriated, bleeding, and exhausted ; and resolved never more to
provoke the mysterious power with which they had to do — a power
which could thus, by an incomprehensible influence, compel their
own wills to pronounce, and their own arms to execute, a sentence of
shame and suffering, such as no other judge would have ventured
to impose.

The great enchanter himself was now, however, to submit to the
common doom. The spiritual sovereignty of which he was the
architect had, in less than a quarter of a century, acquired an exten-
sion almost as great, and an establishment almost as firm, as that
which the papacy had gained by the unremitting labours of a
thousand years. But, on the 30th of July, 1556, the strong man
received the summons to render up his soul to him who gave it.
He lingered till the following day and then died ; but, strange to
say, " unanointed, unannealed," without the benediction of the Pope,
or the sacraments of his Church. It is alleged by his friends that,
in the spirit of obedience to his jjhysician, he had postponed till too
late the demand for these spiritual aids. His enemies exult over
him as having betrayed, by this last act of indifference to the offices
of religion, the latent infidelity and the secret falsehood of his life.
The more charitable is incomparably the more probable hypothesis.
They, however, who have studied Christianity in the life and the
discourses of its divine Author, rather than in systems of dogmatic
theology, will venture to believe that the acceptance of a dying man

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. ICl

by his Maker depends on something infinitely higher and more holy
than any priestly absolution, or sacerdotal chrism.

Some unconscious love of jjowei', a mind bewildered by many
gross superstitions and many theoretical errors, and perhajjs some
tinge of insanity, may be justly ascribed to Ignatius Loyola, liut
no dispassionate student of his life will question his integrity, or
deny him the praise of a devotion at once sincere, habitual, and pro-
found. It is not to the glory of the Eeformed to depreciate tlicir
greatest antagonist ; or to think meanly of him, by whom, more
than by any other man, the Eeformation was stayed, and the Church
of Eome rescued from her impending doom.

In the language now current amongst us, Ignatius might be de-
scribed as the leader of the conservative, against the innovating spirit
of his times. It was an age, as indeed is every era of great popuku*
revolutions, when the impulsive or centrifugal forces which tend to
isolate man, preponderating over the attractive or centripetal forces
which tend to congregate him, had destroyed the balance of the
social S3^8tem. From amidst the controversies which then agitated
the world had emerged two great truths, of which, after three hun-
dred years' debate, we are yet to find the reconcilement. It was true
that the Christian Commonwealth ought to be one consentient body
united under one supreme head and bound together by a community
of law, of doctrine, and of worship. It was also true that each
member of that body was obliged for himself, on his own responsi-
bility, and at his own peril, to render that worship, to ascertain that
doctrine, to study that law, and to seek the guidance of that Supreme
Ruler. Between these corporate duties and these individual obli-
gations, there was a seeming contrariety. And yet the contradiction
must be apparent only, and not real ; for all truths must be consis-
tent with each other. Here was a problem for tlie learned and the
wise, for schools, and presses, and pulpits. But it is not by sages,
nor in the spirit of philosophy, that such problems receive their
practical solution. Wisdom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is
seldom the immediate agent in human affairs. It is by antagonist
passions, prejudices, and follies, that the equipoise of this most belli-
gerent planet of ours is chiefly preserved in our own days ; and so it
was in the sixteenth century. If Papal Eome had her Brennus,
she must also have her Camillus. From the camp of the invaders
arose the war-cry of absolute mental independence; from the
beleaguered host, the watch-word of absolute spiritual obedience.
The German pointed the way to that sacred solitude where, besides
the worshipper himself, none may enter ; the Spaniard to that
innumerable company, which, with one accord, still chant the litin--
gies, and recite the creeds, of remotest generations. Chieftains iu

162 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

the most momentous warfare of which this earth had been the
theatre since the subversion of Paganism, each was a rival worthy
of the other in capacity, courage, disinterestedness, and the love of
truth. And yet how marvellous the contrast !

Luther took to wife a nun. For thirty years together, Loyola
never once looked on the female countenance. To overthrow the
houses of the order to which he belonged, was the triumph of the
reformer. To establish a new order on indestructible foundations,
the glory of the saint. The career of the one was opened in the
cell, and concluded amidst the cares of secular government. The
course of life of the other, led him from a youth of camps and
palaces to an old age of religious abstraction. Demons haunted
both ; but to the northern visionary they appeared as foul or
malignant fiends, with whom he was to agonise in spiritual strife ;
to the southern dreamer, as angels of light marshalling his way to
celestial blessedness. As best became his Teutonic honesty and
singleness of heart, Luther aimed at no perfection but such as may
consist with the everyday cares, and the common duties, and the
innocent delights of our social existence; at once the foremost of
heroes, and a very man ; now oppressed with melancholy, and
defjdng the powers of darkness, satanic or human ; then " rejoicing
in gladness and thankfulness of heart for all his abundance;"
loving and beloved ; communing with the wife of his bosom ;
prattling with his children ; surrendering his overburdened mind
to the charms of music ; awake to every gentle voice, and to each
cheerful aspect of nature or of art ; responding alike to every divine
impulse and to every human feeling ; no chord unstrung in his
spiritual or sensitive frame, but all blending together in harmonies
as copious as the bounties of Providence, and as changeful as the
vicissitudes of life. How remote from the " perfection " whicli
Loyola proposed to himself, and which (unless we presume to dis-
trust the Bulls by which he was beatified and canonised) we must
suppose him to have attained ! Drawn by infallible, not less
distinctly tlian by fallible limners, the portrait of the military
priest of the Casa Professa possesses the cold dignity and the grace
of sculpture ; but is wholly wanting in the mellow tones, the lights
and shadows, the rich coloming, and the skilful composition of the
sister art. There he stands apart from us mortal men, familiar
with visions which he may not communicate, and with joys which
he cannot impart. Severe in the midst of raptures, composed in
the very agonies of pain ; a silent, austere, and solitary man ; with
a heart formed for tenderness, yet mortifying even his best affec-
tions ; loving mankind as his brethren, and yet rejecting their
sympathy : one while, a squalid care-worn self-lacerated pauper.

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 1G3

tormenting his o\vn senses that so he might rescue others from
sensuality; at another a monarch reigning in sechuled majesty,
tliat so he might become the benefjxctor of his race ; and then a
legislator exacting, though with no selfish purposes, an obedience as
submissive and as prompt as is due to the King of kings.

Heart and soul we are for the Protestant. He who will be wiser
than his INIaker is but seeming wise. He who will deaden one half
of his nature to invigorate the other half will become at best a
distorted prodigy. Dark as are the pages, and indistinct as is the
character in which the truth is inscribed, he who can decipher the
roll will there read — that self-adoring pride is the head-spring of
stoicism, whether in the heathen or in the Christian world. But
there is a roll, neither dark nor ambiguous, in which the simplest
and most ignorant may learn in what the " perfection " of our
humanity really consists. Throughout the glorious profusion of
didactic precepts, of pregnant apothegms, of lyric and choral
songs, of institutes ecclesiastical and civil, of historical legends and
biographies, of homilies and apologues, of j^rophetic menaces, of
epistolary admonitions, and of positive laws, which crowd the
inspired Canon, there is still one consentient voice proclaiming to
man, that the world within and the world without him were created
for each other ; that his interior life must'be sustained and nourislied
by intercourse with external things ; and that he then most nearly
approaches to the "perfection" of his nature, when, being most
conversant with the joys and sorrows of life, and most affected by
them, he is yet the best prepared to renounce the one or to eudm'e
the other, in a cheerful acquiescence in the will of Heaven.

Unalluring, and on the whole unlovely as it is, the image of .
Loyola must ever command the homage of the world. No other
uninspired man, unaided by military or civil power, and making no
appeal to the passions of the multitude, has had the genius to con-
ceive, the courage to attempt, and the success to establish, a polity
teeming with results at once so momentous and so distinctly antici-
pated. Amidst his ascetic follies, and his half crazy visions, and
despite all the coarse daubing with which the miracle-mongers of
his Church have defaced it, his character is destitute neither of
sublimity nor of grace. They were men of no common stamp
with whom he lived, and they regarded him with an unbounded
reverence. On the anniversary of his death Raronius and Rellar-
mine met to worship at his tomb; and there, with touching and
unpremeditated eloquence, joined to celebrate his virtues. His
successor Laynez was so well convinced that Loyola was l)eloved
by the Deity above all other men, as to declare it imjiossiblc tliat
any request of his should be refused. Xavier was wont to kncul

M 2

164 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

when he wrote letters to him, to implore the Divine aid through
the merits of his " holy Father Ignatius," and to carry about his
autograph as a sacred relic. In popular estimation, the very house
in which he once dwelt had been so hallowed by his presence, as to
shake to the foundation, if thoughts unbecoming its purity found
entrance into the mind of any inmate. Of his theopathy, as
exhibited in his letters, in his recorded discourse, and in the pre-
cepts of his " Spiritual Exercises," it is perhaps difficult for the
colder imaginations, and the Protestant reserve, of the North to
form a correct estimate. Measured by such a standard, it must be
pronounced irreverent and erotic ; — a libation on the altar at once
too profuse and too little filtered from the dross of human passion.
But to his fellow-men he was not merely benevolent, but com-
passionate, tolerant, and candid. However inflexible in exacting
from his chosen followers an all-enduring constancy, he was gentle
to others, especially to the young and the weak ; and would often
make an amiable though awkward effort to promote their recrea-
tion. He was never heard to mention a fault or a crime, except to
suggest an apology for the offender. " Humbly to conceal humility,
and to shun the praise of being humble," was the maxim and the
habit of his later life ; and on that principle he maintained the
unostentatious decencies of his rank as General of his order at the
Casa Professa ; a convent which had been assigned for their resi-
dence at Eome. There he dwelt, conducting a correspondence
more extensive and important than any which issued from the
cabinets of Paris or Madrid. In sixteen years he had established
twelve Jesuit Provinces in Europe, India, Africa, and Brazil ; and
more than a hundred colleges or houses for the professed and the
probationers, already amounting to many thousands. His mission-
aries had traversed every country, however remote and barbarous,
which the enterprise of his age had opened to the merchants of
Europe. The devout resorted to him for guidance, the miserable
for relief, the wise for instruction, and the rulers of the earth for
succour. Men felt that there had appeared among them one of
those monarchs who reign in right of their own native supremacy ;
and to whom the feebler wills of others must yield either a ready
or a reluctant allegiance. It was a conviction recorded by his dis-
ciples on his tomb, in these memorable and significant words :
"Whoever thou mayest be who has portrayed to thine own
imagination Pompey, or Caesar, or Alexander, open thine eyes to
the truth, and let this marble teach thee how much greater a
conqueror than they was Ignatius."

Whatever may have been the comparative majesty of the Caesa-
rian and the Ignatian conquests, it was true of either that, on the

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITIS]\r. IGJ

death of the conqueror, the succession to his diadem hung long in
anxious suspense. Our tale descends from the sublime and the
heroic to the region of ordinary motives and of ordinary men.

When Ignatius died, two of the most eminent of the original
members of his order, Bobadilla and Laynez, were labouring under
diseases supposed to be mortal. Laynez roused himself to issue a
summons, reijuiring the attendance of the professed memljers at
Rome, to make choice of a Greneral. But Philip II., then at war
with the papal court, rendered the election impossible, by detaining
a majority of the Electoral College in Spain. Laynez, therefore,
undertook the government of the society, with the rank and title
of Vicar-General.

There are some bodily disorders for which promotion is a specific.
Full of renovated life, the Vicar-General assumed all the powers
of his great predecessor, and soon gave proof that they had fallen
into no feeble hands. But neither was that a feeble grasp in which
the keys of Peter were then held. Hot-headed and imperious as
he was, Paul IV. had quailed in the solemn presence of Ignatius ;
but he believed that the time had now come for arresting the pro-
gress of a power which he had learnt rather to dread as the rival,
than to respect as the guardian, of his own. To the succour of the
Pope came Bobadilla; who also shook off his illness that he mitdit
assume the guidance of a party among the professed Jesuits wlio
were opposed to the advancement of Laynez to the office of
General.

They commenced hostilities by preferring against him the charo-e
of meditating an escape to Spain, with the view of conducting the
election there, and of fixing the future seat and centre of tlie
Jesuit power within the dominions of Philip ; where, exempt from
papal control, they might give to the order whatever character and
constitutions might best promote the greatness, and gratify the
ambition, of the General. To defeat this project the Pope issued
a mandate forbidding any Jesuit to quit the precincts of the city.
Encouraged by this success, Bobadilla, a warm-hearted, impetuous
man, who, even during the life of Ignatius, had protested against
the severity of his rules and his demand of implicit obedience,
now poured forth a series of vehement remonstrances against the
supposed machinations of the Vicar-General. With a far more
profound policy Laynez entrenched himself within an elaborate
display of penitence, meekness, and humility. He confessetl tliat
it became him and his followers to atone, by self-inflicted penances,
for the offence which it had seemed good to the Holy Father to
impute to them. He was himself the first to lay publicly on his
own shoulders severe and frequent stripes to expiate this fault.

M 3

Ifi6 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

His meekness was such that he declined to retnrn any answer to
the harsh accusations of his antagonists. The laws of their order,
indeed, required that the Vicar-General should impose some pimish-
ment on a subordinate who had advanced a complaint against his
superior ; but so admirable was his mildness, that he subjected the
bitterest of his assailants to no greater burthen than a single recital
of the Paternoster and the Ave Maria.

Bobadilla and his adherents were no match for subtlety like this.
They forgot of what inestimable price such exquisite lowliness
must be in papal eyes. They overlooked the disfavour with which
any resistance to any spiritual authority must always be regarded
at the Vatican. They had the indiscretion to represent to the
irritable pontiff that by punishing an appeal to himself by the in-
fliction of any penance whatever, Laynez had violated the Majesty
of the Papal Crown, and infringed the privileges of all Christian
people. " What, then, was the penance ? " inquired the Cardinal
Minister. " One Paternoster and one Ave Maria," was the reply.
Indignation, contempt, and a pious hon'or at the feebleness of soul
wliich could murmur under such a trifle, repelled the imfortunate
remonstrants from the presence of Paul. Laynez enjoyed the
pleasure of having made them ridiculous. His gi-atification was
not long afterwards completed by their exile to Assisi, there to
perform far less tolerable exercises of penitence. They left the
world of Eome for him to bustle in.

Peace with Spain returned; and with it came the electors so
long and anxiously expected. The entire chapter did not include
more than twenty members. It was a lowly chamber in which they
were convened, nor did a company less imposing in outward sem-
blance meet together on that day within the compass of the seven
hills. Yet scarcely had the Comitia, to whose shouts those hills
had once re-echoed, ever conferred on consul or on praetor a power
more real or more extensive than that which those homely men
had now assembled to bestow. But before their choice of a Gren-
eral had been made, the doors of the conclave were thrown open,
and Cardinal Pacheco appeared among them in the name of the
Pope, and armed with his delegated authority. He had come (he
said) not to control their proceedings, nor to restrain the free
exercise of their electoral powers; but merely to assert, by his
presence, the high prerogative of his Holiness as the sovereio-n
protector of the order. The votes were then collected. Laynez
was announced as the new General of the Society ; and homilies,
adorations, and thanksgivings celebrated his accession to office.

In the midst of this devotional harmony the voice of Pacheco
was again heard. In the name of Paid he insisted, that, like other

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 167

religious men, the Jesuits should thenceforward perform all the
daily offices, choral and liturgical, of puLlic worship. Ere the
panic of this unwelcome mandate had suhsided, the cardinal an-
nounced the fiu'ther pleasure of the sovereign protector, that the
tenure of the office of General should cease, not with his life, but
at the end of some brief term, not exceeding three years. Each
of these decisions was fatal to the great designs of Ignatius and his
successor. The first would reduce their Society from their hiL,'h
calling, as champions of the Church, to the low level of any other
order of monks. The second, by impairing all the energy of their
monarchical constitution, would render them the mere vassals of tlie
Pope, and subjugate them effectually to the jjapal power. To shake
off these mandates, Laynez expostulated, reasoned, prayed. He was
the most eloquent speaker of his times, but for once he spoke in
vain. The immovable pontiff persisted, and actually inscribed on
the constitutions of Ignatius two decrees for giving effect to these
innovations. In a -few months afterwards Paul IV. died ; when,
despite these solemn commands and their own still more solemn
oaths of obedience, Laynez and his successors remained Generals
for life ; and neither chant nor anthem, psalm or liturgy, were ever
afterwards permitted to prolong the sacred offices of the Order of
Jesus. What are the limits which are implied in every vow of un-
limited submission ? When our own high churchmen were labour-
ing a century and a half ago for the answer to that knotty question,
they were perhaps unconscious that it had already vexed the inge-
nuity of lago Laynez and his associates, without in any degree im-
peding their freedom.

The elevation of Laynez to the vacant throne of Ignatius, was
not accomplished without some sinister arts and some secular
policy ; but there is no reason to doubt that, in achieving that as-
cent, he was also guided by purer and more noble motives. In
him, as in other men, antagonist principles not seldom enjoyed a
divided triumph, and the testimonies to his virtues are such and
so numerous as to command assent to their general truth. Eight
of the twenty-four books of the history of Orlandinus are devoted
to his administration of the affairs of the Jesuits. The reader of
them willingly acknowledges that he possessed extraordinary abili-
ties : and, half reluctantly, admits that he was scarcely less distin-
guished by genuine piety.

Laynez would seem to have been born to supply the intellectual
deficiencies of Ignatius. He was familiar with the Greek and
Latin tongues, with the whole compass of theological literature,
and with all the moral sciences which in his age a theologian was
required to cultivate. With these stores of knowledge he had

M 4

168 THE FOUNDEES OP JESUITISM,

made himself necessary to the founder of his order. Loyola con-
sulted, employed, and trusted, biit apparently did not like him. It
is stated by Orlandinus that there was no other of his eminent fol-
lowers whom the great patriarch of the society treated with such
habitual rigour, while yet there was none who rendered him such
important services.

The rigour with which Laynez was treated is Avell illustrated by
liis appointment to be Provincial of Italy, and to reside at Padua.
As often as he had trained up in that city any promising recruit,
the General withdrew the novice to Kome. Laynez complained of
being thus deprived of the use of the instruments fashioned by
himself. Ignatius answered, that it was right to congregate all the
most efifeetive sons of the society at Rome, because there was the
seat and centre of their operations. Again Laynez remonstrated ;
and then Ignatius called on him to state what he thought the
penance due to him for such contumacious importunity. The Pro-
vincial answered this stern question, as he says, with tears in his
eyes. He proposed that he should be withdrawn from all share in
the government of the Order ; that he should be deprived of all
books, except his breviary ; that he should beg his way to Rome ;
that there he should be employed in the most menial offices of the
Casa Professa ; or, if found unfit for them, in teaching grammar to
little children ; that, after passing through this penance for two or
three years, he should imdergo various scourgings, and a fast of
four weeks' continuance ; to all which most contrite suggestions, he
added a promise that whenever again he should have occasion to
write to his good father, he would abound in circumspection and in
prayer.

This extraordinary course of penitential discipline was obviously
recommended by Laynez only as a mode of expressing the pro-
found reverence due to his General, and not with any real
expectation that he would accept the proposal. Ignatius sub-
stituted for it a much wiser penance, by requiring La3mez to
compose a theological work in refutation of the heretics. The
General had looked deeply into the soul of his lieutenant. He
saw that his too active and restless spirit was the real cause of
his discontent at Padua, and judiciously prescribed the sedative
of the desk.

The services rendered by Laynez to his superior, are not less
remarkable than the severity with which they were thus occasionally
requited. " Do you not think," said Ignatius to him, " that the
founders of the religious orders were inspired when they framed
their constitutions ? " "I do," was the answer, " so far as the
general scheme and outline were concerned." Guided by this

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM, 169

opinion, Loyola established a remarkable division of labour
between himself and his follower. He, in the character of an
inspired saint, took for his province the composing the text of the
constitutions. To Laynez, as an uninspired scholar, he assigned
the preparation of an authoritative comment. For himself, tlje
lawgiver claimed the praise of having erected an edifice of which
the plan and the arrangement were divine. To his fellow-labourer,
he assigned the merit of having supported it by the solid foundation
of a learning which, however excellent, was yet entirely human.
An example will best explain the nature of this joint operation.

"In Theologia legetur vetus et novum Testamentum, et Doctrina
Scholastica Divi Thomoe" — is the text. "Prselegetur etiam
Magister Sententiarum, sed si videatur tempoi'is decursu alius
autor studentibus utilior futurus, ut si aliqua summa vel liber
Theologise scholasticae conficeretur qui nostris temporibus ac-
commodatior videretur, prselegi poterit " — is the comment.
Ignatius was content that the divine Thomas should be installed
among the Jesuits as the permanent interpreter of the sacred
oracles. Laynez, vdth deeper foresight, perceived that the day
was coming when they must discover a teacher " better suited to
our times." It was a prediction which, shortly after his death,
was fulfilled in the person of Molina, his own pupil.

To Laynez belongs the praise or the reproach of having revived,
in modern times, the doctrine known in the Catholic Church as
IMolinist, in the Protestant Churches as Arminian. Our latest
posterity will debate, as our remotest ancestry have debated, the
truth of that doctrine. But that it was " temporibus accommo-
datior," no one will deny. The times evidently required that the
great antagonists of the Reformation should inculcate a belief
more comprehensive and more flexible than that of Augustin or
of Thomas. Much of the danger and disrepute to which the
society was afterwards exposed, may, perhaps, be traced to those
opinions. But much of the secret of their vitality and their
strength, must also be ascribed to the same cause.

Aided by these theological accomplishments, Laynez rendered
to his General at the Council of Trent services still more important
than those which he had performed as a commentator on the
Ignatian constitutions. He was selected, with Salmeron for his
associate, to represent the papacy at that synod, so far as respected
the exposition and defence of the doctrines of the see of Kome.
Orlandinus has preserved the instructions addressed to these
delegates by Loyola on the eve of their departure. They were to
be deliberate in speaking, attentive in listening, and vigilant in
seizing on the exact meaning of other speakers. They were

170 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

admonished to avoid every appearance of dogmatism or prejudice,
lest they should offend those whom it was their business to con-
ciliate. In order to maintain their own serenity, they were to
keep their seats when they spoke. They were to make frequent
a^d regular visits to the hospitals, but not without alms to the
patients ; and in addressing them, they were to converse copiously,
and with affection, laying aside the terse and circumspect style
befitting their addresses to the council. They were to meet every
morning to discuss the business of the day, in the course of which
absolute unanimity amongst themselves would be indispensable ;
and twice on each day they were carefully to examine their own
consciences.

Laynez and Salmeron appear to have conformed exactly to these
wise admonitions. In the midst of the gorgeous assembly of
princes, prelates, and ambassadors, they at first appeared in osten-
tatious meanness of apparel. They then, however, submitted to
wear the better clothing presented to them by a much scandalised
cardinal, that they might manifest a no less ostentatious indifference
to the use or the neglect of so mean an external advantage.
They had joined the synod with purposes too magnificent and
darino- to leave their minds vacant for even a passing thought on
matters so insignificant as these. For in the bosom of that most
orthodox congregation, Laynez dared the reproach of heresy, and
proclaimed opinions which, since the days of Augustin had been
branded as Pelagian.

Since the fall of the Eoman Commonwealth the world had
produced no such theatre for the exhibition of oratorical powers.
Laynez is supposed not to have been constitutionally brave, but in
the cathedral of Trent he bore himself with all the hardihood which
unrivalled superiority in debate will impart to the least courageous.
He asserted the freedom of the human will amidst outcries of in-
dio-nation. He maintained the doctrines which, north of the Alps,
are called ultramontane, although they were most unwelcome to
the vast majority of his auditors. He vehemently opposed the
admission of the laity to the cup, although it was the popular
demand of more than half of Europe. He was strong in the
consciousness of his dominion over those feelings to which a great
speaker in a numerous assembly seldom appeals in vain. The
very position from which he spoke proclaimed the pride, which
becomes impressive only by assuming the disguise of humility.
It was the place the most remote from the thrones of the papal
leo-ates, and the elevated chairs of the ambassadors of Christendom.
But when he spoke those thrones and chairs were abandoned.
Cardinals, bishops, counts, and abbots quitted their seats and

THE FOUNDERS OP JESUITISM. 171

thronged around him. G-enerals and doctors obeyed the Kanio
impulse ; and, on one occasion, a circle more illustrious for rank
and learning than had ever before surrounded the tribune of an
orator, continued, during two successive hours, to reward his
efforts by their profoimd and silent admiration.

On examining the only two of the speeches of Laynez which
have been preserved by Orlandinus, it is difficult to detect the
charm which thus seduced the haughtiest prelates into a passing
forgetfulness of their dignity. His eloquence would appear to
have been neither impassioned nor imaginative, nor of that intense
earnestness which seems to despise the very rules by tlie observ-
ance of which it triumphs. Luminous argumentation, clothed in
transparent language, and delivered with facility and grace, was
probably the praise to which he Avas entitled — no vulgar praise
indeed, for amidst the triumphs of oratory few are greater or
more welcome than that of infusing order without fatigue into the
chaotic thoughts of an inquisitive audience.

The health of Laynez sank beneath these efforts ; and, if
Orlandinus may be believed, . the deliberations of the fathers of
Trent were suspended until he was able to resume his place
among them. The fact seems very questionable; but if Laynez
received this high honour he was not long permitted to enjoy it.
The march of the Protestants on Trent dispersed the council, and
enabled him to exhibit his eloquence in a different, and scarcely
less memorable assembly.

Catherine de Medici had issued, in her son's name, citations to
the leaders of the two religions to meet for their celebrated
conference at Poissy, and Laynez was despatched to France to
protest, in the name of the sovereign pontiff, against this assump-
tion by a temporal prince of the right to convene a synod for the
adjustment of spiritual questions. Nevertheless, Catherine and
her son, and the princes of his blood, appeared on the appointed
day at Poissy. Thither also came a long array of cardinals, of
bishops, and of doctors. Theodore Beza and Peter Martyr were
there, with ten other reformed ministers ; and there also appeared
Laynez, armed cap-a-pie as a polemic, and clothed with all the
dignities of a representative of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic
fSee.

Among the memorable incidents of the debate which followed,
was the bold apostrophe of Laynez to Catherine. He bade her
remember that neither she nor any other secular monarch had
any right to enter into compacts or negotiations with the enemies
of the Church. "The smith," he exclaimed, "to his smithery.
To the j)riesthood, and to them alone, are reserved all such questions

17-2 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

as these/' Catherine is said to have wept on receiving this public
rebuke. If so, her tears were as unimpressive as those of Mary
on the heart of Knox. " Catheiine is an old acquaintance of
mine," said Laynez afterwards to the Prince de Conde ; " she is
an admirable actress, but will not deceive me."

In Beza he encountered an opponent more worthy of his powers.
It had been alleged, in disproof of the real presence, that the
image of anything was misplaced when the reality itself was
there. Laynez answered that the type and anti-type might occa-
sionally meet together ; as, for example, if, on the anniversary of
a victory, the conqueror should exhibit the various military
evolutions by which he had won the battle. With more smart-
ness than reverence Beza rejoined, that the answer reduced the
mass to a comedy, and made a comedian of Him whose presence
there was asserted.

Much else, as little worthy of remembrance, passed between
these learned combatants. Had Samuel Taylor Coleridge been pre-
sent, how would he have deplored their unconsciousness of the great
distinction between the reason and the understanding ! How elo-
({uently would he have reminded them, that if men will join in
the war of words without the same common intuitions, they may
discharge their dialectics agaiast each other till the day of doom
without making any approach to the same common conclusions.

From Poissy Laynez retired to Trent. He resumed his seat in
the council in the double character of Legate of the Pope and
Greneral of the Order of Jesus. These dignities seem to have a
little impaired his former skill in the management of a popular
assembly. Forgetting that the triumphs of pride are best won in
the garb of lowliness, he engaged in an ill-timed and unsuccessful
contest with the Grenerals of the monastic orders for precedency.
But his defeat was solaced, not only by a high station on the epis-
copal bench, but by having appropriated to his use an elevated
desk or pulpit, from which he might address the synod without
danger that any member of it would be deprived of the delight of
hearing him.

Laynez appears to have amply rewarded this homage. He
was foremost in every debate, and the historians of the council
ascribe to his eloquence two of the most remarkable decrees of the
two last sessions. One of those decisions has very lately been
invoked in the House of Commons as among the highest extant
authorities in favour of the recent enactment, by which marriages
not celebrated in facie ecclesice have been rendered as valid as
though solemnised by a priest in holy orders. The council
indeed determined that for the future the intervention of such a

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. I73

priest should be indispensable ; but they prefaced this enactment
by declaring that the former law of the Christian world had been
otherwise, and that, until then, no ecclesiastical observances what-
ever had been necessary to render a matrimonial contract binding
on the spouses, and sufficient for the legitimacy of their offspring.

To the eloquence of Laynez is to be ascribed this recognition of
the general principle. With equal force and intrepidity he main-
tained that marriage is a right conferred upon mankind by tlie
immediate gift of Grod himself — that no human autliority is
entitled to derogate from it even to the slightest extent — that
therefore the Church herself could not lawfully restrain tlie use of
this heaven -born franchise by any burthensome formality — and
that to render sacerdotal interference indispensable to the exercise
of it would be a mere usurpation and a lawless abuse of power. If
the speaker had foreseen that at the distance of three centuries an
heretical parliament would build on the foundation he was thus
laying, or if that parliament had been aware that the foundations
on which they built had been laid by a General of the Jesuits,
which of the two would have been the more scandalised ?

In the twenty-fifth and last session Laynez rendered an impor-
tant service to his society, though with more credit to his address
than to his candour. To abate the offence given to the world by
the abuse of monastic vows of poverty, the council had decreed
that the mendicant orders might hold temporal possessions in their
corporate capacities. Two of the more zealous of those fraternities
sued for and obtained the privilege of exclusion from this invi-
dious franchise. Not to be eclipsed in pious ardour by any reli-
gious community, Laynez also solicited and obtained the boon
that the Jesuits should continue to be bound by their self-denyino-
renunciation of all worldly wealth. But (says Father Paul) with
the return of day other thoughts returned ; and, on the morrow,
Laynez persuaded the council to reverse their sentence, so as to
leave to his society the privilege of holding estates as a body cor-
porate. " To possess the right and j^et never to use it, would," he
argued, " be praiseworthy in the sight of God. To be deprived
of that right on their own petition, would, on the other hand, be
praiseworthy in the sight of man. But how much better was it
that they should enjoy the honour which cometh of God, than
that honour which cometh of man only? " Is it wonderful that
the words Jesuitical, and double-minded, so soon became synony-
mous ?

The council was at length dissolved. Laynez returned to Rome,
ruined in health, but possessing the highest esteem and gratitude
of Pius IV., who then filled the ]japal throne. As an eminent

174 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

expression of his favour, the Pope made a solemn visit to the
General and the College of Jesuits, where he was received with
discharges of compliments, literary, scientific, and philosophical,
mth which the reception of Elizabeth and James at our own uni-
versities will not bear a moment's comparison. For Laynez excelled
most men not only in learning, but in the power of giving an
impulse to the studies of the learned. Under his government the
colleges and scholars of the Order had increased fourfold, and her
associated members in a still greater proportion.

Laynez knew how to rule as well as how to teach. By firmness
or by craft, he at once and for ever crushed the revolt of Bobadilla
and his followers. By his energy he at once animated and con-
trolled the operations of all the ministers of his power. He
swayed it to the last, unaided by any colleague, and unawed by any
rival ; and even on his dying bed refused to name a vicar, or ac-
cept a coadjutor. He died in the year 1565, and in the fifty-
second year of his age. His death was soothed with all the
consolations of the last sacraments of his Church, and of a plenary
indulgence from the Pope ; and perhaps was not without the
solace of remembering that his life had been ceaselessly devoted
to the duties prescribed by the laws of his society, and by the law
of his own conscience.

Was that conscience itself a blind guide, perverted by low affec-
tions, and by unhallowed impulses ? Who shall presume to
answer? All hail to Khadamanthus on his posthumous judgment-
seat in the nether regions ! But when Ehadamanthus comes
above-ground, holds in his hand the historical pen, and resolves all
the enigmas of hearts which ceased to beat long centuries ago,
more confidently than most of us would dare to interpret the mys-
teries of our own, one wishes him back again at the confluence of
Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus. It is, after all, nothing more than
the surface of human character which the retrospective scrutiny of
the keenest human eye is able to detect.

Ambition clothed in rags — subtlety under the guise of can-
dour — timidity beneath the mask of audacious eloquence — these
are the offences laid to the charge of Ifigo Laynez. Yet a priest
who, in the sixteenth century, refused the purple, must have had
aspirations for something higher than worldly honours. Hypocrisy
is the charge which every one must bear who has to do with ene-
mies incredulous of all virtue superior to their o^vn. And coward-
ice is a reproach never to be escaped by him who, being debarred
from the use of all weapons but the tongue, knows how to render
that weapon terrible to his opponents. The historical portraiture
which exhibits Laynez as ambitious, crafty, and timid, may be a

THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM. 175

correct likeness ; but no one who considers how confused are the
lights by which we must now examine it, will peremptorily declare
that the resemblance is accurate.

Gifted with extraordinary talents, flexible address, profound
learning, and captivating eloquence, Laynez fell short of that stan-
dard at which alone the name of any man may be inscribed on the
roll sacred to those who have reigned over their fellow-mortals by
a right divine, inherent, and indefeasible. Without the genius
to devise, or the glowing passion to achieve great things, none may
take his place with those kings of the earth on whose brows
Nature herself has set the diadem. Far surpassing, in mere intel-
lectual resources, both Ignatius and Xavier, the fiery element native
to their souls was uninhabitable by his. But though his hands could
not grasp their weapons, he wielded his own with admirable skill and
efficacy. To Laynez his society were first indebted for their cha-
racteristic theology, for the possession and the fame of learning,
for a more intimate alliance with the papacy, and for the more
pronounced hostility of the Reformers. He first established for
them that authority in the cabinets of Europe, on which, at no
distant time, the edifice of their temporal power was to rest. It
was his melancholy distinction to number among these royal dis-
ciples the infamous Catherine, and her less odious, because feebler
son. He was associated with them at the time when they were
revolving the greatest crime with which the annals of Christendom
have been polluted. His memory is, however, unstained with the
guilt of that massacre, except so far as the doctrines he inculcated
in the conference at Poissy may have induced the sovereigns to
think lightly of any bloodshed which should rid the world of a
party which he taught them to regard as abhorred of God, and as
hateful to the enlightened eye of man.

It is more easy to discern the intellectual than the moral great-
ness of Laynez. He was the earliest, if not the most eminent
example of the natural results of Loyola's discipline. His cha-
racter illustrates the effect of concentrating all the interests of life,
and all the affections of the heart, within the narrow circle of one
contracted fellowship. It yielded in him as it has produced in
others, a vigorous, but a stunted development of the moral faculties
— a kind of social selfishness and sectional virtue — a subordina-
tion of philanthropy to the love of caste — a spirit irreclaimably
servile, because exulting in its own servitude — a temper consistent
indeed with great actions, and often contributing to them, but
destructive (at least in ordinary minds) of that free and cordial
sympathy with man as man, of those careless graces and of tliat
majestic repose, which touch and captivate the heart in Him whose

176 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

name the Order of the Jesuits had assumed, and to which must in
part, at least, be ascribed the sacred fascination exercised over us
all by the simj^le records of his life and language.

On the 2nd of July, 1565, the Cassa Professa, usually the scene
of a profountl stillness, was agitated by an unwonted excitement.
Men of austere demeanour might be seen there clasping each
other's hands, and voices habitually mute were interchanging
hearty congratulations. One alone appeared to take no share in
the common joy. As if overpowered by some strange and unwel-
come tidings, he seemed by imploring gestures to deprecate a
decision against which his paralysed lips in vain attempted to pro-
test. His age might be nearly sixty, his dress mean and sordid,
and toil or suffering had ploughed their furrows in his pallid
cheek ; but he balanced his tall and still graceful figure with a
soldier's freedom, and gazed on his associates with a countenance
cast in that mould which ladies love and artists emulate. They
called him Father Francis ; and, on the death of Laynez, their
almost unanimous suffrage had just hailed him as the third Grene-
ral of the Oi'der of Jesus. The wish for rank and power was never
more sincerely disclaimed ; for never had they been forced on any
one who had a larger experience of their vanity.

In the female line Father Francis was the grandson of Ferdinand
of Arragon, and therefore the near kinsman of the Emperor Charles
V. Among his paternal ancestry he could boast or lament the
names of Alexander VI. and of Caesar Borgia. Of that house,
eminent alike for their wealth, their honours, and their crimes, he
was the lineal representative; and had, in early manhood, in-
herited -from his father the patrimony and the title of the Dukes
of Gaudia.

Don Francis Borgia, as if to rescue the name he bore from the
infamy of his progenitors, exhaled, even in his childish days, the
odour of sanctity. With each returning month, he cast a lot to
determine which he should personate of the saints with whose
names it was studded on the calendar. In his tenth year, with a
virtue unsung and unconceived by the Musoi Etonenses, he played
at saints so perfectly as to inflict a vigorous chastisement on his
own naked person. It is hard to resist the wish that the scourge
had been yet more resolutely wielded by the arm of his tutor. So
seems to have thought his maternal uncle, Don John of Arragon,
Archbishop of Saragossa. Taking the charge of his nephew, that
high-born prelate compelled him to .study alternately the lessons
of the riding-master and those of the master of the sentences ; and
in his nineteenth year sent him to complete his education at the
court of his imperial cousin.

TJIE FOUNDERS OF JESUITIS-Af. I77

Ardent as were still the aspirations of the young courtier for the
monastic life, no one in that gallant circle bore himself more
bravely in the menage, or sheathed his sword with a steadier hand
in the throat of the half-maddened bull, or more skilfully disputed
with his sovereign the honours of the tournament. As the youthful
knight, bowing to the saddle-tree, lowered his spear before the
" Queen of Beauty," many a full dark eye beamed with a deeper
lustre ; but his triumph was incomplete and worthless unless it
Avon the approving smile of Eleonora de Castro. That smile was
not often refused. But the romance of Don Francis begins where
other romances terminate. Foremost in the train of Charles and
Isabella, the husband of the fair Eleonora still touched his lute
with unrivalled skill in the halls of the Escurial, or followed the
quarry across the plains of Castile in advance of the most ardent
falconer. Yet that music was universally selected from the offices
of the Church; and in the very agony of the chase, just as the
wheeling hawk paused for his last deadly plunge, (genius of
Nimrod, listen !) he would avert his eyes and ride slowly home, the
inventor of a matchless effort of penitential self-denial.

With Charles himself for his fellow-j^upil, Don Francis studied
the arts of war and fortification under the once celebrated Sainte
Croix, and practised in Africa the lessons he had been taught ; —
earning the double praise, that in the camp he was the most mag-
nificent, in the field the most adventurous, of all the leaders in
that vaunted expedition. At the head of a troop enlisted and main-
tained by himself, he attended the emperor to the Milanese and
Provence ; and, in honourable acknowledgment of his services, was
selected by Charles to lay a report of the campaign before the em-
press in person, at Segovia. Towards her he felt an almost filial
regard. She had long been the zealous patron and the cordial
friend of himself and of Eleonora; and at the public festivals,
which celebrated at once the victories of Charles and the meeting
of the States of Castile at Toledo, they shone among the most
brilliant of the satellites by which her throne was encircled.

At the moment of triumph the inexorable arm was unbarred
which so often, as in mockery of human pomp, confounds together
the world's bravest pageants and the humiliations of the grave.
Dust to dust and ashes to ashes ! but, when the imperial fall, not
without one last poor assertion of their departed dignity. Isabella
might not be laid in the sepulchre of the Kings of Spain until,
amidst the funeral rites, the soldered coffin had been opened, the
cerements removed, and some grandee of the highest rank had
been enabled to depose that he had seen within them the very
body of the deceased sovereign. Such, in pursuance of an ancient

178 THE FOUIs^DErtS OF JESUITISM.

custom, was the duty confided to the zeal of Don Francis Borgia ;
nor was any one better fitted for such a trust. The eye, now for
ever closed, had never tiurned to him but with maternal kindness,
and every lineament of that serene and once eloquent countenance
was indelibly engraven on his memory. Amidst the half-uttered
prayers which commended her soul to the Divine mercy, and the
low dirge of the organ, he advanced with streaming eyes, and re-
verently raised the covering which concealed the secrets of the
grave ; when — but why or how portray the appalling and loath-
some spectacle ? That gentle brow, that eloquent countenance,
that form so lately reposing on earth's proudest throne, and ex-
tolled with an almost adoring homage ! — Don Francis turned from
the sight to shudder and to pray.

It was the great epoch in the life of Borgia. In the eyes of the
world, indeed, he may have been unchanged ; but in his eyes the
whole aspect of that world was altered. Lord of a princely fortune,
the heir of an illustrious house, the favourite kinsman of the Em-
peror of the West, renowned in the very flower of his youth as a
warrior, a courtier, and a musician, his home hallowed by conjugal
love, and gladdened by the sports of his children ; for whom had
life a deeper interest, or who could erect on a surer basis a loftier
fabric of more brilliant hopes ? Those interests and hopes he de-
liberately resigned, and, at the age of twenty-nine, bound himself
by a solemn vow, that, in the event of his surviving Eleonora, he
would end his days as a member of some religious order. He had
gazed on the hideous triumph of death and sin over prospects still
more splendid than his own. For him the soothing illusions of ex-
istence were no more — earth and its inhabitants, withering under
the curse of their Maker, might put on their empty gauds, and for
some transient hour dream and talk of happiness. But the curse
was there, and there would it lie, crushing the frivolous spirit the
most when felt the least, and consigning alike to that foul debase-
ment the lovely and the brave ; the sylph now floating through
the giddy dance, and the warrior now proudly treading the field of
victory.

From such meditations Charles endeavoured to recall his friend
to the common duties of life. He required him to assume the
viceroyalty of Catalonia, and adorned him with the cross of the
order of Saint James of Compostella, then among the noblest and
the most highly prized of all chivalric honours. His administra-
tion was firm, munificent, and just ; it forms the highest era of his
life, and is especially signalised by the same sedulous care for the
education of the young which afterwards formed his highest praise
4s General of the Order of Jesus.

Till': FOUXDERS OP .JI•:SUITIS^r. 179

Ingenious above all men in inoiii tying liis natural affections,
Don Francis could not neglect the occasion -which his new digni-
ties afforded him, of incurring much wholesome contumely.
Sumptuous banquets nuist be given in honour of his sovereign ;
when he could at once fast and be despised for fasting. To ex-
hibit himself in penitential abasement before the people under
his authority, would give to penitence the appropriate accompani-
ment of general contempt. On the festival of " the Invention of
the Holy Cross," mysteries, not unlike those of the Bona Dea,
were to be celebrated by the ladies of Barcelona ; when, to prevent
the profane intrusion of any of the coarser sex, the viceroy himself
undertook the office of sentinel. With a naked dagger in his
hand, a young nobleman demanded entrance, addressing to the
viceroy insults such as every gentleman is bound, under the
heaviest penalty of the laws of chivalry, to expiate by blood. A
braver man did not tread the soil of Spain than Don Francis, nor
any one to whom the reproach of poltroonery was more hateful.
And yet his sword did not leap from his scabbard. With a calm
rebuke, and courteous demeanour, he allowed the bravo to enter
the sacred precincts — preferring the imputation of cowardice,
though stinging like an adder, to the sin of avenging himself, and,
indeed, to the duty of maintaining his lawful authority. History
has omitted to tell what were the weapons, or what the incanta-
tion, by which the ladies promptly ejected the insolent intruder ;
nor has she recorded how they afterwards received their guardian
knight of St. lago. Her only care has been to excite our admira-
tion for this most illustrious victory, in the bosom of Don Francis,
of the meekness of the saint over the human passions of the
soldier.

At the end of four years, Don Francis was relieved by the death
of his father from his viceregal office, and assumed his hereditary
title of Duke of Gandia. His vassals exulted in the munificence
of their new chief. The ancient retainers of his family lived on
his bounty — cottages, convents, and hospitals, rose on his estates
— fortresses were built to check the ravages of the Moorish cor-
sairs, and the mansion of his ancestors reappeared in all its ancient
splendour. In every work of piety and mercy the wise and gentle
Eleonora was the rival of her lord. But it was the only strife
which ever agitated the Castle of Gandia. Austerities were prac-
tised there, but gloom and lassitude were unknown ; nor did the
bright suns of Spain gild any feudal ramparts, within which Love,
and Peace, the child of Love, shed their milder light with a more
abiding radiance.

But on that countenance, hitherto so calm and so submissive,

180 THE FOUNDERS OF JESUITISM.

might at length be traced the movemeuts of an inward tempest,
which, even when prostrate before the altar, the Duke of Gandia,
strove in vain to tranquillise. Though conversant with every form
of self-inflicted suffering, how should he find strength to endure
the impending death of Eleonora ! His was a prayer transcending
the resources of language and of thought ; it was the mute agony
of a breaking heart. But after the whirlwind and the fire was
heard the still small voice. It said to him, or seemed to say, " If
it be thy deliberate wish, she shall recover ; but it will not be for
her real welfare, nor for thine." Adoring gratitude swept away
every feebler emotion, and the suppliant's grief at length found
utterance. " Thy will be done. Thou knowest what is best for us.
WTiom have we in heaven but Thee, and whom upon earth should we
desire in comparison of Thee ? " At the age of thirty-six the Duke
of Grandia committed to the tomb the frame once animated by a
spirit from which not death itself could separate him. In the sacred
retirement to which, in that event, he had devoted his remaining
days, Eleonora would still unite her pra3^ers to his ; and as each of
those days should decline into the welcome shadows of evening,
one stage the more towards his reunion with her would have been
traversed.

The Castle of Gandia was still hung with the funeral draperies
when a welcome though unexpected guest arrived there. It was
Peter Faber, the officiating priest at the Crypt of Montmartre,
charged by Ignatius with a mission to promote the cause of Chris-
tian education in Spain. Aided by his counsels, and by the let-
ters of the patriarch, the duke erected on his estates a church, a
college, and a library, and placed them under the care of teachers
selected by Ignatius. The sorrows of the duke were relieved as his
wealth flowed still more copiously in this new channel of bene-
ficence ; and the universities of Alcala and Seville were enlarged
by his bounty with similar foundations. But, as Faber remarked,
a still nobler edifice was yet to be erect/ed on the soul of the founder
himself. The first stone of it was laid in the duke's performance
of the Spiritual Exercises. To the completion of this invisible but
imperishable building, the remainder of his life was inflexibly
devoted.

With Ignatius the duke had long maintained a correspondence,
in which the stately courtesies of Spanish noblemen not ungrace-
fidly temper the severer tones of patriarchal authority and filial
reverence. Admission into the Order of Jesus was an honour for
which, in this case, the aspirant was humbly content, and was
wisely permitted, long to wait and sue. To study the biogi-aphy,
that he might imitate the life, of Him by whose holy name the

Till-: FOUNDEllS OF Ji:SUITIS.\r. 181

Society was called ; to preach in lii« own houseliolc], or at the wicket
of the nunnery of the ladies of St. Clair ; and day by day, to place
in humiliating contrast some proof of the Divine goodness and
some proof of his own demerit ; were the first probationary steps
which the duke was required to tread in the toilsome path on which
he had thus entered. It was a path from which Philip, tlien
governing Spain with the title of regent, would have willingly
seduced him. He consulted him on the most critical affairs ; sum-
moned him to take a high station in the States of Castile; and
pressed on his acceptance the office of grand master of the royal
household. It was declined in favour of the Duke of Alva. Had
Gandia preferred the duties of his secular rank to his religious
aspirations, Spain might have had a saint the less and seven pro-
vinces the more. With the elevation of Alva, the butcheries in the
Netherlands, the disgrace of Spain, and the independence of Holland,
might have been averted.

Warned by his escape, the duke implored with renewed earnest-
ness his immediate admission into the order ; nor was Ignatius
willing that his proselyte should again incur such dangers. At the
chapel of his own college he accordingly pronounced the irrevocable
vows ; a Papal bull having dispensed, during a term of four years,
with any public avowal of the change. They were passed in the
final adjustment of his secular affairs. He had lived in the splen-
dour appropriate to his rank and fortune, and in the exercise of
the bounty becoming his eminence in the Christian commonwealth.
But now all was to be abandoned, even the means of almsgiving ; for
he was himself henceforth to live on the alms of others. He gave
his children in marriage to the noblest houses in Spain and
Portugal, transferred to his eldest son the enjoyment of the patri-
monial estates of G-andia, and then, at the age of forty, meekly
betook himself to the study of scholastic divinity, of the traditions
of the Church, and of the canons of the general councils. He even
submitted to all the rules, and performed all the public exercises
enforced on the youngest student. Such was his piety, that the
thorny fagots of the schoolmen fed instead of smothering the flame ;
and on the margin of his Thomas Aquinas might be seen some
devout aspiration, extracted by his sacred alchemy from each subtle
distinction in the text. Never before or since was the degree of
Doctor in Divinity, to which he now proceeded, so hardly earned
or so well deserved.

Two of the brothers of the duke had been members of the sacred
college, and his humility had refused for two of his sons the purple
offered to them at the instance of the emperor. But how shoidd
the new doctor avert from his own head the ecclesiastical cap ot

N -J

182 THE rOlWDEKS OF JESUITISM.

maiutenance with Avbich Charles was now desirous to replace the
ducal coronet ? He fled the presence of his imperial patron, made
and executed his own testamentary dispositions, delivered his last
parental charge to his eldest son, and bade a final adieu to his
weeping family. The gates of the Castle of Grandia closed on their
self-banished lord. He went forth, like Francis Xavier, chanting
the song of David — "When Israel went out of Egypt, and the
House of Jacob from a strange people ; " — but adding, from another
strain of the royal minstrel, the exulting words, " Our bonds are
broken and we are delivered." He lived for more than twenty
years from this time, and in his future missions into Spain often
passed the gates of the castle, but never more re-entered them. He
became a stranger even to his children, never again passing so
much as a single day in their society, or even permitting himself to
become acquainted with their offspring.

As the bird set free to her nest, so hastened the emancipated
duke to take his seat at the footstool of Ignatius. Yet, in his route
through Ferrara and Florence, his sacred impatience was arrested,
and his humility confirmed, by the unwelcome honours yielded to
him Ijy his kinsmen, the reigning sovereigns of those duchies. He
would have entered Rome by night; but, in the city of triumphs
and ovations, the victorious Loyola could not but desire to exhibit
so illustrious a conquest. Attended by the Ambassador of Spain,
by a prince of the liouse of Colonna, and by a long train of cardinals,
priests, and nobles, the Duke of Gandia advanced in solemn proces-
sion to the Casa Professa. There, in the presence of his General,
his wearied spirit found at length the repose which the most pro-
fuse liberality of fortune had been unable to bestow. With tears
of joy he kissed the feet of the patriarch and of his professed
brethren, esteeming the meanest office in their household an honour
too exalted for so unworthy an associate ; and then, in a general
confession, poured into the ear of Ignatius every secret of his
conscience from the dawn of life to that long-desired hour.

Such zeal was a treasure too precious to be left without some
great and definite object; and as the duke was still the steward of
some of this world's treasures, which he had devoted to sacred uses,
they were employed in building at Rome the church and college
afterwards so famous as the College de Propaganda Fide. One only
secular care still awaited him. His rank as a grandee of Spain, and
the cross of St. lago, could not be laid aside without the consent of
the emperor. It was solicited with all the grace of an accomplished
courtier, and all the fervour of a saint. But while he awaited at
Rome the answer of Charles, a new alarm disturbed the serenity of
the Casa Professa. The dreaded pui-ple was again pressed on him

THE FOUNDERS OF JESI'ITISM. 183

with all the weight of Papal admonition. To avoid it, Gandia JIlhI
the presence of the Pope and of Ignatiu!=^, returned to Spain, per-
formed a pilgrimage to the Castle of Loyola, kissed the hallowed
ground, and then burying himself in a Jesuit College at Ognato,
once more awaited the decision of the emperor.

It soon arrived. He was no longer a duke, a knight of St. lago,
nor even a Spanish gentleman. Solemnly and in due legal form, he
renounced all these titles, and with them all his property and ter-
ritorial rights. Even his secular dress was laid aside, and his head
was prepared by the tonsure for the episcopal touch, emblematic of
the most awful mystery. The astonished spectators collected and
preserved the holy, relics. And now, bent in lowly prostration before
the altar at Ognato, the Father Francis had no further sacrifice to
offer there, but the sacrifice of a heart emptied of all the interests
and of all the affections of the world. Long and silent was his
prayer, but it was unattended with any trace of disorder. The
tears he shed were such as might have bedewed the cheek of the
First Man before he had tasted the bitterness of sin. He rose from
his knees, bade a last farewell to his attendants ; and Father Francis
was left alone with his Creator.

It was a solitude not long to be maintained. The fame of his
devotion filled the Peninsula. All who needed spiritual counsel,
and all who wished to indulge an idle curiosity, resorted to his cell.
Kings sought his advice, wondering congregations hung on his lips,
and two at least of the grandees of Spain imitated his example.
His spiritual triumphs were daily more and more splendid ; and, if
he might escape the still threatened promotion into the College of
Cardinals, might be as enduring as his life. The authority of
Ignatius, not unaided by some equivocal exercise of his ingenuity,
at length placed Father Francis beyond the reach of this last
danger. They both went down to the grave without witnessing the
debasement of their order by any ecclesiastical dignity.

But there was yet one tie to the pomp and vanity ot this world
which could not be entirely broken. During his viceregal adminis-
tration. Father Francis, had on one occasion traversed the halls of
the Castle of Barcelona in deep and secret conference with his im-
perial cousin. Each at that interview imparted to the other his
design of devoting to religious retirement the interval which should
intervene between the business and the close of life. At every
season of disappointment Charles reverted to this purpose, and
abandoned or postponed it with each return of success. But now,
broken with sickness and sorrow, he had fixed his residence in a
monastery in Estremadura, and summoned the former viceroy of
Catalonia to the presence of his early friend and patron. Falling

N 4

18-4 THE rOUNDEES OF JESUITISM.

on his knees, as in times of yore, Father Francis offered to impress
the kiss of homage on the hand which had so lately borne the
sceptre of half the civilised world. But Charles embraced his
cousin, and compelled him to sit, and to sit covered, by his side.
Long and frequent were their conversations ; but the record of them
transmitted to us by the historians of the Order of Jesus, has but
little semblance of authenticity. Charles is made to assail, and
Borgia to defend the new institute, and the imperial disputant of
course yields to the combined force of eloquence and truth. It
seems less improbable that the publication of Memoirs of the
Life of the Emperor, to be written by himself, was one subject of
serious debate at these interviews, and that the good father dissuaded
it. If the tale be true, he has certainly one claim the less to the
gi-atitude of later times. What seems certain is, that he undertook
and executed some secret mission from Charles to the court of
Portugal, that he acted as one of the executors of his will, and
delivered a funeral oration in praise of the deceased emperor before
the Spanish court at Valladolid.

From this point the life of Borgia merges in the general history
of the order to which he had attached himself. It is a passage of
history full of the miracles of self-denial, and of miracles in the
more accurate acceptation of the word. To advance the cause of
education, and to place in the hands of his own Society the control
of that mighty engine, was the labour which Father Francis, as
their Greneral, chiefly proposed to himself. His success was com-
plete, and he lived to see the establishment, in almost every state
of Europe, of colleges formed on the model of that which he had
himself formed in the to'wn of Gandia.

Borgia is celebrated by his admirers as the most illustrious of all
conquerors of the appetites and passions of our common nature ;
and the praise, such as it is, may well be conceded to him. No
other saint in the calendar ever renounced or declined so great an
amount of woi-ldly grandeur and domestic happiness. No other
einbraced poverty and pain in forms more squalid, or more revolt-
ing to the flesh and blood. So strange and shocking are the stories
of his flagellations, of the diseases contracted by them, and of the
sickening practices by which he tormented his senses, that even to
read them is of itself no light penance. In the same spirit, our
applause is demanded for feats of humility, and prodigies of obe-
dience, and raptures of devotion, so extravagant, that his biographers
might seem to have assumed the office of penitential executors to
the saint ; and to challenge for his memory some of the disgust and
contempt which when living he so studiously courted. And yet
Borgia was no ordinary man.

THE FOIWDKKS OF JESUITISM. 1S5

He had great talents with a narrow capacity. Under the control
of minds more comprehensive than his own, he couhl adopt and
execute their wider views with admirable address and vigour. With
rare powers both of enduarnce and of action, he was the prey of a
constitutional melancholy, which made him dependent on the more
sanguine spirit of his guides for all his aims and for all his hopes ;
but once rescued from the agony of selecting his path, he moved
along it, not merely with firmness, but with impetuosity. All his
impulses came from without ; but when once given, they could not
readily be arrested. The very dejection and self-distrust of his
nature rendered him more liable than other men to impressions at
once deep and abiding. Thus he was a saint in his infancy at the
bidding of his nurse — then a cavalier at the command of his
uncle — an inamorato because the empress desired it — a warrior
and a viceroy because such was the pleasure of Charles — a devotee
from seeing a corpse in a state of decomposition — a founder of
colleges on the advice of Peter Faber — a Jesuit at the will of
Iffnatius — and General of the Order because his colleaj^fues would
have it so. Yet each of these characters, when once assumed, was
performed, not merely with constancy, but with high and just
applause. His mind was like a sycophant plant, feeble when alone,
but of admirable vigour and luxuriance when properly sustained.
A whole creation of such men would have been unequal to the
work of Ignatius Loyola ; but, in his grasp, one such man could
perform a splendid though but a secondary service. His life was
more eloquent than all the homilies of Chrysostom. Descending
from one of the most brilliant heights of human prosperity, he
exhibited everywhere, and in an aspect the most intelligible and
impressive to his contemporaries, the awful power of the principles
by which he was impelled. Had he lived in the times and in the
society of his infamous kinsmen, Borgia would not improbably
have shared their disastrous renown. But his dependent nature,
moulded by a far different influence, rendered him a canonised
saint ; an honourable, j ust, and virtuous man : one of the most
eminent ministers of a polity as benevolent in intention as it was
gigantic in design ; and tlie founder of a system of education preg-
nant with results of almost matchless importance. His miracles
may be not disadvantageously compared with those of the Baron
Munchausen ; but it would be less easy to find a meet comparison
for his genuine virtues. They triumph over all the silly legends
and all the real follies which obscure his character. His whole
mature life was but one protracted martyrdom, for the advancement
of what he esteemed the perfection of his own nature, and the
highest interests of his fellow-men. ThouLdi he maintained an

Ib6 THE FOUXDERS OF JESUITISM,

intimate personal intercourse with Charles IX. and his mother, and
enjoyed their highest favour, there is no reason to suppose that he
was entrusted mth their atrocious secret. Even in the land of the
Inquisition he had firmly refused to lend the influence of his name
to that sanguinary tribunal ; for there was nothing morose in his
fanaticism, nor mean in his subservience. Such a man as Francis
Borgia could hardly become a persecutor. His own Church raised
altars to his name. Other Churches have neglected or despised it.
In that all- wise and all-compassionate judgment, which is unin-
vaded by our narrow prejudices and by our unhallowed feelings,
his fervent love of God and of man was doubtless permitted to
cover the multitude of his theoretical errors and real extravagances.
Human justice is severe, not merely because man is censorious,
but because he reasonably distrusts himself, and fears lest his
weakness should confound the distinctions of good and evil.
Divine justice is lenient, because there alone love can flow in all
its unfathomable depths and boundless expansion — impeded by
no dread of error, and diverted by no misplaced sympathies.

To Ignatius, the founder of the Order of the Jesuits ; to Xavier,
the great leader in their missionary enterprises ; to Laynez, the
author of their peculiar system of theology ; and to Borgia, the
architect of their system of education, two names are to be added
to complete the roll of the great men from whose hands their
Institute received the form it retains to the present hour. These
are Bellarmine, from whom they learned the arts and resources of
controversy; and Acquaviva, the fifth in number, but in effect the
fourth of their Grenerals — who may be described as the Numa
Pompilius of the Order. There is in the early life of Bellarmine a
kind of pastoral beauty, and even in his later days a grace, and a
simplicity so winning, that it costs some effort to leave such a theme
unattempted. The character of Acquaviva, one of the most
memorable rulers and lawgivers of his age, it would be a still
greater effort to attempt.

" Henceforth let no man say," (to mount on the stilts of dear
old Samuel Johnson,) " Come, I will write a disquisition on the
history, the doctrines, and the morality of the Jesuits" — at least
let no man say so who has not subdued the lust of story-telling.
Filled to their utmost limits, lie before us the sheets so recently
destined to that ambitious enterprise. Perhaps it may be as well
thus to have yielded to the allurement which has marred the
original design. If in later days the disciples of Ignatius, obeying
the laws of all human institutions, have exhibited the sure, though
slow, development of the seeds of error and of crime, sown by the
authors of their polity, it must at least be admitted that they were

THE I'OUXDEES OF JESUITISM. 187

men of no common mould. It is something to know that an
impitlse, which, after three centuries, is still unspent, proceeded
from hands of gigantic power, and that their power was mor;il as
much as intellectual, or much more so. In our own times much
indignation and much alarm are thrown away on innovators of a
very different stamp. From the ascetics of the common room,
from men whose courage rises high enough only to hint at their
unpopular opinions, and whose belligerent passions soar at nothing
more daring than to worry some unfortunate professor, it is almost
ludicrous to fear any great movement on the theatre of human
affairs. When we see these dainty gentlemen in rags, and hear of
them from the snows of the Himalaya, we may begin to tremble.

The slave of his own appetites, in bondage to conventional laws,
his spirit emasculated by the indulgences, or corroded by the cares
of life, hardly daring to act, to speak, or to think for himself,
man — gregarious and idolatrous man — - worships the world in
which he lives, adopts its maxims, and treads its beaten paths. To
rouse him from his lethargy, and to give a new current to his
thoughts, heroes appear from time to time on the verge of his
horizon, and hero-worship. Pagan or Christian, withdraws him for
a while from still baser idolatry. To contemplate the motives and
the career of such men, may teach much wdiich well deserves the
knowing ; but nothing more clearly than this ■ — that no one can
have shrines erected to his memory in the hearts of men of distant
generations, unless his own heart was an altar on which daily
sacrifices of fervent devotion, and magnanimous self-denial, were
offered to the only true object of human worship.

188

MAETIN LUTHEE.*

English literature is singularly defective in whatever relates to the
Eeformation in Grermany and Switzerland, and to the lives of the
great men by whom it was accomplished. A native of this island
who would know anything to the purpose, of Eeuchlin or Hutten,
of Luther or Melancthon, of Zuingle, Bucer, or Qi^colampadius, of
Calvin or Farel, must betake himself to other languages than his
own. To fill this void in our libraries, is an enterprise which
mio-ht stimulate the zeal, and establish the reputation, of the ripest
student of Ecclesiastical History amongst us. In no other field
could he discover more ample resources for narratives of dramatic
interest ; for the delineation of characters contrasted in every
thing except their common design ; for exploring the influence of
philosophy, arts, and manners, on the fortunes of mankind ; and
for reverently tracing the footsteps of Divine Providence, moving
among the ways and works of men, imparting dignity to events
otherwise unimportant, and a deep significance to occurrences in
any other view as trivial as a border raid, or as the palaver of an
African village.

Take, for example, the life of Ulric de Hutten, a noble, a war-
rior, and a rake ; a theologian withal, and a Keformer ; and at the
same time the author, or one of the authors, of a satire to be classed
amongst the most effective which the world has ever seen. Had the
recreative powers of Walter Scott bee:i exercised on Hutten's story,
how familiar would all Christendom have been with the stern

* Any interest whicli may have attached to this essay, on its first appear-
ance, has been so effectually superseded by Mr. Ilazlitt's more recent work on
Luther, that the republication of it now, could hardly be justified, were it not
that it forms an essential part of the series to which it belongs, by exhibiting
the singular contrast between the characters of the gi-eat German Refonner,
and of the Founders of Jesuitism. Every one, however, who wishes to imder-
stand the personal character of Martin Luther, will of course study it in Mr.
Ilazlitt's book, and in the authorities to which he refers.

MARTIN LUTIII:R. 189

Baron of Francouia, and Ulrie, his petulant boy; with th(^ fat
Abbot of Fulda driving the fiery youth by penances and homilies
to range a literary vagabond on the face of the earth ; and with
the burgomaster of Frankfort, avenging by a still more formidable
punishment the pasquinade whicli had insulted his civic dignity.
How vivid would be the image of Hutten at the siege of Pavia,
soothing despair itself by writing his own epitaph ; giving combat
to five Frenchmen for the glory of Maximilian ; and receiving
from the delighted Emperor the frugal reward of a poetic crown.
Then would have succeeded the court and princely patronage of
" the Pope of Mentz," and the camp and castle of the Lord of
Sickengen, until the chequered scene closed with Ulric's death-bed
employment of producing a satire on liis stupid physician.

All things were welcome to Hutten ; arms and love, theology
and debauchery, a disputation with the Thomists, a controversy
with Erasmus, or a war to the knife with the dunces of his age.
His claim to have written the Epistolw Ohscurorum Virorum,
has, indeed, been disputed, though with little apparent reason. It
is at least clear that he asserted his own title, and that no other
candidate for that equivocal honour united in himself the wit and
learning, the audacity and licentiousness, which successively adorn
and disfigure that extraordinary work. Neither is it quite just to
exclude the satirist from the list of those who lent a material aid to
the Reformation. It is not, certainly, by the heartiest or the most
contemptuous laugh that dynasties, whether civil or religious, are
subverted ; but it would be unfair to deny altogether to Hutten
the praise of having contributed by his merciless banter to the
successes of wiser and better men than himself. To set on edce
the teeth of the Ciceronians by the Latinity of the correspondents
of the profound Ortuinus, was but a pleasant jest ; but it was
something more to confer an immortality of ridicule on the erudite
doctors who seriously apprehended, from the study of Greek and
Hebrew, the revival at once of the worship of JNIinerva, and of the
rite of circumcision. It was in strict satirical j ustice, that places
were assigned to these sages in a farce as broad as was ever drawn
by Aristophanes or Moliere ; a farce which was destitute neither of
the riotous mirth, nor even of some of that deep wisdom which it
was the pleasure of those great dramatists to exhibit beneath that
grotesque mask.

Much as Luther himself incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit, he
received with little relish these sallies of his facetious ally; whom
he not only censured for employing the language of reproach and
insult, but, harder still, described as a buffoon. It is, perhaps, well
for the dignity of the stern Reformer that the taunt was \nikiiown

190 MAETIX LUTHER.

to the object of it; for, great as he was, Hiitten would not have
spared him ; and as the quiver of few satirists had been stored with
keener or more envenomed shafts, so, few illustrious men have
exposed to such an assailant a greater number of vulnerable points.
But of these, or of the other private, habits of Luther, little is
generally recorded. History having claimed him for her oi;\n.
Biography has yielded to the pretensions of her more stately sister ;
and tlie domestic and interior life of the antagonist of Leo and of
Charles yet remains to be written.

The materials are abundant, and of the highest interest ; — a
collection of letters scarcely less voluminous than those of Voltaire;
the CoUoquia Mensalia, in some parts of more doubtful authen-
ticity, yet, on the whole, a genuine record of his conversation ; his
theological writings, a mine of egotisms of the richest ore ; and
the works of Melancthon, Seckendorf, Cochloeus, Erasmus, and
many others, who flourished in an age when, amongst learned men,
to write and to live were almost convertible terms. M. Merle
D'Aubigne's " History of the Great Eeformation of the Sixteenth
Century in Germany, Switzerland, &c.," is, in fact, an unfinished
Life of Luther, closing with his appeal from the Pope to a General
Council. It is the most elaborate of a long series of works on the
Eeformation, recently published on the Continent, by the present
inheritors of the principles and passions which first agitated Europe
in the beginning of the sixteenth century. By far the most amus-
ing of the series is the collection of Lidheriana by M. Michelet,
which we are bound to notice with esi^ecial gratitude, as affording
a greater number of valuable references than all other books of the
same kind put together. It was drawn up as a relaxation from
those severer studies on which M. Michelet's historical fame de-
pends. But the pastime of some men is worth far more than the
labours of the rest; and this compilation has every merit but that
of an appropriate title ; for an autobiography it assuredly is not, in
any of the senses, accurate or popular, of that much abused word.

Insulated in our habits and pursuits, not less than in our geogra-
phical position, it is but tardily that within the intrenchment of
our four seas, we sympathise with the intellectual movements of
the nations which dwell beyond them. ]Many, however, are the
motives, of at least equal force in these islands as in the old and
new continents of the Christian world, for diverting the eye from
the present to the past, from those who would now reform, to those
who first reformed, the churches of Europe. Or, if graver reasons
could not be found, it is beyond all dispute that the professors of
Wittemberg, three hundred years ago, formed a group as much
more entertaining than those of Oxford at present, as the con-

JIARTIX lA'TIIER. 191

test with Dr. Eck exceeded in interest the squabble with Dr.
Hampden.

The old Adam in Martin Luther (a favourite subject of his dis-
course) was a very formidable personage ; lodgxxl in a bodily frame
of surpassing vigour, solicited by vehement appetites, and alive to
all the passions by which man is armed for offensive or defensive
warfare with his fellows. In accordance with a general law, that
temj^erament was sustained by nerves which shrunk neither from
the endurance nor the infliction of necessary pain ; and by a courage
which rose at the approach of difficulty, and exulted in the presence
of danger. A rarer prodigality of nature combined witli these en-
dowments an inflexible reliance on the conclusions of his own
imderstanding, and on the energy of his own will. He came forth
on the theatre of life another Samson Agonistes, "Avith plain
heroic magnitude of mind, and celestial vigour armed ; " ready to
wage an unequal combat with the haughtiest of the giants of Grath ;
or to shake down, though it were on his own head, the columns of
the proudest of her temples.

Viewed in his belligerent a'^pect, he might have seemed a being
cut off from the common brotherhood of mankind, and bearing
from on high a commission to bring to pass the remote ends of
the Divine benevolence, by means appalling to human guilt and
to human weakness. But he was reclaimed into the bosom of the
great family of man, by bonds strong and numerous in proportion
to the vigour of the propensities they were intended to control.
There brooded over him a constitutional melancholy, sometimes
engendering sadness, but more often giving birth to dreams so wild,
that, if vivified by the imagination of Dante, they might have passed
into visions as awful and majestic as those of the Inferno. As
these mists rolled away bright gleams of sunshine took their
place ; and that robust mind yielded itself to social enjoyments,
with the hearty relish, the broad humour, and the glorious profu-
sion of sense and nonsense, which betoken the relaxations of those
who abdicate an habitual sovereignty over other men to become,
for a passing hour, their companions. Luther had other and yet
more potent spells with which to cast out the demons who haunted
him. He had ascertained and taught that the spirit of darkness
abhors sweet sounds not less then light itself ; for music (he says),
while it chases away the evil suggestions, effectually baffles the
wiles of the tempter. His lute, and hand, and voice, accompanying
his own solemn melodies, were therefore raised to repel the more
vehement aggressions of the enemy of mankind ; whose feebler
assaults he encountered by studying the politics of a rookery, by
assigning to each beautiful creation of liis flo\ver-l)eds an appro-

192 MAETIX LUTHER.

priate sylph or genius, by the comj^any of his Catherine de Bora,
and the sports of their saucy John and playful Magdalene.

The name of Catherine has long enjoyed a wide but doubtful
celebrity. She was a lady of noble birth, and was still young when
she renounced the ancient faith, her convent, and her vows, to be-
come the wife of Martin Luther. From this portentous union of a
monk and nun, the " obscure men " confidently predicted the birth
of Antichrist ; while the wits and scholars greeted their nuptials
with a thick hail-storm of epigrams, hymns, and dithyrambics,
the learned Eccius himself chiming into the loud chorus with an
elaborate epithalamium. The bridegroom met the tempest with
the spirit of another Benedict, by a counter-blast of invective and
sarcasms, which, afterwards collected under the title of " the Lion
and the Ass," jierpetuated the memory of this redoubtable contro-
versy. " My enemies," he exclaimed, " triumphed. They shouted,
lo, lo ! I was resolved to show that, old and feeble as I am, I am
not going to sound a retreat. I trust I shall do still more to spoil
their merriment."

This indiscreet, if not criminal marriage, scarcely admitted a
more serious defence. Yet Luther was not a man to do anything
which he was not prepared to justify. " He had inculcated on
others the advantages of the conjugal state, and was bound to en-
force his precepts by his example. The war of the peasants had
brought reproach on the principles of the Reformation ; and it was
incumbent on him to sustain the minds of his followers, and to bear
his testimony to evangelical truth by deeds as well as words. There-
fore, it was fit that he should marry a nun." Such is the logic of
inclination, and such the presvimption of uninterrupted success.
*' Dr. Ortuinus " himself never lent his venerable sanction to a
stranger sophistry, than that which could thus discover in one great
scandal an apology for another far more justly offensive.

Catherine was a very pretty woman, if Holbein's portrait may be
believed ; although even her personal charms have been rudely
impugned by her husband's enemies, in grave disquisitions devoted
to that momentous question. Better still, she was a faithful and
affectionate wife. But there is a no less famous Catherine to whom
she bore a strong family resemblance. She brought from her nun-
nery an anxious mind, a shrewish temper, and gi-eat volubility of
speech. Luther's arts were not those of Petruchio. With him
reverence for woman was at once a natural instinct and a point of
doctrine. He observed, that when the first woman was brought to
the first man to receive her name, he called her not wife but
mother — " Eve, the mother of all living " — a word, he saj's,
^' more eloquent than ever fell from the lips of Demosthenes."

MARTIN LUTHER. 193

So, like a wise and kind-liearted mau, wlieu his Catherine prattled
he smiled ; when she frowned, he playfully stole away her anger,
and chided her anxieties with the gentlest soothing. A happier or
a more peaceful home was not to be found in that land of domestic
tenderness. Yet the confession must be made, that, from first to
last, this love tale is nothing less than a case of ki'sa inajestas
against the sovereignty of romance. Luther and his bride did not
meet on either side with the raptures of a first affection. He had
long before sighed for the fair Ave Schonfelden, and she had not
concealed her attachment for a certain Jerome Baungartner. Ave
had bestowed herself in marriage on a physician of Prussia ; and
before Luther's irrevocable vows were pledged, Jerome received
from his great rival an intimation that he still possessed the heart,
and, with common activity, might even yet secure the hand, of
Catherine. But honest Jerome was not a man to be hurried. He
silently resigned his pretensions to his illustrious competitor, who,
even in the moment of success, had the discernment to perceive,
and the frankness to avow, that his love was not of a .flaming or
ungovernable nature.

"Nothing on this earth," said the good Dame Ursula Schweickard,
with whom Luther boarded when at school at Eisenach, "is of such
inestimable value as a woman's love." This maxim, recommended
more, perhaps, by truth than originality, dwelt long on the mind
and on the tongue of the Keformer. To have dismissed this or
any other text without a commentary would have been abhorrent
from his habits of mind ; and in one of his letters to Catherine he
thus insists on a kindred doctrine, the converse of the first. "The
greatest favoiu of God is to have a good and pious husband, to whom
you can entrust your all, your person, and even your life ; whose
children and yours are the same. Catherine, you have a pious
husband who loves you. You are an empress; tliank Grod for it."
His conjugal meditations were often in a gayer mood ; as for ex-
ample, — " If I were going to make love again I would carve an
obedient woman out of marble, in despair of finding one in any
other way." — " During the first year of our marriage she would sit
by my side while I was at my books, and, not having anything else
to say, would ask me whether, in Prussia, the Margrave and the
house steward were not always brothers." — " Did you say your
Pater, Catherine, before you began that sermon ? If you had, I
think you would have been forbidden to preach." He addresses
her sometimes as my Lord Catherine, or Catherine the Queen, the
Empress, the Doctoress ; or as Catherine the rich and noble Lady of
Zeilsdorf, where they had a cottage and a few roods of ground.
])ut as age advanced, these playful sallies were abandoned for the

194 MARTIN LUTHER.

following graver and more affectionate style. *'To the gracious
Lady Catherine Luther, my dear wife, who vexes herself overmuch,
grace and peace in the Lord ! Dear Catherine, you should read
St. John, and what is said in the Catechism of the confidence to
be reposed in Grod. Indeed you torment yourself as though he
were not Almighty, and could not produce new Doctors Martin Ly
the score, if the old doctor should drown himself in the Saal. —
There is one who watches over me more effectually than thou
canst, or than all the angels. He sits at the right hand of the
Father Almighty. Therefore be calm."

There were six children of this marriage ; and it is at once
touching^ and amusing to see with what adroitness Luther contrived
to gratify at once his tenderness as a father and his taste as a
theologian. When the brightening eye of one of the urchins
round his table confessed the allurements of a downy peach, it
was " the image of a soul rejoicing in hope." Over an infant
pressed to his mother's bosom, thus moralised the severe but
affectionate Keformer : " That babe and everything else which
belongs to us is hated by the Pope, by Duke Greorge, by their
adherents, and by all the devils. Yet, dear little fellow, he troubles
himself not a whit for all these powerful enemies ; he gaily sucks
the breast, looks round him with a loud laugh, and lets them storm
as they like." There were darker seasons when even theology and
polemics give way to the more powerful voice of nature; nor,
indeed, has the deepest wisdom anything to add to his lamentation
over the bier of his daughter Magdalene. " Such is the power of
natural affection, that I cannot endure this without tears and
groans, or rather an utter deadness of heart. At the bottom of
my soul are engraven her looks, her words, her gestures, as I gazed
at her in her lifetime and on her deathbed. My dutiful, my
gentle daughter ! even the death of Christ (and what are all deaths
compared to his ?) cannot tear me from this thought as it should.
She was playful, lovely, and full of love ! "

Whatever others may think of these nursery tales, we have
certain reasons of our own for suspecting that there is not, on
either side of the Tweed, a Papa who will not read the following
letter, sent by Luther to his eldest boy during the Diet of Augs-
burg, with more interest than any or all of the five " Confessions "
presented to the Emperor on that memorable occasion.

" Grace and peace be with thee, my dear little boy ! I rejoice to
find that you are attentive to your lessons and 5^om- prayers. Per-
severe, my child, and when I come home I will bring you some
pretty fairing. I know of a beautiful garden, full of children in
golden dresses, who run about under the trees, eating apples, pears.

MARTIX LUTIIEK. l;),5

cherries, nuts, and plums. They jump and sing and arc full of
glee, and they have pretty little horses with golden bridles and
silver saddles. As I went by this garden I asked the owner of it
who those children were, and he told me that they were the good
children, who loved to say their prayers, and to learn their lessons,
and who fear God. Then I said to him. Dear sir, I have a boy,
little John Luther ; may not he too come to this garden, to eat
these beautiful apples and pears, to ride these pretty little horses,
and to play with the other children? And the man said, If he is
very good, if he says his prayers, and learns his lessons cheerfully,
he may come, and he may bring with him little Philip and little
James. Here they will find fifes and drums and other nice instru-
ments to play upon, and they shall dance and shoot with little
crossbows. Then the man showed me in the midst of the garden
a beautiful meadow to dance in. But all this happened in the
morning before the children had dined ; so I could not stay till
the beginning of the dance, but I said to the man, I will go and
write to my dear little John, and teach him to be good, to say his
prayers, and learn his lessons, that he may come to this garden.
But he has an Aunt Magdalene, whom he loves very much — may
he bring her with him ? The man said, Yes, tell him that they
may come together. Be good therefore, dear child, and tell Pliilip
and James the same, that you may all come and play in this beau-
tiful garden. I commit you to the care of God. Give my love to
your Aunt Magdalene, and kiss her for me. From your Papa who
loves you, — Martin Luther."

If it be not a sufficient apology for the quotation of this fatherly
epistle to say, that it is the talk of Martin Luther, a weightier
defence may be drawn from the remark that it illustrates one of
his most serious opinions. The views commonly received amongst
Christians, of the nature of the happiness reserved in another state
of being, for the obedient and faithful in this life, he regarded, if
not as erroneous, yet as resting on no sufficient foundation, and as
ill adapted to " allure to brighter worlds." He thought that the
enjoyments of Heaven had been refined away to such a point of
evanescent spirituality as to deprive them of their necessary at-
traction ; and the allegory invented for the delight of little John,
was but the adaptation to the thoughts of a child of a doctrine
which he was accustomed to inculcate on others, under imagery
more elevated than that of drums, crossbows, and golden bridles.

There is but one step from the nursery to the servant?-' hall ;
and they who have borne with the parental counsels to little John,
may endure the following letter respecting an aged namesake of his
who was about to (juit Luther's family : —

VJ6 MARTIX LUTHEE.

" We must dismiss old John with honour. We know that he has
always served us faithfully and zealously, and as became a Christian
servant. WTiat have we not given to vagabonds and thankless
students who have made a bad use of our money ? So we will not
be niggardly to so worthy a servant, on whom our money will be
bestowed in a manner pleasing to Grod. You need not remind me
that we are not rich. I would gladly give him ten florins if I had
them, but do not let it be less than five. He is not able to do
much for himself. Pray help him in any other way you can. Think
how this money can be raised. There is a silver cup which might
be pawned. Sure I am that Gfod will not desert us. Adieu."

Luther's pleasures were as simjjle as his domestic affections were
pure. He wrote metrical versions of the Psalms, so well described
by Mr. Hallam, as holding a middle place between the doggerel of
Sternhold and Hopkins, and the meretricious ornaments of the later
versifiers of the Songs of David. He wedded to them music of his
own, to which the most obtuse ear cannot listen without emotion.
The greatest of the sons of Grermany was, in this respect, a true
child of that vocal land ; for such was his enthusiasm for the art,
that he assigned to it a place second only to that of theology itself.
He was also an ardent lover of painting, and yielded to Albert
Durer the homage which he denied to Cajetan and Erasmus. His
are among the earliest works embellished by the aid of the en-
graver. With the birds of his native country he had established a
strict intimacy, watching, smiling, and moralising over their habits.
" That little fellow," he said of a bird going to roost, " has chosen
his shelter, and is quietly rocking himself to sleep without a care
for to-morrow's lodging, calmly holding by his little twig, and
leaving Gfod to think for him." The following parable, in a letter
to Spalatin, is in a more ambitious strain : - —

" You are going to Augsburg without having taken the auspices,
and ignorant when you will be allowed to begin. I, on the other
hand, am in the midst of the Comitia, in the presence of illustrious
sovereigns, kings, dukes, grandees, and nobles, who are solemnly
debating affairs of state, and making the air ring with their de-
liberations and decrees. Instead of imprisoning themselves in
those royal caverns which you call palaces, they hold their assem-
blies in the sunshine, with the arch of Heaven for their tent, sub-
stituting for costly tapestries the foliage of trees, where they enjoy
their liberty. Instead of confining themselves in parks and plea-
sure grounds, they range over the earth to its utmost limits. They
detest the stupid luxuries of silk and embroidery, but all dress in
the same colour, and put on very much the same looks. To say
the truth, they all wear black, and all sing one tune. It is a song

MARTIN LUTHER. 197

formed of a single note, with no variation but what is produced by
the pleasing contrast of young and old voices. I have seen and
heard nothing of their emperor. They have a supreme contempt
for the quadruped employed by our gentry, having a much better
method for setting the heaviest artillery at defiance. As far as I
have been able to understand their resolutions by the aid of an in-
terpreter, they have unanimously determined to wage war throng] i
the whole year against the wheat, oats, and barley, and the best
corn and fruits of every kind. There is reason to fear that victory
will attend them everywhere ; for they are a skilful and crafty race
of warriors, equally expert in collecting booty by violence and
by surprise. It has afforded me great pleasure to attend their
assemblies as an idle looker-on. The hope I cherish of the tri-
umphs of their valour over the wheat and barley, and every other
enemy, renders me the sincere and faithful friend of these patres
jpatrice, these saviours of the commonwealth. If I could serve
them by a wish, I would implore their deliverance from their pre-
sent ugly name of Crows. This is nonsense, but there is some
seriousness in it. It is a jest which helps me to drive away
painful thoughts."

The love of fables, which Lutlier thus indulged at one of the
most eventful eras of his life, was amongst his favourite amuse-
ments, ^sop lay on the same table with the book of Psalms, and
the two translations proceeded alternately. Except the Bible, he
declared that he knew no better book ; and pronounced it not to
be the work of any single author, but the fruit of the labours of the
greatest minds in all ages. It supplied him with endless jests and
allusions; as, for example, — "The dog in charge of the butcher's
tray, unable to defend it from the avidity of other curs, said, —
' Well, then, I may as well have my share of the meat,' and fell to
accordingly ; which is precisely what the Emperor is doing with
the property of the church."

Few really great men, indeed, have hazarded a larger number of
jokes in the midst of a circle of note-taking associates. They have
left on record the following amidst many other memorabilia : —
" God made the Priest. The Devil set about an imitation, T)ut he
made the tonsure too large, and produced a JMonk." A cup com-
posed of five hoops or rings of glass of different colours cu-culated
at his table. Eisleben, an Antinomian, was of the. party. Luther
pledged him in the following words : — " Within the second of
these rings He the Ten Commandments ; within the next ring the
Creed ; then comes the Paternoster ; the Catechism lies at the
bottom." So saying, he drank it off. When Eisleben's turn came,
he emptied the cup only down to the beginning of the second rmg.

o 3

198 MARTIN LUTHER.

"Ah," said Luther, "I knew that he wouhl stick at the Commanfl-
ments, and therefore would not reach the Creed, the Lord's Prayer,
or the Catechism."

It must be confessed, however, that Luther's pleasantries are less
remarkable for wit or delicacy than for the union of strong sense
and honest merriment. They were the careless, though not incon-
siderate sport of a free-spoken man, in a circle where religion and
modesty, protected by an inbred reverence, did not seek the doubt-
ful defence of conventional outworks. But pensive thoughts were
the more habitual food of his overburdened mind. Neither social
enjoyments, nor the tenderness of domestic life, could ever long
repel the melancholy which brooded over him. It breaks out in
every part of his correspondence, and tinges all his recorded con-
versation. " Because," he says, " my manner is sometimes gay and
joyous, many think that I am always treading on roses. Grod
knows what is in my heart." " There is nothing in this life which
gives me pleasure ; I am tired of it. May the Lord come quickly
and take me hence. Let him come to his final judgment — I
await the blow. Let him hurl his thunders that I may be at rest."
" Forty years more life ! I would not purchase Paradise at such a
price." Yet with this lassitude of the world, his contemplations of
death were solemn even to sadness. " How gloriously," said his
friend, Dr. Jonas, " does St. Paul speak of his own death. I cannot
enter into this." " It apj^ears to me," replied Luther, *' that when
meditating on that subject, even St. Paul himself could not have
felt all the energy which possessed him when he wrote. I preach,
write, and talk about dying, with a greater firmness than I really
possess, or than others ascribe to me." In common with all men
of this temperament, he was profuse in extolling the opposite dis-
position. " The birds," he says, " must fly over our heads, but why
allow them to roost in our hair ? " " Gaiety and a light heart, in
all virtue and decorum, are the best medicine for the young, or
rather for all. I, who have passed my life in dejection and gloomy
thoughts, now catch at enjoyment, come from what quarter it may,
and even seek for it. Criminal pleasure, indeed, comes from Satan,
but that which we find in the society of good and pious men is ap-
proved by Grod. Kide, hunt with your friends, amuse yourself in
their company. Solitude and melancholy are poison. They are
deadly to all, but, above all, to the young."

The sombre character of Luther's mind cannot be correctly
understood by those who are wholly ignorant of the legendary
traditions of his native land. This remark is made and illustrated
by M. Henry Heine, with that curious knowledge of such lore as
none but a denizen of Germany could acquire. In the mines of

l^rARTIN LUTIIEIJ. 19!)

Mansfeld, at Eisenach, and at Erfurth, the visible and the invisible
worlds were almost equally populous ; and the training of youth
was not merely a discipline for the future offices of life, but an
initiation into mysteries as impressive, though not (piite so sul)-
lime, as those of Eleusis. The unearthly inhabitants of every land
are near of kin to the human cultivators of the soil. The Kill-
kropfif of Saxony differed from a fairy or a hamadryad as a Saxon
differs from a Frenchman or a Greek ; the thin essences by which
these spiritual bodies are sustained being distilled according to
their various national tastes, from the dews of Hymettus, the light
wines of Provence, and the strong beer of Germany. At the fire-
side around which Luther's family drew, in his childliood, there
gathered a race of imps who may be considered as the presiding
genii of the turnspit and the stable; — witches expert in the riglit
use of the broomstick, but incapable of j:)erverting it into a loco-
motive engine; homely in gait, coarse in feature, sordid in tlieir
habits, with canine appetites and superlumian powers, and, for tlie
most part, eaten up with misanthropy. When, in liis twentieth
year, Luther for the first time opened the Bible, and read there
of spiritual agents, the inveterate enemies of our race, these spectra
were projected on a mind over which such legends had already
exercised an indestructible influence. Satan and his angels crowded
upon his imagination, neither as shapeless presences casting their
gloomy shadows on the soul, nor as mysterious impersonations of
her foul and cruel desires, nor as warriors engaged with the powers
of light, and love, and holiness, in the silent motionless war of
antagonistic energies. Luther's devils were a set of athletic, cross-
grained, ill-conditioned wretches, with vile shapes and fiendish
faces ; who, like the monsters of Dame Ursula's kitclien, gave
buffet for buffet, hate for hate, and joke for joke. His Satan was
not only something less than archangel ruined, but was quite
below the society of that Prince of Darkness, whom Mad Tom in
Lear declares to have been a gentleman. Possessing a sensitive
rather than a creative imagination, Luther transferred the visionary
lore, drawn from these humble sources, to the machinery of the
great epic of revelation, with but little change or embellishment ;
and thus contrived to reduce to the level of very vulgar j^rose some
of the noblest conceptions of inspired poetr}^

At the Castle of Wartburg — his Patmos, — where he dwelt the
willing prisoner of his friendly sovereign, the Keformer chanced to
have a plate of nuts at his supper table. How many of them he
swallowed, there is, unfortunately, no Eoswell to tell ; yet, perhaps,
not a few — for, as he slept, the nvits, animated as it would seem
by the demon of the pantry, executed a sort of waltz, knocking

o 4

200 ^lAKTIN LUTHER.

against each other, and against the skimberer's bedstead; when,
lo ! the staircase became possessed bj' a hundred barrels rolling up
and- down, under the guidance, probably, of the imp of the spigot.
Yet all approach to Luther's room was barred by chains and by an
iron door — vain entrenchments against Satan ! He arose, solemnly
defied the fiend, repeated the eighth Psalm, and resigned himself
to sleep. Another visit from the same fearful adversary at Nurem-
burg led to the opposite result. The Keformer flew from his bed
to seek refuge in society.

Once upon a time, Carlostadt, the Sacranientarian, being in the
pulpit, saw a tall man enter the church, and take his seat by one
of the burgesses of the town. The intruder then retired, betook
himself to the preacher's house, and exhibited frightful symptoms
of a disposition to break all the bones of his child. Thinking
better of it, however, he left with the boy a message for Carlostadt,
that he might be looked for again in three days. It is needless to
add that, on the third day, there was an end of the poor preacher,
and of his attacks on Luther and Consubstantiation.

In the cloisters of Wittemburg, Luther himself heard that pecu-
liar noise which attests the devil's presence. It came from behind
a stove, resembling, for all the world, the sound of throwing a fag-
got on the fire. This sound, however, is not invariable. An old
priest, in the attitude of prayer, heard Satan behind him, grunting
like a whole herd of swine. " Ah ! ah ! master devil," said the
priest, " you have your deserts. There was a time when you were
a beautiful angel, and there you are turned into a rascally hog!"
The priest's devotions proceeded without further disturbance ; " for,"
observed Luther, " there is nothing the devil can bear so little as
contempt." He once saw and even touched a KillkropfF or suppo-
sititious child. This was at Dessau. The deviling ^ — for it had
no other parent than Satan himself — was about twelve years old,
and looked exactly like an}'^ other boy. But the unlucky brat
could do nothing but eat. He consumed as much food as four
ploughmen. When things went ill in the house, his laugh was to
be heard all over it. If matters went smoothly, there was no peace
for his screaming. liuther declares (of course sportively) that he
recommended the Elector to have this scapegrace thrown into the
Moldau, as it was a mere lump of flesh without a soul.

His visions sometimes assumed a deeper significance, if not a
loftier aspect. In the year 1496, a frightful monster was discover-
ed in the Tiber. It had the head of an ass, an emblem of the
Pope ; for the Church being a spiritual body incapable of a head
the Pope, who had audaciously assumed that character, was fitly
represented under this asinine figure. The right hand resembled

MARTIN LUTHER. 201

an clej)]iant's foot, typifying the Papal tjranny over tlie weak and
timid. The right foot was like an ox's hoof, shadowing forth the
spiritual oppression exercised by doctors, confessors, nuns, monks,
and scholastic tlieologians; while the left foot, armed mth griffin's
claws, could mean nothing else than the various ministers of the
Pope's civil authority. How far Luther believed in the existence
of tlie monster whose mysterious signification he thus interprets, it
would not be easy to decide. Yet it is difficult to read his exposi-
tion, and to suppose it a mere pleasantry.

So constantly was he haunted with this midnight crew of devils,
as to have raised a serious doubt of his sanity, which even I\Ir.
Hallam does not entii'ely discountenance. Yet the hypothesis is
surely gratuitous. Intense study deranging the digestive organs of
a man, whose bodily coiistitution required vigorous exercise, and
whose mind had been early stored with such dreams as we have
mentioned, sufficiently explains the restless importunity of tlie
goblins amongst whom he lived. It is easier for a man to be in
advance of his age on any subject than on this. It may be doubted
whether the nerves of Seneca or Pliny would have been equal to a
solitary evening walk by the lake Avernus. What wonder, then, if
Martin Luther was convinced that suicides fall not by their own
hands, but by those of diabolical emissaries, who really adjust the
cord or point the knife — that particular spots, as, for example, the
pool near the summit of the Mons Pilatus, were desecrated to
Satan — that the wailings of his victims are to be heard in the
bowlings of the night wind — or that the throwing a stone into
a pond in his own neighbourhood, immediately provoked such
struggles of the evil spirit imprisoned below the water, as shook
the neighbouring country like an earthquake ?

The mental phantasmagoria of so illustrious a man are an
exhibition to which no one who reveres his name would needlessly
direct an unfriendly or an idle gaze. But the infirmities of our
nature often afford the best measure of its strength. To estimate
the power by which temptation is overcome, you must ascertain
the force of the propensities to which it is addressed. Amongst
the elements of Luther's character was an awe, verging towards
idolatry, for all things, whether in the works of God or in the
institutions of man, which can be regarded as depositories of the
Divine power, or as delegates of the Divine authority. From
pantheism, the disease of imaginations at once devout and un-
hallowed, he was preserved in youth by his respect for the doctrines
of the Church ; and, in later life, by his absolute surrender of his
own judgment to the text of the sacred canon. But as far as a
pantheistic habit of thought and feeling can consist witli the most

202 MARTIN LUTHER.

unqualified belief in the incommunicable Unity of the Divine
nature, such thoughts and feelings were habitual to him.

The same spirit which solemnly acknowledged the existence,
whilst it abhorred the use, of the high faculties which, according to
the popular faith, the foul fiends of earth, and air, and water, at
once enjoy and pervert, contemplated with almost prostrate rever-
ence the majesty and the hereditary glories of Eome; and the
apostolical succession of her pontiff, with kings and emperors for
his tributaries, the Catholic hierarchy as his vicegerents, and the
human mind his universal empire. To brave the vengeance of
such a dynasty, wielding the mysterious keys which close the gates
of hell and open the portals of heaven, long appeared to Luther an
impious audacity, of which nothing less than woe, eternal and un-
utterable, would be the sm'e and appropriate penalty. For a man
of his temperament to hush these superstitious terrors, and abjure
the golden idol to which the adoring eyes of all nations, kindred,
and languages were directed, was a self-conquest, such as none but
the most heroic minds can achieve ; and to which even they are
unequal, unless sustained by an invisible but omnipotent arm.
For no error can be more extravagant than that which would
reduce Martin Luther to the rank of a coarse spiritual demagogue.
The deep self-distrust which, for ten successive years, postponed his
irreconcilable war with Rome, clung to him to the last ; nor was
he ever unconscious of the dazzling splendour of the pageantry
which his own hand had contributed so largely to overthrow.
There is no alloy of affectation in the following avowal, taken from
one of his letters to Erasmus :

" You must, indeed, feel yourself in some measure awed in the
presence of a succession of learned men, and by the consent of so
many ages, during which flourished scholars so conversant in sacred
literature, and martyrs illustrious by so many miracles. To all
this must be added the more modern theologians, universities,
bishops, and popes. On their side are arrayed learning, genius,
numbers, dignity, station, power, sanctity, miracles, and what not.
On mine Wycliff and Laurentius Valla, and, though you forget to
mention him, Augustine also. Then comes Luther, a mean man,
born but yesterday, supported only by a few friends, who have
neither learning, nor genius, nor greatness, nor sanctity, nor mir-
acles. Put them altogether, and they have not wit enough to cure
a spavined horse. What are they ? What the wolf said of the
nightingale — a voice, and nothing else. I confess it is with reason
you pause in such a presence as this. For ten years together I
hesitated myself. Could I believe that this Troy, which had
triumphed over so many assaults, would fall at last ? I call Gfod

JfARTIN LUTHER. 203

to witness that I should have persisted in my fears, and shoidd
have hesitated until now, if trutli had not compelled me to speak.
You may well believe that my heart is not rock ; and if it were,
yet so many are the waves and storms which have beaten upon it,
that it must have yielded when the whole weight of this authority
came thundering on my head, like a deluge ready to overwhelm
me."

The same feelings were expressed at a later time in the following
words : —

" I daily perceive how difficult it is to overcome long-cherished
scruples. Oh, what pain has it cost me, though the Scripture is
on my side, to defend myself to my own heart for having dared
singly to resist the Pope, and to denounce him as Antichrist!
What have been the afflictions of my bosom ! How often, in the
bitterness of my soul, have I pressed myself with the Papist's
argument, — Art thou alone wise? are all others in error? have
they been mistaken for so long a time ? What if you are yourself
mistaken, and are dragging with you so many souls into eternal
condemnation? Thus did I reason with myself, till Jesus Christ,
by his own infallible word, tranquillised my heart, and sustained it
against this argument, as a reef of rocks thrown up against the
waves laughs at all their fury."

He who thus acknowledged the influence, while he defied the
despotism, of human authority, was self-annihilated in the pre-
sence of his Maker. " I have learned," he says, ' from the Holy
Scriptures, that it is a perilous and a fearful thing to sjjeak in the
House of Grod; to address those who will appear in judgment
against us, when at the last day we shall be found in His presence ;
when the gaze of the angels shall be directed to us, when every
creature shall behold the Divine Word, and shall listen till He
speaks. Truly, when I think of this, I have no wish but to be
silent, and to cancel all that I have written. It is a fearful thing
to be called to render to God an account of every idle word."

Philip Melancthon occasionally endeavoured, by affectionate ap-
plause, to sustain and encourage the mind whicli was thus bowed
down under the sense of unworthiness. But the praise, even of
the chosen friend of his bosom, found no echo there. He rejected
it, kindly indeed, but with a rebuke so earnest and passionate, as
to show that the commendations of him whom he loved and valued
most were unwelcome. They served but to deepen the depressing
consciousness of ill desert, inseparable from his lofty conceptions of
the duties which had been assigned to him.

In Luther, as in other men, the stern and heroic virtues de-
manded for their support that profound lowliness which niiglit at

204 MARTIN LUTHEE.

first appear the most opposed to tlieir development. The eye which
often turns inward witli self-complacency, or habitually looks round
for admiration, is never long or steadfastly fixed on any more
elevated object. It is permitted to no man at once to court the
applauses of the world, and to challenge a place amongst the
generous and devoted benefactors of his species. The enervating
spell of vanity, so fatal to many a noble intellect, exercised no per-
ceptible control over Martin Luther. Though conscious of the
rare endowments he had received from Providence (of which that
very consciousness was not the least important), the secret of his
strength lay in the heartfelt persuasion, that his superiority to
other men gave him no title to their commendations, and in his
abiding sense of the little value of such praises. The growth of
his social affections was unimpeded by self-regarding thoughts ; and
he could endure the frowns and even the coldness of those whose
approving smiles he judged himself unworthy to receive, and did
not much care to win.

His was not that feeble benevolence which leans for support, or
depends for'existence, on the sympathy of those for whom it la-
bom-s. Eeproofs, sharp, unsparing, and pitiless, were familiar to
his tongue and to his pen. Such a censure he had directed to the
Archbishop of Mentz, which Spalatin, in the name of their common
friend and sovereign, the Elector Frederic, implored him to sup-
j)ress. " No," replied Luther, " in defence of the fold of Christ, I
will oppose to the utmost of my power this ravening wolf, as I have
resisted others. I send you my book, which was ready before your
letter reached me. It has not induced me to alter a word. The
question is decided, I cannot heed your objections." They were
such, however, as most men would have thought reasonable enough.
Here are some of the words of which neither friend nor sovereign
could dissuade the publication. "Did you imagine that Luther
was dead ? Believe it not. He lives under the protection of that
God who has already humbled the Pope, and is ready to begin with
the Archbishop of Mentz a game for which few are prepared."

To the severe admonition which followed, the princely prelate
answered in his own person, in terms of the most humble deference,
leaving to Capito, his minister, the ticklish office of remonstrating
against the rigour with which the lash had been applied. But
neither soothing nor menaces could abate Luther's confidence in
his cause and in himself. " Christianity," he replies, " is open and
honest. It sees things as they are, and proclaims them as they
are. I am for tearing off every mask, for managing nothing, for
extenuating nothing, for shutting the eyes to nothing, that truth

MARTIN LUTIIEK. 203

may be trauspareut aud unadulterated, and ma^^ have a free cour.se.
Think you that Luther is a man who is content to shut his eyes if
you can hut hdl him l)y a few cajoleries?" "Expect everythini^
from my affection ; but reverence, nay tremble for the faith."

Greorge, Duke of Saxony, the near kinsman of Frederic, and one
of the most determined enemies of the Keformation, not selduiu
provoked and encountered the same resolute defiance. " Siiould
God call me to Wittemburg, I would go there, though it should
rain Duke Georges for nine days together, and each new Duke
should be nine times more furious than this." " Though exposed
daily to death in the midst of my enemies, and without any human
resource, I never in my life despised anything so heartily as these
stupid threats of Duke George, and his associates in folly. I write
in the morning, fasting, with my heart filled with holy confidence.
Christ lives and reigns, and I too shall live aud reign."

Here is a more comprehensive denunciation of the futility of the
attempts made to arrest his course.

" To the language of the Fathers of men, of angels, and of devils,
I oppose neither antiquity nor numbers, but the single word of the
Eternal Majesty, even that gospel which they are themselves com-
pelled to acknowledge. Here is my hold, my stand, my restino--
place, my glory, and my triumph. Hence I assault Popes,
Thomists, Henrycists, Sophists, and all the gates of hell. I little
heed the words of men, whatever may have been their sanctity, nor
am I anxious about tradition or doubtful customs. The Word of God
is above all. If the Divine Majesty be on my side, what care I for
the rest, though a thousand Augustines, and a thousand Cyprians,
and a thousand such churches as those of Henr}^ should rise against
me ? God can neither err nor deceive. Augustine, Cyprian, and
all the saints, can err, and have erred."

" At Leipsic, at Augsburg, and at Worms, my spirit was as free
as a flower of the field." " He whom God moves to speak, expresses
himself openly and freely, careless v/hether he is alone or has others
on his side. So spake Jeremiah, and I may boast of having done
the same. God has not for the last thousand years bestowed on
any bishop such great gifts as on me, and it is right that I should
extol his gifts. Truly, I am indignant with myself that I do not
heartily rejoice and give thanks. Now and then I raise a faint
hymn of thanksgiving, and feebly praise Him. Well ! live or die,
Domini sumus. You may take the word eitiier in the genitive or
the nominative case. Therefore, Sir Doctor, be firm."

This buoyant spirit sometimes expressed itself in more pilliy
phrase. When he first wrote against indulgences. Dr. Jerome

20G MARTIN LUTHER.

Schurf said ^ to him, "What are you about? — tliey won't allow
it." " What if they must allow it ? " was the peremptory
answer.

The preceding passages, while they illustrate his indestructible
confidence in himself as the minister, and in his cause as the be-
hest, of Heaven, are redolent of that unseemly violence and
asperity which are attested at once by the regrets of his friends,
the reproaches of his enemies, and his own acknowledgments.
So fierce, indeed, and contumelious and withering is his invective,
as to suggest the theory, that, in her successive transmigrations,
the same fiery soul which in one age breathed " the Divine
Philippics," and in another, the " Letters on a Kegicide Peace,"
was lodged in the sixteenth century under the cowl of an Augus-
tinian monk ; retaining her indomitable energy of abuse, though
condemned to a temporary divorce from her inspiring genius.
Yet what she lost in eloquence in her transit from the Roman to
the Irishman, this upbraiding spii-it more than retrieved in generous
and philanthropic ardour, while she dwelt in the bosom of the
Saxon. Luther's rage, — for it is nothing less — his scurrilities,
for they are no better — are at least the genuine language of
passion, excited by a deep abhorrence of imposture, tyranny, and
wrong. Through the ebullitions of his wrath may be discovered
his lofty self-esteem, but not a single movement of puerile self-
applause ; his cordial scorn for fools and their folly, but not
one heartless sarcasm ; his burning indignation against oppressors,
whether spiritual or secular, unclouded by so much as a passing
shade of malignity. The torrent of emotion is headlong, but
never turbulent. 'W'Tien we are least able to sympathise with his
irascible feelings, it is also least in our power to refuse our admir-
ation to a mind which, when thus torn up to its lowest depths,
discloses no trace of envy, selfishness, or revenge, or of any still
baser inmate. His mission from on high may be disjDuted, but
hardly his own belief in it. In that persuasion, his thoughts often
reverted to the Prophet of Israel mocking the idolatrous priests of
Baal, and menacing their still more guilty King ; and if the mantle
of Elijah might have been borne with a more imposing majesty, it
could not have fallen on one better prepared to pour contempt
on the proudest enemies of truth, or to brave their utmost resent-
ment.

Is it paradoxical to ascribe Luther's boisterous invective to his
inherent reverence for all those persons and institutions, in favour
of which wisdom, power, and rightful dominion are involuntarily
presumed ? He lived under the control of an imagination suscejj-
tible, though nut creative — of that passive mental sense to which

MARTIN LUTHER. ^207

it belongs to emLrace, rather than to originate — to fix and deejicu
our more serious impressions, rather than to minister to tlie under-
standing in the search or tlie embellishment of truth. This pro-
pensity, the basis of religion itself in some, of loyalty in others, and
of superstition perhaps in all, prepares the feeble for a willing ser-
vitude ; and furnishes despotism with zealous instruments in men
of stronger nerves and stouter hearts. It steeled Dominic and
Loyola for their relentless tasks, and might have raised St. Martin
of Wittemburg to the honours of canonisation ; if, in designating
him for his arduous office, Providence had not controlled the undue
sensibility of Luther's mind, by imparting to him a brother's love
for all the humbler members of the family of man, and a filial fear
of Grod, stronger even than his reverence for the powers and prin-
cipalities of this sublunary world. Between his religious affections
and his homage for the idols of his imagination, he was agitated ])y
a ceaseless conflict. The nice adjustment of such a balance ill
suited his impatient and irritable temper ; and he assaulted the
objects of his early respect with an impetuosity which betrays his
secret dread of those formidable antagonists (so he esteemed them)
of Grod and of mankind. He could not trust himself to be moderate.
The restraints of education, habit, and natural disposition, could be
overborne only by the excitement which he courted and indulged.
His long-cherished veneration for those who tread upon the high
places of the earth, lent to his warfj^ire with them all the energy of
self-denial, quickened by the anxiety of self-distrust. He scourged
his lordly adversaries in the spirit of a flagellant taming his own
rebellious flesh. His youthful devotion for " the solemn plausi-
bilities of life," like all other affections obstinately repelled and
mortified, reversed its original tendency, and gave redoubled
fervour to the zeal with which he denounced their vanity and
resisted their usurpation.

If these indignant contumelies offended the gentle, the learned,
and the wise, they sustained the courage and won the confidence
of the multitude. The voice which commands in a tempest
must battle with the roar of the elements. In his own appre-
hension at least, Luther's soul was among lions — the Princes
of Grermany and their ministers ; Henry the Eighth and Edward
Lee, his chaplain ; the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists ; the Uni-
versities of Cologne and Louvain ; Charles and Leo ; Adrian and
Clement ; Papists, Jurists, and Aristotelians ; and, above all, the
devils whom his creeds assigned to each of these formidable oppo-
nents as so many inspiring or ministering spirits. However fierce
and indefensible may be his occasional style, history presents no
more sulilime picturj than that of the humble monk triuni[)hiug

208 MARTIN LUTHER.

over such adversaries, in the invincible power of a faith before
which the present and the visible disappeared, to make way for
things unseen, eternal, and remote. One brave spirit encountered
and subdued a hostile world. An intellect of no gigantic propor-
tions, seconded by learning of no marvellous compass, and gifted
with no rare or exquisite abilities, but invincible in decision and
constancy of purpose, advanced to the accomplishment of one great
design, with a continually increasing momentinn, before which all
feebler minds retired, and all opposition was dissipated. The
majesty of the contest, and the splendour of the results, may, per-
haps, even in our fastidious and delicate age, be received as an
apology for such reproofs as the following to the Eoyal " Defender
of the Faith."

" There is much royal ignorance in this volume, but there is
also much virulence and falsehood, which belongs to Lee the
editor. In the cause of Christ I have trampled under foot the idol
of the Roman abomination which had usurped the place of Grod
and the dominion of sovereigns and of the world. Who, then, is
this Henry, this new Thomist, this disciple of the monster, that I
should dread his blas2)hemies and his fury ? Truly he is the De-
fender of the Church ! Yes, of that Church of his which he thus
extols — of that prostitute who is clothed in purple, drunk with
her debaucheries — of that mother of fornications. Christ is my
leader. I will strike with the same blow that Church and the
defender with whom she has formed this strict union. They have
challenged me to war. Well, they shall have war. They have
scorned the peace I offered them. Well, they shall have no more
peace. It shall be seen which will first be weary — the Pope or
Luther." - — " The world is gone mad. There are the Hungarians,
assuming the character of defenders of God himself. They
pray in their litanies, ut nos defensores tiios exaudire digneris —
why do not some of our princes take on them the protection of
Jesus Christ, others that of the Holy Spirit? Then, indeed, the
Divine Trinity would be well guarded."

The Briefs of Pope Adrian are thus disposed of : — " It is morti-
fying to be obliged to give such good Grerman in answer to this
wretched kitchen Latin. But it is the pleasure of Grod to confound
anti-Christ in everything — to leave him neither literature nor
language. They say that he has gone mad, and fallen into dotage.
It is a shame to address us Germans in such Latin as this, and to
send to sensible people such a clumsy and absurd interpretation of
Scripture."

The Bulls of Pope Clement fare no better. " The Pope tells us
iu his answer that he is willing to throw open the golden doors. It

MARTIN LUTHER. 809

is long since we opened all our doors in Gorniany. 15ut tliese
Italian Scaramouches have never restored a farthing of the gain
they have made by tlieir indulgences, dispensations, and other
diabolical inventions. Good Pope Clement, all your clemency and
gentleness won't pass here. We'll buy no more indulgences.
Golden doors and bulls, get ye home again. Look to the Italians
for payment. They who know ye will buy you no more. Thanks
be to God, we know that they who possess and believe the Gospel,
enjoy an uninterrupted jubilee. Excellent Pope, what care we for
your bulls ? You may save your seals and your parchment. They
are in bad odour now-a-days." — " Let them accuse me of too much
violence. I care not. Hereafter be it my glory that men shall
tell how I inveighed and raged against the Papists. For the last
ten years have I been humbling myself, and addressing them in
none but respectful language. \Miat has been tlie consequence of
all this submission ? To make bad worse. These people are but
the more furious. Well, since they are incorrigible, as it is vain to
hope to shake their infernal purposes by kindness, I will break
with them, I will pursue them," &c. — " Such is my contempt for
these Satans, that were I not confined here, I would go straight to
Eome, in spite of the devil and all these furies. But," he continues,
in a more playful mood, " I must have patience with the Pope, with
my boarders, my servants, with Catherine de Bora, and with every-
body else. In short, I live a life of patience."

At the risk of unduly multiplying these quotations, we must add
another, which has been quoted triumphantly by his enemies. It
is his answer to the charge of mistranslating the Bible. " The ears
of the Papists are too long with their hi ! ha ! — they are unable to
criticise a translation from Latin into German. Tell them that Dr.
Martin Luther chooses that it shall be so ; and that a Papist and a
jackass are the same."

We should reprint no small portion of Luther's works before we
exhausted the examples which might be drawn from them, of the
uproar with which he assailed his antagonists. To the reproaches
which this violence drew on him, he rarely condescended to reply.
But to his best and most powerful friend, the Elector Frederic, he
makes a defence, in which there is some truth and more eloquence.
" They say that these books of mine are too keen and cutting.
They are right ; I never meant them to be soft and gentle. My
only regret is, that they cut no deeper. Think of the violence of
my enemies, and you must confess tliat I have been too forbearing."
— " All the world exclaims against me, vociferating the most hate-
ful calumnies ; and if, in my return, I, poor man, raise my voice,
then nobody has been vehement but Luther. In line, \vhatevcr I

210 MAETIN LUTHER.

do or say must be wrong, even should I raise the dead. Whatever
they do must be right, even should they deluge Germany with
tears and blood." In his more familiar discourse, he gave another,
and perhaps a more accurate account of the real motives of his
impetuosity. He purposely fanned the flame of an indignation
which he thought virtuous, because the origin of it was so. " I
never," he said, " write or speak so well as when I am in a
passion." He found anger an effectual, and at last a necessary
stimulant, and indulged in a liberal or rather in an intemperate
use of it.

The tempestuous phase of Luther's mind Avas not, however,
permanent. The wane of it may be traced in his later writings ;
and the cause may be readily assigned. The liberator of the human
mind was soon to discover that the powers he had set free were not
subject to his control. The Iconoclasts, Anabaptists, and other
innovators, however welcome at first, as useful, though irregular,
partisans, brought an early discredit on the victory to which they
had contributed. The Eeformer's suspicion of these doubtful
allies was first awakened by the facility with which they urged
their conquests over the estabhshed opinions of the Christian world
beyond the limits at which he had himself paused. He looked
with distrust on their exemption from the pangs and throes with
which the birth of his own doctrines had been accompanied in his
own bosom. He perceived in them none of the caution, self-dis-
trust, and humility, which he wisely judged inseparable from the
honest pursuit of truth. Their claims to an immediate intercourse
with heaven appeared to him an impious pretension ; for he judged
that it is only as attempered through many a gi'oss intervening
medium, that Divine light can be received at all into the human
understanding.

Carlostadt, one of the professors at Wittemberg, was the leader
of the Illuminati at that university. The influence of Luther pro-
cured his expulsion to Jena, where he established a printing-press.
But the maxims of toleration are not taught in the school of suc-
cessful polemics ; and the secular aim was invoked to silence an
appeal to the world at large against a new papal authorit}^ The
debate from which Luther thus excluded others he could not deny
to himself; for he shrunk from no inquiry and dreaded no man's
prowess. A controversial passage at arms accordingly took place
between the Eeformer and his refractory pupil. It is needless to
add that they separated, each more firmly convinced of the errors
of his opponent. The taunt of fearing an open encounter with
truth, Luther repelled with indignation and spirit. He invited
Carlostadt to publish freely whatever he thought fit, and the chal-

MARTIN LUTHER. 211

lenge being accepted, he j^laced in liis hands a florin, as a kind of
wager of battle. It was received with equal frankness. The com-
batants grasjjcd each other's hands, drank mutual pledges in a
solemn cup, and parted to engage in hostilities more serious than
such greetings might have seemed to augur. Luther had the spirit
of a martyi*, and was not quite exempt from that of a persecutor.
Driven from one city to another, Carlostadt at last found refuge at
Basle ; and thence assailed his adversary with a rapid succession of
pamphlets, and with such j^leasing appellatives as " twofold
papist," " ally of anti-Christ," and so forth. They were answered
with equal fertility, and with no greater moderation. " The
devil," says Luther, " held his tongue till I won him over with a
florin. It was money well laid out. I do not regret it."

He now advocated the cause of social order, and exposed the
dangers of ignorant innovators, assailing these new enemies with
his old weapons. " It will never do to jest with Mr. All-the-
World (Hew omnes). To keep that formidable person quiet, God
has established lawful authority. It is His pleasure that there
should be order amongst us here." " They cry out. The Bible ! the
Bible!— Bibel! Bubel! Babel!"

From tliat sacred source many arguments had been drawn to
prove that all good Christians were bound, in imitation of the
great Jewish lawgiver, to overthrow and deface the statues with
which the Papists had embellished the sacred edifices. Luther
strenuously resisted both the opinion and the practice ; maintain-
ing that the Scriptures nowhere prohibit the use of images, except
such as were designed as a representation or symbol of Deity.

But to the war with objects designed (however injudicioush^) to
aid the imagination, and to enliven the affections, Carlostadt and
his partisans united that mysticism which teaches that the mind,
thus dej)rived of all external and sensible supports, should raise
itself to a height of spiritual contemplation and repose, where, all
other objects being banished, and all other sounds unheard, and
all other thoughts expelled, the Divine Being will directly manifest
himself, and disclose His will by a voice silent and inarticulate, and
yet distinctly intelligible. Luther handles this sublime nonsense
as it well deserved. " The devil," he says (for this is his universal
solvent), " opens his large mouth, and roars out. Spirit ! spirit !
spirit ! destroying the while all roads, bridges, scaling ladders, and
paths, by which sj^irit can enter ; namel}^, the visible order esta-
blished by God in holy baptism, in outward forms, and in His own
word. They would have you mount the clouds and ride the winds,
telling you neither how, nor when, nor where, nor which. All tliis
they leave you to discover for yourself."

r 2

212 MARTIN LUTHER.

Carlostadt was an image breaker and a mystic, but he was some-
thing more. He had adopted the opinion of Zuingle and Qj^colam-
padins on the Holy Communion, — receiving as an emblem, and as
nothinff else, the sacred elements in which the Koman Catholic
Church, after the words of consecration, recognises the very body and
blood of the Divine Eedeemer. He was, therefore, supported by
the whole body of Swiss reformers. Luther, " chained down," as
he expresses it, " by the sacred text," to the doctrine of the real
presence, had ardently desired to be enfranchised from this opinion.
" As often as he felt within himself the strivings of the old Adam,
he was but too violently drawn to adopt the Swiss interpretation."
" But if we take counsel with reason, we shall no longer believe
any mystery." He had, however, consulted this_^dangerous guide
too long, thus easily to shake off her company. The text taught
him one real presence, his reason assured him of another ; and so
he required his disciples to admit and believe both. They obeyed,
though at the expense of a schism among the Keformers, of which
it is difficult to say whether it occasioned more distress to them-
selves, or more exultation to their common enemies.

This is the first and greatest of those " Variations " of which the
history has been written with such inimitable eloquence. Nothing
short of the most obtuse prejudice could deny to Bossuet the jDraise
of having brought to religious controversy every quality which can
render it either formidable or attractive ; — a style of such trans-
parent perspicuity as would impart delight to the study of the
Year Books, if they could be rewritten in it; a sagacity which
nothing escapes ; and a fervour of thought and feeling so intense,
as to breathe and bm'u not only without the use of vehement or
opprobrious words, but through a diction invariably calm and
simple ; and a mass of learning so vast and so perfectly digested
as to be visible everywhere without producing the slightest en-
cumbrance or embarrassment. To quote from Mr. Hallam's His-
tory of the Middle Ages : — " Nothing, perhaps, in polemical
eloquence is so sj^lendid as the chapter on Luther's theological
tenets. The Eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form,
fierce of eye, terrible in his beak and claws," — a graphic and not
unmerited tribute to the prowess of this formidable adversary.
But the triumph which it appears to concede to him may not be
so readily acknowledged.

The argument of the " Variations " rests on the postulate, that a
religion of Divine origin must have provided some resource for
excluding uncertainty on every debatable point of belief or prac-
tice. Now, it must be vain to search for this steadfast light
amongst those who were at variance on so many vital questions.

MARTIN LUTHER. 2lS

The required Ducfor Duhitantium could, tlierefore, be found only
in the venerable form of the Catholic Church, whose oracles, every-
where accessible and never silent, had, from age to age, delivered
to the faithful the same invariable truths in one continuous strain
of i^erfect and unbroken harmony.

Much as the real contrast has been exaggerated by the most
subtle disputant of modern times, it would be futile to deny, or
to extenuate the glaring inconsistencies of the Reformers with each
other, and with themselves. Protestantism may well endure an
avowal which leaves her foundations unimpaired. Bossuet has
disproved the existence of a miracle wdiich no one alleges. He
has incontrovertibly established tliat the laws of nature were not
suspended in favour of Luther and his associates. He has shown,
with inimitable address and eloquence, that, within the precincts
of moral science, human reason must toil in vain for demonsti'ative
certainties ; and that, in such studies, they who would adopt the
same general results, and co-operate for one common end, must ])o
content to rest very far short of an absolute identity of opinion.

But there is a deep and impassable gulf between these premises
and the inference deduced from them. The stupendous miracle of
a traditional unanimity for fifteen hundred years amongst the
members of the Christian Church, at once unattested by any au-
thentic evidence, and refuted by irresistible proofs, is opposed as
much to the whole economy of the moral government of the world,
as it is to human experience. It was, indeed, easy to silence dis-
sent by terror ; to disguise real differences beneath conventional
symbols; to divert the attention of the incurious by a gorgeous
pageantry; and to disarm the inquisitive a,t one time by golden
preferments, and at another by specious compromises : and it was
easy to allege this timid, or blind, or selfish ac(piiescence in spi-
ritual despotism, as a general consent to the authority, and as a
spontaneous adoption of the tenets, of the dominant priesthood.
But so soon as men really began to think, it was impossible that
they should think alike. When suffrages were demanded, and not
acclamations, there was at once an end of unanimity. With mental
freedom came doubt, and debate, and sharp dissension. The indis-
pensable conditions of human improvement were now to be fid-
fiUed. It was discovered that religious knowledge, like all other
knowledge, and religious agreement, like all other agreement, were
blessings which, like all other blessings, must be purchased at a
price.

Luther dispelled the illusion that man's noblest science may l)e
atta,ined, his first interests secured, and his most sacred duties dis-
charged, except in the strenuous exercise of the best faculties of

p 3

S14 MARTIN LUTHER.

his nature. He was early taught that they who submit themselves
to this Divine ordinance, are cut off from the intellectual repose
which rewards a prostrate submission to human authority ; that
they must conduct the search of truth through many a bitter dis-
appointment, and many a humiliating retractation, and many a
weary strife ; and that they must brace their nerves and strain
their mental powers to the task, with sleepless diligence, — attended
and sustained the while by singleness of purpose, by candour, by
hope, by humility, and by devotion. When this severe lesson had
been learned, the Eeformers boldl}'-, nay, passionately, avowed their
mutual differences. The imperfect vision, and unsteady gait, of
eyes long excluded from the light, and of limbs long debarred
from exercise, drew on them the taunts and contumelies of those
whose bondage they had dared to reject. But the sarcasms even
of Erasmus, the eloquence even of Bossuet, were impotent against
such antagonists. Centuries rolled on their appointed course of
controversy, of prejudice, of persecution, and of long-suffering.
Nor was that sharp conflict endured in vain. Slowly, indeed, but
steadfastly, the Catholic and benignant spirit of the Gfospel reap-
peared, and resumed its influence in the Christian world. The
rights of conscience, and the principles of toleration, were acknow-
ledged. Some vehement disputes were consigned to well-merited
neglect. The Church of Eome herself silently adopted much of
the temper, whilst anathematising the tenets of the Eeformers;
and if the dominion of peace and charity be still imperfect and
precarious, yet there is a brighter prospect of their universal em-
pire than has ever before dawned on the nations of Christendom.
The Eagle of Meaux, had he been reserved for the nineteenth cen-
tury, would have laid aside " the terrors of his beak, the lightnings
of his eye," and would have winged his lordly flight to regions
elevated far above those over which it is his glory to have spread
war and consternation.

These, however, are conclusions which, in Luther's age, were be-
yond the reach of human foresight. It was at that time supposed
that all men might at once freely discuss, and unanimously inter-
pret, the meaning of the inspired volume. The trial of the experi-
ment brought to light many essential variations, but still more
in which the verbal exceeded the real difference ; and such was,
perhaps, the case with the Sacramentarian controversy. The
objection to Luther's doctrine of Consubstantiation, was not that
it was opposed to the reason of man, nor even that it was
contradicted by the evidence of his senses ; but that no intel-
ligible meaning could be assigned to any of the combiuations
of words in which it was expressed. It might be no difficult

MAKTIX LUTHER. 215

task to be jjersuaded tliat whatever so great a doctor taught,
on so high a point of tlieology, must be a truth; — just as the
believers in Greorge Psabnanazer may have been firmly assured of
the verity of the statements he addressed to them in tlie lano-uajre
of Formosa. But the Lutheran doctrine could hardly have been
more obscure, if it had been delivered in the Formosan, instead of
the Latin or the Grerman tongue. To all common apprehension, it
appeared nothing less than the simultaneous affirmation and denial
of the very same thing. In this respect it closely resembled the
kindred doctrine of the Church of Eome. Yet who would indu]<re
in so presumptuous a bigotry as to impute to the long unbroken
succession of powerful and astute minds which have adorned the
Roman Catholic and liUtheran Cliurches, the extravao^ance of
having substituted unmeaning soimds for a definite sense, on so
momentous an article of their respective creeds ? The consequence
may be avoided by a much more rational supposition. It is, that
the learned of both communions used the words in which that
article is enounced, in a sense widely remote from that which they
usually bear. The proof of this hypothesis would be more easy
than attractive ; nor would it be a difficult, though an equally un-
inviting office, to show that Zuingle and his followers indulged
themselves in a corresponding freedom with human language.
The dispute, however, proceeded too rapidly to be overtaken or
arrested by definitions ; which, had they preceded, instead of
following the- controversy, might have stifled in its birth many a
goodly folio.

The minds of men were rudely called away from these subtleties.
Throughout the west of Grermany, the peasants rose in a sudden
and desperate revolt against their lords, under the guidance of
Groetz of the " Iron Hand." If neither animated by the principles,
nor guided by the precepts of the Gospel, the insurgents at least
avowed their adherence to the party then called Evangelical, and
justified their conduct by an appeal to the doctrines of the Re-
formers. Yet this fearful disruption of the bands of society was
provoked neither by speculative opinions, nor by imaginary wrongs.
The grievances of the people were galling, palpable, and severe.
They belonged to that class of social evils over which the advanc-
ing light of truth and knowledge must always triumph, either by
prompting timely concessions, or by provoking the rebound of the
overstrained patience of mankind. Domestic slavery, feudal tenures,
oppressive taxation, and a systematic denial of justice to the poor,
occupied the first place in their catalogue of injuries; the forest
.laws and the exaction of small tithes, the second. Tlie demand of
the right to choose their own religious teachers, may not improbably

p 4

216 MARTIN tUTIIER.

have been added, to give to tbeir cause the semblance of a less sub-
lunary character ; and rather in compliment to the spirit of the
times, than from any very lively desire for instructors, who, they
well knew, would discourage and rebuke their lawless violence.

Such a monitor was Luther. He was at once too conspicuous
and too ardent to remain a passive spectator of these tumults. The
nobles arraigned him as the author of their calamities. The
people invoked him as an arbiter in the dispute. He answered
their appeal with more than papal dignity. A poor imtitled priest
asserted over the national mind of Gfermany a command more ab-
solute than that of her thousand Princes and their Imperial head.
He had little of the science of government, nor, in truth, of any
other science. But his mind had been expanded by studies which
give wisdom even to the simple. His understanding was invigo-
rated by habitual converse with the inspired writings, and his soul
had drunk deeply of their spirit. And therefore it was that from
him Europe first heard those great social maxims which, though
they now pass for elementary truths, were then as strange in theory
as they were unknown in practice. He fearlessly maintained that
the demands of the insurgents were just. He asserted the all-im-
portant though obvious truth, that power is confided to the rulers
of mankind, not to gratify their caprice or selfishness, but as a
sacred trust to be employed for the common good of society at
large; and he denounced their injustice and rapacity with the
same stern vehemence which he had formerly directed against the
spiritual tyrants of the world.

For, in common mth all who have caught the genius as well as
the creed of Christianity, the readiest sympathies of Luther were
with the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed ; and, in contem-
plating the unequal distribution of the good things of life, he was
not slowly roused to a generous indignation against those to whom
the advantages of fortune had taught neither pity nor forbear-
ance. But it was an emotion restrained and directed by far deeper
thoughts than visit the minds of sentimental patriots, or selfish de-
magogues. He depicted, in his own ardent and homely phrase, the
guilt, the folly, and the miseries of civil war. He reminded the
people of their ignorance and their faults. He bade them not to
divert their attention from these, to scan the errors of their supe-
riors. He drew from the evangelical precepts of patience, meek-
ness, and long-suffering, every motive which could calm their
agitated passions. He implored them not to dishonour the religion
they professed ; and showed that subordination in human society was
a Divine ordinance, designed to promote, in different ways, the moral
improvement of every rank, and the general happiness of all.

MARTIN LUTHER. 017

The authority, the courage, and the pathetic earnestness of tlie
great Eeformer were exerted in vain. Oppression which ihivcs
wise men mad, had closed tlie ears of the Grerman peasantry to
the advice even of Martin Luther ; and they plunged into a contest
more desperate in its character, and more fatal in its results, than
any which stains the annals of tlie empire. He felt, with the
utmost keenness, the reproach thus brought on the Keformation ;
nor may it be concealed, that at last his voice was raised in terrible
indignation against the insurgents, by whom his pacific efforts had
been defeated and his remonstrances despised. His old antagonist
Carlostadt, was charged with a guilty participation in the revolt,
and in his distress appealed to the much-reviled Consubstantialist
for protection. It was hardly in human nature, certainly not in
Luther's, to reject such a supplicant. The odium theologicum is,
after all, rather a vituperative than a malignant affection, even its
worst type ; and Luther possessed, more than most polemics the
faculty of expelling from the soul the Demon of Wrath throu'di
the channel of the jDcn. He placed Carlostadt in safety, defended
him from the charge of fostering rebellion, and demanded for him
a fair trial and a patient hearing, His preternatural fate has been
already noticed.

But a more formidable enemy was at hand. The supremacy of
Erasmus in the world of letters was such as no other writer ever
lived to enjoy. Literature had then an universal language, and
the learned of all nations acknowledged him as their cniide and
model. In an age of intense mental activity, no other mind was
so impatient of repose ; at a period when freedom of thouo-ht w^as
asserted with all the enthusiasm of new-born hope, he emulated
the most sanguine of the insurgents against the ancient dynasties.
The restorer, almost the inventor, of the popular interpretation of
the Scriptures, he was excelled by few, if any, in the more am-
bitious science of biblical criticism. His philosophy (if, in defe-
rence to custom, it must so be called) was but the application to
those inquiries in which the present and future welfare of man-
kind is chiefly involved, of an admirable good sense, which pene-
trated sophisms under the most specious disguise, and repelled
mere verbal subtleties, however imposing their pretensions, or
however illustrious their patrons. Alternately a man of the world,
and a recluse scholar, he was ever Avide awake to the real business
of life ; even when engaged in those studies which usually conduct
the mere prisoners of the cloister into dreamy and transcendental
speculations. In his hands, the Latin language was bent to uses of
which Cicero himself might have thought it incapable ; aud, witii-
out any barbarous innovations, became, almost for the first time,

218 MAKTIN LUTHER.

the vehicle of playful banter, and of high and mysterious doctrines,
treated in a familiar and easy tone.

Of the two imperial virtues, industry and self-denial, the literary
character of Erasmus was adorned by the first much more than by
the second. Grrasping at universal excellence and immediate re-
nown, he poured out orations, verses, essays, dialogues, aphorisms,
biographies, translations, and new editions of the classical writers,
with a rapidity which at once dazzled the world, and exhausted
himself. Deeply as the impress of his mind was fastened on his
own generation, those only of his countless works retain their
charm in later times which he regarded but as the pastime of a
few leisure hours. Every one has read the " Colloquies," and ad-
mired their gay and graceful exposure of the frauds and credulity
of his age. The " Praise of Folly" should never be separated from
Holbein's etchings, without which the reader may now and then
smile, but will hardly laugh. The " Ciceronianus " is one of those
elaborate pleasantries which give pleasure only to the laborious.
For neither as a wit, nor as a theologian, nor perhaps even as a
critic, does Erasmus rank among master intellects ; and in the
other departments of Literature no one has ventured to claim for
him a very elevated station. His real glory is to have opened at
once new channels of popular and of abstruse knowledge — to have
guided the few, while he instructed the many — to have lived and
written for noble ends — to have been surpassed by none in the
compass of his learning, or the collective value of his works — and
to have prepared the way for a mighty revolution, which it required
moral qualities far loftier than his to accomplish.

For the soul of this great man did not partake of the energy of
his intellectual faculties. He repeatedly confesses that he had none
of the spirit of a martyr ; and the acknowledgment is made in the
tone of sarcasm, rather than in that of regret. He belonged to
that class of actors on the scene of life, who have always appeared
as the harbingers of gi-eat social changes; — men gifted with the
power to discern, and the hardihood to proclaim, truths of which
they want the courage to encounter the infallible results ; who out-
run their generation in thought, but lag behind it in action ; players
at the sport of reform so long as reform itself appears at an in-
definite distance ; more o.stentatious of their mental superiority than
anxious for the well-being of mankind ; dreaming that the dark
page of history may hereafter become a fairy tale, in which en-
chantment will bring to pass a glorious catastrophe, unbought by
intervening strife, and agony, and suffering ; and therefore over-
whelmed with alarm when the edifice begins to totter, of which
their own hands have sapped the foundation.

MARTIN LUTIIEE. 219

He was a Eeformer, until the Rcf(>rination became a fearful
reality; — a jester at the bulwarks of the papacy, until they began
to give way ; — a propagator of the Scriptures, until men betook
themselves to the study and the application of them; — depre-
ciating the mere outward forms of religion, until they had come to
be estimated at their real value ; — in sliort, a learned, ingenious,
benevolent, amiable, timid, irresolute man, who, though compelled
to bear the responsibility, resigned to others the glory, of rescuing
the human mind from the bondage of a thousand years. The
distance between his career and that of Luther was, therefore,
continually enlarging, imtil they at length moved in opposite
directions, and met each othet with mutual animosity. The Ke-
former foresaw and deprecated this collision : and Bossuet has
condemned as servile the celebrated letter in which Luther en-
deavoured to avert the impending contest. In common vnth many
of his censures of the great father of the Protestant Churches, tliis
is evidently the result of prejudice. The letter was conceived with
tenderness, and expressed with becoming dignity.

"I do not," he says, "reproach you in your estrangements from us,
fearing lest I should hinder the cause which you maintain against
our common enemies the Papists. For the same reason, it gives
me no displeasure that, in many of your works, you have sought to
obtain their favour, or to appease their hostility, by assailing us
with undeserved reproaches and sarcasms. It is obvious that Grod
has not given you the energy or the courage requisite for an open
and fearless attack on these monsters, nor am I of a temper to
exact from you what is beyond your strength." — " I have respected
your infirmity, and that measure of the gifts of Grod which is in
you. None can deny that you have promoted the cause of litera-
ture, thus opening the way to the right understanding of the
Scriptures : or that the endowment which you have thus received
from Grod is magnificent and worthy of all admiration. Here is a
just cause for gratitude. I have never desired that you should
quit your cautious and measured course to enter our camp. Great
are the services you render by your genius and eloquence ; and as
your heart fails you, it is best that you should serve Grod with such
powers as He has given you. My only apprehension is, lest you
should permit yourself to be dragged by our enemies to publish an
attack upon our doctrines, for then I should be compelled to resist
you to the face." — " Things have now reached a point at which we
should feel no anxiety for our cause, even though Erasmus liiniself
should direct all his abilities against us. It is no wonder tliat our
party should be impatient of your attacks. Human weakness is
alarmed and oppressed by the weight of the name of Erasmus. Once

220 MAETIX LUTHER.

to be lashed by Erasmus is a far different thing from being exposed
to the assaults of all the Papists put together." — " I have written
all this in proof of my candour, and because I desire that Grod may
impart to you a spirit worthy of your name. If that spirit be
withheld, at least let me implore you to remain a mere spectator
of our tragedy. Do not join your forces to our enemies. Abstain
from writing against me, and I will write nothing against you."

This lofty tone grated on the fastidious ear of the monarch of
literature. He watched his opportunity, and inflicted a terrible
reveno-e. To have attacked the doctrines of the Eeformation would
have been to hazard an unanswerable charge of inconsistency. But
Luther, in exploring his path, had lost his way in the labyrinth of
the question of free-will : and had published opinions which were
nothing short of the avowal of absolute fatalism. In a treatise De
Lihero Arbitrio, Erasmus made a brilliant charge on this exposed
part of his adversary's position ; exhausting all the resources of his
sagacity, wit, and learning, to lower the theological character of
the founder of the Lutheran Church. The Keformer staggered
beneath this blow. For metaphysical debate he was ill prepared
— to the learning of his antagonist he had no pretension — and to
his wit could oppose nothing but indignant vehemence. His
answer, De Servo Arbitrio, has been confessed, by his most ardent
admirers, to have been but a feeble defence to his formidable
enemy. The temper in which he conducted the dispute may be
judged from the following example : " Erasmus, that king of amphi-
bology, reposes calmly on his amphibological throne, cheats us with
his ambiguous language, and claps his hands when he finds us
entangled amongst his insidious tropes, like beasts of chase fallen
into the toils. Then seizing the occasion for his rhetoric, he springs
on his captive with loud cries, tearing, scourging, tormenting, and
devoting you to the infernals, because, as it pleases him to say, his
words have been understood in a calumnious, scandalous, and
Satanic sense, though it was his own design that they should be so
taken. See him come on, creeping like a viper," &c. &c.

To the last, the sense of this defeat would appear to have clung
to Luther. Accustomed to triumj)h in theological debate, he had
been overthrown in the presence of abashed friends and exulting
enemies; and the record of his familiar conversation bears deep
traces of his keen remembrance of this humiliation. Many of the
contumelious words ascribed to him on this subject, if they really
fell from his lips, were probably some of those careless expressions
in which most men indulge in the confidence of private life ; and
which, when quoted with the most literal exactness, assume in
books published for the perusal of the world at large, a new mean-

MARTIN LUTHER. 221

ing, and an undesigned emphasis. But there is little difllcully in
receiving as authentic the words he is said to hav.e pronounced
when gazing on the picture of Erasmus — that it was, like himself,
full of craft and malice ; a comment on the countenance of that
illustrious scholar, as depicted by Holbein, from which it is impos-
sible altogether to dissent.

The contest with Erasmus and the Sacramentarians had taken,
place in that debatable land which religion and philosophy each
claim for her own. But Luther was now to oppose a revolt not
merely against philosophy and religion, but against decency and
common sense. Equally astounding and scandalous were the antics
which the minds of men performed when, exemi^t from the control
of their ancient prepossessions, they had not as yet been brought
into subjection to any other. Throughout the north of Germany
and the Netherlands, there were found many converts to the belief,
that a divorce might be effected between the virtues which the
Gospel exacts, and those new relations between man and the
Author of his being, whicli it at once creates and reveals ; that, in
short, it was possible to be at the same time a Christian and a
knave. The connection between this sottish delirium and the
rejection of infant baptism was an accident, or at most a caprice ;
and the name of Anabaptists, afterwards borne by so many wise
and good men, is unfortunately, though indelibly, associated with
the crazy rabble who first assumed or received it at Munster.

Herman Shaproeda, and after him Eothmann, were the first who
instructed the inhabitants of that city in these ill-omened novelties;
and they quickly gained the authority which any bold and unscru-
pulous guide may command, in times when hereditary creeds have
been abandoned by those who want the capp.city or the knowledge
to shape out new opinions for themselves. " He who has not re-
ceived adult baptism " (such was their argument) " is not a Chris-
tian ; he who is not a Christian is an enemy of the truth ; and it is
the duty of the faithful to oppose the enemies of truth by all arms,
spiritual or secular, within their reach."

Strong in this reasoning, and stronger still in numbers and in
zeal, the Anabaptists of Munster declared open war against the
Bishop, expelled the Catholics and Lutherans from the city, pillaged
the churches and convents, and adopted as their watch-word the
exhortation to repent, witli wliich tlie Baptist of old had addressed
the multitudes who surrounded him in the wilderness of Juda3a.

If the insurgents did no works meet for repentance, they did
many to be bitterly repented of. Their success was accom]ianied
by cruelty, and followed by still fouler crimes. John de 3Litthei-
son, their cliief prDphct, established a community of goods, and

'*--

222 MARTIN LUTIIEE.

committed to the flames every book except the Bible. John of
Leyden, his successor, was a journeyman tailor, and, though at
once a rogue and a fanatic, was not without some qualities which
might have adorned a better cause. He conducted the defence of
the city against the Bishop with as much skill and gallantry as if
his accustomed seat had been, not the shop-board, but the saddle
of a belted knight.

In the Scriptures, which his predecessor had exempted from the
general conflagration, John found a sanction for the plurality of
wives, and proofs that the sceptre of David had passed into his own
hands. Twelve princes, representing the heads of the tribes of
Israel, received from him authority to ascend the thrones of
Europe ; and apostles were sent to the great cities of Germany to
propagate the new faith, and to attest the miracles of which tliey
had been the witnesses. The doctrine they taught was less abstruse
than might have been anticipated. It consisted in these proposi-
tions : — There have been fom- prophets : the true are King David
and King John of Leyden; the false are the Pope and Martin
Luther : but Luther is worse than the Pope.

While this pithy creed was inculcated without the walls, the
most frightful debaucheries, and a strange burlesque on royalty,
went on within. The king paraded the city, attended by his queen,
and followed by a long train of led horses, caparisoned in gold
brocade, a drawn sword being borne at his left hand, and a crown
and Bible at his right. Seated on a throne in the public square,
he received petitions from supplicants prostrate on the earth before
him. Then followed impious parodies on the most sacred ofiices
of the Christian worship, and scenes of profligacy which may not
be described. To these, ere long, succeeded horrors which rendered
the New JeruspJem no inapt antitype of the old. The conquered
king expiated his crimes on the scaffold, — enduring protracted
and inhuman torments with a firmness which redeems his cha-
racter from the abhorrence to which it had so many indisputable
titles.

The story, however offensive, is not without interest. The
rapidity with which the contagion of such stupid extravagances was
propagated, and the apparent genuineness of the belief which a
man of much fortitude and some acuteness at length yielded to the
coinage of his own brain, are still curious, though not unfrequent,
phenomena in the science of mental nosology. From his answers
to the inteiTogatories which were proposed to him on his trial, it
may be inferred that he was perfectly sane. His mind had been
]:»ewildered, partly by a depraved imagination and ungoverned
appetites, and partly by his encounter with questions too large for

MARTIN LUTIIEK. 223

his capacity, and with detached sentences from }[oly Writ, ofwhicli
he perceived neither the obvious sense nor the more sublime inti-
mations. The memory of this guilty, presumptuons, and mihappy
man, is rescued from oblivion by the audacity of his enterprise, and
still more by the influence it exerted in arresting the progress of
the Eeformation.

The reproach, however unmerited, fell heavily on Lutlicr. It is
the common fate of all who dare to become leaders in the war
against abuses, whether in religious or in political society, to be
confounded with the baser sort of innovators, who at once hate
their persons, and exaggerate and caricature the principles on which
they have acted. For this penalty of rendering eminent services
to the world every wise man is prepared ; and every brave man
endures it firmly, in the belief that a day is coming when his fame
will be no longer oppressed by this unworthy association. Luther's
faith in the ultimate deliverance of his good name from the obloquy
cast on it by the madness of the Anabaptists, has but imperfectly
been justified by the event. Long after his name belonged to the
brightest page of human history, it found in Bossuet an antagonist
as inveterate as Tetzel, more learned than Cajetan, and surpassing
Erasmus himself in eloquence and ingenuity. Later still has
arisen, in the person of Mr. Hallam, a censor, whose religious
opinions, unquestionable integrity, boundless knowledge, and ad-
mirable genius, give a fearful weight to his unfavourable judgment
of the Father of the Reformation. Neither of these great writers,
indeed, countenances the vulgar calumny which would identify the
principles of Martin Luther with those of John of Leyden, although
both of them arraign him in nearly the same terms, as having
adopted and tauglit the Autinomian doctrines of which the Ana-
baptists exhibited the practical results.

The course we are shaping having brought us within reach of the
whirlpools of this interaiinable controversy, roaring in endless
circles over a dark and bottomless abyss, we cannot altogether
yield to that natural impulse which would pass them by in cautious
silence and with averted eyes. The Labariim of Luther was a
banner inscribed with the legend " Justification by Faith " — the
compendium, the essence, the Alpha and the Omef/a, of his
distinctive creed. Of tlie many received or possible interpre-
tations of this enigmatical symbol, that which Bossuet and Mr.
Hallam regard as most accordant with the views of the great stan-
dard-bearer himself, may be stated in the following terms : — If a
man be firmly assured that his sins have been remitted by God, in
the exercise of a mercy gratuitous and unmerited as its respects the
offender himself, but accorded as the merited reward of tlie great

224 MARTIN LUTIIEE.

propitiation, that man stands within the line which, even in this
life, separates the ohjects of the Divine favour from the objects of
the Divine displeasure. We believe this epitome of the Lutheran
doctrine to be inaccurate, and, but for the greatness of the names
by which it is sanctioned, we should have ventured to add super-
ficial. In hazarding a different translation of Luther's meaning
into the language of the world we live in, we do but oppose one
assertion to another, leaving the whole weight of authority on. the
unfavourable side. The appeal ultimately lies to those whose
studies have rendered them familiar with the Eeformer's writings,
and especially with his " Commentary on the Epistle to the Gala-
tians," which he was wont affectionately to call his Catherine de
Bora. It must be conceded that they abound in expressions
which, detached from the mass, wouldmorethan justify the censure
of the historian of the " Literature of the ]\iiddle Ages." But no
writer would be less fairly judged than Luther by isolated passages.
Too impetuous to pause for exact discrimination, too long entangled
in scholastic learning to have ever entirely recovered the natural
relish for plain common sense, and compelled habitually to move
in that turbid polemical region which pure and unrefracted light
never visits, Luther, it must be confessed, is intelligible only to the
impartial and laborious, and might almost be supposed to have courted
those reproaches which he least deserves. Stripped of the techni-
calities of divinity and of the schools, his Articulus stantis aut
cacUntls eccleske may, perhaps, with no material error, be thus
explained.

Define the word " conviction " as a deliberate assent to the truth
of any statement, and the word " persuasion " as the habitual
reference to any such truth (real or supposed), as a rule of conduct ;
and it follows, that we are " persuaded " of many things of which
we are not " convinced : " which is credulity or superstition. Thus,
Cicero was "persuaded " of the sanctity of the mysteries which he
celebrated as one of the College of Augurs. But the author of the
Treatise De Naturd Deorum had certainly no corresponding " con-
victions." We are " convinced " of much of which we are not
" persuaded ; " which, in theological language, is a " dead faith."
The Marquis of' Worcester deliberately assented to the truth, that
the expansive force of steam could be applied to propel a vessel
through the water ; but wanting the necessary " persuasion," he left
to others the praise of the discovery. Again, there are many pro-
positions of which we are at once " convinced " and " persuaded,"
and this in the Lutheran style is a " living or saving faith." In
this sense Columbus believed the true configuration of the earth,
and launched his caravels to make known the two hemispheres to

MAETIX LUTIIEK. 2*25

each other. It is by the aid of successful experiment engendering
confidence ; of habit producing facility ; and of earnest thouglity
quickening the imagination and kindling desire, that our opinions
thus ripen into motives, and our theoretical ' convictions ' into
active ' persuasions.' It is, therefore, nothing else than a contra-
diction in terms to speak of Christian faith as separable from moral
virtue. The practical results of that, as of any other, motive, will
vary directly as the intensity of the impulse, and inversely as the
number and force of the impediments ; but a motive which produces
no motion, is the same thing as an attraction which does not draw,
or as a propensity which does not incline. Far different as was the
style in which Luther enounced his doctrine, the careful study of
his writings will, we think, convince any disjjassionate man that
such was his real meaning. The faith of which he wrote was not
a mere opinion, or a mere emotion. It was a mental energy, of
slow but stately growth, of which an intellectual assent was the
basis ; high and holy tendencies the lofty superstructure ; and a
virtuous life the inevitable \ise and destination. In his own
emphatic words : — ' We do not say the sun oiujld to shine, a good
tree ought to produce good fruit, seven and three ought to make
ten. The sun shines by its own proper nature, without being
bidden to do so ; in the same manner the good tree yields its good
fruit ; seven and three have made ten from everlasting — it is
needless to require them to do so hereafter.'

If any credit be due to his great antagonist, Luther's doctrine of
* Justification,' when thus understood, is not entitled to the praise
or the censure of novelty. Bossuet resents this claim as injurious
to the Church of Eome, and as founded on an extravagant misre-
presentation of her real doctrines. To ascribe to the great and wise
men of whom she justly boasts, or, indeed, to attribute to any one
of sound mind the dogma or the dream which would deliberately
transfer the ideas of the market to the relations between man and
his Creator, is nothing better than an ignorant and uncharitable
bigotry. To maintain that, till Luther dispelled the illusion, the
Christian world regarded the good actions of this life as investing
even him who performs them best with a rigid to demand from his
Maker an eternity of uninterrupted and perfect bliss, is just as
rational as to claim for him the detection of the universal error
which had assigned to the animal man a place among the quadru-
peds. There is in every human mind a certain portion of inde-
structible common sense. Small as this may be in most of us, it
is yet enough to rescue us all, at least when sane and sober, from
the stupidity of thinking, not only that the relations of creditor ami
debtor can really subsist between ourselves and Him wlio made

226 MARTIN LUTHER.

US, but that a return of such inestimable value can be due from
Him for such ephemeral and imperfect services as ours. People
may talk foolishly on these matters ; but no one seriously believes
this. Luther slew no such monster, for there were none such to be
slain. The error which he refuted was far more subtle and refined
than this, and is copiously explained by Hooker, to whose splendid
sermon on the subject it is a ' good work ' to refer any to whom
it is unknown.

The celebrated thesis of ' Justification by Faith,' was peculiar to
Luther and to his followers only in so far as he extricated it from
a mass of superstitions by which it had been obscured, and assigned
to it the prominence in his system to which it was justly entitled.
But if his indignation was roused against those who had darkened
this great truth, they by whom it was made an apology for lewdness
and rapine were the objects of his scorn and abhorrence. His at-
tack on the Anabaptists is conceived in terms so vigorous and so
whimsical, that it is difiicult to resist the temptation to exhibit some
extracts. But who would needlessly disturb the mould beneath
which lies interred and forgotten a mass of disgusting folly, which
in a remote age exhaled a moral pestilence ? Eesolving all the
sinister phenomena of life, by assuming the direct interference of
the devil and his angels in the affairs of men, Luther thought that
this influence had been most unskilfully employed at Munster. It
was a cowp manque on the part of the great enemy of mankind.
It showed that Satan was but a bungler at his art. The Evil One
had been betrayed into this gross mistake, that the world might be
on their guard against the more astute artifices to which he was
about to resort : —

'These new theologians did not,' he said, 'explain themselves
very clearly.' — ' Having hot soup in his mouth, the devil was
obliged to content himself with mumbling out m/wni mum, wishing
doubtless to say something worse.' — ' The spirit which would de-
ceive the world must not begin by yielding to the fascinations of
woman, by grasping the emblems and honours of royalty, still less
by cutting people's throats. This is too broad ; rapacity and op-
pression can deceive no one. The real deceit will be practised by
him who shall dress himself in mean apparel, assume a lamentable
countenance, hang down his head, refuse money, abstain from meat,
fly from woman as so much poison, disclaim all temporal authority,
and reject all honours as damnable ; and who then, creeping softly
towards the throne, the sceptre, and the keys, shall pick them up
and possess himself of them by stealth. Such is the man who
would succeed, who would deceive the angels and the very elect.
This would indeed be a sjjlendid devil, with a plumage more

MARTIX LUTHER. 227

gorgeous than the peacock or the pheasant. But thus impudently
to seize the crown, to take not merely one wife, but as many as
caprice or appetite suggests — oh ! it is the conduct of a mere
schoolboy devil, of a devil at his A B C ; or rather, it is tlie true
Satan — Satan, the learned and the crafty, but fettered by the
hands of Grod with chains so heavy that he cannot move. It is to
warn us, it is to teach us to fear his chastisements, before the field
is thrown open to a more subtle devil, who -will assail us no longer
with the ABC, but with the real, the difficult text. If this mere
deviling at his letters can do such things, what will he not do when
he comes to act as a reasonable, knowing, skilful, lawyer-like,
theological devil ? '

These various contests produced in the mind of Luther the
effects which painful experience invariably yields, when the search
for truth, prompted by the love of triitli, has been long and earnestly
maintained. Advancing ^^ears brought with them an increase of
candour, moderation, and charity. He had lived to see his princi-
ples strike their roots deeply through a large part of the Christian
world, and he anticipated, with perhaps too sanguine hopes, their
universal triumph. His imshaken reliance in them was attested
by his dying breath. But he had also lived to witness the defection
of some of his allies, and the guilt and folly of others. Prolonged
inquiry had disclosed to him many difficulties which had been over-
looked in the first ardour of the dispute, and he had become pain-
fully convinced that the establishment of truth is an enterprise
incomparably more arduous than the overthrow of error. His con-
stitutional melancholy deepened into a more habitual sadness — his
impetuosity gave way to a more serene and pensive temper — and
as the tide of life ebbed with still increasing swiftness, he was chiefly
engaged in meditating on those cardinal and undisputed truths, on
which the weary mind may securely repose, and the troubled heart
be still.

The maturer thoughts of age could not, however, quell the rude
vigour and fearless confidence which had borne him through his
early contests. With little remaining fondness or patience for ab-
struse speculations, he was challenged to debate one of the more
subtle points of theology. His answer cannot be too deeply pon-
dered by polemics at large. ' Should we not,' he said, ' get on
better in this discussion with the assistance of a jug or two of
beer ? ' The offended disputant retired, — ' the devil,' ol;served
Luther, ' being a haughty spirit, who can bear anything better
than being laughed at.'

This growing contempt for unprofitable questions was indicated
by a corresponding decline in Luther's original estimate of the im-

Q 2

228 ilARTIN LUTHER.

portance of some of the minor topics in debate with the Church
of Kome. He was willing to consign to silence the question of the
veneration due to the Saints. He suspended his judgment re-
specting prayers for the dead. He was ready to acquiesce in the
practice of auricular confession, for the solace of those who regarded
it as an essential religious observance. He advised Spalatin to do
whatever he thought best respecting the elevation of the Host, de-
precating only any positive rule on the subject. He held the es-
tablished ceremonies to be useful, from the impression they left on
gross and uncultivated minds. He was tolerant of images in the
churches, and censured the whole race of image-breakers with his
accustomed vehemence. Even the use of the vernacular tongue in
public worship he considered as a convenient custom, not an indis-
jjensable rule. Carlostadt had insisted upon it as essential. ' Oh,
this is an incorrigible spirit,' replied the more tolerant Reformer ;
* for ever and for ever positive obligations and sins ! '

But while his catholic spirit thus raised him above the exagge-
rated estimate of those external things which chiefly attracted the
hostility of narrower minds, his sense of the value of those great
truths in which he judged the essence of religion to consist, was
acquiring increased intensity and depth. In common with Mon-
taigne and Eichard Baxter (names hardly to be associated on any
other ground), he considered the Lord's Prayer as surpassing every
other devotional exercise. ' It is my prayer,' said Luther ; ' there
is nothing like it.' In the same spirit, he preferred the Grospel of
St. John to all the other sacred books, as containing more of the
language of Christ himself. As he felt, so he taught. He practised
the most simple and elementary style of preaching. ' If,' he said,
' in my sermons I thought of Melancthon and other doctors, I
should do no good; but I speak with perfect plainness for the
ignorant, and that satisfies everybody. Such Greek, Latin, and
Hebrew as 1 have, I reserve for the learned.' — ' Nothing is more
agreeable or useful for a common audience than to preach on the
duties and examples of Scripture. Sermons on grace and justifi-
cation fall coldly on their ears.' He taught that good and true
theology consisted in the practice, the habit, and the life of the
Christian graces — Christ being the foimdation. ' Such, however,'
he says, ' is not our theology now-a-days. We have substituted
for it a rational and speculative theology. This was not the case
with David. He acknowledged his sins, and said, Miserere mei
Domine ! '

Luther's power of composition is, indeed, held very cheap by a
judge so competent as Mr. Hallam : nor is it easy to commend his
more elaborate style. It was compared by himself to the earth-

MARTIN LUTJIEU. 229

quake and the wind which preceded tlie still small voice addressed
to the prophet iu the wilderness; and is so turbulent, copious, and
dogmatical, as to suggest the supposition that it was not written by
his own hand, but dictated to an amanuensis, or perhaps to a class
of submissive pupils, under the influence of extreme excitement.
Obscure, redundant, and tautologous as these writings appear, they
are still redeemed from neglect, not only by the mighty name of
their author, but by that all-pervading vitality and downright
earnestness which atone for the neglect of all the mere artifices of
style ; and by that profound familiarity with the sacred oracles,
which far more than compensates for the absence of that speculative
wisdom which is drawn from lower sources.

But the Reformer's lighter and more occasional works not uufrc-
quently breathe the very soul of eloquence. His language in these,
ranges between colloquial homeliness and the highest dignity, — now
condensed into vivid figures, and then diffused into copious ampli-
fication, — exhibiting the successive phases of his ardent, melauchol}^
playful, and heroic character in such rapid succession, and with such
perfect harmony, as to resemble the harp of Dryden's Timotheus,
alternately touched and swept by the hand of the master — a perfor-
mance so bold and so varied, as to scare the critic from the dischar<Te
of his office. The address, for example, to the Swabian insurgents
and nobles, if not executed with the skill, is at least conceived in the
spirit of a great orator. The universal testimony of all the most
competent judges, attests the excellence of his translation of the
Bible, and assigns to him in the literature of his country, a station
corresponding to that of the great men to whom James committed
the corresponding office in our own.

Bayle has left to the friends of Luther no duty to perform in the
defence of his moral character, but that of appealing to the
unanswerable reply which his Dictionary contains to the charges
preferred against the Reformer l)y his enemies. One unhappy
exception is indeed to be made. It is impossible to read without
pain the names of Luther, jMelancthon, and Bucer, amongst the
subscribers to the address to the Landgrave of Hesse, on the subject
of his intended polygamy. Those great but fallible men remind liis
Highness of the distinction between universal laws, and such as
admit of dispensation in particular cases. They cannot publicly
sanction polygamy. But his Highness is of a peculiar constitution,
and is exhorted seriously to examine all the considerations laid
before him ; yet, if he is absolutely resolved to marry a second time,
it is their opinion that he shoxdd do so as secretly as possible !
Fearful is the energy with which the ' Eagle of Meaux' pounces on
this fatal error, — tearing to pieces the flimsy pretexts alleged in

Q 3

230 MARTIN LUTHER.

defence of such an evasion of the Christian code. The charge
admits of no defence. To the inference drawn from it against the
Ixeformer's doctrine, every Protestant has a conclusive answer.
Whether in faith or in practice, he acknowledges no infallible Head
but one.

But we have wandered far and wide from our proper subject.
Where, all this while, is the story of Luther's education, of his visit
to Eome, of the sale of Indulgences, of the denunciations of Tetzel,
of the controversy with Eccius, the Diets of Worms and Augsburg,
the citations before Cajetan and Charles, the papal excommunication,
and the appeal to a general council ? These, and many other of the
most momentous incidents of the Reformer's life, are recorded in
M. D'Aubigne's work, from which our attention has been diverted
by matters of less account, but perhaps a little less familiar.

It would be unpardonable, however, to pass over such a work
with a merely ceremonious notice. The absolute merit of M.
D'Aubigne's ' Life of Martin Luther ' is great, but the comparative
value far greater. In the English language it has no competitor ;
and, though Melancthon himself was the biographer of his friend,
we believe that no foreign tongue contains so complete and impres-
sive a narrative of these events.

It is true that M. D'Aubigne neither deserves nor claims a place
amongst those historians, usually distinguished as philosophical.
He does not aspire to illustrate the principles which determine or
pervade the character, the policy, or the institutions of mankind.
He arms himself with no dispassionate scepticism, and scarcely
affects to be impartial. To tell his tale copiously and clearly, is the
one object of his literary ambition. To exhibit the actors on the
scene of life, as the free but unconscious agents of the Divine Will,
is the higher design with which he writes ; to trace the mysterious
intervention of Providence in reforming the errors and abuses of
the Christian Church is his immediate end ; and to exalt the name
of Luther, his labour of love.

These purposes, as far as they are attainable, are effectually
attained. M. D'Aubigne is a Protestant of the original stamp, and
a Biographer of the old fashion ; — not a calm, candid, discrimina-
ting weigher and measurer of a great man's parts, but a warm-
hearted champion of his glory, and a resolute apologist even for his
errors; — ready to do battle in his cause with all who shall impugn
or derogate from his fame. His book is conceived in the spirit, and
executed with all the vigour, of Dr. M'Crie's ' Life of Knox.' He
has all our lamented countryman's sincerity, all his deep research,
more skill in composition, and a greater mastery of subordinate
details ; along with the same inestimable faculty of carrying on his

MAKTIN LUTIIEK. -31

story from one stage to anotlier, with an interest which never sub-
sides, and a vivacity which knows no intermission. If he displays
no familiarity with the moral sciences, he is no mean proficient in
that art which reaches to perfection only in the Drama or the Ivo-
mance. It is the art, not of inventing, but of discerning such
incidents as impart life and animation to a narrative. For M.
D'Aubigne is a writer of scrupidous veracity. He is at least an
honest guide, though his prepossessions may be too strong to ren-
der him worthy of implicit confidence. They are such, however, as
to make him the uncompromising and devoted advocate of those
cardinal tenets on which Luther erected the edifice of the Reforma-
tion. To the one great article of the Faith on which the Eeformer
chiefly insisted in his assault on the Papacy, the eye of the Biogra-
pher is directed with scarcely less intentness. To this, every other
truth is viewed as subordinate and secondary ; and although, on
this favourite point of doctrine, M. D'Aubigne's meaning is too
often obscured by declamation, yet must he be hailed by every
genuine friend of the Eeformation, as having raised a powerful voice
in favour of one of the fundamental truths of the Gospel — truths
which, so long as they are faithfully taught and diligently observed,
will continue to form the gi-eat bulwarks of Christendom against the
overweening estimate, and the despotic use, of human authorit}^, in
opposition to the authority of the Revealed Will of God.

Q 4

282

THE FEENCII BENEDICTINES.

MiDDLETON and Gibbon rendered a real, however undesigned, ser-
vice to Christianity, by attempting to prove that the rapid extension
of the Primitive Church was merely the natural result of natural
causes. For what better proof could be given of the Divine origin
of any religion than by showing that it had at once overspread the
civilised world, by the expansive power of an inherent aptitude to
the nature and to the wants of mankind ? By entering on
a still wider range of inquiry, those great but disingenuous writers
might have added much to the evidence of the fact they alleged,
although at a still greater prejudice to the conclusion at which they
aimed.

It is not predicted in the Old Testament that the progress of the
Grospel should, to any great extent, be the result of any agency
pretei-natural and opposed to ordinary experience ; nor is any such
fact alleged in any of the apostolical writings as having actually
occurred. There is, indeed, no good reason to suppose that such
miraculous though transient disturbances of the laws of the material
or the moral world, would have long or powerfully controlled either
the belief or the affections of mankind. The heavenly husbandman
selected the kindliest soil and the most propitious season for soAving
the grain of mustard seed ; and so, as time rolled on, the adapta-
tion of our faith to the character and the exigencies of our race was
continually made manifest, though under new and ever varying
forms.

Thus the Church was at first Congregational, that by the agitation
of the lowest strata of society, the superincumbent mass of corrup-
tion, idolatry, and mental servitude might be broken up — then
Synodal or Presbyterian, that the tendency of separate societies to
heresy and schism might be counteracted — then Episcopal, that in
ages of extreme difficulty and peril, the whole body might act in
concert and with decision — then Papal, that it might oppose a
visible unity to the armies of the Crescent and the barbarians of
the North — then Monastic, that learning, art, and piety might be

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 233

preserved in impregnable retreats amidst the deluge of ignorance
and of feudal oppression — then Scholastic, that the human mind
miglit be educated for a return to a sounder knowledge, and to
primitive doctrine — then Protestant, that the soul might be eman-
cipated from error, superstition, and spiritual despotism — tiien
partially Reformed, in the very bosom of the papacy, lest that
emancipation should hurry the whole of Christendom into precijn-
tate change and lawless anarchy — and then at length Philosophical,
to prove that as there are no depths of sin or misery to which the
healing of the Grospel cannot reach, so there are no heights of spe-
culation to which the wisdom of the Gospel cannot ascend.

Believing thus in the Perpetuity as well as on the Catholicity
of the Church, and judging that she is still the same in spirit
throughout all ages, although, in her external developments, flexible
to the varying necessities of all, we have ventured on some foruKu-
occasions, and are again about to assert, for ' the pure and reformed
branches ' of it in England and in Scotland, an alliance with the
heroes of the faith in remote times, and in less enliglitened coun-
tries ; esteeming that to be the best Protestantism whicli, while it
frankly condemns the errors of other Christian societies, yet claims
fellowship with the piety, the wisdom, and the love, which, in the
midst of these errors, have attested the divine original of them all.

If, according to the advice which on some of those occasions we
have presumed to offer to those who are studious of such subjects,
there be among us any scholar meditating a Protestant history of
the Monastic Orders, he will find materials for a curious chapter in
the correspondence of the French Benedictines of the reign of Louis
XIV. which was published in the year 1846 by M. Valery at Paris.
In that fraternity light and darkness succeeded each other b}' a law
the reverse of that wdiich obtained in Europe at large. P>om the
promulgation of their rule in the sixth century, their monasteries
were comparatively illuminated amidst the general gloom of the
dark ages. But when the sun arose on the outer world, its beams
scarcely penetrated their cloisters ; nor did they hail the returning
dawn of literature and science until the day was glowing all around
them in meridian splendour. Then, however, passing at one vault
from the haze of twilight to the radiance of noon, they won the
wreath of superior learning, even in the times of Tillemont and Du
Cange — though resigning the palm of genius to Bourdaloue, Bos-
suet, and Pascal. Thus the three great epochs of their annals are
denoted by the growth, the obscuration, and the revival of their
intellectual eminence. M. Valery's volumes illustrate the third and
last stage of this progress, Avhich cannot, however, be understood
without a rapid glance at each of the two preceding stages.

234 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

' But wliy,' it may be asked, ' direct the eye at all to the
mouldering records of monastic superstition, self-indulgence, and
hypocrisy ? ' Why, indeed ? From contemplating the mere de-
basement of any of the great families of man, no images can be
gathered to delight the fancy, nor any examples to move or to in-
vigorate the heart. And doubtless he who seeks for such know-
ledge, may find in the chronicles of the convent a fearful disclosure
of the depths of sin and folly into which multitudes of our brethren
have plunged, under the pretence of more than human sanctity.
But the same legends will supply some better lessons, to him who
reads books that he may learn to love, and to benefit his fellow-men.
They will teach him that, as in Judaea, the temple, so, in Christen-
dom, the monastery, was the ark, freighted during the deluge, with
the destinies of the Church and of the world, — that there our own
spiritual and intellectual ancestry found shelter amidst the tempest,
— that there were matured those powers of mind which gradually
infused harmony and order into the warring elements of the Euro-
pean Commonwealth, — and that there many of the noblest orna-
ments of our common Christianity were trained to instruct, to govern,
and to bless the nations of the West.

Guided by the maxim ' that whatever any one saint records of
any other saint must be true,' we glide easily over the enchanted
land along which Domnus Johannes Mabillon conducts the readers
of the earlier parts of his wondrous compilations ; receiving sub-
missively the assurance that St. Benedict sang eucharistic hymns
in his mother's womb — raised a dead child to life — caused his
pupil Maurus to tread the water dry-shod — untied by a word the
knotted cords with which an Arian Groth (Zalla by name) had
bound an honest rustic — cast out of one monk a demon who had
assumed the disguise of a farrier — rendered visible to another a
concealed dragon, who was secretly tempting him to desert his
monastery — and, by laying a consecrated wafer on the bosom of a
third, enabled him to repose in a grave which till then had con-
tinually cast him out; — for all these facts the great annalist relates
of his patriarch St. Benedict, on the authority of the pontiff (first
of that name^ St. Grregory. If, however, the record had contained
no better things than these, the memorial of Benedict would long
since have perished with him.

His authentic biography is comprised in a very few words. He
was born towards the end of the fifth century, at Nursia, in the
duchy of Spoleto. His mother died in giving him birth. He was
sent to Rome for his education by his father, a member of the
Anician family, which Claudian has celebrated ; but was driven from

THE FREXCII BENEDICTINES. 235

tlie city by the invasions of OJoacer and Theodoric to tlie Mens
Subiacus, where, while yet a beardless youtli, he took up his abode
as a hermit. Like Jerome, he was haunted in his solitude by tlic too
vivid remembrance of a Roman lady ; and subdued his voluptuous
imagination by rolling his naked body among the thorns. The
fame of such premature sanctity recommended him to the monks
of the neighbouring monastery as their abbot ; but scarcely had ho
assumed the office when, disgusted by the rigours of his discipline,
the electors attempted to get rid of him by poison. Returning to
his hermitage, he soon found himself in the centre of several rude
huts, erected in his vicinity by other fugitives from the world, who
acknowledged him as the superior of this monastic village. But
their misconduct compelled him again to seek a new retirement ;
which he found at Monte Casino, on the frontiers of the Abbruzzi.
There, attended by some of his pupils and former associates, he
passed the remainder of his life — composing his rule, and establish-
ing the Order which, at the distance of thirteen centuries, still re-
tains his name and acknowledges his authority. He died in the
year 543, in the sixty-fourth year of his age.

To the intercourse of Benedict with the refractory monks of
Subiaco, may perhaps be traced the basis of his system. It
probably revealed to him the fact that Indolence, Self-will, and
Selfishness are the three archdgemons of the cloister ; and suggested
the inference that Industry, Obedience, and Community of goods
are the antagonist powers which ought to govern there. But the
comprehensiveness of thought with which he so exhausted the
science of monastic polity, that all subsequent rules have been
nothing more than modifications of his own, — the prescience
with which he reconciled conventual franchises "svith abbatial
dominion, — the skill with which he at once concentrated and
diffused power among the different members of his Order, according
as the objects in view were general or local, — and the deep in-
sight into the hviman heart by which he rendered myriads of men
and women, during more than thirty successive generations, the
spontaneous instruments of his purposes, — these all unite to
prove that profound genius, extensive knowledge, and earnest
meditation, had raised him to the very first rank of uninspired
legislators. His disci2)les, indeed, find in his legislative wisdom a
conclusive proof that he wrote and acted under a divine in^pulse.
Even to those who reject this solution it is still a phaaiontenon
affording ample exercise for a liberal curiosity.

That the Benedictine statutes remain to this day a living co<le,
written in the hearts of multitudes in every province of the

236 THE FEENCn BEI^EDICTINES.

Christian woiltl, is chiefly perhaps to be ascribed to the inflexible
rigour with which they annihilated the cares and responsil^ilities
of freedom. To the baser sort no yoke is so galling as that of
self-control ; no deliverance so welcome as that of being hand-
somely rid of free agency. With such men mental slavery readily
becomes a habit, a fashion, and a pride. To the abject man}"-, the
abdication of self-government is a willing sacrifice. It is reserved
for the nobler few to rise to the arduous virtues of using wisely
the gifts which God bestows, and walking courageously, though
circumspectly and humbly, in the light which Grod vouchsafes.

And by the abject many, though often under the guidance of
the nobler few, were peopled the cells of Monte Casino and her
affiliated convents. Their gates were thrown open to men of
every rank, in whom the abbot or prior of the house could discover
the marks of a genuine vocation. To exclude any such candidate,
though a pauper or a slave, would have been condemned by Benedict,
in the words and spirit of Augustine, as grave delictiiin. In those
sacred enclosures, therefore, many poor and illiterate brethren found
a refuge. But they were distinguished from the rest as conversi, —
that is, as persons destined neither for the priesthood nor the
tonsure, but bound to labour for the society as husbandmen, shep-
herds, artizans, or domestic servants.

In the whirl and uproar of the handicrafts of our own day, it
is difficult to imagine the noiseless spectacle which in those ages so
often caught the eye, as it gazed on the secluded abbey and the
adjacent grange. In black tunics, the mementos of death, and in
leathern girdles, the emblems of chastity, might then be seen carters
silently yoking their bullocks to the team, and driving them in
silence to the field, — or shepherds interchanging some inevitable
whispers while they watched their flocks, — or vine-dressers pruning
the fruit of which they might neither taste or speak, — or wheel-
wrights, carpenters, and masons plying their trades like the inmates
of some deaf and dumb asylum, — and all pausing from their
labours as the convent bell, sounding the hom's of primes, or nones,
or vespers, summoned them to join in spirit, even when they could
not repair in person, to those sacred offices. Around the monastic
workshop might be observed the belt of cultivated land, continually
encroaching on the adjacent forest ; and the passer-by might trace
to the toils of these mute workmen the opening of roads, the
draining of marshes, the herds grazing, and the harvests waving,
in security, under the shelter of ecclesiastical privileges which even
the Vandal and the Ostrogoth regarded with respect. Our own an-
nual agricultural meetings, with their implements, and their prizes,
their short horns and their long speeches, must carry back their

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 237

economic genealogy to those husbandmen who, with dismal aspect,
brawny arms, and compressed lips, first taught the concpierurs of
Eome the science in which Columella and Virgil had instructed the
ancient Komans.

A similar pedigree must be assigned to our academies of painting,
sculpture, architecture, and music. The fine arts are merely
imitative in their infancy ; though as they become mature, they
also become symbolical. And this maturity is first attained by
the architect, because he ministers to a want more urgent than
the rest, — because, in the order of time, the edifice must precede
the works designed for its embellishment, — and because finding
in nature no models except for the details of his performance, he
must, from the first, be inventive in the composition of it. Thus
the children of Benedict, when contemplating their lofty avenues,
sacred to meditation — and the mellowed lights streaming through
the foliage — and the flowers clustering in the conventual garden
— and the pendulous stalactites of the neighbouring grottoes, —
conceived of a Christian temple in which objects resembling these,
though hewn out of imperishable stone, and carved into enduring-
forms, might be combined and grouped together into one glorious
whole. With a ritual addressed to the eye rather than to the ear ■ — -
a sacred pantomime, of which the sacrifice of the mass was the
action, the priests the actors, and the high altar the stage, —
nothing more was requisite to the solemn exhibition but the
cathedral, as its appropriate theatre. It arose, therefore, not the
servile representation of any one natural object, but the majestic
combination of the forms of many ; and full of mystic significance,
in the cruciform plan, the lofty arch, the oriel windows, the lateral
chapels, and the central elevation. Not a groining, a mullion, or a
tracery was there, in which the initiated eye did not read some
masonic enigma, some ghostly counsel, or some inarticulate sum-
mons to confession, to penitence, or to prayer.

Every niche without, and every shrine within, these sanctuaries,
was adorned with images of their tutelary saints ; and especially of
Her who is supreme among the demigods of this celestial hierarchy.
But, instead of rising to the impersonation of holiness, beauty, or
power, in these human forms, the monkish sculptors were content
to copy the indifferent models of humanity within their reach ;
and the statues, busts, and reliefs which, in subsequent times, fell
beneath the blows of Protestant Iconoclasts, had little if any value
but that which belonged to their peculiar locality and their acci-
dental associations. In painting also, whether encaustic, in fresco,
or on wood, the performances of the early Benedictine artists were
equally humble. In order to give out their visible poetry, the

•2.38 THE FRENCH BENEDICTIXES.

chisel and the pencil must be guided by minds conversant with
the cares and the enjoyments of life ; for it is by such minds only
that the living soul which animates mute nature can ever be per-
ceived ; or can be expressed in the delineation of realities, whetlier
animated or inanimate. In ecclesiastical and conventual architec-
ture, and in that art alone, the monks exhausted their creative
imagination ; covering Europe with monuments of their science in
statics and dynamics, and with monuments of that plastic genius,
which, from an infinity of elaborate, incongruous, and often worth-
less, details, knew how to evoke one sublime and harmonious
whole. In those august shrines, if anywhere on earth, the s2Dirit
of criticism is silenced by the belief that the adorations of men are
mingled in blest accord with the hallelujahs of heaven.

To animate that belief, the Benedictine musicians produced
those chants which, when long afterwards combined by Palestrina
into the Mass of Pope Marcellus, were hailed with rapture by the
Koman Conclave and the Fathers of Trent, as the golden links
which bind together in an indissoluble union the supplications
of the Militant Church and the thanksgivings of the Church
Triumphant.!

' Lusts of the imagination ! ' exclaimed, and may yet exclaim,
the indignant pulpits of Scotland, and Geneva — 'lusts as hostile
to the purity of the Christian Faith as the grosser lusts of the flesh
or the emptiest vanities of life.' Hard words these for our re-
storers of church architecture in mediaeval splendour ! Let the
Camden Society, the Lord of Wilton, and the benchers of the
Temple look to it ; while we, all innocent of any such sumptuous
designs — her Majesty's Church Building Commissioners them-
selves not more so — refer to these Benedictine prodigies only as
illustrating a memorable passage in Benedictine History.

But art was regarded by the fathers of that order rather as the
delight than as the serious occupation of their brotherhood. With
a self-reliance as just as that of the great philosopher, if not as
sublime, they took to themselves all knowledge as theii' proper
province. Their rule assigned an eminent rank among monastic
virtues to the guardianship and multiplication of valuable manu-
scripts. It taught the copjast of a holy book to think of himself
as at once a pupil and a teacher, — as a missionary while seated at
his desk — using each finger as a tongue — inflicting on the Spirit
of Evil a deadly wound at each successive line — and as baflfling,
Avith the pen, the dread enemy, who smiles at the impotent hos-
tility of every other weapon grasped by the hand of mortal man.
In each Benedictine monastery a chamber was set apart for the
discharge of this sacred office. In this Scrijptoriuin some of the

THE FREXCII BEXEDICTIXES. -239

monks plied their pens assiduously, and in profound silence, to
produce faultless transcripts of the best originals. To others was
committed the care of revising the text of such works as were then
held in the highest esteem. Charlemagne himself assigned to the
Benedictine Alcuin the high office of preparing, from the various
sources within his reach, a perfect Codex of the Holy Scriptures.
For what remains to us of Pliny, Sallust, and Macrobius, and for
the orations against Verres, we are indebted to their literary zeal.
A tribute of writing materials at the commencement of each novi-
tiate, and another of books at its close, with an annual impost of
manuscripts on the inferior houses, were continually augmenting
the libraries of their greater convents. How extensive and how
valuable such collections became, may be inferred from the direc-
tions given by the Benedictine Cassiodorus for the guidance of his
brethren in their studies. He had collected, and he enjoins them
to read, the Greek and Latin Fathers, the Church historians, the
geographers and grammarians whose works were then extant and
in repute, with various medical books, for the assistance of those
monks to whom the care of the infirmary was confided. Whoever
will consult the ' Historia Eei Literariae Ordinis Sancti Benedicti,'
by their historiographer Magnoaldus Zeigelbauer, may rapidly ac-
cumulate the most conclusive proofs, that by their Order were
either laid or preserved the foundations of all the eminent schools
of learning of Modern Europe.

The greatness of the Benedictines did not, however, consist
either in their agricultural skill, their prodigies of architecture, or
their priceless libraries ; but in their parentage of countless men
and women, illustrious for active piety — for wisdom in the go-
vernment of mankind — for profound learning — and for that
contemplative spirit, which discovers within the soul itself things
beyond the limits of the perceptible creation. Such, indeed, is the
number of these worthies, that, if every page at our disposal were
a volume, and every such volume as ponderous as our old acquaint-
ance. Scapula, space would fail us to render justice to the achieve-
ments of the half of them. We cannot, however, pass by this
goodly fellowship Avithout a transient glance at one normal type,
at the least, of each of these various forms of Benedictine heroism.
For that purpose we need scarcely wander from the annals of our
own land.

In the Benedictine abbey of Nutsall, near Winchester, Poetry,
History, Rhetoric, and the Holy Scriptures were taught, in the be-
ginning of the eighth century, by a monk whom his fellow country-
men called Winfred, but whom the Church honours under the
name of Boniface. He was born at Crediton, in Devonshire, of

•240 THE FEEXCII BEXEDICTINES.

noble and wealthy parents, wlio had reluctantly yielded to his wish
to embrace the monastic state. Hardly, however, had he reached
middle life, when his associates at Nutsall discovered that he was
dissatisfied with the pursuits by which their own thoughts were
engrossed. As, in his evening meditations, he paced the long con-
ventual avenue of lime trees, or as, in the night-watches, he
knelt before the crucifix suspended in his cell, he was still con-
scious of a voice, audible though inarticulate, which repeated to
him the Divine iujunction, to ' go and preach the Grospel to all
nations.' Then, in mental vision, was seen stretching out before
him the land of his Grerman ancestry ; where, beneath the veil
of the customs described by Tacitus, was concealed an idolatry
of which the historian had neither depicted, nor probably conjec-
tured, the abominations. To encounter Satan in this stronghold,
became successively the day dream, the passion, and the fixed re-
solve of Boniface ; until at length abandoning, for this holy war,
the studious repose for which he had already abandoned the world,
he appeared, in his thirty-sixth year, a solitary and unbefriended
missionary, traversing the marshy sands and the primoeval forests of
Friesland. But Charles Martel was already there, — the leader in
a far different contest ; nor, while the Christian Mayor of the
Palace was striking down the Pagans with his battle-axe, could
the pathetic entreaties of the Benedictine Monk induce them to
bow down to the banner of the Cross. He therefore returned to
Nutsall, not with diminished zeal, but with increased knowledge.
He had now learnt that his success must depend on the conduct
of the secular and spiritual rulers of mankind, and on his own con-
nection with them.

The chapter of his monastery chose him as their abbot ; but, at
his own request, the Bishop of Winchester annulled the election.
Then, quitting for ever his native England, Boniface pursued his
way to Kome, to solicit the aid of Pope Gregory II., in his efforts
for the conversion of the (ierman people.

Armed with a papal commission, a papal blessing, and a good
store of relics, Boniface again aj^peared in Friesland, where Charles
Martel was now the undisputed master. Victory had rendered him
devout ; and he gladly countenanced the labours of the monk, to
bring his new subjects within the fold of the Christian Church.
So ardent, indeed, was his zeal for this great work, that the destined
author of it was soon comj^elled to migrate into Saxony, as the
only means of escaping the unwelcome command of the conqueror
to fix his residence in Friesland, and there to assume the coadjutor-
ship and succession to the Bishop of Utreclit.

The missionary labours of Boniface, interrupted only by three

THE FEEXCII BEXEDICTINES. 241

short visits to Rome, were prolonged over a period of more than
thirty-six years ; and were extended over all tlie territories between
the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Ocean. At Rome he sought and
found all the support which papal authority, zeal, and wisd(jin
could afford him. Gregory II. consecrated him a bishop, though
wthout a diocese. Grregory III. raised him to be the Archbishop
and Primate of all Grermany ; with power to establish bishoprics
there at his discretion. The same pontiff afterwards nominated
him Legate of the Holy See, in Germany and France. To these
distinctions Pope Zachary added the Archbishopric of Mentz, then
first constituted the metropolis of the German churches. Last of
all was bcvStowed on him the singular privilege of ajipointing his
own successor in his primacy.

There have been churchmen to whom such a memento of the
vanity of even the highest ecclesiastical dignities would have
afforded but an equivocal satisfaction. To Boniface the remem-
brance of the shortness of life was not only familiar, but welcome.
The treatise of Ambrose on the advantages of death was his constant
companion. It had taught him to regard his successive promotions
but as the means of preparing his mind for the joyful resignation
of them all. His seventy-fourth year was now completed. For
the spiritual care of his converts he had established seven new
bishoprics; and had built and endowed many monasteries for the
advancement of piety and learning among them. At last, abdicating
his own mitre in favour of LuUus, a monk of Malmesbury, he
solemnly devoted his remaining days to that office of a missionary,
which he justly esteemed as far nobler than any symbolised by the
crosier, the purple, or the tiara. Girding round him his black
Benedictine habit, and depositing his Ambrose, ' De Bono Mortis,'
in the folds of it, he once more travelled to Friesland ; and, pitching
his tent on the banks of a small rivulet, awaited there the arrival
of a body of neophytes, whom he had summoned to receive at his
hands the rite of confirmation.

Ere long a multitude appeared in the distance, advancing
towards the tent; not, however, with the lowly demeanour of
Christian converts drawing near to their bishop, but carrying-
deadly weapons, and announcing by their cries and gestures that
they were Pagans, sworn to avenge their injured deities against the
arch-enemy of their worship. The servants of Boniface drew
their swords in his defence; but calmly, and even cheerfully,
awaiting the approach of his enemies, and forbidding all resistance,
he fell beneath their blows — a martyi* to the faith which he had
so long lived, and so bravely died, to propagate. His copy uf
Ambrose, ' De Bono Mortis,' covered with his blood, was exhibited,

242 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES;

during many succeeding centuries, at Fulda as a relic. It was
contemplated tliere by many who regarded as superstitious and
heretical some of the tenets of Boniface. But no Christian, what-
ever might be his own peculiar creed, ever looked upon that
blood-stained memorial of him without the profoundest veneration.
For, since the Apostolic Age, no greater benefactor of om- race
has arisen among men than the Monk of Nutsall, unless it be that
other Monk of Wittemberg who, at the distance of seven centuries,
appeared to reform and reconstruct the chm-ches founded by the
holy Benedictine. To Boniface the north and west of Germany,
and Holland, still look back as their spiritual progenitor ; nor did
any uninspired man ever add to the permanent dominion of the
Grospel provinces of such extent and value.

If, in accomplishing that great work, Boniface relied more on
human authority than is consistent with the practice, or, rather,
with the theory, of our Protestant churches, his still extant letters
will show that he rebuked, with indignant energy, the vices of the
great on whom he was dependent. In placing the crown of Chil-
deric on the head of Pepin, he may have been guilty of some
worldly compliance with the usurper. Yet it is not to be forgotten
that the Pope himself had favom-ed the cause of the Mayor of the
Palace, by his Delphic response, ' Melius esse ilium vocari regem
apud quem summa potestas consisteret.'

The guides of our own missionary enterprises will, probably,
accuse Boniface of undue promptitude in admitting within the pale
any one who chose to submit himself to the mere outward form of
baptism. His facility is indisputable ; but what Protestant will
venture to condemn the measures which brought within the pre-
cincts of the Christian Church the native lands of Luther, of Grotius,
and of Melancthon ?

On a single occasion we find him wearing a garb at least
resembling that of an inquisitor. Within his spiritual jurisdiction
came a Frenchman, working miracles, and selling as rehcs the
cuttings of his own hair and the parings of his own nails. This
worthy had an associate in one Vincent, a Scotchman, a sort of
premature Knox — a teacher, it is said, of heresies, but certainly a
stout opponent of all the laws and canons of the Church. Moved
by Boniface, the secular arm lodged them both in close prison ;
and, all things considered, one must doubt their claim to any
better lodgings.

Peace be, however, to the faults of Boniface whatever they may
have been ! Among the heroes of active piety, the world has few
greater to revere ; as the disciples of Benedict have assuredly none
greater to boast.

TUE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 243

They boast, however, in Lanfranc, another primate, to whose
far-seeing wisdom in the government of maulcind may not ob-
scurely be traced much of the vital S2)irit of those venerable insti-
tutions which are still the glory of the Anglo-Saxon race in our
own islands and in the North American continent. In his romance
of ' Harold,' Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, solving with equal erudi-
tion and creative fancy, the great problem of his art (the problem
how to produce the greatest amount of dramatic effect at the least
expense of historical truth), has produced a living portrait of
Lanfranc, the subtle Italian, who, armed with homilies for the
devout, jests for the facetious, austerities for the superstitious,
learning for the inquisitive, and obsequiousness for the great,
renders the weakness and the strength of each in turn tributary
to his own ambition ; and ascends the throne of Canterbmy, not
merely by the aid of the meek old Abbot Herduiu, but on the
shoulders of the imperious William and the imperial Hildebrand.
Our great ma.ster of historico-romantic portraiture would have
destroyed the picturesque unity of his beautiful sketch, if, by ad-
vancing further, he had taught us (and who could have taught us
so powerfully?) how vast is the debt of gratitude which England
owes to her great primates, Lanfranc, Anselm, Langton, and
Becket, — or rather to that benign Providence which raised them
up in that barbarous age. Whatever may have been their personal
motives, and whatever their demerits, they, and they alone,
wrestled successfully with the despotism of the Conqueror and
his descendants to the fourth generation ; maintaining among us,
even in those evil days, the balanced power, the control of public
opinion, and the influence of moral, over physical, a force, which
from their times passed as a birthright to the parliaments of
Henry HI. and his successors ; and which at this day remains the
inheritance of England, and of all the free communities with which
she has covered, and is still peopling, the globe. The thunders
and reproaches of Eome are sufficiently encountered, by such re-
verberated thunders and reproaches as they provoke. To those
who deplore alike the necessity and the rancour of the conflict, it
may yet be permitted to render a due and therefore a reverent
homage to the ancient prelates of the Eoman Chuj-ch. Unchecked
by the keen wisdom, the ecclesiastical policy, and the Eoman
sympathies of the Benedictine Lanfranc, the fierce Conqueror
would have acquired and transmitted to his posterity on the En-
glish throne, a power absolute and arbitrary, beneath the withering
influence of which every germ of the future liberties and greatness
of England must have prematurely perished.

When, in the mind of William Rufus, the fear of death had i>rc-

241 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

vailed over the thirst for the revenues of Canterbury, he phiced
the mitre of Lanfranc on the head of the Benedictine Anselm ;
anticipating, probably, a less effective assertion of the rights of the
Church by the retired and gentle student, than had been made
by his insinuating and worldly-wise predecessor. In the great
controversy of investitures, however, Anselm showed that nothing
is so inflexible as meekness, sustained and animated by the firm
conviction of right. Yet at the very moment of success he turned
aside from these agitations to revolve the mysterious enigmas
which it was at once the purpose and the delight of his existence
to unravel. Those boundless realms of thought over which, in the
solitude of his library, he enjoyed a princely, but unenvied do-
minion, were in his eyes of incomparably higher value than either
his primacy of the Church of England, or his triumph in main-
taining the prerogatives of the Church of Eome. In our days,
indeed, his speculations are forgotten ; and the very subjects of
them have fallen into disesteem. Yet, except, perlaps, the writ-
ings of Erigena, those of Anselm on the 'Will of God,' on
' Truth,' on ' Free-will,' and on the ' Divine Prescience,' are not
only, in point of time, the earliest examples, but, in the order
of invention, the earliest models, of those scholastic works, which
exhibit, in such intimate and curious union, the prostration and
the aspirings of the mind of man — prostrating itself to the most
absurcl of human dogmas — aspiring to penetrate the loftiest and
the most obscure of the Divine attributes.

Truth may have concealed herself from most of these inquirers ;
but their researches formed no unimportant part of the education
which was gradually preparing the intellect of Europe for admis-
sion into her sanctuary. Among the followers of Anselm are
to be reckoned not merely the Doctors — Venerable, Invincible,
Irrefragable, Angelical, and Seraphic, — but a far greater than
they, even Des Cartes himself — who, as may be learnt from
Brucker, borrowed from the Benedictine philosopher his proof of
the Being of a God. Anselm taught that the abstract idea of
Deity was the fontal principle of all knowledge — that as God
himself is the primoeval source of all existence in the outer
world, so the Idea of God precedes, and conducts us to, all other
ideas in the world within us — and that, until we have risen to
that remotest spring of all our thoughts, we cannot conceive
rightly of the correspondence of our own perceptions with the
realities amidst which we exist.

If these speculations are not very intelligible, they are at least
curious. They show that the metaphysicians who lived when
Westminster Hall was rising from its foundations, and those who

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 245

lived when the first stone of our Edinburgli University was laiil,
beat themselves very much in the same manner against the bars of
their mental prison-house.

Philosophy may thrive in other places than conventual cells.
But there is a literature which scarcely flourishes elsewhere. The
peculiar and sj^ontaneous product of the monastery is mystic devo-
tion. If the Benedictines had been cursed with barrenness in
yielding this fruit, they would have resembled a Dutch garden in
which it was impossible to cultivate the tulip. But no such re-
proach clings to the sons and daughters of Benedict. It must,
however, be admitted that our own land has been singidarly des-
titute of fertility in this the most delicate of all the plants cultivated
in monastic seclusion. We produced schoolmen to satiety. Eri-
gena, Hales, Duns Scotus, and Occam were our own. But we
must pass over to Spain and Germany to find a type of Benedic-
tine greatness, in that impalpable though gorgeous world, which in
later times was inhabited by Molinos and by Fenelon.

In those more fortunate regions, many are the half-inspired
rhapsodists whom we encounter — chiefly ladies — and, wdiat is
worthy of notice, ladies who from their childhood had scarcely
ever strayed beyond the convent garden. Nevertheless, the inde-
structible peculiarity of our national character (wliether it be shy-
ness or dryness, — high aims or low aims, — the fear of irreve-
rence for what is holy, or the fear of being lauglied at for what
is absurd), — that character which forbade the public utterance
in these islands "of the impassioned communings of the soul with
its Maker and with itself, forbids us to make any report to our
fellow-countrymen of the sublime * Canticles ' of St. Gertrude or
of St. Theresa. Lest, however, our hasty sketch of Benedictine
intellectual greatness should be defective, without some specimen
of their super-terrestrial poetry, we venture to remind our readers
of one passage of which M. de Malan (one of Mabillon's biogra-
phers) h-as reminded us, in which the author of the ' De Imitatione
Christi ' (himself a Benedictine, if Mabillon may be trusted) has
sung to his ^olian harp a more than earthly strain. It is, indeed,
an excellent example of a style of which we have no model in our
own language, — except perhaps in occasional passages of Arch-
bishop Leighton.

' My son, let not the sayings of men move thee, however beau-
tiful or ingenious they may be : for the kingdom of God consisteth
not in words but in power.

* Weigh well my words, for they kindle the heart, ilhuuinate
the mind, quicken compunction, and supply abundaiit springs of
consolation.

U 3

246 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

* Eead not the Word of Grod in order that thou mayest appear
more learned or more wise.

*When thou shalt have read and known many things, then
return to the one beginning and principle of all things.

*I am he that teacheth man knowledge, and to little children I
impart an understanding more clear than man can teach.

' He to whom I speak shall quickly be wise, and in spirit shall
profit largely.

' Woe be to them that searcli out many curious things, and take
little thought how they may serve me.

* I am he who, in one instant, raise up the humble in mind to
understand eternal truth better than if he had studied many years
in the schools.

* I teach witliout noise of words, without confusion of opinions,
without ambition of honour, without the shock of arguments.

' To some men I speak common things, to others things rare ;
to some I appear sweetly by signs ; to some, with much light, I
discover mysteries.

' The voice of books is, indeed, one ; but it is a voice which
instructs not all alike. I am he who teaches the truth concealed
wathin the voice. I am the searcher of the heart, the discoverer
of the thoughts, promoting holy actions, distributing to each one
as I will.'

If, as the Benedictines maintained, this sacred chant was really
sung by a poet of their own fraternity about the beginning of the
fourteenth century, it may be looked upon as a kind of threnody,
designed to intimate the approaching obscuration of their order.
For already might be observed, in a state of morbid activity among
them, those principles of decay which were pointed out so indig-
nantly by Benedict himself to Dante, when, under the guidance
of Beatrice, the poet had ascended to his presence in the seventh
heaven: —

< * * My rule
Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves ;
The walls, for ahbeys reared, turned into dens ;
The cowls, to sacks choked up with nuisty meal.
Foul usmy doth not more lift itself
Against God's pleasm-e, than that fruit which makes
The hearts of monks so wanton.'

Carey'' s Dante, canto xxii. ' II Paradiso.'

In the lapse of more than seven centuries, the state of society
had undergone vast changes ; but the institutes of Benedict had
not been clianged to meet them. The new exigencies of life
demanded reformations in the religious state which Francis, Domi-

THE FEENCII BENEDICTINES. 247

nic, and Loyola, successively established. They combined a more
mature policy with a younger enthusiasm. Exhibiting ascetic self-
mortifications, till then unknown among any of the monastic com-
munities of the West, they also formed relations, equally new, with
the laity in all their offices — domestic, political, militar}'^, and
commercial. Having, at the same time, obtained possession of
nearly all the pulpits of the Latin Church, the imagination, the
interests, and the consciences of mankind fell so much under the
control of these new fraternities, that their influence was felt
throughout all the ramifications of society.

While the spiritual dominion of the earlier monasticism was
continually narrowed by this formidable competition, the Benedic-
tines were no less constantly becoming more and more entangled in
the cares and enjoyments of the world. They established an ill-
omened alliance with the Templars, with the Knights of Calatrava
and Alcantara, and with five other orders of chivalry — an unlial-
lowed companionship, which, by familiarising the monks with the
military and dissolute manners of these new brethren, gradually
contaminated their own.

Wealth and temporal prosperity were no less prolific of evil in
the order of St. Benedict than in other societies in which their
enervating influence has been felt. But on the monks they inflicted
a peculiar disaster. For their riches tempted the chief sovereigns
of Europe to usurp the patronage of the religious houses ; and to
transfer the government of them from abbots elected by the chap-
ters, to abbots appointed by the king.

The grant of these conventual benefices in commendam, was
one of those abuses in the Church, which yielded to no reform
imtil the Church herself and her abuses were swept away together,
by the torrent of the French Eevolution. It was, however, a
practice in favour of which the most venerable antiquity might be
alleged. From the earliest times churches had been placed under
a kind of tutelage between the death of the incumbent and the
appointment of his successor. But it not rarely happened that
when the period of this spiritual guardianship was over, the tutor
had become too much enamoured of his ward, and possessed too
much influence with the great, to acquiesce in a separation from
her. In such cases, the commendatory, aided by some ill-fed
stipendiary curate, assumed all the privileges and immunities of a
sinecurist.

Yet it was not necessary to rely on any vulgar names in defence
or in extenuation of this usage. The great Athanasius liimself
held a bishopric mi commendam, in addition to iiis see of Alex-
andria. Neither were they vulgar names by whom it was con-

R 4

248 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

demned. Hildebrand, Innocent III., and the Fathers of Trent,
rivalled each other in denunciations of the abuse ; and were
cordially seconded by Philippe Auguste, by St. Louis, and even by
Francis I. Papal, synodal, and royal decrees, proved, however,
too feeble to check an abuse so tempting to royal and sacerdotal
cupidity. The French kiugs converted the splendid monastery of
Fontevrault into an appanage for a long succession of royal or
noble ladies. The abbey of St. Grermain-des-Pres also was given
in com/niendam by Louis the Debonnaire, to a bishop of Poictiers ;
by Eudes to his brother Eobert, a layman ; and at length, by Louis
XIII., to a widow of the Duke of Lorraine — which is much as
though the mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge, had been
Sfiven to the widow of the Elector Palatine.

During the progress of this decay, there was no lack of re-
formers, or of reforms of the Benedictine Order. But the cormpt-
ing proved too strong for the renovating power ; and their decline
proceeded without any real check rmtil, in the year 1614, Don
Nicholas Benard became a member of the congregation of St. Maur.
Benard was one of those reformers to whom it is given to inno-
vate, at once in the spirit of the institution which they desire to
improve, and in the spirit of the age in which the improvement is
to be made. His object was to bring back his Order to the dutiful-
ness, the industry, and the self-renunciation enjoined by Benedict.
His remedial process consisted in conducting them, by exhortation
and by his own example, to the culture of those studies which were
held in highest esteem in France in the reigns of the thirteenth and
of the fourteenth Louis. In those times no seeds of science or litera-
ture could be sown in that favoured land without yielding an
abundant increase. The reason of this redundant fertility at that
jmrticular era, no historian can explain and no psychologist can
conjecture. But, like the other promoters of learning in his age,
Benard soon found himself followed and surrounded by a band of
scholars, who joined with him in the successful culture of all his-
torical, antiquarian, and critical knowledge. With their aid he
restored one of the chief households of the great Benedictine race
to even more than their pristine glory.

During the seventeenth century one hundred and five writers in
the congregation of St. Maur (then established at St. Grermain-des-
Pres) divided among them this harvest of literary renown. A
complete collection of their works would form a large and very
valuable library ; as may indeed be inferred from a bare enume-
ration of the books of the earlier and later fathers, which they re-
published. Among them are the best editions which the world has

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 211)

seen of the writings of St. Gregory the Great, of Lanfranc, Basil,
Bernard, Ansehn, Augustine, Cassiodorus, Ambrose, Hilary, Jerome,
Athanasius, Gregory of Tours, Irenajus, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alex-
andiia, Tertullian, Justin, and Origeu ; to which must be added
their edition of Josephus.

But it would be as easy to form an image of the Grecian camp
from the catalogue of the ships, as to conceive aright of the Bene-
dictines of St. Maur from an enumeration of their publications and
of the names of the authors of them. To exhibit sume sliglit
sketch of that great seminary as it existed in its days of splendour,
it is necessary to confine our attention to the Achilles of their
host — to him whom all the rest revered as their great example,
and acknowledged by acclamation as their head.

The life of Mabillon has been written by Ruinart, his affec-
tionate pupil ; by Dom Filipe le Cerf, the historiographer of the
congregation ; and more recently by M. Chavin de jNtalan. To the
last of these biographers we are largely indebted for much valuable
information. But a companion at once more instructive and pro-
voking, or a guide less worthy of confidence, never offered himself
at the outset of any literary journey. It is the pleasure of M. de
Malan to qualify the speculative propensities of our own age by
the blindest credulity of the middle ages. He is at the same
moment a rhetorician and an antiquarian (as a dervish dances
while he prays), and is never satisfied with investigating truth,
unless he can also embellish and adorn it. Happily, however, we
are not dependent on his guidance. All that is most interesting
respecting Maljillon may be gathered from his own letters and his
works. For to write was the very law of his existence ; and from
youth to old age his pen unceasingly plied those happy tasks, of
which the interest never fails, and the tranquillity can never be
disturbed.

Jean Mabillon was born at the village of St. Pierre Mont, in
Champagne, on the 23rd of November, 1632. His mother did not
long survive his birth ; but Ruinart congratulates himself on having
seen Etienne, the father of Jean, at the age of 105, in the full en-
joyment of all his mental and bodily powers. Jean himself was
sent by his paternal uncle, the cure of a parish near Rheims, to a
college in that city, which, on his return homewards from the
Council of Trent, the celebrated Cardinal of Lorraine had founded
there for the education of clergymen. The habits of the place well
became its origin. Except while addressing their teachers, the
pui^ils passed in profound silence every hour of the day save that
of noon ; when they amused themselves in a garden, where, a-s we

2.50 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

read, it was their custom, many hundred times a day, to sahite a
conspicuous image of the Virgin, with assurances of their venera-
tion and their love.

Whatever may have been the effects of this discipline on the
characters of his fellow-students, it moulded the meek and quiet
nature of Mabillon into the exact form which the authors' of it
regarded as the most perfect. He surrendered up his will to
theirs ; and, yielding his whole soul to the divine offices of his
college chapel, became so familiar with them, that when, after an
absence of more than fifty years, Euinart knelt beside him there,
he heard the then aged man repeat, from memory, with unerring
exactness, every prayer, every ceremonial, and every sacred melody
in which he had been accustomed to offer up the devotions of his
youth.

In the year 1653, and (to use the chronology of the cloister and
of Oxford) on the feast of the Decollation of St. John the Baptist,
Mabillon was received as a Postulant at the Benedictine monastery
then attached to the cathedral church of St. Eemy. In that
sublime edifice his imagination had long before been entranced by
the anticipated delights of a life of devotional retirement. It had
been his single indulgence, while at college, to wander thither that
he might listen to the choral strains as they rose, and floated, and
died away through the recesses of those long drawn aisles ; and
there had he often proposed to himself the question, whether this
world had anything to offer so peaceful and so pure as an habitual
ministration at those hallowed altars, and an unbroken ascent
of the heart heavenwards, on the mngs of those unearthly psal-
modies ?

To this inquiry his judgment, or his feelings, still returned the
same answer; and, at the end of his novitiate, he gladly pro-
nounced those irrevocable vows which were to exclude him for
ever from all delights less elevated than those of a devotional life.
He had not, however, long to await the proof that the exclusive
use of this ethereal dietary is unfriendly to the health both of
these gross bodies of ours, and of the sluggish minds by which
they are informed. The flesh revolted ; and, to subdue the re-
bellion, ascetic rigours were required. Then (alas for the bathos !)
that base and unfortunate viscus, the stomach, racked his head
with insufferable pains. Compelled at length to fly for relief to
a Benedictine convent at Nogent, he there soothed his aching
brows by traversing, and mourning over, the ruins which the im-
pious ravages of the Huguenots had brought upon the monastic
buildings. Then passing, for relief, to another monastery at
Corbie, he recovered his health ; through the intercession of fSt.

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 251

Adelhard, the patron saint of the place, as he piously believed ;
though a less perfect faith might have been tempted to ascribe
the cure to the active employments in tlie open air in which the
abbot of Corbie compelled him to engage.

With restored health, Mabillon was next transferred, by the
commands of his superior, to the royal abbey of St. Denys ; there to
act as curator of the treasures which the profaneness of a later age
has scattered to the winds. This was no light trust. Amidst
countless monuments of the illustrious dead, and of the greatness of
the French monarchy, the collection contained one of the arms in
which the aged Simeon had raised the infant Jesus in the Temple;
and the very hand which the sceptical Thomas had stretched out to
touch the wounded side of his risen Lord !

It was just one year before the birth of Mabillon, that the con-
gregation of St. Maur had taken possession of the monastery of
St. Grermain-des-Pres at Paris. At the time of his arrival at St.
Denys, Dom Luc d'Achery, a Benedictine monk, was engaged at
St. Grermain's, in one of those gigantic undertakings to which
Benard had invited his fraternity. It was a compilation from the
libraries of France of the more rare and valuable letters, poems,
charters, and chronicles relating to ecclesiastical affairs, which had
been deposited in them either in later or remoter ages. These
gleanings (for they were published under the name of Spicilegium)
extended over thirteen quarto volumes. Such, however, were the
bodily infirmities of the compiler, that, dming forty-five years he
had never been able to quit the infirmary. There he soothed his
occasional intermissions of pain and study, by weaving chaplets of
flowers for the embellishment of the altars of the church of St.
Grermain's.

For the relief of this venerable scholar, Mabillon, then in his
thirty-fifth year, was withdrawn from his charge of St. Denys to
St. Grermain's, where he passed the whole of his remaining life in
the execution of that series of works which have placed his name
at the head of the competitors for the palm of erudition in the
most erudite nation of the world, at the period of her greatest
eminence in learning. The commencement of his fame was laid
in a demeanomr still more admirable for self-denial, humility, and
lovingkindness. To mitigate the sufferings of D'Achery, and to
advance his honour, had become the devoted purpose of his affec-
tionate assistant. Taking his seat at the feet of the old man,
Mabillon humoured his weakness, stole away his lassitude, and
became at once his servant, his secretary, his friend, and Iiis con-
fessor. From the resources of his far deeper knowledge, guided by
his much larger capacity, he enabled D'Acliery to complete liis

252 THE FREXCII BENEDICTINES.

Spicilegium, — generously leaving him in possession of the undivided
honour of that contribution to the literary wealth of France.

Nor was this the greatest of the self-sacrifices which he made to
gratify the feelings of the aged antiquarian. Benard and the other
brethren of the congregation had, from their first settlement at
St. Grermain's, meditated a complete history of their Order. During
forty successive years they had accumulated for the purpose a body
of materials of such variety and magnitude as to extinguish the
hopes and baffle the exertions of all ordinary men. Having found
at length in Mabillon one fitted to ' grapple with whole libraries,'
they committed to him the Titanic laljour of hewing out of those
rude masses an enduring monument to the glory of Benedict and
of his spiritual progeny. He undertook the task in the spirit
of obedience and of love. In the printed circular letters with
which he solicited the aid of the learned, he joined the name of
D'Achery to his own ; and kept alive the same friendly fiction by
uniting their names in the title-page of every volume of the Acta
Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti which appeared in D'Achery's
lifetime.

The literary annals of France, although abounding in prodigies,
record nothing more marvellous than the composition of that book
by a single man, in the midst of other labours of almost equal
magnitude. From the title alone it might be inferred that it was
a mere collection of religious biographies ; and, if such had been
the fact, they who are the deepest read in Roman Catholic hagio-
logy would probably prefer the perusal of the writers of ordinary
romance ; since, with less irreverence for sacred things, they are
usually more entertaining, and not less authentic. For, in recording
the lives of those whom it is the pleasure of the Church to honour,
her zealous children regard every incident redounding to their
glory, as resting on so firm a,nd broad a basis of antecedent proba-
bility, as to supersede the necessity for any positive evidence at all ;
— nay, as to render impious the questioning of any such testi-
monies as may happen to be cited, even when they are the most
suspicious and equivocal. This argument from probability is
especially insisted on, when any such occurrences are alleged as
miraculous — that is, as improbable — for, if probable, they cease
to be miracles. Of these probable improbabilities, few writers are
better persuaded, or more profuse, than Mabillon.

But apart from the extravagancies of his monkish legends, and in
despite of them all, Mabillon's book will live in perpetual honour
and remembrance as the great and inexhaustible reservoir of know-
ledge respecting the ecclesiastical, religious, and monastic history
of the middle nges ; and, therefore, though incidentally, respecting

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 253

the secular condition and intellectual character of mankind duriii"
that period. In those nine fulius lie, in orderly method and chro-
nological arrangement, vast accumulations of authentic facts, of
curious documents, and of learned dis(|uisitions ; like some rich
geological deposit, from which the Genius of history may hereafter
raise up and irradiate the materials of a philosophical survey of
the institutions, habits, and opinions which have been transmitted
from those remote generations to our own. Thence also may be
readily disinterred picturesque narratives without end ; and inex-
haustible disclosures both of the strength and of the weakness of
the human heart.

Nor will this knowledge be found in the state of rude and unor-
ganised matter. Mabillon was not a mere compiler ; but was also
a learned theologian, and a critic and scholar of the first order.
When emancipated from the shackles of human authority, he knew
how to take a wdde survey of the affairs of men, and could sketch
their progress from age to age with a free and powerful hand. To
each volume which he lived to complete, he attached a prefatoiy
survey of the epoch to which it referred ; and those Prolegomena, if
republished in a detached form, would constitute such a review of
the ecclesiastical history of that perplexing period, as no other
writer has yet given to the world. It would, indeed, be based
tin-oughout upon assumptions which the Protestant Churches with
one voice contradict. But if, for the immediate purpose, those
assumptions were conceded, the reader of such a work would find
himself in possession of all the great controversies which agitated
the Christian world during several centuries ; and of the best solu-
tions of which they are apparently susceptible. Nor is it an insig-
nificant addition to their other merits, that the Latin in which these
ponderous Tomes are written, if often such as Cicero would have
rejected, is yet better adapted than the purest Ciceronian style, for
the easy and unambiguous communication of thought in modern
times — the phraseology and the grammar, those of the Court of
Augustus ; the idioms and structure of the sentences, not seldom
those of the Court of Louis Quatorze.

In the reign of that most orthodox Prince, to have given assent
to any fact on which the Church had not set the seal of her infalli-
bility was hazardous ; much more so to dissent from any fact which
her authority had sanctioned. Yet even this heavy charge was
preferred against Mabillon by some of his Benedictine brethren,
before a general chapter of the Order. Among the saints of whom
the fraternity boasted, there were some whose relation to the Order
he had disputed ; some whose claims to having lived and died in
the odour of sanctity he had rejected ; some whose very existence

254 THE FEENCII BENEDICTINES.

he had denied. So at least we understand the accusation. His
antagonists maintained that it was culpable, thus to sacrifice the
edification of the faithful to a fastidious regard for historical evi-
dence ; and injurious, thus to abandon a part of the glories of their
society, which, by mere silence, might have been maintained invio-
late. Among those who invoked the censure of tlieir superiors on
the reckless audacity of Mabillon's critical inquiries, the foremost
was Dom Phillippe Bastide ; and to him Mabillon addressed a
defence, in every line of which his meekness and his love of truth
beautifully balance and sustain each other.

' I have ever been persuaded,' he says, ' that in claiming for
their order honours not justly due to it, monastic men offend against
the modesty of the Grospel as grievously as any person who arro-
gates to himself individually a merit to which he is not really
entitled. To pretend that this is allowable because the praise is
desired, not for the monk himself, but for his order, seems to me no
better than a specious pretext for the disguise of vanity. Though
disposed to many faults, I must declare that I have ever had an
insuperable aversion to this; and that therefore I have been scrupu-
lous in inquiring who are the saints really belonging to my own
order. It is certain that some have been erroneously attributed to
it, either from the almost universal desire of extolling, without
bounds, the brotherhood of which we are members, or on account of
some obscurity in the relations which have been already published.
The most upright of our writers have made this acknowledgment ;
nor have the Fathers Yebez and Menard hesitated to reduce the
number of our saints by omitting those whom they thought inad-
missible. I thought myself also entitled to make a reasonable use
of this freedom ; though with all the caution which could be recon-
ciled with reverence for truth. I commit the defence of my work
to the Divine Providence. It was not of my own will that I engaged
on it. My brethren did me the honour to assign the task to me ;
and if they tliink it right, I shall cheerfully resign the completion
of it to any one whose zeal may be at once more ardent and more
enlightened than my own.'

In the Benedictine conclave the cause of historical fidelity tri-
umphed, though not without a long and painful discussion. In
proof of the touching candour which Mabillon exhibited as a con-
troversialist, we are told that he spontaneously published one of
the many dissertations against his book, to manifest his esteem and
affection for the author of it. But before subscribing to this eu-
logium, one would wish to examine the arrow which he thus winged
for a flio-ht against his own bosom, Eecluse as he was, he was a
Frenchman still : and may have quietly enjoyed a little pleasantry

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 255

even at the expense of a friend — for he was a man of a social
spirit, and not altogether unskilled in those arts by -SYhicIi society
is amused and animated.

The sick chamber of D'Achery was, however, the only salon in
which he could exert these talents. There, for tlie gi'atification of
his aged friend, and, doubtless, for his own, he was accustomed on
certain evenings to entertain a circle of scholars devoted, like them-
selves, to antiquarian researches. The hotels of Paris in his days
were thronged with more brilliant assemblies, — even as, in our
own times, reunions of greater aristocratic dignity have adorned
that Faubourg of St. Germain in which these gatherings of the
learned took place. But neither the Bourbon Lilies nor the Im-
perial Eagles ever protected a society more distinguished by the
extent and dejath of the knowledge they were able to intercliange.
In that ill-furnished dormitory of the decrepid monk, miglit be
seen Du Cange, reposing for a moment from his scrutiny into all
the languages and histories of mankind ; and Baluze, rich in inex-
liaustible stores of feudal and ecclesiastical learning ; and D'Her-
belot, unrivalled in oriental literature ; and Fleury, in whom the
Church of Eome reveres the most perfect of her annalists ; and
Adrian de Valois, whose superlative skill in deciphering the remains
of the first dynasties of France was so amusingly combined with
almost equal skill in finding fault with his own generation, as to
provoke an occasional smile even in the most thoughtful of those
grave countenances; and, more eminent than all these, Feuelon,
then basking in the noon of royal favour, and Bossuet, in tlie
meridian of his genius, both of whom, if not habitual guests at the
monastery, lived in an affectionate confidence with Mabillon,
which they were unable to maintain with each other.

Nor were these the only relations which he had formed witli tlie
world beyond his convent walls. The Jesuits, the Bollandists of
Antwerp, and the chroniclers of the Carthusian and Cistercian
fraternities, solicited his aid in tlieir various literary pursuits.
Leibnitz applied to him for intelligence regarding the House of
Brunswick ; and even Madame de la Valliere sued for his intei-est
to procure for one of her kindred advancement in that world from
which she had herself retired to penitential solitude. Like other
luminaries in tlie same literary firmament, he was now followed by
his attendant satellites ; nor was his orbit seldom disturbed by the
too close vicinity of the bodies amidst which he was constrained to
pass.

The theological, or rather the conventual, world was at that
time agitated by a controversy, in which the great eulogist of the
Benedictine Saints could not have declined to interfere without

25G THE FllENCII BENEDICTINES'.

some loss of honour, and some abandonment of the cause of which
he had become the illustrious advocate. It related to the author-
ship of the treatise ' De Imitatione Christi/ — of all uninspired
"writings incomparably the most popular, if the popularity of books
may be inferred from the continuance and extent of their circula-
tion. That it was written, either in the fourteenth, or at the com-
mencement of the fifteenth, century, was a well ascertained fact ;
and that the author was a monk might be confidently inferred
from internal evidence. But was he Thomas a Kempis, one of the
regular canons of Mont. St. Agnes, near Zwol ? or was he the
Benedictine Jean Grersen ? This was the point at issue ; and with
what learning, zeal, and perseverance, it was debated, is well
known to all the curious in such matters ; and may be learned by
others from the notice prefixed by Thuilliers to his edition of the
posthumous works of Mabillon. It is only so far as his pen was
diverted from its Cyclopean toils by this protracted warfare, that
we are concerned with it at present.

Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a Flemish printer,
then living at Paris (Joducus Badius Ascentius was his Latinised
name), published two editions of the ' De Imitatione,' in which
Thomas, of the village of Kemp, in the diocese of Cologne, was, for
the first time, announced as the author. Francis de To], or Tob,
a German, in two other editions, followed this example ; and was
himself followed by Sommatius, a Jesuit, — in reliance, as he said,
on certain manuscripts of the work in the handwriting of Thomas
a Kempis, then to be seen at Antwerp and Louvain.

But in the year 1616, Constantine Cajitano, a Benedictine monk,
published at Rome another edition, in the title-page of which Ger-
sen was declared to be the author ; partly on the authority of a
manuscript at the Jesuit's College at Arena, and partly in deference
to the judgment of Cardinal Bellarmine.

Round Cajitano rallied all the champions of the Gersenian cause.
The partisans of Thomas a Kempis found an equally zealous leader
in the person of Rosweid, a Jesuit. Bellarmine, himself a member of
the same company, was, as the Kempists maintained, induced by
Rosweid to abandon the Gersenian standard. The Benedictines,
on the contrary, assert that the Cardinal never deserted it at all, nor
ever gave in his adhesion to their adversaries except by pronoun-
cincr the words, ^ As you will,' in order to silence the importunities
with which the anxious Kempists were disturbing his dying bed.

Whatever the fact may be regarding Bellarmine's latest opinion,
the next chieftain who appears on this battle-field is Francis
Waldeo-rave; who, with true English pertinacity and party spirit,
traversed the Continent, to bring up to Cajitano a vast reinforce-

THE FEENCn BENEDICTINES. 257

ment of manuscripts, pictures, and other proofs collected from all
the German, Swiss, and Italian abbeys. Missiles from either side
darkened the air ; when, between the combatants, appeared the
majestic form of Eichelieu himself, who, having employed the
royal press at the Louvre to print off a new edition of the * De
Imitatione,' enjoyed at once the honour of being solicited by the
disputants on either side for his authoritative suffrage, and the
pleasure of disappointing both, by maintaining to the last a digni-
fied neutrality.

On the death of Eosweid, the commander of the Kempists, his
Baton passed to Fronteau, a regular canon, who signalised his
accession to the command by a work called ' Thomas Vindi-
catus.' This, for the first time, drew into the field the congrega-
tion of St. Maur, who, by their champion Dom Quatremaire,
threw down the gauntlet in the form of a pamphlet entitled
' Gersen Assertus.' It was taken up by the Jesuit, George Heser,
the author of what he called ' Dioptra Kempensis.' That blow
was parried by Quatremaire, in a publication to which he gave
the title of ' Gersen iterum Assertus.' And then the literary
combatants were both surprised and alarmed to learn that the
Prevot of Paris considered their feud as dangerous to the peace
of that most excitable of cities ; and that they could no longer be
permitted to shed ink with impunity in the cause of either
claimant.

Thus the controversy was transferred to the safe arbitrament of
Harlay, the archbishop of that see ; who, having no other qualifi-
cation for the task than the dignity he derived from his mitre,
convened at his palace a solemn council of the learned, which,
under his own presidency, was to investigate the pretensions of
Thomas and of Gersen. Of this conclave Mabillon was a member;
and, after much deliberation, they pronounced a sentence which
affirmed the title of Gersen to the honour of having written this
ever-memorable treatise.

An ultimate appeal to public opinion lies against all adjudica-
tions, let who will be the author of them ; and in due season the
Father Testelette made that appeal against the decision of the
archiepiscopal palace, in the form of a book entitled * Vindicite
Kempenses,' which drew from Mabillon his * Animadversiones '
on the argument of Testelette. A truce of ten years followed ;
after which another council was held, under the presidency of Du
Cange ; and although they pronounced no formal sentence, yet the
general inclination and tendency of their opinions appears to liave
been hostile to the claims of Gersen, — which have ever since been
regarded by the best judges with suspicion, if not A\ath disfavour.

258 THE FKENCH BENEDICTINES.

Agitated by this vehement dispute, and mourning the silence of
her infallible head, the Eoman Catholic Church was at length re-
joiced to repose in the oracular dictum of St. Francis de Sales,
who declared that the authorship was to be ascribed neither to
Thomas a Kempis nor to Grersen, but to Him by whose inspiration
the Scriptures themselves had been written !

It is probably on account of the darkness of the regions through
which they pass, that antiquarians, philologists, and theologians are
so much addicted to use their pens as belligerent weapons. Though
the most peaceful of mankind, Mabillon, while waging war with
the Kempists on one flank, was engaged in a contest not less ar-
duous with the Bollandists on the other. Papebroch, one of the
most learned of that learned body, had published a book on the
art of verifying the charters and other ancient public acts de-
posited in the various archives of Europe. In 1681 Mabillon
answered him in a treatise 'De Ee Diplomatica.' After laying
down rules for distinguishing the false instruments from the
true, — rules derived from the form of the character, the colour of
the ink, the nature of the penmanship, the style and orthography
of the instrument, the dates, seals, and subscriptions, — he pro-
ceeded to show, by more than 200 examples, how his laws might
be applied as a test ; and how, by the application of that test, the
manuscripts on which Papebroch chiefly relied might be shown to
be valueless. Whatever may be thought of the interest of this
dispute (which, however, involves questions of the very highest
practical importance), no one probably will read with indifference
the answer of Papebroch to his formidable antagonist : —

' I assure you,' he says, * that the only satisfaction which I retain
in having written at all on this subject is, that it has induced 3'ou
to write so consummate a work. I confess that I felt some pain
when I first read it, at finding myself refuted in a manner so con-
clusive. But the utility and the beauty of your treatise have at
length got the better of my weakness ; and in the joy of contem-
plating the truth exhibited in a light so transparent, I called on
my fellow student here to partake of my own admiration. Yoii
need have no difficulty, therefore, in stating publicly, whenever it
may fall in your way, that I entirely adopt and concur in your
opinions.'

While Papebroch, thus gracefully lowering his lance, retired
from the lists, they were entered by Father Grermon, another
Jesuit ; who, armed with two duodecimo volumes, undertook to
subvert the new Benedictine science. His main assault was aimed
at the assumption pervading Mabillon's book, that the authenticity
and the authority of an ancient cliarter were the same. He sug-

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 259

gested that forgery was a very wide-spread art, and liad proLahly
flourished with peculiar vigovir in remote and ignorant ages. Ma-
billon was content to reply that throughout his extensive researches,
he had never found a proof of any such imposture. His disciples
assailed the sceptical Germon by far more elaborate hostilities. In
one form or another the dispute has descended to our own times.
At the commencement of it, in the seventeenth century, in France,
it yielded (as what French dispute will not yield ?) some choice
entertainment. The Jesuit, Hardouin, anticipating our contem-
porary, Strauss, resolved all these ancient instruments, and with
them a large part of the remains of antiquity, into so many
monkish and mythical inventions. Thus, he declared that the
odes of Horace were written in some Benedictine monastery; and
that Lalage herself was nothing more than a monkish poetical
symbol of the Christian faith. Whither such theories tended Har-
douin clearly enough perceived ; but he sheltered himself by
offering up his thanks to God that he had been denied all human
faith, in order (as he said) that the total want of it might improve
and strengthen his divine faith. Boileau's remark on the occasion
was still better : * I have no great fancy for monks,' he said,
*yet I should be glad to have knoTvn Brother Horace and Dom
Vij-gil.'

Father Anacreon might have been recognised by the great
satii'ist in the person of the reverend Armand Jean le Bouthillier
de Eance, who, having been appointed, at the age of ten, to a
canonry at Notre Dame, became, in less than three years after-
wards, the author of a new edition of the Anacreontic Odes, — a
work of undoubted merit in its way ; though it must not be con-
cealed that the young canon was happy in the possession of a
learned tutor, as well as of powerful patrons ; for Richelieu was
his godfather and kinsman, Bossuet his friend, Marie de Medicis
his protector, Francis de Harlay (afterwards archbishop of Paris)
the associate of his j^outhful revels, and De Retz his instructor in
intrigue and politics. Eminent alike in the field and at the Sor-
bonne, De Ranee would occasionally throw aside his hunting frock
for his cassock, — saying to Harlay, ' Je vais ce matin precher
comme un ange, ce soir chasser comme un diable.' The pupil of
the coadjutor was, of course, however, an eyesore and an offence to
Mazarin; and being banished by him to Verret, this venerable
archdeacon and doctor in divinity (sucli were then his dignities)
converted his chateau there into so luxurious a retreat, that the
cardinal himself might have looked with envy on the exile.

The spirit of this extraordinary churchman was, however, des-
tined to undergo a change, immediate, final, and complete. De la

8 2

2G0 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

Roque relates that having hurried to an interview with a lady of
whom he was enamoured, he found her stretched in her shroud —
a disfigured corpse. Marsollier's story is that his life was saved by
the rebound of a musket-ball from a pouch attached to his shooting
belt. It is agreed on all sides that, under the deep emotion ex-
cited by some svich startling occurrence, he retired from the world,
and became first the founder, and then the Abbe of the monastery
of La Trappe, of the Cistercian Order, where he remained till his
death. During the forty intervening years he was engaged in
solving the problem — what are the Maxima of self-inflicted mor-
tifications which, in the transit through this world to the next, it
is possible to combine with the Minima of innocent self-gratifi-
cations ?

\Miile occupied in this rueful inquiry, it happened that De
Eance lighted on a treatise which Mabillon had recently published
under the title of ' Traite des Etudes monastiques.' To M. de la
Trappe, it appeared that the book was designed as an indirect
attack on himself and his community; and he made his appeal to
the world he had abandoned, in a publication, entitled * Eeponse
au Traite des Etudes monastiques.' In reluctant obedience to the
commands of his spiritual superiors, Mabillon published 'Reflexions
sur la Reponse de M. I'Abbe de la Trappe,' which drew from De
Ranee another volume, entitled ' Eclaircissements sur la Reponse,'
&c. ; and there the controversy ended.

When one of two disputants plants his foot on the terra firma of
intelligible utility, and the other is upborne by the shifting, dark,
and shapeless clouds of mysticism, it is impossible for any witness
of the conflict to trace distinctly either the progress or the result
of it. It may, however, be in general reported of this debate that,
according to the Benedictine arguments, he best employs the
leisure of a religious state who most successfully devotes it to the
diffusion among mankind of divine and human knowledge : while,
according to the Trappist, such labours are at best but the fulfil-
ment of the written, positive, and categorical commands of Scrip-
ture or of the Chui-ch, — an obedience of incomparably less excel-
lency than that which is due from those communities, or from
those individuals, who are called to the state of sinless perfection ;
for to them it is given, not merely or chiefly to conform to absolute
rules of duty, but to listen to those inarticulate suggestions which,
from the sanctuary of the Divine presence, descend into the sanc-
tuary of the human heart, and to dwell amidst those elevations of
soul to which such heaven-born impulses are designed to conduct
them.

They who thus contended could never come within the reach of

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 2GI

each other's weapons. But Mabillon and De Ranee could never
get beyond the reach of each other's love. After the close of tlie
debate they met at La Trappe ; and separated — not without
much unreserved and affectionate intercourse, — each in possession
of his own opinion, and of his antagonist's esteem. The sentences
of Innocent XII. and Clement XI. awarded the victory to the
author of *Les Etudes monasjiques;' and, without the gift of in-
fallibility, the same result might, with safety, have been predicted
from the different tempers in which the controversialists had en-
countered each other. Mabillon descended to the contest in the
panoply of a humble, truth-loving spirit. De Eance (if we may
rely on those who knew him well) was not emancipated, even in
his retreat, from that enervating thirst for human sympathy which
had distinguished him in the world. His disputations and his
self-tormentings are both supposed to have been deeply tinged by
his constitutional vanity ; and it was believed that he would have
been far less assiduous in digging his grave and macerating his
flesh, if the pilgrimage to La Trappe had not become a rage at
Paris; and if the salons of that most inquisitive capital had not
been so curious for descriptions of that living sepulchre, that the
very votaries of pleasure were sometimes irretrievably drawn, by a
kind of suicidal fascination, within those gates impervious to all
sublunary delights, and scarcely visited by the light of day.

From the depths of his humility Mabillon gathered not only
truth, but courage. In his days the altars of the Church were
every where hallowed by the relics of saints and maityrs ; of which
the catacombs at Eome afforded an inexhaustible suj^ply. To
watch over this precious deposit, and to discriminate the spurious
article from the true, was the peculiar office of a congregation
selected for that purpose from the sacred college. But though the
skill and the integrity of cardinals were remote from all suspicion,
who could answer for the good faith of their subordinate agents,
and what was the security that the Dulia appropriate to the bones
of the blessed might not be actually rendered to the skeletons of
the ungodly?

When teaching the art of discriminating between the osseous
remains of different mammalia, Cuvier never displayed a more
edifying seriousness than was exhibited by INIabillon in laying
down the laws which determine whether any given bone belonged
of yore to a sinner or a saint. The miracle-working criterion,
though apparently the best of all, being rejected silently, and not
without very good reasons, Eusebius Romanus (such was his
incognito on this occasion) addressed to Theophilus Gallus a letter
' De Cultu Sanctorum ignotorum ; ' in which he discussed the suflS-

s 3

262 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

ciency of three other tests. First, he inquired, are we sure of the
sanctity of a bone extracted from a sepulchre on which an anagram
of the name of Christ is sculptured in the midst of palms and
laurels ? The answer is discouraging : because it is a well-ascer-
tained fact that the body of one Flavia Jovina was found in this
precise predicament, and yet she was a simple neophyte. Then,
secondly, are we safe if a vase stained with blood be also found in
the tomb ? Nothing more secure — if only we could be quite
certain that the stain was sanguineous, and was not produced by
the perfumes which the ancients were accustomed to heap up in
such vessels. But, thirdly, what if the word ' Martyr ' be engraven
on the stone ? In that case all doubt would be at an end, were it not
for a sophistical doctrine of equivalents which the relic dealers have
propagated. Thus, for example, at the abbey of St. Martin, at
Pontoise, the devout had long been honouring the corpse of one
Ursinus, in the quiet belief that the words of his sepulchral inscrip-
tion were equivalent to a declaration of martyrdom, whereas, on
inquiry, it turned out that they were really as follows : * Here lies
Ursinus, who died on the first of June, after living with his wife
Leontia 20 years and 6 months, and in the world 49 years, 4
months, and 3 days.' Thus his only recorded martyrdom was the
endurance of Leontia's conjugal society for twenty years and
upwards.

Abandoning then all these guides, whither are we to look for
assurance as to the title of a relic to the veneration of the faithful ?
To this grave inquiry the learned Benedictine gravely answers as
follows : Be sure that the alleged saint has been authentically
proved to have been a saint. Be sure that his sanctity was es-
tablished, not merely by baptism, but by some illustrious deeds,
attested either by tradition or by certain proofs. Above all, be
sui'e that the apostolic see has ordained that homage be rendered to
his remains. Admirable canons, doubtless. Yet to an unenlightened
Protestant it would seem that they afford no solution of the pro-
blem — Did this very jawbone before which we are kneeling,
sustain, while yet in life and action, the teeth of a martyr, or the
teeth of one of those by whom martyrs were slain, or the teeth of
any one else?

To assert that any such question was debatable at all before the
tribunal of human reason, was, however, an overt act of liberalism ;
which Mabillon was of course required to expiate. Long and
anxious were the debates in the congregation of the Index, whether
the book should not be condemned, and the temerity of the author
rebuked ; nor would that censure have been averted but for the
interference of the Pope in person ; who made himself sponsor for

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 203

the willingness of Eusebius to explain in a new edition whatever
might be thought objectionable in the first. The pledge was re-
deemed accordingly ; and then the letter ' De Cultu {Sanctorum
ignotorum ' was not only acquitted of reproach by that sacred Col-
lege, but even honoured with their emphatic approl)ation.

Mabillon gave a yet more decisive proof that he was not blinded
to truth by any extravagant scepticism. In his days, as iu our
own, there was living a M. Thiers, a man of singular talents, and
of no less remarkable courage; who had accused the Benedictine
fathers of Vendome of an egregious imposture, in exhibiting at
their convent one of those tears which fell from the eyes of Jesus
when he Avept at the grave of Lazarus. An angel (such was tlie
legend) had treasured it up, and given it to Mary, the sister of the
deceased. It passed some centuries afterwards to the treasury of
relics at Constantinople ; and was bestowed by some Greek emperor
upon some German mercenaries iu reward for some services to his
crown. They placed it in the abbey of Frisingen, whence it was
conveyed by the emperor Henry III., who transferred it to his
mother-in-law, Agnes of Anjou, the foundress of the monastery of
Vendome, where she deposited it. Mabillon threw the shield of
his boundless learning round this tradition ; maintaining that the
genuineness of the relic might at least be reasonably presumed from
the admitted facts of the case ; that it had a prescriptive claim
to the honours it received ; and that his brethren ought to be
left in peaceable enjoyment of the advantages they derived from
the exhibition in their church at Vendome of the Holy Tear of
Bethany.

Passing from fables too puerile for the nursery, to inquiries
which have hitherto perplexed the senate, Mabillon undertook to
explain the right principles of Prison Discipline, in a work entitled
* Eeflexions sur les Prisons des Ordres Keligieux.' He insisted,
that by a judicious alternation and mixture of solitude, labour,
silence, and devotion, it was practicable to render the gaol a school
for the improvement of its unhappy inmates in social arts and in
moral character. After discussing to what extent solitary confine-
ment would be consistent with the mental and bodily health of
the sufferers, and how far the rigour of punishment ought to be
mitigated by exercise and active employments, he concludes as
jFollows : —

' To return to the prison of St. Jean Climaque. A similar
place might be established for the reception of penitents. There
should be in such a place several cells like those of the Chartrcux,
with a workshop, in which the prisoners might be employed at
some useful work. To each cell also might be attached a little

S 4

264 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

garden, to be thrown open to the prisoner at certain hours, for the
benefit of labour, and exercise in the open air. They should
attend public worship, at first in a separate lodge or compartment,
and afterwards in the choir with the congregation at large, so soon
as they should have passed the earlier stages of penal discipline,
and given proofs of penitence. Their diet should be coarse and
poor, and their fasts frequent. They should receive frequent ex-
hortation, and the master of the gaol, either in person or by
deputy, should from time to time see them in private, at once to
console and to strengthen them. Strangers should not be per-
mitted to enter the place, from which all external society should be
strictly excluded. Once establish this, and so far from such a
retirement appearing horrible and insupportable, I am convinced
that the greater number of the prisoners would scarcely regret
their confinement, even if it were for life. I am aware that all
this will be considered as a vision of some new Atlantis : but let
the world say or think what it may, it would be easy to render
prisons more tolerable and more useful, if men were but disposed
to make the attempt.'

So wrote a Benedictine monk in the age and kingjdom of Louis
XIV. The honour which one of his biographers, M. de Malan,
challenges for him, of being the very earliest of those who have
addressed themselves to this difficult subject in the spirit of phil-
anthropy and wisdom, is strictly his due. To the enlightened
reformer of prisons may be cheerfully forgiven his sacred osteology,
and even his defence of the Holy Tear of Vendome. Though in
bondage to the prejudices of his own age, he was able to break
through the bonds which have shackled so many powerful minds in
later and more enlightened times.

In the midst of these and similar employments, Mabillon had
reached his sixty-second year, but the great project of his life was
still unfinished and unattempted. In the belief that the end of his
days was drawing near, he desired to consecrate them to a devout
preparation for death. But being roused to the task by the in-
stances of Renaudot and Baluze, and his affectionate pupil Euinart,
he engaged, with all the ardour of youth, in collecting materials
for his long-meditated history of the Benedictine Order. In
studying and methodising the vast collections at his disposal, the
aged scholar displayed, though without a shade of scepticism, an
acuteness which the subtlest sceptic might have envied, and, with-
out a tinge of philosophy, a luminousness of mind worthy of the
most illustrious philosopher.

At that period the more ardent sons of the Church regarded her
as no less infallible when she asserted historical facts, than when

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 2G5

she proclaimed dogmatic truths. On tlie other hand, tlie Centuri-
ators of Magdeburgh, Du Pin, Kichard fSinion, and even the great
Arnauld, had 23resumed to interrogate ecclesiastical traditions, and
to controvert the authority of popes and synods, fathers and saints,
whenever it touched on topics beyond the articles of the Christian
faith. This audacious freedom was rebuked by the contemptuous
and withering eloquence of Bossuet ; and Mabillon presented him-
self as the great living model of an historian, employing the most
profound and varied knowledge, under the severe restraints of this
intellectual docility. By day and by night he laboured, during the
last fourteen years of his life, on the annals of his Order ; without
so much as a solitary departure from the implicit submission which
he yielded to the Church, as to all matters of fact attested either
by her own authoritative voice, or by the decision of her accredited
doctors. The result was, that, instead of a history of what had
actually occurred, he produced a chronicle, from which it may be
learnt what are the occurrences, the belief of which the Church has
sanctioned, or has silently left to the investigation of her obedient
annalists.

It is, however, a book which irresistible evidence establishes, and
which, without such evidence, could not be believed to be the work
of a single man between his sixty-second and seventy-sixth years.
It comprises a biography of the Benedictine saints in a form more
compendious than that of his Acta Sanctorum. It contains an
account of every other illustrious member of the Order. It in-
cludes a careful review of every book written by any eminent
Benedictine author. All the grants and charters under which tlie
property and privileges of their monasteries were held, are recapi-
tulated and abridged in it. Finally, it embraces a description of
all their sepulchral and other ancient monuments.

Five folio volumes of this vast compilation were finished, and
the last was about to appear, when the life and labours of Mabillon
were brought to a painful and a sudden, though not an immature
termination. Ruinart meditated, though in vain, the completion
of the work. He lifted (perhaps unwisely) the veil which would
otherwise have concealed the last fearful agonies of its great
author. He has, however, shown, with the most artless and
genuine pathos, how the tortures of the body were soothed and
dignified by the faith, the hope, and the serenity of soul of the
sufferer. With no domestic ties, and no worldly ambition to bind
him to earth, and with no anxious forebodings to overcast the
prospect before him, he entertained the last enemy as a messenger
of good tidings, and a herald of approaching joy and freedom ;
and then breathed out his spirit in an unhesitating affiance on

266 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

Him, whom, beneath the shade of many superstitions, and the
burden of many errors, he had loved, and trusted, and obeyed from
childhood to the grave.

Mabillon was a perfect model of monastic perfection ; and how-
ever much inferior the produce of the conservatory may be to those
hardier plants which germinate amidst the frosts and the scorch-
ings of the unsheltered day, yet they have a value and a delicacy
peculiarly their own. He had quitted the world without a sigh,
and probably never breathed a sigh to return to it. If compelled
to revisit and to tread the highways of mankind, he would have
resembled the lifelong prisoner of an aviary, driven out to the
bleak uplands for shelter. Meekly bowing his head to * Holy
Obedience,' he yielded himself without reluctance, to be moulded
into whatever form that Genius of the place might prescribe. Nor
was this a painful sacrifice. The graces of the cloister, — docility,
devotion, and self-discipline, — were his by an antenatal predestin-
ation. Mabillon lived and died in an uninterrupted subjection to
positive laws and forms of man's devising. Even in his interior
life, rule and habit exercised an inflexible dominion over him.
He worshipped indeed with fervent piety ; but with such a me-
chanical exactness of ceremonial, of time, and of place, as might
seem, to a careless self-observer, fatal to the life of spiritual ex-
ercises. To his daily routine of divine offices were added other
forms of private worship, scarcely less immutable ; of which some
were appropriate to his entrance on any literary work, — some to
the arrival of the first proof sheet from the press, — and some to
the commencement of the studies of each succeeding day.

To this constitutional and acquired acquiescence in the will of
his superiors and the rules of his convent, was added the most pro-
found lowliness of spirit. ' Permit me. Sire,' said Le Tellier, the
archbishop of Rheims, to Louis XIV,, 'to present to your Majesty
Dom Mabillon, the most learned man in your Majesty's do-
minions.' ' Sire,' rejoined Bossuet, who stood by, ' the archbishop
might also have said the most humble man in France.' It is sup-
posed that the plumage of the eagle of Meaux was not a little
ruffled by the superlative adjective which derogated from his own
claims to the first place among men of learning. But the applauses
both of the archbishop and of the bishop, in whatever temper given,
were perfectly just. The proofs of Mabillon's learning are, at this
moment, among the noblest monuments of the age of Louis XIV.
The proofs which his eulogists adduce of his humility have not
been very judiciously selected.

A humble man is one who, thinking of himself neither more
highly nor more lowly than he ought to think, passes a true judg-

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 267

ment on his own character. Eut the great Benedictine neither
entertained nor suggested a truth ; when among titled men, and
learned men, and superficial pretenders to knowledge, he bore
himself as if he had been undeserving of their notice, and unworthy
to communicate with them on equal terms. There is no genuine
self-abasement apart from a lofty conception of our own destiny,
powers, and responsibilities; and one of the most excellent of
human virtues is but poorly expressed by an abject carriage.
Torpid passions, a languid temperament, and a feeble natiu'c, may
easily produce that false imitation of humility; which, however, in
its genuine state, will ever impart elevation to the soul and dignity
to the demeanour. This part of Mabillou's portrait has been ill
drawn ; because the artists drew rather from a false image in their
own minds, than from the great original.

In the conventual merit of bodily self-discipline, so far as it
could be reconciled with his studious habits, Mabillon was emulous
of the Trappists. His food, sleep, clothing, warmth, social inter-
course, and other personal gratifications, were measured by the
indispensable exigencies of nature ; and his admirers describe his
austere mortifications of the flesh with the fond delight of a Hindoo
recounting his sacred legends of the spontaneous endurance of more
than human sufferings. * Holy Obedience ' dictated to her fa-
vourite child abasements and self-denials, which it is difficult to
reconcile with decorum or with sincerity. If she had been wise,
she would have summoned him to the nobler office of asserting
that intellectual rank, and those claims to the reverence of mankind
which, like all the other good gifts of Providence, are designed for
noble uses by the wise and gracious Author of them all.

Although the virtues of the convent, even in the person of
Mabillon, excite but a reluctant admiration, and a still colder
sympathy, yet his simple tastes, his devout spirit, and his affec-
tionate nature, would, under a more genial discipline, have ren-
dered his character as lovely as his diligence, his critical sagacity,
and the extent of his knowledge were wonderful. For, soaring,
in these respects, immeasurably above vulgar ascetics, he obeyed to
the letter the command of his great patriarch Benedict, and de-
voted every moment of his life to some useful and energetic occu-
pation.

In these pursuits Mabillon was not merely an indefatigable
student, but a laborious traveller. In his time the treasm'es of
which he was insatiably covetous were not accumidated in the
Eoyal Library of Paris, but dispersed in the conventual, episcopal,
and other public archives of France, Belgium, Germany, and
Italy. The journeys necessary for examining them had all the

2G8 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

terrors of an exploration of the Nile to one whom (all French-
man as he was) not even the enchanted gardens and terraces of
Versailles had, during a period of twenty years, been able to
seduce, for a single morning, from his seclusion at St. Grermain-
des-Pres. But what antiquarian worthy of the name would be
arrested by the Loire^ the Meuse, the Ehine, or the Alps, when
beyond these distant barriers a whole harem of virgin manuscripts
wooed his embrace, glowing, like so many houris, with immortal
youth, and rich in charms which increased with each revolving
century ? Sometimes alone, but more commonly attended by a
Benedictine brother, he accomplished several Capitulary or Diplo-
onatic tours through Flanders, Burgundy, Switzerland, the south
of Grermany, and the whole of the Italian peninsula. The earlier
of those expeditions were made on foot, at the cost of his Order ;
the latter with the equipages becoming an agent of the Grrand
Monarque, employed by Colbert to collect or to transcribe manu-
scripts for his royal master. The results of these expeditions were
various learned itineraries (such as his ' Iter Burgundicum ' and
his ' Museum Italicum '), and a prodigious accession to the wealth
of the royal library. His services were rewarded by Louis with a
seat in the Academy of Belles Lettres and Inscriptions. But the
whole republic of letters united to confer on the learned traveller
honours far exceeding any at the disposal of the greatest of the
kings of the earth.

His journeys, especially his Italian journey, resembled royal
progresses rather than the unostentatious movements of a humble
monk. Monasteries contended for the honour of entertaining him
as their guest. Fet^s celebrated his arrival in the greater cities
of Italy. His society and correspondence were courted by the
learned, the great, and the fair. The Pope, the Grrand Duke of
Tuscany, the Cardinals, and Queen Christina, vied in rendering
courtesies to their illustrious visitor. At the Catacombs, at Loretto,
at Clairvaux, and, above all, at Monte Casino, the devout assembled
to witness and to partake of his devotions. All libraries flew open
at his approach ; nor did the revolutionary sgavans of France tra-
verse the same regions, or examine the same repositories with an
authority comparable to that of the poor Benedictine, as he
moved from one Italian state to another, — powerless except in the
lustre of his reputation, the singleness of heart with which he
pursued his object, and the love with which he was regarded by
all his associates.

In M. Valery's three volumes will be found an ample and curious
diary of Mabillon's Italian expedition. He commenced it on the
1st of April, 1685, having selected as his companion Dom Michel

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 2G9

Grermaiu, another member of the congregation of St. Maur. Ger-
main had himself written some essays on monastic history ; but his
chief title to literary honours was derived from his having minis-
tered to the j^roduction of the 'Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti
Benedict!,' and of the treatise ' De Ee Diplomatica.'

The travellers had engaged to maintain a correspondence with
three of their monastic associates. One of these was the faithful
and affectionate liuinart, of whom we already know something,
Placide Porcheron, the next, seems to have been a member of the
Dryasdust family, so celebrated by Walter Scott and Thomas
Carlyle ; his two great performances being a commentary on an
obsciu-e geographical book of the seventh century, and notes on a
treatise on Education written by Basil the Macedonian, who, two
hundred years later, had been Emperor of the Greeks. Claude
Bretagne, the third of the Committee of Correspondence at Paris,
was the author of some devotional works, bvit was more eminent as
the intimate friend of Nicole, and as a companion of infinite grace
and wit, and of the most captivating discourse. It was arranged
that letters shoidd be addressed to Charles Bulteau also, who was
not a monk, but ' Doyen des Secretaires du Eoi,' and was famous
for having, in that capacity, vindicated, with great learning, the
supremacy of the King of France over the sovereigns of the Spanish
monarchies.

"When devout men, profound scholars, or still more profound
antiquaries, engage in a prolonged epistolary intercourse, the
reader is not without preconceptions of the mental aliment await-
ing him. He has probably gone through some volumes in wliich
Protestant divines interchange their religious experiences. The
style in which Salmasius, Budseus, and Scaliger entertained their
friends is not wholly unknown to him ; and how the Spelmans of
old, and the Whitakers of recent times, wrote their letters, may be
learnt at the expense of a transient fatigue. But let no one address
himself to M. Valery's volumes, with the hope or the fear of being
involved 'in any topics more sacred, more crabbed, or more anti-
quated than befits an easy chair, a winter's evening, and a fireside.
Eeading more pleasant, or of easier digestion, is hardly to be met
with in the Parisian epistles of Grimm, Diderot, or La Harpe.

Our pilgrims first take up the pen at Venice. They had ran-
sacked the Ambrosian Library, examined the Temple of Venus at
Brescia, admired the amphitheatre at Verona, and visited the mo-
nastery of their order at Vicenza ; though, observes Germain, ' Ni
la ni ailleurs, nos moines ne nous out pas fait gouter de leur vin.'
Some gentlemen of the city having conducted them over it, ' On ne
saurait,' adds he, ' faire attention sur le merite et les maniercs

270 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

honnetes de ces messieurs, sans reflechir sur nos moines et admirer
letir insensibilite. Aussi n'etudient ils pas ; ils disent matins avant
souper ; ils mangent gras ; portent du linge, pour ne rien dire du
pecuHum, et de leur sortie seuls.' In short, there is already
peeping out, from behind oiu* good Germain's cowl, one of those
Parisian countenances on the quick movable lines of which flashes
of subacid merriment are continually playing.

On reaching Florence the migratory antiquarians form a new
acquaintance, alike singidar and useful, in the person of Maglia-
bechi, the librarian of the Grand Duke. Another man at once so
book-learned, so dirty, and so ill-favoured, could not have been
found in the whole of Christendom. The Medicsean Library was
his study, his refectory, and his dormitory ; though, except in the
depth of winter, he saved the time of dressing and undressing, by
sleeping in his clothes and on his chair ; his bed serving the while
as an auxiliary book-stand. Fruit and salads were his fare ; and
when sometimes an anchovy was served up with them, the worthy
librarian, in an absent mood, would not unfrequently mistake, and
use it for sealing-wax. Partly from want of time, and partly from
the consciousness that an accurate likeness of him would be a
caricature on humanity at large, he would never allow his jiortrait
to be taken ; though what the pencil was not permitted to do, the
pens of his acquaintance have so attempted, that he would have
judged better in allowing the painter to do his worst. Michel
Germain describes him as 'Varillas multiplied by three.' Now
Menage tells us that happening once to say that every man was
hit off by some passage or other in Martial, and having been
challenged to prove it with respect to Varillas, the most slovenly
scholar of his acquaintance, he immediately quoted ' Dimidiasque
nates Gallica palla tegit.' Short indeed, then, must have been the
skirts of Magliabechi, according to Germain's arithmetic.

His bibliographical appetite and digestion formed, however, a
psychological phenomenon absolutely prodigious. Mabillon called
him ' Museum inambulans, et viva qusedam bibliotheca.' Father
Finardi, with greater felicity, said of him, ' Is unus bibliotheca
magna,' that being the anagram of his Latinised name, Antonius
Magliabechius.

Having established a correspondence with this most learned
savage, the Benedictines proceeded to Rome, where they were
welcomed by Claude Estiennot, the procurator of their Order at the
Papal court. He also devoted his pen to their entertainment.
Light labour for such a pen ! within eleven years he had collected
and transcribed forty-five bulky folios, at the various libraries of
bis society in tlie several dioceses of France, adding to them, sa^'s

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 271

Dom Le Cerf, 'reflexions tr(^s sensees et judicieuses;' a praise
which probably no other mortal was ever able to gainsay or to
affirm.

Germain found Rome agitated with the affair of the Quietists.
His account of the dispute is rather facetious than theological.
Just then a Spaniard liad been sent to the galleys, and a priest to
the gallows; the first for talking, and tlie second for writing-
scandals, while the great Quietist Molinos was in the custody of the
Inquisition. Marforio, says Grermain, is asked by Pasquinwhy are
you leaving Rome, and answers, ' Chi parla e mandato in galera ;
chi scrive d impiccato ; chi sta quieto va al sant' officio.' Marforio
had good cause for his hurry ; for the scandal which (as Germain
pleasantly has it) ' broke the priest's neck ' was merely his having
said that 'the mare had knocked the snail out of its shell;' in
allusion to the fact of the Pope's having been forced out of his
darling seclusion and repose, to be present at a certain festival, at
which a mare or palfrey was also an indispensable attendant.
* The rogues continue to repeat the jest notwithstanding,' observes
the reverend looker-on.

He gathered other pleasant stories, at the expense of his
Holiness and these heretical aspirants after a devotional repose of
the soul. Some of them are not quite manageable in our most
fastidious times, without the aid of a thicker veil than he chose to
employ. For example, he tells of a Quietist bishop who, to escape
an imaginary pursuit of the police, scaled the roof of his mansion
in his night-dress, and so, running along the tops of the adjacent
houses, unluckily made his descent through one of them, into
which he could not have entered, even in full canonicals and in
broad day, without a grievous damage to his reputation. Then
follows a fine buffo catastrophe, and when (says Germain) ' the
whole reaches the ears of Nostro Signore, the holy man has a good
laugh, and orders the bishop to quit Rome without delay.' Yet Ger-
main himself breaks out into hot resentment against ' the wretched
and abandoned Molinos,' and proposes to Magliabechi (in seeming
seriousness) to arrest the progress of the evil, by publishing a
manuscript discovered in their Italian tour, from which it would
appear that the bones of a wicked Bohemian lady, of the name of
Guillemine, who, three centuries before, had propagated nearly the
sairte enormities, were at length taken, with public execration, out
of her grave, and scattered to the winds.

Molinos, however, was strong in the protection of Christina, who
then dwelt at Rome. Her abandonment of the faith of her illus-
trious father, was accepted there, not only as a cover for a multi-
tude of sins, but as an apology for the assiunption of an independent

272 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

authority beneath the very shadow of the Vatican. Mabillon, ac-
companied by Germain, presented to her his book ' De Liturgia
Gallicana,' in which, to her exceeding discontent, she found her-
self described as ' Serenissima.' ' My name,' she exclaimed, ' is
Christina. That is eulogy enough. Never again call me, and ad-
monish your Parisians never to call me, Serenissima.' Germain
left her with the fullest conviction that the epithet was altogether
out of place ; but ' after all,' he says, ' she gave us free access to
her library, — the best thing she could do for us.' So great were
her privileges, or such the weakness of the lazy Innocent XI., that,
as we learn from these letters, an offender on his way to prison,
having laid hold on the bars of one of her windows as a sanctuary,
was violently rescued by her servants, whereupon they were tried
and sentenced to be hanged. Christina wrote to the judge to in-
form him, that if her servants died any other than a natural death,
they should not die alone ! The judge complained to the Pope ;
but his Holiness laughed at the affair, and terminated it by sending
her Majesty a peace-offering, which she contemptuously handed
over to the complainant.

Germain looked upon the religious observances of Eome with
the eye of a French encyclopediste. He declares that the Romans
burn before the Madonna, and in their churches, more oil than the
Parisians both burn and swallow. ' Long live St. Anthony ! ' he
exclaims, as he describes the horses, asses, and mules, all going, on
the saint's festival, to be sprinkled with holy water, and to receive
the benediction of a reverend father. * All would go to ruin, say
the Eomans, if this act of piety were omitted. So nobody escapes
paying toll on this occasion, not Nostro Signore himself.' Then
follows an account of a procession to St. Peter's, on the reception of
certain new converts, which is compressed into a single paragraph
purposely long, intricate, and obscure ; * a sentence,' says Germain,

* which I have drawn out to this length to imitate the ceremony
itself.' Soon after we meet him at the cemetery of Pontianus,

* where,' he observes with all the mock gravity of Bayle, ' there
lie 50,263 martyrs, without counting the women and children.
Each of us was allowed to carry off one of these holy bodies. That
which fell to my share had been too big for the hole in which it
was found. I had infinite trouble in disinterring it, for it was
quite wet, and the holy bones were all squeezed and jammed
together. I am still knocked up with the labour.'

The Pope himself fares no better than the ceremonies and relics
of his church. 'If I should attempt,' he says, 'to give you an
exact account of the health of his Holiness, I must begin with
Ovid, "In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas." At ten he

THE FEENCII liEXEDlCTINES. 273

is sick, at tifteen well again, at eighteen eating as niiicli ius fuur
men, at twenty-four dropsical. They say he has vowed never to
leave his room. If so, M. Struse declares that he can never get a
dispensation, not even from himself, as his confinement will be, de
jure divino. The unpleasant part of the affair is, that they say he
has given up all thoughts of creating new cardinals, forgetting in
his restored health the scruples he felt when sick ; like other great
sinners.'

Indolent and hypochondriacal as he was. Innocent XI. had
signalised himself, not only by the virtues which Burnet ascribes
to him in his travels, but by two remarkable edicts. One of them,
which could not be decorously quoted, regulated the appearance
on the stage of certain classes of singers; the other, (under the
l^enalties of six days' excommunication, and of incapacity for
absolution, even in the article of death, save from the Pojjc
himself,) commanded all ladies to wear up to their chins, and
down to their wrists, draperies not transparent. ' The Queen of
Spain,' says our facetious Benedictine, ' immediately had a new
dress made, and sent it to her nuncio at Eome, to ascertain whether
it tallied exactly with the ordinance: for,' he continues (the
inference is not very clear), ' one must allow that Spanish ladies
have not as much delicacy as our own.'

He has another story for the exhilaration of St. Grermain-des-
Pres, at the expense of both pope and cardinals. A party of the
sacred college were astounded, after dinner, by the appearance of
an austere Capuchin, who, as an imexpected addition to their
dessert, rebuked their indolence and luxury, and their talkativeness
even during High JMass. Then, passing onwards to an inner
chamber, the preacher addressed his Holiness himself, on the sin
of an inordinate solicitude about health — no inappropriate theme ;
for he was lying in the centre of four fires, and beneath the load of
seven coverlets, having recently sustained a surgical operation ; on
which Germain remarks, that if it had taken place in summer, ' it
would have been all up with the holy man.'

The Jesuits of course take their turn. At the table of the
Cardinal Estrees, jNIabillon and Germain meet the Father Couplet,
who had passed thirty years in China. ' I do not know,' says
Germain, ' whether he was mandarin and mathematical apostle at
the same time ; but he told us that one of his bretliren was so
eminent an astrologer as to have been created a mandarin of the
third class. He said that another of them was raising himself by
contemplation to the third heaven, before actually going there. I
have my doubts about his success. However, Father Couplet told
us that he had a very numerous Chretiente. ' My Chretiente,'' he

274 THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES.

frequently said, ' consists of more than 30,000 souls.' Do you
believe his story, that there are forty millions oi' inhabitants in
Pekin, and from two to three hundred millions in China at large ?
I do not.'

This keen observer is not silent on the cold reception at Home
of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The arrogant claims of
Louis XIV. on behalf of the Grallican Church and Crown had
abated much of the enthusiasm with which the measure would
otherwise have been hailed. 'Well,' observes Germain (one can
see the rising of his shoulders as he writes), ' a hundred years ago
they took a very different tone about the Huguenots. They not
only offered public thanksgiving on their massacre by Charles IX.,
but hung the walls of the royal hall in the Vatican with pictures
of the murder of Coligny and of the butcheries of St. Bartholomew.
They still form its chief ornaments.'

Even when accompanying IMabillon on a pilgrimage to the
cradle of their Order at Monte Casino, Grermain looks about him
with the same esprit fort. ' At the foot of the mountain,' he says,
' we found an inn, where we learned to fast, as we got nothing
but some cabbages which I could not eat, some nuts, and one
apple for our supper. Then we paid thirty francs for a wretched
bed, which we divided between us, in the midst of bugs and fleas.'
On the next day they luckily fell in with the vicar-general of the
Baruabites, a Frenchman, from whom (he says) ' we got some
cheese and preserves, and, finally, a glass of Lachryma ; as he
told us, to strengthen the stomach. Reaching at length the
mansion of the abbe of Monte Casino, he made a fete for us, and
bore witness to our excellent appetites.'

Mabillon's devotion at the tomb of his patriarch . is described as
deep, fervent, and protracted. Grermain sends to their friend
Porcheron a picturesque account of the dress and aspect of the
monks, an enthusiastic description of the library, a very pretty
sketch of the adjacent country, with a graphic representation of
the church and the ceremonial observed in it; and promises his
correspondent ' to say a mass for him at the foot of Benedict's
tomb.' With the exception of that assurance (whether grave or
gay it is not easy to determine), the whole letter might have been
written by Miss Martineau, and would have done no discredit even
to her powers of converting her readers into her fellow-travellers.

Such of the letters comprised in this collection as are written by
Mabillon himself, relate exclusively to the duties of his mission ;
and are grave and simple, though perhaps too elaborately courteous.
In the last volume are some contributions from Quesnel, whose
singular fate it is to have been censured by the Pope, Clement XI.,

THE FRENCH BENEDICTINES. 27.5

and eulogised by De Kance the Trappist, by l^a Chaise the Jesuit,
by Voltaire the Wit, and by Cousin the Philosopher. The
pleasantries of Michel Grermain and the freedoms of Estiennot are
far from being the best things in M. Valery's book. We have
selected them rather as being the most apposite to our immediate
purpose.

In this correspondence three of the most eminent of the congre-
gation of St. Maur transmit from Italy such intelligence and
remai'ks as appear to them best adapted to interest other three of
the most eminent of their brotherhood at Paris. If the table-talk
of the refectory at St. Germain-des-Pres was of the same general
character, the monks there had no better title to the praise of an
ascetic social intercourse, than the students or the barristers in the
halls of Christ Church, or of Lincoln's Inn. It would be difficult
to suppose an appetite for gossip more keen, or more luxuriously
gratified.

The writers and the receivers of these letters were all men
devoted by the most sacred vows to the duties of the Christian
priesthood ; yet in a confidential epistolary intercourse, extending
through eighteen successive months, no one of them utters a
sentiment, or discusses a question, from which it could be gathered
that he sustained an}^ religious office, or seriously entertained any
religious belief whatever. It may be that our Protestant divines
occasionally transgress the limits within which modesty should
confine the disclosure, even to the most intimate friends, of the
interior movements of a devout spirit. But all reverence to the
memory of our Doddridges and Howes, om* Venns and Newtons !
whose familiar letters, if sometimes chargeable Avith a failure in tliat
gi-aceful reserve, yet always glow with a holy unction, and can at
least never be charged with the frigid indifference which these
learned Benedictines exhibit on the subjects to which they had all
most solemnly devoted their talents and their lives.

Visiting, for the first time, the places which they regard as the
centre of Christian unity, as the seat of apostolic dominion, as the
temple towards which all the churches of the earth should worship,
as the ever salient fountain of truth, and as the abode of him who
impersonates to his brother men the Divine Eedeemer of mankind,
not a solitary word of awe or of tenderness falls from their pens —
not a fold of those dark tunics is heaved b}^ any throb of grateful
remembrance or of exulting hope. They could not have traversed
Moscow or Amsterdam with a more imperturbable phlegm ; nor
have sauntered along the banks of the Seine or the courts of the
Louvre in a temper more perfectl}^ debonnaire.

Protestant zeal may be sometimes rude, bitter, and contumelious

T 2

276 THE FEENCH BENEDICT1^"ES.

in denouncing Roman Catholic superstitions. It is a fault to be
sternly rebuked. But how adequately censure these reverend
members of that communion, who, without one passing sigh, or
one indignant phrase, depict the shameful abuses of the holiest
offices of their Church, with cold sarcasms and heartless unconcern !

Rome combated her Protestant antagonists by the aid of the
Jesuits in the world, and of the Benedictines in the closet. Yet to
those alliances she owes much of the silent revolt against her
authority which has characterised the last hundred years ; and of
which the progress is daily becoming more apparent. The Jesuits
involved her in their own too well merited disesteem. The
Benedictines have armed the philosophy both of France and
Grermany with some of the keenest weapons by which she has been
assailed. It was an ill day for the papacy, when the congregation
of St. Maur, at the instance of Benard, called the attention of their
fellow-countrjnnen to the mediaeval history of the Church, and
invited the most enlightened generation of men whom Europe had
ever seen, to study and believe a mass of fables of which the most
audacious Grrecian mythologist would have been ashamed, and at
which the credulity of a whole college of augurs would have
stagcrered.

It was but a too prolific soil on Avhich this seed was scattered.
At the moment when, in the integrity of his heart, JNIabillon was
propagating these legends, the walls of his monastery were often
passed by a youth, whose falcon eye illuminated with ceaseless
change one of the most expressive countenances in which the
human soul had ever found a mirror. If the venerable old man
had foreseen how that eye would one day traverse his Benedictine
annals, in a too successful search for the materials of the most
overwhelming ridicule of all which he held holy, he would cheer-
fully have consigned his unfinished volumes, and with them his
own honoured name, to oblivion. Not so would Michel Germain,
Claude Estiennot, and the brethren for whose amusement they
wrote, have contemplated, if they could have foreknown, the
approaching career of the young Arouet. Though they clung to
the Church of Rome with all the ardour of partisans, and though
their attachment to her Avas probably sincere, their convictions
must have been faint, unripe, and wavering. The mists of doubt,
though insufficient to deprive them of their faith in Christianity,
had struck a damp and abiding chill into their hearts. If they had
lived long enough to know the patriarch of Ferney, they would
have been conscious of the close affinity between his spirit and
their own.

Hoy/ could it have been otherwise ? From disinterrinsf leofends

THE FREXCII BEXEDICTIXEf^. 277

and traditions revolting to tlieir hearts and understandings, they
passed to Rome, there to disinter foul masses of holy l)ones, to con-
template sacred processions of nudes and asses, to find a corpulent
self-indulgent valetudinarian sustairnng the character of the vicar
of Christ, and to discover that the basest motives of worldly interest
dictated to the papal court the decisions for wliich they dared to
claim a divine impulse and a divine infallibility. P^rom such
follies and such pretensions these learned persons turned away with
immeasurable contempt. The freedom of thought which unveiled
to them these frauds, left them disgusted with error, but did not
carry them forward to the pursuit of truth. Without the imbecility
to respect such extravagances, they were also without the courage
to denounce and repudiate them. Their sujoerior light taught
them to expose and ridicule religious error ; — it did not teach
them to emlirace unwelcome truth. In that book which is ' the
religion of Protestants,' they might have read that 'the light is the
life of men,' — that is, of men who obey and follow its guidance.
There also they might have learned that ' the light which is in us
may be darkness,' — that is, may at once illuminate the inquisitive
intellect, and darken the insensible heart. The letters which they
have bequeathed to us, interesting as they are in other respects,
afford melancholy proof how deeply the younger Benedictines of
the congregation of St. Maur were alread}^ imbued with the spirit
of that disastrous philosophy, which was destined, before the lapse
of another century, to subvert the ancient institutions of their
native land, and with them, the venerable fabric of their own
illustrious Order.

T 3

278

THE POET-EOYALISTS.

All religions, and all ages, have their saints ; their men of un-
earthly mould ; self-conquerors ; sublime even in their errors ; not
altogether hateful in their very crimes. If a man would under-
stand the dormant powers of his own nature, let him read the Acta
sanctorum. Or, if ' too high this price of knowledge,' let him at
least acquaint himself with the legends of the later heroes of the
Grallican Church. Of all ascetics they were the least repulsive.
They waged war on dulness with the ardom' of Dangeau and St.
fSimon, and with still better success. While macerating their
bodies in the cloisters of Port-Royal, they did not cease to be
French men and French women of the Augustan age. While prac-
tising the monastic virtue of silence, their social spirit escaped this
unwelcome restraint, in a body of Memoirs as copious as those
which record the splendom- and the miseries of Versailles. A rapid
sketch of the substance of thoge monastic chronicles, may not be
without its use in directing the attention of our readers to one of
the most remarkable episodes in ecclesiastical history.

He whose journey lies from Versailles to Chevreuse, will soon
find himself at the brow of a steep cleft or hollow, intersecting the
monotonous plain across which he has been passing. The brook
which winds through the verdant meadows beneath him, stagnates
into a large pool, reflecting the mutilated Gothic arch, the water-
mill, and the dovecot, which rise from its banks ; with the farm-
house, the decayed towers, the forest trees, and innumerable shrubs
and creepers which clothe the slopes of the valley. France has
many a lovelier prospect, though this is not without its beauty ;
and many a field of more heart-stirring interest, though this, too,
has been ennobled by heroic daring ; but through the length and
breadth of that land of chivalry and of song, the traveller will in
vain seek a spot so sacred to genius, to piety, and to virtue. That
arch is all which remains of the once crowded monastery of Port-
Royal. In those woods Racine first learned the language — the
imiversal language — of poetry. Under the roof of that humble

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 27 Ji

farmhouse, Pascal, Arnauld, Nicole, De Saci, and Tillemont, medi-
tated those works, which, as long as civilisation and Christianity
survive, will retain their hold on the gratitude and reverence of
mankind. There were given innumerable proofs of the graceful
good humour of Henry IV. To this seclusion retired the heroine
of the Fronde, Ann Genevieve, Duchess of Longueville, to seek
the peace which the world could not give. Madame de Sevigne
discovered here a place * tout propre a inspirer le desir de faire son
salut.' From the Petit Trianon and Marly, there came hither to
worship Grod, many a courtier and many a beauty, heartbroken or
jaded with the very vanity of vanities — the idolatry of their fellow
mortals. Survey French society in the seventeenth century from
what aspect you will, it matters not, at Port-Royal will be found
the most illustrious examples of whatever imparted to that motley
assemblage any real dignity or permanent regard. Even to the
mere antiquarian, it was not without a lively interest.

At the eve of his dejoarture to the conquest of the Holy Se-
pulchre, the good knight, Matthieu de INIarli, cast a wistful gaze
over the broad lands of his ancestors, and entrusted to his spouse,
Mathilde de Grarlande, the care of executing some work of piety
by which to propitiate the Divine favour, and to insure his safe
return. A Benedictine monastery, for the reception of twelve
ladies of the Cistertian order, was accordingly erected, in imitation
of the Cathedral at Amiens, and by the same architect. Four cen-
turies witnessed the gradual increase of the wealth and splendour
of the foundation. Prelates of the houses of Sully and Nemours
enlarged its privileges. Pope Honorius III. authorised the cele-
bration of the sacred office within its walls, even though the whole
country should be lying under a papal interdict ; and of the host
consecrated on the profession of a nun, seven fragments might be
solemnly confided to her own keeping, that, for as raan}^ successive
days, she might administer to herself the holy sacrament. Yet
how arrest by spiritual immunities the earthward tendency of all
subhmary things ? At the close of the reign of Henry IV., the
religious ladies of Port-Royal had learned to adjust theu- * robes a
grandes manches ' to the best advantage. Promenades by the
margin of the lake relieved the tedium of monastic life. Gayer
strains of music than those of the choir might be heard from the
adjacent woods; and if a cavalier from Paris or Chevreuse had
chanced to pursiie his game that way, the fair musicians were not
absolutely concealed nor inexorably silent. So lightly sat the
burden of their vows on those amiable recluses, that the gayest
courtier might well covet for his portionless daughter the rank of
their lady abbess.

T 4

280 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

Such at least was the judgment of M. Marion. He was ad-
vocate-general to Henry IV., and maternal grandfather of Jaqueline
Marie Angelique, and of Agnes Arnanld. Jobbing is not one of
the arts to the invention of which the moderns may lay claim.
M. Marion obtained from 'the father of his people' the coadjuterie
of the Abbey of Port-Royal for the high-spirited Jaqueline, then
in her eighth year ; and that of St. Cyr for the more gentle Agnes,
over whom not more than five summers had passed. The young
ladies renounced at once the nursery and the world. A single
step conducted them from the leading strings to the veil. Before
the completion of her first decade, Angelique, on the death of her
immediate jiredecessor, found herself, in plenary right, the abbess
and ruler of her monastery ; and, in attestation of her spiritual
espousals, assumed the title and the name of the Mere Angelique,
by which she has since been celebrated in the annals of the
church.

To the church, however, must not be imputed this breach of
ecclesiastical discipline. In the ardour of his parental affections,
the learned advocate-general was hurried into acts for which he
would have consigned a criminal of lower degree to the galleys. He
obtained the requisite bulls from Eome by forged certificates of
his granddaughter's age ; and to this treason against the Holy See,
Henry himself was at least an accessory after the fact. Hunting
in the valley of Port-Royal, the gay monarch trespassed on the
precincts of the sacred enclosure. To repel the royal intruder, a
child, bearing in her hand the crosier which bespoke her high con-
ventual rank, issued from the gates of the abbey at the head of a
solemn procession of nuns, and rebuked her sovereign with all
the majesty of an infont Ambrose. Henry laughed and obeyed.
Marion's detected fraud would seem to have passed for a good
practical joke, and for nothing more. In the result, however, no
occiurrence ever contributed less to the comedy of life, or formed
the commencement of a series of events more grave or touching.
It would be difficult or impossible to discover, in the history of the
church, the name of any woman wdio has left so deep an impress
of her chara,cter on the thoughts and the conduct of the Christian
comm on weal th .

The family of Arnauld held a conspicuous station among the
noblesse of Provence, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In
a later age a member of that house enjoyed the singular honour of
at once serving Catharine de Medicis as her procureur-general, and
of defeating, sword in hand, at the head of his servants, the force
sent to assassinate him on the day of St. Bartholomew. Returning
to the bosom of the churchj which had thus roughly wooed him,

THE PORT-EOYALTSTS. ogi

he transmitted Ins fortune and his office to his son, Antoine
Arnauld, the Imsband of Catharine Marion. They were the happy
parents of no less tha,n twenty children. Of these the youngest
was the great writer, who has imparted to the name of Arnauld an
imperishable lustre. Five of the daughters of the same house
assumed the veil in the aljbey of Port-Royal. Their mother,
Catharine Marion, was admitted in her widowhood intt:> that so-
ciety. Pomponne, the minister of Louis XIV., Le Maitre, \m-
rivalled among the masters of forensic eloquence in France, and
De Saci, the author of the best version of the Holy Scriptures into
the French language, were three of her grandsons. Before her
death the venerable matron had seen herself surrounded, in the
monastery and the adjoining hermitages, by eighteen of her de-
scendants in the first and second generations ; nor until the final
dispersion of the sisterhood, in the beginning of the seventeenth
century, had the posterity of Antoine and Catharine Arnauld ceased
to rule in the house of which the Mere Angelique had, seventy
years before, been the renowned reformer.

To those who believe that the psychological distinction of the
sexes may be traced to physical causes ; and that, where they
neither marry nor are given in marriage, those distinctions will
for ever disappear, the character of Angelique is less perplexing
than to the advocates of the opposite theory. Her understanding,
her spirit, and her resolves, were all essentially masculine. She
was endued with the various faculties by which man either extorts
or wins dominion over his fellow-men; — with address, courage,
fortitude, self-reliance, and an unfaltering gaze fixed on objects at
once too vast to be measured, and too remote to be discerned, but by
the all-searching eye of faith. Among the Israelites of old, she
would have assumed the office of Judge ; or would have given out
oracles in the forests of ancient Grermany. Born in the reign, and
educated near the court of a Bourbon, the lighter and more gentle
elements of her nature found exercise even under the paralysing
influences of an ascetic life ; for Angelique was gay and light of
heart, and St. Benedict himself might have forgiven or applaude<l
the playful sallies of his votary. In scaling the heights of de-
votion, she could call to her own aid, and that of others, all the
resources of the most plaintive or impassioned music. To flowers,
and the glad face of nature, she gave l)ack their own smiles with
a true woman's sympathy. With such literature as might be
cultivated within the walls of her convent, she was intimately con-
versant; and would have eclipsed Madame de Sevigne's epistolary
fame, had it been permitted to her to escape from theological into
popular topics. Concentrated within a domestic circle, and be-

282 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

stowed on a husband or a child, the affections which she poured
out on every human being who claimed her pity, would have
burned with a flame as pure and as intense as was ever hymned in
poetry, or dreamt of in romance. A traveller on the highways of
the world, she must have incurred every peril except that of tread-
ing an obscure and inglorious path. Immured by superstition in
a cloister, she opened the way at once to sublunary fame and to an
immortal recompence ; and has left an example as dangerous as it
may be seductive to feebler minds who, in a desperate imitation of
such a model, should hazard a similar self-devotion.

Angelique, indeed, might be fitted for a nunnery ; for such was
the strength, and such the sacred harmony, of her spirit, that
whilst still a sojourner on earth, she seemed already a denizen of
heaven. When a child, she understood as a child ; enjoying the
sports, the rambles, and the social delights which the habits of
Port-Eoyal had not then forbidden. With advancing years came
deeper and more melancholy thoughts. She felt, indeed, (how
could she but feel ?) the yearnings of a young heart for a world
where love and homage awaited her. But those mysteries of our
being of which the most frivolous are not altogether unconscious,
pressed with unwonted weight on her. A spouse of Christ — a
spiritual mother of those who sustained the same awful character
— her orisons, her matins, and her vesper chants, accompanied by
unearthly music and by forms of solemn significance — the Grothic
pile beneath which she sat enthroned — and the altar where, as
she was taught, the visible presence of her Redeemer was daily
manifested — all spoke to her of a high destiny, a fearful responsi-
bility, and of objects for which all sublunary ties might well be
severed, and a sacrifice wisely made of every selfish feeling. Nor
need a Protestant fear to acknowledge, that on a heart thus con-
secrated to the service of her Maker, rested the holy influence,
familiar to all who meekly adore the great source of wisdom, and
reverently acquiesce in his will. As a science, religion consists in
the knowledge of the relations between Grod and man ; as a living
principle, in the exercise of the corresponding affections ; as a rule
of duty, in the performance of the actions which those affections
prescribe. The principle may thrive in healthful life and energy,
though the science be ill understood, and the rule imperfectly
apprehended. For, after all, the great command is Love ; and He
from whom that command proceeded, is himself Love ; and amidst
all the absurdities (for such they were) of her monastic life, Ange-
lique was still conscious of the presence of a Father, and found the
guidance of a friend.

When, at the age of eleven years, Angelique became the abbess

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 283

of Port-Eoyal, few things were less thought of by the Frencli
ladies of the Cistertian Order thau the rule of their austere
founder. During the wars of the League, religion, by becoming a
watchword, had almost ceased to be a reality. Civil war, the
apology for every crime, had debased the national character ; and
the profligacy of manners which the last generation expiated by
their sufferings, may be distinctly paid back to the age of which
Davila has written the political, and Bassompien*e the social his-
tory. Society will still exert a powerful influence even over those
by whom it has been abandoned. When Gfabrielle d'Etrees reigned
at the Louvre, beads were told and masses sung in neighbouring
cloisters, by vestals who, in heathen Rome, woiild have been con-
signed to a living sepulchre. In a monastery, the spiritual thermo-
meter ranges from the boiling to the freezing point, with but few
intermediate pauses. From the ecstacies of devotion there is but
one step to disgust, and thence to sensuality, for most of those who
dare to forego the aids to piety and virtue which divine wisdom
has provided in the duties and the affections of domestic life.

While this downward progress was advancing at Port-Eoyal, it
happened that a Capuchin friar sought and ol)tained permission to
preach there. Of the man himself, the chroniclers of the house
have left a scandalous report ; but they gratefully acknowledge the
eflficac}^ of his sermon. Angelique listened, and Avas converted.
Such, at least, is her o^vn statement : and unstirred be all the
theological questions connected with it. How deep was the im-
pression on her mind, may be gathered from her own words : —
' Often,' she exclaims, ' did I wish to fly a hundred leagues from
the spot, and never more to see my father, mother, or kindred,
dearly as I love them. My desire was to live apart from every
one but God, imknown to any human being, concealed and humble,
with no witness but himself, with no desire but to please him.'
Her dignity as abbess she now regarded as a burden. Even her
projected reforms had lost their interest. To live where her holy
aspirations would be thwarted, and where examples of holiness
would not be found, was to soar to a more arduous, and therefore
a more attractive sphere of self-denial. Tiiat such fascinations
should dazzle a young lady in her seventeenth year, is, it must be
confessed, no very memorable prodigy; but to cherish no ineffectual
emotions was one of the characteristics of the Mere Angelique ; as
it is, indeed, of all powerful minds. To abdicate her ecclesiastical
rank, and, by breathing a tainted moral atmosphere, to nourisli,
by the force of contrast, the loftier Christian graces, Avere purposes
ultimately executed, though for a while postponed. She paused
only till the sisterhood of Port-Eoyal should have acquired, from

284 THE POET-llOYALISTS.

her example or teaching, that sanctity of manners in which her
creed informed her that the perfection of our nature consist^. To
the elder ladies, the prospect had few charms. But the will of
their young abbess prevailed. They laid at her feet their separate
possessions, abandoned every secular amusement, and, closing the
gates of their monastery against all strangers, retired to that unin-
terrupted discharge of their spiritual exercises to which their vows
had consigned them. Much maybe read, in the conventual annals,
of the contest with her family to v/hich the Mere Angelique was
exposed by the last of these resolutions. On a day, subsequently
held in high esteem as the ' Journee du Gruichet,' her parents and
M. D'Andilly, her eldest brother, were publicly excluded, by her
mandate, from the hallowed precincts, despite their reproaches and
their prayers, and the filial agonies of her own heart. That great
sacrifice accomplished, the rest Avas easy. Poverty resumed his
stern dominion. Linen gave place to the coarsest woollens. Fast-
ing and vigils subdued the lower appetites ; and Port-Eoyal was
once more a temple whence the sacrifices of devotion rose with an
unextinguished flame to heaven, thence, as it was piously believed,
to draw down an unbroken stream of blessings upon earth.

Far different were the strains that arose from the neighbouring
abbey of Maubisson, under the rule of Mde. d'Etrees. That
splendid mansion, with its dependent baronies and forests, re-
sembled far more the palace and gardens of Armida, than a retreat
sacred to penitence and prayer. She was the sister of the too
famous Grabrielle, to whose influence with Henry she was indebted
for this rich preferment. Indulging without restraint, not merely
in the luxuries but in the debaucheries of the neighbouring capital,
she had provoked the anger of the king, and the alarm of the
General of the Order. A visitation of the house was directed.
Madame d'Etrees imprisoned the visitors, and well-nigh starved
them. A second body of delegates presented themselves. Pe-
nances, at least when compulsory, were not disused at Maubisson.
The new commissioners were locked up in a dungeon, regaled with
bread and water, and soundly whipped every morning. Supported
by a guard, the Greneral himself then hazarded an encounter with
the formidable termagant. He returned with a whole skin, but
boasting no other advantage. Next appeared at the abbey gates
a band of archers. After two days of fruitless expostulation, they
broke into the enclosure. Madame now changed her tactics. She
took up a defensive position, till then unheard of in the science of
strategy. In plain terms, she went to bed. A more embarrassing
manoeuvre was never executed by Turenne or Conde. The siege
was turned into a blockade. Hour after hour elajDsed ; night

THE FORT-KOVAM.^TS. 285

succeeded to day, and day to nioht; but still the abbe.ss was re-
cumbent — unapparelled,— unapproachable. Driven thus to choose
between a ludicrous defeat and a sore scandal, what Frenchman
could longer hesitate ? Bed, blankets, abbess and all, were raised
on the profane shoulders of the archers, lifted into a carriage,
and most appropriately turned over to the keepiug of the Filles
Peniientes at Paris.

And now was to be gratified the lofty wish of Angelique to tread
in paths where, unsustained by any human sympathy, she might
cast herself with an undivided reliance on the Arm which she knew
could never fail her. From the solemn repose of Port-Eo3'al, she
was called, by the General of the Order, to assume the government
of the ladies of Maubisson. Thetis passing from the ocean caves
to the Grecian camp, did not make a more abrupt transition. At
Maubisson, the compromise between religious duties and earthly
pleasiu'es was placed on the most singular footing. i\Ionks and
nuns sauntered together through the gardens of the monastery, or
angled in the lakes which watered them. Fetes were celebrated
in the arboiurs with every pledge except that of temperance.
Benedictine cowls and draperies were blended in the dance with
the military uniform and the stiff brocades of their secular guests ;
and the evening closed with cards and dice and amateur theatricals,
until the curtain fell on scenes than which none could more re-
quire that friendly shelter. Toil and care might seem to have fled
the place, or rather to have been reserved exclusively for the con-
fessor. Even for him relief v^^as provided. Considerately weighing
the extent of the labours which they habitually imposed on him,
his fair penitents drew up for their common use certain written
forms of self-arraignment, to which he, with equal tenderness,
responded by other established forms of conditional absolution.

But the Lady entered, and Comus and his crew fled the
hallowed ground which they had thus been permitted to defile.
She entered with all the majesty of faith, tempered by a meek
compassion for the guilt she abhorred, and strong in that virgin
purity of heart which can endure unharmed the contact even of
pollution. ' Our health and our lives may be sacrificed,' she said
to her associates in this work of mercy; ' but the work is the work
of God:' and in the strength of God she performed it. Seclusion
from the world was again established within the refectory and the
domain of Maubisson. Novices possessing a ' genuine vocation '
were admitted. Angelique directed at once the secular and the
spiritual affairs of the convent. All the details of a feudal princi-
pality, the education of the young, the care of the sick, the
soothing of tlie penitents, the management of the perver.':c, the

286 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

conduct of the sacred offices, alternately engaged her time ; and in
each she exhibited a gentleness, a gaiety, and a firmness of mind,
before which all resistance gave way. The associates of Madame
d'Etrees retained their love of good cheer, and Angelique caused
their table to be elegantly served. They sang deplorably out of
tune, and the young abbess silently endured the discord Avhich
racked her ear. To their murmurs she answered in her kindest
accents. Their indolence she rebuked only by performing the
most menial offices in their service ; and she inculcated self-
denial by assigning to herself a dormitory which, to say the truth,
would have much better suited tlie house-dog. The record of the
strange and even sordid self-humiliations to which she thought it
right to bow, can hardly be read without a smile ; but, whatever
may have been the errors of her creed, a more touching picture
has never been drawn of the triumphs of love and of wisdom, than in
the record left by Madame Suireau des Anges of this passage of
the life of Angelique Arnauld.

But Madame d'Etrees Avas not yet at the end of her resources.
A company of young men, under the guidance of her brother-in-
law the Count de Sauze, were observed one evening to loiter near
the house of the Filles Fenitentes. By the next morning she was,
under their escort, at the gates of Maubisson. Burst open by
main force, they again admitted the ejected abbess. The servant
who opposed her entrance was chastised on the spot. Patients who
now occupied as an hospital the once sumptuous chambers of the
Abbatial lodge, instantly found themselves in much more humble
lodgings. Cooks resumed their long neglected art, and Madame
d'Etrees provided a dinner worthy of her former hospitality and
her recent privations. But in the presence of Angelique, the
virago was abashed. To intimidate or to provoke her rival proved
alike impossible : it might be more easy to overpower her. De
Sauze and his confederates made the attempt. They discharged
their pistols and flourished their drawn swords over her head, with
immanly menaces. She remained unmoved and silent. The
screams which the occasion demanded, were accordingly supplied
by the intrusive abbess. Clamour and outrage were alike in-
effectual. At length Madame d'Etrees and her respectable con-
fessor, aided by De Sauze, laid their hands on Angelique, and
thrust her from the precincts of the monastery. Thirty of the
nuns followed her in solemn procession. Their veils let down,
their eyes cast on the earth, and their hands clasped in prayer,
they slowly moved to a place of refuge in the neighbouring town
of Pontoise.

But alas, for the vanity of human triumphs ! — waving banners.

THE PORT-KOYALISTS. 287

and burnished arms glittered through the advancing column of
dust on the road from Paris to Maubisson. Scouts announced the
approach of two hundred and fifty well-appointed archers. Madame
d'Etrees and her cavaliers escaped by the postern. A desperate
leap saved the worthless life of her confessor. Her partisan, the
Mere de la Sure, ' a nun by profession, but otherwise resembling a
trooper,' mounted through a trap-door to a hiding-place in the
ceiling, thence to be shamefully dragged by an archer, whom she
still more shamefully abused. Then might be seen through the
gloom of night, a train of priests and nuns drawing near with
measured steps to the venerable abbey; on either side a double file
of cavalry, and in each horseman's hand a torch, illuminating the
path of the returning exiles. Angelique resumed her benignant
reign ; but not in peace. Brigands led by De Sauze, and en-
couraged by her rival, haunted the neighbouring forests ; and,
though protected by the archers, the monastery remained in a
state of siege. Shots were fired through the windows, and the life
of Angelique was endangered. Strong in the assurance of Divine
protection, she demanded and obtained the removal of the guard.
Her confidence was justified by the event. Madame d'Etrees was
discovered, was restored to her old quarters at the Filles Penitentes,
and, in due time transferred — not without good cause — to the
Chatelet ; there to close in squalid misery, in quarrels, and intem-
perance, a career which might, with almost equal propriety, form
the subject of a drama, a homily, or a satire.

For five successive years Angelique laboured to Ijring Ijack the
ladies of Maubisson to the exact observance of their sacred vows.
Aided by her sister Agnes, the abbess of St. Cyr, she established a
similar reform in a large proportion of the other Cistertian nunne-
ries of France. All obstacles yielded to their love, their prudence,
and their self-devotion. A moral plague was stayed, and excesses
which even the sensual and the worldly condemned, were banished
from the sanctuaries of religion. That in some, the change was
but from shameless riot to hypocritical conformity ; that in others,
intemperance merely gave way to mental lethargy ; and that even
the most exalted virtues of the cloister hold biit a subordinate and
an equivocal place in the scale of Christian graces, is indeed but
too true : yet assuredly it was in no such critical spirit as this, that
the labours of Angelique were judged and accepted by Him, in the
lowly imitation of whom she had thus gone about doing good.
' She has done what she could,' was the apology witli which He
rescued from a like cold censure the love which had expressed
itself in a costly and painful sacrifice ; nor was the gracious bene-
diction which rewarded the woman of Bethany withheld from the

288 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

abbess of Port-Koyal. To that tranquil Lome she bent her steps,
there to encounter far heavier trials than any to which the resent-
ment of Madame d'Etrees had exposed her.

Accompanied by a large number of the nuns of Maubisson, An-
gelique returned to the valley of Chevreuse. They brought with
them neither silver nor gold, though rich in treasures of a far
higher price in the account of their devout protectress. Poverty,
disease, and death, were however in their train. Kising from the
marshes below, a humid fog hung continually on the slopes of the
adjacent hills, and the now crowded monastery was soon converted
into one great hospital. But for a timely transfer of the whole
establishment to a hotel purchased for them by the mother of An-
gelique in the Faubourg St. Jacques at Paris, their remaining his-
tory might all have been compressed into a chapter on the influence
of inalaria.

The restoration of the community to health was not, however,
the most momentous consequence of the change. It introduced
the abbess to the society and the influence of Hauranne de Verger,
the abbot of St. Cyran, one of the most memorable names in the
ecclesiastical annals of that age. When Eichelieuwas yet a simple
bishop, he distinguished among the crowd of his companions one
whose graceful bearing, open countenance, learning, gaiety, and
wit, revealed to his penetrating glance the germs of future emi-
nence. But to an eye dazzled by such prospects as were already
dawning on the ambitious statesman, those which had arrested the
upward gaze of his young associate were altogether inscrutable.
With what possible motive De Verger should for whole days bury
himself in solitude, and chain down that buoyant spirit to the
study of the Grreek and Latin fathers, was one of the few problems
which ever engaged and baffled the sagacity of M. de Lupon.
They parted ; the prelate to his craft, the student to his books ; the
one to extort the reluctant admiration of the world, the other to
toil and to suffer in the cause of piety and truth. They met
again ; the cardinal to persecute, and the abbot to be his victim.
Death called them both to their account ; leaving to them in the
world they had agitated or improved, nothing but historical names,
as forcibly contrasted as they had been strangely associated.

Great men (and to few could that title be more justly given than
to Eichelieu) diff"er from other men chiefly in the power of self-
multiplication ; in knowing how to make other men adopt their
views and execute their purposes. Thus to subjugate the genius of
St. Cyran, the great minister had spared neither caresses nor
bribes. The place of first almoner to Henrietta of England, the
bishoprics of Clermont and Bayonne, a choice among numerous

TIIK rORT-KOYALlSTS. 289

abbacies, -were successively offered and refused. * Gentlemen, I
introduce to you the most learned man in Europe,' was the cour-
teous phrase by which the Cardinal made known the friend of his
youth to the courtiers who thronged his levee. But human ap-
plause had lost its charm for the ear of St. Cyran. The retired
and studious habits of his early days had not appeared more inex-
plicable to the worldly-minded statesman than his present in-
difference. Self-knowledge had made Eichelieu uncharitable.
Incredulous of virtues of which he detected no type in the dark
recesses of his own bosom, he saw in his former comptanion a
treacherous enemy, if not a rival. There were secrets of his early
life of which he seems to have expected and feared the disclosure.
St. Cyran was at least the silent, and might become the open
enemy of the declaration by which the parliament and clergy of
Paris had annulled the marriage of Gaston Duke of Orleans, in
order to pave the way for his union wdth the niece of the Cardinal.
To his long-cherished scheme of erecting the kingdom of France
into a Patriarchate in his own favour, there could arise no more
probable or more dangerous opponent. To these imaginai-y or
anticipated wrongs, was added another, which seems to have excited
still more implacable resentment. An aspirant after every form of
glory, Eichelieu had convinced himself, and required others to
believe, that his literary and theological were on a level with his
political powers. He was the author of a Catechism where might
be read the dogma, that contrition alone, uncombined in the heart
of the penitent with any emotions of love towards the Deity, was
sufficient to justify an absolution at the Confessional. One Segue-
not, a priest of the Oratory, maintained and published the opposite
opinion. Rumour denied to Seguenot the real parentage of the
book which bore his name, and ascribed it to St. Cyran. From
speculations on the love of God to feelings of hatred to man, what
polemic will not readily pass, whether his cap he red or l)lack ?
Seguenot's errors Avere denounced by the Sorbonne, and the poor
man himself was sent to the Bastille, there, during the rest of his
great opponent's life, to obtain clearer view^s on the subject of con-
trition. Impartial injustice required that the real, or imputed,
should fare no better than the nominal author ; and St. Cyran was
conducted to Vincennes, to breathe no more the free air of heaven
till Richelieu himself s^iould be laid in the grave.

Never had that gloomy fortress received w-ithin its Avails a man
better fitted to endure with composure the utmost reverses of for-
time. To him, as their patriarch or founder, the Avhole body of
the Port-Royalists, Avith one voice, attribute not merely a pre-
eminence above all their other teachers, but sucli a combination of

290 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

intellectual powers and Christian graces, as would entitle him not
so much to a place in the calendar, as to a place apart from, and
above, the other luminaries in that spiritual galaxy. Make every
deduction from their eulogies which a rational scepticism may
suggest, and it will yet be impossible to evade the accumulated
proofs on which they claim for St. Cyran the reverence of man-
kind. Towards the close of the first of the four volumes which
he has dedicated to the attempt, Claude Lancelot confesses and
laments the difficulty of conveying to others by words any definite
image of the sublime and simple reality which he daily contem-
plated with more than filial reverence. He describes a man mov-
ing through the whole circle of the virtues which the Grospel
inculcates, with a step so firm as to indicate the constant aid of a
more than human power, and with a demeanour so lowly as to be-
speak an habitual consciousness of that divine presence. He
depicts a moral hero, by whom every appetite had been subdued,
and every passion tranquillised, though still exquisitely alive to
the pains and the enjoyments of life, and responding with almost
feminine tenderness to every affectionate and kindly feeling — a
master of all erudition, but never so happy as when imparting to
little children the elementary truths on which his own heart re-
posed — grave, nay, solemn in discourse, but with tones so gentle,
a wisdom so profound, and words of such strange authority to
animate and to soothe the listener, that, in comparison with his,
all other colloquial eloquence was wearisome and vapid — rebuking
vice far less by stern reproof than by the contrast of his own
serene aspect, at once the result and the reflection of the perfect
peace in which his mind continually dwelt, — exhibiting a trans-
cript, however rudely and imperfectly, yet faithfully drawn, of
the great example to which his eye was ever turned, and where,
averting his regard from all inferior models, it was his wont to
study, to imitate, and to adore. In short, the St. Cyran of Lan-
celot's portraiture is one of those rare mortals whose mental health
is absolute and unimpaired — whose character consists not so much
in the excellence of particular qualities, as in the symmetry, the
balance, and the well-adjusted harmonies of all — who concentrate
their energies in one mighty object, because they live under the
habitual influence of one supreme motive — who are ceaselessly
animated by a love embracing every rational being, from Him who
is the common parent of the rest, to the meanest and the vilest
of those who were originally created in His image and likeness.

Nor was Lancelot a man inapt to discriminate. He was the
author of the Port-Eoyal Grrammars, Grreek, Latin, and Italian,
now fallen into disuse, but so well known to such of us as ploughed

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 291

those rugged soils during the first ten years of the present centiu-y.
His biographical labours are not without a tinge of his style as a
grammarian; — a little tedious perhaps, and not a little prolix and
over-methodical, but replete in almost every page \vith such touches
of genuine dignity in the master, and cordial reverence in the dis-
ciple — Avith a S3mipathy so earnest for the virtues he celebrates,
and so simple-hearted a consciousness of his own inferiority — that,
in the picture he undesignedly draws of himself, he succeeds more
than in any other way in raising a lofty conception of the man by
whom he was held in such willing and grateful subjugation. And
he had many fellow-subjects. Eichelieu himself had felt his dar-
ing spirit awed by the union, in the friend of his youth, of a
majestic repose and unwearied activity, which compelled the great
minister to admit that the heart of man might envelope mysteries
beyond his divination. Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld, and many others,
eminent in that age for genius and piety, submitted themselves to
his guidance in their studies as well as in their lives, with the im-
plicit deference of children awaiting the commands of a revered
and affectionate father. He was a most voluminous Avriter; but of
his published works, one only attained a transient celebrity, and of
that book his authorship was more than doubtful. If he did not
disown, he never claimed it. Of the innumerable incidents re-
corded of him during his imprisonment at Vincennes, few are
more characteristic than the sale of a considerable part of a scanty
collection of books he had brought there, to purchase clothes for
two of his fellow-prisoners, the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil.
* I entreat you,' he says to the lady to whom he gave this com-
mission, ' that the cloth may be fine and good, and befitting their
station in society. I do not know what is becoming ; but, if I
remember, some one has told me that gentlemen and ladies of
their condition ought not to be seen in company without gold lace
for the men, and black lace for the women. If I am right about
this, pray purchase the best, and let every thing be done modestly,
yet handsomely, that when they see each other, they may, for a
few minutes at least, forget that they are captives.' It is in the
moral, rather than in the intellectual qualities of St. Cyran, that
his claim to the veneration of posterity must now be rested. He
occupies a place in ecclesiastical history as the founder of Jansenism
in PYance.

Of that system of religious belief and practice, the origin is to
be traced to the joint labours of St. Cyran and Cornelius Jansen,
during the six years which they passed in social study at Bayonue.
Eeturning to his native country, Jansen became first a Professor
of Divinity at Louvain, and afterwards Bishop of Ypres. There

D 2

292 THE PORT-EOYALISTS.

he surrendered himself to a life of unremitting labour. Ten times
he read over every word of the works of Augustine ; thirty times
he studied all those passages of them which relate to the Pelagian
controversy. All the fathers of the church were elaborately collated
for passages illustrative of the opinions of the Bishop of Hippo.
At length, after an uninterrupted study of twenty years, was
finished the celebrated Augustinus Cornelii Jansenii. With St.
Austin as his text and guide, the good Bishop proceeded to esta-
blish, on the authority of that illustrious father, those doctrines
which, in our times and country, have been usually distinguished
by the terms Calvinistic or Evangelical. Heirs of guilt and cor-
ruption, he considered the human race, and each successive member
of it, as 13'ing in a state of condemnation, and as advancing to-
wards a state of punishment ; until an internal impulse from on
high awakens one and another to a sense of this awful truth, and
infuses into them a will to fly from impending vengeance. But
this impulse is imparted onl}^ to the few ; and on them it is be-
stowed in pursuance of a decree existing in the Divine intelligence
before the creation of our species. Of the motives of their pre-
ference not even a conjecture can be formed. So far as human
knowledge extends, it is referable simply to the Divine volition ;
and is not dependent on any inherent moral difference between the
objects of it, and those from whom such mercy is withheld. This
impulse is not, however, irresistible. Within the limits of his
powers, original or imparted, man is a free agent; — free to admit
and free to reject the proffered aid. If rejected, it enhances his
responsibility — if admitted, it leads him by continual accessions of
the same supernatural assistance to an acquiescence in those
opinions, to the exercise of those affections, and to the practice of
those virtues which collectively form the substance of the Christian
system.

Such is the general result of the labours of Jansen. On the
day which Avitnessed the completion of them, he was removed by
the plague to a state of being where he probably learned at once
to rejoice in the fidelity, and to smile at the simplicity of those
sublunary toils. Within an hour of his death he made a will,
submitting his work to the judgment of the Church of Eome, in
the communion of which he had lived, and was about to die. He
addressed to Pope Urban VIII. a letter, laying the fruits of his
studies at the feet of his holiness, ' approving, condemning, ad-
vancing, or retracting, as should be prescribed by the thunder of
the apostolic see.' Both the will and the letter were suppressed
by his executors. Two years from the death of its author had not
elapsed, before the Augnstiims appeared in print. It was the

THE PORT-ROYALISl'S. 293

signal of a contest which for nearly seventy years agitated the
Sorbonne and Versailles, tired the enthusiasm of the ladies and
the divines of France, and gave to her historians and her wits a
theme, used with fatal success, to swell the tide of hatred and of
ridicule, which has for ever swept away the temporal greatness,
and which for a while silenced the spiritual ministrations of the
Galilean Church.

Having aided largely in the composition of this memorable
treatise, St. C3?ran exerted himself with still greater effect in
building up a society for the maintenance and promulgation of
the principles it established. Angelique Arnauld and the sister-
hood of Port-Eoyal were now settled at Paris, but they were still
the proprietors of the deserted monastery ; and there were gradu-
ally assembled a college of learned men, bound by no monastic
vows, and living according to no positive rule, Benedictine or Fran-
ciscan. They were chiefly disciples of St. Cyrau, and under his
guidance had retired from the world to consecrate their lives to
penitence, to their own sjjiritual improvement, and to the instruc-
tion of mankind.

Of this number was Antoine Le Maitre. At the age of twenty-
seven, he had been advanced to the rank of Councillor of State,
and enjoyed at the bar an unriv^alled reputation for learning and
for eloquence. When he was to speak, even the churches were
abandoned. Quitting their pulpits, the preachers assisted to throng
the hall of the palace of justice ; and some of the most celebrated
among them actually obtained from their superiors a permanent
dispensation from their ecclesiastical duties at such seasons, that
they might improve in the art of public speaking by listening to
the great advocate. When he spoke, the delight of the audience
broke out into bursts of applause, which the Judges were unable
or unwilling to repress. 'I would rather be the object of those
plaudits than enjoy all the glory of my Lord the Cardinal,' was the
somewhat hazardous exclamation of one of his friends, as he joined,
heart and hand, in the universal tumult.

Far different was the estimate which his devout mother had
formed of the j)rospects of her son. She was one of the sisters of
Angelique Arnauld; and, amidst the cares of conjugal life, cher-
ished a piety at least as pure and as ardent as ever burned in the
bosom of a Carthusian. In the wealth and glory which rewarded
his forensic eminence she could see only allurements to which (so
she judged) his peace on earth, and his meetness for a holier state
of being beyond the grave, must be sacrificed. She mourned over
his fame, and prayed that her child might be abased, that so in
due season he might be exalted. It happened that his aunt, Ma-

u 3

294 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

dame D'Andilly, in the last awful scene of life, was attended by
her kindred, and amongst the rest by Le Maitre. Her fading eye
was fixed on the crucifix borne in the hand of St. Cyran, as she
listened to his voice, now subdued to its gentlest accents, and
breathing hope, and peace, and consolation. It was as though
some good angel had overpassed the confines of the earthly and
the heavenly worlds, to give utterance, in human language, to
emotions sacred as his own high abode, and to thoughts as lofty
as his own celestial nature. The great orator listened, and won-
dered, and wept. An eloquence such as even his fervent imagina-
tion had never before conceived, enthralled and subdued his inmost
soul. It was but a soft whisper in the chamber of death ; but in
those gentle tones, and to that weeping company, were spoken
words, compared with which his own eloquence appeared to him
trivial, harsh, and dissonant as the bowlings of the forest. And
when his dying relative's last sigh was heard, accompanied by the
solemn benediction, ' Depart, Christian soul ! from this world,
in the name of the Almighty G-od who created you,' Le Maitre
felt that the bonds which attached him to that world were for ever
broken. He yielded himself to the spiritual guidance of St.
Cyran; resigned his office and his calling; and plunged into a
retreat, where in solitude, silence, and continued penances, he
passed the remaining twenty-one years of his life. By the advice
of his confessor, the execution of this design was postponed till the
close of the annual session of the courts. In the interval he re-
sumed his ordinary employments ; but the spirit which till then
had animated his efforts was gone. He became languid and un-
impressive ; and one of the judges was heard to mutter, that, after
all, the real power of Le Maitre was that of persuading to sleep.
This was too much even for a penitent. Fixing his eye on the
critic, he once more summoned his dormant strength, and pouring
forth all the energies of his soul in one last and most triumphant
speech, he for ever quitted the scene of his forensic glories.

At Port-Royal he appropriately charged himself with the care
of the proprietary interests of the house. A village judge in the
neighbourhood was once attended by the illustrious advocate, on a
question of the purchase of some bullocks. Astounded by his
eloquence (so runs the story), the judge fell on his knees before
the pleader, professing his unworthiness to preside in his presence,
and imploring that they might exchange places. A more likely
tale records that the booksellers had got up, during Le Maitre's
retreat, an edition of his speeches full of interpolations and errors.
At '■ the request of friends,' though not with the consent of his
confessors, the orator undertook a corrected edition. His spiritual

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 295

g-iiides interfered. They prescribed, as a new species of penance,
that he should silently acquiesce in this inroad on his fame as a
speaker. The penitent submitted, but not so the booksellers.
They (worldly men!) talked loudly of violated promises, and of
sheets rendered useless. He listened to discourses on the duty of
mortifying these last movements of vain glory. Under the ex-
citement of the dispute, his health, already enfeebled by his mode
of life, gave way. A fever decided the question against the pub-
lishers ; and Le Maitre was doomed at length to die the victim of
the brilliant career he had so long and resolutely abandoned.

His brother, Mons. de Sericourt, was another of the converts of
St. Cyran. De Sericourt had served with distinction under Conde.
He "was taken prisoner at the siege of Philipsburg, and effected
his escape by leaping from the AN'alls of the fortress at the immi-
nent hazard of his life. Under the deep impression, which this
incident left on his mind, of the protecting care of Providence, he
returned to Paris, where his first object was to visit his brother,
the report of whose retreat from the bar had tilled him with
astonishment. He found him (the words are Fontaine's) in a kind
of tomb, where he was buried alive ; his manner bespeaking all
the gloom of penitence. De Sericourt was shocked, and in vain
endeavoured to recognise Le Maitre in the person who stood before
him. Immediately changing his demeanour, Le Maitre embraced
his brother with looks full of gaiety and sj)irit, exclaiming, ' Be-
hold the Le Maitre of former days ! He is dead to the world, and
now desires only to die to himself. I have spoken enough to men.
Henceforth I wish to converse only with Grod. I have exerted
myself in vain to plead the cause of others. Now I am to plead
my own. Do you intend to pay me the same compliment which
I receive from the world at large, who ' believe and publish that I
have gone mad?' Nothing could be more remote from the judg-
ment of the soldier. Instead of regarding his brother as mad, he
aspired to share his solitude, and succeeded. Under the direction
of St. Cyran, he joined in the silence and austerities of the ad-
vocate. During the war of the princes he once more took up arms
for the defence of Port-Royal ; but his monastic life was soon
brought to a close. Philipsburg had in reality been attended with
less danger. At the age of thirty-nine, he died, a premature vic-
tim to fastings, vigils, confinement, and probably to ennui. Ee-
cruits for Port-Royal were but seldom drawn from the armies ot
the Most Christian King, and could hardly have been draughted
from a less promising quarter.

In this memorable brotherhood there was yet a third, Louis
Isaac Le Maitre de Saci. At the early age of fom-teen he was

V 4

296 THt: POKT-ROYALISTS.

placed by his aunt, the Mere Angelique, under the guidance of St.
Cy^ran. From that prophetic eye the future eminence of his pupil
was not hidden. ' God will restore him to you, for his death would
probably be the greatest loss which the church could sustain ' —
was the prediction with which St. Cyran at once disclosed his own
hopes and allayed the fears of De Saci's mother, as he watched
over the sick-bed of her child. To ensure the fulfilment of those
hopes, the mind of the boy was sedulously trained.^ Absolute, un-
hesitating submission to human authority, as representing the
divine, was the cardinal principle of his education. Though him-
self one of the most conspicuous teachers of his age as a guide to
others, he, on no single question, presumed to guide himself. If
no other director could have been had, he would have placed him-
self under the direction of his valet, was the praise with which his
friends expressed their admiration of his illustrious docility. By
tlie advice or commands of St. Cyran, he accordiugl}^, like his
brothers, became one of the recluses of Port-Eoyal ; and, like them,
transferred to the support of the monastery all his worldly wealth.
With them also he surrendered himself up to penitence, to solitude,
and to silence ; and in their company sujDplied his emaciated fi-ame
^ni\l food which rather mocked than satisfied its wants. Le Maitre
thus describes one of the j^etits sowpers of Port-Eoyal : — 'It is, you
know, but a slight repast wliich they serve up for us in the even-
ing ; but it engages my brother De Saci as completely as the most
sumptuous meal. For my own part, such is the warmth of my
temperament, the end of my good cheer follows so hard on its
beginning, that I can hardly tell which is which. When all is over
with me, and I have nothing left to do but to wash my hands, I see
my brother De Saci, as composed and as serious as ever, take up
his quarter of an apple, peel it deliberately, cut it up with precision,
and swallow it at leisure. Before he begins, I have more than half
done. When his little all is over, he rises from table as light as
when he sat down, leaving untouched the greater part of what was
set before him, and walks off as seriously as a man who had been
doing great things, and who never fasted except on fast-days.'

Poor Le Maitre ! the gay spirit which had animated the palace
of justice had its transient flashes even in his ' living tomb ;'
though the smile was in this case lighted up at an absurdity which
had well nigh conducted his brother to that tomb where all life is
extinct. Under these solemn parodies on what usually goes on at
the dinner-table, De Saci pined away ; and was rescued, not without
extreme hazard, from the effects of his suicidal abstemiousness.
He returned from the gates of death with a spirit unsubdued and
undaunted ; for it was animated by hopes, and sustained by convic-

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 297

tions which gave to that last enemy the aspect and the welcome of
a friend. Admitted, in reluctant obedience to his confessor, to
ordination as a priest, he assumed the office of director to the
recluses of either sex at Port-Eoyal. Nature struggled in the
bosom of Le Maitre against laying bare all the secrets of his soul to
the inspection of his younger brother. But authority prevailed.
Their mother led the way, by placing herself under the direction of
her son. Blaise Pascal himself meekly took the law of his con-
science from the same revered lips. Days of persecution followed,
and De Saci was driven from his retreat, and confined for more
than two years in the Bastille. There was fulfilled the prediction
of St. Cyran. Fontaine, the bosom friend of De Saci, was the
associate of his prison hours. They were hours of suffering and of
pain; but haj^pier by far than the brightest and the most joy ou.-;
passed by the revellers in the gay city beneath them.

In those hours, De Saci executed, and his friend transcribed, that
translation of the Holy Scriptures which to this moment is regarded
in France as the most perfect version in their own or in any otlier
modern tongue. While yet under the charge of St. Cyran, the
study of the divine oracles was the ceaseless task of De Saci. In
matvu'e life, it had been his continual delight; in the absence of
every other solace, it possessed his mind with all the energy of a
master passion. Of the ten thousand chords which there blend
together in sacred harmony, there was not one which did not
awaken a responsive note in the heart of the aged prisoner. In a
critical knowledge of the sacred text, he may have had many
superiors, but none in that exquisite sensibility to the grandeur,
the pathos, the superhuman wisdom, and the awful purity of the
divine original, without which none can truly apj)rehend, or accu-
rately render into another idiom, the sense of the inspired writers.
Even the habitual prostration of his judgment to a human au-
thority, believed to be divine, aided him as a translator : it forbade,
indeed, the correction of errors, but it imj^arted freedom and couil-
dence to the expression of all that lie acknowledged as truth.
Protestants may with justice except to many a passage of De Saoi's
translation ; but they will, we fear, search their own libraries in
vain for an}^ where the author's unhesitating assurance of the real
sense of controverted words permits his style to flow with a similar
absence of constraint, and an equal warmth and glow of diction.

Fontaine, the humble companion of his biblical labours, had
also been one of the penitents of De Saci. He was a man of
learning, and his ' Memoires sur MM. de Port-Eoyal,' bespeak a
nature gentle, affectionate, and devout. But to saturate his me-
mory with the discourse of minds more exalted tlian his own, and

298 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

to minister to them in collating or transcribing the books on which
they were employed, limited his humble desires. He was succes-
sively the amanuensis of De Saci, and the secretary of the 'great '
Arnauld. A name so truly great, excepting that of Pascal, does
not appear among the ^disciples of St. Cyran, or the inmates of
Port-Koyal.

Antoine Arnauld was the youngest child of the parents of the
Mere Angelique: he was consequently the unole of Le Maitre, De
Sericourt, and De Saci. From his earliest years the reputation of
his genius and learning had rendered him the object of universal
notice and expectation. Eichelieu himself is recorded to have stolen
silently into his chamber, to enjoy the unpremeditated conversation
of the young student. The Cardinal had no apparent reason to
dread that in this case his advances would be repulsed ; for Arnauld
possessed several rich benefices, dressed in fashion, and even kept a
carriage. But repulsed they were, and by the influence of the man
to whom similar allurements had been presented in vain. In his
dungeon at Vincennes, St. Cyran received a visit from the young
abbe. That almost magical influence was again exerted with irre-
sistible power. Arnauld renounced his preferments, assumed the
garb of penitence, and became the companion of his nephews, Le
Maitre and Sericourt, in their austere retirement. This abandon-
ment of the world was not, however, so absolute, but that he still
sought the rank of a socius or fellow of the Sorbonne. By the
authority of Eichelieu, his claims were rejected. But not even the
Cardinal could obstruct the advancement of so eminent a scholar
and divine to the dignity of a doctor in divinity. ' To defend the
truth, if necessary, to the death,' was in those days one of the vows
of such a graduate — vows, it is to be feared, light as air with most
men, but, in this instance, engraven as with a pen of iron on the
soul of the new professor of theology.

A year had scarcely elapsed since he had received from the lips
of his dying mother an adjuration to be faithful in the defence of
truth at the expense, were it possible, of a thousand lives. Touched
with the coincidence of his academical oath and of this maternal
precept, he thenceforward existed but to combat for what he at
least esteemed the truth ; and endm-ed poverty, exile, and re-
proach, as he would have cheerfully submitted to death, in that
sacred warfare. In controversy he found his vocation, his triumph,
and perhaps his delight. The author of more than a hundred
volumes, he was engaged in almost as many contests. His great
work, Lafrequente Communion, is essentially controversial. He
warred Avith the Jesuits as a body ; and with several of their most
eminent writers, as Sirmond, Nouet, and De Bonis, he carried on

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 299

separate debates. Apologies for St. Cyrau, Janseuius, and for the
ladies of Port-Royal flowed copiously from his ever ready pen.
He assailed the metaphysical meditations of Des Cartes, and Male-
branche's theory of miracles. He contended even with his friend
and associate, Nicole, on an attempt to apply certain geometrical
principles to the solution of some problems in divinity. Claude,
Maimbourg, and Annat, were among his adversaries. The mere
list of his works occupies twenty-six closely-printed octavo pages.
A rapid analysis of them fills a large volume. If that compilation
may be trusted (he would be a bold man who should undertake to
verify it), the vast collection of books which bear the name of
Antoine Arnauld scarcely contain a tract, except those on mathe-
matics, in which he is not engaged in theological or scientific strife
with some antagonist.

In the catalogue, of course, appears the celebrated treatise De
la Perpetiiite de la Foi sur VEucharistie, a work rewarded with
higher applause than any other of his avowed \\Titings. Twenty-
seven Bishops and twenty Doctors prefaced it Avith eulogies on the
learning, piety, talents, and orthodoxy of the illustrious author.
He dedicated it to Clement IX., and was repaid with the most
gloAving compliments. Perhaps a still more gratifying tribute to
his success was the conversion to the Eoman Catholic faith of
Turenne, of which this book was the occasion ; and yet nothing is
more certain than that the real author was not Arnauld, but
Nicole. In the title page of a book, designed to refute the for-
midable Claude, the two friends judged the name of a Doctor of
the church would avail more tlian that of a simple tonsure — on the
side of Arnauld a literary and pious fraud, which it is impossible
to excuse ; and, on the side of Nicole, an example of zeal for a
man's cause triumphing over his love of fame, to which it would
not be easy to find a parallel. Such, however, was the height of
Arnauld's reputation, and such the affluence of his mind, that -it is
scarcely reasonable to attribute this disingenuous proceeding to
selfish motives. Few men have been more enamoured of the em-
ployments, or less covetous of the rewards of a literary life. For
nearly threescore years he lived pen in hand, except when engaged
in devotion, or in celebrating the offices of the church of Port-
Royal on occasions of peculiar dignity. His Avas one of those rare
natures to which intellectual exertion brings relief rather than
lassitude ; thus giving to feebler understandings the assurance that
the living spirit which is in man, if disunited from the burdens
of mortality, would be capable of efforts commensiu'ate with an
immortal existence.

His book, De lafrequente Communion, was the commencement

300 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

of the seventy years' religious war which ended in the destruction
of Port-Koyal. To restore the severe maxims of Christian antiquity
respecting the spiritual qualification of communicants, and thus to
raise a standard of church membership, incomparably more exalted
than that which prevailed in his own generation, was the avowed ob-
ject of Arnauld. His scarcely concealed purpose was to chastise the
lax morality to which the Jesuits had lent their sanction; and to repel
their attacks on the more rigid 'system of St. Cyran. Eevised in his
prison by that father of the faithful, and sheltered by the commen-
dation of divines of every rank and order, the book — forbearing in
style, lofty in sentiment, replete with various learning, and breath-
ino- an eloquence at once animated by unhesitating faith, and
chastened by the most profound humility ^ — broke like a peal of
thunder over the heads of his startled antagonists. Such was the
fury of their resentment, that the Marshal de Vihe sagaciously ob-
served, ' There must be some secret in all this. The Jesuits are
never so excited when nothing but the glory of Grod is at stake.'
Though at first struck down by the censures of a conclave of
Bishops, with Mazarin at their head, Nouet, the great advocate of
the society, returned again and again to the assault. Pulpits ful-
minated, presses groaned. On the one side, the Sorbonne invoked
the aid of the civil power, then in feeble hands ; on the other, the
Jesuits appealed to the Papal See, then rising in new vigour from
the disasters of the preceding centur3\ Arnauld was cited by the
Pope, and required by the Cardinal Minister of France to appear
ill his own defence at Eome. Against this infringement of the
(rallican liberties, the University, the Sorbonne, and the Parliament
of Paris remonstrated ; but Mazarin was inflexible.

The Holy See took cognisance of the cause, though the person
of the accused was beyond their reacli. In his absence, that infal-
lible tribunal decided not to let the world know whether, of the
thirty erroneous opinions imputed to Arnauld as heresies, twent}^
and nine were heretical or not. Arnauld hinjself, however, was
unable to stand his ground. For twenty-five years together, he
was compelled to live in a voluntary concealment, which his ene-
mies had not the power nor perhaps the wish, to violate. His
retirement was passed in the monastery of Port-Koyal, or in one of
the adjacent hermitages.

That ancient seat of their Order had now been long deserted by
his sister Angelique and her associates. Their residence at Paris
had not been unfruitful of events. They had exchanged the juris-
diction of the General of their Order for that of the Ai-chbishop of
Paris. On the voluntary resignation of Angelique, and by hei-
desire, the abbatial dignity had been made elective in their house.

THE ruRT-ROyALlSTS. 301

An ineffectual scheme of devoting themselves to the perpetual ado-
ration of the Holy Eucharist, had deeply exercised their thoughts
Occasional miracles had awakened or rewarded their piety. An
inspired litany (so it was believed) had fallen insensibly from the
pen of sister Agnes, which eight Doctors censured, St. Oyran vindi-
cated, and the Pope suppressed. From his prison at Vincennes,
their great apologist directed their consciences, and guided them to
the office of educating children of their own sex — advise and happy
project, which brought back into the sphere of ordinary duties,
minds soaring with indefinite aims into the regions of mysticism,
and wasting, in efforts for an ideal perfection, talents eminently
fitted to bless and to improve mankind.

To restore the sisterhood to the quiet valley where their prede-
cessors had worshipped, was the next care of St. Cyran. True, it
threatened their lives ; but ' is it not,' he asked, ' as well to serve
Grod in an hospital as in a church, if such be his pleasure ? ' ' Are
any prayers more acceptable than those of the afflicted?' Ange-
lique's heart had a ready answer to such questions from such an
inquirer. In that sequestered church where angels, and a still
more awful presence, had once dwelt, the}^ could not but still aljide,
(such was his assurance,) and she returned to seek them there.
She came attended by a large proportion of the ladies of Port-
Koyal, hailed by the poor and aged, whom in former times she had
cherished, and welcomed by her kinsmen and by the companions of
their religious solitude. It was their first and only meeting. Les
Granges (a farm-house on the hill-side) became the residence of the
recluses, the gates of the monastery closing on the nuns.

Bound by no monastic vows, the men addressed themselves to
such employments as each was supposed best qualified to fill.
Schools for the instruction of youth in every branch of literature
and science were kept by Lancelot, Nicole, Fontaine, and De Saci.
Some laboured at translations of the fathers, and other works of
piety. Arnauld plied his ceaseless toils in logic, geometry, meta-
physics, and theological debate. Physicians of high celebrity exer-
cised their art in all the neighbouring villages. Le Maitre and
other eminent lawyers addressed themselves to the work of arbi-
trating in all the dissensions of the vicinage. There were to be
seen gentlemen working assiduously as vine-dressers ; officers mak-
ing shoes; noblemen sawing timber and repairing windows; a
society held together by no vows, governed by no corporate laws,
subject to no common superior, pursuing no joint designs, yet all
living in unbroken harmony ; all following their respective callings
silent, grave, abstracted, self-afflicted by fastings, watchings, and
humiliations — a body of penitents on their painful progress through

302 - THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

a world Avhich they had resolved at once to serve and to avoid.
From year to year, till death or persecution removed them from the
valley of Port-Eoyal, the members of this singular association ad-
hered pertinaciously to their design ; nor among their annals will be
found more, we think, than a single name on which rests the impu-
tation of infidelity or fickleness of purpose.

To the nuns, indeed, no such change was possible. Like the
inhabitants of Les Grranges, they employed themselves in educating
the children of the rich and the poor, in almsgiving, and in other
works of mercy. Their renunciation of secular cares was combined
(no common alliance) with an entire superiority to all secular inte-
rests. Angelique, now the elected abbess, and in that character the
ruler of the temporalities of the convent, exhibited a princely spirit
of munificence — nourished and sustained by the most severe and
self-denying economy. She and her sisterhood reserved for them-
selves little more than a place in their own list of paupers. So firm
was her reliance on the Divine bounty, and so abstemious her use
of it, that she hazarded a long course of heroic improvidence, justi-
fied by the event and ennobled by the motive ; but at once fitted
and designed rather to excite the enthusiasm of ordinary mortals,
than to afford a model for their imitation. Buildings were erected
both at Port-Eoyal de Paris, and Port-Eoyal des Champs ; in the
serene majesty of which the worshipper might discern an appropriate
vestibule to the temple made without hands, towards which his
adoration was directed. Wealth was never permitted to introduce,
nor poverty to exclude, any candidate for admission as a novice or
a pupil. On one occasion twenty thousand francs were given as a
relief to a distressed community ; on another, four times that sum
were restored to a benefactress, whose heart repented a bounty
which she had no longer the right to reclaim. Their regular expen-
diture exceeded by more than sevenfold their certain income ; nor
were they ever disappointed in their assurance, that the annual
deficiency of more than forty thousand francs would be supplied by
the benevolence of their fellow Christians.

What was the constraining force of charity, Angelique had learned
from the study of her own heart, and she relied with a well-founded
confidence in the same generous impulse in the hearts of others.
The grace, the gaiety, and tenderness of her nature, which might
have embellished courts and palaces, were drawn into continual
exercise to mitigate the anguish of disease, to soothe the wretched,
and to instruct the young. Her hands ministered, by day and by
night, to the relief of those whose maladies were the most loath-
some or contagious, and her voice, in its most kindly tones, allayed
their terrors. With playful ingenuity she would teach her associates

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 808

how to employ the vestments, the furniture, and, when other
resources failed, even the sacred plate, of the monastery, in provi-
ding clothes for the naked, though it left themselves in want, and
in feeding the hungry, though it deprived themselves of all present
resources. While thus distributing bounties, not merely to the
necessities of the indigent, but to the relief of persons of her own
rank in life, there was in the bosom of Angelique a feeling which
revolted, not against dependence on alms, for her vows of poverty
required it, but against soliciting aid even from her nearest kindred ;
— a feeling condemned as human, perhaps, in her stern self-judg-
ment, but assuredly one of those emotions which the best of our
race are the last to relinquish. And if it be true, as true it surely
is, that to the culture and exercise of the benevolent affections as an
idtimate end, all other ends of human life — knowledge, practical
skill, meditative power, self-control, and the rest — are but subser-
vient means, who shall deny to such a course of life as that of the
nuns of Port-Royal, the praise of wisdom, however ill he may judge
of the wisdom which established and maintained conventual insti-
tutions ? Some affections, indeed, they could not cultivate. Two
of the deepest and the richest mines of their nature, maternal and
conjugal love, lay unwrought and unexplored. Yet they lived, as
wisdom we are told ought to live, with children round their knees ;
training them for every office in life, if not with a mother's yearn-
ings, with perhaps something more than a mother's prudence.

Over this singular theocracy, male and female, presided St. Cyran,
exercising from his dungeon a supreme authority ; and under him
ruled Antoine Singlin, the general confessor both of the recluses
and the nuns. In the conduct of souls, (such is the appropriate
style,) Singlin was supposed to excel all the professors of that most
critical science. Pascal, De Saci, and Arnauld sat at his feet with
childlike docility. Ministers of state, advocates, and bishops,
crowded reverently round his pulpit ; yet by the confession, or rather
the boast, of his disciples, he was distinguished neither by learning,
talents, nor eloquence. The mystery of his absolute dominion over
intellects so incomparably superior to his own, is partly, at least,
dispelled by what remains of his writings. They indicate a mind
at once discriminating and devout, conversant alike with human
natui-e and with the Divine, exerting all its powers to penetrate the
labyrinth of man's heart, and sustaining these powers by habitual
communion with the source of wisdom.

Gruided by such pastors, the Port-Royalists were following out a
progress more tranquil than that of John Bunyan's Pilgrim, when
the wars of the Fronde rudely scattered the shepherd and the flock.
Most of the nuns fled for refuge to Paris, but the recluses (they

304 THE PORT-KOYALISTS.

v.-ere Frenchmen still) appeared three hundred strong, in defence
of their sequestered valley. Above their hair-shirts glittered coats
of mail. As the last notes of the anthem died aAvay, the trumpet
summoned the worshippers to military exercises. Spears and hel-
mets flashed through the woods — plumes waved over man}^ a
furrowed brow — intrenchments, the course of which may still be
traced, were thrown up ; and the evening-gun, the watch-word, and
the heavy tread of cavalry, broke a silence till then undisturbed,
except by the monastic choir, or the half-uttered prayer of some
lonel}^ penitent. De )Sericourt felt once again his pulse beat high
as he drew out the martial cohmm, and raised the long-forgotten
words of peremptory command. But ere long a voice more subdued
though not less peremptory, was heard to silence his. De Saci's
heart mourned over this reliance on an arm of flesh. Watching
the first pause in the new enthusiasm of his associates, he implored
them to lay aside their weapons ; and in long-suffering to submit
themselves and their cause to the Supreme Disposer of events. At
an instant the whole aspect of Port-Eoyal was changed. Students
returned to their books, penitents to their cells, and handycraftsmen
to their ordinary labours. It was a change as sudden and as com-
plete as when, at the bidding of the Genius, the crowded bridge and
the rushing river disappeared from the eyes of Mirza, leaving before
him nothing but the long hollow Valley of Bagdad, with oxen,
sheep, and camels grazing on the sides of it.

To one inmate of Port-Eoyal the terrors of an impending war
had brought no disquietude. Angelique remained there, the
guardian angel of the place. Hundreds of ruined peasants were
daily fed by her bounty. ' Perhaps I shall not be able ' (the
quotation is from one of her letters written at the time) 'to send
you a letter to-morrow, for all our horses and asses are dead with
hunger. Oh ! how little do princes know the detailed horrors of
war. All the provender of the beasts we have been obliged to
divide between ourselves and the starving poor. We have con-
cealed as many of the peasants and of their cattle as we could, in
our monastery, to save them from being murdered and losing all
their substance. Our dormitory and the chapter-house are full of
horses ; we are almost stifled by being pent up with these beasts,
but we could not resist the piercing lamentations of the starving
and the heart-broken poor. In the cellar we have concealed forty
cows. Our court-yards and out-houses are stuffed full of fowls,
turkeys, ducks, geese, and asses. The church is piled up to the
ceiling with corn, oats, beans, and peas, and with caldrons, kettles,
and other things belonging to the cottagers. Our laundry is filled
by the aged, the blind, the maimed, the halt, and infants. The

TJIE rORT-ROYALISTS. SOU

infirmary is full of sick and wounded. We have torn up all our
rags and linen clothing to dress their sores ; we have no more, and
are now at our wits' end. We dare not go into the fields for any
more, as they are full of marauding parties. We hear that the
abbey of St. Cyran has been burned and pillaged. Our own is
threatened with an attack every day. The cold weather alone
preserves us from pestilence. We are so closely crowded, that
deaths happen continually. God, however, is with us, and we are
at peace.'

That inward peace which Angelique was thus enabled to main-
tain during the horrors of civil war, was soon to be exposed to a
more arduous trial. To the baffled antagonists of Arnauld, Port-
Royal was an abomination. There dwelt in safety their intended
victim, plying his dreaded pen, surrounded by his kindred, his
scholars, and his allies ; and all engaged in the same contest with
the casuistry, the theology, and the morals of the society of Jesus.
Against these devoted enemies one Brisacier, a Jesuit, led the
assault. His articles of impeachment bore that they despised the
Eucharist, that they had neither holy water nor images in their
churches, and that they prayed neither to the Virgin nor the saints.
Vain was the clearest refutation of calumnies so shocking to
Catholic ears, and vain the archiepiscopal thunders which rebuked
the slanderer. Father Megnier, of the same holy company,
denounced to the astonished world a secret conspiracy against the
religion of Christ, the leaders of which were the Abbot of St.
Cyran and Antoine Arnauld — - the Voltaire and the Diderot of
their age ! But human credulity has its limits, and JNIegnier had
overstepped them. For a moment the assailants paused ; but at
last, the womb of time, fertile in prodigies, gave birth to the far-
famed ' five propositions ' of Father Cornet — a ' palpable ob-
scure,' lying in the dim regions of psychological divinity, and
doomed for successive generations to perplex, to exasperate, and to
overwhelm with persecution, or with ridicule, no inconsiderable
part of the Christian world.

That these five dogmas on the mystery of the Divine grace, were
to be found within the Augustinus of Jansenius, was not the
original charge. They were at first denounced by Coruet as
opinions which had been derived from the work of the Bishop of
Ypres, by Arnauld and other Doctors of the Galilean Church, and
by them inculcated on their own disciples. Innocent X. condemned
the propositions as heretical ; and to the authority of the Holy See
Arnauld and his friends implicitly bowed. In a woodcut prefixed
to tliis papal constitution by the triumphant Jesuits, Jansenius
appeared in his episcopal dress, but accoutred with the aspect, the

30G THE POET-ROYALISTS.

wings, and the other well-known appendages of the evil spirit,
around whom were playing the lightnings of the Vatican.

The man and the heresy thus happily disposed of, a single
question remained — Were the peccant propositions really to be
i'onnd in the Aiirjusthius or not? Arnauld declared that he had
studied the book from end to end, and could not find them there.
That there they were nevertheless to be found, the Jesuits as
strongly asserted. To have quoted by chapter and page the
offensive passages, would have spoiled the most promising quarrel
which had arisen in the Church since the close of the Tridentine
Council. Still-born must then have perished the ever-memorable
distinction of the droit and the fait — the droit being the justice
of the j^apal censure of the propositions, which all Catholics ad-
mitted — the fait being the existence, in the Augustinus, of the
propositions so censured, which all Jansenists denied.

The vulgar mode of trial by quotation being discarded, nothing
remained but trial by authority. Annat, the King's Confessor, a
Jesuit in religion, and INIazarin, the King's Minister, a Jesuit in
politics, each, from different motives, found his account in humili-
ating the Port-Eoyalists. A conclave of Parisian Doctors, selected
by them, decreed that the five propositions were in the book, and
should be in the book. A papal bull affirmed their sentence, and
then a second conclave required all the ecclesiastics, and all the
religions communities of France, to subscribe their assent to the
order which had thus affiliated these foundling opinions on poor
Jansenius. That such a defender of the faith as Antoine Arnauld,
would receive such a mandate in silence, the authors of it neither
expected nor desired. In words exactly transcribed, though not
avowedly quoted, from Chrysostom and Augustine, he drew up his
own creed on the questions of grace and free-will ; and in good
round terms acquitted the Bishop of Ypres of having written more
or less. A third conclave censured the apologist, unconscious ap-
parently that their fulminations would reacli the holy fathers of
Constantinople and Hippo. They at least reached the object at
which they in reality aimed. ' Could the most Christian King,'
they exclaimed, ' permit that penitent recluses and young children
should any longer assemble for instruction under the influence of
a man who had been convicted of heresy on the subject of efficaci-
ous grace, and who was either unable or unwilling to find in the
Augustinus what the Pope himself had said might be found
there?' Anne of Austria listened, ]Mazarin whispered, and she
obeyed. Armed with her authority, her lieutenants appeared at
Port-Eoyal with orders to restore Les Granges and the forests
around it to their ancient solitude; and then had for ever fallen

THE rOET-ROYALISTS. 307

the glories of that ScOcred valley, but for an incident so strange and
opportune as to force back the memory to the precipitate descent
from Mount Ida of the Homeric Deities, to rescue, in the agony of
his fate, some panting hero on the field of Troy.

Mademoiselle Perrier was the niece of Blaise Pascal. She was
a child in her eleventh 3'ear, and a scholar residing in the monas-
tery of Port-Royal. For tliree years and a half she had been
afflicted with a fistula laci'ymalis. The adjacent bones had
become carious, and the most loathsome ulcers disfigured her
countenance. All remedies had been tried in vain ; the medical
faculty had exhausted their resources. One desperate experiment
remained — it was that of the actual cautery. For this the day
was ai:)pointed, and her father had set out on a journey to be
present at the operation. Now it came to pass that M. de la
Potherie, who was at once a Parisian ecclesiastic, a great-uncle of
Angelique and of Arnauld, and an assiduous collector of relics,
had possessed himself of one of the thorns composing the crown
of which we read in the Evangelists. Great had been the curiosity
of the various convents to see it, and the ladies of Port-Royal had
earnestly solicited that privilege. Accordingly, on the 24th of
March, in the year 1656, the day of the week being Friday, and
the week the third in Lent, a solemn procession of nuns, novices,
and scholars, moved along the choir of the monastic church,
chanting appropriate hymns, and each one, in her turn, kissing the
holy relic. When the turn of Mademoiselle Perrier arrived, she,
by the advice of the schoolmistress, touched her diseased eye with
the thorn, not doubting that it would effect a cure. She regained
her room, and the malady vvas gone! The cure was instantaneous
and complete. So strict, however, was the silence of the abbey,
especially in Lent, that, except to the companion who shared her
chamber, IMademoiselle Perrier did not at first divulge the miracle.
On the following day the surgeon appeared with his instruments.
The afflicted father was present ; exhortations to patience were
delivered ; every preparation was complete, when the astonished
operator for the first time perceived that every symptom of the
disease had disappeared. All Paris rang with the story. It
reached the ear of the queen-mother. By her command, M.
Felix, the principal surgeon to the king, investigated and confirmed
the narrative. The royal conscience was touched. Who but must
be moved with such an attestation from on high, of the innocence
of a monastery divinely selected as the theatre of so great a
miracle? Anne of Austria recalled her lieutenant. Again the
recluses returned to their hermitages ; the busy hum of school-

X 2

308 THE POET-ROYALISTS.

boys was heard once more at Port-Royal; and in his ancient
retreat Arnauld was permitted to resume his nnrcmitting labours.

Time must be at some discount with any man who should
employ it in adjusting the * balance of improbabilities' in such a
case as this. But there is one indisputable marvel connected with
it. The greatest genius, the most profound scholar, and the most
eminent advocate of that age, all possessing the most ample means
of knowledge, all carefully investigated, all admitted, and all
defended with their pens, the miracle of the Holy Thorn. Europe
at that time produced no three men more profoundly conversant
with the laws of the material world, with the laws of the human
mind, and with the municipal law, than Pascal, Arnauld, and Le
Maitre ; and they were all sincere and earnest believers. Yet our
Protestant incredulity utterly rejects both the tale itself and the
inferences drawn from it, and but for such mighty names, might
yield to the temptation of regarding it as too contemptible for seri-
ous notice. Why is this ? It is a question which volumes might
be well employed to answer. In this place, a passing notice is all
that can be given to it.

Antecedently to their investigation of the evidence, Pascal,
Arnauld, and Le Maitre may be supposed to have reduced their
reasonings on the subject to the following syllogism: — The true
Church is distinguished from all others by the perennial possession of
miraculous gifts. But the Church of Eome is the true church.
Therefore, when a miracle is alleged to have happened within her
fold, the presumption is not against, but in favour of the truth of the
statement ; and therefore, aided by that presumption, credit is due
in such a case to testimony which would be insufficient to substan-
tiate the fact under any other circumstances. Negamus onajorem.
It is not in the spirit of paradox, far less in that of irreverence or
levity, that we would maintain the reverse — namely, that a church
really distinguished by the permanent exercise of miraculous
powers, would presumably be not a true church, but a false.

Probability is the expectation of the recurrence of usual sequences.
Certainty is the expectation of the recurrence of sequences believed
to be invariable. The disappointment of such an expectation may
be the disclosure of some uniform sequence hitherto unknown ;
that is, one of the laws of nature; or it may be a mistake;
that is, the disturbance of those laws by some power capable of con-
trolling them. He who alleges a miracle, alleges the existence of
natural laws ; for there can be no exception where there is no rule.
Now, to ascribe the laws of nature to any power but that of God,
would be atheism. But to ascribe an habitual infringement of
these laws to powers subordinate, yet opposed, to the divine, is not

THE rORT-llOYALISTS. 309

atheistic, but is, on the contrary, consistent alike with piety and
with reason.

That analogies of natural and revealed religion not only permit,
but require, us thus to judge. For example, the moral law of God
is love. That law is habitually infringed by human selfishness.
Submission to the legitimate exercise of legitimate authority, is a
law from Heaven. That law is habitually infringed by human
self-will. That within the range of his powers of action man should
be a free agent, is the divine law. That law, as we learn from the
Gospels, was habitually infringed in the case of demoniacs.

That the blood of the dead should corrupt and not liquefy ; that
houses should be built and not fly ; that diseases should be cured
by therapeutics, or not at all, are all physical laws of nature — that
is, of God. Those physical laws, we are told, are habitually in-
fringed within the fold of the Eoman Catholic Church. Be it .so.
But if so, what is the inference ? That the Roman Catholic Churcli
is the depositary of divine truth, and the special object of divine
favour ? — We wot not. Where such truth resides, and such favour
rests, there will be a harmony, not elsewhere to be found, with the
general laws of the divine economy, and the general principles of
the divine government. The law is higher than the anomaly. The
rule is more worthy than the exception. That conformity to the
eternal ordinances of Heaven, whether psychological or physical,
should indicate the possession of truth and holiness in a Church, is
intelligible. That a systematic counteraction of any such ordinances
should indicate the same, is not intelligible. If in any society any
law of the divine government, whether moral or physical, ishabltiL-
ally reversed, the inference would seem to be, that such a society is
subject to the control of some power opposed to the divine.

Will it be answered that every disturbance of the laws of God
must proceed from the Author of those la.ws, and attest his agency
and approbation ? Why so ? His moral laws are violated every
instant by rebel man : why not his physical laws by rebel angels ?
Moses and Paul, and that divine teacher to whom Pascal, Arnauld,
and Le Maitre bowed their hearts, and desired to bow their under-
standings, all assure us that this is no impossible supposition. Or
will it be answered that such reasonings impugn the miracles uf
Christ himself ? If so, we abandon them as fallacious; for, sooner
should our right hand forget its cunning, than be employed to write
one word having that tendency. But the cases are utterly dissimilar.
Assume the reality both of the series of miracles recorded in the
Gospels, and of the series of miracles recorded in the Roman Catho-
lic legends, and without any inconsistency we may regard the one

X 3

310 THE rORT-EOYALISTS.

as stamped with the seal of truth, and the other as bearhig the im-
press of error. Our Eedeemer's miracles blend in perfect harmon}^,
though not in absolute unison, with those laws, physical and moral,
which he established in the creation, and fidfiUed in the redemp-
tion, of the world. In their occasion — in their object — in their
fulfilment of prophecy — in their attendant doctrine — and in their
exceptional character, they are essentially distinguished from the
perennial miracles of Eome. These are at absolute discord with
the laws which the miracles of Christ fulfil. If compelled to be-
lieve them true, we should not be compelled to refer them to a
divine original. But that the truth of such stories as that of the
Holy Thorn should ever have commanded the assent of such men
as Pascal, Arnauld, and Le Maitre, is, after all, a standing wonder,
and can be accounted for only by remembering that they assumed
as inevitable, and hailed as invaluable, an inference which, as it
seems to us, is not to be drawn from the premises, even if esta-
blished.

Judge as we may of the miraculous attestation to the innocence
of Port-Eoyal, which thus obtained the advocacy of Pascal, sentence
is irreversibly passed by mankind on the prodigies wrought, at the
same time and in the same cause, by the pen of that wonder-working
controversialist. In the whole compass of literature, ancient and
modern, there is probably nothing in the same style which could
bear a comparison with the ' Provincial Letters.' Their peculiar
excellence can be illustrated only by the force of contrast ; and, in
that sense, the ' Letters of Junius ' may afford the illustration.

To either series of anonymous satires must be ascribed the praise
of exquisite address, and of irresistible vigour. Each attained an
immediate and a lasting popularity ; and each has exercised a power-
ful influence on the literature of succeeding times. But here all
resemblance ends. No writer ever earned so much fame as Junius
with so little claim to the respect or gratitude of his readers. He
embraced no large principles ; he awakened no generous feelings ;
he scarcely advocated any great social interest. He gives equally
little proof of the love of man, and of the love of books. He con-
tributed nothing to the increase of knowledge, and but seldom
ministered to blameless delight. His topics and his thoughts were
all of the passing day. His invective is merciless and extravagant ;
and the veil of public spirit is barely thrown over his personal
antipathies and inordinate self-esteem. No man was ever so greatly
indebted to mere style ; yet, with all its recommendations, his is a
style eminently vicious. It is laboured, pompous, antithetical —
never self- forgetful, never flowing freely, never in repose. The

THE rORT-ROYALISTS. 311

admiration he extorts is yielded grudgingly ; nor is there any hook
so universally read which might become extinct with so little loss
to the world as ' The Letters of Junius.'

Keverse all this, and you have the characteristics of the * Pro-
vincial Letters.' Their language is but the transparent, elastic,
unobtrusive medium of thought. It moves with such quiet grace-
fulness as entirely to escape attention, until the matchless per-
spicacity of discussions, so incomprehensible under any manage-
ment but his, forces on the mind an inquiry into the causes of so
welcome a phenomenon. Pascal's wit, even when most formidable,
is so tempered by kindness, as to show that the infliction of pain,
however salutary, was a reluctant tribute to his supreme love of
truth. His playfulness is the buoyancy of a heart which has no
burden to throw off, and is gay without an effort. His indignation
is never morose, vindictive, or supercilious : it is but philanthropy
kindling into righteous anger and generous resentment, and im-
parting to them a tone of awful majesty. The unostentatious
master of all learning, he finds recreation in toils which would
paralyse an ordinary understanding; yet so sublimated is that
learning with the spirit of philosophy, as to make him heedless of
wdiatever is trivial, transient, and minute, except as it suggests or
leads to what is comprehensive and eternal.

But the canons of mere literary criticism were never designed
to measm'e that which constitutes the peculiar greatness of the
author of the ' Provincial Letters.' His own claim was to be
tried by his peers — by those who, in common with him, possess a
mental vision purified by contemplating that light in which is no
darkness at all, and affections enlarged by a benevolence which,
having its springs in heaven, has no limits to its diffusion on earth.
Among his ascetic brethren in the valley of Port-Eoyal, he himself
recognised the meet, if not the impartial, judges of his labours.
They hailed with transport an ally who, to their own sanctity of
manners, and to more than their own genius, added popular arts
to which they could make no pretension. We infer indeed, though
doubtfully, that they were taught by tlie excellent M. Singlin to
regard and censure such exultation as merely human. That great
spiritual anatomist probably rebuked and punished the glee which
could not but agitate the innermost folds of Arnauld's heart, as he
read his apologist's exquisite analysis of the Pouvolr Frochaiib
and of the Graces Suffisantes qui ne sont pas effi^cacec. For
history records the misgivings of Mademoiselle Pascal on the
question, whether M. Singlin would jiut up with the indomitable
gaiety which would still chequer with some gleams of mirth her

X 4

312 THE POET-ROYALISTS.

brother's cell at Les Grranges, even after his preternatural inge-
nuity had been exhausted in rendering it the most desolate and
cheerless of human abodes.

Whatever may have been his treatment of his illustrious peni-
tents, the good man Avas not long permitted to guide them through
their weary pilgrimage. The respite obtained for Port-Koyal by
the Holy Thorn and the ' Provincial Letters/ expired with the
death of Mazarin, and wdth the authority of the Queen-mother.
Louis began, as he believed, to act for himself — a vain attempt for
a man who could never think for himself. The genius, such as it
was, of the dead minister, had still the mastery over the inferior
mind of the surviving monarch. Louis had been taught by the
Cardinal to fear and to hate De Eetz, Jansenism, and Port-Eoyal.
Poor Singlin was therefore driven away, and in due time consigned
to the Bastille. At the bidding of the King, a synod of the clergy
of France drew up an anti-Jansenist test, to be taken by all
ecclesiastics, and by all religious communities, male and female ;
fortified, of course, by effective penalties. They were all required
to subscribe their names to a declaration that the ' five pro-
positions,' in their heretical sense, were to be found in the
Aufjustinus ; nor was there any exception in favour of those who
had never seen the book, or of those who could not read Latin.
This was no ineffectual menace. Blow after blow fell on those
who refused, and even on those who were expected to refuse, thus
to condemn the Bishop of Ypres. Port-Royal was foremost among
such obdurate recusants. Their schools, male and female, were
dispersed. Arnauld and the other recluses were banished from
the valley. The admission of novices and postulantes was inter-
dicted to the abbess ; and her ancient monastery was threatened
with suppression as contumacious and heretical.

Angelique Arnauld was now sinking under the pressure of in-
firmity and of old age. Half a century had elapsed since the com-
mencement of her reforms, and her tale of threescore years and
ten had been fully told ; but, ere she yielded her soul to Him who
gave it, she rose from her dying bed to make one more effort for
the preservation of the house so long devoted, under her guidance,
to works of mercy and to exercises of penitence and prayer. Sur-
rounded by a throng of weeping children, and by her elder associates
maintaining their wonted composure, she for the last time, quitted
Port-Royal des Champs, giving and receiving benedictions, and
went to die at the convent of Port-Royal de Paris.

She found the gates guarded, and the court-yards filled by a
troop of archers, the executioners of the royal mandate for expel-
ling the scholars, novices, jjostulantes, and other unprofessed in-

THE PORT-KOYALISTS. 313

mates of the house. Duriug eight successive days one after another
of these helpless women was torn from the place around which
their affections had twined ; and from the arms of the dying mother,
whom they loved with the tenderness of children, and regarded
with more than iilial reverence. Seventy-five persons were thus
successively separated from her, as from hour to hour she descended
to the tomb, under bodily and mental sufferings, described with
fearful minuteness in the obituaries of Port-Royal. * At length
oin- good Lord has seen fit to deprive us of all. Fathers, sisters,
disciples, children — all are gone. Blessed be the name of the
Lord.' Such was her announcement to Madame de Sevigne of the
emptying of this first vial of kingly wrath. To the Queen-mother
she addi'essed herself in a loftier, though not in a less gentle tone.
At each momentary remission of her agonies, she dictated to Anne
of Austria a letter, long and justly celebrated as a model of epis-
tolary eloquence. It has no trace of debility, still less of resent-
ment. Her defence is as clear and as collected as though, in the
fulness of health, she had been conducting the cause of another.
Without a reproach or a murmur, she exposes the wrongs of her
sisterhood, and the error of her persecutors. For herself she asks
no sympathy ; but, from the verge of the world she had so long
renounced, and was now about to quit for ever, she invokes from
the depositaries of worldly power the justice they owed to man, and
the submission due to the ordinances of Heaven. ' Now, my
earthly business is done ! ' was her grateful exclamation as this
letter was closed ; and then commenced a mental and bodily strife,
recorded, perhaps, but too faithfully by her biographers. These
pages, at least, are no fit place for the delineation of a scene over
which the sternest spectator must have wept, and the most hardened
must have prayed fervently for the sufferer and for himself. From
the dark close of a life so holy and so blameless, and from the hoj^e,
and peace, and joy, which at length cast over her departing spirit
some radiance from that better state on the confines of which she
stood, lessons may be drawn which we have no commission to teach,
and which are perhaps best learned without the intervention of any
human teacher. Yet, even in Port-Eoyal itself, there were not
wanting some to whom this admonition of the vanity of human
things was addressed in vain.

Among that venerable society, the Soeur Flavie Passart was un-
rivalled in the severity of her self-discipline, and the splendour of
her superhuman gifts. As often as illness confined her to her bed,
so often did a miracle restore her. The dead returned to licr with
messages from the other world. No saint in the calendar witliheld
his powerful influence in the court of heaven when she invoked it.

314 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

Like many wiser folks, Soeiir Flavie discovered at last, and douljt-
less to her own surprise, that she had become (there are none but
masculine terms to express it) a liar and a knave. The same dis-
covery was opportunely made by her associates, and arrested her
progress to the elective dignities of the abbey. A penitent confes-
sion of her Jansenist errors, a denunciation of the more eminent
ladies of Port-Royal as her seducers, and a retractation of her
heretical belief in the innocence of Jansenius, might, however,
still pave her 'way to the abbatial throne. So judged the Soeur
Flavie, and so decided M. Perifixe, the then Archbishop of Paris.
She merely asked the imprisonment of twenty-six of her rivals.
He cheerfully accorded so reasonable a boon. Eepairing in ponti-
fical state to the Parisian monastery, he again tendered the anti-
Jansenist test. Angelique was gone ; but her spirit and her con-
stancy survived. The simple-hearted nuns thought that it would
be a mere falsehood to attest the existence of ' five propositions '
in a book which they had never seen, and could not read ; and truth,
they knew, was the Command of Grod, let Pope, Cardinal, or Arch-
bishop say what they would to the contrary. Perifixe interdicted
their admission to the holy sacrament. * Well, my lord,' they re-
plied, ' there is in heaven a Judge who reads the heart, and to him
we commend our cause.' ' Ay, ay,' rejoined the exemplary pre-
late, * when we get to heaven it will be time enough to consider
that, and see how things go there.'

Eight days elapsed ; and still no change of purpose, no subscrip-
tion to the test. Preceded by his crosier, the mitre on his brows,
his train borne by ecclesiastics, and followed by a long line of
archers, the Archbishop reappeared. Much he discoursed respect-
ing his own mildness, and much of the obduracy of the nuns. In
proof of both, twenty-three of their number were conveyed to
separate places of confinement. But the fruits of her treachery
were not reaped by the Soeur Flavie. By the influence of the
Archbishop, the Soeur Dorothee Perdreau was elected abbess. That
lady established her residence at Paris. She effected a final sepa-
ration of the two monasteries; and gave entertainments at the
Parisian convent which might vie with the most brilliant of any
which formed the boast of the neighbouring hotels. For ten
months her exiled sisters remained in prison. Perefixe then or-
dered their return to Port-Royal des Champs, there to be excluded
from the sacraments of the Church, and to die without her bene-
dictions. The recluses of the valley were to be seen there no more.
They lived in hiding-places, or joined away in dungeons. Singlin
died of extremity of suffering in the Bastille. It must be admitted,
therefore, that if the existence of the * five propositions ' in the

THE rOllT-ROYA LISTS. 315

Augustinus was not verified by the attestation of a score or two
of old ladies, Louis and bis clergy bave not to bear tbe respun-
sibility of so great a misfortune to tbe Cliurcb.

Twelve years before, tbe miracle of tbe Holy Tborn and tbe
genius of Pascal bad rescued Port-Royal from impending destruc-
tion. A person scarcely less unlike tbe common lierd of mortals
tban the author of the ' Provincial Letters,' and whose elevation
had been owing to events which some may think more miraculous
than the cure of Pascal's niece, now interposed in their behalf,
and with not inferior success.

Anne Grenevieve de Bourbon was born in the year 1619, in tbe
castle of Vincennes, where her father, Henry, Prince of Orleans,
was then confined. The misfortunes of her family, and especially
the execution of the Constable Montmorency, her maternal uncle,
had predisposed in early youth, to serious thought, a mind distin-
guished to the last by an insatiable craving for strong emotions.
To renounce the world, and to take the veil among the sisterhood
of Carmelites of the Faubourg St. Jacques, were tbe earliest of tbe
projects she had formed to baffle tbe foul fiend ennui. A counter-
project, devised by her mother, was, that the young princess
should present herself at a court ball. Maternal authority, per-
haps inclination, on the one side, and conscientious scruples on tbe
other, balanced and distressed the spirit of the high-born maiden.
She betook herself for guidance to the Faubourg St. Jacques. A
council on tbe arduous question was held with all tbe forms, con-
ventual and theatrical, which the statutes of the Order and the
fancy of tbe nuns required or suggested. As presidents, sat two of
their number, one impersonating the grace of Penitence, the other
the virtue of Discretion. From the judgment-seat so occupied,
went forth the sentence that Anne Grenevieve de Bourbon should
attend tbe ball, and should surrender herself ' de bonne foi ' to
all the dress and ornaments prepared for her ; but that in imme-
diate contact with her person she should be armed with the peni-
tential robe of hair-cloth commonly called a cilice. Above tbe
talisman which thus encircled that young and lovely form, glowed
the bright panoply of the marchande de modes. Beneath it
throbbed a heart responsive in every pulse to the new intoxication.
Penitence and Discretion took their flight, no more to return till,
after the lapse of many a chequered year, the cilice was again
drawn over a heart, then, alas ! aching with remorse, and bowed
down with the contrite retrospect of many a crime and many a
folly.

At the Hotel de Eambouillet, she was initiated, witli her bro-
ther, afterwards ' the great Coude,' into the Parisian mystery of

316 THE rORT-ROYALISTS.

throwing over the cold hard lineaments of downright selfishness
the fine woven draperies of polite literature, of sentimentality, and
of taste. She had scarcely read any books ; but she could discourse
eloquently on all. Mistress of the histrionic art, all words fell
bewitchingly from a voice with which every look, and gesture, and
attitude combined in graceful harmony. De Eetz notices the ex-
quisite effect of the sudden bursts of gaiety which would at times
dispel her habitual, but not inexpressive, langour. Sarazin and
Voiture were proud to receive their laurels from her hand, or to
beg them at her feet. Statesmen and generals sought, or seemed
to seek, her counsels. Even her mitred correspondents infused
into their pastoral admonitions a delicacy and a glow of language,
which reveal alike her skill to fascinate, and their desire to please.
Vows of celibacy no longer promised an escape from lassitude. At
the age of twenty-three she gave her hand to Henri d'Orleans,
Due de Longueville, who had already numbered forty-seven years.
The Duke repaired as plenipotentiary to the conferences at Mun-
ster. The Duchess remained at Paris, the idol of the court.
Unexplored, at least by us, be the scandalous chronicle of a scan-
dalous age. She rejoined him in time to shelter, if not entirely to
save, her reputation.

As she floated down the Meuse in a royal progress (for it was
nothing less), the sister of Conde was received with more than
royal honours. Troops lined the banks ; fortresses poured forth
their garrisons to welcome her approach; the keys of Namur,
then held by Spain, were laid at her feet; complimentary ha-
rangues hailed her arrival at Liege, Maestricht, and Ruremonde ;
and amidst the roar of cannon, and the acclamations of ten thou-
sand voices, the triumphant beauty was restored to the arms of
her husband. At Munster she exhibited the state and splendour
of a crowned head. But her heart was depressed by ennui, if not
agitated by more guilty emotions. Tours were undertaken, palaces
built, wars of etiquette successfully waged with rival princesses,
diplomatic intrigues twisted and unt^\'isted : but gloom still settled
on the spirit of her to whose diversion all other minds were
ministering.

She returned to Paris. Conde had exalted the glories of her
house. Mazarin got uj) an Italian opera for her amusement.
Benserade and Voiture referred to her award the question, then
agitating the whole Parisian world, of the comparative excellence
of their rival sonnets. She became a mother. On every side the
tedium of existence was assailed by new excitements ; but melan-
choly still brooded over her. Relief was however at hand. The
dissensions, the wars, the intrigues of the Fronde, filled the void

THE rORT-ROYALISTS. 317

which nothing else could fill. Ilcr share in tlmt mad revel is
known to all the readers of De Retz, La Eochefoucault, De INIont-
pensier, and De Motteville. Her younger brother, the Prince de
Conti, was but a puppet in her hands. With Conde she quarrelled
one day, and made it up the next. De Eetz was alternately her
ruler and her dupe. Marsaillac alone acquired a lasting influence
over her mind. He flattered, amused, animated, and governed
her, to whose government alone the factious and the frivolous
were alike willing to bow. With her infant in her arms, she ap-
peared on the balcony, at the Hotel de Ville, ' beautiful,' says De
Retz, 'with her dress apparently, but not really, neglected; while
at the Greve, from the pavement to the tiles, was a countless mul-
titude of men shouting with transport, and women shedding tears
of tenderness.' Never did mob-idolatry assume a more bewitch-
ing aspect. Hushed into affectionate silence were the harsh voices
of the many-headed monster, as the peerless dame gave birtli to
* Charles Paris,' her second son. Crowded even was that sick-
chamber with black-robed councillors, and plumed officers, solicit-
ing her commands for the defence of the blockaded capital.

Peace came, and she met almost on equal terms the haughty
wndow and mother of the kings of France. For her brother and
her husband, she demanded and obtained the government of pro-
vinces ; for herself, a state ball at the Hotel de Ville, with the
presence of the queen-mother to grace her triumph ; for JNIarsaillac,
the entree at the Louvre in his carriage ; for his wife, a tabouret.

There are limits to human endurance. Against the entree and
the tabouret the whole nobility of France awoke in generous re-
sentment. Astrsea once more took her flight. Conde, Conti, and
poor De Longueville himself, were conducted to Vincennes ; our
heroine fled to Normandy. Besieged in the castle of Dieppe, she
escaped on foot, and, after a march of some leagues along the
coast, reached a fishing-boat, which lay at anchor there, awaiting
her arrival. A storm was raging ; but, in defiance of all remon-
strances, she resolved to embark. In an instant she was struggling
for life in the water. Rescued with difficulty, but nothing daunted,
she mounted behind a horseman, and for fifteen days evaded the
pursuit of her enemies, in mean and desolate hiding-places. At
length, reaching Havre, an English vessel conveyed her to Rotter-
dam. From that disastrous eclipse, she emerged with undi-
minished splendour. From Stenay, Turenne advanced to meet
her at the head of all his forces. She became a party witli him to
the convention by which the King of Spain bound himself to main-
tain the war with France till the liberation of the tliroe captive
princes ; and sixty thousand crowns were promised for the suj^port of

318 THE rORT-EOYALISTS.

the table and equipages of Turenne and the Princesse de Longue-
ville. That more tender bonds than those of war and treason did
not unite them, is ascribed by her biographers to her preference
for one La Motissaye, the commandant of Stenay. There she
braved the denunciations of her sovereign, opposing one manifesto
to another, and adding to her other glories the praise of diplomatic
eloquence.

Again the centre of all intrigue, the delirium, whether ambitious
or voluptuous, of her heart, yielded for a while (and where beats
the heart which is not enigmatical?) to remembrances, at once bit-
ter and soothing, of the Carmelites of St. Jacques, with whom, in
days of youth and innocency, she had joined in far different aspi-
rations. But in the jphantasmagoria at Paris the scenes are again
shifted. The parliaments remonstrate, the Princes are enlarged,
the Cardinal exiled, and a royal declaration attests the innocence
of Madame de Longueville. 'Vous n'etes plus criminelle, si
ce n'est de lese-amours,' was the greeting on this occasion of her
favourite Sarazin. She rewarded the poet with an embassy to the
Spanish government ; for the Duchesse had now undertaken a
negotiation for peace between the two crowns. Her second triumph,
however, was still incomplete. She returned in all the pomp
of a conqueror to Paris, and once more met on equal terms the
majesty of France.

It may reasonably be doubted whether there exists at this day
one human being who has found leisure and inclination to study
with exact attention, in all its tedious details, the history of the
wars of the ' Fronde.' But that they disturbed the peace, and
postponed the rising greatness, of a mighty nation, they would
have as little to commend them to serious regard as the cabals one
may suppose to distract the fair council presiding over the internal
economy of Almacks. To assert, during the weakness of a long
minority, some popular rights not otherwise to be maintained, and
to restore the greater nobility to the powers of which Eichelieu
had dispossessed them, were indeed motives which gave some show
of dignity to the first movement of the Frondeurs; but meaner
passions, more frivolous questions, interests more nakedly selfish,
or in themselves more contemptible, never before or since roused
a people to war, or formed a pretext for rebellion. Cardinals,
Judges, Monarchs, Princesses, Courtiers, and Grenerals whirl before
the eye in that giddy maze — intriguing, lying, jesting, imprisoning,
and killing, as though Bacchus, Momus, and Moloch had for a while
usurped a joint and absolute dominion over the distracted land.

Among the figurantes in this dance of death, none is more con-
spicuous than the Duchesse de Longueville. In the third and

THE POrwT-ROYALISTS. 319

last of those preposterous wars, tlie royal authority triumphed, ami
her star declined ; but it now set to rise again in a new and far
purer radiance. Like the wisest of the sons of men, she liad
applied her heart to see if there was any good thing mider the
sun ; and, like him, she returned with a spirit oppressed by the
hopeless pursuit, and proclaiming that all is vanity. * I have no
wish so ardent ' (such is her confession to the Prioress of the
Carmelites) ' as to see this war at an end, that, for the rest of my
days, I may dwell with you, and apart from all the world besides.
Till peace is concluded, I may not do so. My life seems to have
been given me but to prove how bitter and how oppressive are the
sorrows of this mortal existence. INly attachments to it are broken,
or rather crushed. Write to me often, and confirm the loathing I
feel for this sublunary state.'

It was a weary way which the returning penitent had to retrace.
Now rising towards the heaven to which she aspired, her fainting
spirit would again sink down to the earth she had too much loved.
Long and arduous was the struggle — tardy, and to the last pre-
carious, the conquest. But the conquest was achieved. Gainsay
it who will, the spirit of man is the not unfrequent, though the
hidden, scene of revolutions as real as that which, from the seed
corrupting in the soil beneath us, draws forth the petals, diffusing
on every side their fragrance, and reflecting in every varied hue
the light of heaven. He who, with disappointed hopes, and the
satiety of all the pleasures which earth has to offer, seeks refuge
in that sanctuaiy which in the heat and confidence of youth he
had despised, may well expect that human judges will note the
change with incredulity or derision : nor, perhaps, has he much
right to complain. There ever must be some ground for others to
doubt whether the seeming love of long-neglected virtues be more
than a real distaste for long-practised vices. That the rouce should
pass into the ennuyee, and the ennuyee into the devote, may appear
as natural as that the worm should become a chrysalis, and the
chrysalis a butterfly. To the wits be their jests, and to the
mockers their gibes. To those who can feel for some of the
deepest agonies of our common nature, such jests will be at least
less welcome than the belief that, when innocence is gone, all is
not lost ; and the conviction, that over the soul blighted and de-
praved by criminal indulgence, may still be effectually brooding
an influence more gentle than a mother's love, and mightier than
all the confederate powers of darkness and of guilt.

Few readers of the later correspondence of the Duchesse de
Longueville will doubt that the change in her character was the
result of such a renovating energy. At the age of thirty-four she

320 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

finally retired from the cabals in which she had borne so conspicu-
ous a part. Conde had now taken up arms against her native
country, and Turenne commanded her armies. Tlie Duchesse
mourned alike the success and the reverses of her brother. De
Longueville, a kind-hearted man, hailed with unabated tenderness
her return to the paths of wisdom and peace. She watched with
true conjugal care over his declining years, and even extended her
kindness to one of his illegitimate daughters.

Touched by her altered conduct, the King and the Queen-mother
admitted her not merely to their favour, but to a high place in
their regard ; nor are there many incidents in the life of Louis so
amiable, as the affectionate gentleness of his demeanour to this
once dangerous but now self-humbled enemy. On the death of
her husband, she expended immense sums in the attempt to repair,
in some degree, the calamities which the war of the Princes had
inflicted on the peasantry. In a single year she restored to free-
dom, at her own expense, nine hundred persons imprisoned for
debt ; and had a list of no less than four thousand pensioners sub-
sisting altogether on her bounty. The austere penances, which, at
least, attested her sincerity, were combined, on all becoming occa-
sions, with the princely magnificence due to her exalted station.
Her eldest son, the Comte Du Dunois, a feeble-minded youth,
turned Jesuit, took orders, escaped to Rome, and was placed under
permanent restraint. The Comte St. Paul, her only other child,
was a wild profligate. He enjoyed ecclesiastical benefices of the
annual value of 50,000 crowns, which she compelled him to resign
unconditionally to the disposal of the King.

Louis revered and applauded such unwonted disinterestedness,
and exerted all the magic of his flattery to win her back again to
the court and to the world. But she had learnt a salutary lesson
of self-distrust. In the valley of Port-Royal she built a modest
residence, where she found repose, if not serenity ; and soothed
with humble hopes a spirit too deeply contrite to be visited, by
more buoyant feelings. Her own hand has traced the history of
her declining years ; nor have the most pathetic preachers of that
age of pulpit eloquence bequeathed to us a more impressive
admonition. Whoever would learn what are the woes of minis-
tering, by reckless self-indulgence, to the morbid cravings of the
heart for excitement ; or how revolting is the late return to more
tranquil pursuits ; or how gloomy is the shadow which criminal
passions, even when exorcised, will yet cast over the soul they
have long possessed ; or how, through that gloom, a light pure
as its divine original, may dawn over the benighted mind with
still expanding warmth and brightness — should study the Letters

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 821

and the Confessions of Anne Genevieve, Duchesse de Lougue-
ville.

Sucli, and so conversant with the ways of the workl, was the
diplomatist who at length appeared for the rescue of the ladies of
Port-Royal. No less skilful hand could have unravelled the folds
in which the subject had been wrapped by intrigue and bigotry.

To explain what was the task she undertook, we- must return a
little on our former steps.

The original anti-Jansenist test had been promulgated by a
synod of the clergy of France, adopted by the Sorbonne, and en-
forced by Louis. To the remonstrances of the nuns against being
required to attest by their signatures a matter of fact of which
they had, and could have, no knowledge, the King had answered
only by reiterating the demand for a ' pure and simple ' subscrip-
tion. ' His jNIajesty,' observed the Princesse de Guimene, ' is
supreme. He can make princes of the blood, bishops, and arch-
bishops. Why not martyrs also?' It was a branch of the royal
prerogative which he was nothing loath to exercise. De Eetz abdi-
cated the see of Paris, and was succeeded by De Marca, the author
of the Formulary. Availing themselves of so happy an occasion,
the Jesuits at Clermont drew up a thesis, in which was pro-
pounded for the acceptance of the faithful, the naked dogma of
Papal infallibility, not only on points of doctrine, but as to mere
matters of fact. Arnauld and his friends protested. Their protest
was refuted by the hand and the torch of one of the great polemics
of that age — the public executioner. De Marca did not live long ;
and his death brought with it a truce in this holy war. His suc-
cessor in the see of Paris, M. de Perifixe, resumed it, but with
greater subtlety. He taught that it was enough if a matter of
fact, asserted by the Pope, were believed not cVunefoi divine, but
cPune foi humaine. WTiether, in the Virgilian elysium, the re-
compense awarded to the inventors of useful arts awaits the authors
of useful distinctions, has not been revealed to us ; but if so, De
Perifixe may there have found his recompense. On earth it was
his hard fate to be refuted by Nicole, to be laughed at by the
Parisians, and to be opposed by the ladies of Port-Poyal. They
had no faith, divine or human, and they would profess none, as to
the contents of a large folio written in a language of which they
were entirely ignorant. ' Pure as angels,' said the incensed Arch-
bishop ; ' they are proud as devils I' How he punished their pride
has already been recorded.

When a great dignitary has lost his temper there is nothing
which he should more studiously avoid than the being hooked into
the sort of contemporary record which the French call a proems

322 THE PORT-EOYALISTS.

verbal. In tlie midst of the nuns of Port-Eoyal, De Perifixe had
stormed and scolded more in the style of a poissarde than of an
Archbishop of Paris ; and when the chronicle of all his sayings
and doings on the occasion stole into light, with all the forms of
notarial certificates, he found himself, to his unutterable dismay,
the hero of as broad a farce as had ever delighted that lauo'hter-
loving city. It was the single joke of which the nuns had ever
been either the willing or the unintentional authors ; and they
soon found to their cost that it was no light matter to have directed
the current of ridicule against an archiepiscopal, and, through him,
against a royal censor.

The invincible opposition of the Port-Eoyalists to the test, had
awakened a more extended resistance. Men had begun to deny
the right of assemblies of the clergy, or of the King himself, to
impose such subscriptions. To retreat was, however, no longer
possible. Louis, therefore, by the advice of the Jesuits, desired
the Pope himself first to draw up a Formula, which should declare
his own infallible knowledge of matters of fact : and then to re-
quire the universal acceptance of it. Alexander VII. exultingly
complied. Subscription to De Marca's test was now exacted by
papal authority, with the addition that the subscribers should call
on the Deity himself to attest their sincerity. To this demand the
great body of the clergy of France submitted ; but still the resist-
ance of the nuns of Port-Royal was unsubdued. Four years of
persecution — of mean, unmanly, worrying persecution — followed.
The history of it fills many volumes of the Conventual Annals,
exciting in the mind of him who reads them, feelings of amazement
and disgust, of respect and pity, strong enough to carry him
through what it must be confessed is but a wearisome task. From
the poor remnant of earthly comforts which these aged women had
retained, the mean-spirited king, his bigoted confessors, and his
absurd archbishop, daily stole whatever could be so pilfered. From
their means of preparing for the world where the wicked cease from
troubling, every deduction was made which sacerdotal tyranny
could enforce. But no tyranny could induce them to call on the
Grod of Truth to attest a lie. One after another went down, with
no priestly absolution, to graves which no priest would bless ;
strong even amidst the weakness and the mortal agonies of nature,
in the assurance, that the path to heaven could not be found in
disobedience to the immutable laws which Heaven itself had
established.

Among the bishops of France, four had been faithful enough
to insist on the distinction between the droit and the fait. In
publishing the papal bull, they attached to it an express statement

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. '823

of their disseut from this uew pretension of Eome. Of these
prelates, one was a brotlier of the great Arnauld, and bore the
same name. Alexander VII. was now on his death-bed ; he had
even received extreme unction. But at that awful hour he re-
tained enough of human or of papal feeling to launch against the
four prelates a brief full of menaces, which it devolved on his
successor, Eospigiiosi, to execute.

But Clement IX. was a man of a far greater and more Christian
spirit. He had mourned over the distractions of the Cliurch, and
had made it his appropriate glory to mediate between the con-
tending crowns of Spain and Portugal. To him the Duchesse de
Longueville addressed herself on behalf of Port-Eoyal, in a letter
of the most insinuating and impressive eloquence. His nuncio at
Paris was made to feel all the powers of that fascinating influence
which she still knew how to employ. At her hotel, and in her
presence, a select committee met daily for the management of this
affair. It was composed of three bishops, aided by Arnauld and
Nicole. Conde himself was induced by his sister to lend the weight
of his authority to her projects. Even Le Tellier was circumvented
by the toils spread for him by this great mistress of intrigue. For
nearly eighteen months she laboured to overcome the obstacles
which the pride of Eome and of Louis, and the ill-will of the
Father Annat, his confessor, opposed to her. All difficulties at
length yielded to her perseverance and her diplomatic skill. The
four bishops were content to denounce the ' five propositions ' as
heretical, and to promise ' a submission of respect and discipline,'
as to the fact, declaring that ' they would not contest the pajDal
decision, but would maintain an absolute silence on the subject.'
One of them insisted on adding an express statement of the falli-
bility of the Church respecting such matters of fact as the contents
of a book. Clement IX. was, however, satisfied. Peace was re-
stored to the Gallican Church. Medals were struck, speeches made,
and solemn audiences accorded by Louis to Arnauld and his as-
sociates. De Saci and his fellow-prisoners were set at libert}'-.
Port-Eoyal was once more permitted to recruit her monastery, to
open her schools, and to give shelter to her dispersed recluses.
Among the events which signalised the pacification of Clement
IX., one demands especial notice. Malebranche had signed the
Formulary. He now frankly avowed that he had condemned
Jansenius without reading his book, and implored the pardon of
Grod and of man for his guilty compliance.

It may perhaps be consolatory to some, in our own times, to be
informed, that in censuring as heretical the book of a professor of
divinity, of which they knew nothing but the title-page, they

Y 2

324 • THE PORT-EOYALISTS.

might have pleaded the example of so great a man — a comfort,
however, to which they will not be entitled, unless they imitate
also the example of his repentance.

Ten years elapsed from this pacification before the close of the
extraordinaiy career of the Duchesse de Longueville; and they
were years distinguished in the chronicle of Port-Eoyal by little
else than the peaceful lives and the tranquil deaths of many of the
inhabitants of the valley. In their annals are to be found more
than a century of names, to which their admirers have promised
not only an eternal reward, but such immortality as the world has
to bestow.

Overburdened as we are by the ever increasing debt of admir-
ation to the illustrious dead, these promises will hardly be fulfilled,
at least by our busy age : nor is it easy even for one who has care-
fully travelled through the whole of these biographies, to select
from among the female candidates for posthumous renown, those
to whom such homage is especially due. Their portraitures have
a strong resemblance to each other. To each, in her turn, is
awarded the praise of passive virtue, of fervent j^iety, and of aus-
terities from which nature shrinks. If a sense of the ludicrous
will occasionally provoke a passing smile, or if a sigh must now
and then be given to the melancholy superstitions of which they
were the blameless victims, it is at least impossible to contemplate,
irreverently or unmoved, the image of purity and peace, of mutual
kindness and cheerful acquiescence in the Divine will, which dis-
closes itself at each successive aspect of that holy sisterhood.

The sternest Protestant cannot rouse himself at once from the
influence of this course of reading ; nor resume, without an effort,
his conviction, that it is amidst the charities of domestic life that
female virtue finds the highest exercise, and female piety the most
sublime elevation. He knows, indeed, that exuberant as is the
charter of his faith in models of every human virtue, and in pre-
cepts of wisdom under every varied form, it contains not so much
as a single example, or a solitary admonition, from which the
Confessors of Port-Eoyal could have shown that a retreat to such
cloisters was in accordance with the revealed will of Grod. He
knows also, that thus to counteract the eternal laws of nature and
the manifest designs of Providence, must be folly, however specious
the pretext or solemn the guise which such folly may assume. He
is assured that filial affection, cheerfully, temi^erately, bountifully,
and thankfully using the gifts of heaven, is the best tribute which
man can render to Him who claims for himself the name and the
character of a Father. But with all this knowledge, the disciple
of Luther or of Calvin will yet close the vies edifiantes and the

THE rORT-KOYALIST3. 325

necrologies of these holy women, not without arehictance to (loul)t,
and a wish to believe, that they really occupied the high and awful
station to which they aspired ; and stood apart from the world, its
pollutions, and its cares, to offer with purer hearts than others, and
with more acceptable intercessions, the sacrifice of an uninterrupted
worship, replete with blessings to themselves and to mankind.
Peace then to their errors, and imquoted be any of the innumer-
able extravagances which abound in the records of their lives. To
the recluses who shared, without ever breaking, their solitude, we
rather tui'n for illustrations of the spirit which animated and
characterised the valley of Port-Royal.

On the pacification of Clement IX., Louis Sebastian le Nain de
Tillemont, who had been educated in the schools of Nicole and
Lancelot, returned in the maturity of his manhood to a hermitage
which he had erected near the court-yard of the abbey. Such had
been his attainments as a boy, that the pupil had soon exhausted
the resources of those profound teachers, and in his twentieth year
had commenced those works on ecclesiastical history, which have
placed him in the very foremost rank, if not at the head, of all
who have laboured in that fertile though rugged field. To the
culture of it his life was unceasingly devoted. Though under the
direction of De Saci he had obtained admission to holy orders, he
refused all the rich preferments pressed on him by the admirers of
his genius. Year after year passed over him, unmarked by any
event which even the pen of his affectionate biographer, Fontaine,
could record. ' He lived,' says that ajniable writer, ' alone, and
with no witness but Grod himself, who was ever present with him,
and who was all in all to him.' It was only in an habitual and
placid communion with that one associate, that he sought relief
from his gigantic toils ; and with a spirit recruited by that com-
munion, he returned to the society of the Emperors, the Popes,
the Fathers, and the Saints, who were to him as companions and
as friends. To a man long conversant with the anxieties of a
secular calling, the soft lights and the harmonious repose of such a
picture may perhaps exhibit a delusive aspect ; yet it can hardly
be a delusion to believe, that for such colloquy with the minds
which yet live in books, and with that Mind which is the source of
all life, would be wisely abandoned whatever ambition, society,
fame, or fortune, have to confer on their most favoured votaries.

So at least judged one, whom fame and fortune wooed with
their most alluring smiles. Eacine had been trained at Port-
Royal, in the same schools and by the same masters as Tillemont.
For the great dramatist, no sympathy could of course be expressed
by the austere dwellers in the desert ; and perhaps the friendship!

Y 3

326 THE PORT-ROYALISTS.

of Boileau may have consoled him for the alienation of his old
teacher Nicole. But when, in his Visionnaires, that devout and
learned man denounced the writers of stage-plays as the Empoison-
neurs publics des cimes, Eacine keenly felt and resented the re-
proach. Like most controversialists, he lived to repent the asperity
of his language: but his repentance yielded fruits, the like of
which have rarely been gathered from that bitter stem. The
author of Andromaque not only sought the pardon, and regained
the friendship of Arnauld and Nicole, but actually renounced the
drama, exhorted his son to abandon poetry, became the advocate
and the historian of Port-Eoyal, and secured for his bones a rest-
ing-place in that consecrated soil.

Happily for the world, a method was afterwards discovered of
reconciling the exercise of Racine's genius with the severe prin-
ciples which Nicole had instilled into him when a boy, and had
revived with such decisive effect in his riper days. Esther and
Athalie were allowed, even at Port-Royal, to be works not un-
seemly for a man whose single talent was that of writing verses,
and who, if he could do nothing better, was at least acknowledged
to do that well. But alas for human consistency ! He who traced
those majestic scenes where reliance on the Divine arm triumphs
over all human regards and terrors, was doomed himself to pine
away and even to die of a hard saying of the hard master it was
his ill fate to serve. His guilt was to have drawn up a Memoir on
the means of relieving the starving poor at Paris. His punish-
ment, the indignant exclamation of the great Louis, ' Because he
is an all-accomplished versifier, does he presume that he knows
everything ? Because he is a great poet, does he mean to become
a minister ? ' Well might the sensitive spirit which such a feather
could crush, wish with Wolsey that he had served his God as faith-
fully as his King, and repine amidst the pageantries of Versailles
for the devout composure of Port-Royal.

And many were the eminent men who sought and enjoyed that
repose. There dwelt the Prince de Conti, one of the heroes of the
Fronde, and still more memorable for his penitence and restitu-
tions ; of whom it is recorded, that his young children were so
impressed by his absolute devotedness to the Divine will, as to
conceal from him the story of Abraham, lest the example of the
sacrifice of Isaac should be imitated at their own expense. There,
too, resided the Due de Laincourt, on whom fortune had exhausted
all her bounties, and who, under the loss of them all, rose to the
utmost heroism of a meek, unrepining, and cheerful resignation.
Pontchateau, a noble, a courtier, an ambassador, and at length the
apostolical prothonotary at Rome, brought all the strange vicissi-

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 327

tildes of bis life to an end, by becoming, under the name of Le
Mercier, a common labourer in the gardens, and a devout wor-
shipper in the church of Port-Eoyal. But this chronicle of
worthies, spreading out into interminable length, must give place
to a very brief account of the events which reduced to a desert the
solitudes which they had cultivated and adorned.

Amidst the contentions of the Galilean Church, full proof had
been given of the keen edge of those weapons which might be
borrowed from the papal arsenals. It readily occurred to the suf-
ferers, that the resources which the Jesuits had so successfully
employed, might be turned against themselves. Pascal had
startled the civilised world with the exposure of Molinist errors,
hostile not merely to the Catholic creed, but to those principles of
virtue which are the very cement of human society. They had
imputed to Jansenius five heresies on the obscvu-e subjects of
Divine grace and human freedom ; but who could numl)er the
propositions in which Escobar and his associates had spiu'iied the
authority of the decalogue itself? The assiduity of the bishops of
Arras and St. Pons collected sixty-five of these scandalous dogmas,
and these they transmitted to Eome in a memorial of which Nicole
was believed to be the writer, and known to be the translator.
Eighteous, unc[ualified, and decisive was the papal condemnation
of the morality of the Jesuits ; but fatal to the repose of Port-
Eoyal was this triumph of one of her brightest ornaments. The
Duchesse de Longueville had lately died, and with her had disap-
peared the motive which had induced Louis to show some forbear-
ance to the objects of her affectionate solicitude. Harlay now
governed the see of Paris. He was a man of disreputable character,
and the mere instrument of the King. Louis was in bondage to
Madame de Maintenon, and she to the Jesuits. Their vengeance
scarcely sought a pretext, and soon found its gratification.

In the exercise of his archiepiscopal authority, Harlaj'- banished
De Saci, Tillemont, and Pontchateau, from the valley of Port-
Eoyal. Nicole and Arnauld sought shelter in the Netherlands
from his menaces. The postulantes and scholars were once more
expelled, and the admission of novices was again forbidden.

At this epoch, another lad}^ of the house of Arnauld — a cousin
and namesake of the Mere Angelique — was invested with the
dignity of abbess. Her genius, her virtue, and her learning, are
the subject of eulogies too indistinct to be impressive, and too
hyperbolical to win implicit credence. Yet, if she was the writer of
the memoir in defence of her monastery which bears her name,
there was no apparent obstacle, but her sex and her profession, to
her successful rivalry of the greatest masters of juridical eloquence

328 THE POET-ROYALISTS.

in France. Ineffectual, however, would have been all the rhetoric
which ever adorned the parliament of Paris, to avert the threatened
doom of the stronghold of Jansenism. As he approached the tomb,
Harlay's resentment became more deep and settled. He left it a
fatal inheritance to his successor, the Cardinal De Noailles. A weak
and obstinate, but not an unfeeling man, De Noailles owed his pro-
motion to the see of Paris to his fixed hostility to Port-Royal,
and his known willingness to hazard the odium of subverting that
ancient seat of piety and learning. The apology soon presented
itself.

Several years had elapsed since the dispute about ' Le Droit et
le Fait de Jansenius ' had apparently reached its close. Revolving
this passage of bygone history, a priest had improved or amused
his leisure, by drawing up, for the decision of the Sorbonne, ' a
case of conscience,' which, it must be owned, was a hard problem
for the most expert casuist. Of two infallible Popes, one had with
his dying breath affirmed as a momentous truth, a proposition
which the other had abandoned, if not retracted. What was it the
duty of the faithful to believe on the subject? Forty doctors
answered, that it was enough to maintain a respectful silence as to
the ' fait de Jansenius.' Archiepiscopal mandaments, treatises of
the learned, royal orders in council, and parliamentary arrets, flew
thick and fast through the troubled air, and obscured the daylight
of common sense. Again the eldest son of the Church invoked the
authority of her spiritual father. In oracular darkness went forth
from the Vatican, the sentence, that ' respectful silence is not a
sufficient deference for apostolical constitutions.' This is what is
called in ecclesiastical story, the bull 'Vineam Domini Sabaoth.'
Under shelter of an abstract theorem which no Catholic could deny,
it ingeniously concealed the conflict of opinion of two infallible
Pontiffs. Subscription of their unqualified assent to the bull
'Vineam' was demanded from the nuns of Port-Royal, and from
them alone. They cheerfully subscribed ; but with the addition,
that their signature was not to be understood as derogating from
what had been determined on the pacification of Clement IX.
This was their final and their fatal act of contumacy. Decree
after decree was fulminated by De Noailles. He forbade the ad-
mission of any new members of their house. He prohibited the
election of an abbess. He despoiled them of a large part of their
estates. He interdicted to them all the sacraments of the Church.
He obtained a papal bull for the suppression of their monastery ;
and in October, 1709, he carried it into effect by an armed force,
under the Marquis D'Argenson.

There is in Westminster Hall a tradition that an eminent advo-

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 329

cate of our own times addressed to the House of Peers, duriug six-
teen successive days, a speech, in the course of which (such is the
calculation) he employed all the words in Johnson's Dictionary,
one with another, just thirty-five times over. Neither boastiiH^
the copiousness, nor presuming on the patience which were at the
command of that gi'eat lawyer, we have compressed into a few
sentences the history of a contest, which, if not so abridged, would
have swollen to the utmost limits of that unparalleled oration. But
to those who have leisure for such studies, and who delight in a
well-fought forensic field, we can promise that pleasure in the
highest degree fi'om a perusal of the contest between the aged
ladies of Port Eoyal, and their royal, mitred, and ermined antago-
nists. Never was a more gallant struggle against injustice. After
exhausting all the resources of legal defence, those helpless and
apparently feeble women disputed every inch of ground by protests,
remonstrances, and petitions, which, for the moment at least, held
their assailants in check, and which yet remain a wondrous monu-
ment of their perseverance and capacity, and of the absolute self-
control which, amidst the outpourings of their griefs, and the ex-
posure of their wrongs, restrained every expression of asperity or
resentment. Never was the genius of the family of Arnauld ex-
hibited with greater lustre, and never with less effect.

In a grey autumnal morning, a long file of armed horsemen,
under the command of D'Argenson, was seen to issue from the
woods which overhung the ill-fated monastery. In the name of
Louis he demanded and obtained admission into that sacred in-
closure. Seated on the abbatial throne, he summoned the nuns
into his presence. They appeared before him veiled, silent, and
submissive. Their papers, their title-deeds, and their property
were then seized, and proclamation made of a royal decree which
directed their immediate exile. It was instantly carried into effect.
Far and wide along the summits of the neighbouring hills, might
be seen a thronging multitude of the peasants whom they had in-
structed, and of the poor whom they had relieved. Bitter cries of
indignation and of grief, joined with fervent prayers, arose from
those helpless people, as, one after another the nuns entered the
carriages drawn up for their reception. Each pursued her solitary
journey to the prison destined for her. Of these venerable women,
some had passed their eightieth year, and the youngest was far ad-
vanced in life. Labouring under paralysis and other infirmities of
old age, several of them reached at once their prisons and their
graves. Others died under the distress and fatigues of their
journey. Some possessed energies which no sufferings could sub-
due. Madame de Remicourt, for example, was kept for two yeai's

330 THE POET-ROYALISTS.

in solitary confinement; in a cell lighted and ventilated only
throuo-h the chimney ; without fire, society, or books. ' You may
persecute, but you will never change Madame de Remicourt,' said
the Archbishop; 'for' (such was his profound view of the pheno-
menon) ' she has a square head, and people with square heads are
always obstinate.'

Last in the number of exiles appeared, at the gates of the abbey,
the prioress, Louise de St. Anastasie Mesnil de Courtiaux. She
had seen her aged sisters one by one quit for ever the abode, the
associates, and the employments of their lives. To each she had
given her parting benediction. She shed no tear, she breathed no
murmur, nor for a moment betrayed the dignity of her office, nor
the constancy of her mind. ' Be faithful to the end,' were the last
words which she addressed to the last companion of her sorrows.
And nobly did she fulfil her own counsels. She was conducted to
a convent, where, under a close guard, she was compelled to
endure the utmost rigours of a jail. Deprived of all those
relio-ious comforts which it is in the power of man to minister,
she enjoyed a solace, and found a strength, which it was not in
the power of man to take away. In common with the greater
part of her fellow-sufferers, she died without any priestly abso-
lution, and was consigned to an unhallowed grave. They died
the martyrs of sincerity; strong in the faith that a lie must
ever be hateful in the sight of Grod, though infallible popes should
exact it, or an infallible Church, as represented by cardinals and
confessors, should persuade it.

Unsatiated by the calamities of the nuns, the vengeance of the
enemies of Port- Royal was directed against the buildings where
they had dwelt, the sacred edifice where they had worshipped,
and the tombs in which their dead had been interred. The
monastery and the adjacent church were overthrown from their
foundations. Workmen, prepared by hard drinking for their
task, broke open the graves in which the nuns and recluses of
former times had been interred. With obscene ribaldry, and
outrages too disgusting to be detailed, they piled up a loathsome
heap of bones and corpses, on which the dogs were permitted to
feed. What remained was thrown into a pit, prepared for the
purpose, near the neighbouring churchyard of St. Lambert. A
wooden cross, erected by the villagers, marked the spot; and many
a pilgrim resorted to it, to pray for the souls of the departed, and
for his own. At length no trace remained of the Fortress of Jan-
senism to offend the eye of the Jesuits, or to perpetuate the
memory of the illustrious dead with whom they had so long
contended. The mutilated Gothic arch, the water-mill, and the

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 331

dovecot, rising from the banks of the pool, with the decayed towers
and the farm-house on the slopes of the valley, are all that now
attest that it was once the crowded abode of the wise, the learned,
and the good. In that spot, however, may still be seen the
winding brook, the verdant hills, and the quiet meadows, nature's
indestructible monuments to the devout men and holy women who
nurtured there affections which made them lovely in their lives,
and hopes which rendered them triumphant in death. Nor in her
long roll of martyrs has history to record the names of any who
suffered with greater constancy, or in a nobler cause; for their
conflict was with the very Church which they most profoundly
revered, and their cause was that of devotedness to sincerity and
abhorrence of falsehood.

Amongst the interpreters of the counsels of Divine Providence
in that age, there were not wanting many who found, in the
calamities which overwhelmed the declining years of Louis, the
retribution of an avenging Deity for the wrongs inflicted on Port-
Eoyal. If it w^ere given to man to decipher the mysterious
characters engraven on the scroll of this world's history, it might
not be difficult to find, in the annals of his reign, other and yet
more weighty reasons for the awakening of Nemesis in France at
the commencement of the eighteenth century. But of the mere
chronological fact, there is no doubt. The death of the three
Dauphins, and the victories of Eugene and Marlborough, followed
hard on the dispersion of the nuns. With his dying breath, Louis
cast the responsibility of his conduct towards them on the Jesuits
who stood round his bed. ' If, indeed, you have misled and
deceived me,' — such was his last address to his confessors — ' you
are deeply guilty, for in truth I acted in good faith. I sincerely
sought the peace of the Church.'

The humiliation of his spiritual advisers quickly followed. It
was preceded by the retirement and death of Madame de Main-
tenon, who had both provoked and derided the sufferings of the
Port-Royalists. The very type of mediocrity out of place, she is to
our mind the least attractive of all the ladies of equivocal or des-
perate reputation, who, in modern times, have stood on the steps of
Em-opean thrones. Her power was sustained by the feebleness of
the mind she had subdued, and by the craftiness of those who had
subjugated her own. Her prudery and her religiousness, such as it
was, served but to deepen the aversion which her intriguing, selfish,
narrow-minded, and bigoted spirit excite and justify ; although, in
her own view of the matter, she probably hoped to propitiate the
favour of heaven and the applause of the world, by directing against
the unoffending women of Port-Roval the deadlv wrath of the

332 THE POET-ROYALISTS.

worn-out debauchee, whose jaded spirits and unquiet conscience it
was her daily task to sustain and flatter.

De Noailles, the instrument of her cruelty, lived to bewail his
guilt with such strange agonies of remorse, as to rescue his memory
from hatred, although it is difficult to contemplate, without some
contempt, such a paroxysm of emotions, which, however just in
themselves, deprived their victim of all powers of self-control, and
of every semblance of decorous composure. His bowlings are
described by the witness of them, to have been more like those of
a wild beast or a maniac, than of a reasonable man.

If these slight notices of the heroes and heroines of Port-Royal
Tslight, indeed, when compared with the materials from which they
have been drawn) should be ascribed by any one to a pen plighted
to do suit and service to the cause of Rome, no surmise could be
wider of the mark. No Protestant can read the writings of the
Port-Royalists themselves, '\\dthout gratitude for his deliverance
from the superstitions of a Church which calls herself Catholic, and
boasts that she is eternal. That she will flourish as long as the
race of man shall endure, is indeed a conclusion which may reason-
ably be adopted by him who divines the future only from the past.
For where is the land, or what the age, in which a conspicuous
place has not been held by phenomena essentially the same, how-
ever circumstantially different ? In what sera has man not been
a worshipper of the visible ? In what country has imagination —
the sensuous property of the mind — failed to triumph over those
mental powers which are purely contemplative ? Who can discover
a period in which religion has not more or less assumed the form
of a compromise — between the self-dependence and the self-distrust
of her votaries — between their abasement before a merely human
authority and their conviction that no such allegiance is really due
— between their awe of the Divine power and their habitual revolt
against the Divine will ? Of every such compromise, the indications
have ever been the same — a worship of pomp and ceremonial — a
spiritual despotism exercised by a sacerdotal caste — bodily penances
and costly expiations — and the constant intervention of man, and
of the works of man, between the worshipper and the supreme
object of his worship. So long as human nature shall continue
what it is, the religion of human nature will be unchanged. The
Church of Rome will be eternal, if man, such as he now is, shall
himself be eternal.

But for every labour under the sun, says the Wise Man, there is
a time. There is a time for bearing testimony against the errors
of Rome: why not also a time for testifying to the sublime virtues

THE PORT-ROYALISTS. C33

with which those errors have been so often associated ? Are we for
ever to admit and never to practise the duties of kindness and
mutual forbearance ? Does Christianity consist in a vivid percep-
tion of the faults, and an obtuse blindness to the merits, of those
who differ from us? Is charity a virtue only when we om-selves
are the objects of it? Is there not a Church as pure and more
catholic than those of Oxford or Rome — a Church comprehending
within its limits every human being who, according to the measure
of the knowledge placed within his reach, strives habitually to be
conformed to the will of the common Father of us all ? To
indulge hope beyond the pale of some narrow communion, has, by
each Christian society in its turn, been denounced as a daring
presumption. Yet hope has come to all, and with her Faith and
Charity, her inseparable companions. Amidst the shock of con-
tending creeds, and the uproar of anathemas, good men have
listened to gentler and more kindly sounds. They may have
debated as polemics, but they have felt as Christians. On the
universal mind of Christendom is indelibly engraven one image,
towards which the eyes of every true disciple of Christ are more or
less earnestly directed. Whoever has himself caught any resem-
blance, however faint and imperfect, to that divine and benignant
Original, has, in his measure, learnt to recognise a brother in every
one in whom he can discern the same resemblance.*

There is an essential unity in that ' Kingdom which is not of
this world.' But within the provinces of that mighty state there
is room for endless varieties of administration, and for local laws
and customs widely differing from each other. The unity consists
in the one object of worship — the one object of affiance — the one
source of virtue — the one cementing principle of mutual love,
which pervade and animate the whole. The diversities are, and
must be, as numerous and intractable as are the essential distinc-
tions which nature, habit, and circumstances have created among
men. Uniformity of creeds, of discipline, of ritual, and of cere-
monies, in such a world as ours ! — a world where no two men are
not as distinguishable in their mental as in their physical aspect ;
where every petty community has its separate system of civil
government ; where all that meets the eye, and all that arrests the
ear, has a stamp of boundless and infinite variety ! What are the

* See on this subject <i book entitled ' The Catholic Spirit of Christianity/
the anonymous work of the Rev. E. M'Vicar, now a minister of the Church of
Scotland, in Ceylon. Why such a book should not have attained an extensive
celebrity, or why such a writer should have been permitted to quit his native
land, are questions to which we fear no satisfactoiy answer could be given by
the dispensers of fame or of church preferment.

334 THE PORT-KOYALISTS.

harmonies of tone, of colour, and of form, but the result of con-
trasts — of contrasts held in subordination to one all-pervading
principle, which reconciles without confounding the component
elements of the music, the painting, or the structure? In the
physical works of Grod, beauty could have no existence without
endless diversities. Why assume that in religious society — a work
not less surely to be ascribed to the supreme Author of all things —
this law is absolutely reversed ? Were it possible to subdue that
innate tendency of the human mind, which compels men to differ
in religious opinions and observances, at least as widely as on all
other subjects, what would be the results of such a triumph ?
Where then would be the free comparison, and the continual
enlargement of thought; where the self-distrusts which are the
springs of humility, or the mutual dependencies which are the bonds
of love ? He who made us with this infinite variety in our intel-
lectual and physical constitution, must have foreseen, and foresee-
ing must have intended, a corresponding dissimilarity in the
opinions of his creatures on all questions submitted to their judg-
ment, and proposed for their acceiDtance. For truth is his law ;
and if all men will profess to think alike, all men must live in the
habitual violation of that law.

Zeal for uniformity attests the latent distrusts, not the firm
convictions of the zealot. In proportion to the strength of those
convictions on our minds, is our indifference to the multiplication
of suffrages in favour of our judgment. Our thoughts are steeped
in imagery ; and where the palpable form is not, the impalpable
spirit escapes the notice of the unreflecting multitude. In com-
mon hands, analysis stops at the species or the genus, and cannot
rise to the order or the class. To distinguish birds from fishes,
beasts from insects, limits the efforts of the vulgar observer of the
face of animated nature. But Cuvier could trace the sublime
unity, the universal type, the fontal Idea, existing in the creative
intelligence, which connects as one the mammoth and the snail.
So, common observers can distinguish from each other the dif-
ferent varieties of religious society, and can rise no higher. Where
one assembly worships with harmonies of music, fumes of incense,
ancient liturgies, and a gorgeous ceremonial, and another listens
to the unaided voice of a single pastor, they can perceive and
record the differences ; but the hidden ties which unite them
both escape such observation. All appears as contrast, and all
ministers to antipathy and discord. It is our belief that these
things may be rightly viewed in a different aspect, and yet with
the most severe conformity to the Divine will, whether as inti-
mated by natural religion, or as revealed in Holy Scripture. We

THE POKT-ROYALISTS. 335

believe that, in the judgment of an enlightened charity, many
Christian societies, who are accustomed to denounce each other's
errors, will at length come to be regarded as members in common
of the one great and comprehensive Church, in which diversities
of forms are harmonised by an all-pervading unity of spirit. For
ourselves at least, we should deeply regret to conclude that we
were aliens from that great Christian Commonwealth of which the
Nuns and Eecluses of the valley of Port-Royal were members, and
members assuredly of no common excellence.

336

EICHAED BAXTER.

The recent republication of the whole of the voluminous prac-
tical works of Richard Baxter, under the superintendence of the
late Mr. Orme, may be considered, in legal phrase, as a demand
for judgment, in the appeal of the great Nonconformist to the
ultimate tribunal of posterity, from the censures of his own age,
on himself and his writings. We think that the decision was sub-
stantially right, and that, on the whole, it must be affirmed. Right
it was, beyond all doubt, in so far as it assigned to him an elevated
rank amongst those, who, taking the spiritual improvement of
mankind for their province, have found there at once the motive
and the reward for labours beneath which, unless sustained by that
holy impulse, the utmost powers of our frail nature must have
prematurely fainted.

About the time when the high-born guests of Whitehall were
celebrating the nuptial revels of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine,
and the visitors of low degree were defraying the cost by the pur-
chase of titles and monopolies, there was living at the pleasant
village of Eaton Constantine, between the Wrekin Hill and the
Severn, a substantial yeoman, incurious alike about the politics of
the empire and the wants of the exchequer. Yet was he not with-
out his vexations. On the green before his door, a Maypole, hung
with garlands, allured the retiring congregation to dance out the
Sunday afternoon to the sound of fife and tabret ; while he, intent
on the study of the sacred volume, was greeted with no better
names than Puritan, Precisian, and Hypocrite. If he bent his
steps to the parish church, venerable as it was, and picturesque, in
contempt of all styles and orders of architecture, his case was not
much mended. There the aged and purblind incumbent executed
his weekly task mth the aid of strange associates. One of them
had laid aside the flail, and another the thimble, to mount the
reading desk. To these succeeded ' the excellentest stage player in
all the country, and a good gamester, and a good fellow.* This
worthy having received holy orders, forged the like for a neighbour's

RICHARD BAXTER. 337

son, who, on the strength of that title, officiated in the pulpit and
at the altai'. Next in this goodly list came an attorney's clerk, who
had ' tippled himself into so great poverty,' that he had no other
way to live but by assuming the pastoral care of the flock at Eaton
Constantiue. Time out of mind, the curate, whoever he might
chance to be, had been ex-officio the sole professor of secular, as
well as of sacred literature in the parish ; and to each in turn of
these learned persons our yeoman was tlierefore fain to commit the
education of his only son and namesake, Eichard Baxter.

Such, from his tenth to his sixteenth year, were the teachers of
the most voluminous theological writer in the English language.
Of that period of his life, the only incidents whicli can n(jvv be
ascertained are, that his love of apples was inordinate, and that, on
the subject of robbing orchards, he held, in practice at least, the
doctrines handed down amongst schoolboys b}^ an unbroken tra-
dition.

Almost as barren is the only extant record of the three remain-
ing years of his pupilage. They were spent at the endowed school
at Wroxeter, which he quitted at the age of nineteen, destitute of
all mathematical and ph3^sical science — ignorant of Hebrew — a
mere smatterer in Grreek — and possessed of as much Latin as
enabled him in after life to use it with reckless facility. Yet, it
was not possible that a mind so prolific, and which yielded such
early fruits, should have advanced to manhood without much well-
directed culture.

The Bible which lay on his father's table, formed the whole
of the good man's library, and would have been ill exchanged
for all the treasures of the Vatican. He had been no stranger
to the cares, nor indeed to the disorders of life ; and, as his
strength declined, it was his delight to inculcate on his inquisitive
boy the lessons which inspired wisdom teaches most persuasively,
when illustrated by dear-bought experience, and enforced by
parental love. For the mental infirmities of the son, no better
discipline could have been found. A pyrrhonist of nature's making,
his threescore years and ten might have been exhausted in a fruit-
less struggle to adjudicate between antagonist theories, if his mind
had not thus been subjugated to the supreme authority of Holy
Writ, by an influence coeval with the first dawn of reason, and
associated indissolubly with his earliest and most enduring affec-
tions. It is neither the wise nor the good by whom the patrimony
of opinion is most lightly regarded. Such is the condition of our
existence, that, beyond the precincts of abstract science, we must
take much for granted, if we would make any advance in know-
ledge, or live to any useful end. Our hereditary prepossession^

338 EICHARD BAXTEE.

must not only precede our acquired judgments, but must conduct
us to them. To begin by questioning everything is to end Ijy
answering nothing ; and a premature revolt from human authority
is but an incipient rebellion against conscience, reason, and truth.

Launched into the ocean of speculative inquiry, without the
anchorage of j)arental instruction and filial reverence, Baxter would
have been drawn by his constitutional tendencies into that sceptical
philosophy, through the long annals of which no single name is to
be found to which the gratitude of mankind has been yielded or is
justly due. He had much in common with the most eminent
doctors of that school — the animal frame, characterised by sluggish
appetites, languid passions, and great nervous energy ; the intel-
lectual nature distinguished by subtlety to seize distinctions more
than by wit to detect analogies ; by the power to dive, instead of
the faculty to soar ; by skill to analyse subjective truths, rather
than by ability to combine them with each other and with objec-
tive realities into one symmetrical structure. But what was want-
ing in his sensitive, and deficient in his intellectual nature, was
balanced and corrected by the spiritual elevation of his mind. If
not enamoured of the beautiful, nor conversant with the ideal, nor
accustomed to grasp at the same time the comprehensive and the
abstract, he enjoyed that clear mental vision which attends on
moral purity — the rectitude of judgment which rewards the sub-
jection of the will to the reason — the loftiness of thought awakened
by habitual communion with the source of light — and the earnest
stability of purpose inseparable from the predominance of the
social above the selfish affections. Scepticism and devotion were
the conflicting elements of his internal life ; but the radiance from
above gradually dispersed the vapours from beneath, and througli
half a century of pain, and strife, and agitation, he enjoyed that
settled tranquillity which no efforts merely intellectual can attain,
nor any speculative doubts destroy, — the peace, of which it is said,
that it passes understanding.

Baxter was born in 1615, and consequently attained his early
manhood amidst events ominous of approaching revolutions. Deep
and latent as are the ultimate causes of the continued existence of
Episcopacy in England, nothing can be less recondite than the
human agency employed in working out that result. Nursed by
the Tudors, adopted by the Stuarts, and wedded in her youth to a
powerful aristocracy, the Anglican Church retains the indelible
stamp of these early alliances. To the great, the learned, and the
worldly wise, it has for three centuries afforded a resting-place and
a refuge. But a long interval had elapsed before the national
temples and hierarchy were consecrated to the nobler end of

RICIIAKD BAXTER. ISg

enlightening the ignorant, and of administering comfort to the
poor. Rich beyond all Protestant rivalry in sacred literature, th(;
Church of England, from the days of Parker to those of Laud, liad
scarcely produced any one considerable work of popular instruc-
tion. The pastoral care which at a later period Burnet depicted,
was till then a vision which, though since nobly fulfilled, no past
experience had realised. The alphabet was among the mysteries
which the English Church long concealed from her catechu-
mens. There is no parallel in the annals of any other Protestant
State, of so wonderful a concentration, and so imperfect a diffusion
of learning and genius, of piety and zeal. The reigns of Whitgift,
Bancroft, and Laud, were unmolested by cares so rude as those of
evangelising the artisans and peasantry. Jewell and Bull, Hall
and Donne, Hooker and Taylor, lived and wrote for their peers, and
for future ages, but not for the commonalty of their own.

Yet was not Christianity bereft in England of her distinctive
and glorious privilege. It was still the religion of the poor.
Amidst persecution, contempt, and penury, the Puritans had
toiled and suffered, and had, not rarely, died in their service.
And thus in every city, and almost in every village, they who had
eyes to see, and ears to hear, might, at the commencement of the
seventeenth century, perceive the harbingers of the coming tempest.
Thoughtful and resolute men had transferred the allegiance of the
heart from their legitimate, to their chosen leaders ; while, uncon-
scious of their danger, the ruling powers were straining the bonds
of authority, in exact proportion to the decrease of their number
and their strength. It was when the future pastors of New
England were training men to a generous contempt of all sub-
lunary interest for conscience sake, that Laud, not content to be
terrible to the founders of Connecticut and Massachusetts, braved
an enmity far more to be dreaded than theirs. His truth and
courage were far less appropriate to the ends to which his life was
devoted, than would have been the wily and time-serving genius of
Williams. Supported by Heyling, Cosins, Montague, and many
others, who adopted or exaggerated his own opinions, he precipi-
tated, by a dull and uncompromising bigotry, the overthrow of a
Church, in harmony with the character of the people, strong in
their aflfections, upheld by a long line of illustrious names, con-
nected with the whole aristocracy of the realm, and enthusiastically
defended by the sovereign.

Baxter's theological studies were commenced during these
tumults, and were insensibly biassed by them. The * Eccle-
siastical Polity ' had reconciled him to episcopal ordination; but
as he read, and listened, and observed further, his attachment to

Z 2

340 RICIIArtD BAXTER.

the established ritual and discipline progressively declined. He
beo-an by rejecting the practice of indiscriminate communion. He
was dissatisfied with the compulsory subscription to articles, and
the baptismal cross. ' Deeper thoughts on the point of Episcopacy '
were suggested to him by the et cetera oath ; and these reflections
soon rendered him an irreconcilable adversary to the ' English
Diocesan frame.' He distributed the sacred elements to those who
would not kneel to receive them, and religiously abjured the sur-
plice. Thus ripe for spiritual censures, and prepared to endure
them, he was rescued from the danger he had braved by the demon
of civil strife. The Scots in the north, and the Parliament in the
south, summoned Charles and Laiid to more serious cares than
those of enforcing conformity, and left Baxter free to enlarge and
to propagate his discoveries.

With liberty of speech and action, his mind was visited by a
corresponding audacity of thought. Was there indeed a future
life ? — Was the soul of man immortal ? — Were the Scriptures
true ^ Such were the questions which now assaulted and perplexed
him. They came not as vexing and importunate suggestions, but
* under pretence of sober reason,' and all the resources of his
understanding were summoned to resist the tempter. Self-decep-
tion was abhorrent from his nature. He feared the face of no
speculative difficulty. Dark as were the shapes which crossed his
path, they must be closely questioned ; and gloomy as was the abyss
to which they led, it was to be unhesitatingly explored. The result
needs not to be stated. From a long and painful conflict he emerged
victorious, but not without bearing to the grave some scars to mark
the severity of the struggle. No man was ever blessed with more
profound convictions ; but so vast and elaborate was the basis of
argumentation on which they rested, that to re-examine the tex-
ture, and ascertain the coherence of the materials of which it was
wrought, formed the still reciu-ring labour of his whole future life.

While the recluses of the world are engulfed in the vortices of
metaphysics, the victims of passion are still urged forward in their
wild career of guilt and misery. From the transcendental laby-
rinths through which Baxter was winding his solitary and painful
way, the war recalled him to the stern realities of life. In the im-
mediate vicinity of the earlier military operations, Coventry had
become a city of refuge to him, and to a large body of his clerical
brethren. They believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that
Essex, Waller, and Cromwell, were fighting the battles of Charles,
and that their real object was to rescue the King from the
thraldom of the malignants, and the Church from the tyranny of
the prelatists. 'We kept,' says Baxter, speaking of himself and
his associates, ' to our old principles, and thought all others had

RICHARD BAXTKiJ. 041

done so too, except a very few inconsiderable persons. We wlto
unfeignedly for King and Parliament. "We believed that the war
w^as only to save the Parliament and kingdom from the Papists
and delinquents, and to remove the dividers, that the King might
again return to his Parliament, and that no changes might be
made in religion, but by the laws which had his free consent. We
took the true happiness of King and people. Church and State, to
be our end, and so we understood the covenant, engaging both
against Papists and schismatics ; and when the Court News-Book
told the world of the swarms of Anabaptists in our armies, we
thought it had been a mere lie, because it was not so with us.'

Ontology and scholastic divinity have their charms ; and never
did man confess them more than Eichard Baxter. But the pulse
must beat languidly indeed, when the superior fascination of the
' tented field ' is not acknowledged ; nor should it derogate from
the reverence which attends his name, to admit that he felt and
indulged this universal excitement. Slipping away from Durandus,
Bradwardine, Suarez, and Ariminensis, he visited Edgehill and
Naseby while the Parliamentary armies still occupied the ground
on which they had fought. He found the conquerors armed cap-d-
pie for spiritual, as well as carnal combats ; and to convert the
troops from their theological errors, was the duty which, he was
assm'ed, had been committed to him by Providence. Becoming
accordingly chaplain to WTialley's regiment, he witnessed in that
capacity many a skirmish, and was present at the sieges of Bristol,
Sherborne, and Worcester. Eupert and Groring proved less
stubborn antagonists than the seekers and levellers of the Lieu-
tenant-General's camp ; and Baxter was ' still employed in preach-
ing, conferring, and disputing against their confounding errors.'
The soldiers discoursed as earnestly, and even published pamphlets
as copiously as himself. After many an affair of posts, the hostile
parties at length engaged in a pitched battle at Amersham in
Buckinghamshire. 'When the public talking-day came,' says
Baxter, ' I took the reading pew, and Pitchford's cornet and
troopers took the gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham
men begin, and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in ; and I alone
disputed against them from morning vmtil almost night.' Too old
a campaigner to retire from the field in the presence of his enemy,
' he staid it out till they first rose and went away.' The honours
of the day were, however, disputed. In the strange book pub-
lished by Edwards, under the appropriate title of ' Grangrsena,' the
fortunes of the field were chronicled ; and there, as we are
informed by Baxter himself, may be read ' the abundance of
nonsense uttered on the occasion.'

342 KICHARD BAXTER.

Cromwell regarded these polemics with ill-disguised aversion,
and probably with secret contempt. He had given Baxter but a
cold welcome to the army. ' He would not dispute with me at
all,' is a fact related by the good man with evident surprise ; ' but
he would in good discourse very fluently pour out himself in the
extolling of free grace, which was savoury to those that had
right principles, though he had some misunderstanding of
free grace himself. He was a man of excellent natural parts
for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles
of his religion ; of a sanguine complexion, naturally of such a
vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as another man hath when he hath
drunken a cup too much ; but natm-ally, also, so far from humble
thoughts of himself, that it was his ruin.' The Protector had
surrendered his powerful mind to the religious fashions of his
times, and never found the leisure or the inclination for deep
inquiry into a subject on which it was enough for his purposes to
excel in fluent and savoury discourse. Among those purposes, to
obtain the approbation of his own conscience was not the least
sincere. His devotion was ardent, and his piety genuine. But
the alliance between habits of criminal self-indulgence, and a
certain kind of theopathy, is but too ordinary a phenomenon.
That at each step of his progress, Cromwell should have been
deceived and sustained by some plausible sophistry, is the less
wonderful, since even now, in retracing his course, it is difficult to
ascertain the point at which he first quitted the straight path of
duty, or to discover what escape was at length open to him from
the web in which he had become involved. There have been
many worse, and few greater men. Yet to vindicate his name
from the condemnation which rests upon it, would be to con-
found the distinctions of good and evil as he did, without the
apology of being tempted as he was.

Baxter was too profound a moralist to be dazzled by the triumph
of bad men, however specious their virtues; or to affect any
complacency towards a bad cause, though indebted to it for the
only period of serenity which it ever was his lot to enjoy. He
had ministered to the forces of the Parliamentary general, but
abhorred the regicide and usurper. In his zeal for the ancient
constitution, he had meditated a scheme for detaching his own
regiment, and ultimately all the generals of the armj^, from their
leader. They were first to be undermined by a course of logic,
and then blown up by the eloquence of the preacher. This
profound device in the science of theological engineering would
have been counterworked by the Lieutenant-Greneral, had he
detected it, l»y methods somewhat less subtle, but certainly not

RICHARD BAXTER. 343

less effective. A fortunate illness defeated the formidable conspi-
racy, and restored the projector to his pastoral duties and to peace.
Even then, his voice was publicly raised against 'the treason,
rebellion, perfidiousness, and hypocrisy ' of Cromwell, who probably
never heard, and certainly never heeded, the denunciations of his
former chaplain.

Baxter enjoyed the esteem which he would not repay. He was
once invited by the Protector to preach at court. Sermons in
those days were very serious things — point-blank shots at the
bosoms of the auditory ; and Cromwell was not a man to escape or
to fear the heaviest pulpit ordnance which could be brought to
bear on him. From the many vulnerable points of attack, the
preacher selected the crying sin of encouraging sectaries. Not
satisfied with the errors of his own days, the great Captain had
anticipated those of a later age, and had asserted in their utmost
extent the dangerous principles of religious liberty. This latitu-
dinarian doctrine may have been suggested by motives merely
selfish ; and Baxter, at least, could acknowledge no deeper wisdom
in which such an innovation could have had its birth. St. Paid
was, therefore, made to testify ' against the sin committed by
politicians, in maintaining divisions for their own ends, that they
might fish in troubled waters.' He who now occupied the throne
of the Stuarts claimed one prerogative to which even those
monarchs had never aspired. It was that of controverting the
argumentation of the pulpit. His zeal for the conversion of his
monitor appears to have been exceedingly ardent. Having sum-
moned him to his presence, ' he began by a long tedious speech to
me ' (the narrative is Baxter's) ' of Grod's providence in tlie change
of the government, and how God had owned it, and what great
things had been done at home and abroad, in the peace witli
Spain and Holland, &c. When he had wearied us all with
speaking thus slowly for about an hour, I told him it was too
great a condescension to acquaint me so fully with all these matters
which were above me; but I told him that we took our ancient
monarchy to be a blessing, and not an evil, to the land ; and
humbly craved his patience that I might ask him how England had
ever forfeited that blessing, and unto Avhom that forfeiture was
inade. Upon that question he was awakened into some passion,
and then told me that it was no forfeiture, but God had changed
it as pleased him ; and then he let fly at the Parliament which
thwarted him, and especially by name at four or five of those
members who were my chief acquaintances, whom I presumed to
defend against his passion, and thus four or five hours were spent.'

During this singular dialogue, Lambert fell asleep, an indecorum

Z 4

344 RICHARD BAXTER

wliich, in the court of an hereditary monarch, would have heeii
fatal to the prospects of the transgressor. But the drowsiness of
his old comrade was more tolerable to Cromwell than the pertinacity
of his former chaplain, against whom he a second time directed the
artillery of his logic. On this occasion almost all the Privy Council
were present; liberty of conscience being the thesis, Baxter the
respondent, and Cromwell assuming to himself the double office of
opponent and moderator. ' After another slow, tedious speech of
his, I told him,' says the autobiographer, ' a little of my judgment,
and when two of his company had spun out a great deal more of
the time in such like tedious, but more ignorant speeches, I told
him, that if he would be at the labour to read it, I could tell him
more of my mind in \vi-iting two sheets than in that way of speaking
many days. He received the paper afterwards, but I scarcely
believe that he ever read it. I saw that what he learnt must be
from himself, being more disposed to speak many hours than hear
one, and little heeding what another said when he had spoken
himself.'

Whatever may have been the faults, or whatever the motives of
the Protector, there can be no doubt that under his sway England
witnessed a diffusion, till then unknown, of the purest influence of
genuine religious principles. The popular historians of that period,
from various motives, have disguised or misrepresented the fact ;
and they who derive their views on this subject from Clarendon,
from Hume, or from Hudibras, mistake a caricature for a genuine
portrait. To this result, no single man contributed more largely
than Baxter himself, by his writings and his pastoral labours.
His residence at Kidderminster during the whole of the Protectorate
Avas the sabbath of his life ; the interval in which his mind enjoyed
the only repose of which it was capable, in labours of love, prompted
by a willing heart, and unimpeded by a contentious world.

Grood Protestants hold, that the Supreme Head of the Church
reserves to himself alone to mediate and to reign, as his incom-
municable attributes ; and that to teach and to ininister are the
only offices he has delegated to the pastors of his flock. Wisdom
to scale the heights of contemplation, love to explore the depths of
wretchedness— a science and a servitude inseparably combined; —
the one investigating the relations between man and his Creator,
the other busied in the cares of a self-denying philanthropy — such,
at least in theory, are the endowments of that sacred institution,
which, first established by the fishermen of Galilee, has been ever
since maintained throughout the Christian commonwealth. A
priesthood, of which all the members shall be animated with this
spirit, may be expected when angels shall resume their visits to our

RICHARD BAXTER. 345

earth, and not till then. Human agency, even when emjjloycd to
distribute the best gifts of Providence to man, must still bear the
impress of human guilt and frailty. But if there be one object in
this fallen world, to which the eye, jaded by its pageantries and its
gloom, continually turns with renovated hope, it is to an alliance,
such as that which bound together Richard Baxter and the people
among whom he dwelt. He, a poor man, rich in mental resources,
consecrating alike his poverty and his wealth to their service ; ever
present to guide, to soothe, to encourage, and, when necessary, to
rebuke ; shrinking from no aspect of misery, however repulsive,
nor from the most loathsome forms of guilt which he might hope
to reclaim; — the instructor, at once, and the physician, the almoner
and the friend, of his congregation. They, repaying his labours of
love vnih untutored reverence ; awed by his reproofs, and rejoicing
in his smile ; tavight by him to discharge the most abject duties,
and to endiure the most pressing evils of life, as a daily tribute to
their Divine benefactor; incurious of the novelties of their con-
troversial age, but meekly thronging the altar from which he
dispensed the symbols of their mystical union with each other and
their common Head ; and, at the close of their obscure, monotonous,
but tranquil course, listening to the same parental voice, then
subdued to the gentlest tones of sympathy, and telling of bright
hopes and of a glorious reward.

Little was there in common between Kidderminster and the
' sweet smiling ' Auburn. Still less alike were the ' village
preacher,' who ' ran his godly race,' after the fancy of Oliver Gold-
smith, and the 'painful preacher,' whose emaciated form, gaunt
visage, and Geneva bands, attested the severity of his studies, and
testified against prelatic ascendency. Deeper yet the contrast
between the delicate hues and fine touches of the portrait drawn
from airy imagination, and Baxter's catalogue of his weekly
catechisings, fasts, and conferences : of his Wednesday meetings and
Thursday disputations; and of the thirty helps by which he was
enabled to quicken into spiritual life the inert mass of a rude and
vicious population. But, truth against fiction, all the world over,
in the rivalry for genuine pathos and real sublimity ! Though
ever new and charming, after ten thousand repetitions, the plaintiv(?,
playful, melodious poetry of the ' Deserted Village ' bears to the
homely tale of the curate of Kidderminster a resemblance like that
of the tapestried lists of a tournament to the well-fought field of
Eoncesvalles. Too prolix for quotation, and perhaps too sacred for
our immediate purpose, it records one of those moral conquests
which attest the existence in the human heait of faculties which,
even when most oppressed by ig-novance, or benumlted by guilt.

316 RICHARD BAXTER.

may yet be roused to their noblest exercise, and discijjlined for
their ultimate perfection.

Eventful tidings disturbed these apostolical labours, and but too
soon proved how precarious was the tenure of that religious liberty
which Baxter at once enjoyed and condemned. With the Pro-
tectorate it commenced and ended. The death of Oliver, the abdica-
tion of Richard, the revival of the Long Parliament, the reappear-
ance of the ejected members, the assembling of a new House of
Commons under the auspices of Monk, and the restoration of the
Stuarts, progressively endangered, and at length subverted the
edifice of ecclesiastical freedom, which the same strong hand had
founded and sustained.

Yet the issue for a while seemed doubtful. The sectarians over-
rated their ow^n streng-th, and the Ejjiscopalians exaggerated their
own weakness. Infallible and impeccable, the Church of Eome is
a Tadmor in the wilderness, miraculously erect and beautiful in the
midst of an otherwise universal ruin. The Church of England —
liable to err, but always judging right, capable of misconduct, but
never acting wrong — is a still more stupendous exception to the
weakness and depravity which in all other human institutions sig-
nalise our common nature. But for this well-establislied truth, a
hardy scepticism might have ventured to arraign her as an habi-
tual alarmist. If she is ' in danger ' at this moment, she has been
so from her cradle. Puritans and Presbyterians, Arminians and
Calvinists, Indejaendents and Methodists, had for three centuries
threatened her existence, when at last the matricidal hands of the
metropolitan of all England, and of the prelate of England's metro-
polis, were in our own days irreverently laid on herprebendal stalls.
One ' whose bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne,' in the pre-
sence of all other forms of peril, has on this last fearful omen lost
his accustomed fortitude * ; though even the impending overthrow
of the church he adorns, finds his wit as l)rilliant, and his gaiety as
indestructible as of yore. What wonder, then, if the canons ex-
pectant of St. Paul's at the Court of Breda, could not survey, even
from that Pisgah, the fair land of promise lying before them, with-
out many faint misgivings that the sons of Anak, who occupied the
strongholds, would continue to enjoy the milk and honey of their
Palestine ? Thousands of intrusive incumbents, on whose heads
no episcopal hand had ever been laid, and whose purity no surplice
had ever symbolised, possessed the parsonages and the pulpits of
either episcopal province. A population had grown up unbaptized
with the sign of the cross, and instructed to repeat the longer and

* See the Letters of the Eev. Svclnev Smith to Archdeacon Siiio-leton.

EICIIARD BAXTER. 347

shorter catechisms of the Westminster Divines. Thirty thousand
armed Covenanters yielded to Monk and his officers a dubious sub-
mission. Cud worth and Lightfoot at Cambridge, Wilkins and
Wallis at Oxford, occupied and adorned the chairs of the ejected
loyalists. The divine right of Episcopacy might yet be contro-
verted by Baxter, Howe, and Owen ; and Smectymnus might
awaken from his repose in the persons of Marshall, Calamy, and
Spurstow. Little marvel then, that their eternal charter inspired
a less exulting faith than of old in the Bishops who had assembled
at Breda; that Hyde and Southampton temporised; or that Charles,
impatient of the Protestant heresy in all its forms, and of Christianity
itself in all its precepts, lent his royal name to an experiment of
which deceit was the basis, and persecution the result.

Liberty of conscience, and a concurrence in any Act of Parlia-
ment which, on mature deliberation, should be offered for securing
it, were solemnly promised by the King, while yet uncertain of the
temper of the Commons he was about to meet. Ten Presbyterian
ministers were added to the list of royal chaplains ; and, fur once
a martyr to the public good, Charles submitted himself to the
penalty of assisting at four of their sermons. That wdth Tvhich
Baxter greeted him, could not have been recited by the most rapid
voice in less than two hours. It is a solemn contrast of the
sensual and the spiritual life, without one courtly phrase to relieve
his censure of the vices of the great. More soothing sounds were
daily falling on the royal ear. The sui'plice and the Book of Com-
mon Prayer had reappeared at the w'orship of the Lords and Com-
mons. Heads and fellows of colleges enjoyed a restoration scarcely
less triumphant than that of their sovereign. Long dormant
statutes, arising from their slumbers, menaced the Nonconformists ;
and the truth was revealed to the delighted hierarchy, that the
Church of England was still enthroned in the affections of the
English people — the very type of their national character — the
reflection of their calm good sense — of their reverence for hoar
authority — of their fastidious distaste for whatever is scenic, im-
passioned, and self-assuming — of their deliberate preference for
solid sense, even when oppressively dull, to mere rhetoric, however
animated — and of their love for those grave observances and
ancient forms which conduct the mind to self-communion, and lay
open to the heart its long accumulated treasure of hidden, though
profound, emotions. Happy if the confidence in her own strengtli
excited by this discovery, had been blended either with the forgive-
ness and the love which the gospel loaches ; or with the toleration
inculcated by human philosophy; or with the prudence, which
should be derived from a long course of suffering! Twenty-eight

348 EICIIAED BAXTER.

disgraceful years had then been blotted from the annals of the
Anglican Church, and perhaps from the secular history of Eng-
land.

The time was yet unripe for avowed retaliation, but wrongs and
indignities such as those which the Episcopalians had suffered,
were neither to be pardoned nor unavenged. Invited by the King
to prepare a scheme of future church government, Baxter and his
friends, taking Usher's ' Eeduction of Episcopacy ' as their basis,
presented to Charles and the prelates a scheme of ecclesiastical
reform. " As to Archbishop Usher's model of government,' replied
the bishops, ' we decline it as not consistent with his other learned
discourses on the original of Episcopacy and of metropolitans, nor
wath the King's supremacy in causes ecclesiastical.' ' Had you
read Grerson, Bucer, Parker, Baynes, Salmasius, Blondel, &c.,' re-
joined Baxter, 'you would have seen just reason given for our
dissent from the ecclesiastical hierarchy as established in England.
You would easily grant that dioceses are too great, if you had ever
conscionably tried the task which Dr. Hammond describeth as the
bishop's work, or had ever believed Ignatius' and others' ancient
descriptions of a bishop's church.'

To what issue this war of words was tending, no bystander could
doubt. To maintain the splendour and the powers of Episcopacy,
to yield nothing, and yet to avoid the appearance of a direct breach
of the royal word, was so glaringly the object of the Court, that
wilful blindness only could fail to penetrate the transparent veil
of ' The Declaration ' framed by Clarendon with all the astuteness
of his profession, and accepted by the Presbyterians with the eager-
ness of expiring hope. Baxter was not so deceived. In common
with the other heads of his party, he judged the faith of Charles
an inadequate security, and refused the proffered mitre of Hereford
as an insidious bribe.

There were abundant reasons for this distrust. Thanks for his
gracious purjDoses in favour of the Nonconformists had been pre-
sented to the Head of the Church by the House of Commons, who
immediately afterwards, at the instance of his Majesty's Secretary
of State, rejected the very measure which had kindled their gra-
titude. Three months had scarcely passed since the declaration had
issued, when an Order in Council proclaimed the illegality of all
religious meetings held without the walls of the parochial churches.
The Book of Common Prayer and the Statute Book were daily
cementing their alliance ; the one enlarged by a supplication for
' grace carefully and studiously to imitate the example of the
blessed saint and martyr ' who had now attained the honours of
canonization : the other requiring the officers of all corporate and

RICITAKD BAXTER. 349

port towns *to take the sacrament of the Lord's supper;' and to
swear ' that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take
arms against the king,' or against ' those commissioned by him.'

Amidst these parliamentary thunders were opened the cou-
' ferences of the Savoy, Avhich were to reduce to a definite meanin<'-
the declarations of Breda and of Whitehall. It was the scene of
Baxter's triumph and defeat — the triumph of his promptitude,
subtlety, and boundless resources — the defeat of the last hope he
was permitted to indulge, of peace to himself or to the Church of
which he was then the brightest ornament. The tactics of popular
assemblies form a system of licensed deceit ; and their conventional
morality tolerates the avowal of the skill by which the antagonist
party has been overreached, and even an open exultation in the
success of such contrivances. To embarrass the Presbyterians by
the course of the discussion, to invent plausible pretexts for delays,
and to guide the controversy to fin impotent, if not a ludicrous close,
were the scarcely concealed objects of the Episcopalians. Opposed
to these by the feebler party were the contrivances by which weak-
ness usually seeks to evade the difficulties it cannot stem, and the
captiousness which few can restrain when overborne by the superior
force of numbers or of authority.

Who ever has seen a parliament, may easily imagine a Synod.
Baxter was the leader of an unpopular opposition, — the Charles
Fox of the Savoy, of which Morley was the William Pitt, and Gun-
ning the Henry Dundas. To review the Book of Common Prayer,
and Ho advise and consult upon the same, and the several objec-
tions and exceptions which shall be raised against the same,' was the
task assigned by Charles to twelve bishops, nine doctors of divinity,
and twenty-one Presbyterian divines. Exalted by the acclamation of
the whole Episcopalian party to the head of all human writings, not
without some doubts whether it should not rather class with those
of the sacred canon, the Book of Common Prayer was pronounced
by the bishops, at the opening of the conferences, to be exempt
from any errors which they could detect, and incapable of any
improvements which they could suggest. They could not there-
fore advance to the encounter until their antagonists should have
unrolled the long catalogue of their hostile criticisms and projected
amendments.

From such a challenge it was not in Baxter's nature to shrink,
though warned by his associates of the motives by which it was
dictated, and of the dangers to which it would lead. 'Bishop
Sheldon,' says Burnet, 'saw well enough what the effect wotild
be of obliging them to make all their demands at once, that
the number would raise a miglity outcry against them as a people

350 EICHARD BAXTER.

that could never be satisfied.' In fourteen days Baxter had pre-
pared a new liturgy. In a few more he had completed his objec-
tions to the former rubric, with an humble petition for peace and
indulsrence. Fast and thick flew over the field the missiles of
theolosrical theses before the closer conflict of oral debate. This
was waged in high dialectic latitudes. Take the following ex-
ample : — ' That command ' (we quote the EpiscopaHan jpro-
'ponitiir') * which enjoins only an act in itself lawful, and no other
act whereby an unjust penalty is enjoined, or any circumstance
whence directly or per accidens any sin is consequent, which the
commander ought to provide against, hath in it all things requisite
to the lawfulness of a command, and particularly cannot be charged
with enjoining an act per accidens unlawful, nor of commanding
an act under an unjust penalty.' As an Indian listens to the war-
cry of a hostile tribe, Baxter heard the announcement of this
heretical doctrine, and plunged headlong into the fight. Pouring
forth his boundless stores of metaphysical, moral, and scholastic
speculation, he alternately plunged and soared beyond the reach of
ordinary vision — distinguished and qualified, quoted and subtilised,
till his voice was drowned ' in noise and confusion, and high reflec-
tions on his dark and cloudy imagination.' Bishop Sanderson,
the Moderator, adjudged the palm of victory to his opponent.
* Baxter and Grunning ' (the words are Burnet's) ' spent several
days in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who looked
upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a dispute that could
not be brought to any end.' It had, however, reached the only end
which the King and his advisers had ever contemplated. An
apology had been made for the breach of the royal promise.
Henceforth the Presbyterians might be denounced as men whom
reason coidd not convince, and who were therefore justly given up
to the coercion of penal laws. To cast on them a still deeper
shade of contumacy, some few trifling changes were made in the
Rubric by the Convocation. The Church was required to celebrate
the martyrdom of the first Charles, and the restoration of the
second, — that * most religious and gracious Elng ' (the last an
epithet with which in the same sentence the monarch was compli-
mented and the Deity invoked) ; and, as if still more certainly to
exclude from her pale those who had sued in vain for entrance, Bel
and the Dragon, and other worthies of the Apocrypha, were now
called to take their stations in her weekly services.

Had Charles been permitted to follow the dictates of his own
easy nature, or of his religious predilections, he would (though for
precisely opposite reasons) have emulated the zeal of Cromwell for
liberty of conscience. He would gladly have secured that freedom

RICHARD BAXTER. 351

to bis Eoinau Catholic subjects; and would still more gladly have
relieved himself from the trouble of persecuting the Protestant
Dissenters. But the time was still unrijie for such hazardous ex-
l^eriments. At the dictation of Clarendon, be was made to assure
bis Parliament that he was ' as much in love with the Book of
Common Prayer as they could wish, and bad prejudices enough
against those who did not love it.' Within two years from his
return, the depth and sincerity of this affection were attested by
the imprisonment of more than four thousand Quakers, and by the
promulgation of the Act of Uniformity. Among the two thousand
clergymen whom this law excluded from the Church, Baxter was on
every account the most conspicuous. He bad refused the bishopric
of Hereford, and the united interest of Charles and Clarendon bad
been exerted in vain (so with most elaborate hypocrisy it was pre-
tended) to recover for bim a curacy at Kidderminster. He for
ever quitted that scene of his apostoUc labours ; and, in the forty-
seventh year of his age, bowed down with bodily infirmities, was
driven from bis home and bis weeping congregation, to pass the
remainder of his life in loathsome jails or precarious hiding-places;
there to achieve, in penury and almost ceaseress pain, works without
a parallel in the history of English theological literature, for their
extent, or their prodigality of intellectual wealth.

Solitude was not amongst the aggravations of bis lot. Margaret
Charlton was a lady of gentle birth, rich in the gifts of nature and
of fortune. She dwelt in her mother's house at Kidderminster,
where both parent and child found in Baxter their teacher and
spiritual guide. ' In her youth, pride and romances, and company
suitable thereto, did take her up.' But sickness came, and he
ministered to her- anxieties ; and health returned, and be led the
thanksgiving of the congregation ; and there were mental conflicts
in which he sustained her, and works of mercy in which he directed
her, and notes were made of his sermons, and passages were trans-
cribed from bis consolatory letters, and gradually— but who needs
to be told the result ?

]\Iargaret was no ordinary woman. Her ' strangely vivid wit ' is
celebrated by the admirable John Howe ; and her widowed hus-
band, in ^ The breviate of her life,' has drawn a portrait the original
of which it would have been criminal not to love. Timid, gentle,
and reserved, and nursed amidst all the luxuries of her age, her
heart was the abode of affections so intense, and of fortitude so
enduring, that her meek spirit, impatient of one selfish wish, pro-
gressively acquired all the heroism of benevolence, and seemed at
length incapable of one selfish fear. In prison, in sickness, in evil
report, in eveiy form of danger and fatigue, she was still with un-

352 EICHAED BAXTEE.

abated cheerfulness at the side of him to whom she had pledged
her conjugal faith ; — prompting him to the discharge of every
duty, calming the asperities of his temper, his associate in imnum-
bered acts of philanthropy, embellishing his humble home by the
little arts with which a cultivated mind imparts its own graceful-
ness to the meanest dwelling-place; and during the nineteen years
of their union joining with him in one unbroken strain of filial
affiance to the Divine mercy, and of a grateful adoration for the
Divine goodness. Her tastes and habits had been moulded into a
perfect conformity to his. He celebrates her Catholic charity to
the opponents of their religious opinions, and her inflexible adhe-
rence to her own ; her high esteem of the active and passive virtues
of the Christian life, as contrasted with a barren orthodoxy ; her
noble disinterestedness, her skill in casuistry, her love of music,
and her medicinal arts.

Peace be to the verses which he poured out not to extol but to
animate her devotion. If JNIargaret was wooed in strains over
which Sacharissa would have slumbered, Baxter's uncouth rhymes
have a charm which Waller's lyrics cannot boast — the charm of
purity, and reverence, and truth. The Eloise of Abelard and the
Eloise of Eousseau, revealing but too accurately one of the dark
chambers of the human heart, have poisoned the imagination, and
rendered it difficult to conceive of such ties as those which first drew
together the souls of the Nonconformist minister and his pupil ; —
he approaching his fiftieth and she scarcely past her twentieth year ;
he stricken with penury, disease, and persecution, and she in the
enjoyment of affluence and of the world's alluring smiles. It was
not in the reign of Charles II. that wit or will were wanting to
ridicule or to upbraid such espousals. Grave men sighed over the
weakness of the venerable divine ; and gay men disported them-
selves with so effective an incident in the tragi-comedy of life.
JNIuch had the great moralist written upon the benefits of clerical
celibacy, but, * when he said so, he thought that he should die a
bachelor.' Something he wrote as follows, in defence of his altered
opinions : — ' The unsuitableness of our age, and my former known
purposes against marriage and against the conveniency of ministers'
marriage, who have no sort of necessity, made our marriage the
matter of much talk ; ' but he most judiciously proceeds, ' the true
opening of her case and mine, and the many strange occurrences
which brought it to pass, would take away the wonder of her friends
and mine that knew us, and the notice of it would much conduce
to the understanding of some other passages of our lives. Yet wise
friends, by whom I am advised, think it better to omit such per-
sonal particularities at this time. Both in her case and in mine

RICHARD BAXTER. 353

there was much extraordinary, which it doth not much concern tlic
world to be acquainted with.'

Under this apology, is veiled tlie fact that Margaret herself first
felt, or first betrayed the truth, that a sublunary affection had
blended itself with their devotional feelings ; and that she encou-
raged him to claim that place in her heart which in the holiest of
human beings will still remain accessible to a merely human sym-
pathy. It was an attachment hallowed on either side by all that
can give dignity to the passions to which all are alike subject. To
her it afforded the daily delight of supporting in his gigantic
labours, and of soothing in his unremitted cares, a husband who
repaid her tenderness with unceasing love and gratitude. To him
it gave a friend whose presence was tranquillity, who tempered by
her milder wisdom, and graced by her superior elegance, and
exalted by her more confiding piety, whatever was austere, or rude,
or distrustful in his rugged character. After all, it must be con-
fessed that the story will not fall handsomely into any niche in the
chronicles of romance ; though, even in that light, Crabbe or Mar-
montel would have made something of it. Yet, unsupported by
any powers of narrative, it is a tale which will never want its
interest, so long as delight shall be felt in contemplating the sub-
mission of the sternest and most powerful minds to that kindly
influence which cements and blesses, and which should ennoble
human society.

Over the declining years of Baxter's life, friendship, as well as
conjugal love, threw a glow of consolation which no man ever
needed or ever valued more. His affectionate record of his asso-
ciates has rescued some of their names from oblivion. Such is the
case with ' good old Simon Ash, who went seasonably to heaven at
the very time he was to be cast out of the church ; who, having a
good estate, and a very good wife, inclined to entertainments and
liberality, kept a house much frequented by ministers, where,
always cheerful, without profuse laughter or levity, and never
troubled with doubtings,' he imparted to others the gaiety of his
own heart, and died as he had lived, ' in great consolation and
cheerful exercise of faith, molested with no fears or doubts, exceed-
ingly glad of the company of his friends, and greatly encouraging
all about him.' Such also was ' good Mr. James Walton, commonly
called the weeping prophet; of a most holy blameless life, and,
though learned, greatly averse to controversy and dispute ; ' a man
who had struggled successfully against constitutional melancholy,
until, ' troubled with the sad case of the Church and the multitude
of ministers cast out, and at his own unserviceableness, he consumed
to death.'

A A

354 EICIIARD BAXTEE.

To the Democritus and the Heraclitus of nonconformity, a
far greater name succeeds in the catalogue of Baxter's friends.
In the village of Acton, Sir Matthew Hale had found an occasional
retreat from the cares of his judicial life ; and devoted his leisure
to science and theology, and to social intercourse with the ejected
Nonconformist. In an age of civil strife, he had proposed to
himself the example of Atticus, and like that accomplished person,
endeavoured to avert the enmity of the contending parties by the
fearless discharge of his duties to all, without ministering to the
selfish ends of any. The frugal simplicity of his habits, his un-
affected piety and studious pursuits, enabled him to keep this
hazardous path with general esteem, though he was more indebted
for safety to his unrivalled eminence as a lawyer and a judge.
Though Cromwell and Ludlow revolted against the Papal autho-
rity of Westminster Hall, their age lagged far behind them. In
the overthrow of all other institutions, the courts in which For-
tescue and Coke had explained or invented the immemorial customs
of England, were still the objects of universal veneration ; and the
supremacy of the law secured to its sages the homage of the
people. Never was it rendered more justly than to Hale. With
the exception of Eoger North we remember no historian of that
day who does not bear an unqualified testimony to his uprightness,
to the surpassing compass of his professional learning, and the
exquisite skill with which it was employed. That agreeable,
though most prejudiced writer, refuses him not only this, but the
still higher praise of spotless patriotism, and ridicules his preten-
sions as a philosopher and divine. Baxter, an incomparably better
judge, thought far otherwise. In the learning in which he himself
excelled all others, he assigned a high station to Hale ; and has
recorded that his ' conference, mostly about the immortality of the
soul and other philosophical and foundation points, was so edifying,
that his very questions and objections did help me to more light
than other men's solutions.' Differing on those subjects which
then agitated society, their minds, enlarged by nobler contempla-
tions, rose far above the controversies of their age ; and were
united in efforts for their mutual improvement, and for advancing
the interests of religion, truth, and virtue. It was a grave and
severe, but an affectionate friendship ; such as can subsist only
between men who have lived in the habitual restraint of their
lower faculties, and in the strenuous culture of those powers
which they believe to be destined hereafter, and to be ripening
now, for an indefinite expansion and an immortal existence.

From such intercourse Baxter was rudely called away. Not
satisfied with the rigid uniformity of professed belief and external

RICHARD BAXTER. 355

observances amongst the clergy of the EstaLlished Cliurcli, Parlia-
ment had denounced a scale of penalties, graduated from fine to
banishment to the plantations, against laics who should attend
any other form of religious Avorship, even in private houses, where
more than five strangers should be present. At Acton, a per-
sonage of no mean importance watched over the ecclesiastical dis-
cipline of the parish. ' Dr. Eyves, rector of that church and of
Hadley, dean of Windsor and of Wolverhampton, and chaplain
in ordinary to the King,' could not patiently endure the irregu-
larities of his learned neighbour. The Dean indeed officiated by
deputy, and his curate was a raw and ignorant youth ; and Baxter
(an occasional conformist) was a regular attendant on all the
sacred ofiices. But he refused the Oxford oatli, and at his do-
mestic worship there were sometimes found more than the sta-
tutable addition to the family circle. Such offences demanded
expiation. He was committed to Clerkenwell gaol ; and when
at length discharged from it, was compelled to seek a new and
more hospitable residence. He had his revenge. It was to obtain,
through the influence of one of his most zealous disciples, the
charter which incorporates the or%Mia^ Society for the Propaga-
tion of the Grospel* — a return of good for evil for which his
name might well displace those of some of the saints in the
calendar.

While the plague was depopulating London, and the silenced
clergymen were discharging the unenvied office of watching over the
multitude appointed to death, the King and Clarendon, at a secure
distance from the contagion, were employed in framing the statute
which denounced the most rigid punishment against any noncon-
formist minister who should approach within five miles of any
town in England, or of any parish in which he had formerly offi-
ciated. Totteridge, a hamlet, round which a circle of ten miles
diameter could be drawn without including any of the residences
thus prescribed to Baxter, became his next abode, but was not per-
mitted to be a place of security or rest. His indefatigable pen had
produced a paraphrase on the New Testament, where the keen
scrutiny of his enemies detected libels, to be refuted only by the
logic of the court and prison of the King's Bench. From the re-
cords of that court, Mr. Orme, the editor of Baxter's works, has ex-
tracted the indictment, which sets forth that ' Richardus Baxter,

* The society wliicli now bears that name is an institution of later date,
founded on the model of that for the establishnient of which Baxter laboured,
and designed to supersede it; just as the "National School Society " followed
on the " British and Foreip-n School Society," or King's College, London, on tho
London Universit3%

A A 2

356 RICHARD BAXTER.

persona seditiosa et factiosa, pravsB mentis, impise, inquietas, tur-
bulent' disposition' et conversation' ; ' — ' falso, illicite, injuste,
nequit', factiose, seditiose, et irreligiose, fecit, composuit, scripsit
quondam falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, factiosum, et irreligiosum
librum.' The classical pleader proceeds in a vein of unconscious
humour to justify these hard words by the use of the figure called,
we believe, a ' scilicet ' by those who now inhabit the ancient abode
of the Knights Templars. * It is folly,' says the paraphrase, ' to
doubt whether there be devils, while devils incarnate dwell
amongst us here ' (clericos pred' hujus regni Angl' innuendo).
* What else but devils could make ceremonious hypocrites ' (clericos
pred' innuendo) ? ' men that preach in Christ's name,' (seipsum R.
B. et al' seditiosas et factiosas person' innuendo), ' therefore, are
not to be silenced if they do more harm than good. Dreadful
then is the case of men ' (episcopos et ministros justitice infr' hujus
regni Angl' innuendo) ' that silence Christ's faithful ministers '
(seipsum E. B. et al' seditiosas et factiosas person' innuendo).

Anstej^ and George Stevens were dull fellows compared with the
great originals from which they drew. L'Estrange himself might
have taken a lesson in the art of defamation, from this innuendoing
special pleader. But the absurdity was crowned by the conduct of
the trial. There were passages in the judicial career of Jeffries in
which abhorrence, disgust, indignation, and all other feelings of
the sterner land, gave way to the irresistible sense of the ludicrous ;
and, ' to be grave exceeds all powers of face,' even when reading the
narrative of this proceeding, which was drawn up by one of the spec-
tators. The judge entered the court with his face flaming, ' he
snorted and squeaked, blew his nose and clenched his hands, and
lifted up his eyes, mimicking their manner, and running on furiously,
as, he said, they used to pray.' The ermined buffoon extorted a smile
even from the Nonconformists themselves. Pollexfen, the leading-
counsel for the defence, gave in to the humour, and attempted to
gain attention for his argument by a jest. 'My Lord,' he said,
'some will think it a hard measvue to stop these men's mouths,
and not to let them speak through their noses.' ' Pollexfen,' said
Jeffries, ' I know you well. You are the patron of the faction ;
this is an old rogue, who has poisoned the world with his Kidder-
minster doctrine. He encouraged all the women to bring their
bodkins and thimbles, to carry on the war against their King, of
ever blessed memory. An old schismatical knave — a hypocritical
villain ! ' ' My Lord,' replied the counsel, ' Mr. Baxter's loyal and
peaceable spirit. King Cliarles would have rewarded with a bishopric,
when he came in, if he would have conformed.' ' Aye,' said the
judge, ' we know that ; but what ailed the old blockhead, the uu-

EICHARD BAXTER. 367

thaukful villain, that he would uot conform ? Is he wiser or better
than other men ? He hath been, ever since, the spring of the
faction. I am sure he hath poisoned the world with his linsey-
woolsey doctrine — a conceited, stubborn fanatical dog ! ' After one
counsel, and another, had been overborne by the fury of Jeffries,
Baxter himself took up the argument. ' My Lord,' he said, ' I have
been so moderate with respect to the Church of England, that I
have incurred the censure of many of the Dissenters on that ac-
count.' ' Baxter for Bishops,' exclaimed the judge, * is a merry
conceit indeed ! Turn to it, turn to it ! ' On this one of the
counsel turned to a passage in the libel, which stated, 'that great
respect is due to those truly called bishops amongst us.' ' Aj^e,' said
Jeffries, ' this is your Presbyterian cant, truly called to be bishops ;
that is of himself, and such rascals, called the Bishops of Kidder-
minster, and other such places. The bishops set apart by such fac-
tious, snivelling Presbyterians as himself ; a Kidderminster bishop
he means, when, according to the saying of a late learned author,
every parish shall maintain a tithe-pig metropolitan.' Baxter offer-
ing to speak again, Jeffries exploded in the following apostrophe :
* Eichard ! Kichard ! dost thou think here to poison the court ?
Eichard, thou art an old fellow — an old knave ; thou hast written
books enough to load a cart, every one as full of sedition, I might
say treason, as an egg is full of meat. Hadst thou been whipped
out of thy writing trade forty years ago, it had been happy. I
know thou hast a mighty party, and I see a great many of the
brotherhood in corners, waiting to see what will become of their
mighty Don, and a doctor of your party at your elbow ; but I will
crush you all. Come, what do you say for yourself, you old knave
— come, speak up, what doth he say ? I am not afraid of him, or
of all the snivelling calves you have got about you,' — alluding to
some persons who were in tears at this scene. *Yoiu: Lordsliip
need not,' said Baxter, ' for I'll not hurt you. But these things
will surely be understood one day ; what fools one sort of Protest-
ants are made, to prosecute the other.' Then lifting up his eyes
to Heaven, he said, ' I am not concerned to answer such stuff, but
am ready to produce my writings, in confutation of all this ; and
my life and conversation are known to many in this nation.'

The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and, but for the resistance
of the other judges, Jeffries would have added whipping througli
the city, to the sentence of imprisonment. It was to continue
until the prisoner should have paid five hundred marks. Baxter
was at that time in his seventieth year. A childless widower,
groaning under agonies of bodily pain, and reduced by former per-
secutions to sell all that he possessed, he entered the King's Bench

A A 3

358 EICHARD BAXTEE.

prison in utter poverty ; and remained there for nearly two years,
hopeless of any other abode on earth. But the hope of a mansion
of eternal peace and love raised him beyond the reach of human
tyranny. He possessed his soul in patience. Wise and good men
resorted to his prison, and brought back from him greetings to his
distant friends, and maxims of piety and prudence. Happy in the
review of a well-spent life, and still happier in the prospect of its
early close, his spirit enjoyed a calm for which his enemies might
have joyfully resigned their mitres and their thrones. His pen, the
faithful companion of his troubles, as of his joys, still plied the
Herculean tasks which habit had rendered not merely easy, but
delightful to him ; and what mattered the gloomy walls or the
obscene riot of a gaol, while he was free to wander from early
dawn to nightfall over the sublime heights of devotion, or through
the interminable, but, to him, not pathless, wilderness of psycho-
logy ? There pain and mortal sickness were unheeded, and even
his long-lost wife forgotten, or remembered only that he might
rejoice in the nearer approach of their indissoluble re-union. The
altered policy of the Court restored him for a while to the ques-
tionable advantage of bodily freedom. 'At this time,' says the
younger Calamy, ' he talked about another world like one that had
been there, and was come as an express from thence to make a
report concerning it.' But age, sickness, and persecution had
done their work. His material frame gave way to the pressure of
disease, though, in the language of one of his last associates, ' his
soul abode rational, strong in faith and hope.' That his dying
hours were agitated by the doubts which had clouded his earlier
days, has been often, but erroneously, asserted. With manly truth,
he rejected, as affectation, the wish for death, to which some pretend.
He assumed no stoical indifference to pain, and indulged in no
unhallowed familiarity on those awful subjects which occupy the
thoughts of him whose eye is closing on sublunary things, and is
directed to an instant eternity. In profound lowliness, with a
settled reliance on the Divine mercy, repeating at frequent inter-
vals the prayer of the Eedeemer on whom his hopes reposed, and
breathing out benedictions on those who encircled his dying bed,
he passed away from a life of almost unequalled toil and suffering,
to a new condition of existence, where he doubted not to enjoy
that perfect conformity of the human to the Divine will, to which,
during his long and painful pilgrimage, it had been his ceaseless
labour to attain.

The record of the solitary, rather than of the social, hours of a
man of letters, must form the staple of his biography ; yet he must

RICIIAED I3AXTEE. 359

be a strenuoiiH reader, who should be able, from his own know-
ledge, to prepare such a record of the fruits of Richard Baxter's
solitude. After a familiarity of many years with his writings, we
must avow, that of the one hundred and sixty-eight volumes com-
prised in the catalogue of his printed works, there are many which
we have never opened, and many with which we can boast but
a very slight acquaintance. These, however, are such as (to borrow
a phrase from Mr. Hallam) have ceased to belong to men, and
have become the property of moths. From the recesses of the
library in Red Cross Street they lower, in the sullen majority of
the folio age, over the pigmies of this duodecimo generation — the
expressive, though neglected monuments of occurrences, which can
never lose their place, or their interest, in the history of theological
literature.

The English Reformation produced no Luther, Calvin, Zuingle,
or Knox — no man who imparted to the national mind the impress
of his own character, or the heritage of his religious creed. Our
Reformers, Cranmer scarcely excepted, were statesmen rather tlian
divines. Neither he, nor those more properly called the martyrs of
the Church of England, ever attempted the stirring appeals to man-
kind at large, which awakened the echoes of the presses and the pul-
pits of Grermany, Switzerland, and France. From the papal to the
royal supremacy — from the legantine to the archiepiscopal power
— from the Roman missal to the Anglican liturgy, the transition
was easy, and, in many respects, not very perceptible. An amlji-
dexter controversialist, the English Church warred at once with
the errors of Rome and of Geneva ; until, relenting towards her
first antagonist, she turned the whole power of her arms against
her domestic and more dreaded enemy. To the resources of piety,
genius, and learning, she added less legitimate weapons ; and the
Puritans underwent confiscation, imprisonment, exile, compulsory
silence, — everything, in short, except conviction. When the civil
wars set loose their tongues and gave freedom to their pens, the
Nonconformists found themselves wdthout any established standard
of religious belief; every question debatable ; and every teacher
conscience-bound to take his share in the debate. Presbyterians,
Independents, Anabaptists, Seekers, Familists, Behmenists, and
Quakers, were agreed only in cementing a firm alliance against
their common enemies, the Prelatists and Papists. Those foes
subdued, they turned against each other, some contending for
supremacy, and some for toleration, but all for what they severally
regarded, or professed to regard, as truth. Nor were theirs tlie
polemics of the schools or the cloister. The war of religious

A A 4

3G0 EICIIAKD BAXTER.

oijinion was accompanied by the roar of Cromwell's artillery, by
the fall of ancient dynasties, and by the growth of a militar^^,
though a forbearing despotism.

It was an age of deep earnestness. Frivolous and luxurious men
had for a while retreated to make way for impassioned and high-
wrought spirits ; for the interpreters at once of the ancient revela-
tions, and of the present judgments, of heaven ; for the monitors
of an ungodly world ; and for the comforters of those who bent
beneath the weight of national and domestic calamities. Such
were that memorable race of authors to whom is given collectively
the name of the Puritan divines ; and such, above all the rest, was
Richard Baxter. Intellectual efforts of such severity as his, re-
lieved by not so much as one passing smile — public services of such
extent, interrupted by no one recorded relaxation — thoughts so
sleeplessly intent on those awful subjects, in the presence of which
all earthly interests are annihilated — might seem a weight too vast
for human endurance ; as assuredly it forms an example which few
would have the power, and fewer still would find the will, to imi-
tate. His seventy-five years, unbroken by any transient glance at
this world's gaieties ; his one hundred and sixty-eight volumes,
where the fancy never once disports herself; a mortal man absorbed
in the solemn realities, and absolutely independent of all the illu-
sions, of life, appears like a fiction, and a dull one too. Yet it is
an exact, and not an uninviting, truth.

Never was the alliance of soul and body formed on terms of
greater inequality than in Baxter's person. It was like the compact
in the fable, where all the spoils and honours fall to the giant's
share, while the poor dwarf puts up with all the danger and the
blows. The mournful list of his chronic diseases renders almost
miraculous the mental vigour which bore him through exertions
resembling those of a disembodied spirit. But his ailments were
such as, without affecting his mental powers, gave repose to his
animal appetites, and quenched the thirst for all the emoluments
and honours of this sublunary state. Death, though delaying to
strike, stood continually before him, ever quickening his attention
to that awful presence, by approaching the victim under some new
or varied asj:)ect of disease. Under this influence he wrote, and
spoke, and acted — a dying man, conversant with the living in all
their pursuits, but taking no share in their transient hopes and
fugitive emotions. Every returning day was welcomed and im-
proved, as though it were to be his last. Each sermon which he
delivered might not improbably be a farewell admonition to his
audience. The sheets which lay before him were rapidly filled
with the first suggestions of his mind in the first words which

EICIIARD BAXTER. 3G1

offered; for to-morrow's sun miglit find liiiu iinal)lo to complete
the momentous task. All the graces and the negligences of com-
position were alike unheeded ; for how labour as an artist when
the voice of human applause might in a few short hom-s become
inaudible !

In Baxter, the characteristics of his age, and of his associates,
were thus heightened by the peculiarities of his own ph3^sical and
mental constitution. Their earnestness passed in him into a pro-
found solemnity ; their diligence into an unrelaxing intensity of
employment; their disinterestedness into a fixed disdain of the
objects for which other men contend. Even the episode of his
marriage is in harmony with the rest. He renounced the property
with which it would have encumbered him, and stipulated for the
absolute command of his precarious and inestimable time. Had
this singular concentration of thought and purpose befallen a man
of quick sympathies, it would have overborne his spirits, if it had
not impaired his reason. But Baxter was naturally stern. Had
it overtaken a man of excitable imagination, it would have engen-
dered a troop of fantastic and extravagant day-dreams. But to
Baxter s vision all the objects which fascinate ordinary observers,
presented themselves with a hard outline, colourless, and with no
surrounding atmosphere. Had it been united to a cold and selfish
heart, the result would have been a life of ascetic fanaticism. But
Baxter was animated by an enlarged, though a calm philanthropy.
His mind, though never averted from the remembrance of his own
and of others' eternal doom, was still her own sovereign ; diligently
examining the foundations, and determining the limits of belief;
methodising her opinions with painful accuracy, and expanding
them into all their theoretical or practical results, as patiently as
ever analyst explored the depths of the differential calculus. Still
every thing was practical and to the purpose. ' I have looked,' he
says, ' over Hutton, Vives, Erasmus, Scaliger, Salmasius, Casaubon,
and many other critical grammarians, and all Gruter's critical
volumes. I have read almost all the physics and metaphysics I
could hear of. I have wasted much of my time among loads of
historians, chronologers, and antiquaries. I despise none of their
learning — all truth is useful. Mathematics, which I have least
of, I find a pretty and manlike sport; but if I had no other kind
of knowledge than these, what were my understanding worth ?
"What a dreaming dotard should I be ! I have higher thoughts of
the schoolmen than Erasmus and our other grammarians had. I
much value the method and sobriety of Aquinas, the subtlety of
Scotus and Ockam, the plainness of Durandus, the solidity of Ari-
minensis, the profundity of Bradwardine, the excellent acuteness

362 RICHARD BAXTER.

of many of tlieir followers ; of Am-eolus, Capreolus, Bannes, Alva-
rez, Zumel, &c. ; of Mayro, Lyclietus, Trombeta, Faber, Meurisse,
Eada, &c. ; of Euiz, Pennattes, Saurez, Vasques, &c. ; of Hurtado,
of Albertinus, of Lud a Dola, and many others. But how loth
should I be to take such sauce for my food, and such recreations
for my business ! The jingling of too much and false philosophy
among them often drowns the noise of Aaron's bells. I feel myself
much better in Herbert's " Temple." '

Within the precincts of that temple, and to the melody of those
bells, he accordingly proceeded to erect the vast monument of his
theological works. Their basis was laid in a series of ' Aphorisms
on Justification' — an attempt to fix the sense of the sacred volume
on those topics which constitute the essential peculiarities of the
Christian system. The assaults with which the Aphorisms had
been encountered were repelled by his ' Apology,' a large volume
in quarto. The ' Apology ' was, within a few months, reinforced
by another quarto, entitled his ' Confession of Faith.' Between
four and five hundred pages of ' Disputations ' came to the succour
of the ' Confession.' Then appeared four treatises on the ' Doctrine
of Perseverance,' on ' Saving Faith,' on ' Justifying Eighteousness,'
and on ' Universal Eedemption.' Next in order is a folio of seven
hundred pages, entitled 'Catholic Theology, plain, pure, peaceable,'
unfolding and resolving all the controversies of the Schoolmen, the
Papists, and the Protestants. This was eclipsed by a still more
ponderous folio in Latin, entitled 'Methodus Theologige Chris-
tian se,' composed, to quote his own words, ' in my retirement at
Totteridge, in a troublesome, smoky, suffocating room, in the
midst of daily pains of sciatica, and many worse.' After laying
down the nature of Deity, and of things in general, he discloses all
the relations, eternal and historical, between G-od and man, with
all the abstract truths, and all the moral obligations, deducible
from them; — detecting the universal presence of a Trinity, not in
the Divine Being only, but in all things spiritual and material
which flow from the great fountain of life. With another book,
entitled 'An End of Doctrinal Controversies,' — a title, he observes,
' not intended as a prognostic, but as didactical and corrective,' —
terminated his efforts to close up the mighty questions which
touch on man's highest hopes and interests. He had thrown upon
them such an incredible multitude and variety of cross lights, as
effectually to dazzle any intellectual vision less aquiline than his
own.

His next enterprise was to win mankind to religious concord.
A progeny of twelve books, most of them of considerable volume,
attest his zeal in this arduo s cause. Blessed, we are told, are the

EICIIARD B.VXTEK. 303

peacemakers ; but the benediction is unaccompanied Avith tlic
promise of tranquillity. He found, indeed, a patron in * His High-
ness, Eichard, Lord Protector,' whose rule lie acknowledged as
lawful, though he had denied the authority of his father. Ad-
dressing that wise and amiable man, ' I observe,' he says, ' that
the nation generally rejoice in your peaceable entrance upon the
government. Many are persuaded that you have been strangely
kept from participating in any of our late bloody contentions, that
God might make you the healer of our breaches, and employ you
in that temple work which David himself might not be honoured
with, though it was in his mind, because he shed blood abundantly,
and made great wars.'

Stronger minds, and less gentle hearts, than that of Richard
repelled mth natural indignation counsels which rebuked all the
contending parties. Amongst these was ' one Malpas, an old
scandalous minister,' ' and Edward Bagshawe, a young man who
had written formerly against monarchy, and afterwards against
Bishop JMorley, and being of a resolute Roman spirit, was sent first
to the Tower, and then lay in a horrid dungeon ; ' and who wi'ote
a book ' full of untruths, which the furious temerarious man did
utter out of the rashness of his mind.' In his dungeon, poor
Bagshawe died, and Baxter closes the debate with tenderness and
pathos. ' While we wrangle here in the dark, we are dying, and
passing to the world that will decide all our controversies, and the
safest passage thither is by peaceable holiness.' Dr. Owen, one of
the foremost in the first rank of the divines of his age, had borne
much ; but these exhortations to concord he could not bear ; and
he taught his monitor, that he who undertakes to reconcile enemies
must be prepared for the loss of friends. It was on every account
a desperate endeavour. Baxter was opposed to every sect, and
belonged to none. He can be properly described only as a Bax-
terian — at once the founder and the single member of an eclectic
school, within the portals of which he invited all men, but per-
suaded none, to take refuge from their mutual animosities.

Had Baxter been content merely to establish truth, and to de-
cline the refutation of error, many might have listened to a voice
so affectionate, and to counsels so profound. But * while he
spake to them of peace, he made him ready for battle.' Ten
volumes, many of them full-grown quartos, vindicated his secession
from the Church of England. Five other batteries, equally well
served, were successively opened against the Antinomians, the
Quakers, the Baptists, the Millenarians, and the Grotians. The
last, of whom Dodwell was the leader, prefigiued, in the reign of
Charles, the divines who flourish at Oxford in the reign of Victoria.

3G4 KICHARD BAXTER.

Long it were, and not very profitable, to record the events of these
theological camjDaigns. They brought into the field Tillotson,
Stillingfleet, and Dodwell. The men of learning were aided by
the men of wit. Womack, the Bishop of St. David's, had incurred
Baxter's censure for his ' abusive, virulent accusations ' of the
Synod of Dort, in a book which the Bishop had published under
the name of ' Tilenus Junior.' To this attack appeared an answer,
entitled ' The Examination of Tilenus before the Triers, in order
to his intended settlement in the office of a public preacher in the
commonwealth of Utopia.' Among the jurors empannelled for
the trial of Tilenus, are ' Messrs. Absolute,' ' Fatality,' ' Preteri-
tion,' ' Narrow Grace, alias Stint Grrace,' ' Take o' Trust,' ' Know
Little,' and ' Dubious,' — the last the established sobriquet for
Kichard Baxter.

But neither smile nor sigh could be extorted from the veteran
polemic ; nor, in truth, had he much right to be angry. If not
Avith equal pleasantry, he had, with at least equal freedom, in-
vented appellations for his opponents; — designating Dodwell, or
his system, as ' Leviathan, absolute destructive Prelacy, the son of
Abaddon, ApoUyon, and not of Jesus Christ.' Statesmen joined in
the affray. Morice, Charles's first Secretary of State, contributed
a treatise : and Lauderdale, who, with all his faults, was an ac-
complished scholar, and amidst all his inconsistencies a staunch
Presbyterian, accepted the dedication of one of Baxter's contro-
versial pieces, and presented him with twenty guineas. The un-
varying kindness to the persecuted Nonconformist of one who was
himself a relentless persecutor, is less strange than the fact, that
the future courtier of Charles read, during his imprisonment at
Windsor, the whole of Baxter's then published works, and, as their
grateful author records, remembered them better than himself.
While the pens of the wise, the witty, and the great, were thus
employed against the universal antagonist, the Quakers assailed
him with their tongues. Who could recognise, in the gentle and
benevolent people who now bear that name, a trace of their
ancestral character, of which Baxter has left the following singular
record? — 'The Quakers in their shops, when I go along London
Streets, say, " Alas ! poor man, thou art yet in darkness." They
have oft come to the congregation, when I had liberty to preach
Christ's gospel, and cried out against me as a deceiver of the
people. They have followed me home, crying out in the streets,
" the day of the Lord is coming, and thou shalt perish as a de-
ceiver." They have stood in the market-place, and under my
window, year after year, crying to the people, " take heed of your
priests, they deceive your souls ;" and if any one wore a lace

RICHARD BAXTER. 365

or neat clothing, they cried out to me, " these are the fruits of
your ministry," '

Against the divorce of divdnity and politics, Baxter vehemently
protested, as the putting asunder of things which a sacred ordinance
had joined together. He therefore published a large volume, en-
titled ' The Holy Commonwealth ; a Plea for the Cause of Mon-
archy, but as under Grod, the Universal Monarch.' Far better to
have roused against himself all the quills which had ever bristled
on all the 'fretful porcupines' of theological strife. For, while
vindicating the ancient government of England, he hazarded a
distinct avowal of opinions, which, with their patrons, were about
to be proscribed with the return of the legitimate Sovereign. He
taught that the laws of England are above the King ; ' that Par-
liament was his highest court, where his personal will and word
were not sufficient authority.' He vindicated the war against
Charles, and explained the apostolical principle of obedience to the
higher powers as extending to the senate as well as to the emperor.
The royal power had been given * for the common good, and no
cause could warrant the king to make the commonwealth the
party which he should exercise hostility against.'

All this was published at the moment of the fall of Richard
Cromwell. Amidst the multitude of answers which it provoked
may be especially noticed those of Harrington, the author of the
' Oceana,' and of Edward Pettit. 'The former,' says Baxter,
* seemed in a Bethlehem rage, for, by way of scorn, he printed half
a sheet of foolish jests, in such words as idiots or drunkards use,
railing at ministers as a pack of fools and knaves, and, by his
gibberish derision, persuading men that we deserve no other
answer than such scorn and nonsense as beseemeth fools. With
most insolent pride, he carried it as neither I nor any minister
understood at all what policy was; but prated against we knew
not what, and had presumed to speak against other men's art,
which he was master of, and his knowledge, to such idiots as we,
incomprehensible.'

Pettit places Baxter in hell, where Bradshawe acts as President
of an infernal tribunal, and Hobbes and Neville strive in vain to
obtain from his adjudication the crown for pre-eminence of evil
and mischief on earth ; which he awards to the Nonconformist.
' Let him come in,' exclaims the new Ehadamanthus, ' and be
crowned with wreaths of serpents and chaplets of adders. Let his
triumphant chariot be a pulpit drawn on the wheels of cannon by
a brace of wolves in sheep's clothing. Let the ancient fathers ot
the Church, whom out of ignorance he has vilified ; the reverend
and learned prelates, whom out of pride and malice he has belied.

360 RICHARD BAXTER.

abused, and persecuted ; the most righteous King, whose murder
he has justified — let them all be bound in chains to attend his
infernal triumph to his "Saint's Everlasting Rest;" then make
room, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, atheists, and politicians,
for the greatest rebel on earth, and next to him that fell from
heaven.'

Nor was this all. The ' Holy Commonwealth ' was amongst the
books which the University of Oxford sentenced to the flames
which, in a former generation, had been less innocently kindled at
the same place, against the persons of men who had dared to pro-
claim unwelcome truths. Morley, and many others, branded it as
treason ; and the King was taught to regard the author as one of
the most inveterate enemies of the royal authority. South joined
in the universal clamour ; and Baxter, in his autobiography, re-
cords, that when that great wit and author had been called to
preach before the King, and a vast congregation drawn together by
his high celebrity, he was compelled, after a quarter of an hour, to
desist and to retire from the pulpit, exclaiming, ' the Lord be mer-
ciful to our infirmities !' The sermon, which should have been
recited, was afterwards published, and it appeared that the passage
at which South's presence of mind had failed him, was an invective
against the ' Holy Commonwealth !'

After enduring for ten years the storm which his book had pro-
voked, Baxter took the very singular course of publishing a revo-
cation, desiring the world to consider it as non scrlptum ; — main-
taining, nevertheless, the general principles of his work, and 'pro-
testing against the judgment of Posterity, and all others that were
not of the same time and place, as to the mental censure either of
the book or revocation, as being ignorant of the true reason of them
both.' We of this age, therefore, who, for the present, constitute
the Posterity, against whose rash judgment this protest was entered,
must be wary in censuring what, it must be confessed, is not very
intelligible ; except, indeed, as it is not difficult to perceive, that
he had motives enough for retreating from an unprofitable strife,
even though the retreat could not be very skilfully accomplished.

Two volumes of Ecclesiastical History, the first a quarto of five
hundred pages, the second a less voluminous vindication of its
predecessor, attest the extent of Baxter's labours in this departihent
of theological literature, and the stupendous compass of his
reading. The authorities he enumerates, and from a diligent study
of which his work is drawn, would form a considerable library.

Such labours as those we have mentioned, might seem to have
left no vacant space in a life otherwise so actively employed. But
these books, and the vast mass of unpublished manuscripts, are not

EICIIARD BAXTER. 867

the most extensive, as they are incomparably the least valuable, of
the produce of his solitary hours.

With the exception of Grrotius, Baxter is the earliest of that long
series of eminent writers who have undertaken to establish the
truth of Christianity, by a systematic exhibition of the evidence
and the arguments in favour of the divine origin of our faith. All
homage to their cause, for we devoutly believe it to be the cause of
truth ! Be it acknowledged that their labours could not have
been declined, without yielding a temporary and dangerous
triumph to sophistry and presumptuous ignorance. Admit (as
indeed it is scarcely possible to exaggerate) their boundless su-
periority to their antagonists in learning, in good faith, in sagacity,
in range and in depth of thought, and in whatever else was re-
quisite in this momentous controversy; — concede, as for om'selves
we delight to confess, that they have advanced their proofs to the
utmost heights of probability which by such reasonings it is
possible to scale ; — and yet with all these concessions may not in-
consistently be combined some distaste for these inquiries, and
some doubt of their real value.

The sacred writers have none of the timidity of their modern
apologists. They never sue for an assent to their doctrines, but
authoritatively command the acceptance of them. They denounce
unbelief as guilt, and insist on faith as a virtue of the highest
order. In their Catholic invitations, the intellectual not less than
the social distinctions of mankind are unheeded. Every student
of their writings is aware of these facts ; but the solution of them
is less commonly observed. It is, we apprehend, that the Apostolic
authors assume the existence in all men of a ' Spiritual Discern-
ment,' enabling the mind, when unclouded by appetite or passion,
to recognise and distinguish the Divine voice, whether uttered from
within by the intimations of conscience, or speaking from without
in the language of inspired oracles. They presuppose that vigour
of reason may consist with feebleness of understanding ; and that
the power of discriminating between religious truth and error,
does not chiefly depend on the culture or on the exercise of the
mere argumentative faculty. The especial patrimony of the poor
and the illiterate, the Grospel has been the stay of countless
millions who never framed a syllogism. Of the great multitudes
whom no man can number, who, before and since the birth of
Grotius, have lived in the peace, and died in the consolations, of
our faith, how incomparably few are they whose convictions have
been derived from the study of works like his! Of the numbers
who have addicted themselves to such studies, how small is tlie
proportion of those who have brought to the task either learning.

3G8 RICHARD BAXTER.

or leisure, or industry sufficient to enable them to form an inde-
pendent judgment on the questions in debate ! Called to the
exercise of a judicial function for which he is but ill prepared — ad-
dressed by pleadings on an issue where his prepossessions are all
but unalterable, — bidden to examine evidences which he has most
rarely the skill, the learning, or the leisure to verify, — and pressed
by arguments, sometimes overstrained, and sometimes fallacious —
he who lays the foundations of his faith in such ' evidences,' will
but too commonly end either in yielding a credulous, and there-
fore an infirm, assent, or by reposing in a self-sufficient, and far
more hazardous, incredulity.

For these reasons we attach less value to the long series of
Baxter's works in support of the foundations of the Christian faith,
than to the rest of his books which have floated in safety down the
tide of time to the present day. Yet it would be difficult to select
from the same class of writings any more eminently distinguished
by the earnest love and the fearless pursuit of truth ; or to name
an inquirer into these subjects, who possessed, and exercised to a
greater extent, the power of suspending his long cherished opinions,
and of closely interrogating every doubt by which they were
obstructed.

In his solicitude to sustain the conclusions he had so laboriously
formed, Baxter unhappily invoked the aid of arguments, which,
however impressive in his own days, are answered in ours by a
smile, if not by a sneer. The sneer, however, would be at once
unmerited and unwise. When Hale was adjudging witches to
death, and More preaching against their guilt, and Boyle investi-
gating the sources of their power, it is not surprising that Baxter
availed himself of the evidence afforded by witchcraft and appa^
ritions in proof of the existence of a world of spirits ; and there-
fore in support of one of the fundamental tenets of revealed
religion. Marvellous, however, it is, in running over his historical
discourse on that subject, to find him giving so unhesitating an assent
to the long list of extravagances and nursery tales which he has
there brought together ; unsupported, as they almost all are, by
any proof that such facts occurred at all, or by any decorous pre-
text for referring them to jDreternatural agency.

Simon Jones, a stout-hearted and able-bodied soldier, standing
sentinel at Worcester, was driven away from his post by the ap-
pearance of something like a headless bear. A drunkard was
warned against intemperance by the lifting up of his shoes by an
invisible hand. One of the witches condemned by Hale threw a
girl into fits. Mr. Emlin, a bystander, ' suddenly felt a force pull
one of the hooks from his breeches, and, while he looked with

RICHARD BAXTER. 369

wonder what had become of it, the tormented girl vomited it up
ont of her mouth.' At the house of Mr. Beecham, there was a
tobacco pipe which had the habit of 'moving itself from a
shelf at one end of the room to a shelf at the other end of the
room.' When Mr. Munn, the minister, went to witness the pro-
digy, the tobacco pipe remained stationary ; but a great Bible made
a spontaneous leap into his lap, and opened itself at a passage, on
the hearing of which the evil spirit who had possessed the pipe was
exorcised. 'This Mr. Munn himself told me, when in the sick-
ness year, 1665, I lived in Stockerson Hall. I have no reason to
suspect the veracity of a sober man, a constant preacher, and a
good scholar.'

Baxter was credulous and incredulous for precisely the same
reason. Possessing, by long habit, a mastery over his thoughts,
such as few other men ever acquired, a single effort of the will was
sufficient to exclude from his view whatever recollections he judged
hostile to his immediate purpose. Every prejudice was at once
banished when any debatable point was to be scrutinised ; and,
with equal facility, every reasonable doubt was exiled when his
only object was to enforce or to illustrate a doctrine of the truth
of which he was assured. The perfect submission of the will to
the reason may belong to some higher state of being than ours.
On mortal man that gift is not bestowed. In the best and the
wisest, inclination will often grasp the reins by which she ought
to be guided, and misdirect the judgment which she should obey.
Happy they who, like Baxter, have so disciplined the affections, as
to disarm their temporary usurpation of all its more dangerous
tendencies !

Controversies are ephemeral. Ethics, metaphysics, and political
philosophy are doomed to an early death, unless Avhen born of
genius and nurtured by intense and self-denying industry. Even
the theologians of one age must, alas ! too often disappear to
make way for those of later times. But if there is an exception to
the general decree which consigns man and his intellectual off-
spring to the same dull forgctfulness, it is in favour of such
Avritings as those which fill the four folio volumes bearing the title
of ' Baxter's Practical Works.' Their appearance in twenty-three
smart octavos is nothing short of a profanation. Hew down the
Pyramids into a range of streets I divide Niagara into a succession
of water privileges ! but let not the spirits of the mighty dead be
thus evoked from their majestic shrines to animate the dwarfisli,
structures of our bookselling generation.

Deposit one of those grey folios on a resting-place equal to that
venerable burden, then call up the patient and serious thoughtQ

B B

370 RICHARD BAXTER.

which its very aspect should inspire, and confess that, among the
writings of uninspired men, there are none better fitted to awaken,
to invigorate, to enlarge, or to console the mind, which can raise
itself to such celestial colloquy. True, they abound in undis-
tinguishable distinctions; the current of emotion, when flowing
most freeJy, is but too often obstructed by metaphysical rocks and
shallows, or diverted from its course into some dialectic winding ;
one while the argument is obscured by fervent expostulation ; at
another the passion is dried up by the analysis of the ten thousand
springs of which it is compounded ; here is a maze of subtleties to
be unravelled, and there a crowd of the obsciurely learned to be
refuted ; the unbroken solemnity may now and then shed some
gloom on the traveller's path, and the length of the way may
occasionally entice him to slumber. But where else can be found
an exhibition, at once so vivid and so chaste, of the diseases of the
human heart — a detection so fearfully exact, of the sophistries of
which we are first the voluntary, and then the unconscious victims
— a light thrown with such intensity on the madness and the woe
of every departure from the rules of virtue — a develoj)ment of
those rules at once so comprehensive and so elevated — counsels
more shrewd or more persuasive — or a proclamation more conso-
latory of the resources provided by Christianity for escaping the
dangers by which we are surrounded, of the eternal rewards she
promises, or of the temporal blessings she imparts, as an earnest
and a foretaste of them ?

' Largior hie camp is cether.^ Charles, and Laud, and Cromwell
are forgotten. We have no more to do with anti-psedobaptism or
prelacy. L'Estrange and Morley disturb not this higher region ;
but man, and his noblest pursuits — Deity, in the highest con-
ceptions of his attributes which can be extracted from the poor
materials of human thought — the world we inhabit, divested of
the illusions which ensnare us — the world to which we look
forward, bright with the choicest colours of hope — the glorious
witnesses, and the Divine Example and the Divine Supporter of
our conflict — throng, and animate, and inform every crov/ded page.
In this boundless repository, the intimations of inspired Avisdom
are pursued into all their bearings on the various conditions and
exigencies of life, with a fertility which would inundate and over-
power the most retentive mind, had it not been balanced by a
method and a discrimination even painfully elaborate. Through
the vast accumulation of topics, admonitions, and inquiries, the
love of truth is universally conspicuous. To every precept is ap-
pended the limitations it seems to demand. No difficulty is
evaded. Dogmatism is never permitted to usurp the province of

RICHARD BAXTER. 871

argument. Each equivocal term is curiously defined, and each
plausible doubt narrowly examined. Not content to explain the
results he has reached, he exhibits the process by which they were
excogitated, and lays open all the secrets of his mental laboratory.
And a wondrous spectacle it is. Calling to his aid an extent of
theological and scholastic lore sufficient to equip a whole college of
divines, and moving beneath the load with unencumbered freedom,
he expatiates and rejoices in all the intricacies of his way — now
plunging into the deepest thickets of casuistic and psychological
speculation — and then emerging from them to resume his chosen
task of probing the conscience, by remonstrances from which there
is no escape — or of quickening the sluggish feelings, by strains of
devotion in which it is impossible not to join.

That expostulations and arguments of which almost all admit
the justice, and the truth of which none can disprove, should fall
so ineffectually on the ear, and should so seldom reach the heart,
is a phenomenon worthy of more than a passing notice, and merit-
ing an inquiry of greater exactness than it usually receives even
from those who profess the art of healing our spiritual maladies.
To resolve it ' into the corruption of human nature,' is but to
change the formula in which the difiiculty is proposed. To afiirm
that a corrupt nature always gives an undue preponderance to the
present above the future, is untrue in fact ; for some of our worst
passions — avarice, for example, revenge, ambition, and the like —
chiefly manifest their power in the utter disregai'd of immediate
privations and sufferings, with a view to a supposed remote ad-
vantage. To represent the world as generally incredulous as to
the reality of a retributive state, is to contradict universal experi-
ence, which shows how firmly that persuasion is incorporated with
the language, habits, and thoughts of mankind ; — manifesting itself
most distinctly in those great exigencies of life, when disguise is
the least practicable. To refer to an external spiritual agency,
determining the will to a wise or a foolish choice, is only to repro-
duce the original question in another form — what is that structure
or mechanism of the human mind by means of which such influ-
ences operate to control or to guide our volitions ?

The best we can throw out as an answer to the problem is, that
the constitution of our frames, partly sensitive and partly rational,
and, corresponding with this, the condition of our sublunary ex-
istence, pressed by animal as well as by spiritual wants, condemns
us to a constant oscillation between the sensual and the divine,
between the propensities which we share with the brute creation,
and the aspirations which connect us with the Author of our being.
The rational soul contemplates means only in reference to their

B B 2

37-2 RICHARD BAXTER.

ends ; whilst the sensuous nature reposes in means alone, and looks
no further. Imagination, alternately the ally of each, most
readily lends her powerful aid to the ignobler party. Her golden
hues are more easily employed to exalt and refine the grossness
of appetite, than to impart brilliancy and allurement to objects
brought within the sphere of human vision by the exercise of faith
cind hope. Her draperies are adjusted with greater facility to
clothe the nakedness and to conceal the shame of those things
with which she is most conversant, than to embellish the forms
and add grace to the proportions of things obscurely disclosed at
few and transient intervals.

It is with this formidable alliance of Sense and Imagination
that Religion has to contend. Her aim is to win over to her side
that all-230werful mental faculty which usually takes part with her
antagonist, and thus to shed over each of our steps the colours
borrowed from its ultimate, as contrasted with its immediate, ten-
dency ; to teach us to regard the pleasures and the pains of our
mortal state in the light in which we shall view them in our im-
mortal existence ; to make things hateful or lovely now, according
as they impede or promote our welfare hereafter. He is a reli-
gious, or, in the appropriate language of theology, a ' regenerate '
man, who, trained to this discipline, habitually transfers to the
means he employs the aversion or the attachment due to the end
he contemplates; who discerns and loathes the poison in the other-
wise tempting cup of unhallowed indulgence, and perceives and
loves the medicinal balm in the otherwise bitter draught of hardy
self-denial. Good Richard Baxter erected his four folio volumes
as a dam with which to stay this confluent flood of sense and im-
agination, and to turn aside the waters into a more peaceful and
salutary channel. When the force of the torrent is correctly esti-
mated, it is more reasonable to wonder that he and his fellow-
labourers have succeeded so well, than that their success has been
no greater.

On his style as an author, Baxter himself is the best critic.
' The commonness and the greatness of men's necessity,' he says,
* commanded me to do anything that I could for their relief, and
to bring forth some water to cast upon this fire, though I had not
at hand a silver vessel to carry it in, nor thought it the most fit.
The plainest words are the most profitable oratory in the weightiest
matters. Fineness for ornament, and delicacy for delight; but
they answer not necessity, though sometimes they may modestly
attend that which answers it.' He wrote to give utterance to a
full mind and a teeming spirit. Probably he never consumed
forty minutes in as many years in the mere selection and adjust-

RICHARD BAXTER. a 73

ment of words. So to have employed his time, would in his jikIlj-
ment have been a sinful waste of that precious gift. ' I thought
to have acquainted the world with nothing but what was the work
of time and diligence, but my conscience soon told me that there
was too much of pride and selfishness in this, and that humility
and self-denial required me to lay by the affectation of that style,
and spare that industry, which tended but to advance my name
with men, when it hindered the main work and crossed my end.'
►Such is his own account ; and, had he consulted Quinctilian, he
could have found no better precept for writing well than that
which his conscience gave him for writing usefully. The first of
all the requisites for excelling in the art of composition is, as one
of the greatest masters of that art in modern times (Sir Walter
Scott) informs us, ' to have something to say.' When there are
thoughts that burn, there never will be wanting words that breathe.
Baxter's language is plain and perspicuous when his object is
merely to inform ; copious and flowing when he exhorts ; and
when he yields to the current of his feelings, it becomes redun-
dant and impassioned, and occasionally picturesque and graphic.
There are innumerable passages of the most touching pathos and
unconscious eloquence, but not a single sentence written for effect.
His chief merit as an artist is, that he is perfectly artless ; and
that he employs a style of great compass and flexibility, in such a
manner as to demonstrate that he never thought about it, and as
to prevent the reader, so long at least as he is reading, from think-
ing about it either.

The canons of criticism, which the great Nonconformist drew
from his conscience, are, however, sadly inapplicable to verse.
Mr. James Montgomery has given his high suffrage in favour of
Baxter's poetical powers, and justifies his praise by a few passages
selected from the rest with equal tenderness and discretion. It is
impossible to subscribe to this heresy even in deference to such an
authority ; or to resist the suspicion that the piety of the critic has
played false with his judgment. Nothing short of an actual and
plenary inspiration will enable any man who composes as rapidly
as he writes, to give meet utterance to those ultimate secretions of
the deepest thoughts and the purest feelings in which the essence
of poetry consists. Most of Baxter's verses, which however are not
very numerous, would be decidedly improved by being shorn of
their rhyme and rhythm, in which state they would look like very
devout and judicious prose ; as they really are.

Every man must and will have some relief from his more severe
pursuits. His faithful pen attended Baxter in his pastime as in his
studies; and produced an autobiography, which appeared after his

B B 3

374 RICHARD BAXTER.

death in a large folio volume. Calamy desired to throw these
posthumous sheets into the editorial crucible, and to reproduce
them in the form of a corrected and well-arranged abridgment.
Mr. Orme laments the obstinacy of the author's literary executor,
which forbade the execution of this design. Few who know the
book will aofree with him. A strange chaos indeed it is. But
Grainger has well said of the writer, that ' men of his size are not
to be drawn in miniature.' Large as life, and finished to the most
minute detail, his own portrait, from his own hand, exhibits to the
curious in such things a delineation, of which they would not
willingly spare a single stroke, and which would have lost all its
force and freedom if reduced and varnished by any other limner,
however practised, or however felicitous.

There he stands, an intellectual giant as he was, playing with his
quill as Hercules with the distaff, his very sport a labour under
which any one but himself would have staggered. Towards the
close of the first book occurs a passage, which, though often re-
published, and familiar to most students of English literature,
must yet be noticed as the most impressive record in our own lan-
guage, if not in any tongue, of the gradual ripening of a powerful
mind under the culture of incessant study, wide experience, and
anxious self-observation. Mental anatomy, conducted by a hand
at once so delicate and so firm, and comparisons, so exquisitely
just, between the impressions and impulses of youth and the tran-
quil conclusions of old age, bring his career of strife and trouble
to a close of unexpected and welcome serenity. In the full
maturity of such knowledge as is to be acquired on earth of the
mysteries of our mortal and of our immortal existence, the old man
returns at last for repose to the elementary truths, the simple
lessons, and the confiding affections of his childhood ; and wi'ites
an unintended commentary, of unrivalled force and beauty, on the
inspired declaration, that to ' become as little children ' is the in-
dispensable, though arduous, condition ofattaining totrue heavenly
wisdom.

To substitute for this self-portraiture any other analysis of
Baxter's intellectual and moral character would indeed be a vain
attempt. If there be any defect or error of which he was un-
conscious, and which he therefore has not avowed, it was the com-
bination in his mind of an undue reliance on his own powfers of
investigating truth, with an undue distrust in the result of his
inquiries. He proposed to himself, and executed, the task of ex-
ploring the whole circle of the moral sciences, logic, ethics, divinity,
politics, and metaphysics ; and this toil he accomplished amidst
public employments of ceaseless importunity, and bodily pains

RICHAJID BAXTER. 375

almost unintermitted. Intemperance never assumed a more venial
form ; but that this insatiate thirst for knowledge was indulged to
a faulty excess, no reader of his life, or of his works, can doubt.

In one of his most remarkable treatises * On Falsely Pretended
Knowledge,' the dangerous result of indulging this omnivorous
appetite is peculiarly remarkable. Probabilities, the only objects
of such studies, will at length become evanescent, or scarcely per-
ceptible, when he who holds the scales refuses to adjust the
balance, until satisfied that he has laden each with every sug-
gestion and every argument which can be derived from every
author who has preceded him in the same inquiries. Yet more
hopeless is the search for truth, when this adjustment, after
having been once made, is again to be verified as often as any new
speculations are discovered ; and when the very faculty of human
understanding, and the laws of reasoning, are themselves to be
questioned and examined anew as frequently as any doubt can be
raised of their adaptation to their appointed ends. Busied with
this immense apparatus, and appl3ang it to this boundless field of
inquiry, Baxter would have been bewildered by his own efforts,
and lost in the mazes of an universal scepticism, but for the ardent
piety which possessed his soul, and the ever recurring expectation
of approaching death, w^hich dissipated his ontological dreams, and
roused him to the active duties, and the instant realities, of life.
Even as it is, he has left behind him much, which, in direct oppo-
sition to his own purposes, might cherish the belief that human
existence was some strange chimera, and human knowledge an
illusion, did it not fortunately happen that he is tedious in pro-
portion as he is mystical. Had he possessed and employed the wit
and gaiety of Bayle, there are some of his writings to which
a place must have been assigned in the Index Expurgatorius of
Protestantism.

Amongst his contemjDoraries, Baxter appears to have been the
object of general reverence, and of as general unpopularity. His
temper was austere and irritable, his address ungracious and un-
couth. While cordially admitting the merits of each rival sect, he
concurred with none, but was the common censor and opponent of
all. His own opinions on church government coincided with the
later judgment, or, as it should be rather said, with the conces-
sions, of Archbishop Usher. They adjusted the whole of that in-
terminable dispute to their mutual satisfaction at a conference
which did not last above half an hour ; for each of them was too
devoutly intent on the great objects of Christianity to differ with
each other very widely as to mere ritual observances. The conten-
tions by which our forefathers were agitated on these subjects,

B B 4

376 KICHAKD BAXTER.

have now happily subsided into a speculative and comparatively
uninteresting debate. They produced their best, and perhaps their
only desirable result, in diffusing through the Church, and amongst
the people of England, an indestructible conviction of the folly of
attempting to coerce the human mind into a servitude to any
system or profession of belief; or of endeavouring to produce
amongst men any real uniformity of opinion on subjects beyond
the cognisance of the bodily senses, and of daily observation.
They have taught us all to acknowledge in practice, though some
may yet deny in theory, that as long as men are permitted to avow
the truth, the inherit diversities of their understandings, and of
their circumstances, must impel them to the acknowledgment of
corresponding variations of judgment, on all questions which touch
the mysteries of the present, or of the future, life. If no man
laboured more, or with less success, to induce mankind to think
alike on these topics, no one ever exerted himself more zealously,
or more effectually, than did Richard Baxter, both by his life and
his writings, to divert the world from those petty disputes which
falsely assume the garb of religious zeal, to those eternal and
momentous truths, in the knowledge, the love, and the practice of
which, the essence of religion consists.

One word respecting the edition of his works, to which we
referred in the outset. For the reason already mentioned, we
have stuck to our long-revered folios, without reading so much as
a page of their diminutive representatives, and can therefore re-
port nothing about them. But after diligently and repeatedly
reading the two introductory volumes by Mr. Orme, we rejoice in
the opportunity of bearing testimony to the merits of a learned,
modest, and laborious writer, who is now, however, beyond the
reach of human praise or censure. He has done everything for
Baxter's memory which could be accomplished by a skilful abridg-
ment of his autobiography, and a careful analysis of the theological
library of which he was the author ; aided by an acquaintance
with the theological literature of the seventeenth century, such as
no man but himself has exhibited, and which it may safely be con-
jectured no other man possesses. Had Mr. Orme been a member
of the Established Church, and had he chosen a topic more in
harmony with the studies of that learned body, his literary abilities
would have been far more correctly estimated, and more widely
celebrated. They who dissent from her communion, and who are
therefore excluded from her universities and her literary circles,
are not, however, to expect for their writings the same toleration
which is so firmly secured for their persons and their ministry.
But let them not be dejected. Let them take for their examples

RICHARD B.IXTER. 377

those whom they have selected as their teachers ; and learning
from Eichard Baxter to live and to write, they will either achieve
his celebrity, or will be content, as he was, to labour without any
other recompense than the tranquillity of his own conscience, the
love of the people among whom he dwelt, and the approbation of
the Master to whom every hour of his life, and every page of his
books, were alike devoted.

378

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

If the enemies of Christianity in the commencement of the last
century failed to accomplish its overthrow, they were at least suc-
cessful in producing what at present appears to have been a strange
and unreasonable panic. Middleton, Bolingbroke, and Mandeville,
have now lost their terrors ; and Chubb, Toland, Collins, and Wool-
ston, are remembered, like the heroes of the Dunciad, only on
account of the brilliancy of the Auto-da-fe at which they suffered.
To these writers, however, belongs the credit of having suggested
to Clarke his inquiries into the elementary truth on which all reli-
gion depends. By them Warburton was provoked to ' demonstrate '
the Divine legation of Moses. They excited Bishop Newton to
show the fulfilment of Prophecy, and Lardner to accumulate the
proofs of the Credibility of the Grospels. A greater than any of
these, Joseph Butler, was induced, by the same adversaries, to in-
vestigate the analogy of natural and revealed religion ; and Berke-
ley and Sherlock, with a long catalogue of more obscure writers,
crowded to the defence of the menaced citadel of the Faith. But
in this anxiety to strengthen their ramparts the garrison not only
declined to attempt new conquests, but withdrew from much of
their ancient dominion. In this its apologetic age, English The-
ology was distinguished by an unwonted timidity and coldness.
There was an end of the alliance which it had maintained from the
days of Jewell to those of Leighton, with philosophy and eloquence,
with wit, and poetry. Taylor and Hall, Donne and Hooker, Bax-
ter and Howe, had spoken as men having authority, and with an
unclouded faith in their Divine Mission. In that confidence they
had grappled with every difficulty, and had wielded with equal ease
and vigour all the resources of genius and of learning. Alternately
searching the depths of the heart, and playing over the mere sur-
face of the mind, they relieved the subtleties of logic by a quibble
or a pun, and illuminated, by intense flashes of -wit, the metaphy-
sical abysses which it was their delight to tread. Even when

THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCP:SSIOX. ,J70

directing the spiritual affections to their highest exercise, tliey
hazarded any quaint conceit which crossed their path, and gave
way to every impulse of fancy or of passion. But Divinity was no
longer to retain the foremost place in English literature. The
Tillotsons and Seekers of a later age were alike distrustful of their
readers and of themselves. Tame, cautious, and correct, they rose
above the Tatlers and Spectators of their times, because on such
themes as theirs it was impossible to be frivolous ; but they can
hardly be said to have contributed as largely as Steele and Ad-
dison to guide the opinions, or to form the character of their
generation.

This depression of theology was aided by the state of political
parties under the two first princes of the House of Brunswick.
Low and High Church were but other names for Whigs and Tories ;
and while Hoadley and Atterbury wrangled about tlie principles of
the Ke volution, the sacred subjects which formed the pretext of
their disputes were desecrated in the feelings of the multitude,
who witnessed and enjoyed the controversy. Secure from further
persecution, and deeply attached to the new order of things, the
Dissenters were no longer roused to religious zeal by invidious
secular distinctions ; and Doddridge and Watts lamented the de-
cline of their congregations from the standard of their ancient
piety. The former victims of bigotry had become its proselytes,
and joined in directing anathemas against the Pope and the
Pretender, with still greater acrimony than against the Evil
One, with whom good Protestants of all denominations asso-
ciated them.

The theolegy Qf any age at once ascertains and regulates its
moral_statur&-j-and, at the jieriod of which we speak, the austere
virtues of the Puritans, and the more meek and social, though not
less devout, spiiit of the Worthies of the Church of England, if
still to be detected in the recesses of private life, were discoun-
tenanced by the general habits of society. The departure of the
more pure and generous influences of earlier times may be traced
nowhere more clearly than in those works of fiction, in which the
prevailing profligacy of manners was illustrated by Fielding, Sterne,
and Smollett ; and proved, though with more honest purposes, by
Eichardson and Defoe.

It was at this period that the Ahna Mater of Laud and Sache-
verel was nourishing in her bosom a little band of pupils destined
to accomplish a momentous revolution in the national character.
Wesley had already attained the dawn of manhood, when, in 1714,
his future rival and coadjutor, George Whitfield, was born at a
tavern in Gloucester, of which his father was the host. The death

380 THE " EVAxVGELICAL " SUCCESSI02f.

of the elder Whitfield within two years from that time, left the
child to the care of his mother, who took upon herself the manage-
ment of the " Bell Inn ;' though, as her son has gratefully recorded,
she ' prudently kept him, in his tender years, from intermeddling
with the tavern business.' In such a situation he almost inevit-
ably fell into vices and follies, which have been exaggerated as
much by the vehemence of his own confessions, as by the ma-
lignity of his enemies. They exhibit some curious indications of
his future character. He filched his mother's purse, but gave part
of the money to the poor. He stole books, but they were books
of devotion. Irritated by the unlucky tricks of his playfellows,
who, he says, in the language of David, ' compassed him about Hke
bees,' he converted into a prayer the prophetic imprecation of the
Psalmist — ' In the name of the Lord I will destroy them.' The
mind in which bad passions and devotional feelings were thus
strongly knit together, was consigned, in early youth, to the culture
of the master of the grammar-school of St. Mary de Crypt, in his
native city ; and there were given the first indications of his future
eminence. He studied the English dramatic writers, and repre-
sented their female characters with applause ; and when the mayor
and aldermen were to be harangued by one of the scholars, the
embryo field-preacher was selected to extol the merits, and to
gratify the taste, of their worships. His erratic propensities were
developed almost as soon as his powers of elocution. Wearied
with the studies of the grammar-school, he extorted his mother's
reluctant consent to return to the tavern ; and there, he says, ' I
put on my blue apron and my snuffers, washed mops, cleaned
rooms, and, in one word, became professed and common Drawer
for nigh a year and a-half.' The Tapster was, of course, occasion-
ally tipsy, and always in request ; but as even the flow of the tap
may not be perennial, he found . leisure to compose sermons, and
stole from the night some hours for the study of the Bible.

At the Bell Inn there dwelt a sister-in-law of Whitfield's, Avith
whom it was his fortune or his fault to quarrel ; and to soothe his
troubled spirit he ' would retire and weep before the Lord, as
Hagar when flying from Sarah.' From the presence of this Sarah
he accordingly fled to Bristol, and betook himself to the study of
Thomas a Kempis ; but returning once more to Grloucester, first
exchanged Divinity for the drama, and then abandoned the drama-
tists for his long neglected school-books. For now had opened
a prospect inviting him to the worthy use of those talents which
might otherwise have been consumed either in sordid occupations,
or in some obscure and fruitless efforts to assert his native supe-
riority to ordinary men. Intelligence had reached his mother that

THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 381

admission might be obtained at Pembroke College, Oxford, fur her
capricious and thoughtful boy ; and the intuitive wisdom of a
mother's love assured her that through this avenue he might ad-
vance to distinction, if not to fortune. A few more oscillations
between dissolute tastes and heavenward desires, and the youth
finally gained the mastery over his lower appetites. From his
seventeenth year to his dying day he lived amongst embittered
enemies and jealous friends, without a stain on his reputation.

In 1731 the gates of Pembroke College had finally closed on the
rude figure of one of her illustrious sons, expelled by poverty to
seek a precarious subsistence, and to earn a lasting reputation, in
the obscure alleys of London. In the following year they were
opened to a pupil as ill provided with this world's wealth as Samuel
Johnson, but destined to acquire a still more extensive and a more
enduring celebrity. The waiter at the Bell Inn had become a
servitor at Oxford — no great advancement in the social scale,
according to the habits of that age — yet a change which conferred
the means of elevation on a mind too ardent to leave any such ad-
vantage unimproved. He became the associate of Charles, and the
disciple of John Wesley, who had at that time taken as their spi-
ritual guide the celebrated mystic William Law. These future
chiefs of a religious revolution were then ' interrogating themselves
whether they had been simple and collected; whether they had
prayed with fervour Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and on
Saturday noon ; if they had used a collect at nine, twelve, and
three o'clock ; duly meditated on Sunday from three to four on
Thomas a Kempis ; or mused on Wednesday and Friday from
twelve to one on the Passion.'

But Quietism, indigenous in the East, is an exotic in this cold
and busy land of ours, bearing at the best but sorry fruit, and has-
tening to a premature decay. Never was mortal man less fitted
for the contemplative state than George Whitfield. It was an
attempt as hopeful as that of converting a balloon into an observa-
tory. He dressed the character indeed to admiration, for ' he
thought it unbecoming a penitent to have his hair powdered, and
wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes.' But the
sublime abstractions which should people the cell and haunt the
spirit of the hermit he wooed in vain. In the hopeless attempt to
do nothing but meditate, ' the power of meditating or even think-
ing was,' he says, ' taken from him.' Castanza on the ' Spiritual
Combat' advised him to talk but little: and 'Satan said he must
not talk at all.' The Divine Redeemer had been surrounded in bi.s
temptations by deserts and wild beasts, and to approach this exam-
ple as closely as the localities allowed, Whitfield was accustomed to

382 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

select Christ Church Meadow as the scene, and a stormy night as
the time, of his mental conflicts. He prostrated his body on the
bare earth, fasted during Lent, and exposed himself to the cold till
his hands began to blacken, and ' by abstinence and inward strug-
gles so emaciated his body as to be scarcely able to creep upstairs.'
In this deplorable state he received from the Wesleys books and
ghostly counsels. His tutor, more wisely, sent him a physician,
and for seven weeks he laboured under a severe illness. It was, in
his own language, ' a glorious visitation.' It gave him time and
composure to make a written record and a penitent confession of
his youthful sins ; to examine the New Testament ; to read Bishop
Hall's Contemplations ; and to seek by prayer for wisdom and for
peace. The blessings thus invoked were not denied. 'The day-
star,' he says, ' arose in my heart. This spirit of mourning was
taken from me. For some tim^e I could not avoid singing Psalms
wherever I was, but my joy became gradually more settled. Thus
were the days of my mourning ended.'

And thus also was ended his education. Before the completion
of his twenty-first year, Whitfield returned to Gloucester; and
such was the fame of his piety and talents, that Dr. Benson, the
then Bishop of the Diocese, offered to dispense, in his favour, with
the rule which forbade the ordination of Deacons at so unripe an
age. The mental agitation which preceded his acceptance of this
proposal, is described in these strange but graphic terms in one of
his latest sermons.

* I never prayed against any corruption I had in my life, so
much as I did against going into holy orders so soon as my friends
were for having me go. Bishop Benson was pleased to honour me
with peculiar friendship, so as to offer me preferment, or to do any-
thing for me. My friends wanted me to mount the Church be-
times. They wanted me to knock my head against the pulpit too
young ; but how some young men stand up here and there and
preach I do not know. However it be to them, God knows how
deep a concern entering into the ministry and preaching was to
me. I have prayed a thousand times, till the sweat has dropped
from my face like rain, that God of his infinite mercy would not
let me enter the Church till he called me to and thrust me forth
in his work. I remember once in Gloucester, I know the room —
I look up to the window when I am there, and walk along the
street — I know the window upon which I have laid prostrate. I
said, Lord, I cannot go, I shall be puffed up with pride, and fall
into the condemnation of the Devil. Lord, do not let me go yet.
I pleaded to be at Oxford two or three years more. I intended to
make L50 sermons, and thought that I would set up with a good

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 3SS

stock in trade. I remember praying, wrestling, and striving with
God. I said, I am undone. I am untit to preach in thy great
name. Send me not, Lord, — send me not 3^et. I wrote to all my
friends in town and country to pray against the Bishop's solicita-
tion, but they insisted I should go into orders before I was twenty-
two. After all their solicitations, these words came into my mind,
*' Nothing shall pluck you out of my hands ;" they came warm to
my heart. Then, and not till then, I said, Lord, I vjlll go ; send
me when thou wilt.' He was ordained accordingly ; and * when he
Bishop laid his hands upon my head, my heart,' he says, *was
melted down, and I offered up my whole spirit, soul, and bod3^'

A man within whose bosom resides an oracle directing his steps
in the language and with the authority of inspiration, had needs
be thus self-devoted, in soul and body, to some honest purpose. If
not, he will but too often mistake the voice of the Pythoness for
that which issues from the sanctuary. But the uprightness and in-
flexible constancy of Whitfield's character rendered even its super-
stitions comparatively harmless; and the sortilege was ever in
favour of some new effort to accomplish the single object for which
he henceforward lived.

The next words which 'came to his soul with power' were,

* Speak out, Paul,' and never was injunction more strictly obeyed.

* Immediately,' he says, ' my heart was enlarged, and I preached on
the Sunday morning to a very crowded audience with as much
freedom as if I had been a preacher for some years. As I pro-
ceeded I perceived the fire kindled, till at last, though so young,
and amidst a crowd of those who knew me in my infant childish
days, I trust I was enabled to speak with some degree of gospel
authority. Some few mocked, but most for the present seemed
struck, and I have heard since that a complaint had been made to
the Bishop that I drove fifteen mad by the first sermon. The
worthy Prelate, as I am informed, wished that the madness might
not be forgotten before next Sunday.'

Thus early conscious of his own rare powers, delighting in the
exercise of them, charmed with the admiration which they excited,
and exulting in the belief that he had been commissioned from on
high to quicken a torpid generation into life, he was urged into ex-
ertions which, if not attested by irrefragable proofs, might appear
incredible and fabulous. It was the statement of one who knew
him well, and who was incapable of wilful exaggeration — and it is
confirmed by his letters, his journals, and a whole cloud of wit-
nesses — that, ' in the compass of a single week, and that for years,
he spoke in general forty hours, and very many sixty, and that to
thousands ; and after his labours, instead of taking any rest, he was

384 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

engaged in offering up prayers and intercessions, with hymns and
spiritual songs, as his manner was, in every house to which he was
invited.'

Given, a preacher, who, during the passage of the sun through
the ecliptic, addresses his audience every seventh day in two dis-
courses of the dwarfish size to which sermons attain in this degene-
rate age, and multiply his efforts by forty, and you do not reach the
measure of Whitfield's homiletical labours, during each of his next
five and thirty years. Combine this with the fervour with which
he habitually spoke, the want of all aids to the voice in the fields
and the thoroughfares he frequented, and the toil of rendering him-
self distinctly audible to thousands and tens of thousands, and,
considered merely as a physical phenomenon, the result is amongst
the most curious of all well-authenticated marvels. If the time
spent in travelling from place to place, and some brief intervals
of repose and preparation be subtracted, his whole life may be said
to have been consumed in the delivery of one continuous or
scarcely interrupted sermon. Strange as is such an example of
bodily and mental energy, still stranger is the power he possessed
of fascinating the attention of hearers of every rank of life and of
every variety of understanding. Not only were the loom, the forge,
the plough, the collieries, and the workshops deserted at his ap-
proach, but the spell was acknowledged by Hume and Franklin —
by Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield — by maids of honour
and lords of the bedchamber. Such indeed was its force, that when
the scandal could be concealed behind a well-adjusted curtain, ' e'en
mitred " auditors " would nod the head.' Neither English reserve,
nor the theological discrimination of the Scotch, nor the callous
nerves of the slave-dealers of America, nor the stately self-
possession of her aborigines, could resist the enchantment. Never
was mortal man gifted with such an incapacity of fatiguing or of
being fatigued.

It is impossible to award any similar praise to the Reverend
Robert Philip, WTiitfield's latest biographer. He has followed the
steps of the great itinerant from the cradle to the grave, in a
volume of nearly six hundred closely printed pages, compiled on
the principle that nothing can be superfluous in the narrative of a
great man's life which was of any real importance to the man him-
self, or to his associates. The chronicle so drawn up, illuminated
by no eloquence or philosophy, human or divine, and arranged on
no intelligible method, is a sore exercise for the memory and the
patience of the reader. It records, without selection or forbear-
ance, thirteen successive voyages across the Atlantic — pilgrimages
incalculable in every part of the North American continent, from

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 38ff

Georgia to Boston — controversies with Wesley on predestination
and perfection, and with the Bishops on still deeper mysteries —
chapel buildings and subscriptions — preachings and the excitement
which followed them — and characteristic sayings and uncharac-
teristic letters — meetings and partings — and every other incident,
great and small, which has been preserved by the oral or written
traditions of Whitfield's followers. His life still remains to be
written by some one who shall bring to the task other qualifications
than an honest zeal for his fame, and a cordial adoption of his
opinions.

From the conflict with the enemies who had threatened her
existence, the Church militant turned to resist the unwelcome ally
who menaced her repose. Warbiuton led the van, and behind
him many a mitred front scowled on the audacious innovator.
Divested of the logomachies which chiefly engaged the attention of
the disputants, the controversy between WTiitfield and the Bishops
lay in a narrow compass. It being mutually conceded that the
virtues of the Christian life can result only from certain divine
impulses, and that to lay a claim to this holy inspiration when its
legitimate fruits are wanting, is a fatal delusion — he maintained,
and they denied, that the person who is the subject of this sacred
influence has within his own bosom an independent attestation of
its reality. So abstruse a debate required the zest of some more
pungent ingredients ; and the polemics with wlioin Whitfield had
to do, were not such sciolists in their calling as to be ignorant of
the necessity of fastening upon him some epithet at once oppro-
brious and vague. While, therefore, milder spirits arraigned him
as an Enthusiast, Warburton, with constitutional energy of invec-
tive, denounced him as a Fanatic. In vain he demanded a defi-
nition of these reproachful terms. To have fixed their meaning
would have been to destroy their point. They afforded a solution
at once compendious, obscure, and repulsive, of whatever was re-
markable in his character, and have accomj)anied his name from
that time to the present.

The currents of life had drifted Warburton on divinity as his
profession, but his satirical propensities were too strong to yield
even to the study of the Gospels. From them he might have dis-
covered the injustice of his censure ; for the real nature of religious
fanaticism can be learnt with equal clearness from no other source.
They tell of some men wlio compassed sea and land to make one
proselyte, that, when made, they might train him up as a perse-
cutor and a bigot; of some, who erected sepulchral monuments
to the martyrs of a former age, while unsheathing the sword which
was to augment their number ; of some who would have called

C c

386 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

down fire from heaven to punish the inhospitable city which re-
jected their Master; and of some who exhausted their bodies with
fasting, and their minds with study, that they might with deeper
emphasis curse the ignorant multitude. These all laboured under
a mental disease, which, amongst fanatics of every generation, has
assumed the same distinctive type. It consists in an unhallowed
alliance of the morose and vindictive passions with devotional or
religious excitement. Averting the mental eye from what is
cheerful, affectionate, and animating in piety, the victims of this
malady regard the sects opposed to them not as the children, but
as the enemies of God ; and while looking inward with melancholy
alternations of self-complacency and self-reproach, learn to con-
template their brethren as their enemies, and Deity itself with but
half-suppressed aversion. To connect the name of the kind-
hearted Greorge Whitfield with such a rejDroach as this ! To call
on the indolent of all future generations who should believe in
Warburton, to associate the despised itinerant of his times with
the Dominies and the Bonners of former ages ! Truly the in-
dignant prelate knew not what manner of spirit he was of. If
ever philanthropy burned in the human heart with a pure and
intense flame, embracing the whole family of man in the spirit of
universal charity, it was in the heart of Greorge Whitfield. His
predestinarian speculations perplexed his mind, but could not
check the expansion of his Christian feelings. * He loved the
world that hated him.' He had no preferences but in favour of
tlie ignorant, the miserable, and the poor. In their cause he
shrunk from no privation, and declined neither insult nor hostility.
To such wrongs he opposed the weapons of an all-enduring meek-
ness, and a love which would not be repulsed. The springs of his
benevolence were inexhaustible, and could not choose but flow.
Assisted it may have been by natural disposition, and by many
external influences ; but it ultimately reposed on the fixed per-
suasion that he was engaged in a sacred duty, the faithful discharge
of which would be followed by an imperishable recompense. With
whatever undigested subtleties his religious creed was encumbered,
they could not hide from him, though they might obscure, the
truth, tliat, between the virtues of this life and the rewards of a
future state, the connexion is necessary and indissoluble. Eefer-
ring this retributive dispensation exclusively to the Divine benevo-
lence, his theology inculcated humility, while it inspired love, and
fortitude, and hope. It taught him self-distrust, and reliance on a
strength superior to his own ; and instructed him in the mystery
which reconciles the elevation and the purity of disinterested love
with those lower motives of action which more immediately respect

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 387

the future advantage of the agent. Whatever else Whitfield niay
have been, a Fanatic, in the proper sense of that term, he assuredly
was not.

The charge of Enthusiasm was so ambiguous, that it might,
with equal propriety, be understood as conveying either com-
mendation or reproach. Hope is the element in which all the
great men of the world move and have their being. Engaged in
arduous and lofty designs, they must, to a certain extent, live in
an imaginary world, and reanimate their exhausted strength with
ideal prospects of the success which is to repay their labours. But,
like every other emotion, Hope, when long indulged, yields but a
precarious obedience to the reasoning powers ; and Eeason herself,
even when most enlightened, will not seldom make a voluntary
abdication of her sovereignty in favour of this her so powerful
minister ; — surrendering up to the guidance of bright and ardent
anticipations, a mind Avhose lofty aims cannot be realised by obe-
dience to her own sober counsels. For in ' this little state of man '
the passions must be the free subjects, not the slaves of the Eeason ;
and while they obey her precepts, should impart to her some of
their own spirit, warmth, and energy. It is, however, essential to
a well-constituted nature, that the subordination of the lower to
the superior faculties, though thus occasionally relaxed, should be
habitually maintained. Used with due abstinence, Hope acts as
an healthful tonic ; intemperately indulged, as an enervating opiate.
The visions of future triumph, which at first animate exertion, if
dwelt upon too intently, will usurp the place of the stern reality,
and noble objects mil be contemplated, not for their own inherent
worth, but on account of the day-dreams they engender. Thus, Hope
aided by Imagination makes one man a hero, another a somnambu-
list, and a third a lunatic ; while it renders them all Enthusiasts.
And thus are classed together, under one generic term, characters
wide asunder as the poles, and standing at the top and at the
bottom of the scale of human intellect. The same epithet is
applied indifferently to Francis Bacon and to Emanuel Swe-
denborg.

Eeligious men are, for obvious reasons, more subject than otliers
to Enthusiasm, both in its invigorating and in its morbid forms.
Tliey are aware that there is about their path and about their bed
a real presence, which yet no sense attests. They revere a spiritual
inmate of the soul, of whom they have no definite consciousness.
They live in communion with one, whose nature is chiefly defined
by negatives. They are engaged in duties which can be performed
acceptably only at the bidding of the deepest affections. Tliey
rest their faith on prophetic and miraculous suspensions, in times

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388 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

past, of the usual course of nature ; and derive their hopes and
fears from the dim shadows cast by things eternal on the troubled
mirror of this transient scene. What wonder if, under the in-
cumbent weight of such thoughts as these, the course of active
virtue be too often arrested ; or if a religious romance sometimes
takes the place of contemplative piety ; or if the fictitious gra-
dually supersedes the real ; or if a world of dreams, a system of
opinions, and a code of morals, which religion disavows, occasionally
shed their narcotic influence over a spirit excited and oppressed by
the shapeless forms and the fearful powers with which it is con-
versant ?

Both in the more and in the less favourable sense of the ex-
pression Whitfield was an Enthusiast. The thraldom of the active
to the meditative powers was indeed abhorrent from his nature ;
but he was unable to maintain a just equilibrium between them.
His life was one protracted calenture ; and the mental fever dis-
coloured and distorted the objects of his pursuits. Without in-
tellectual discipline or sound learning, he confounded his narrow
range of elementary topics with the comprehensive scheme and
science of divinity. Leaping over the state of pupilage, he
became at once a teacher and a dogmatist. The lessons which he
never drew from books were never taught him by living men. He
allowed himself no leisure for social intercourse with his superiors,
or with his equals, but underwent the debilitating effects of con-
versing, almost exclusively, with those who sat as disciples at his
feet. Their homage, and the impetuous tumult of his career, left
him but superficially acquainted with himself. Unsuspicious of
his own ignorance, and exposed to flattery far more intoxicating
than the acclamations of the theatre, he laid the foundations of a
new religious system with less of profound thought, and in a greater
penury of theological research, than had ever fallen to the lot of a
reformer or heresiarch before. The want of learning was concealed
imder the dazzling veil of popular eloquence, and supplied by the
assurance of Divine illumination ; and the spiritual influence on
which he thus relied, would, if real, have been little else than a
continually recurring miracle. It was not a power like that which
acts throughout the material world — the unseen and inaudible
source of life, sustaining, cementing, and invigorating all things,
hiding itself from the heedless beneath the subordinate agency it
employs, and disclosed to the thoughtful by its prolific and plastic
energies. The access of the Sacred presence, which Whitfield ac-
knowledged, was perceptible by an inward consciousness, and was
not merely different, but distinguishable, from the movements of
that intellectual and sensitive mechanism of his own nature, by

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSIOX. 389

means of which it operated. He discerned it not only in the
growth of the active and passive virtues, and in progressive strength
and wisdom and peace, but in sudden impulses which visited his
bosom, and unexpected suggestions which directed his path. A
truth of all others the most consolatory and the most awful, was
thus degraded almost to a level with superstitions, wliich, in their
naked form, no man would have more vehemently disclaimed ;
and the great mystery which blends together the human and the
divine in the Christian dispensation, lost much of its sublime
character, and with it much of its salutary influence.

It was indeed impossible that a mind feeding upon such visions
as he invited and cherished should entirely escape their practical
mischief. He would have rejected with horror the impious dream
that the indwelling Deity would absolve him from any obligation of
justice, merc}^, or truth. Yet he could persuade himself tliat he
enjoyed a dispensation from the duty of canonical obedience to his
ecclesiastical superiors. His revolt against the authority of the
Church of which he was a presbyter, is at once avowed and de-
fended by his latest biographer. ' I f,' he says, ' a bishop did good,
or allowed good to be done, Whitfield venerated him and his office
too ; but he despised both whenever they were hostile to truth or
zeal — I have no objection to say, whenever they were hostile to
his own sentiments and measures. What honest man would respect
an unjust judge, or an ignorant physician, because of their pro-
fessional titles ? It is high time to put an end to this nonsense.'

Mr. Philip's boast is not, or at least should not be, that he is
well found in the principles of casuistry. He is no Ductor Duhi-
tantiuiii, but a spiritual pugilist, who uses his pen as a cudgel.
Whatever may be the value of hard words, they are not sufficient
to adjust such a question as this. Under sanctions of the most
awful solemnity, "WTiitfield had bound himself to submit to the
lawful commands of his bishop. His ' measures ' being opposed to
the law ecclesiastical, were interdicted by his diocesan; but, his

* sentiments' telling him that he was right, and the bishop wrong,
the vow of obedience was, it seems, cancelled. If so, it was but
an impious mockery to make, or to receive, it. If it be really

* nonsense ' to respect so sacred an engagement, then is there less
sound sense than has usually been supposed in good faith and
plain dealing. Even on the hazardous assumption that the allegi-
ance voluntarily assumed by the clergy of the Anglican church is
dissoluble at the pleasure of the inferior party, it is at least evi-
dent that Whitfield was bound to abandon the advantages, when
he repudiated the duties, of the relation in which he stood to liis
bishop. But, 'despising' the episcopal office, he still kept bis

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390 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

station in the episcopal church ; and, if he had no share in her
emoluments, continued at least to enjoy the rank, the worship, the
influence, and the privileges which attend her ministers. In the
midst of his revolt he performed her offices, and ministered in her
temples, as often as opportunity offered. It was the dishonest pro-
ceeding of a good man bewildered by dreams of the special guid-
ance of a Divine Monitor. The apology of his biographer is the
error of a religious man led away by a sectarian spirit.

The sinister influence of Whitfield's imagination on his opinions,
and, through them, on his conduct, may be illustrated by another
example. He not only became the piuchaser of slaves, but con-
demned the restriction which at that time forbade their introduc-
tion into Greorgia. There is extant, in his handwriting, an inven-
tory of the effects at the Orphan House, in that province, in which
these miserable captives take their place between the cattle and the
carts. ' Blessed be God,' he exclaimed, * for the increase of the
negroes. I entirely approve of reducing the Orphan House as low
as possible, and I am determined to take no more than the planta-
tion will m^aintain till I can buy more negroes.' It is true that it
was only as founder of this asylum for destitute children that he
made these purchases ; and true also, that in these wretched bonds-
men he recognised immortal beings for whose eternal welfare he
laboured ; and it is further true that the morality of his age was
lax on this subject. But the American Quakers were already bear-
ing testimony against the guilt of slavery and the slave-trade ; and
even had they been silent, so eminent a teacher of Christianity as
Whitfield could not, without just censure, have so far descended
from scriptural to conventional virtue.

To measure such a man as Greorge Whitfield by the standards of
refined society might seem a very strange, if not a ludicrous at-
tempt. Yet, as Mr. Philip repeatedly, and with emphasis, ascribes
to him the character of a ' gentleman,' it must be stated that he
was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours against the laws of
that aristocratic commonwealth in which the assertion of social
equality, and the nice observance of the privileges of sex and
rank, are so curiously harmonised. Such was his want of animal
courage, that in the vigour of his days he could tamely acquiesce
in a severe personal chastisement ; and fly to the hold of his vessel
for safety at the prospect of an approaching sea-flght. Such his
failure in self-respect, that a tone of awkward adulation distin-
guishes nearly all his letters to the ladies of high degree who par-
took and graced his triumph. But his capital offence against the
code of manners was the absence of that pudicity which shrinks
from exposing to public gaze the deepest emotions of the heart.

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 31)1

In Journals originally divulged, and at last published, by himself,
and, throughout his voluminous correspondence, he is * naked and
is not ashamed.' Some very coarse elements must have entered
into the composition of a man who could thus scatter abroatl
disclosures of the secret comnumings of his spirit with his Maker.

Akin to this ftuilt is his seeming unconsciousness of the oppres-
sive majesty of the topics with which he was habitually occupied.
The seraph in the prophetic vision was arrayed with wings, of
which some were given to urge his flight, and others to cover his
face. Vigorous as were the pinions with whicli Whitfield moved,
he appears to have been improvided with those beneath which liis
eyes should have shrunk from too familiar a contemplation of the
ineffable glory. Where proj^hets and apostles ' stood trembHiig,'
he is at his ease ; where tlie}^ adored, he declaims. Tliis is, indeed,
one of the besetting sins of licentiates in divinity. But few ever
moved among the infinitudes and eternities of invisible things with
less embarrassment or with less of silent awe. Illustrations miglit
be drawn from every pai't of his writings, but hardly without com-
mitting the irreverence we condemn.

To the lighter graces of taste and fancy Whitfield had no pre-
tension. He wandered from shore to shore unobservant of the
wonders of art and nature, and of the strange varieties of men
and manners which solicited his notice. In sermons in which no
resource within his reach is neglected, there is scarcely a trace to
be found of such objects having met his eye or arrested his atten-
tion. The poetry of the insjjired volume awakens in him no cor-
responding raptures ; and the rhythmical quotations which over-
spread his letters never rise above the cantilena of the tabernacle.
In polite literature, in physical and moral science, he never ad-
vanced much beyond the standard of the grammar-school of St.
Mary de Crypt. Even as a theologian, he has no claims to erudi-
tion. He appears to have had no Hebrew and little Greek, and
to have studied neither ecclesiastical antiquity nor the great divines
of modern times. His reading seems to have been confined to a
few, and those not the most considerable, of the works of the later
nonconformists. Neither is it possible to assign him a place among
profound or original thinkers. He was, in fact, almost an unedu-
cated man ; and the powers of his mind were never applied, and
perhaps could not have been applied successfully, either to the
acquisition of abstruse knowledge, or to the enlargement of its
boundaries.

'Let the name of Greorge Whitfield perish if God be glorified,'
was his own ardent and sincere exclamation. His disciples will
hardly acquiesce in their teacher's self-abasement. Tliey will per-

c c 4

392 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

haps resent, as injurious to him and to their cause, these imputa-
tions of enthusiasm, of personal timidity, of irreverence and
coarseness of mind, of ignorance and of a mediocrity or a total
absence of the powers of fancy, invention, and research. But the
apotheosis of saints is no less idolatrous than that of heroes ; and
they have not imbibed WTiitfield's spirit who cannot brook to be
told that he had his share of the faults and infirmities which no
man more solemnly ascribed to the whole human race.

Such, however, was his energy and self-devotion, that even the
defects of his character were rendered subservient to the one end
for which he lived. From the days of the Apostles to our own,
history records the career of no man who, with a less alloy of
motives terminating in self, or of passions breaking loose from the
control of reason, concentrated all the faculties of his soul, with
intensity and perseverance, for the accomplishment of one great
design. He belonged to that rare variety of the human species of
which it has been said tliat the liberties of mankind, depend on
their inability to combine in erecting an universal monarchy.
With nerves incapable of fatigue, and a confidence in himself,
which no authority, neglect, or opposition could abate, opposing an
impenetrable skin to all the missiles of scorn and contumely, and
yet exquisitely sensitive to the affection which cheered, and the
applause which rewarded his labours ; unembarrassed either by the
learning which reveals difficulties, or by the meditative powers
which suggest doubts ; with an insatiable thirst for active occupa-
tion, and an unhesitating faith in whatever cause he undertook ;
he might have been one of the most dangerous enemies of the
peace and happiness of the world, if powers so formidable in their
possible abuse had not been directed to a beneficent end. Judged
by the wisdom which is of the earth, earthy, Whitfield would be
pronounced a man whose energy ministered to a vulgar ambition,
of which the triumph over his ecclesiastical superiors, and the ad-
miration of unlettered multitudes, were the object and the recom-
pense. Estimated by those whose religious opinions and observances
are derived from him by hereditary descent, he is nothing less than
an apostle, inspired in the latter ages of the Church to purify her
faith, and to reform her morals. A more impartial survey of his
life and writings may suggest the conclusion, that the homage of
admiring crowds, and the blandishments of courtly dames, were
neither vmwelcome nor unsolicited ; that a hierarchy subdued to
inaction, if not to silence, gratified his self-esteem ; and that, when
standing on what he delighted to call his * throne,' the current of
devout and holy tlioughts was not uncontaminated by the admix-
ture of some human exultation. But ill betide him who delights •
in the too curious dissection of the motives of others, '^r even of

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 393

his own. Such anatomists breathe an impure air, and uncon-
sciously contract a sickly mental habit. Whitfield was a great and
a holy man ; among the foremost of the heroes of philanthropy ;
and as a preacher without a superior or a rival.

If eloquence be justly defined by the emotions it excites, or by
the activity it quickens, the greatest orator of our times was he
who first announced the victory of Waterloo, — if that station be
not rather due to the learned President of the College of Physicians,
who daily makes the ears to tingle of those who listen to his prog-
nostics. But the converse of the rule may be more readily ad-
mitted, and we may confidently exclude from the list of eloquent
speakers him whose audience is impassive whilst he addresses them,
and inactive afterwards. Every seventh day a great company of
preachers raise their voices in the land to detect our sins, to ex-
plain our duty, to admonish, to alarm, and so console. Compare
the prodigious extent of this apparatus with its perceptible results,
and, inestimable as they are, who mil deny that they disappoint
the hopes which, antecedently to experience, the least sanguine
would have indulged ? The preacher has, indeed, no novelties to
communicate. His path has been trodden hard and dry by constant
use ; yet he speaks as an ambassador from heaven, and his hearers
are frail, sorrowing, perplexed, and dying men. The highest interests
of both are at stake. The preacher's eye rests on his manuscript ;
the hearer's turns to the clock ; the half-hour glass runs out its
sand ; and the portals close on well-dressed groups of critics, look-
ing for all the world as if just dismissed from a lectm-e on the
tertiary strata.

Taking his stand on some rising knoll, his tall and graceful
figure dressed with elaborate propriety, and composed into an easy
and commanding attitude, Whitfield's 'clear blue eye' ranged over
thousands, and tens of thousands, drawn up in close files on the
plain below, or clustering into masses on every adjacent eminence.
A ' rabble rout ' hung on the skirts of the mighty host ; and the
feelings of the devout were disturbed by the scurril jests of the
illiterate, and the cold sarcasms of the more polished spectators of
their worship. P>ut the rich and varied tones of a voice of un-
equalled depth and compass quickly silenced every ruder sound, —
as in rapid succession its ever-changing melodies passed from tlie
calm of simple narrative, to the measured distinctness of argument,
to the vehemence of reproof, and the pathos of heavenly con-
solation. 'Sometimes the preacher wept exceedingly, stamped
loudly and passionately, and was frequently so overcome that for a
few seconds one would suspect he could never recover, and, when
he did, nature required some little time to compose herself.' In
words originally applied to one of the first German Reformers —

394 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

vividus vultus, vividi oculi, vividcemanus, denique omnia vivida.
The agitated assembly caught the passions of the speaker, and
exulted, wept, or trembled at his bidding. He stood before them,
in popular belief, a persecuted man, spurned and rejected by-
lordly prelates, yet still a presbyter of the Chui-ch, and clothed
with her authority ; — his meek and lowly demeanour chastened
and elevated by the conscious grandeur of the apostolic succession.
The thoughtful gazed earnestly on a scene of solemn interest,
pregnant with some strange and enduring influence on the future
condition of mankind. But the wise and the simple alike yielded
to the enchantment ; and the thronging multitude gave utterance
to their emotions in every form in which nature seeks relief from
feelings too strong for mastery.

\\Taitfield had cultivated the histrionic art to a perfection which
has rarely been obtained, even by the most eminent of those who
have trodden the stage in sock or buskin. Foote and Grarrick
were his frequent hearers, and brought away with them the cha-
racteristic and very just remark, that ' his oratory was not at its
full height until he had repeated a discourse forty times.' The
transient delirium of Franklin, (attested by the surrender on one
occasion of all the contents of his purse at a ' charity sermon,' and
by a Quaker's refusal to lend more to a man who had lost his wits,)
did not prevent his investigating the causes of this unwonted ex-
citement. * I came,' he says, * by hearing him often, to distinguish
between sermons newly composed and those he had preached often
in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so im-
proved by frequent repetition, that every accent, every emphasis,
every modulation of the voice was so perfectly timed, that, without
being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased
with the discourse, — a pleasm^e of much the same kind as that
received from an excellent piece of music'

The basis of the singular dominion which was thus exercised by
Whitfield during a period equal to that assigned by ordinary cal-
culation for the continuance of human life, would repay a more
careful investigation than we have space or leisure to attempt
Amongst subordinate influences, the faintest of all is that which
may have been occasionally exercised over the more refined mem-
bers of his congregations by the romantic scenery in which they
assembled. The tears shaping ' white gutters down the black faces
of the colliers, black as they came out of the coal-pits,' were cer-
tainly not shed under any overwhelming sense of the picturesque,
but the preacher himself felt and courted this excitement. * The
open firmament above me, the prospect of the adjacent fields,' ' to
which sometimes was added the solemnity ' ' of the approaching
evening,' was, he says, ' almost too much for me.' But a far more

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 395

effectual resource was found in the ai't of diverting into a new and
unexpected channel, the excited feelings of a multitude already
brought together for purposes the most strangely contrasted to his
own. Journeying to Wales, he passes over Hampton Common, and
finds himself surrounded by twelve thousand people collected to
see a man hung in chains, and an extempore pulpit is immediately
provided within siglit of this deplorable object. On another similar
occasion, the wretched culprit was permitted to steal an hour from
the eternity before him, while listening, or seeming to listen, to a
sermon delivered by Whitfield to himself, and to the spectators of
his approaching doom. He reaches Basingstoke, when the inha-
bitants are engaged in all the festivities of a country fair, and thus
records the use he made of so tempting an opportunity. ' As I
passed on horseback I saw the stage, and as I rode furtlier T met
divers coming to the revel, which affected me so much, tliat I had
no rest in my spirit, and therefore having asked counsel of God,
and perceiving an unusual warmth and power enter my soul, though
I was gone above a mile, I could not bear to see so many dear souls
for whom Christ had died ready to perish, and no minister or magis-
trate interpose ; upon this, I told my dea.r fellow-travellers that I
was resolved to follow the example of Howell Harris in Wales, and
bear my testimony against such lying vanities, let the consequences
to my own private person be what they would. They immediately
assenting, I rode back to the town, got upon the stage erected for
the -wrestlers, and began to show them the error of their wa3^s.'

The often-told tale of Whitfield's controversy with the Merry-
Andrew at Moorfields, still more curiously illustrates the skill and
intrepidity with which he contrived to divert to his onnti ends an
excitement running at high tide in the opposite direction. The
following is an extract from his own narrative of the encounter.

* For many years, from one end of Moorfields to the other, booths
of all kinds have been erected for mountebanks, players, puppet-
shows, and such like. With a heart bleeding with compassion for
so many thousands led captive by the devil at his will, on Whit-
Monday, at six o'clock in the morning, attended by a large congre-
gation of praying people, I ventured to lift up a standard amongst
them, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps there were
about ten thousand in waiting, not for me, but for Satan's instru-
ments to amuse them. Griad was I to find that I had for once, as
it were, got the start of the devil. I mounted my field pulpit ;
almost all flocked immediately around it; I preached on these
words — "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the \\alderness," &c.
They gazed, they listened, they wept, and I believe that many felt
themselves stung with the deep conviction for their past sins. All
was hushed and solemn. Being thus encouraged, I ventured out

- 396 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

agfain at noon. The whole fields seemed, in a bad sense of the
word, all white, ready not for the Redeemer's, but for Beelzebub's
harvest. All his agents were in full motion. Drummers, trum-
peters, Merr5^-Andrews, masters of puppet-shows, exhibitions of
wild beasts, players, &c. &c. all busy in entertaining their respective
auditors. I suppose there could not be less than twenty or thirty
thousand people. My pulpit was fixed on the opposite side, and
immediately, to their great mortification, they found the number of
their attendants sadly lessened. Judging that, like St. Paul, I
should now be called, as it were, to fight with beasts at Ephesus, I
preached from these words, " Grreat is Diana of the Ephesians."
You may easily guess that there was some noise among the crafts-
men, and that I was honoured with having a few stones, dirt, rotten
eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me, whilst engaged in call-
ing them from their favourite but lying vanities. My soul was
indeed among lions, but far the greatest part of my congregation,
which was very large, seemed for a while turned into lambs. This
Satan could not brook. One of his choicest servants was exhibiting,
trumpeting on a large stage, but as soon as the people saw me in
my black robes and my pulpit, I think all to a man left him and
ran to me. For a while I was enabled to lift up my voice like
a trumpet, and many heard the joyful sound. Grod's people kept
praying, and the enemy's agents made a kind of roaring at some
distance from our camp. At length they approached near, and the
Merry- Andrew got up on a man's shoulders, and, advancing near
the pulpit, attempted to slash me with a long heavy whip several
times, but always with the violence of his motion tumbled down.
I think I continued in praying, preaching, and singing (for the
noise was too great to preach) for about three hours. We then
retired to the Tabernacle, with my pockets full of notes from per-
sons brought under concern, and read them amidst the praises and
spiritual acclamations of thousands. Three hundred and fifty
awakened souls were received in one day, and I believe the number
of notes exceeded a thousand.'

The propensity to mirth which, in common with all men of
robust mental constitution, Whitfield possessed in an unusual
degree, was, like everything else belonging to him, compelled to
minister to the interest and success of his preaching ; but, however
much his pleasantries may attest the alacrity of his mind, it would
be difficult to assign them any other praise. Oscillating in spirit
as well as in body, between Drury Lane and the Tabernacle,
Shuter, the comedian, attended in Tottenham Court Road during
the run of his successful performance of the character of Ramble,
and was greeted with the following apostrophe, — ' and thou, poor
Ramble, who hast so long rambled from Him, come thou also.

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 397

Oh ! end thy rambliugs, and come to Jesus.' The preaclier in
this instance descended not a little below the level of the player.

In the eighteentli century the crown of martyrdom w.os a prize
for which Koman Catholics alone were permitted to contend, and
Whitfield was unable to gain the influence which he would have
derived from the stake, from a prison, or a confiscation. Conscious,
however, of the importance of such sufferings, he persuaded liim-
self, and desired to convince the world, that he had to endure
them. The Bishops were persecutors, because they repelled with
some acrimony his attacks on their authority and reputation.
The mob were persecutors, because they pelted a man who
insisted on their hearing him preach when they wanted to see
a bear dance, or a conjuror eat fire. A magistrate was a per-
secutor, because he summoned him to appear on an unfounded
charge, and then dismissed him on his own recognizance. He
gloried with better reason in the contemptuous language with
v.'hich he was assailed, even by the more decorous of his opj)onents,
and in the ribaldries of Foote and Bickerstaff. He would gladly
have partaken of the doom of Eogers and Kidley, if his times had
permitted, and his cause required it ; but the fires of Smithfield
were put out, and the exasperated Momus of the fair, with his
long whip, alone remained to do the appropriate honours of the
feast of St. Bartholomew.

There are extant seventy-five of the sermons by which Whitfield
agitated nations, and the more remote influence of which is still
distinctly to be traced, in the popular divinity and in the national
character of Great Britain and of the United States. They have,
however, fallen into neglect ; for to win permanent acceptance for
a book, into which the principles of life were not infused by its
author, is a miracle which not even the zeal of religious proselytes
can accomplish. Yet, inferior as were his inventive to his his-
trionic powers, Whitfield is entitled to a place among theoloo-ical
writers ; which, if it cannot challenge admiration, may at least
excite and reward curiosity. Many, and those by far the worst,
of his discourses bear the marks of careful preparation. Take at
hazard a sermon of one of the preachers usually distinguished as
evangelical, add a little to its length, and subtract a great deal
from its point and polish, and you have one of his more elaborate
performances ; — common-place topics discussed in a common-place
way ; a respectable mediocrity of thought and style ; endless varia-
tions on one or two cardinal truths ; — in short, the task of a
clerical Saturday evening, executed with piety, good sense, and
exceeding sedateness. But open one of that series of Whitfield's
sermons which bears the stamp of having been conceived and
uttered at the same moment, and imagine it recited to myriads of

398 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

eager listeners with every charm of voice and gesture, and the
secret of his unrivalled fascination is at least partially disclosed.
He places himself on terms of intimacy and unreserved confidence
with you, and makes it almost as difficult to decline the invitation
to his familiar talk as if Montaigne himself had issued it. The
egotism is amusing, affectionate, and warm-hearted ; with just that
slight infusion of self-importance without which it would pass for
affectation. In this art of rhetoric, personification holds the first
place ; and the prosopopoeia is so managed as to quicken ab-
stractions into life and to give them individuality and distinctness
without the use of any of those spasmodic and distorted images
which obey the incantations of vulgar rhetoricians. Every trace
of study and contrivance is obliterated by the hearty earnestness
which pervades each successive period, and by the vernacular and
homely idioms in which his meaning is conveyed. The recollection
of William Cobbett will obtrude itself on the reader of these
discourses, though the remembrance of the sturdy athlete of the
' Political Register,' with his sophistry and his sarcasm, his drollery
and his irascible vigour, sorely disturbs the sacred emotions which
it was the one object of the preacher to awaken. And it is in this
grandeur and singleness of purpose that the charm of Whitfield's
preaching seems really to have consisted. You feel that you have
to do with a man who lived and spoke, and who would gladly have
died, to deter his hearers from the path of destruction, and to
guide them to holiness and to peace. His gossiping stories and
dramatic forms of speech are never employed to dissipate the
awful emotions which he proposes to excite. Conscience is not
permitted to find an intoxicating draught in spiritual excitement,
or a narcotic in glowing imagery. Gfuilt and its punishment,
pardon and spotless purity, death and an eternal existence, stand
out in bold relief on every page. From these the eye of the
teacher is never withdrawn, and to these the attention of the hearer
is riveted. All that is poetic, grotesque, or rapturous is employed
to deepen these impressions, and is dismissed as soon as that
design is answered. Deficient in learning, meagre in thought, and
redundant in language as are these discourses, they yet fulfil the
one great condition of genuine eloquence. They propagate their
own kindly warmth, and leave their stings behind them.

The enumeration of the sources of WTiitfield's power is still
essentially defective. Neither energy, nor eloquence, nor histrionic
talents, nor any artifices of style, nor the most genuine sincerity
and self-devotedness, nor all these united, would have enabled him
to mould the religious character of millions in his own and future
generations. The secret lies deeper, though not very deep. It

THE '' EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 399

consisted in the natiu-e of the theology he taught — in its perfect
simplicity and universal application. His thirty or forty thousand
sermons were but so many variations on two key-notes. Man is
guilty, and may obtain forgiveness ; he is immortal, and must
ripen here for endless weal or woe hereafter. Expanded into
innumerable forms, and diversified by infinite varieties of illus-
trations, these two cardinal principles were ever in his heart and
on his tongue. Let who would invoke poetry to embellish the
Christian system, or philosophy to penetrate its depths, from his
lips it was delivered as an awful and urgent summons to repent, to
believe, and to obey. To give orders on ship-board in a tempest
in the cadences of Haydn, or in all the categories of Aristotle, would
have seemed to him not a whit more preposterous than to divert his
hearers from their danger and their refuge, their duties and their
hopes, to any topics more trivial or more abstruse. In fine, he
was thoroughly and continually in earnest, and, therefore, possessed
that tension of the soul which admitted neither of lassitude nor re-
laxation. Few and familiar as were the topics to which he was
confined, his was that state of mind in which alone eloquence,
properly so called, can be born, and a moral and intellectual
sovereignty acquired.

The effects of Whitfield's labours on succeeding times have been
thrown into the shade by the more brilliant fortunes of the
Ecclesiastical Dynasty of which Wesley was at once the founder, the
lawgiver, and the head. Yet a large proportion of the American
Churches, and that great body of the Church of England, which,
assuming the title of * Evangelical,' has been refused that of
' Orthodox,' may trace back their spiritual genealogy by regular
descent from him. It appears, indeed, that there are among them
some who, for having disavowed this ancestry, have brought them-
selves within the swing of Mr. Philip's club. To rescue them, if it
were possible, from the bruises which they have provoked, would
be to arrest the legitimate march of penal justice. The consan-
guinity is attested by historical records, and by the strongest
family resemblance. The quarterings of Whitfield are entitled to
a conspicuous place in the ' Evangelical ' scutcheon ; and they who
bear it are not wise in Ijeing ashamed of the blazonry.

If the section of the Church of England which usually bears that
title, be properly so distinguished, there can be no impropriety in
designating as her four Evangelists John Newton, Thomas Scott,
Joseph Milner, and Henry Venn. Newton held himself forth, and
was celebrated by others, as the great living example of the re-
generating efficacy of the principles of his school. Scott was their
interpreter of Holy Scripture, Milner their ecclesiastical historian,

4C0 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

Venn their systematic teacher of the whole Christian institutes. In
some respects these men closely resembled each other. A certain
sturdiness of character and intrepidity of mind belonged to them
all. They all possessed that free, flowing, and inartificial style in
which a full man pours out the mature results of his studies and
meditations. Each of them was, to a considerable extent, self-
educated. As soon as he had made good any position in theology,
each of them was accustomed to retain it firmly as a post in advance,
or basis for further conquests of the same kind. And, after effecting
many such conquests, they all reached and adhered to that system
of divinity, which has so long arrested the corruption, and prevented
the fall of our Elizabethan church economy. But though in contact
at these points, the}^ were directly antithetical to each other at
many more.

In the year 1736 John Newton, then a boy in his twelfth year,
commenced a seafaring life in a merchant vessel under the command
of his father, a master mariner. His mother was then dead. She
had given much religious instruction to her son, and had bequeathed
to him the inheritance of many blessings, and of many prayers.
These maternal cares yielded at length an abundant harvest ; but
their immediate fruits were harsh and premature. ' I took up,' he
says, ' and laid aside a religious profession, three or four times
before I was sixteen years old. I spent the greater part of every
day in reading the Scriptures, in meditation, and in prayer. I
fasted often, I even abstained from animal food for three months.
I would hardly answer a question, for fear of speaking an idle
word.'

From this state of mind, which he afterwards condemned as
* gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless,' Newton passed by an
easy transition to scepticism. The faith of the young ascetic was
overthrown by a stray volume of the ' Characteristics.' By a second
and equally natural revolution the ' Ehapsodies' of Shaftsbury
made way for other raptures of a more sublunary kind. As he
journeyed to join his ship in the Thames, Newton formed an
acquaintance with Mary Catlett, a Kentish maiden in her fourteenth
year, for whose fair sake he abandoned his voyage, and the prospects
it held out to him of an advantageous settlement in the West
Indies. ' The world ' was once ' well lost for love,' and at the same
shrine the sailor boy sacrificed the management of a plantation in
Jamaica. He received, in return, a romance, composed by Hope
and embellished by Imagination, of a minority to be passed by
himself and Mary Catlett on the same side of the broad Atlantic.
Relentless fate destroyed the fiction and postponed their union
until Newton had consumed seven dark and dismal years in

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX. 401

frequent and j)rotracted exile?. ' During the whole of that time,
he assures us, ' she was never absent for a single hour from liis
waking thoughts.' Vvlien occasionally resident in England, in
the brief intervals of these early voyages, he performed some-
times twice, and always once, in each week, a pilgi-image of many
miles to Shooter's Hill, there to gaze, not indeed on the house in
which she dwelt, for that was still far away, but on the country
towards which her eyes might perhaps be directed at the same
moment !

Before the close of his septennial banishment our nautical
Oroondates made one visit to the actual abode of the enchantress,
when, in obedience to the spell, he again permitted his ship to put
to sea without him. The penalty was immediate and severe. On
reaching the port at which he ought to have embarked, he was
pressed into the King's service, and sent on board the ' Harwich,' a
ship of war then under sailing orders for the East Indies. Even
this disaster soon assumed a comparatively smiling aspect. Struck
with Newton's intelligence and address, his captain rated him on
the ship's books as a midshipman, and thus laid open to him the
path to preferment, and perhaps to martial renown. But his heart
was with his idol. In the hope of another interview with her he
effected his escape, and on his recapture was reduced to the rank of
a common seaman. It was with a fierce resentment that he surren-
dered himself up to this degradation. ' I was,' he says, ' as miserable
on all hands as could well be imagined.' ' My heart was filled with
the most excruciating passions, eager desires, bitter rage, and black
despair. Every hour exposed me to some new insult and hardship,
with no hope of relief or mitigation. Whether I looked inward or
outward I could perceive nothing but darkness and misery. I kept
my eyes fixed upon the English shore, till, the ship's distance in-
creasing, it insensibly disappeared, and when I could see it no
longer I was tempted to throw myself into the sea, which, according
to the wicked system I had adopted, would put an end to my
sorrows at once.'

The wholesome discipline of His Majesty's ship * Harwich,' how-
ever deeply abhorred by Newton, seems not to have been altogether
unprofitable to him. He had acquired a certain resjiect for his own
good name, but his conduct was such that he was readily permitted
to exchange into a merchant ship, which they found lying at
JNIadeira, on her way to the coast of Africa. ' While passing from
one ship to the other, one reason why he rejoiced in the change
(such is liis own statement) was, that he might now be as abandoned
as he pleased without any controversy ; and from this time,' he sa3^s,
' I was exceedingly vile indeed, little, if anything, short of that

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402 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX.

animated description of an almost irrecoverable state, wliicli we
have in 2 Peter, ii. 14.'

On his arrival on the Gold Coast, Newton became the overseer
of one of those depots of slaves which were then, as now, main-
tained at the mouths of the great African rivers, for the immediate
and cheap supply of that article of commerce to the traders resort-
ing thither. But he sank into a bondage only less deplorable than
that of his captives. The power of his master and of his master's
concubine over him was absolute, and their tyranny intolerable.
Sick and despised, half naked, and half starved, he dragged out a
wretched existence, feeding on tish, which he could not catch
Avithout extreme peril, and which, when caught, he was unable to
dress, and often exposed without shelter in the rainy season, during
forty successive hours, to the inclemency of that fearful climate.
As he traversed the shore from one pestilential estuary to anothez-,
the unhappy outcast would have been as destitute of solace from
within as from without, had it not happened that a copy of
Barrow's Euclid had stuck by him in all his wanderings, and, while
he traced the diagrams on the sand, and revolved the demonstra-
tion, his sorrows took a temporary flight.

Better, or, at least, less painful days arrived. Newton was
transferred to another master, who admitted him to a share in his
slave factory. ' And now,' he says, ' I was decently clothed and
lived in plenty, business flourished, and our employer was satisfied,
and here I began to be wretch enough to think myself happy. In
the language of the country, the white man was growing black,'- — ■
that is, he was learning to contract and to satiate his desires within
the narrow range of those sensual gratifications which lay at his
command. From such happiness he was opportunely rescued by
the appearance off the coast of a ship from Liverpool, the owner of
which, Mr. Annesty, a friend of his family, had directed the master
to inquire for him among the slave-traders in those parts, and, if
possible, to effect his deliverance. Eeluctantly, and not without
the practice by the master of some cajolery, Newton was persuaded
to return home, and, after incurring the perils of the sea in their
utmost terrors, he reached the North of Ireland in the year 1748.

This he regards as the epoch of his reformation, and as the com-
mencement of the happier portion of his life. In a ship, with the
command of which he was entrusted by Mr. Annesty, he made four
slave-trading voyages to the coast of Africa. After the completion
of the first voyage, he married Mary Catlett. After the completion
of the fourth, he was compelled by a dangerous illness to exchange
his seafaring pursuits for the office of a landing waiter in the
customs at Liverpool, for which also he was indebted to the zealous
and persevering fj-iendship of Mr. Annesty.

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 403

A still more momentous change was at hand. It liad been the
cherished liope of Newton's pious mother that he might become a
faithful minister of the Gospel, and many circumstances concurred
to bring about the full, though tardy, accomplishment of her
prayer. However dissolute and profane he had been in his passage
from youth to manhood, the impressions of her devout cares for
him had never been wholly obliterated from his mind ; and he had
been fortunate in his childhood in a schoolmaster of the true Busby
breed, from whose lips and vigorous right arm he had received
other and more severe lessons, which he never had entirely for-
gotten. To that inflexible pedagogue he was indebted for his
soothing intercourse with Euclid on the sea-shore in Africa, and for
the company of Horace, of Livy, of Erasmus, and of Casimir on his
subsequent voyages to the same coast. To his mother he owed a
taste for the Bible, and for books of devotion, which in due time
expelled the pagan poets from his cabin. Old ocean probably
never before or since floated such another slave ship. On board of
her, indeed, were to be seen all the ordinary phenomena. Packed
together like herrings, stifled, sick, and broken-hearted, the negroes
in that aquatic Pandemonium died after making futile attempts at
insurrection. But, separated by a single plank from his victims,
the voice of their gaoler might be heard, day by day, conducting
the prayers of his ship's company, singing a devout imitation of his
own, of the verses of Propertius (' tu mihi curarum requies,' &c.),
and, as he assures us, experiencing on his last voyage to Guinea
* sweeter and more frequent hours of divine communion ' than he
had ever elsewhere known.

From these devotional exercises, Newton passed into much
religious society in tlie West Indies, and in what was then British
North America. There he became acquainted with George Whit-
field, ' whose ministry,' he says, ' was exceedingly useful to him.'
Still more useful were his leisure, and his solitary studies, at
Liverpool. In the custom-house, at that town, he made such
progress in Hebrew and in Greek, as to be able to read the
originals of the Holy Scriptures, and, if we can rely on his o\vn
assurance, he there became acquainted ' with the best writers in
divinity, in Latin, French, and English.' If Hooker was of the
number of those ' best writers,' he found a refractory pupil in John
Newton. He became an absolute latitudinarian on all points of
ecclesiastical polity. After making ' some small attempts ' as a
Nonconformist, ' in a way of preaching and expounding,' he was
much disposed to join the Protestant Dissenters altogether. He
esteemed it a matter of very little, if of any, importance, witli
what outward ceremonial he might officiate, or in what Christian

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404 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

society. His one solicitude was to find ' a public opportunity to
testify the riches of Divine grace, thinking that he was, above
most living, a fit person to proclaim that faithful saying, that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save the chief of sinners.'

After some delay, he was enabled to gratify this desire by the
counsels, and by the united influence, of Eichard Cecil, of the Earl
of Dartmouth, and of Young, the author of the ' Night Thoughts.'
They not only induced him to seek, but enabled him to find, ad-
mission as a pastor in the episcopal fold. In his thirty-ninth year
he became at once a deacon of the Church of England, and curate
of the parish and town of Olney, in Buckinghamshire.

At Olney, Newton composed and published many sermons and
religious letters, some spiritual exercises in verse, and a brief
survey of Ecclesiastical History. There also he formed that
friendship which the genius of Cowper has immortalised ; became
the friend and almoner of John Thornton, the munificent; and
contributed largely to form and to mature the theological system
of Thomas Scott, the commentator. At Olney, also, he himself
laboured to inculcate that system, but with no happy issue. After
a continuance there of sixteen years, he acknowledged, and de-
plored, his inability to restrain the ' gross licentiousness ' of his
followers ' on particular occasions,' and was at length driven away
* by the incorrigible spirit prevailing in the parish, which he had so
long laboured to reform.'

He was indebted to John Thornton for a place of refuge from
Olney, and for a station of far greater prominence. He became
the rector of St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street, in the city of
London, where he continued till the year 1807, when he died
in the eighty-third year of his age, in the twenty-seventh of his
incumbency of that church, and in the forty-third of his ministry.

The animal homo, male or female, is always found in a de-
fective, crude, and distorted state, unless when exhibiting, in his
or her character, a certain fusion and reconcilement of the dis-
tinctive qualities of either sex. A tearless, cheerless, pitiless
world this globe of ours would have been, if, according to the wish
ascribed to our first progenitor, his race could have been per-
petuated witbout the intervention of Eve or of her daughters!
A world in which love, hate, zeal, hope, courage, and every other
active passion would have burnt fiercely and blazed brilliantly ;
but where sensibility, fear, compassion, modesty, sympathy, and
all the other passive emotions, would have been wanting to coun-
teract and mitigate the flame ! A world in which the lawless
many would have been a band of homicides, and in which the
heroical few would have borne a strong resemblance to John

THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 405

Newton, the sailor, the slave-ti'aJer, the author, and the rector of
St. Mary Woolnoth. His strength and his weakness alike con-
sisted in the strange predominance of the male above the female
elements of his nature.

In his own age and country few ministers of the Gospel oc-
cupied a more conspicuous station, or exercised a more extensive
influence. But he attained that eminence by asserting for himself
a distinction which nothing but the most absolute mascularity
could have challenged. It was the distinction of having emerged
from a depth of moral debasement into which few men had ever
fallen, and from which scarcely any man had ever been restored.
In the narrative which he published of his own life, he had the
courage to describe himself as having been ' the willing slave of
every evil, possessed with a legion of unclean spirits ; ' — as not
only ' having sinned with a high hand himself, but as having made
it his study to tempt and seduce others upon every occasion ; very
eagerly seeking occasion ; ' — as ' big with mischief, and like one
infected with a pestilence, capable of spreading a taint wherever he
went ; ' — as ' shunned aud despised,' even by the savages among
whom he lived, ' and as an outcast lying in his blood.'

When Newton indited these and many other passages of equally
bitter self-condemnation, he certainly neither desired nor expected
to be understood by his readers to the letter. Pachydermatous as
he was, he could not propose to draw on himself either the abhor-
rence, or the indignation, or even the distrust of the world. The
wilful and deliberate murder of one's own good name, is a crime
unknown in the catalogue of human offences. Such a felo-de-se
would be ripe for any other felony. What, then, suggested these
confessions, and what was the meaning which the waiter of them
really designed to convey ?

They were certainly not the product of that voracious vanity
which finds its account even in self-crimination, and which would
rather depict the vices, faults, and follies of the painter, than banish
self altogether from the canvas. This canine appetite for human
sympathy of any kind, and on any terms, is the disease of men tor-
mented, like Eousseau, by irritable nerves and a delicate organisa-
tion. But Newton had nerves of brass, and his sinews w^ere iron.

Neither is it credible that he used these dark colours in his self-
portraiture in order to win the praise of humility, candour, and
tenderness of the awakened conscience. The veil of penitence has,
indeed, been sometimes worn for this purpose ; and there have not
been wanting those who have gratified a morbid ambition by
appearing in public in the white sheet falling round them in
graceful folds, and ai'ranged as an ornamental drapery. But from

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406 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

the very bottom of his manly heart, Newton would have loathed all
such nauseous affectations. He had not a thought or a feeling in
common with Lord Byron and his imitators. To his last breath,
he was an honest downright sailor, who always employed wliat
seemed to him the most a.pt, direct, and intelligible words to express
what he really thought.

And such was doubtless his pm^pose in his penitential autobio-
graphy. His mistake was that of transferring to the press the lan-
guage of the oratory. When he lifted up his voice in the market-
place, and when he went into his secret chamber, and shut to the
door, his style was still the same. He poured out the language of
self-crimination without changing a word, whether he addressed the
sacred presence invoked in his prayers, or the coarse, bad world
without. Insensible to the proprieties of places and of times, he
could not perceive that Truth herself ceases to be true, unless she
shapes her discourse to the apprehension of her audience. Rightly
judging that, in the retrospect of the sins of his youth, he could
not abase himself too much when bowing down before the Holiest,
he erroneously inferred that it was impossible to exaggerate his
guilt when addressing his fellow-sinners on the same melancholy
theme. Yet no danger could be greater or more evident.

"V^Tien divested of all colouring, a.nd stated in plain words, the
fact appears to be that, in his seafaring life, from his seventeenth
to his twenty-second year, Newton was irreligious and profane, and
was accustomed to violate the Seventh Commandment as recklessly
as the third ; but that, even in those evil days, he was habitually
sober and scrupulously honest. At a later period, taking the
Scriptures for his law, and the evangelical commentators on them
for his counsellors, he might well look back on Ids early career with
profound shame and with the deepest consciousness of ill desert.
But, when he confided those self-upbraidings to mankind at large
in language so contrite, so emphatic, and so vague, what could he
reasonably expect but that (deeming it altogether inappropriate to
the occasion, if referring merely to the impieties and debaucheries
of a very young sailor when surrounded by every form of tempta-
tion) the world would adopt one of two theories — either that it
referred to guilt, of which any more precise mention would have
been insufferable, or that it stood on the same level, in point of
sincerity, with the penitential emblazonments of William Hunt-
ington, ' Sinner Saved,' and of his worshipful fraternity ? By what
method were Newton's contemporaries to discover that the voice
which reached them from the vicarage of Olney, was the exact echo
of his solitary devotions there, and that he who invited tliem to so
strange a confidence, was neither an enormous transgressor, nor an

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. ^107

actor wearing the mask of contrition, but a straiglitforward sailor,
who, with a skin as thick as the copper sheathing of his ship,
laid bare the recesses of his conscience with as little squeaniish-
ness as he would have thrown open her hold and overhauled her
cargo.

The perfect good faith with which the penitent confessed himself
to his readers, is sufficiently proved by the disappointment which he
prepared for them at the very same moment. There is a natural
history of religious conversions. It commences with melancholy,
advances through contrition to faith, is then conducted to traii-
cpiillity, and after a while, to rapture, and subsides at length into
an abiding consolation and peace. No epoch in this mental pro-
gress can be passed over by the narrator of any such change with-
out I'aising some suspicion of its genuineness in those who have
studied the human heart, rather as it is described in pious books,
than as it works in pious men. But, braving all such suspicions
and strong in conscious sincerity, Newton acknowledged, without
the least reserve, that he had overleapt all of these stages. His
heart of oak had been rent by no poignant sorrow, nor had it been
agitated by any tumultuous joy, from the beginning to the end of
his spiritual course. With no vehement internal conflict whatever,
he shed the skin of a dissolute seaman, and sheltered himself in
that of a devout clergyman. He gave up bad habits of life for an
infinitely better course, with abundant good sense, seriousness, and
deliberation, but with very little passion or excitement. Ill as such
an anomaly squared with the prepossessions of those for whom he
■\vi-ote, he would not deviate by an hair's breadth from the simple
truth, nor affect any feeling which he had not really experienced,
either to propitiate the good will of his teachers or disciples, or to
do homage to their religious theories.

With similar hardihood Newton threw the broad glare of day into
the Arcana of his most sacred human affections. He had loved
Mary Catlett with all the fervent energy of truth. He depicted
that love to the world at large, with all the unscrupulous minute-
ness of fiction. The ardour of his attachment had triumphed over
absence, profligacy, and despair. His letters to her throbbing with
every pulse of that emotion, were, during his own lifetime, on sale
at the book-stalls ! She was to him a second existence, dearer and
holier than his own. But, on the arrival of her mortal agony, ' I
took,' he says, ' my post by her bed-side, and watched her nearly
three hours, with a candle in my hand, till I saw her breathe her
last.' 'I was afraid of sitting at home, and indulging myself by
poring over my loss, and tlierefore I was seen in the street, and
visited some of my serious friends the very next day. I likewise

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408 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

preached tliree times while she lay dead in the house, and, after
she was deposited in the vault, I preached her funeral sermon with
little more sensible emotion than if it had been for another person.'
' I preached from a text which I had reserved from my first
entrance on the ministry for this particular service, if I should
survive her, and be able to speak.'

Newton was a copious writer of letters. They were pious, wise,
and affectionate, and flowed freely out from the depths, which
much self-knowledge, and much study, had opened in his mind.
They were admirably adapted to feed the flame of devotion in the
bosoms of the writer and of his correspondents, and to one collec-
tion of them, he accordingly gave the appropriate title of Cardi-
phonia. But the language of Newton's heart became, in his own
lifetime, one of the embellishments of the windows of Paternoster
Eow ! Romance and poetry have beautifully said, and fondly
sung, much of friendship the balm of life. It is, however, a balm
which loses much of its virtue if rubbed in with a rough hand.
However unquestionable a blessing in itself, it may, by such
management, be rendered a no less unequivocal discipline. Such,
probably, was the judgment of Newton's correspondents, when they
found his letters to them advertised in the newspapers. Such also
was apparently the judgment of the most illustrious of his friends,
William Cowper.

No two human beings ever experienced more fully the attractive
force of contrarieties of tastes and tempers, than the pastor and the
poet of Olney. The sensitive man of genius partook in the labours,
revered the character, loved the person, and writhed in the grasp, of
his robust and hard-favoured neighbour ; and when he sang the fate
of the rose, broken in a rude attempt to shake off the moisture
which depressed it, he probably aimed a gentle rebuke at the
ungentle touch which was occasionally put forth at the vicarage,
to dry up his own tears. The cohesion between the two was
obviously never complete. There was, indeed, one repulsive force,
which miist always have prevented it. Newton had been the
manager of a slave factory, and the master of a slave ship. Cowper
abhorred the slave-trade with his whole soul, and denounced it
with passionate energy. Horrors which had been invisible to the
mariner, though jDlaced immediately before his bodily eyes, had
presented themselves to the imagination of the poet in all their
frightful details. The one had publicly commemorated his pursuit
of this traffic, without one word of apology or self-reproach on that
account. The other was calling on Grod and man to arrest it as a
crime, in which all the varieties of human wickedness met, and
associated, in deadly union. Between the writer of such an

THE "EYAXGELICAL SUCCESSION. 4C9

autobiography, and the writer of such verse, there yawued a guliili
which nothing could ever entirely fill up.

The prolonged slave-trading of John Newton, and still more his
cold and phlegmatic avowal of it, has ever been the great blot on
his ' evangelical ' scutcheon. Before the tribunal in which Pes-
terity sits in judgment on the men of former times, he appears not
in hi^ sailor's blue jacket, but in full canonicals. Being arraigned,
as a remorseless slave-trader, his defence is, that he was eminent
as a penitent, still more eminent as a saint, and eminent above all
as a zealous and effective preacher of righteousness. The judges
are accordingly required to pronounce a decree, consigning his
memory either to the lowest degradation, or to the highest
posthumous glory. A singular and a perplexing dilemma for the
bench !

One point seems clear enough. Ne\\i:on could not be, at one
and the same time, a slave-trader and a saint. To this extent he
may safely be judged out of his own mouth. * I would not give a
straw ' (such is his impartial and honest declaration) ' for that
assurance which sin will not damp. If David had come from his
adultery, and had talked of his assurance at that time, I should
have despised his speech.' When Newton himself came from his
man-stealing, and his homicides, and talked of his ' sweet hours of
divine communion on his last voyage to Gruinea,' — and of no em-
ployment ' affording greater advantages to an awakened mind, for
promoting the life of Grod in the soul, especially to a person who
has the command of a ship,' ' and still more so in African voyages,'
— we are compelled to take up his own parable against him, and,
in his own words, to say that his speech is to be despised. There
can be no fellowship between light and darkness ; and woe to us if
reverence for any name, however worthy, zeal for any doctrines,
however orthodox, or attachment to any party, however estimable,
shall induce us to disregard the eternal land-marks between good
and evil, or to believe that the service of Moloch can be reconciled
with the service of God. Let Him be true, and every man a liar.

Does it then follow that the venerable John Newton was eitlier
an impostor, or the unresisting victim of self-love and of self-
deceit ? A thousand times no ! All that can be inferred is that
his priesthood at the altar of Mammon, with its blood-stained
rites, could not be synchronous with his priesthood at that other
shrine, at which human love presumes to offer, and divine love
condescends to accept, the heart of the worshipper as the one
appropriate sacrifice. At tliat shrine Newton ministered during
forty-three successive years, the very counterpart of our old friend
INIr. Grreatheart, beneath whose shield Mr. Feeblemind and IMrs.

410 THE " EVANGELICAL SUCCESSIOX.

Miicli-afraid found shelter, and before whose arm the walls of
Doubting Castle and the might of Giant Despair were overthrown.
The charge that, during some preceding years, he was a ruthless
slave-trader, and that to the last he was little sensible of the
heinousness of that guilt, cannot be admitted to countervail such
services, or to obscure the lustre of a life in which the brightness
of his Christian course was unsullied by a single stain during more
than half a century.

For in the court of Posterity it is a well-settled point of law,
that in mitigation, if not in bar, of any penal sentence, the defend-
ant may plead, that the generation to which he belonged did not
regard as culpable, or as scandalous, the conduct imputed to him as
a crime by men of a later age ; but that, on the contrary, it was
sanctioned by the prevalent opinions, and countenanced by the
general practice, of his contemporaries. This apology may be
justly alleged on behalf of Newton. In his early days the current
of public sentiment in favour of the slave-trade ran too strongly
to be stemmed, except by the most powerful understanding, guided
by the most healthful conscience. There can be no reason to
distrust the accuracy of the following statement, in which he
adverts to his own particij^ation in it : —

' During the time I was engaged in the slave-trade, I never had
the least scruple as to its lawfulness. I was, upon the whole,
satisfied with it, as the appointment Providence had marked out
for me.' ' However, I considered myself as a sort of jailer or
turnkey, and I was sometimes shocked with an employment that
was perpetually conversant with chains, bolts, and shackles. In
this view I had often petitioned in my prayers that the Lord in
his own time would be pleased to fix me in a more humane
calling.' Such is the dominion of the social over the individual
conscience ! Such the control which the immoral maxims of his
associates may obtain, even over a devout student of Holy Scrip-
ture ! So hopeless is it to shape a right course, even by the aid of
that heavenly compass, unless the navigator shall make allowance
for the disturbing influence of the magnetic currents through
which he is passing ! Eichard Cecil himself, who completed and
republished Newton's Biography, seems to have been blind to the
wide deviation of the needle, by which his friend and brother
evangelist was misled. He gave to their common disciples a new
edition of that work, without so much as one passing remark on
the incongruity with which the warp of homicidal recollections is
there interwoven wdth the woof of devotional exercises. Alas for
the inconsistency of the wisest and the best among us ! But alas
also for the severity with which the untempted censure even the

THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 411

penitent victims of temptation 1 Such censures are not seldom
founded rather on human dogmas, tlian on any divine revelations.
If he who forsakes the error of his ways, has l)een assured hy the
Supreme Judge that the gates of mercy shall be thrown open to
him, who shall presume to close them on such a transgressor,
because he has failed to exhibit all the compunctious mourning
prescribed by some favourite theory of repentance? Though
Newi;on did not smite upon his breast, nor put sackcloth and ashes
under him on the remembrance of his slave-trading, he yet aban-
doned the practice itself, and gravely, though composedly, con-
demned it. Wlien summoned to the bar of the House of Lords as
a witness, he censured, without reserve, in his old age, the pursuits
of his youth, and contributed, by his evidence, to prevent the
crimes to which he had given too much countenance by his con-
fessions as well as by his example. He thus entitled himself, if
not to applause or sympathy, at least to absolution.

To the hard texture of Newton's mind must be ascribed much of
the force, as well as most of the faults, of his character, and much
of the success of his apostolate. It was his province to work at the
foundations of a great and necessary reform in the spirit of the
Established Church of England. His weapon, therefore, was the
pickaxe of the builder rather than the chisel of the sculptor ; or, in
the dialect of his original calling, he had need, not for the delicate
touch which regulates the time-keeper, but for the brawny arm
which turns the windlass. The bark of Peter was at that time
deeply imbedded in the mud banks of a somnolent orthodoxy ; but
when she was well afloat, under the pilotage of Newton and his
brethren, he shaped a steady course, and without shifting a sail
pursued his way to his destined harbour. Or, to drop these nautical
figures, when Newton had gathered from the Bible that creed, for
which the instructions of Whitfield had prepared him, he clung to
it till his last breath with unabated hardihood, sincerity, and
courage. Never molested by any speculative doubts, never de-
pressed by any melancholy misgivings, never embarrassed by the
refinements of the outer world, he took his stand with firmness, and
then advanced with decision, at the command of his own under-
standing, at the bidding of his own conscience, and at the impulse
of his own heart. For, having consecrated these and all his
faculties to the service of God, he lived in the joyful conviction of
the continual presence of that infallible guide. A century of learned
investigation would have availed him infinitely less than this re-
solute fidelity to his own nature. Prayer, obedience, practical
wisdom, contemplative wisdom, and again prayer, each producing
and reproducing the other^ became the unbroken routine oi" his life,

412 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

a circle ever revolving with a still wider range and a more brilliant
radiance. Looking upward, and moving onward, he passed by the
critics and philosophers, the worldly great, and the worldly wise, as
so many busy idlers, who might impede, but who could not advance,
the one great object of his renovated existence. To raise aloft the
banner of the cross, that men might look to it and be saved, — to
exhibit Christ as the alpha and omega of his ministrations, — to in-
culcate this ' foolishness ' as the one true wisdom, — to trample on
all wisdom at variance with this, as but so much gaudy foolishness,
— to derive all motives to holiness, all consolation, fortitude, energy,
and peace from that one central source of light and love, — to
unfold the mystery of a living union with that living head, — to
irradiate with the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness, all the
dark questions which perplex the intellect of fallen man, and all
the still darker inquiries which press with so heavy a burden on his
lieart, — to be, in short, in all the comprehensive fulness of the
words, a preacher of the Gospel — such was the purpose which,
without pause or faltering, occupied, during more than half a
century, the soul of John Newton.

To this arduous task, he brought no exquisite or remarkable
abilities. His writings are characterised by a rich unction of
Christian kindness, by plain sound sense, by a perspicuous and easy
style, and by the natural bloom which always adorns the genuine
fruits of the personal experience, and the unborrowed reflection of
any shrewd observer of human affairs. Cecil, a friendly and most
competent critic, says of his preaching, that ' he appeared perhaps
to least advantage in the pulpit, as he did not generally aim at
accuracy in the composition of his sermons, nor to any address in
the delivery of them. His utterance was far from clear, and his
attitudes ungraceful.' To these faults he frequently added the
intolerable error of preaching without premeditation. What, then,
is the ground on which a place can be assigned to John Newton,
amongst those whose memory ought to outlive the age to which
they belonged?

His title to a niche in the temple of fame rests on the great
effects which many of the best and most observant of his contem-
poraries ascribed to the energy, the decision, and the singleness of
heart, with which he laboured among them. The promise to the
Father of the Faithful, that the doomed city should be spared, if
ten righteous men could be found in it, was an intimation to him
and to his descendants, that the united efforts of even so small a
number of such men would have rendered impossible the wide-
spread depravity of winch the cry had ascended up to Heaven.
For, however deadly may be the contagion propagated by those

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX. 413

who go hand in hand to work wickedness, the sympatlietic inlhicnce
of the smallest band, inflexibly devoted to any wise and holy
enterprise, is more active still. The greater frequency of associations
for evil than for good, and their more extensive results, attest tlie
superior strength of the inducements to form them, not their
superior strength when actually formed. Who can assign a limit
to the dominion over the selfish, inert, and sensual mass, even of a
solitary mind, when wrought up to a great and immutable resolve,
although it be armed with no other authority than that which God
himself, by evident tokens, commits to all his appointed mission-
aries ? The history of all the great moral renovations of any
large bodies of mankind is indeed nothing else than a series of the
biographies of men bearing a general resemblance to John Newton.
Among congregations which adhered to the Church and to tlie
ritual of their forefathers, he assiimed the office, which had been
discharged with far higher powers, and much more conspicuous
success, by Whitfield, among the enraptured crowds which hung
upon his lips. Newton lived to see his pulpit surrounded by the
adult grandchildren of his first hearers, and the tradition of his
doctrine, his piety, and his undeviating perseverance, is a part of
the inheritance of many who at this day stand at the distance of
several descents from them. In the genealogy which connects
the spiritual ancestry of his age with their spiritual progeny in
our own, he holds an eminent place. Himself the child of
Whitfield, he was one of the progenitors of Claudius Buchanan, to
whom the Church in India owes so large a debt of gratitude — of
William Wilberforce, to whom the Church Universal is still more
largely indebted — of Joseph Milner, whom he induced to write
the ' History of the Church ' of ancient times — and of Thomas
Scott, who has bequeathed to the Church, in ages yet to come,
writings of imperishable value, and the memory of a life passed in
no unsuccessful emulation of those of whom this unhallowed world
w^as the least worthy.

Thomas, the tenth child of John Scott, a grazier in Lincolnshire,
was born in P^ebruary 1747. After passing five years to little
profit at a grammar school at Scorton, in that county, he was
apprenticed to a medical practitioner. From that service he was
dismissed for some unexplained, but 'gross' misconduct. At the
age of sixteen he returned home and passed the nine following
years in ' the most lal)orious and dirty parts of the g)-azier"s
business.' The hope that he should one day iulierit tlu; farm on
which he worked, sustained him under these toils, until lie
accidentally discovered that his father had made a will, disposing
of it in favour of another of his sons. To escape the necessity of

414 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

passing his life in menial employments as a shepherd or herdsman,
Thomas Scott forthwith applied himself with vigour to regain and
to enlarge such knowledge of Greek and Latin as he had acquired
at school. Undeterred by the difficulties which so often seem to
forbid, while they really promote, the success of a poor, unaided,
solitary student, he mastered many classical, and some theological
books. Among the last was a Socinian Commentary on the Bible.
This ' poison he drank greedily,' and became ' nearly a Socinian
and Pelagian, and wholly an Arminian.'

With this amount of preparation, and in tliis state of religious
belief, Mr. Scott became a deacon of the Church of Enghind in
March 1773, by the ' laying on of the hands' of the then bishop of
Lincoln. The story of his life from that epoch, occupies nearly 500
pages of a volume, written by his son, with such filial piety, such
guileless simplicity of heart, and so much deep and unostentatious
wisdom, as to give it a jalace among those books which suspend
the critical spirit of the reader during his progress, and leave his
thirst for intercourse with the writer unsatiated to the end. Yet
seldom has a less eventful tale been told. The external incidents
of it may all be comprised in one brief paragraph.

Mr. Scott became curate of Stoke Goldingham in Buckingham-
shire, where he married Mrs. Jane Kell, who bore him a numerous
offspring. From Stoke Goldingham, he removed to Eavenstone,
from Eavenstone to Weston, and from Weston to Olney, all adja-
cent parishes in the same county, in each of which successively he
held the office of curate. After passing more than thirteen years
in these services, he was appointed to preach at a chapel, attached
to a hospital, then standing in Grosvenor Place, where he laboured
during the next seventeen years. In that interval deatli deprived
him of his wife, but the benignity of Providence directed him to
another wise and happy marriage. He was presented, in 1803, to
the rectory of Ashton Sandford, in Buckinghamshire, and died
there in April, 1821.

He died unknown, even by name, to all, or nearly to all, of the
statesmen and warriors, to whose glory the annals of the reign of
George III. are dedicated, although no one of that illustrious band
had really hewn out for himself a monument so sublime and im-
perishable. He died unknown or unheeded by the poets, the philoso-
phers, the historians, and the artists, who during the same momentous
era, had established an intellectual sovereignty in his native land, al-
though he had laid the basis of a wider and more enduring domi-
nion than had been acquired by the most triumphant of their
number. He died neglected, if not despised, by the hierarchy of
the Church of England, although in him she lost a teacher, weighed

THE "evangelical" SUCCESSIOX. 415

against whom those most reverend, right reverend, very reverend
and venerable personages, if all thrown together into the opposing
scale, would at once have kicked the beam. But he died amidst
the regrets, and yet lives in the gratefid remembrance, of nund)t'rs
without number, who, on either side of the Atlantic (in continental,
as well as in insular Britain), had found in his writings such a mass
of diversified instruction, such stores of intellectual and of spiritual
nutriment, such completeness and maturity of divine knowledge,
so steady and so pure a light to lighten the dark places of Holy
Scripture, so absolute a devotedness to truth, and so indefatigable
a pursuit of truth, as they had not fovuid in any or in all of the
theologians who wrote or spake in his own times, and in his own
mother tongue.

Panting to emerge from the mean pursuits to which he had been
born and bred, and deluded by sophistries then generally prevalent,
Mr. Scott had, with the most solemn vows, declared his uncondi-
tional assent and consent to the creeds, the articles, and the liturgy
of the Anglican Churcli, although he had rejected more than one
of the doctrines which those formulas represent as fundamental ; —
doubtless a great offence, which no true disciple of his would ever
excuse or palliate, and which it is impossible to reprobate more
strongly than in the terms of his own public self-condemnation.
The dominion of Pelagius, Socinus, and Arminius over him, was
however but short-lived. They abdicated it in favour of their
rivals, Augustin, Athanasius, and Calvin ; and, imder the title of
' The Force of Truth,' Scott published a narrative of this interior
revolution, which is extolled by Dr. Wilson, the present Bishop of
Calcutta, as only second, and as scarcely inferior, in value, to the
confessions of the great Bishop of Hippo. A venturous eiilogium ;
but it may be safely said that the book is a luminous and dispas-
sionate portraiture of a series of mental phenomena of rare occur-
rence, of deep interest, and of such a character, that no man could
have been the subject of them, without the severest integrity, nor the
delineator of them, without singular perspicacit}'^ and force of mind.

In this remarkable volume, Scott sketches himself at his ori-
ginal curacy in no very attractive colours — as a needy, ])roud,
morose, and ambitious churchman, negligent even of the forms of
private devotion, and wrapt up in those le;irned inquiries, from
which he hoped at some future time to gather literary fame and pro-
fessional advancement. It happened that the mortal illness of two
of his parishioners had failed to draw this eager student from his
books ; but Newton had found his way from his parsonage at
Olney to their bed-sides, with ghostly advice and consolation.
Scott listened meekly to the rebukes which this contrast drew upon

414 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

him from his own conscience. He sought the society of his more
zealous neighbour, and even became an occasional attendant at
his church. But he attended it in vain. On one of those occasions
Newton had selected, as the subject of his discourse, St. Paul's de-
nunciation of the sorcerer Elymas, and Scott was moved to irresis-
tible merriment, by the belief that the preacher was aiming his
uncharitable and pointless shafts at himself, as the ' child of the
devil, full of all subtlety and mischief.' Yet revering the honesty
of his supposed censor, and assm-ed of his own superiority as a con-
troversialist and a scholar, Scott challenged him to a written de-
bate on their religious differences. The proposal was wisely de-
clined. Newton estimated theological debate at its true value, and
perhaps had the discretion to perceive his own comparative poverty
in the weapons of that warfare, and his unskilfulness in the use of
them. He therefore encountered the argumentative letters of his
antagonist by courteous and affectionate answers. He wisely
iudged that in the field of Polemics, that rude and haughty spirit
would have been exasperated into error ; but he perceived that it
was united to an uprightness and a courage which, in the quiet
ways of secluded meditation, might guide him peacefully to the
knowledge and to the love of truth.

This friendly anticipation was soon verified. Scott received an
offer of preferment. He had thirsted and laboured for it, but
nothing could tempt him to set his hand again to a confession from
which his heart dissented. He chose to remain a necessitous curate,
rather than to become a rich but hypocritical incumbent. He has
not explained, and it is vain to conjecture, how he so nearly ap-
proached, without reaching the inference, that the same principle
demanded the abandonment of his poor curacy also, and of his
clerical rank and office. But blessings on him v/ho gives us an
example of genuine integrity, even though it be not absolutely
self-consistent. In his own time, and by his own connexions, his
refusal of preferment was condemned, not as an incomplete sacri-
fice, but as a feeble scrupulosity. From the sting of that censure
he knew how to extract a salutary truth. In his self-communings
on the subject, he inquired Avhy he should receive any human
authority as the foundation of any part of his religious creed, when,
upon a point of moral obligation so incomparably more simple,
they who loved him best, and whom he best loved, could fall into
an error so obvious and so profound. He turned away from his
well-meaning, but ill-judging advisers, with a solemn resolution
that he would ' search the word of Grod with the single intention to
discover whether the articles of the Church of England in general
were or were not agreeable to the Scriptures.'

THE " EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 417

The history of that searcli occupies the larger part of 'The Force
of Truth.' It was pursued during three successive years in retire-
ment, and almost in solitude. The Bible lay continually open on
his table. Day by day, and hour by hour, he implored the Divine
Author of it to become also the infallible interpreter. From page
to page, and from sentence to sentence, he searched, weighed, and
collated every word with unremitting diligence and inextinguish-
able ardour. He does not seem to have armed himself with any
critical apparatus, or to have sought the assistance of any hiunan
commentators. He had rejected the authority of all men over his
faith, and therefore of these men. Yet he was not wholly unaided
by theological advisers. He summoned to his succour a series of
writers, of whose works it seems strange that he should till then
have been ignorant. They are among the most trite and popular
in our langruasfe.

First came Locke, with his ' Essay on the Reasonableness of
Christianity,' which only supplied Scott with arguments in favour
of his Socinian, or, in more modern phrase, his rationalistic errors.
Then Burnet's ' Pastoral Care ' sent him back to the study of the
Scriptures, not without an awful rebuke for his past negligence as
a minister of the Gospel. Tillotson and Jortin next presented
themselves, to teach (as we are told) neither law nor gospel, but a
compromise of both, and tempted him, too successfully, to the
indolent practice of transcribing their sermons for his own pulpit.
Soame Jenyns, with his ' Internal Evidences,' broke up in his
soul an hitherto undiscovered depth of religious feeling, which Dr.
Samuel Clarke contributed again to close up, by his ' Scriptural
Doctrine of the Trinity.' For although Clarke refuted the dogmas
of Socinus, he substituted for them the errors of Arius, from which
Scott afterwards perceived there was a straight, and only not inevi-
table, descent to Atheism. The mystic Law, in his ' Serious Call,'
taught our inquirer the need of a more earnest diligence, and a
more profomad devotion than he had hitherto practised, and drew
fi'om him a vow, which, to his latest hour, he preserved inviolate,
'never more to engage in any pursuit not evidently subservient
to his ministerial usefulness, or to the propagation of Chris-
tianity.'

But, last of all, there appeared in Scott's secret chamber one
before whose majestic presence Locke and Burnet, Tillotson and
Jortin, Jenyns, Clarke, and Law, retreated into obscurit3'- and
silence, like the interlocutors in the Platonic dialogue, when the
voice of Socrates is heard. With his ' Sermon on Justification,'
the great and judicious Hooker put to flight, at once and for ever,
the more oppressive doubts which had overshadowed the mind of

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418 THE " EVAJs^GELICAL " SUCCESSION.

the student, and enabled him to plant his foot immovably on
Luther's rock, stantis aut cadentis ecclesice. He was at once
astonished and delighted to find that the great adversary of the
Puritans, the illustrious champion of the polity of the Church of
England, had announced that doctrine with as full an emphasis,
and with as fearless an unreserve, as the Grerman Keformer, and as
the founders of Methodism.

Up to this period, Scott had never seen the Homilies of that
Church, which her Thirty-fifth Article declares to contain ' a godly
and wholesome doctrine.' He read them with eagerness and with
surprise, for they completely echoed the voices of Luther, of
Hooker, and of '\Miitfield. Convinced, yet shrinking from the
public avowal of his convictions, he opportunely met with one of
the works of Henry Venn, who taught him (what no man had a
better title, or more ability, to teach) the contempt of every motive
which would, for one hour, delay the amplest acknowledgment of
any part of any of the truths which his Saviour had lived to pro-
claim, and had died to establish.

And now the Socinian had adopted the Creed of Nicaea, the
Pelagian had admitted that, unaided by divine grace, every thought
and desire of the heart was immersed in an utter and hopeless cor-
ruption, and the Formalist was convinced that the justification
of sinful man is produced by faith alone, withovit the works either
of the ceremonial or of the moral law. Thus the entire system,
then and since distinguished as * Evangelical,' had gained possession
of his mind. But he drew back from the belief that, notwithstand-
ing the stupendous and unutterable mercy of the Incarnation of
Deity itself, a comparatively small number only of the race whose
nature was thus assumed by their Creator, had, by his irreversible
decree, been elected, to the exclusion of all the rest, and predestined,
not only to eternal happiness, but to an incapacity of forfeiting that
inestimable privilege. He attained, however, to this belief also,
by the devout study of the sacred oracles ; although, in this in-
quiry, he accepted the aid of two writers, each of whom must have
regarded the other as a kind of hopeless riddle, if they could have
read each other's books. These were Lipsius, the grave expositor
of the 'Economy of the Covenants,' and Harvey, the efflorescent
author of ' Theron and Aspasia.'

The whole cycle of doctrine was now complete, and, ever faithful
to the light which he possessed, Scott enforced his new tenets from
his own pulpit, and sat as a child, to receive a more perfect exposi-
tion of them from the lips of Newton. Nearly half a century of
apostolic labour lay before him. During that period he continued
to search and to ponder the Scriptures with an intensity of appli-

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 419

cation, and a perseverance of prayer, of which the records of our
own age and country afford no counterpart. The result was but
to add to the stability of the convictions he had derived from his
early studies. As the world receded from his view, he clung to
them with increased tenacity, and his dying breath attested Ids
indestructible affiance in them.

Such are the facts. They are important, chiefly as forming the
foundation of an argument, which has been very widely diffused,
and cordially accepted, in favour of Mr. Scott's peculiar theological
opinions. He observes that the system which he thus embraced,
was in direct contradiction to his long-cherished views — that his
spirit and temper indisposed him to such a departure from any
position which he had once deliberately taken up — that the change
was hostile to his secular interests — and that it exposed him to
contumelies and contempt, from which no man could slirink with
a more acute sensitiveness. He remarks that tliis change in his
opinions took place very gradually — that it was not preceded or
accompanied by any instruction from those to whose sentiments he
acceded — that the only uninspired books which he consulted were
those of writers of high reputation in the Church of England —
that he was indebted for his opinions to the study of the Scriptures,
incomparably more than to all other studies — and that he read
them with fervent and unceasing prayer for the right understanding
of them. He very solemnly denies that his narrative is clouded
by any enthusiastic dreams or illusions, or tliat it is more or less
than a plain record of so many real occurrences. Hence he infers
that the conclusions to which he attained must necessarily be just
and true; an inference irresistibly following (as he conceives) from
the enormous impieties with which the denial of it is pregnant.

For, if a man devoted to the pursuit of truth, sacrificing his
fondest prejudices, his interest, and his reputation, for the love of
truth — labouring intensely during three successive years, by night
and by day, for the discovery of truth — taking the word of God
as his only authoritative expositor of truth, and studying that word
with earnest and habitual prayer for the attainment of truth ; — if
such a man shall be at last left under any grave and dangerous
error, how escape the revolting consequence, that we may ask and
not receive — seek and not find — knock without having the door
opened — sue for bread and receive a stone — be disappointed in
the confidence we are taught to repose in our Heavenly Father —
and find even the divine promises an insecure foundation of our
hopes? 'Can any man,' exclaims Mr. Scott, 'suppose tliat after
such repeated and continual pleadings of the express promises of
the Lord to this effect, in earnest prayer, according to his appoiut-

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420 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

ment, I should be delivered wp to the teaching of the father of
lies ? Can any one make this conclusion without an evident in-
sinuation that God hath broken his promises ? '

Taunt a Eoman Catholic with his doctrine of infallibility, and
he answers that his creed confines that awful prerogative to the
Christian Church, as represented either by an oecumenical Synod,
or by her supreme earthly Head ; but that such Protestants as Mr.
Scott acknowledge that the number of devout persons and of infal-
lible persons is the same, and believe that, although such persons
are collectively unable to agree, they are individvially unable to err.
Such a disputant leaps over the dilemma of ' the force of truth,'
at a single bound. He denies that Holy Scripture contains any
promise of illumination, excepting of such as shall be conveyed
through the appointed channels, and means of grace, in the Church.
He thinks it no contradiction to the divine word, and certainly no
marvel, that a man should consume a long life in isolated biblical
studies, however energetic, and in solitary meditation and prayer,
however fervent, without discovering the narrow way which leads
to truth and life, or escaping the broad way which leads to error
and to perdition ; for such a man has rejected what his Eoman
Catholic antagonist maintains to be the one source of light, laid
open by Heaven itself for the guidance of man.

Neither are Protestants really hedged up between the adoption
of Mr. Scott's religious system, and the abandonment of their
reliance on the divine promises. For they insist that all such
promises are conditional, and that every promise of divine guidance
is qualified by the condition, express or implied, that the search
for it be made in the pure love of truth, and without the bias of
any secular motive. But it is irrational to say, that Mr. Scott
conducted his inquiries with this entire impartiality. He had the
strongest possible inducement to get rid of his original tenets.
They were utterly inconsistent with his preferment, and even with
his continuance in his sacred office. He tells us that he had ' per-
ceived his Socinian principles to be very disreputable,' and that he
had been compelled ' to conceal them in a great measure.' He
might have stated this much more strongly. It would not merely
have been disreputable, but base and criminal, to have adhered at
once to his opinions and to his profession.

Further, that search for truth, w^ich the divine veracity is
pledged to assist, is a search conducted in the use of those means
which the divine beneficence has seen fit to supply. Of these not
the|[^least considerable is conference with the wise, either in their
per&ons, or in their writings. But, during the three years of his
biblical investigations, Mr. Scott seems to have withdrawn not only

THE "evangelical" SUCCESSION. 421

from all intellectual society, but from all theological reading. His
whole catalogue of auxiliary books would hardly afford serious
occupation for one month to a student of ordinary diligence ; and,
although he afterwards extended his book knowledge more widely,
he seems never to have possessed more than a very slight acquaint-
ance with the works of any divines, ancient or modern. But he
who revolves the text of Holy Scripture without informing himself
how it has been interpreted by any of the great teachers of the
Church, has no right to expect immunity from those errors to
which we are all liable, in all our studies, and on all subjects, when
we wilfully cut ourselves off from the resources of our social
nature, and from a free intercourse with the minds of other
men.

Mr. Scott's alternative ' think with me, or cease to believe that
he who seeks shall find,' implies, or rather affirms, that none ever
sought as he sought, excepting only those who concluded their
search by thinking as he thought. He disposes of all experiments
attended with an opposite result, by denying that they were con-
ducted with the same good faith, simplicity of purpose, earnestness
and devotion, as his own. Such inquirers as found at length any
resting-place rejected by him, were, as he assures us, either persons
leaning to their own understanding — or persons held in bondage
by human authority — or persons incredulous of their own liability
to error — or persons blinded by prejudice, or heated by controversy
— or persons whose dissent from his own conclusions touches only
points of minor importance, that is, does not encroach on any part
of his system, excepting that which relates to the predestination
and final perseverance of the chosen few. Now, it is a matter of
fact, clear and indisputable, that a vast company of those who have
been honoured in the Christian Churches, as worthies of the highest
name, lived and died in a faith far more remote than this from the
faith of Thomas Scott. But it is a mere matter of conjecture, ad-
mitting of no proof whatever, that all of these persons were justly
liable to some one or more of the imjiutations thus cast upon tliem.
And it is a most improbable conjecture. Can any one be named,
who held and taught all Mr. Scott's doctrines, among the throng of
saints and martyrs, and confessors, who flourished between the da3^s
of Clement of Rome and those of Augustin ? Can we ascribe the
belief of them to any of those who have been most illustrious for
piety in the Eoman Catholic communion, as, for example, to St.
Bernard, to Savonarola, to St. Charles Borromeo, to St. Francis De
Sales, to Pascal, to De Saci, or to Fenelon ? Must we conclude
that, in their biblical inquiries, all these illustrious men were either
indevout, or presumptuous, or hasty, or bigoted, or arrogant, or

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422 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION".

prejudiced, or contentious ? Are we to refuse assent to the over-
whelming and undisputed evidence on which we have hitherto
assigned to each of them a place amongst the most learned, devoted,
and reverential lovers and worshippers of divine truth ? Had
Mr. Scott any such acquaintance with the lives or the writings of
the primitive Fathers, or of the modern Catholics, as entitled him
to pronounce this indiscriminate censure on them all ? Is it not
rather the fact, that when he wrote that censure, he was wholly un-
acquainted with the books of any of them, and with the very
names of most of them ?

What, then, is the right inference from the incontrovertible facts,
that during three successive years Mr. Scott laboured devoutly and
energetically to deduce from the Bible the genuine articles of the
Christian faith, and that those labours rendered him an immutable
adherent of the system called Evangelical? The right inference,
we apprehend, is, that in that system is contained whatever was
necessary to his peace, to his holiness, and to his eternal welfare.
For they who seek shall find. They shall find those practical truths
which are essential to their highest good, although they may miss
of some abstract truths, which lie within the domain of science
rather than of practice. In one sense, indeed, each article of the
' Evangelical ' creed, and of every other creed, must either be an
absolute truth, or an absolute untruth. But such articles are con-
templated by the several adherents or opponents of them, in so
many contrary aspects, with such various prepossessions, with so dif-
ferent an use and understanding of words, and with habits of thought
so dissimilar, that there is another sense in which such articles may
be said to be relatively true, and relatively false — true to one man,
false to another. Many agree in the use of a common S3^mbol, who
have yet no meaning in common. Many between whom there is no
external uniformity, are living in a substantial unanimity. Amidst
the mists which envelope us in this life, many opposite deductions
have been made from Holy Scripture, by men who in that other
life, where such mists are dispersed, have doubtless discovered how
much our world is agitated by debates, in which nothing is in fact
at issue — how much disturbed by controversialists between whom
no real difference exists — and how much occupied by questions
which might be decided either way without affecting any vital
principle of the religion to which they relate.

But whatever authority Mr. Scott's studies and prayers may or
may not have imparted to his opinions, they undoubtedly formed
the origin of his future pursuits, and the basis of his eminence, as
the great Scriptural commentator of his age. If regarded only in
a commercial point of view, the story of his biblical labours would

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION, 423

form a curious addition to the chrouiclc of the 'calamities of
authors.'

There was, it seems, in Scott's early days, a publisher whose name
moulders in well-merited oblivion, but whose trading capital
consisted in his own unblushing effrontery, and in the command
which it gave him over the types, the paper, the ink, and the brains
of his credulous neighbours. It occurred to this worthy that a
series of weekly annotations on the Bible, from the pen of Mr.
Scott, in one hundred successive numbers, would yield a handsome
profit to himself, and that the annotator would be splendidly
recompensed by the receipt of the same number of guineas. Some
well-fed authors of our own times may think that a payment of
fifty-two pounds ten shillings in each of two successive years, was
but a niggardly recompense for such labours. Mr. Scott judged
otherwise. It was an addition of fifty per cent, to the annual
income which he earned by officiating four times every Sunday in
two churches, between which he had fourteen miles to walk, and
by ministering on every other day of the week to the patients at a
hospital.

Accordingly, in the year 1788, he sat him down to the composi-
tion of his weekly commentaries. The world had cordially wel-
comed the first fifteen numbers, when the crafty bibliopole an-
nounced that the work must be abandoned, unless the author could
borrow from his friends, and transfer to him, the sum of 5001.
These hard terms having been complied with, the book was finished
in 174 numbers, for which the commentator received 164- guineas.
Then the bookseller became bankrupt, leaving poor Scott to
repay the money he had borrowed for his use. A second book-
seller purchased the stock of the insolvent, reprinted a large part of
it, but refused to account for a shilling of the profits. Kescued by
the Court of Chancery from the grasp of this pirate, Scott next
braved the perils of becoming his own bookseller, and, after printing
two editions of five quarto volumes, and ' scarcely clearing more
than the prime cost,' surrendered himself to fate and Paternoster
Eow, and sold the copyright. At this passage of the tragedy, tlie
stage is darkened by the re-appearance of the Lord Chancellor, at
one time fulminating injunctions, at another recalling his own
thunderbolts in a manner altogether terrific and inexplicable. At
length we reach the catastrophe. It presents to us Thomas Scott,
under the accumulated burdens of sixty-seven years, of sickness,
and of poverty, investigating his accounts, and ascertaining tliat
199,900/. had been 'paid in his lifetime across the counter' for
his theological publications — that he had himself derived from
them an income of a little more than 47/. per annum — that they

K K 4

424 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

had involved him in a debt of about 1200^. — and that all his
worldly wealth consisted of a warehouse-full of unsaleable theology.
Agitated, alarmed, and distressed, but never desponding, he at
length, for the first time, invokes the aid of his friends and fellow-
labourers, among whom the large-souled Charles Simeon first
answers the appeal with affectionate greetings, with numerous orders
for his books, and with a remittance of 560/. for his relief. Others
rapidly follow this good example, and within two months the
warehouse is emptied of its contents, and the great commentator
finds himself possessed of more than 2000L With his debts paid,
his cares dispersed, his heart warmed to his brethren, and his trust
in Gfod justified, the curtain falls on the brave old man applying
himself to a new edition of his work, and toiling with all the vigour
of youth to compile a new concordance, by which he hopes to
emulate and to supersede the vast compilation of Cruden.

Sore vexations doubtless ! A rebuke not altogether unmerited,
of that amial)le inconsistency which, while in deference to a ' re-
morseless logic ' it depicted in the darkest colours the utter de-
pravity of the whole race of man, could see in each individual of it
nothing but truth, honour, and integrity personified! But what,
after all, were such vexations to Thomas Scott? Of what account
were swindlers, blunderers, and suits in Chancery to him, or what
cared he even for sickness, penury, and distress ? The volume for
the elucidation of which he lived had imparted to him that self-
sovereignty which the Porch so vainly promised. Animated by one
changeless purpose, — devoted to one inexhaustible task, never
undertaken but to be finished, never finished but to be resumed,
— governed by a creed to which, in each succeeding year, he clung
more firmly, — rejoicing in the tranquil assurance, that by a divine
decree eternal happiness was his indefeasible inheritance, — blest
with a resoluteness of understanding which turned aside from no
difficulty, and with a mental energy which trampled down the
whole brood of doubts, sophisms, and delusions, — and sustained by
a vigour of body which baffled all fatigue and triumphed over all
disease, — on he went interpreting the word of his Grod, and onward
he could not but go, though ' fractus illabatur orbis,' — though
publishers should cheat and chancellors restrain him, — though
asthma should choke, and fever unnerve him, — though want should
hang on him heavily, and critics censure, and congregations desert
liini, — and though the wife of his bosom should be taken from
him. It mattered not. These things could not move him, nor
prevent his writing and enlarging, and yet again enlarging, his
Commentary. He might safely have challenged the world to pro-
duce a more unfortunate, or a more enviable man.

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSIOX. 425

Enviable for many reasons, and not least so (it is but a seeming
contradiction), becavise be brougbt to his task neither the intel-
lectual powers, nor the intellectual wealth, which we are most
accustomed to admire. In his mental economy, imagination ex-
isted only as a negative quantity, and, therefore, invention, pathos,
vehemence, ardour, and all the other forms of eloquence, were
foreign alike to his pen and to his lips. No exact knowledge of He-
brew, Grreek, or Latin, no familiarity with the literature or the
languages of modern Europe, no patristic or mediaaval learning, no
skill in geography, chronology, political or natural history, no mas-
tery of any moral or political science, and no penetrating critical
acumen, conducted him through the codes or the annals of the
Hebrew theocracy, or illuminated his path amidst the aphorisms,
the prophecies, or the mythic intimations of their inspired writers,
or unabled him to unravel and to complete the elliptical state-
ments, the suggestive reasoning, and the obscure allusions which
more or less darken all the Apostolic Scriptures, and especially
such of them as have been thrown into the epistolary form.

But in this poverty he found his wealth, and illustriously vindi-
cated, in his own person, the bold paradox, ' when I am weak then
am I strong.' He proposed to himself a canon of biblical criti-
cism more perfect than any which had been followed by Origen,
Jerome, Erasmus, or Beza. Believing Grod to be the common
Father of us all, and the Word of Grod to be the common patri-
mony of all His children, he was assured that the real meaning of
it must have been placed within the reach, not only of the learned
few, but also of the unlearned many. But how (he inquired)
should that book, which was so often found by the wise to be
sealed and inscrutitble, be thus intelligible to the simple ? He
returned the answer to his own inquiry. God is truth, and His
word is truth, and all truth must be consistent with itself. He,
therefore, who shall diligently, liuiubly, and devoutly collate every
passage of the divine oracles with the rest, will possess himself of
the key to that inexhaustible treasury, and, in proportion to
the constancy with which he shall repeat this process, will the
clearer pages of the Bible illuminate for him those which are more
obscure, until a reflected and continually expanding light shall
have shed its beams over the whole of the inspired canon.

Mr. Scott's efforts to elucidate the sacred text by the juxtaposi-
tion and comparison of the various parts of it with each other,
were such that a review of them must affect any ordinaiy student
with shame and admiration. It is scarcely possible to count, and
it is vain to conjectiue, the number of the illustrations of the sense
of scriptural words and phrases with which this method fm-nished

426 THE " EVAIs^GELICAL " SUCCESSION.

him. The labour expended in collecting, verifying, and arranging
them all, must have oppressed any mind of less than herculean
vigour. Yet this was but one, and not the most arduous, of the
many employments to which he devoted the scanty leisure allowed
to him by the daily and severe pressure of his pastoral and do-
mestic duties. That leisure was chiefly dedicated to the exposition
of the truths, and to the enforcement of the practical lessons, which
he had extracted from the inspired writings by his indefatigable
collation of every part of them.

They who shall judge Mr. Scott's Commentary on the Bible as a
work of art, or by those rules which literary artists inculcate and
observe, will not pronounce a favourable, and hardly a tolerant,
decision. He often wrote with a haste fatal at once to the matu-
rity and to the methodical arrangement of his thoughts. ' I have
actually known him ' (says his son), ' with great difficulty and suf-
fering, prepare as much copy as he thought would complete the
current number, then, when he had retired to bed and taken an
emetic, called up again to furnish more ; what he had provided
being insufficient for his purpose.' It is not permitted to any
human being to give birth to any mental offspring after so short a
gestation, without consigning it to an existence which must long
be precarious, even though it be eventually protracted by the
vigour of the natural constitution.

From the same biographer we learn that INIr. Scott ' was com-
pelled, in the first instance,' ' to give the result of his own reflec-
tions almost alone, there being little time to consult, much less to
transcribe, from other authors.' This exclusive reliance on his
own resources brought with it the inevitable results of want of
method, of tautology, and of a sameness in the staple of thought,
attesting the common origin of all the successive pages. Thus
tediousness became the besetting sin, not only of the entire work,
but of almost every part and member of it. The unbroken mo-
notony of the style, and the lowness of that uniform level, is main-
tained throughout six quarto volumes, with scarcely one passing
attempt to bestow on any single passage any of the warmth, the
vivacity, or the other embellishments which habit has rendered so
familiar to us all, as to have almost elevated them to the class of
necessaries. Dulness is the one unpardonable crime of authorship.
Nor can the most zealous of Mr. Scott's admirers deny that his
pen has much to answer for on that score. Hence it has come to
pass that this vast biblical Thesaurus, though the greatest theo-
logical performance of our age and country, has never enjoyed
and can never attain, popularity, excepting with those who consult
and study it in the same grave, devout, and practical spirit in

THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCESSIOX. 427

which it was written. In proportion as that sacred harmony exists
hetween the commentator and his readers, is the reverence and
the attachment with which they follow his guidance ; nor would it
be easy to form for any student of the Bible, a better wish, than that
he might drink so deeply of Mr. Scott's spirit, as to lose the power
of perceiving his defects, and the disposition to censure them.

Any such censure would, indeed, be most unreasonable, if not
qualified by a cordial acknowledgment of the merits of that most
elaborate commentary. The style if heavy, is at least plain,
clear, and unambitious. If there is not in those six volumes, a
solitary sentence which could be quoted as an example of pathetic,
fervent, or felicitous composition, it is equally true that they might
be searched in vain for a sentence put together for effect, or merely
interstitial and unmeaning. They are not only replete with
thought, but with a greater amount of solid and indigenous thought
than perhaps any other man ever accumulated in the solitary and
unaided exercise of his own powers of meditation. There they
stand, and shall stand for generations 3^et to come, those bulky
tomes ! a huge Cyclopean mass, defying alike the laws of architec-
ture and the tooth of time ; a vast artificial quarry, from which
inferior builders may be supplied with materials already wrought
and shaped for their puny edifices ; a capacious tank, irrigating the
whole thirsty neighbourhood. True they are embellished by no
delicate workmanship or superfluous ornament, and have nothino-
to satisfy a refined and elegant taste. But let the reader of them
believe, as the writer of them believed, that the words on which
he commented were, in the exact and literal sense, the very words
of Grod himself — that they form the voice, and the only voice,
by which the silence between Heaven and earth has ever been
broken — that they contain the history which alone discloses the
awful origin of our race, and the single prophecy which reveals our
still more awful destiny, and the immutable law of our hidden, as
well as of our external life, and the great charter of our salvation ;
— let the reader implore, as his teacher himself implored, the il-
lumination of every chamber of his soul by rays of light, diverg-
ing from every page of that holy volume ; — let him labour,
as his teacher laboured, to jDenetrate to the deepest and the
richest ores deposited in those inexhaustible mines of wisdom, —
and then he will perceive and feel that Thomas Scott, the com-
paratively unlearned, the positively unskilful, and the superlatively
unamusing commentator, has descended further into the meaning
of the sacred oracles, and has been baptized more copiously into
their spirit, than the most animated and ingenious and accom-
plished of his competitors.

428 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

This saturation of the comment by the spirit of the text is the
true and characteristic merit of Mr. Scott's exegesis. Except by
having the Bible by heart, or in the heart, it would be impossible
for any uninspired man to take a view so wide in its range, and
so boundless in its variety, of the position of the people of Christ,
as betrayed by a corrujit nature, environed by temptations, beset
by dangers, deluded by self-deceits, assailed by the powers of dark-
ness, and, in the midst of all the affections and employments,
the joys and the sorrows of life, continually summoned to exercises
of duty and of self-control. No man, unless so qualified, could
have produced so comjDrehensive a development of the relations
between Deity, contemplated in a unity of essence and a trinity of
persons, and man, contemplated as the object of His creative, re-
deeming, and sanctifying energy ; or of the relations subsisting
between different men, contemj^lated as members of one spiritual
body ; or of the claims, the obligations, and the privileges resulting
from all those relations at once so awful, so mysterious, and so
inextricably complicated with each other. Without the use of
scientific formularies, he has thus brought together a complete
body of divinity. Without aspiring to logical exactness, he has
compiled a complete system of ethics. Without affecting the cha-
racter of a philosopher, he has solved most of the familiar, and
some of the more recondite problems of moral, social, and political
philosophy. His great difficulty was, and wonderful are the efforts
with which he encountered it, to revolve through every part of
this mighty orbit with an eye at once steadfastly compassing
the whole, keeping in view the connection of the several parts, and
surveying each in its due subordination to the rest.

The biblical spirit of Mr. Scott's mind placed him at the distance
of the poles from the neologists of a later day. He accepted every
word of either Testament with the same prostrate reverence of
soul with which the author of the Apocalypse bowed himself down
when ' he heard the voice saying to him, " Come up hither, and I
will show thee things which must be hereafter." ' The doctors of
Germany, and those other doctors by whom Oxford is now replac-
ing her Anglo-Catholic professors of divinity, must of course look
down from their cloudy tabernacles with pity, if not with contempt,
on Thomas Scott, as he submissively plods his way along the ancient
paths with an unhesitating belief in the literal and plenary inspira-
tion of every word of each of the sixty-six books, which collectively
we call the Bible. His great work will, indeed, be consigned by such
critics to the limbo of empty toils, and ponderous vanities. But in
bar of that judgment his advocates will plead that the Bible, as
expounded by the all-believing Thomas Scott, left on his heart and

THE "EVANGELICAL ' SUCCESSIOX. 429

life a more vivid image of Him who is the alpha and the omega of
those sacred writings, than was ever impressed on any half-believ-
ing, half-rejecting interpreter, who has pyrrhonised them into a
series of mythes — that the discijjles of Scott have home the same
similitude more vividly than any who have sat at the feet of our
neologian Gamaliels — and that no ordinary presumption arises in
favour of the superiority of that spiritual culture which has thus
yielded fruits of so much greater excellence.

Mr. Scott did not live to finish his Concordance, though he pub-
lished many other books. They consisted chiefly of sermons or of
homiletical essays, designed to guide the conscience and the con-
duct, and to regulate the affections, of those who, with or without
reason, call and profess themselves Christians. These publications
might pass for so many fragments accidentally broken off from the
author's great work, for they have the same general character.
But in his later years he changed his theological pursuits and style,
and presented himself to the world as a controversialist and an
ecclesiastical historian.

His antagonist was Dr. Prettyman Tomline, successively tutor,
secretary, and biographer of William Pitt, Bishop of Lincoln, and
Bishop of Winchester — a studious pains-taking man, the spoilt
child of fortune, who bestowed on him boundless wealth and dig-
nity ; but less favoured by nature, who refused him the eminence
to which he aspired in letters and theology. The mitre of Wyke-
ham and of Andrews could not rescue him from a wearisome,
lethargic mediocrity. As far as his acceptance at the temj^le of
fame is concerned, arrogance, impertinence, blundering, or heresy,
would have been more venial faults.

After long research, the bishop had convinced himself, and
undertook to convince the world, that the doctrines of election,
predestination, and final perseverance, with other cognate tenets,
composing, collectively, the Calvinistic system, where novelties of
the Church of Geneva, and were not to be found either in Holy
Writ, or in the works of any of the Fathers, or Doctors of the
Church, before John Calvin. To this episcopal * refutation of
Calvinism ' IMr. Scott opposed two octavo volumes of ' Eemarks,
in which the speculations and the narrative of the prelate are
encountered front to front, as subversive not only of the institutes
of the Swiss reformer, but of the foundations of the Christian faith.
No final adjustment of this high debate is ever to be expected ; nor
is there the reasonable prospect even of an approach to such an
adjustment, until it shall be transferred from the field of divinity,
to the more appropriate arena of moral philosophy. The inspired
writers teach morals, not moral science. They proceed on pojjular

430 THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION.

assumptions, and make an unrestrained use of popular language.
They keep as far aloof from ontology and psychology as from astro-
nomy and optics. Their object is only to purify and to save the soul.
The meaner office of explaining the secrets of nature, material or
immaterial, they abandon to the schools. A man may be a perfect
textuary, though altogether destitute of physics or metaphysics.

Heedless, therefore, of the discord of the pulpits, we may with
reasonable safety acquiesce in the prevailing opinion of the philoso-
phers, that a subordinate intelligence may, within the limit of its
powers, exercise a will perfectly free, of which nevertheless every
movement may, with infallible accuracy, have been foreseen by
another and superior intelligence. When the mother raises her
infant to her bosom, or when the guide conducts the caravan to
the fountains in the desert, they both, with unerring certainty,
foresee (that is, predestinate) that the infant, or the pilgrims, will
forthwith slake their thirst, the free will of either being in each
case the instrument by which that foresight or predestination is
verified. But if we suppose a case in which the disparity of in-
tellect is not finite, but infinite, the prescience of such a superior
as to the use which, in any given circumstances, such an inferior
will make of his free will, must also be infinite. The reflection of
the mother, or of the guide, and the intuitions of the Omniscient,
alike accomplish their purposes, and alike fulfil their predestina-
tions, through the agency of the volitions of the objects of their
care. In a world where the whole system of life is carried on by
means of such foresights, it seems strange that we should be per-
plexed with the inquiry, whether a similar dominion can be
exercised over us by the prescience of our Supreme Euler, com-
patibly with our possession of a choice in the dilemmas to which
we are continually reduced. The debate regarding predestination,
would indeed have assumed far less importance in the minds of the
disputants themselves, had it not been for its inevitable connexion
with the far more arduous debate how to reconcile the divine per-
fections with the existence of sin and sorrow within any province
of the divine empire. The complete solution of that inquiry is for
some better and holier state than ours, in which let us hope that
the bishop and his antagonist have long since met to discover and
to adore it.

Mr. Scott's historical labours are comprised in a brief account of
the acts of the Synod of Dort, in which he undertook to correct the
errors into which Bishop Tomline had fallen, by relying on Hey-
lin\s abridgment of them instead of consulting the originals. To
this defence of the Protestant divines of the seventeenth century, he
added a confession of his own faith on the much agitated qiiestions

THE "evangelical" SUCCESSION. 431

of the terms of religious commuuion, of religious liberty, and of
toleration. He taught that the removal of the disabilities affecting
the Koman Catholics, would be not only a great political blunder,
but a grievous sin ; and while he attacked Judaism in the writings
of a certain Rabbi Crool, he defended Christianity against the far
more celebrated Thomas Paine. Like most other voluminous
authors, he also dallied with many subjects on which it was not
permitted to him to enter ; such, for example, as prophecy, and
the Christian ministry. But no man could better afford such dis-
appointments. His Commentary survives him, the enduring monu-
ment to his name, or rather (for such was his own view of it) a
monument which he was graciously permitted to erect, to the
edification of the Church, and to the glory of her great Head, in
every region of the world in which the Word of Grod is now studied
by Englishmen or their descendants, or shall hereafter be pro-
claimed in their mother tongue.

The inscription on the tomb of Pope Grregory the Great, ' Im-
plebatque actu quicquid sermone docebat,' proves, if it be true,
that the great Roman Catholic Saint never taught, for it is certain
that he never fulfilled, the most important of all human duties —
those of parental and of conjugal life. But the virtues of Thomas
Scott were exhibited in all the domestic relations, as his teaching
extended to them all. He was an illustrious example of the great
truth that the sublimest heights of Christian perfection are best
scaled by ascending through the deepest and purest of our earthly
affections to the love of God himself ; and that he who turns aside
from the lower, will scarcely ever rise to the more elevated, of the
two ' kindred points of heaven and home.'

Yet Scott did not seem, on a casual acquaintance, well suited
for the interchange of the kindly offices of domestic life. His
appearance was harsh and uninviting, his features coarse, his eye
lacking lustre, his gait uncouth, his voice asthmatic and dissonant,
and his manner absent and inattentive, like that of a student who
had been dragged by violence from his mute associates into a
reluctant intercourse with his fellow-men. Nor can it be denied
that his natural temper was characterised by asperity and arro-
gance. In his pulpit he too often seemed to scold, and in society
to dogmatise. But beneath this rough surface the seeds of every
Christian grace were constantly germinating, and their energy
became more and more prolific as the time drew near when they
were to be transplanted into the paradise of God, there to bloom
in perennial beauty.

Mr. Scott was an unpopular, and, on the whole, an unsuccessful,
preacher. He trusted to one hour's peripatetic musing for the

432 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

preparation of his sermons, and to the impulse of the moment for
the composition of them — errors so glaring, as to derive no justifi-
cation, and scarcely any apology, from any fulness of mind or
powers of eloquence. But to eloquence in any of the senses of the
word, he had not the most remote claim. He found in his Bible
declarations of the efficacy of preaching, and, in reliance on them,
he persevered from youth to old age in delivering seldom less than
three, and usually four, discourses on each Sunday, neither deterred
by hostile criticism — nor disgusted by the frivolity of the fashion-
able triflers whose nerves he had offended — nor damped by the
joerversity of some of his hearers, or by the scandalous disgrace of
others — nor disheartened by the gradual decline of his congrega-
tion — nor dispirited by finding himself at last the pastor of one of
the most wretched of country villages, inhabited by persons little
raised above pauperism, and not exceeding seventy in number.
And this heroical confidence was vindicated by the event. His
preaching, indeed, had no power over the multitude; but there
was a little company, some of whom always sat reverently at his
feet, to gather the rich ore of scriptural wisdom and ponderous
sense, to which they afterwards imparted more attractive forms,
and so gave it circulation amongst auditors more fastidious than
themselves, though less discerning.

Mr. Scott was not naturally a social man. His table-talk was
exhilarating neither to himself nor to others, although the vigour
of his mind would now and then break out into a proverbial terse-
ness of phrase, and a homely quaintness of illustration, which had
something of the character, and of the effect, of humour. His
colloquial fame must rest on a very different ground. Those with
whom he lived were, in his eyes, the joint heirs with himself of
the same eternal inheritance, and his associates in the same arduous
probation. He therefore poured himself out in a discourse which,
though thoughtful and profoundly serious, was kind and affectionate,
giving assurance of the depth from which it sprang by the height
at which it aimed. We have no right to expect a playful, an
amusing, or a tender companion in a guardian appointed to minister
to us frail mortals in our conflicts with temptation and sorrow. A
compassionate and watchful kindness satisfies the duties of such a
relation, and in such kindness Mr. Scott was never wanting.

He was a poor, and even a necessitous man. His annual income,
professional and literary, seldom approached 200^., and usually
amounted to but half that sum. But the great interpreter of Holy
Scrii)ture was rich in his knowledge of the full meaning of the
promise v/hich he found there — ' Seek ye first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you ; '

THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX. 433

and therefore he dared to cast himself and his family on the divine
fidelity, rejecting preferment which his conscience forbade him to
accept, and never swerving from any principle in order to i)ropitiate
the favour, or to avert tlie displeasure, of the dispensers of popu-
larity and patronage. He lived in severe frugality, in brave inde-
pendence, and in a self-denying charity to those who were still
poorer than himself. When he had exhausted all other means of
assisting them, he stooped (it is difficult to suppose a more painful
condescension) to convert his house into a soi't of public kitchen,
where he and his distressed neighbours could partake together of a
cheap diet, purchased at their joint expense, but prepared and
served at his own charge, seasoned with his cordial greeting, and
animated by his wise and gracious conversation.

Around that humble board were gathered three sons and one
daughter. From the same divine promise he had derived the
habitual assurance (how often beyond the reach of the most affluent !)
that nothing necessary for the real welfare of his children should
be withholden from them. A whole library of treatises on educa-
cation might be studied to less advantage than his brief and simple
account of the method by which he trained them up to tread in
his own footsteps. In his household, punishment, rebuke, and even
direct admonition, were almost unknown. His children listened
from day to day to prayers offered with seriousness and singleness
of heart, and to conversation which, though not apparently, was
yet studiously, directed to raise their minds to the comprehension
and the love of whatsoever things are true and honest, just and
pure, lovely and of good report. From day to day the tempers and
the habits of their parents bore an irresistible testimony to tl\e
perfect sincerity with which those prayers were offered, and that
language employed. It was a healthful moral atmosphere in which
his children grew up. With the keen instinct of their age they
watched the congruity of the discourse and the conduct of their
teachers. With the ductility of youth they imitated what they
thus perceived to be the genuine cliaracter of their parents ; and
their earliest thoughts of the enjoyments and comforts of life be-
came indestructibly associated with the remembrance of the integrity
of those through whose hands those blessings were imparted to
them.

Thus, rich in an imperishable faith in human piety and virtue,
Mr. Scott's sons all became clergymen, and were all devoted to the
diffusion of the doctrines which their father had taught. John
Scott, the eldest of them, published a biography of his father. It
is a narrative which probably no liuman being ever read without
some salutary compunction. It is no monkish legend of supcr-

F F

434 THE "evangelical" SUCCESSION.

stitioiis observances, of cruel self-tormentings, or of romantic
miracles. It tells of no prodigies of penitence, nor of any feats of
preternatural virtue. It shows how a divine and undying light,
fed by the pure word of Grod, and nourished by constant prayer
and meditation, may shine into the heart, and illuminate the path,
and gladden the humble roof and the happy household, of one of
those to whom that Word is an abiding guide and comforter. It
became the happy duty of his son to commemorate and to give to
the world a legend of one saint at least worthy of that awful name,
and to show with what force of intellect, what candour of mind,
and what indefatigable diligence, he laboured to discover the whole
will of God ; — with what a burning zeal, and yet with what a
tranquil energy, he strove to fulfil it; — how acutely he felt the
troubles of life, and how bravely he endured them ; — how con-
stantly progressive, and at length how perfect, was his victory over
the faults and infirmities of his nature ; — with what brotherly
kindness he laboured to promote the best interests of mankind ; —
with what filial affiance he committed himself to the guidance of
his heavenly Father ; — how he sanctified all the homely offices, all
the dearest relations, and all the arduous duties of domestic life ; —
how profound, and yet how simple, was the unadorned wisdom which
flowed so copiously from his pen and from his lips ; — how un-
averted and how confiding was the gaze which, during fifty suc-
cessive years, he fixed on the holy life, and on the atoning death,
of his Saviour ; — and how, in the strength of a living union with
Him, he fought the good fight of faith, and then passed through
the dark waters, agitated but not overwhelmed, cast down, but not
in despair ; and at last made more than conqueror in the strength
of that Divine Master, to whom his life had been consecrated, and
to whom he committed his departing spirit in the sure and certain
hope of a further revelation of the Divine Will, transcending, as
the eternal Heavens transcend this perishing earth, that present
revelation of it, which, he had so laboriously studied and so de-
voutly loved.

Scott was not the only eminent theologian whom Newton could
claim as his disciple or imitator. The work which occupied the
life, and signalised the name, of Joseph Milner, originated in the
example, if not in the suggestions, of the same master. Milner
was the elder of the three sons of a wool-stapler at Leeds ; but
was educated at the University of Cambridge at the expense of a
society instituted for the assistance of young students of remark-
able intelligence and piety. Having been admitted into holy
orders, he became one of the ministers of the High Church at
Hull, and master of the endowed grammar-school at that town.

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 435

There he won for himself a permanent place in literature, and left
a deep impress of his researches and opinions on the minds of his
own, and of later generations.

In the course of his ministry those opinions underwent a change,
which, in a brief memoir prefixed to a volume of his posthumous
sermons, his surviving brother, Isaac, represented as radical and
entire. It was a change which would be described, in popidar
language, as a passing over from the ranks of ' the orthodox ' to
those of ' the evangelical ' clergy. For these conventional terms
his biographer endeavours to substitute a more precise definition ;
but the readers of the memoir would seem with one voice to have
declared their inability to attach any definite meaning to the expla-
nation. The attempt was renewed still more elaborately in the
second edition, but with no happier result. Tlie fact was, that the
distinction which Isaac INIilner so ineffectually laboured to express,
was, in theory at least, so subtile and evanescent, as to escape the
bondage of any words whatever. Neither Crabbe, the synonymist,
nor even Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer, could have discrimi-
nated exactly between the senses of two appellations, so equivocal
in themselves, so tossed about by party spirit, and so continually
shifting in their use.

The knot would perhaps have been best cut, by defining an
orthodox clergyman as one who held, in dull and barren for-
mality, the very same doctrines which the evangelical clergyman
held in cordial and prolific vitality ; or by saying, that they
differed from each other as solemn triflers differ from the profoundly
serious. It was a specific, not a generic distinction. It resulted
from no assignable diversity in the elements of their respective
creeds, nor from any dissimilarity in the manner in which, in either
class, those elements affected, and united with, each other ; but
in the degree in which they were combined in each with that
caloric — the vital heat of the soul itself — which quickens into
animating motives the otherwise inert and torpid mass of doctrinal
opinions.

The opinions of Joseph Milner, when thus vivified, gave birth to
his * History of the Church of Christ.' To the Koman Catholic in-
quiry, ' Where was your religion before Luther ? ' no very satisfactory
answer had been returned by Protestant divines. Their counter
inquiry, ' Where was your face before you washed it this morning ? '
was but a bad argument, thrown into the form of a sorry jest. If the
hands by which such ablutions be performed be rude and violent,
they may so wash the face as to lacerate the epidermis ; just as the
hard scouring of some ancient vase may destroy incrustations coeval
with the work itself. Unskilful and presumptuous hands may tear

F F 2

436 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

n'waj an integral part of what they desire to amend, by mistaking
it for an accidental and injurious accessary ; and such is the error
or the offence which the antagonists of Luther ascribe to him. They
maintain that the creeds and observances of which he despoiled the
Church, belonged to the remotest ecclesiastical antiquity. They
call upon their opponents to specify the time anterior to Luther,
when she appeared among men withovit them, or when she was in-
vested with those ceremonies, and those opinions, with which his
hands arrayed her. They insist that, during a period of fifteen
centuries, the confession of Augsburg and the ritual of Greneva would
have appeared to all Christian people as so many strange innova-
tions. They declare that at every successive era in that long lapse
of ages, the Tridentine decrees would have sounded in Christian
ears but as so many familiar expositions of established truths. They
infer that there is, therefore, an irresistible presumption against the
one, and in favour of the other.

John Newton undertook to refute these assertions, and the
argument thus founded on them. In his ' Observations on Eccle-
siastical History,' he 'attempted to trace the Lutheran, or ' Evan-
gelical ' system, from the apostolic times, until it faded away
before the growth of papal errors, in the sixth and following cen-
turies. It was the deliberate judgment of his friend and critic
William Cowper, that he had proved his superiority, in some of
the essential qualities of an historian, to the author of the ' Decline
and Fall of the Eoman Empire.' The world, however, did not
affirm the sentence of the poet. With far greater learning, and
much more ability, Joseph Milner devoted all the leisure of his
life, and all the resources of his mind, to the accomplishment of
Newton's design. He pledged himself to demonstrate that, from
the days of Peter and of Paul, there had l)een an unbroken succes-
sion of Christian teachers and of Christian societies, among whom
the eternal fire of gospel truth had burnt pure and undefiled by
the errors which were abjured in the sixteenth century by the half
of Christendom.

Milner's qualifications for this enterprise, were a respectable
proficiency in classical knowledge ; a far wider acquaintance with
the Grreek and Latin fathers than was usual at that time and in
this country ; an inflexible regard for truth ; an ardent attachment
to the memory of those heroes of primitive piety, who were at
once the witnesses and the ornaments of his cause ; and the com-
mand of a style, natural and perspicuous, and glowing with a
devout reverence for whatever indicated the presence in the
Church of her Supreme Head, and of her Holy Paraclete. He
lived to complete the greater part of his plan, but left his account

THE '-EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 4;i7

of the German lieformation to be finished by his brother Isaac,
and bequeathed to the most worthy, the privilege of bringing his
history to an end. It fell, as we have seen, into the hands of John,
the son of Thomas Scott.

The Church History of Joseph Milner is one of these books
which may perish with some revolution of the moral and religious
character of the English race, but hardly otherwise. For in a tone
and manner eminently English, it contains the only extant attempt
to deduce the theological genealogy of the British churches from
those of which the Apostles were the immediate founders. Our
national homage for antiquity, and for remote traditions, constrains
us all, and some of us with undisguised reluctance, to attach a
high value to our ecclesiastical ancestry, and to our inheritance,
through them, of our religious opinions. ' The Bible, and the Biljle
only,' may be our rallying cry ; but the ' quod semper, ([uod
ubique,' &c, will never lose its hold on English imaginations, or
on English hearts.

It appears to be the opinion of the most competent judges, that
Milner was unable to establish the theory to which he was pledged.
Indeed his own honest admissions are scarcely to be reconciled
with that theory. If the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians was
really understood by Tertullian, Cyprian, Basil, Chrysostom,
Jerome, or by either Grregory, as it was understood by Martin
Luther, it will follow that our Church historian was either most
unfortunate in examining their writings, or most injudicious in
reporting what he discovered in them. Whatever may be the
truth, or whatever the antiquity, of the Lutheran doctrine of justi-
fication, Milner has not been able to prove that it held, in the
theological system of those Fathers of the Church, the all-impor-
tant work assigned to it by the great Reformer, or by the incom-
parably greater Apostle.

That this polar star of our faith underwent a protracted and
almost a total eclipse, is one of those strange and obstinate facts
which the inquiries of Milner ascertained, and which his integrity
has virtually acknowledged. The explanation of that phenomenon
we suppose to be, that the vital energy of this doctrine has ever
consisted rather in the negation of error, than in the affirmation of
any positive truth, — that, with the reappearance of the opposite
delusion, the Pauline and Luthei-an doctrine lias ever reasserted its
dominion, — and that with the disappearance, or supposed disap-
pearance, of that heresy, the antagonist doctrine has always fallen
into comparative disregard.

Thus, the Jewish people assumed that the Deity considered them
alone as righteous or justified persons, and that He looked on lliy

F F 3

438 THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION.

rest of the childre n of men as cursed with an indelible reprobation.
In defence of this opinion they urged that Abraham, their great
progenitor, had transmitted to them promises, and that Moses, their
great legislator, had given to them a law, from the benefits and
obligations of which the rest of mankind were excluded. This
exclusive privilege was claimed, on the same grounds, by the early
Jewish Christians, except that they acknowledged that heathen con-
verts to the Grospel, who should submit to the law of Moses, a,nd
conform to the Mosaic ritual, might also find a place among the
righteous or 'justified.' To refute this fatal error, St. Paul taught
negatively that no man could be justified by the works of the law,
and affirmatively that men could be justified only by the all-sancti-
fying influence of faith, — that is, by living habitually in that state
of mind, in which the remote is converted into the present, and the
unseen into the visible.

With the overthrow of tlie Jewish economy came the disappear-
ance of this Judaical illusion. The apostolic protests against it
having accomplished their purpose, ceased to retain their original
significance and value. The doctors of the Church dismissed from
their writings and their homilies, what they regarded as an obsolete
warning against an exploded error. But when errors kindred to
that of the Jewish people sprang up in the Christian Church, the
protestation of Paul was also revived to negative and to combat
them. His reasoning with the Gralatians was quoted against the
corresponding fallacies of their own times, by Augustine, by the
early Paulicians, by the Waldenses, by Grrossetete, by Wicliffe, by
Huss, and by Luther. For, in the times of each of them, the Deity
was again represented by the priesthood, and was again regarded by
the laity, as contemplating the whole human family as outcasts
from his presence, with the exception of those only who were reci-
pients of sacerdotal chrisms, indulgences, and absolutions, and w^ho
were observant of a certain discipline, ritual, and routine of external
duties. They, and they only, were, according to this creed, esteemed
by their Creator as righteous or 'justified ' persons. The lie of Lu-
ther's day was but the revival, in another form, of the lie of the day
of Paul of Tarsus, and Luther's contradiction to it was the distinct
echo of the contradiction with which it had been met by the great
Apostle. Among the fathers of the first three centuries, the same
echo was raised faintly and indistinctly, and at length died away
altogether, because in those centmies the lie was uttered in tones
too low and indistinct to wound the ears of the guardians of the
faith, amidst the din of persecutions from without, and of other
controversies from within. It is true, indeed, that the father of lies
and his children will always labour to proj^agate the falsehood, that

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 43i)

•

the divine i;xvour is to be won by burthensome rites, and by certain
external and visible acts. At every period, the ministers of truth
must therefore denounce the fallacy, as Paul and as Luther denounced
it. The absence of such denunciations in the theological writin'-^s
of any age will prove, not that the champions of Truth had deserted
her cause, but that the advocates of Error had desisted from assert-
ing her pretensions — not that the doctrine of justification by faith
had been abandoned by the holy and the wise, but that the doctrine
of justification by works had not been inculcated by the carnal and
the foolish.

Although for this reason, as we believe, JNIilner was unable to
discover much to his immediate purpose in the earlier literature of
the Church, yet his diligence in turning up that long-neglected
soil, was repaid by an abundant harvest. Though he failed to
discover any frequent republication of the apostolic doctrine res-
pecting the piacular inefficacy of any outward acts, and respecting
the saving efficacy of that spiritual state which is designated by the
word Faith, he succeeded in tracing the deep workings of that
vital energy in the meditations, in the writings, in the lives, and in
the deaths of a long and illustrious lineage in which the martyrs,
the confessors, and the fathers of antiquity are connected by an
unbroken and indissoluble chain with the reformers and the mis-
sionaries of these later ages. He ascertained that there had been a
constant succession of holy men, who, amidst great differences of
judgment and still wider diversities of language, had lived and
died in the power of the same faith, maintaining the unity of the
spirit in the bond of peace. He showed that men might live very
Avisely while they reasoned very absurdly, — that much practical
sanctity was consistent with much theoretical error, — that the
victims of many strange superstitions might yet have within them
tlie living fountains of eternal life, — and that to a head impervious
to a syllogism, might be united a heart penetrated with the love of
God and with the love of man. In the Catholic Church he found
a place for not a few Eoman Catholics. He discerned that faith in
Christ had been the ruling principle, and the image of Christ the
acquired likeness, of many, whom a sterner or more ignorant judge
would have condemned as benighted idolaters or bewildered
formalists.

A noble enterprise and an invaluable conclusion ! Though
Milner has been sui-passed by a host of writers in explaining tiie
relations of the Church with the world, and in recording the
occurrences which advanced or retarded her progress to worldly
domination, and although he is but an infant in tlie grasp of his
great German rivals in the history of religious opinions, and of the

F F 4

440 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

iuflueuce of the philosophical sects on the Church, and though it is
impossible to assign to him any rank at all as a philosophical,
luminous, graphic, or animated historian, yet this praise is ex-
clusively his own — he gave the true answer to the taunting
inquiry, ' Where was your religion before Luther ? ' He demon-
strated that it dwelt, if not formally, yet substantially, in the souls,
and that it was manifested, if not without some dross of human
infirmity, yet with distinctness, in the lives, of a long succession of
saints, canonised or uncanonised, reaching backwards from the
sixteenth to the first century of the Christian era; each of whom,
could he have seen the days of the monk of Wittemberg, would
have hailed him as a brother, would have joined in his devotions,
would have sympathised with his hopes, and would have acknow-
ledged that the foundation of their and of his faith was the same,
notwithstanding the seeming inconsistency of their creeds, and the
wide dissimilarity of their respective rituals.

If that posthumous intercourse between the ancient and tiie
modern worthies of the Church Catholic could have been carried
onward from Luther himself to his followers in the Anglican
Church, the mighty dead would have greeted none of them with
more cordiality than Henry Venn, the last of her four great 'Evan-
gelical ' fathers. Vast as is the interval, which, in the estimate of
the world, must ever separate heroical from other men, yet, to
eyes purged and strengthened like those of such imaginary visitors
to discern in the human heart those dormant germs of moral
grandeur, which, under the genial influence of meet occasion,
woidd have borne luxuriant fruit, he would have appeared as be-
longing potentially to that order of mankind, among whom the
highest and most conspicuous place belonged actually to Martin
Luther.

All the paternal ancestors of Henry Venn, from the Eeformation
to his own birth, in the reign of George II., had been in holy
orders, and several of them had been eminent for piety, zeal, or
learning. His father, Richard, was remarkable for his successful
opposition to the appointment to the see of Gloucester of Dr.
Rundle, whose theology was so liberal, as at length to have dis-
solved into a creed, to which any man might assent, who did not
dissent from theism. The story is told with great effect in Lord
Hervey's memoirs, with the addition that Rundle, after having been
rejected by the Church of England, was thrust by Walpole on the
Church of Ireland, where, of course, no defender of the faith arose
to dispute his pretensions to the mitre. Henry, the son of Richard,
adopting the hereditary profession of his family, became succes-
sively Vicar of Huddersfield, in Yorkshire, and Rector of Yelling,

THE " EV.\Jy^GELICAL SUCCESSION. 441

a small village in the county of Ilimtingdou. Failing health
compelled him to abandon the first of these cures, after an in-
cumbency of twelve years, and the second, after twenty-years'
continuance in it. He died in the year 1797, beneath the roof of
his son, John Venn, who having, like himself, observed the law of
his house, was then in the jDossession of the rectory, and residing at
the parsonage of Clapham, in Surrey. Faithful to the example of
his progenitors, and therefore sustaining the same clerical office,
Henry, the son of John Venn, has recently published a brief me-
moir of his grandfather, a collection of his letters, and a new edition
of his ' Complete Duty of Man,' the book on which his fame as an
author and a theologian princiijally depends. His celebrity as a
minister of the Grospel rests on traditions which are not likely soon
to die away; and was not long since resting on the personal re-
collections of some few aged men and women in Yorkshire, whose
hearts and lips overflowed as often as they could find any one to
listen to their accounts of the apostolical teacher, by whom they
had been guided in youth into those paths of pleasantness, which,
even in decrepitude and decay, they still found to be the ways of
peace.

Those traditions, and the writings of Henry Venn, are calculated
to excite thoughts far more befitting the silence of a solitary
evening's walk than the noise and excitement of the press. His
venerable image seems to look upbraidingly on any attempt to
delineate himself or his works in a spirit less devout than his own,
or less exclusively consecrated to the glory of God and to the well-
being of mankind. Yet, it can hardly be at variance with those
great objects of his life to record of him, that he was one of the
most eminent examples of one of the most uncommon of human
excellencies — the possession of perfect and uninterrupted mental
health. As all the chords of a well-tuned harp, or as all the organs
of a well-ordered body, so all the faculties of a well-constituted
mind, contribute, each in its due place and measure, to that har-
mony which is the essence at once of all effective action, and of all
salutary repose. In this sense of the words, Henry Venn was
' made whole,' first by Nature, or that divine patrimony with
which we enter on our present state of being ; and then by Provi-
dence, or that divine beneficence which directs and blesses our
progress through life. The congruity of liis intellectual powers
was not marred by any discord in his affections, nor did either
reason or passion ever abdicate or usurp in his mind the separate
provinces over which they were respectively connnissioned to reign.
There prevailed throughout the whole man, a certain symphony
which enabled hiui to possess his soul in order, in energy, and in

442 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

composure. And as, in all great social enterprises, the perfection
of the success depends on the completeness of the concert between
the various co-operating agents, so in individual life, perfection
can result only from the absolute accord, and the mutual support,
of the various springs of action which animate the solitary agent.
Those qualities which are antagonistic in most men, were con-
sentient in him ; and his talents, though separately of no very
exalted order, became, by their habitual concurrence, of very singular
efficacy. Thus, his athletic sense was associated with a keen taste
for the beautiful, and with a quick perception of the ludicrous.
Though dwelling amidst the most sublime devotional elevations,
his oral and epistolary discourse on those mysterious topics, was
characterised by perfect simplicity and transparent clearness. With
a well-stored memory, he was an independent, if not an original,
thinker. With deep and even vehement attachments, he knew
how to maintain on fit occasions, even towards those whom he
loved best, a judicial gravity, and even a judicial sternness. He
acted with indefatigable energy in the throng of men, and yet, in
solitude, could meditate with unwearied perseverance. He was at
once a preacher, at whose voice multitudes wept or trembled, and
a companion to whose privacy the wise resorted for instruction,
the wretched for comfort, and all for sympathy. In all the exi-
gencies and in all the relations of life, the firmest reliance might
always be placed on his counsels, his support, and his example.
Like St. Paul, he became all things to all men ; and, for the same
reason, that he might by any means save some. For the con-
centration of all his desires on that one object, bore the double
relation of cause and of effect to that concentration of thought and
oneness of mind by which he was distinguished. Keeping that
sino-le end continually in view, he made all the resources within
his reach at all times tributary to it.

To Henry Venn, therefore, among the ' Evangelical ' clergy,
belonged, as by an inherent right, the province which he occupied
of o-iving to the world a perfect and continuous view of their system
of Christian ethics. The sacred consonance of all the passages of
his own life, and the uniform convergence of them all towards one
great design, rendered his conceptions of duty eminently pure,
large and consistent ; gave singular acuteness to his discernment of
moral error ; and imparted a rich and cordial unction to his per-
suasions to obedience.

The Anglican Church already possessed, in the ' Whole Duty of
Man,' a treatise on what Benthani calls ' deontology,' remarkable
for the idiomatic force of its style, for the extent of its popularity,
and for the darkness which envelopes its true authorship. But to

THE " EViVNGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 4i3

Mr. Venn, and to his brethren, it appeared so defective, in the
pursuit of morality downwards to its deep and only sure founda-
tion, that he thought it necessary, not only to lay the basis anew,
but also to erect again the superstructure, with all the variations
and additions consequent on that fundamental change. The
* Complete Duty of Man' has ever since rivalled, if it lias not sur-
passed, the fame and the acceptance of the * Whole Duty of Man,'
and is still one of those few books of which the benefits are never
unfelt, of which the love never abates, and of which the republica-
tion is never long intermitted. Even in our own age of literary
voluptuousness, it retains the undiminished favour of many classes
of readers, although no sacrifice is made in it to gratify the tastes
of any class. It was written from the soul, and therefore to the
soul ; from a full heart, and therefore with genuine tenderness ;
from a profound sense of responsibilit}', and therefore with the
deepest seriousness ; from a full mind, and therefore with no per-
ceptible regard to mere words ; from the most mature experience,
and therefore in a tone which never falters, and in a style perfectly
artless, unrestrained, and perspicuous. He might have borrowed
for this and for all his writings, from his friend, John Newton, the
title of Cardiphonia.

They have passed to their account, these holy men of the
eighteenth century ; and it is neither without the appearance, nor
the consciousness, of presumption, that these attempts are made to
discriminate between them, and to assign to each his appropriate
claims to the gratitude of a later age. All such judgments must
be more or less conjectural, resting on those slight and imperfect
indications of character, which can be discovered in their extant
writings, or in the brief notices in which their contemporaries have
celebrated them. But after every allowance shall have been made
for these sources of error, enough will remain to convince any im-
partial inquirer, that the first generation of the clergy designated
as ' Evangelical,' were the second founders of the Church of Eng-
land — that if not entitled to the praise of genius, of eloquence, or
of profound learning, they were devout, sincere, and genuine men
— that the doctrines of the New Testament were to them a reality,
and the English liturgy a truth — that their public ministrations
and their real meaning were in exact coincidence — that they rose
as much above the Hoadleian formality as above the Marian
superstition — that they revived amongst us the spirit of Paul and
Peter, of Augustine and Boniface, of Wicliffe and Eidley, of Baxter
and Howe, — that they burned with a loyal and enlightened zeal
for the kingdom of Christ, and for those eternal verities on which
that kingdom is founded — that their personal sanctity rose to the

444 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOiY.

same elevation as their theological opinions — and that in all these
respects they formed a contrast, as cheering in one light as it was
melancholy in another, to the spirit which, in that age, character-
ised their clerical brethren. On the other hand, the coincidence
with the spirit and the doctrines of the Methodists, and especially
of Whitfield, was such as to forbid the belief that there existed no
other relations between the two bodies, but that of a simultaneous
existence. It has already, indeed, been shown, that Newton was
the disciple of Whitfield, that Scott was the disciple of Newton,
and that Milner was his imitator ; and it would be easy to show
that Venn lived in a long and friendly intercourse with the great
Itinerant, and officiated with him in places of public worship
which rejected episcopal controuL

But the ' Evangelical Fathers,' bound as they were to the Church
of England by their vows, and deeply attached to her ordinances,
had neither the power nor the wish to emulate the ' Fathers of
Methodism,' by establishing a new ecclesiastical polity. The line
of demarcation between them and the other Anglican clergy, being
therefore indicated by no corresponding difference of government, of
confessions, or of ritual, gradually became less and less definite, until
at length it had been almost wholly obliterated. No one man of
commanding genius arose to lay the foundation of a new spiritual
dynasty ; and no religious system can ever acquire a corporate per-
petuity, or long retain a continuous succession, which does not
commence in some such personal unity. No scholars arose among
them, illustrious for learning, nor any authors to whom the homage
of the world at large has been rendered ; and without such an aris-
tocracy, no intellectual commonwealth can long flourish. Their
theology, also, revolved so much on a very few central points, as to
induce a disastrous facility in catching a superficial acquaintance
with it, and in reproducing it in a plausible imitation. Popular
applause, neither carefully measiu-ed, nor always well merited,
rewarded any eminent success in the advocacy of their peculiar
tenets ; and they were early taught the deep truth of the remark of
Tacitus — ' Pessimum inimicorum genus, laudantes.'

Grradually, also, it came to pass in the Evangelical, as in other
societies, that the symbol was adopted by many who were strangers
to the spirit of the original institution ; — by many an indolent,
trivial, or luxurious aspirant to its advantages, both temporal and
eternal. The terms of membership had never been definite or
severe. Whitfield and his followers had required from those who
joined their standard neither the practice of any peculiar aus-
terities, nor the adoption of any new ritual, nor the abandonment
of any established ceremonies, nor an irksome submission to eccle-

THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 445

siastical autliority, nor the renunciation of any reputable patli to
eminence or to wealth. The distinguishing tenets were few and
easily learned ; the necessary observances neither onerous nor unat-
tended with much pleasurable emotion. In the lapse of years the
discipline of the society imperceptibly declined, and errors coeval
with its existence exhibited themselves in an exaggerated form.
\Mien country gentlemen and merchants, lords spiritual and tem-
poral, and even fashionable ladies gave in their adhesion ; their
dignities uninvaded, their ample expenditure flowing chiefly in its
accustomed channels, and their saloons as crowded, if not as bril-
liant, as before, the spirit of Whitfield was to be traced among his
followers, not so much in the burning zeal and self-devotion of that
extraordinary man, as in his insubordination to episcopal rule, and
in his unquenchable thirst for spiritual excitement. Although the
fields and the market-places no longer echoed to the voice of the
impassioned preacher and the hallelujahs of enraptured myriads,
yet spacious theatres, sacred to such uses, received a countless host
to harangue or to applaud, to recount or to hear adventures of
stirring interest, to listen to exhortations for propagating the Chris-
tian faith to the furthest recesses of the globe, to drop the super-
fluous guinea, and to retire with feelings strangely balanced between
the human and the divine, the glories of heaven and the vanities
of earth.

And then, in obedience to the general law of human affairs,
arrived the day of reaction. A new race of students had grown
up at Oxford. They were men of unsullied, and even severe virtue ;
animated by a devotion which, if not very fervent, was at least
genuine and grave ; conversant with classical literature, and not
without pretensions, more or less considerable, to an acquaintance
with Christian antiquity. As they paced thoughtfully along those
tall avenues, to which, a hundred years before, Wliitfield and the
Wesleys had been accustomed to retire for meditation, they recoiled,
with a mixture of aversion and contempt, from the image of the
crowded assemblages, and the dramatic exercises, in which the suc-
cessors of those great men in the Church of England were per-
forming so conspicuous a part. They revolved, not without indig-
nation, the intellectual barrenness with which that Church had
been stricken, from the time when her most popular teachers had
not merely been satisfied to tread the narrow circle of the ' Evan-
gelical' theology, but had exulted in that bondage as indicating
their possession of a purer light than had visited the other minis-
ters of the Gospel. They invoked, with an occasional sigh, but
not without many a bitter smile, the reappearance amongst us
of a piety more profound and masculine, more meek and con-

446 THE " EVANaELICAL " SUCCESSION.

templative. They believed that such a change in the religions
character of their age and country was a divine command, and
that a commission had been given to themselves to carry it into
effect.

It happened that at this period Mr. Wordsworth had, at Oxford,
a pupil and an imitator, who would have surpassed his master, if
he could have attained to the exquisite felicities of his master's
occasional and better style. The author of the ' Christian Year,'
like the author of the ' Excursion,' inhabited a world in which
the humblest objects, and the most familiar incidents, were sym-
bolical of whatever is most elevated in things spiritual, and most
remote from our experience in things invisible. In the tame sub-
urbs, the dusty roads, and the busy streets of Oxford, Mr. Keble
lived by imagination, not by sight. On every side they teemed for
him with analogies and interpretations of the significance of her
lituro-ical offices, of the mysteries of her priesthood, and of the
temples erected by no human hands in the souls of her worshippers.
When he transferred to the canvas the rich hues in which the sanc-
tuary Avithin the veil of common things was disclosed to his own
eyes, he was accustomed to throw over the j^icture an atmosphere,
which, however brilliant, was not seldom so hazy as to be almost
impervious. "WTiat the Virgin Mother had been to the great
painters of Italy, that the Anglican or Elizabethan Church became
to him. Immaculate in conception, peerless in beauty, resplendent
with every grace, she presented herself to him as a living per-
sonality to be loved and wooed, and as a divine impersonation to
be adored and hymned.

No strains could be more grateful than these to the sensitive
ears which had been wounded by the coarser soimds wafted from
Exeter Hall to the banks of Isis ; and it is one of the caprices of
fortune, which, at the expense of the Professor of Poetry, has con-
ferred on the Professor of Hebrew the honour of bestowing his
patronymic on the league formed under the auspices of their com-
mon Alma Mater, against the ' Evangelical succession.' For,
although the warfare of their holy alliance has chiefly been con-
ducted in the lowlands of Prose, it commenced by an irruption of
the invaders from the mountain tops of Poetry. From first to last,
indeed, their assaults have been more or less Parnassian or Pe-
o-assean. The same hands which wrought at the ' Tracts for the
Times,' strung and swept the chords of the ' Lyra Apostolica.'
In everythiug but rhythm, the tractarian essay was lyrical. In
everything but tediousness, the apostolic lyre was tractarian. To
each belonged the poetical privilege of escaping by a half sense, or
by the half suggestion of a sense, or by words with no sense at all.

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 447

from the dilemma of Mr. Justice Shallow — ' If, sir, you come with
news from the court, I take it, sir, there is but two ways, either to
utter them or to couceal them.'

Mr. Newman was incomparably the most eminent of those trac-
tarians, who chiefly used the instrument of prose. His theoloj^y
differed from that of Mr. Keble, as a substance in a solidified form
differs from itself when in a gaseous form. The style of each
bore the impress of learning, and elevation of sanctity and tender-
ness, but was chargeable with that cloudiness or ambi-dexterity of
meaning which David Hume denounced as the vilest of all the
abuses of the gift of language. But these eminent writers were
still more clearly identified by their unmasculine horror of every-
thing vulgar in belief or in sentiment, and therefore of the ' Evan-
gelical ' tenets as vulgar beyond all other opinions, and of the
' Evangelical ' teachers as vulgar beyond all other men. And as
from Oxford had come forth Wicliffe, to subvert tlie spiritual
power of Eome, and \Miitfield, with a deluge of popular rhetoric,
to overwhelm the hierarchy of England, so in the same venerable
academy arose Messrs. Keble and Newman, to cast down the
stronghold of Protestantism. But they came neither with con-
flagration nor with storm. The genius of refinement, fastidious-
ness, exclusion, and delicacy, attended, if it did not guide, their
movements. They were therefore speedily encumbered by the
throng who will always attach themselves to any leader who ex-
hibits a supercilious contempt for the common herd, and stands
haughtily aloof from it. But they were also followed by the crowd
of aspirants after sacerdotal domination, and by that still larger
crowd, who, not knowing how to distinguish between tlie right
and the duty of private judgment, are rejoiced to repudiate both
the one and the other, as burdens beyond their strength.

It therefore came to pass, in the Oxonian, as in other leagues,
that the head moved forward by the impulse of the tail. Step by
step in their progress, * the Church,' whom they worshipped,
changed her attitude and her aspect. She soon disclaimed her
Elizabethan or statutory origin, and then made vehement efforts
to escape from her Elizabethan or statutory ceremonial. She as-
sumed the title, and laid claim to the character, of the Primitive
Church, or the Church of the Fathers, and at length arrogated to
herself the prerogatives of that Catholic or universal church, which
* lifts her mitred front in courts and palaces,' whether at Eome, at
Moscow, or at Lambeth, but whose presence is never vouchsafed
to any who cannot trace back from apostolic hands an episcopal
succession.

At this stage of the history of the Oxonian league, its progress

448 THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSION.

was quickened and animated Ly tlie panic wliich exhibited itself
from one end to tlie other of the hostile camp. Tlie disciples of
Whitfield and of Wesley united to those of Newton and Scott, of
Milner and of Venn, and, reinforced by the whole strength of the
Nonconformists, began to throw up along the whole field of con-
troversy entrenchments for their own defence, and batteries for
the annoyance of their assailants. Amongst the literary missiles
cast by the contending hosts against each other, there are few
better worth the study of those who wish to estimate the probable
result of the conflict, than the life of Eichard Hurrell Froude. It
was launched from a catapult under the immediate direction of
Messrs. Keble and Newman themselves, and, though it is a book
of no great inherent value, it has a considerable interest as the
only biography which the world possesses, of a confessor of Oxford
Catholicism. It contains a vivid picture of the discipline, the
studies, the opinions, and the mental habits of his fraternity, and
is published by the two great fathers of that school, with the
avowal of their 'own general coincidence' in the opinions and feel-
ings of their disciple. We have thus a delineation at fuU length
of one of those divines who are to effect the conquest which was
attempted in vain by the Bellarmines and the Bossuets of former
times. If it teaches us nothing else, this biography will at least
teach us what is the real extent and urgency of the danger which
has so much disturbed the tranquillity of the guardians of the
Protestant faith of England.

Eichard Hurrell Froude was born, as we read, on the ' Feast of
the Annunciation,' in the year 1803, and died in 1836. He was
an Etonian, a fellow of Oriel College, a priest in holy orders of the
Church of England, the writer of unsuccessful prize essays, and of
jom-nals, letters, and sermons; an occasional contributor to the
periodical literature of his theological associates ; and, during the
last four years of his life, an invalid in search of health, either in
the south of Europe or in the West Indies.

Such are all the incidents of a life to tlie commemoration of
which two octavo volumes have been dedicated. A more intrac-
table story, if regarded merely as a narrative, was never under-
taken. But ]Mr. Froude left behind him a great collection of
papers, which affection would have committed to the fire, though
party spirit has given them to the press. The most unscrupulous
publisher of diaries and private correspondence never offered for
sale a self-analysis more frank or less prepossessing. But the
world is invited to gaze on this suicidal portraiture on account of
« the extreme importance of the views, to the development of which
the whole is meant to be subservient,' and in order that they may

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX. 440

not lose ' the instruction derivaLle from a full exhibition of liis
character as a witness to those views. Heavy as are the penalties
which the editors of these volumes have incurred for their dis-
closure of the infirmities of their friend, the world will probably
absolve them, if they will publish more of the letters which he ap-
pears to have received from his mother, and to have transmitted
to them. One such letter which they have rescued from oblivion,
is worth far more than all which they have published of her son's.
Though both the parent and the child have long since been with-
drawn from the reach of this world's judgment, it yet seems almost
an impiety to transcribe her estimate of his early character, and to
add that the less favourable anticipations which she drew from her
study of him in youth, were but too distinctly veritied in his riper
years. She read his heart with a mother's sagacity, and thus re-
vealed it to himself with a mother's tenderness and truth.

* From his very birth his temper has been peculiar ; pleasing,
intelligent, and attaching, when his mind was undisturbed, and he
was in the company of people who treated him reasonably and
kindly ; but exceedingly impatient under vexatious circumstances ;
very much disposed to find his own amusement in teazing and
vexing others ; and almost entirely incorrigible when it was'
necessary to reprove him. I never could find a successful mode of
treating him. Harshness made him obstinate and gloomy ; calm
and long displeasure made him stupid and sullen ; and kind
patience had not sufficient power over his feelings to force him
to govern himself. After a statement of such great faults, it may
seem an inconsistency to say, that he nevertheless still bore about
him strong marks of a promising character. In all points of sub-
stantial principle his feelings were just and high. He had (for hi.s
age) an unusually deep feeling of admiration for every thing which
was good and noble ; his relish was lively, and his taste good, for
all the pleasures of the imagination ; and he was also quite conscious
of his own faults, and (untempted) had a just dislike to them.'

Exercising a stern and absolute dominion over all the baser
passions, with a keen perception of the beautiful in nature and in
art, and a deep homage for the sublime in morals ; imbued with
the spirit of the classical authors, and delighting in the exercise of
talents which, though they fell far short of excellence, rose as far
above mediocrity, Mr. Fronde might have seemed to want no
promise of an honourable rank in literatvu-e, or of distinction in liis
sacred office. His career was intercepted by a premature death ;
but enough is recorded to show that his aspirations, however noble,
must have been defeated by the pride and moroseness which his
mother's wisdom detected, and which her love disclosed to him-;

G G

450 THE " EV.\NGELICAL " SUCCESSION'.

united as they were to a constitutional distrust of his own powers,
and a weak reliance on other minds for guidance and support. A
spirit at once haughty and unsustained by genuine self-coufidence;
subdued by the stronger will or intellect of other men, and glorying
in that subjection ; regarding the opponents of his masters with an
intolerance exceeding their own ; and, in the midst of all his
animosity towards others, turning with no infrequent indignation
on itself, — might form the basis of a good dramatic sketch, of
which Mr. Froude might not unworthily sustain the burden. But
a ' dialogue of the dead,' in which Greorge Whitfield and Eichard
Froude should be the interlocutors, would be a more appropriate
channel for illustrating the practical uses of ' the Second Reforma-
tion,' and of the Catholic Restoration,' which it is the object of
their respective biographies to illustrate. Rhadamanthus having
dismissed them from his tribunal, they would compare together
their juvenile admiration of the drama, their ascetic discipline at
Oxford, their early dependence on stronger or more resolute minds,
their propensity to self-observation and to self-portraiture, their
contemptuous opinions of the negro race, and the surprise with
which they witnessed the worship of the Church of Rome in lands
where it is still triumphant. So far all is peace, and the concordes
animce exchange such greetings as jDass between disembodied spirits.
But when the tidings brought by the new denizen of the Elysian
fields to the reformer of the eighteenth century, reach his affrighted
shade, the regions of the blessed are disturbed by an unwonted
discord ; and the fiery soul of Whitfield blazes with intense desire
to resume his wanderings through the earth, and to lift up his
voice against the new apostasy.

It was with no unmanly dread of the probe, but from want of
skill or leisure to employ it, that the self-scrutiny of "WTaitfield
seldom or never penetrated much below the surface. Preach he
must ; and when no audience could be brought together, he seized
a pen and preached to himself. The uppermost feeling, be it what
it may, is put down in his journal honestly, vigorously, and devoutly.
Satan is menaced and upbraided. Intimations from heaven are
recorded, without one painful doubt of their origin. He prays and
exults, anticipates tlie future with delight, looks back to the past
with thankfulness, blames himself simply because he thinks him-
self to blame, despairs of nothing, fears nothing, and has not a
moment's ill-will to any human being.

Mr. Froude conducts his written soliloquies in a different spirit.
His introverted gaze analyses with elaborate minuteness the various
motives at the confluence of which his active powers receive their
impulse, and, with perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examination,

THE " EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION. 4.51

until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of his own nature, lie es-
capes to the cheerful light of day by locking up his journal. 'A
friend '(whose real name is as distinctly intimated under its initial
letter, as if it were written at length) ' advises burning confessions.
I cannot make up my mind to that,' observes the penitent ; ' but I
think I can see many points in which it will be likely to do me
good to be cut off for some time from these records.' On such a
siibject the author of 'The Christian Year' was entitled to greater
deference. That bright ornament of the College de Propaganda
at Oxford had also gazed on liis own heart through the mental
microscope, till he had learnt the danger of the excessive use of it.
While admonishing men to approach their Creator not as isolated
beings, but as members of the Universal Church, and while aiding
the inmates of her hallowed courts to worship in strains so pure, so
reverent, and so meek, as to answer not unworthily to the voice of
hope and reconciliation in which she is addressed by her Divine
Head, this 'sweet singer' had so brooded over the evanescent
processes of his own spiritual nature, as not seldom to render his
real meaning imperceptible to his readers, and probabl}^ to himself.
With how sound a judgment he counselled Mr. Froude to burn
his books, may be judged from the following entries in them: —

' I have been talking a great deal to B. about religion to-day. He
seems to take such straightforward practical views of it that, when
I am talking to him, I wonder what I have been bothering myself
with all the summer, and almost doubt how far it is right to allow
myself to indulge in speculations on a subject where all that is
necessary is so plain and obvious.' — ' Yesterday, when I went out
shooting, I fancied I did not care whether I hit or not ; but when
it came to the point, I found myself anxious, and, after having
killed, was not unwilling to let myself be considered a better shot
than I described myself. I had an impulse, too, to let it be thought
that I had only three shots when I really had had four. It was slight,
to be sure, but I felt it.' — ' I have read my journal, though I can
hardly identify myself with the person it describes. It seems like hav-
ing some one under one's guardianship who was an intolerable fool,
and exposed himself to my contempt every moment for the most
ridiculous and trifling motives; and while I was thinking all this,
I went into L.'s room to seek a pair of shoes, and on hearing him
coming got away as silently as possible. Why did I do this ? Did
I think I was doing what L. did not like ? or was it the relic of a
sneaking habit ? I will ask myself these questions again.' — ' I have
a sort of vanity which aims at my own good opinion, and I look for
any thing to prove to myself that I am more anxious to mind myself
than other people. I w^as very hungry, but because I thought the

452 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

charge unreasonable, I tried to shirk the waiter; sneaking!' —
* Yesterday I was much put out by an old fellow chewing tobacco
and spitting across me ; also bad thoughts of various kinds kept
presenting themselves to my mind when it was vacant.' — ' I talked
sillily to-day, as I used to do last term, but took no pleasure in it,
so I am not ashamed. Although I don't recollect any harm of
myself, yet I don't feel that I have made a clean breast of it.' — 'I
forgot to mention that I had been looking round my rooms, and
thinking that they looked comfortable and nice, and that I said in
my heart. Ah, ah I I am warm.' — ' It always suggests itself to me
that a wise thought is wasted when it is kept to myself, against
which, as it is my most bothering temptation, I will set down some
arguments to be called to mind in time of trouble.' — ' Now, I am
proud of this, and think that the knowledge it shows of myself im-
plies a greatness of mind.' — ' These records are no guide to me to
show the state of my mind afterwards ; they ai'e so far from being
exercises of humility, that they lessen the shame of what I record,
just as professions and good-will to other people reconcile us to our
neglect of them.'

The precept ' know thyself came down from heaven; but such
self-knowledge as this has no heavenward tendency. It is no part
of the economy of our nature, nor is it the design of our Maker, that
we should so cunningly unravel the subtle filaments of which our
motives are composed. If a man should subject to such a scrutiny
the feelings of others to himself, he would soon lose his faith in
human virtue and affection. The mind which should thus put to the
question its own workings in the domestic or social relations of life,
would ere long become the victim of a still more fatal scepticism.
Why dream that this reflex operation which, if directed towards
those feelings of which our fellow-creatures are the object, would
infallibly eject from the heart all love and all respect for man, should
strengthen either the love or the fear of God? A well-tutored
conscience aims at breadth rather tlian minuteness of survey, and
tasks itself much more to ascertain general results than to find out
the solution of riddles. So longf as relig-ious men must reveal their
' experiences,' and self-defamation revels in its present impunity,
there is no help for it, but in withholding the applause to which
even lowliness itself aspires for the candour with which it is com-
bined, and the acuteness by which it is embellished.

As it is not by these nice self- observers that the creeds of hoar
antiquity, and the habits of centuries are to be shaken ; so neither
is such high emprise reserved for ascetics who can pause to enu-
merate the slices of bread and butter from which they have ab-
stained. When Whitfield would mortify his body, he set about it

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSIOX. 453

like a man. The paroxysm was short indeed, but terriljle. While
it lasted his diseased imagination brought soul and body into
deadly conflict, the fierce spirit spurning, trampling, and well-nigh
destroying the peccant carcase. Not so the fastidious and relined
* witness to the views ' of the restorers of the Catholic Church.
The strife between his spiritual and animal nature is recorded in his
journal in such terms as these, — ' Looked with greediness to see if
there was goose on the table for dinner.' — ' Meant to have kept a
fast and did abstain from dinner, but at tea eat buttered toast.' —
' Tasted nothing to-day till tea time, and then only one cup and
dry bread.' — ' I liave kept my fast strictly, having taken nothing
till near nine this evening, and then only a cup of tea and a little
bread without butter, but it has not been as easy as it was last.' —
' I made rather a more hearty tea than usual, quite giving up the
notion of a fast in ^Y.'s rooms, and by this weakness have occasioned
another slip.'

Whatever may be thought of the propriety of disclosing such
passages as these, they will provoke a contemptuous smile from no
one who knows much of his own heart. But they may relieve
the anxiety of the alarmists. Luther and Zuingle, Cranmer
and Latimer, may still rest in their honoured graves. ' Take
courage, brother Eidley, we shall liglit up such a flame in England
as shall not soon be put out,' is a prophecy which will not be
defeated by the successors of the Oxonian divines who listened to it,
so long as they shall be vacant to record, and to publish, contrite
reminiscences of a desire for roasted goose, and of an undue indul-
gence in buttered toast.

Yet the will to subvert the doctrines and discipline of the Refor-
mation is not wanting, and is not concealed. Mr. Froude himself,
were he still living, might, indeed, object to be judged by his
careless and familiar letters. No such objection can, however, be
made by the eminent persons who have deliberately given them to
the world on account ' of the truth and extreme importance of the
views to which the whole is meant to be subservient,' and in which
they record their ' own general concurrence.' Of these weighty
truths take the following examples : —

•' You will be shocked at my avowal that I am every day becom-
ing a less and less loyal son of the Eeformation. It appears to me
plain that in all matters which seem to us indifferent, or even
doubtful, we should conform our practices to those of the Church
which has preserved its traditionary practices unbroken. We
cannot know about any seemingly indifferent practice of the Church
of Rome that it is not a development of the apostolic r]6os, and it is
to no purpose to say that we can find no proof of it in the writings

G G 3

454 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

of the first six centuries — they must find a disproof if they would
do any thing." — ' I think people are injudicious who talk against
the Koman Catholics for worshipping saints and honouring the
Virgin and images, &c. These things may perhaps be idolatrous ;
I cannot make up my mind about it.' — ' P. called us the Papal
Protestant Church, in which he proved a double ignorance, as we
are Catholics without the Popery, and (Church of England men
without the Protestantism.' — ' The more I think over that view of
yours about regarding our present communion service, &c. as a
judgment on the Church, and taking it as the crumbs from the
apostles' table, the more I am struck with its fitness to be dwelt
upon as tending to check the intrusion of irreverent thoughts,
without in any way interfering with one's just indignation.' — 'Your
trumpery principle about Scripture being the sole rule of faith in
fundamentals (I nauseate the word), is but a mutilated edition,
without the breadth and axiomatic character, of the original.'—
*Eeally I hate the Reformation and the Reformers more and more,
and have almost made up my mind that the rationalist spirit they
set afloat is the -vlrsuSoTrpo^r^TT;? of the Revelations.' — ' Why do you
praise Ridley ? T)o you know sufficient good about him to counter-
balance the fact, that he was the associate of Cranmer, -Peter
Martyr, and Bucer ? ' — ' I wish you could get to know something of
S. and W.' (Southey and Wordsworth), ' and un-Protestantise,
un-Miltonise them.' — ' Hovj is it we are so much in advance of
our generation V

Spirit of Greorge Whitfield ! how would thy voice, rolled from
* the secret place of thunders,' have overwhelmed these puny
protests against the truths which it was the one business of thy life
to proclaim from the rising to the setting sun ! In what does the
modern creed of Oxford differ from the ancient faith of Rome ?
Hurried along by the abhorred current of advancing knowledge
and social improvement, they have indeed renounced papal domi-
nion, and denied papal infallibility, and rejected the grosser super-
stitions which Rome herself at once despises and promotes. But
a prostrate submission to human authority — the repose of the
wearied or indolent mind on external observances — an escape from
the arduous exercise of man's highest faculties in the worship of
his Maker — and the usurped dominion of the imaginative over the
rational nature, — these are the common characteristics of both
systems.

The Reformation restored to the Christian world its only au-
thentic canon, and its one Supreme Head. It proclaimed the
Scriptures as the rule of life ; and the Divine Redeemer as the
supreme and central object to whom every eye must turn, and on

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 453

whom every hope must rest. It cast down not only the idols
erected for the adoration of the vulgar, but the idolatrous abstrac-
tions to which the worship of more cultivated minds was rendered.
Penetrating the design, and seizing the spirit of the gospels, the
reformers inculcated the faith in which the sentient and the
spiritual in man's compound nature had each its appropriate office;
the one directed to the Eedeemer in his palpable form, the other
to the Divine Paraclete in his hidden agency ; while, united with
these, they exhibited to a sinful, but penitent, race the parental
character of the Omnipresent Deity. iSuch is not the teaching of
the restored theology. The most eminent of its professors have
thrown open the doors of Mr. Fronde's oratory, and have invited
all passers-by to notice in his prayers and meditations ' the absence
of any distinct mention of our Lord and Saviour.' They are ex-
horted not to doubt that there was a real though silent 'allusion to
Christ' under the titles in which the Supreme Being is addressed;
and are told that ' this circumstance may be a comfort to those
who cannot bring themselves to assume the tone of many popular
writers of this day, who yet are discouraged by the peremptoriness
with which it is exacted of them. The truth is, that a mind alive
to its own real state often shrinks to utter what it most dwells
upon ; and is too full of awe and fear to do more than silently hope
what it most wishes.'

It would indeed be presumptuous to pass a censure, or to hazard
an opinion, on the private devotions of any man ; but there is no
such risk in rejecting the apology which the publishers of those
secret exercises have advanced for Mr. Fronde's departure from the
habits of his fellow Christians. Feeble, indeed, and emasculate
must be the system, which, in its delicate distaste for the ' popular
writers of the day,' would bury in silence the name in which every
tongue and language has been summoned to worship and to rejoice.
Well may ' awe and fear ' become all who assume and all who
invoke it. But an 'awe' which 'shrinks to utter ' the name of
Him who was born at Bethlehem, and yet does not fear to use the
name which is ineffable; — a' fear' which can make mention of the
Father, but may not speak of the Brother, of all, — is a feeling
which fairly baffles comprehension. There is a much more simple,
though a less imposing theory. Mr. Froude permitted himself,
and was encouraged by his correspondents, to indulge in the
language of antipathy and scorn towards a large body of his fellow
Christians. It tinges his letters, his journals, and is not without
its influence even on his devotions. Those despised men too often
celebrated the events of their Eedeemer's life, and the benefits of
his passion, in language of offensive familiarity, and invoked Him

6 G 4

456 THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION.

with fond and feeble epithets. Therefore, a good Oxford-Catholic
must envelope in mystic terms all allusion to Him round whom as
its centre the whole Christian system revolves. The line of demar-
cation between themselves and these coarse sentimentalists must be
broad and deep, even though it should exclude those by whom it
is drawn, from all the peculiar and distinctive ground on which the
standard of the reformed Churches has been erected. There is
really nothing to dread from such hostility and from such enemies.
A fine lady visits the United States, and, in loathing against the
salivated and tobacconised republic, becomes an Absolutist. A

* double-first class' theologian overhears the Evangelical psalmody,
and straightway turns Catholic. But Congress will not dissolve at
the bidding of the fair Exclusive ; nor will Exeter Hall be closed to
propitiate the fastidious Double-first. The martyrs of disgust and
the heroes of revolutions are composed of entirely opposite ma-
terials, and are cast in quite different moulds. Nothing truly great
or formidable was ever yet accomplished, in thought or action, by
men whose love for truth was not strong enough to triumph over
their dislike of the offensive objects with which truth may chance
to be associated.

Mr. Froude was the helpless victim of such associations. No-
thing escapes his abhorrence which has been regarded with favour
by his political or religious antagonists. The bill for the Abolition
of Slavery was recommended to Parliament by an Administration
more than suspected of Liberalism in matters ecclesiastical. The

* Witness to Catholic Views,' ' in whose sentiments as a whole,' his
editors concur, visits the West Indies, and they are not afraid to
publish the following report of his feelings : - — 'I have felt it a kind
of duty to maintain in my mind an habitual hostility to the niggers,
and to chuckle over the failures of the new system, as if these poor
wretches concentrated in themselves all the Whiggery, dissent, cant,
and abomination that have been ranged on their side.' Lest this
should pass for a pleasant extravagance, the editors enjoin the
reader not to ' confound the author's view of the negro cause and
of the abstract negro vdth his feelings towards any he should
actually meet ; ' and Professor Tholuck is summoned from Grermany
to explain how the ' originators of error ' may lawfully be the ob-
jects of a good man's hate, and how it may innocently overflow upon
all their clients, kindred, and connections. Mr. Fronde's feelings
towards the ' abstract negro ' would have satisfied the learned Pro-
fessor in his most malevolent mood. ' I am ashamed,' he says, ' I
cannot get over my prejudices against the niggers.' — 'Every one I

* meet seems to me like an incarnation of the whole Anti-Slavery
Society, and Fowell Buxton at their head.' — ' The thing that

TUE " EVANGELICAL SUCCESSIOX. 4.57

i§trikes me as most remarkable in the cut of these niggers is exces-
sive immodesty, a forward stupid familiarity intended for civility,
which prejudices me against them worse even than Buxton's cant
did. It is getting to be the fashion with everybody, even the
planters, to jjraise the emancipation and Mr. Stanley.'

Mr. Fronde, or rather his editors, appear to have fallen into the
error of supposing that their profession gives them not merely the
right to admonish, but the privilege to scold. Lord Stanley and
Mr. Buxton have, however, the consolation of being railed at in
good company. Hampden is ' hated ' with much zeal, though, it
is admitted, with imperfect knowledge. Louis Philippe, and his
associates of the Three Days, receive the following humane bene-
diction — 'I sincerely hope the march of mind in PYance inay yet

jprove a bloody one.'' — ' The election of the wretched B. for ,

and that base fellow H. for , in spite of the exposure,' &c.

Again, the editors protest against our supposing that this is a play-
ful exercise in the art of exaggeration. ' It should be observed,'
they say, ' as in other parts of this volume, that the author used
these w^ords on principle, not as abuse, but as expressing matters
of fact, as a way of bringing before his own mind things as they
are.'

Milton, however, is the especial object of Mr. Fronde's virtuous
abhorrence. He is ' a detestable author.' Mr. Fronde rejoices to
learn something of the Puritans, because, as he says, ' It gives me
a better right to hate Milton, and accounts for many of the things
which most disgusted me in his {iiot in my sense of the tvord)
poetry / ' — 'A lady told me yesterday that you wrote the article
of Sacred Poetry, &c. I thought it did not come up to what I
thought your standard of aversion to Milton.'

Mr. Fronde and his editors must absolutely be delivered over to
the secular arm and club of Dr. Philip, under the writ Be Hcvretico
Castigando, for their wilful obstinacy in rejecting the infallible
sentence of the fathers and ecumenical counsels of the Church
poetical on this article of faith. There is no room for mercy.
Messrs. Froude and Newman are not of the audience, meet but
few, to whom the Immortal addressed himself. They have no
place in that little company to which alone it is reserved to estimate
the powers of such a mind, and reverently to notice its defects.
They belong to that multitude who have to make their choice be-
tween repeating the established poetical creed, and holding their
peace. Why are freethinkers in literature to be endured more
than in religion ? The guilt of Liberalism has clearly been con-
tracted by this rash judgment; and Professor Tholuck being the
witness, it exposes the criminals and the whole society of Oriel, nay,

45S THE " EVAXGELICAL " SUCCESSIO>\

the entire University itself, to the ' diffusive indignation ' of all
who cling to the Catholic faith in poetry.

There are much better things in Mr. Fronde's book than the
preceding quotations might appear to promise. If given as speci-
mens of his powers, tney would do injustice to one whom we wil-
lingly would believe to have been a good and able man, a ripe
scholar, and a devout Christian; though as illustrations of the tem-
per and opinions of those who now sit in Wicliffe's seat, they are
neither unfair nor unimportant. But they may convince all whom
it concerns, that hitherto at least Oxford has not given birth to a
new race of giants, by whom the Evangelical founders and mis-
sionaries of the Church of England are about to be expelled from
their ancient authority, or the Protestant world excluded from the
light of day and the free breath of heaven.

It was but a heartless folly of the surviving friends of Richard
Hurrell Fronde, which thus exhibited him as the foremost in the
reaction against the ' Evangelical ' system. To mark the progress
of that reaction, his brother (who announces himself as J. A.
Fronde, of Exeter College, Oxford) has published a novel called
the ' Nemesis of Faith.' The passage from the flippant shallowness
of the posthumous essayist to the imny scepticism of the living
novelist, has consumed about ten years, although, from first to last,
the direction of it has been unaltered. Mr. Richard Hurrell Froude
had, however, the merit of using his mother-tongue with propriety
and ease. It is the taste of Mr. J. A. Froude to involve his mean-
ing in a style which strives in vain to be Grermanic, and to adorn it
with those meretricious embellishments which he has successfully
borrowed from the modern Parisian romance. This tractarian of
the ' latest development' is the biographer of an imaginary pupil of
Mr. Newman, on whom he bestows the name of ' Markham Suther-
land.' Markham writes several letters to a friend who is made
known to us by the name of ' Arthur,' and Arthur attaches to his
friend's letters a series of commentaries. But Markham and Arthur
are but two names for one person. They have every sentiment
and every opinion in common ; if, indeed, their unmanly pulings
deserve the name of sentiment, or their chloroform dreams can
aspire to the dignity of opinions.

The mouldering walls of an old abbey deliver a discourse to
Markham about ' Paganism,' ' Star Gods,' and * Almighty Pan.'
After secretly avowing to his friend his infidelity, he obtains ordi-
nation and a benefice. Certain ' Evangelical ' and much abused
ladies and gentlemen at a tea-table, wring from him the avowal of
his unbelief. He loses his benefice, and migrates to the Lake of
Como ; where he plays extensively on the flute, writes several irre-

THE '' EV^VXGELICAL SUCCESSIOX. 459

ligious papers, seduces a young married lady, and ends his days in
a monastery. Rousseau himself would have shrunk from making
his Savoyard vicar the hero of his Eloise. Mr. Froude, without
any such embarrassment, prepares his readers for an adulterous
catastrophe, by a series of audacious speculations from a clergyman
on matters religious and ecclesiastical.

To quote almost any page of this book, would be to stain our own
pages, although it would be easy to enliven them by various exhi-
bitions of the writer's estimate of himself and of other men. For
example, Mr. Froude's hero having, for the first time, performed
divine service as a minister of the Church of England, relieves him-
self by the following missive to his correspondent : — '1 felt so sick,.
Arthur. So; I may live to be like Burnet, or Tillotson, or Bishop
Newton, or Archdeacon Paley. May I die sooner ! ' There would
seem a very reasonable probability that this ardent aspiration will
not have been breathed by Mr. J. A. Froude in vain. But the
ludicrous too rapidly makes way for emotions of a far different
kind. The following are no unfair specimens of the general style
of this child and pupil of Oxford Catholicism : —

' Considering all the heresies, the enormous crimes, the wicked-
nesses, the astounding follies which the Bible has been made to jus-
tify, and which its indiscriminate reading has suggested; considering
that it has been indeed the sword which our Lord said that He was
sending ; that not the Devil himself could have invented an imple-
ment more potent to fill the hated ivorld with lies, and blood, and
fury ; I think certainly that to send hawkers over the world, loaded
with copies of this book, scattering it in all places, among all per-
sons — not teaching them to understand it — not standing, like
Moses, between that heavenly light and them, but cramming it
into their own hands as God's book, which He wrote, and they are
to read, each for himself, and learn what they can for themselves
— is the most culpable folly of luhich it is possible for man to be
guilty J

' In Christianity, as in everything else which men have thrown
out of themselves, there is the strangest mixture of what is most
noble with what is most .... I shrink from the only word.'
' Sin, therefore, as commonly understood, is a chimera.'
* Our failures are errors, not crimes; — Nature's discipline with
which Grod teaches us, and as little violations of His law, or
rendering us guilty in His eyes, as the artist's early blunders,
or even ultimate and entire failures, are laying store of guilt on
him.'

' When, when shall we learn that " minds " are governed by laws
as inexorable as physical laws, and that a man can as easily refuse

460 THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION".

to obey what Las power over him, as a steel atom can resist the
magnet ? '

* And why all this murdering ? Sometimes for sins committed
five centuries past, while for those five centuries generation was let
to go on to follow generation in a darkness out of which no deliver-
ance was offered them ; for Israel monopolised God. It is nothing
to say these were peculiar exceptive cases. The nation to whom
they were given never thought them peculiar cases. And what is
Eevelation, if it is but a catalogue of examples, not what we are,
but what we are not, to follow ? No, Arthur, this is not God —
this is a Fiend ! '

From the shelter of his convent Mr. Newman, the former teacher
of Mr. J. A. Froude, has also sent forth a novel — a novel of humour,
drollery, and sarcasm, directed chiefly against those who, ten years
since, were his own zealous and affectionate disciples. The
scouro-e of his contempt is laid with inexorable severity on all who
have been weak enough to be dazzled and misled by the glare of
his sophistry. In a book, which Mr. Newman once regarded as the
rule of his faith, there is an awful woe denounced on those by whom
offences shall come. In reading the work of his brother novelist
with that denunciation in his remembrance, Mr. Newman may per-
haps have been awakened to some other and less exulting feeling
than that of contempt for his dupes. He has consigned one of
them, Kichard Hurrell Froude, to lasting ridicule. He has drawn
another of them, Mr. J. A. Froude, into the awful responsibility
of conceiving in his heart, and publishing with full deliberation,
the ' Nemesis of Faith.' Little as is our sympathy with the author
of that revolting novel, we have still less fellow-feeling for Mr.
Newman, in his new character of Mephistopheles, mocking so
merrily at the delusions he has himself propagated, and heedless
(as it seems) of their fatal consequences. He is at least entitled
to the praise of fairly preparing for the fate which awaits them,
any who shall be simple enough to give heed to his present rea-
sonino-s, to yield to his present persuasions, or to follow his present
example.*

* lu this edition of this book I retain the preceding paragraph, not because
I adhere to it, but because I could not otherwise explain in what sense and to
what extent I now retract it. It was on the 18th of July 1853, that I for the
first time leamt (and the evidence which then reached me was altogether con-
clusive and iiTesistible to show), that I had been mistaken in representing Mr.
Newman as having aimed the ridicule and the sarcasms of his novel against those
who had formerly been his own disciples, and whose imputed errors were the
result of his oavu teaching ; and that those caustic passages had really been de-
signed to chastise the follies of a different class of persons. This discovery im-
poses on me the obligation of thus publicly and unequivocally apologising to

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 4(;i

Let us, however, render to the discarded followers of ]\lr
Newman the justice which he himself refuses them.

Although the reaction at Oxford seems chiefly to have originated
in a certain morbid fastidiousness of taste, yet there was some
apology for the indulgence of that feeling; for while the 'Evan-
gelical ' teaching had grievously degenerated from the standard of
Newton and Scott, of Milner and of Veiui, all the more eminent
opponents of it who had risen up at that university, were men of
letters, and some of them men of large capacity ; and they may
be forgiven, if they cannot be approved, for the contemptuous spirit
in which they contrasted their own intellectual stature with the
dwarfish, sterile, rotatory minds of so many of their more con-
spicuous antagonists. Although this innovation was, in some, but
the relapse into the spiritual bondage from which the Eeformers

Mr. Newman for having done Mm that injustice, and for tlae asperity of the
tei-ms in which, under my misconception of his meaning, I referred to him, I
cannot, however, reproach myself with any other faidt on this subject than
that of didness. Wits so nimble as his are always in danger of being misunder-
stood by slower and more torpid minds ; and td myself at least the mistake into
which I fell was inevitable. It was a very serious but a natural blimder. I
had wholly misconceived the light in which Mr. Newman, and the other
clerical seceders fi'om the Church of England to the Church of Rome, must re-
gard themselves. I had anticipated that men who had grown gi-ey in the as-
siduous inculcation of doctrines which, according to their new or adopted creed,
were nothing less than deadly poison to the souls of their hearers, would have
announced that awfid discovery in the spirit of the most profound self-abase-
ment—would have asked pardon of God and man for the terrible and irreparable
evil of which they now believed themselves to have been the deliberate and
persevering authors — would have been filled with a modest, if not an oppressi\e,
consciousness of the weakness and fallibility of their own judgment, smd of
their extreme liability to error — and would have abounded in compassionate
tenderness for those religious prejudices in which they had themselves been so
recently immersed. — But when, to my surprise, I found them a body of self-
satisfied, self-confident, and contumelious polemics, I read their faceticp, as well
as some of their gTaver passages, in what I must now conclude to have been a
' non-natural ' and injurious sense. Under the bias of some sucli mistake I
have in this book referred to Mr. Newman in one or two other places in terms
which I slioidd not now select, but which it is not now worth while to alter.
He is not a man whose literary or personal reputation will be assailed by any
one who is discreetly jealous of his owii. While utterly dissenting from the
doctrines which he has recently adopted, I render a willing homage to his
genius and his learning, to his mastery of all the resoiu'ces of our English
tongue, to the iutegi'ity with which, for conscience sake, he has abandoned so
many brilliant prospects and long-cherished attachments, and to the spirit with
which he stands erect and fearless in the presence of antipatliics and of calum-
nies before which many a brave man might have quailed. My solicitude not
to be numbered among his enemies and calumniators is dictated by my regard,
not for him, but for myself; for I am well aware that neither his estimation
in the world nor his tranquillity of mind is at all dependent on anytliing
which I have ever written or could ever write respecting him.

462 THE " EVANGELICAL SUCCESSIOX.

bad rescued us, yet, in many more, it was a sincere and resolute
effort to throw round our Protestant liberties tbe safeguards of law
and order, of reverence, and of boar antiquity. Although the
movement brought into action not a few, who, like Mr. Eichard
Hurrell Froude, could never advance beyond the impertinent
minutiae and the ecclesiastical fopperies which became the badges
of their fraternity, yet it called forth a still greater number destined
to break up much fallow or neglected ground in the Grospel field,
and thence to raise harvests of thought which had never before
been gathered in their own generation. And though many of the
husbandmen in that field laboured to exalt, beyond all reasonable
limits, the authority of ecclesiastical traditions, yet even that
attempt may perhaps have been more dangerous in appearance
than in reality.

For, in the great cycle of religious controversy, the questions at
issue remain very much the same from one age to another, though
the terms in which they are stated and discussed are continually
shifting. Thus, from the remotest historical era of the Jewish and
Christian Churches, the strife between the ' Biblical ' and the
* Traditional ' parties has been unaltered in substance, though car-
ried on under many different forms of speech. To each of the
contending hosts an impartial arbitrament must award a certain
measure of truth and justice, and of consequent success. The
Biblicists have always maintained that, in every passage of Holy
Writ, we are listening to words in which the Deity himself has
condescended to afford to us solutions at once complete and
unambiguous, of all the problems in which, as responsible moral
agents, we have any concern. The Traditionists have, with similar
constancy, alleged that since the creation of our race, those sacred
truths by which we are bound to mould our ideas, and to regulate
our conduct, have been transmitted from one depository of them
(patriarchal or sacerdotal) to another; that, in the Bible, those
truths are neither systematically arranged nor logically established,
nor even categorically propounded ; that they are announced by
the inspired writers in language usually so popular and poetical,
often so mythic and abrupt, as must imavoidably have induced
endless diversities and invincible errors, if there had not been, in
the mind of every reader, a preconceived scheme of hereditary
doctrine, into the complex harmony of which all scriptural
revelations might be first received, and then be adjusted and re-
conciled. They who adhere, with severe consistency, to the last
of these opinions, generally take refuge in the Eoman Catholic
fold, as the one secure place of shelter from fatal error. They
who pursue to its consequences the former of these opinions, for

THE "EVANGELICAL" SUCCESSION. 4G.T

the most part find themselves, at length, astray on the bleak
mountains of scepticism, without a track, a resting-place, or a
guide.

Neither of these disputants is, however, in point of fact, thus
inflexibly self-consistent. Loudly as our ' Tractarians ' extol the
authoiity of ecclesiastical tradition, they are not really unconscious
into what an abyss they would be conducted by following that
guidanc3 alone without an habitual appeal, and a constant reference,
to the divine law and to the written testimony. Confidently as
our ' evangelical biblicists' proclaim that the 'Bible and the Bible
only ' is their religion, they still read it inevitably, though often
unconsciously, by the light of those very traditions which their
theory repudiates.

In the New Atlantis, as we learn from the great circumnavigator
who discovered and described it, Christianity was established by
the unassisted teaching of a volume in which were written 'all the
canonical books of the Old and New Testaments.' It had been
placed by St. Bartholomew ' on a great cylindrical pillar of light '
on the sea-shore of the island, whence it was devoutly brought for
the instruction of the islanders, ' by one of the wise men of the
society of Solomon's house.' Francis Bacon, the witness of 'this
miraculous evangelism ' of the Apostle, has, with characteristic
"wisdom, abstained from alleging the yet greater miracle, that the
Atlantean people had succeeded in extracting from those inestimable
leaves any one of the three creeds of the Catholic Church, or any
other dogmatic synopsis of the Christian faith. His narrative, on
the contrary, implies that, in their theological isolation, neither
doctors nor dogmas flourished amongst them ; — that cut off, as they
were, from all intercourse with the Fathers, the Schoolmen, and
the Keformers, they had found their solitary written guide inex-
orably silent on many of the most arduous of the questions which
most deeply affect the actual condition and the prospects of our
race ; — that it had never even occurred to them to assign to divinity
a place among the sciences ; — that they were destitute of all tenets
whatever on many of the subjects most insisted on among other
Christians, such as original sin, baptismal regeneration, the efficacy
of the sacraments, and the like ;— and that, although devout and
learned above all other people, these mere biblicists of the New
Atlantis had never discovered in their language, nor attempted to
invent, any terms in which to define either the mysteries of the
divine nature, or those of the human nature of the divine Ee-
deemer, or those of His real presence in the consecrated elements.
Such, indeed, seems to have been, and such is probably still, the
primitive simplicity of these ' Bible Christians,' that if they shall

4(34 THE "evangelical" SUCCESSION

hereafter be visited by the most ' evangelical ' of our missionaries,
the ' wise men of the society of Solomon's house,' though they have
by heart the volume deposited on the pillar of light, will infallibly
astound their visitors by the assurance that they have never per-
ceived in it, nor conjectured that it could contain, either the sys-
tem of theology which their new teachers will lay before them, or
any other theological system whatever.

If a lawyer, educated in this nineteenth century, should say that
he had o-athered the whole scheme of the British Constitution from
the statutes at large, he would be quite as reasonable as a contem-
porary divine, who should persuade liimself that he had deduced
his creeds and systematic views of Christian doctrine from the Bible,
and the Bible alone. The Doctor, whether he has graduated in law
or in divinity, has grown up from the cradle in the arms of tradi-
tions, and in the lap of prepossessions, which have indelibly im-
pressed their own character on all the knowledge which he has
afterwards derived from his books. We have some myriads of
clero-ymen amongst us, who have subscribed their assent to each of
the three confessions of faith which are comprised in the Anglican
Lituro-y. Will any one of those reverend persons seriously assert
that, without the aid of uninspired teaching, he either did discover
in the sacred text, or could have discovered there, the whole of any
one of those confessions ? or that, if confined to the study of that
text alone, he would have detected a fatal error in the opinion of
the ' Similarity of Substance ? ' — a vital truth in the opinion of the
« Identity of Substance ; ' or that he would have learnt that between
the inversion of the words ' Begotten not made,' and the retaining
those words in their present order, there lay all the difference of a
deadly heresy and an orthodox belief?

Unwelcome as such a conclusion must be to any controversialists,
it seems inevitable to conclude that the Traditional party is far more
biblical, and the Biblical party very far more traditional, than
either of them are willing to suppose, whether of their opponents,
or of themselves. Except by those who rush either into the ex-
treme of spiritual bondage, or into the excesses of spiritual anarch}'-,
these conflicting opinions are held on both sides, with such great,
thouo-h unavowed qualifications, as render them far more innoxious,
in fact, than might be anticipated, from the incautious language of
the disputants. To be thus unconsciously at variance with oneself,
is a mental weakness, which, in a greater or less degree, is only not
universal. Many a man prostrates himself before the shrine of the
Vircrin, in whose heart the spirit of the Bible neutralises the super-
stition which it has not subdued. INIany a man worships in all the
naked siiuplicity of Greneva, in whose mind the traditions of the

THE " EVANGELICAL " SUCCESSION. 4G5

Chiu'ch control the lawless licence with which he boasts, and be-
lieves, that he interprets the Scriptures for himself.

Yet since, for the hearts of most of us, slavery has more attrac-
tions than freedom — since it leads to far more fatal evils — and
since it much more effectually debars us from the highest good —
so is there far greater cause to deprecate the dangers of the tradi-
tional, than those of the biblical, system of belief. For all tradi-
tional knowledge is deeply imbued with the infirmities and the
corruptions of the human agency through which it reaches us. It
ever tends to crystallise into brilliant, but cold, hard, and profitless
theories. But biblical knowledge, like the manna rained on the
wilderness, ever tends to dissolve into a warm, and generous, and
healthful nutriment. From ecclesiastical lore we learn how to be
subtle in distinctions, exact in the analysis of particular doctrines,
and clear-sighted in the synthesis of them all. But from the
Bible, and from the Bible alone, we may derive, though with no
scientific accuracy, and by no logical process, the one great, prolific,
and all-embracing idea — even the idea of Him in whom we live,
and move, and have our being. There also, and there only, we
learn all that is to be known, or rather all that is to be felt and ex-
perienced, of our relations to Him — how they have been impaired
by sin, and how they have been restored by an adorable, though
utterly inscrutable, atonement. There also we discover what are
the spiritual agencies employed for the restoration of our nature to
its primeval image. There, too, is lifted the veil which interposes
between our present and our futm-e state, so far as to disclose to us
that this ' mortal is to put on immortality.' There, in no recondite
learning, no abstruse speculation, nor in any abstract creed, but in
the very person of Christ himself, is exhibited to us the Way, the
Truth, and the Life. There we may contemplate and listen to
Him, who is the ' Word,' or communicative energy, of God. There
is set before us the very image of Deity, so far as it can be projected
on the dark and contracted mirror of our feeble humanity. There
we become cognisant of a spiritual relationship — a consanguinity
of the soul of man with Him who assumed man's nature — an alli-
ance which, though human words can but ill express it, the gospels
reveal to us as not less real, and as far more intimate and enduring,
than those which bind us to each other in domestic life.

These, and such as these, are the disclosures which day by day
dawn with still increasing brightness on him who continually i-efers
to the revealed Word of God for light, and day by day examines by
that light every theological opinion which he has gathered from
any other source. It is because the fathers of the ' Evangelical
succession ' thus continually resorted to Holy Scripture as at once

II H

466 THE "EVANGELICAL SUCCESSION.

the ultimate source and the one criterion of all religious truth,
that we reverently hail them as the restorers and witnesses of the
faith in their own and in succeeding generations. It is in propor-
tion as they who now sit in their seats are in this respect imitating
their example, that we assign to them also their measure of the
same honour. But we do not judge that the like homage may not
be reasonably rendered to many, who, taking their departure from
what is evidently a distant, and apparently an opposite point, are
yet conducted, even by their reverence for ecclesiastical traditions,
to the feet of the same great Teacher, and who study His recorded
life and language with the same childlike affiance and unreserved
docility. In the presence of their common enemies. Sin and Igno-
rance, Superstition and Idolatry, our teachers would, we think, do
wisely to abate much of their mutual alienation and distrust. Their
disciples can, we trust, not be doing ill, or interposing presumptu-
ously, by any attempt, however humble, to promote such reconcile-
ment.

467

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

BiOGBAPHY must be parsimonious of her honours; yet, even in the
age of Burke and Mirabeau, of Napoleon and Wellington, of
Cxoethe and of Walter Scott, she could not have justly refused
them to one who, by paths till then untrodden, reached a social
and political eminence never before attained by any man unaided
by place, by party, or by the sword.

William Wilberforce was born at Hull, on the 24th of August,
1759. His father, a merchant of that town, traced his descent
from a family which had for many generations possessed a large
estate at Wilberfoss, in the East Riding of the county of York.
From that place was derived the name which the taste or the
caprice of his latter progenitors moulded into the form in which it
was borne by their celebrated descendant. His mother was nearly
allied to many persons of consideration, among whom may be
numbered the present Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of
Winchester, and the members of that great London banking house
of which Lord Carrington was formerly the head.

In the commencement of the reign of George III., the Grammar
School of Hull was kept by Joseph Milner, the Church historian,
assisted by his brother Isaac, who afterwards rose to great acade-
mical honours and emoluments in the University of Cambridge.
To attend their lectures, William Wilberforce, then a sickly and
diminutive child, might be daily seen passing along the streets of
his native town with his satchel on his shoulder. Even at that
early age he was himself appointed to teach. So rich were the
tones of his voice, and such the grace and impressiveness with
which it was modulated, that the Milners would lift him on the
table, that his schoolfellows might admire and imitate such a
model in the art of recitation. At a far distant period the same
matchless voice was to be employed in courts and parliaments, in
defence of the theological system, among the confessors and advo-
cates of which each of bis tutors was destined to hold a distinguished
station.

u u 2

468 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

The father of William Wilberforce died before his son had com-
pleted his tenth year, and the ample patrimony which he then
inherited was afterwards largely increased on the death of a
paternal uncle, to whose guardianship his childhood was committed.
By that kinsman he was placed at a school in the immediate
neigbourhood of his own residence, at Wimbledon in Surrey. The
following are the characteristic terms in which, many years after-
wards, the pupil recorded his recollections of this second stage of
his literary education. 'Mr. Chalmers the master, himself a
Scotchman, had an usher of the same nation, whose red beard, for
he scarcely shaved once a month, I shall never forget. They taught
French, arithmetic, and Latin. With G-reek we did not much
meddle. It was frequented chiefly by the sons of merchants, and
they taught, therefore, everything and nothing. Here I continued
some time as a parlour boarder. I was sent at first among the
lodgers, and I can remember even now the nauseous food with
which we were supplied, and which I could not eat without
sickness.'

His early years were not, however, to pass away without some
impressions more important and not less abiding than those which
had been left on his sensitive nerves by the red beard of one of
his Scotch teachers, and by the ill savour of the dinners of the
other. His uncle's wife was a disciple of Greorge Whitfield, and,
under her pious care, he acquired a familiarity with the sacred
writings, and a habit of devotion, the results of which were per-
ceptible throughout the whole of his more mature life. While yet
a school-boy, he had written several religious letters, * much in
accordance with the opinions which he subsequently adopted,' and
which, but for his peremptory interdict, the zeal of some indiscreet
friend would have given to the world. On looking back, after a
long interval, to this part of his youthful training, Mr. Wilberforce
summed up, in the following pithy sentence, his estimate of its
apparent tendency : ' If I had staid with my uncle I should probably
have been a bigoted, despised Methodist.' His mother's earlier
sagacity foresaw what her son's later experience discovered, and
by her he was withdrawn from Wimbledon, and initiated into the
amusements and luxuries of his native city.

The escape from methodism, bigotry, and contempt, was com-
plete. The youth sang, danced, and feasted with the wealthier
inhabitants of Hull, endured their card parties, and admired their
strolling players ; and, lest these spells should be too weak to cast
out the Whitfield spirit from his mind, he was committed by the
same maternal prescience to the care of a professional exorcist of
such demons. He was a sound and well-beneficed divine, a

WILLIAM WILBERFORCK. 469

polished gentleman, an elegant scholar, and master of the endowed
grammar school of Pocklington. To him his pupil was indebted
for some general knowledge of polite literature, and for an intimate
acquaintance with the best dinner tables in that part of the county
of York. From this easy thrall he passed, at the age of seventeen,
to St. John's College, Cambridge, not without a tincture of learning
more than sufficient for the plausibilities of the literary character
which he was there to sustain.

No better choice could have been made, if the object of his
residence at the University had been to repress any aspirations
towards scholarship of a higher order. His companions were
hard-drinking, licentious youths, whose talk was even worse than
their lives. His teachers did their best to make and to keep him
idle. The single problem proposed for his solution was, * Why so
rich a man should trouble himself with faj^gincr ? ' and no Johnian
Archimedes could find the answer. Euclid and Newton were
abandoned for whist, and Thucydides for such other pastimes as
collegiate dulness loves best. With a great Yorkshire pie crown-
ing his table, and with wit, drollery, and song ever flowing from
his lips, the child of fortune passed through his academical course,
the centre of that never-failing crowd, whose aim it is to eat with-
out cost, and to be amused without effort.

' That complete and generous education which fits a man to
perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both
public and private, of peace and war,' was not to be acquired under
such teachers or among such associates. Yet scarcely had Mr.
Wilberforce shaken off that alliance, than he entered on one of the
noblest and most difficult of those offices. Within six weeks from
the sumptuous celebration of the day on which he attained his
majority, he found himself, by the expenditure among the electors
of Hull of more than 8000/., their representative in the House of
Commons.

To make laws is the single employment of adult life which is
supposed to require no preparatory study; which may be one of
the reasons why the studies of half a life are too little for the right
interpretation of such laws as our legislators make. The young
member for Hull, conscious as he was of his ignorance, may yet
have sustained himself with the conviction that he would meet in
Parliament with many as ill provided as he was with political
science, and scarcely with any one so well qualified by the mere in-
stinct of natural sagacity to discuss any question, however un-
familiar, or to adorn it by the embellishments of an insinuating
address, a playful fancy, a brave self-reliance, and a voice which
resembled an Eolian harp controlled by the touch of a St. Cecilia.

H H 3

470 WILLIAM WILBEKFORCE.

He had, indeed, come up to London (such was his rustic sim-
plicity) ' stored with arguments to prove the authenticity of Eow-
ley's poems,' unconscious that, among the gay circle awaiting him,
the sermons delivered in the pulpit of St. Mary Eedcliffe would
have been just as welcome as a debate on the parchments dis-
covered in her tower. Brookes's, White's, and Boodle's received
him with open arms. George Selwyn stood sentinel at the faro-
table to keep away any intrusive good advice. With Fox, Fitz-
patrick, and Sheridan he chatted, or played at cards or dice,
according to the humour of the moment. His suppers were taken
at a club of which William Pitt, Lord Grrenville, and Windham
were assiduous members. At a Shaksperian party at the Boar's
Head he admired the surpassing brilliancy of Pitt, 'the wittiest
man ' (such is his record of that evening) ' he ever knew ; to whose
mind every possible combination of ideas seemed always present,
and who could at once produce whatever he desired.' At Wimble-
don the ghost of his pious aunt might have awakened from the
tomb to see Lord Harrowby, her nephew's guest, alight, not long
before sunrise, at the gates w^hich once were hers, wearing the
triangular hat which had clung by him at the Opera, and, not long
after the sun had risen, William Pitt, another of his guests, in-
dustriously sowing her once-loved flower-beds with the fragments
of it, in order, as he declared, to raise a crop of new ones. At
Burliugton House Mrs. Sheridan sang to him ' old English songs
angelicall}^' At Devonshire House he was himself required to
sing by no mean judge in such matters, Greorge, the too famous
Prince of Wales. One while passing an evening with Mrs. Siddons,
at another exchanging repartees with the ' charming Mrs. Crewe,'
and occasionally speaking with applause in St. Stephen's Chapel (in
those days the best and most fashionable of debating societies), he
floated with the gay crowd down the smooth current of early life,
until the resignation of the Shelburne ministry restored Mr. Pitt to
leisure, and enabled the two friends, accompanied by Mr. Eliot (dear
alike to both of them), to project and execute a summer tour in
France.

This ' march of the allies to Paris ' was directed through the
ancient city of Eheims. As the school in which the future minister
of England and his friends were to study the French language, no
place could have been more judiciously chosen; for, as M. Guizot
teaches us, it is the sacred fountain from whence have flowed all
the streams of our modern civilisation. Yet in the year 1783
Rheims failed to impart to her English visitors the knowledge
which they had proposed to gather there. ' We spent nine or ten
days without making any great progress,' says Mr. Wilberforce,

WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE. 471

* which,' he adds, ' could not indeed be expected of us, as we spoke
to no human being but each other and our Irish courier.' Ten
years later such a secret conclave of foreigners in the metropolis of
an English province would have excited the jealousy of j\Ir. Pitt
himself. Little marvel, then, that in the capital of Champagne it
attracted the inquisitive eye of M. Du Chatel, the Eoyal Intendant
of Police. Who might these mysterious strangers be ? Were they
hatching a conspiracy against the great ally of Washington ? —
England had bitter humiliations to avenge. Or were they in alli-
ance with Count Cagliostro against the purses of his most Christian
Majesty's subjects ? — England, impoverished by war, Avas the too
fertile parent of swindlers seeking after their prey. M. Du Chatel
must look to it !

There was at Rheims, in those days, an Abbe de Legeard, ' a
fellow of infinite humour,' to whom the Intendant disclosed his
suspicions. The Abbe undertook a domiciliary visit to the in-
triguants. He found them as full of humour as himself, liked
their appearance, their manners, and their talk, and ended at last
by a cordial tender to them of his good services.

The son of Chatham stood then in urgent need of such subsidies
as he was destined at a future day to lavish. ' Here we are,' he
exclaimed to the fascinated Abbe, ' in the middle of Champagne,
and can't get any tolerable wine ! ' The Abbe was moved. In his
own cellars was some of the choicest, and it crowned his hospitable
boai"d, during five or six successive hours, for the exhilaration of
his English guests — a symposium doubtless of infinite hilarity,
fearful as may have been its length, to the courteous PVeuchraan.

Rheims began to assume a brighter aspect. Either the future
agitator of Europe, or the future liberator of Africa (history does
not say which), had been the bearer of an introduction to jNI.
Coustier, of that city, from the great Peter Thellusson, and to the
hotel of M. Coustier, their coachman was directed to drive. ' It
was with some surprise that we found him ' (such is Mr. Wilber-
force's contemporary narrative) ' behind a counter distributing
raisins. I had heard that it was very usual for gentlemen on the
Continent to practise some handicraft trade or other for their
amusement, and therefore, for my own part, I concluded that his
taste was in the fig way, and that he was only playing at grocer
for his amusement ; and, viewing the matter in this light, I could
not help admiring the excellence of his imitation.' A genuine
grocer, however, was M. Coustier. But he was un brave homme
to boot, and at the request of milords Anglais mounted his wig
and sword, and ushered them to the house of one of his best cus-
tomers among the noblesse. This was no other than M. Du Chatel

H H 4

472 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

himself. ' Eelatious of peace and amity ' were established between
the Intendant and the suspects. He introduced them to the
Archbishop, and the Archbishop gave them ' two very good and
pleasant dinners,' with an invitation to spend a week at his palace.
The following is the portrait which Mr. Wilberforce has bequeathed
to posterity of this agreeable prelate. ' Archbishops in England
are not like archbishops in France. These last are jolly fellows,
of about forty years of age, who play at billiards, and live like
other people.'

In October, Paris opened her gates to the three members of the
British Parliament. Mr. Wilberforce's memorabilia of their sojourn
there resemble the brief notes so often found in the hands of
' honourable gentlemen ' when rising to take part in a debate.
From these fragments, however, we collect that they associated
with Vergennes, La Fayette, and Marmontel — that they followed
the court to Fontainebleau — that there Mr. Pitt hunted the stag on
horseback, while his companions in a chaise hunted the boar —
that Louis XVL on that occasion presented himself * in immense
boots, a clumsy strange figure, of the hog kind' — that at Madame
de Polignac's 'poor Marie Antoinette chatted easily,' and rallied
them with inquiries after their friend M. Coustier, the epicier —
that they passed an evening with Benjamin Franklin — that 'all
the men and women crowded round Pitt in shoals, who behaved
with great spirit, though he was sometimes a little bored when
they talked to him about 'the Parliamentary Eeform' — and that
he was at length rescued from the crowd of his admirers by Iris,
who, in the shape of a king's messenger, suddenly appeared at
Paris, charged with despatches from the Jupiter Londinensis.

The object of this royal summons was to secure the aid of Mr.
Pitt in opposing the India Bill, and in turning out the authors of
it. He obeyed ; and in the struggle in which he was soon after-
wards engaged with the majority of the House of Commons, he
found no more zealous or effective supporter than the partaker of
his amusements at Paris and at Kheims.

The Coalition Ministry was now the one object of popular
invective ; and, at a public meeting in the Castle Yard at York, in
March, 1784, Mr. Wilberforce, in a speech, welcomed with the
loudest plaudits, contributed his share of invective against the
Unholy Alliance. In an account of the scene which he transmitted
to Mr. Dundas, James Boswell described it in terms equally cha-
racteristic of the speaker and of himself. ' I saw,' he says, ' what
seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table ; but, as I listened,
he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale.'

A still more convincing attestation of his eloquence on this

AYILLIMI WILBERFORCE. 473

occasion is to be found in the consequences to which it led. j\Ir.
Wilberforce had attended this meeting with the avowed purpose
of defeating the influence of the great Whig families of Yorkshire
at the approaching general election, and with the unavowed
purpose of becoming himself a candidate for the county. From
' Wilberforce and Liberty,' the cry raised by his auditors while he
spoke, the transition was obvious and easy to the cry of ' Wilber-
force for Yorkshire ' when he concluded. The current of popular
favour flowed strongly in his support, for he appeared as the
tribune of the people against the patricians of the North ; he had
opposed the India Bill ; he had denounced the Coalition ; and he
enjoyed the personal affection of Mr. Pitt, then rich in hereditary
honours, in personal renown, and in the brightest promise. Large
subscriptions defrayed the expense of the contest, and his aristo-
cratic opponents, without venturing to the poll, surrendered to him
a seat which he continued to occupy without intermission in many
successive Parliaments.

With this memorable triumph, Mr. Wilberforce closed his twenty-
fifth year. He was now in possession of whatever could exalt the
hopes of a candidate for fame on the noblest theatre of civil action
which at that period had ever been thrown open to the ambition of
private men. But the appointed hour had also struck, from which
a new direction was to be given to the thoughts and the pursuits
of this favourite of nature and of fortune.

Accompanied by some of his female relatives, and by Isaac
Milner, one of his two earliest tutors, the new member for the
county of York, before appearing in the House of Commons in that
capacity, undertook a journey to the south of France, and thence
through Switzerland to Spa. This expedition (interrupted by a
brief return to England in the winter of 1784-5) was extended
during some months, and forms a memorable era in his life. The
lessons he had learnt in childhood at Wimbledon, had left an indelible
impression on his mind. The dissipation of his subsequent days
had but retarded the growth of those seeds of early piety. The
companions of his youth had not been without frequent intimations
that their gay associate was silently revolving deeper thoughts
than those which formed the staple of their ordinary social inter-
course. These were now to take entire possession of his mind, and
to become the life and mainsprings of his future existence. The
opinions of Greorge Whitfield had found a more impressive exposi-
tor than the good lady who had originally inculcated them upon
him.

Isaac Milner was a man of strong native sense, and of no incon-
siderable learning, and would probably have attained to celebrity.

474 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

both in science and in theology, if the too early possession of three
rich ecclesiastical and academic sinecures had not enabled him to
gratify his constitutional indolence. In a narrow collegiate circle
he exercised a colloquial despotism akin to that which Samuel
Johnson had enjoyed, and to which Samuel Parr had aspired,
among the men of letters and statesmen of their age. But Milner's
dogmatism was relieved by a tenderness of heart not inferior to that
of the great lexicographer, and was informed by a divinity incom-
parably more profound than that of the grandiloquent grammarian.
He was among the dearest of tlie friends of Mr. Wilberforce, and
now became his spiritual preceptor and guide.

And now our narrative has reached a point at which the ground
over which we have to pass becomes tremulous and unstable. If
we adopt the orthodox style of the Episcopalian Churches, we must
record that ' the baptismal seed, long dormant in the soul of Isaac
Milner's pupil, began at length to germinate and to yield its fruit.'
If we prefer the language of a more popular theology, it must be
stated that ' the conversion . of Mr. Wilberforce took place in the
twenty-sixth year of his age, and during his journey to Nice.'
There are, we doubt not, those to whom each of these forms of
speech conveys an intelligible meaning. But there are others who
can perceive in them nothing more than abtruse metaphors or
rhetorical tropes; and they, in a deep consciousness of their own
ignorance, referring all such mysteries both to that revelation of
the divine will which is * written with ink,' and to that other
revelation of it which is ^vritten 'on the fleshly tables of the
heart,' will learn from each of those revelations that the human
mind is subject to a sacred influence, which, like the wind, bloweth
where it listeth, although it be given to none to discover whence it
Cometh or whither it goeth.

It is a fact, which few, if any, self-observers will deny, that, in
the interior life of every man, there are occurrences explicable on
no hypothesis but that of the direct intervention of the Supreme
Euler of the Universe for the spiritual improvement of his rational
creatures. Such events may be considered either as parts of some
gi-eat predetermined system, or as immediate interpositions of the
Deity in particular cases. Each supposition alike refers to that
divine origin those salutary changes in human character which the
least thoughtful so often notice, and which even the most depraved
not seldom undergo.

Such a change, when enduring and complete, is designated in
the familiar theological terminology as ' a new birth ; ' and if it be
allowable to assign a definite sense to a phrase so much darkened
by the rhetorical use of it, ' the new birth ' may be said to consist

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 475

iu the progressive coincidence of inclination and of duty, or in the
divorce of obedience from self-denial. A slow, a laborious, and an
imperfect process indeed with the best of ns ! Yet, in very many,
an evident reality attested by the most conclusive proofs. The
very day-dreams on this subject, which are floating in most minds
and iu most societies, are themselves a sufficient evidence of the
existence of substantial things on which they rest as a basis, and
which they indistinctly reflect and dimly shadow forth to us.

But when such a phenomenon is alleged by the biographers of
any man, they are bound to distinguish, as clearly as may be,
between his original and his superinduced character, and to explain,
in unambiguous language, in what the new man differed from the
old. A hard necessity, if not a desperate attempt ! Yet an at-
tempt to be reverently made, if we would not dismiss, unsolved
and unexamined, the most curious problem which the life of Mr.
Wilberforce raises or suggests.

Man, as he is delineated by the great masters of fiction, is made
up of elements which are at once incongruous, inharmonious, con-
flicting, and yet compatible. Man, as he is drawn by inferior
artists, is the impersonation of some one dominant propensity
which possesses, guides, and individualises him. Thus Lawrence
Sterne has filled up his canvass with four figures, each of whom,
like one of Joanna Baillie's heroes, is in bondage to some one
tyrannical passion. To Mr. Shandy is assigned the love of wisdom,
— to Uncle Toby the wisdom of love, — to Corporal Trim heart-
loyalty to his captain, — and to Yorick a versatile sympathy, by
which the humours of all the rest are caught, and heightened, and
reflected. Shakspeare or Cervantes would have known how to
blend the whole group into one complex man — a composite yet
not irreconcilable assemblage of dissimilar qualities — a veritable
unit of the race of Adam. Such an imaginary personage would
have borne a vivid resemblance to the aboriginal William Wilber-
force.

By force of a decree preceding his birth, he came into the world
predestined to be the centre of admiration and of love for the
circle of his associates in it. Nature herself endowed him with
that genial warmth and graciousness of temper which, by a constant
succession of spontaneous impulses, pom-s itself into all the chan-
nels of social intercourse. Towards all who approached him, those
kindnesses which, unless when innate are unattainable, expanded
with such a happy promptitude, that, to borrow a well-known
eulogy, he might have passed for the brother of every man, and
for the lover of every woman, with whom he conversed.

This instinct of philanthropy was combined with a iTiercuvial

476 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE.

gaiety, and with that exquisite perception of all the proprieties
of life, which, in mesmeric language, places cultivated minds in 'a
relation of mutual consciousness towards each other.' Every eye
which followed him beamed with the lights, or was darkened by the
shadows, which played over his countenance ; and his feelings,
whether grave or gay, vibrated through every point of the circle
by which he was surrounded.

The basis of the natural or indigenous character of Mr. Wilber-
force was laid in this quick fellow-feeling with other men. All the
restless vivacity of Voltaire, and a sensibility more profound than
that of Eousseau, met in him and mutually controlled each other.
His responsiveness to the joys and the sorrows of his companions
made the happy and the wretched his captives in their turns.
But, though ready to weep with those who wept, he was still more
prompt to rejoice with those that rejoiced; nor could the elastic
rebound of his heart to gladness be ever long repressed by any
burthen, whether laid on others or on himself.

Society was not merely his delight or his passion; it was the
necessity of his existence. He mixed freely, and on equal terms,
with all the men and women of his age the most eminent in wit,
in genius, and in learning ; and drank in, with the keenest relish,
every variety of colloquial eloquence. Yet he not merely endured
but rejoiced in companions, whose absence would have been a
luxury to any one but himself. "When Pitt, and Burke, and
Sheridan were not to be had, he would take the most cordial plea-
sure in the talk of the most woollen of his constituents at Leeds.
When Madame de Stael and Mrs. Crewe were away, some dowager
from the Cathedral Whist Club became his inspiring muse, and
for the moment, would seem herself to be half inspired. Dulness
fled at his approach. The most somnolent awakened at his
presence. The heaviest countenance caught some animation
from his eye. 'The listless prisoner of an easy chair' gave out
some sparks of intellect when brought into a friendly collision
with him.

Reckless is the liberality which bestows rank, wealth, beauty, and
prowess so lavishly on the preux chevalier of romance. He enjoys
those exterior advantages at the expense of his essential greatness.
But the charm exercised by Mr. Wilberforce was the inherent and
indefeasible attribute of the soul herself. Informed by her, the
body which, with all affection and reverence be it spoken, was but
a caricature of the human form divine, became the ready minister
of all his social purposes, and the eloquent interpreter of all his
emotions. Before his fellow-men, that diminutive and shapeless
figure bore itself gallantly, as if elevated and sustained by con-
scious worth. Towards the other sex, his attitudes and looks

WlLLlA^r AVILBERFORCE. 477

and bearing expressed a respect and a tenderness so heartfelt
and so grateful, as to impart to the humblest woman he addressed
a sense of self-complacency; and as to fascinate those who were
themselves the most skilful in the arts of fascination. Baj^ard,
accosting a damsel of the House of Longueville, could not have
carried himself with a more gentle and generous coiu'tesy.

There is an association of certain indissoluble ideas which de-
grades the histrionic art in general esteem, yet the faculty of
exhibiting and exciting every human sentiment is a power which,
though too often desecrated to the meanest ends, may be devoted
to the noblest. Mr. Wilberforce was, by the gift of nature,
amongst the most consummate actors of his times. Imagine
David Grarrick — talking not as a mime, but from the resources of
his own mind, and the impulses of his own nature — to have per-
sonated in some other society the friends with whom he had been
dining at the Literary Club, — now uttering maxims of wisdom
with Johnsonian dignity — then haranguing with a rapture like
that of Burke— telling a good story with the unction of James
Boswell — chuckling over a ludicrous jest with the child-like glee
of Oliver Goldsmith — singing a ballad with all the taste of Percy
— reciting poetry with the classical enthusiasm of Cumberland —
and, at each successive change in this interlude, exhibiting the
amenities of Sir Joshua — then brood a while over this supposed
monopolylogue, and there will emerge an image of the social
William Wilberforce, ever the same, and ever multiform, constrain-
ing his companions to laugh, to weep, to admire, to exult, and to
meditate at his bidding.

This rare felicity in running over the whole scale of feeling, and
the refinement which rescued him, at each successive passage, from
every taint of affectation or of coarseness, gave to his discourse a
far deeper interest than would have belonged to the mere words he
uttered, if falling from any lips but his own. A certain air of
originality embellished the most trite and familiar of his observa-
tions. There was still an impress of novelty when he repeated for
the twentieth time some favourite maxim, or told over again some
well-known story, or resumed the discussion of yesterday from the
very beginning. In ' The Doctor,' Southey has drawn an inverted
pyramid, the narrowing lines of which represent the subsiding
cadences in which he supposes Mr. Wilberforce to repeat the words,
* Poor creature ! ' when advised by the anonymous author to read
his book on a Sunday ; each cadence in its turn being meant to
convey a rebuke in which kindness and acidity, liking and dislike,
acquiescence and dissent, meet together in continually varying
proportions. Now this is hardly a burlesque. The words, however
simple, which Mr. Wilberforce selected as the vehicle of any

478 WILLIAM WILBEEFORCE.

passion, became, in his use of them, as replete with significance as
those homely phrases with which Mrs. Siddons was accustomed to
awaken the loudest echoes of the theatre. The expression ' Poor
creature ! ' modulated, and varied, and played with, as he would
have managed it, would have formed an exqviisite criticism on the
favourite work of the Laureate, with all its graceful pathos and
unmirthful jocularity.

In the age of Jekyll, Mackintosh, and Sydney Smith, society had
no member more popular or more attractive than William Wilber-
force. At one time obeying the impulse of the moment, at another
pursuing the train of his solitary musing, he passed and repassed
from the merest frolic of fancy to the most mature contemplations,
the same simple-hearted natiu-al man, talking, without effort, or
preparation, or disguise, from the overflowing of his mind,
although his voice and manner, and the whole structure of his
dialogue, were in a state of constant vicissitude. Yet scarcely any
memorial of his table-talk has survived him, nor is it_ difficult to
explain the reason.

Wit may either pervade a man's conversation, or be condensed
in particular passages of it, as the electric current may be either
equally diffused through the atmosphere, or flash across it. Mr.
Wilberforce turned on every topic which he touched a sort of gal-
vanic stream of vivacity, humour, and warm-heartedness, which
tended rather to volatilise and to disperse, than to consolidate, the
substances on which it fell. He did not dispose of a laughable
incident by one terse and pregnant jest ; he rather used it as a toy
to be tossed about and played with for a while, and then thrown
aside. Even his wisdom demanded a certain breadth of space for
its development ; for it incorporated every illustration, pleasant or
pathetic, which fell in his way, and left behind it an impression
more delightful than definite. Being himself amused and interested
by everything, whatever he said became amusing or interesting.
Sometimes Francis Bacon would supply the text, and sometimes
Sir John Sinclair ; but whether he fused the pure gold of the sage,
or brayed, as in a mortar, the crotchets of the simpleton, the com-
ment was irresistibly charming, though no memory could retain
the glowing, picturesque, or comic language in which it was deli-
vered. When he and Sydney Smith left the same dinner-table,
their companions carried away some of the solid bullion of wit
from the Canon of St. Paul's to be exhibited in other company ;
but from the member for the county of York, recollections which,
though not transferable to others by any quotation of his words,
dwelt with themselves as an exhilarating influence, like that of
some joyous carol or pungent sether.

WILLIAM WILBEKFORCE. 479

If it be required that the eulogies on his colloquial powers
should be justified more distinctly than by this kind of general
description, the demand will perhaps be best satisfied by referring
to his letters. It must indeed be admitted that his epistolary
style is far below that of the great writers in that kind, and below
his own reputation ; that his sport is not very graceful, nor his
tenderness very touching, nor his gravity very iiippressive. But
suppose a man continually pouring forth, in his common talk,
language as brilliant as that in which he writes to Hannah More,
or as playful as that in which he rallies Lord Muncaster, or as full
of deep meaning as that in which he unbosoms himself to William
Hey, or as affectionate as the style of his letters to his sons; and
suppose that his discourse is continually embellished by the most
perfect histrionic ornaments; and the supposition will render
Mr. Wilberforce audible and visible to the imaginations of those
who never heard or saw him, very much as he was to the bodily
organs of those who lived with him in familiar intimacy.

His social passion, and his social talents, clung to him even
when he quitted the throng of men for the solitude of his library.
Although a stranger to all the exact sciences, whether physical or
moral, and though neither born nor educated to be himself a great
author, he was yet the happy comrade, the docile pupil, and the
enthusiastic admirer of the greatest. After having lost the sight
of one of his eyes, and while sorely annoyed by the ailments of the
other, he ran over with eagerness, and appreciated with curious
felicity, a greater body of literature than is usually compassed by
those who devote themselves exclusively to letters.

It was, indeed, an ill-assorted and heterogeneous mass, made up
of history, morals, philosoph}^, poetry, statistics, ephemeral politics,
and theology ; yet it was not without a certain unity of design that
these were all in turn either lightly skimmed, or diligently studied.
' He was never abandoned by his human affections, even when his
books were his only companions. He searched them to detect the
various springs of human action, and their influence on the welfare
of the great brotherhood he loved so well. He learned from them
to understand, and so to benefit, mankind. Nor, in his intercourse
with these mute teachers, was he deserted by the tricksy Ariel,
who inspired his carriage and his talk in the haunts of living men.
That brilliant fancy broke out into a ceaseless colloquy with the
grave masters at whose feet he sat. He would controvert, interro-
gate, or applaud in the form of marginal notes, when he was alone ;
or, if an auditor was at hand, in spoken comments, at one moment
so arch and humorous, at the next so reverent and affectionate,
and then so full of solemn meaning, that the austere folio, or the

480 WILLIAM WILBEKFOKCE.

saucy pamphlet, became so many characters in a sort of tragi-
comedy ; in which, however, there was usually a large preponderance
of the droll above the serious.

For so arbitrary were the associations of his ideas, such the revelry
of his animal life, and so tumultuous the flow of his thoughts, that
if his presence had not been fatal to fatigue, the rapid transitions
through which the interlocutor in any dialogue with him was
hurried, might have perplexed and wearied the most patient
listener. In his most playful moods, reverence for all that he
esteemed great and holy would arrest at an instant the riot of his
spirits ; and, when elevated to the highest contemplations, some odd
conceit would lighten up his face with unexpected smiles, and break
forth in a burst of contagious merriment.

It was difficult or impossible to take a deliberate measure of the
intellectual stature of such a companion ; nor was it until time and
distance had subdued the power of the charm, and diminished the
accuracy of the remembrance of it, that they who lived with him
could make any successful attempt to estimate and analyse the
powers by which they had been dazzled. The result of that tardy
effort was to induce the conviction that the master of the spell had
not received from on high a commission to disclose hidden truth, or
to throw over familiar truth the mantle of a creative imagination —
that he never held, nor could ever have attained, to a place among
philosophers or poets — and that nature had not formed him for
patient inquiry, suspended judgment, or for faith in the glorious
unrealities of fiction. But if not permitted to take his stand within
the innermost circle of genius, he derived from nature such rapidity
of conception — such an intuitive insight into the characters of
other men — such a sense of the ludicrous and of the tender — a
wit vaulting so lightly across his whole visible horizon — and so
ardent a love for every form of beauty, as justified the enthusiasm
of his admirers, although his name would scarcely have descended
to posterity if he had devoted himself to any other than an active
life.

And now, whether it be more fitly called the tardy ripening
of baptismal seed, or an early conversion, or by whatever other
theological term the event may be most properly described, it came
to pass that he was roused and qualified for that course of life, by
the great though gradual change to which we have referred. ' To
be born again ' is to acquire, not new powers, but a new tendency
of the powers which we derive from nature. William Wilberforce,
the pupil of Greorge Selwyn, and William Wilberforce, the pupil of
John Newton, were not two diff"erent men, but one and the same
man. Yet his two preceptors did not differ more widely from each

Wl 1.1,1AM WILDKRFORCK. 481

other than he differed from his former self Before him had opened
a new world, and within him a new creation. From an intoxicatintT
intercourse with human society, he had withdrawn to commune
with himself From self-acquaintance he had ascended to commu-
nicate with the eternal source of light. Faith had revealed to him
the illusions of sight, and motives had sprung up in his mind of an
energy in some degree commensurate with the invisible realities
which she disclosed to him. His social feelings, which had traversed
the earth unsatisfied, now found their resting-place in the Kedeemer,
who henceforth became the ever-present associate of his hopes and
purposes. The new fabric of thoughts and of affections which arose
within him rested on a basis more firm than he had ever foui;d
before, because ceaiented and sustained by divine, as well as l.y
human, love.

It was, indeed, with deep dejection and a protracted self-conflict,
that these new habits of mind were formed. Gradually and surely,
however, the joyful spirit of the man re-assumed its dominion over
him. The frolic of earlier years had subsided, and his gaiety
assumed a more cautious and a gentler character. But as his self-
government gained strength, and as peace diffused her holy calm
over him, he rose to the enjoyment of that perfect freedom in which
even his constitutional hilarity could indulge and disport itself.
Still sadness flew at his approach ; and, tliough the most devout of
men, his mirth was as exhilarating as the first laughter of child-
hood.

Grod was in all his thoughts. His piety was allied not only \o
his serious pursuits, but to all the daily pleasures, and even to the
whims and amusements of life. Inhabiting at once the visible and
the invisible worlds, he rejoiced over his bright heritage in each.
From the passing shadows of earth to the enduring substances of
heaven, from secular cares to devotional exercises, he moved with
such unexpected rapidity, that the web of his discourse would some-
times appear to be of an incongruous colouring and texture. But
this fusion of religious and worldly thoughts enhanced the spirit
with which he performed every duty, and the zest with which he
welcomed every enjoyment.

Faintly as any portraiture can represent Mr. Wilberforce in his
relations with other men, it is altogether impossible that he should
be properly delineated in these dearer and more sacred relations
which he had now formed. If any one shall refer to mere en-
thusiasm, the belief that the regenerate heart maintains a real,
although it be a hidden, intercourse with a Being who has taken
up His abode there, we shall leave the censor in undisturbed pos-
session of his incredulity. If he shall deny that any sound mind

I I

482 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.'

can entertain such a belief, we shall be content to assure him that
there are, in the character of man, mysteries of which he has as
yet no knowledge. But if he shall assert that the intercourse
between the soul and the in-dwelling Paraclete cannot be recorded
by the Avritten confessions, experiences, or revelations of any self-
observer whatever, we have no controversy with him, but the
reverse.

It was the habit of Mr. Wilberforce to transcribe in a private
journal the results of a most unsparing self-examination, not lui-
mixed with some passages from those prayers in which he was
engaged ' without ceasing.' The extracts from those manuscripts
which his biogi'aphers have published, bear the impress of the most
perfect sincerity. They attest his exquisite tenderness of conscience,
his constant sense of present Deity, and his intense solicitude for an
entire conformity to the Divine will. Doubtless these were inesti-
mable aids to himself in liis daily retrospect of his own spiritual
progress. But, having served that purpose, would they not have
been more wisely committed to the flames, than to the press ?

Such publications too often foster in those who read them, a rank
undergrowth of hypocrisy. For one man, who, like Mi". Wilber-
force, will honestly endeavour to lay bare on paper the course of
his life and the state of his heart, one hundred will make the same
attempt dishonestly, having the fear or the hope of the biographer
before their eyes. How fluent the acknowledgment of those faults
which the reader will certainly regard as venial, while he admires
the sagacity which has detected, the humility which has condemned,
and the integrity which has acknowledged them !

Such disclosures, whether made to the confessor or to the world
at large, are at best an illusion. No man has such an insight into
his own circumstances, motives, and actions, or such leisure for
describing them, or such powers of description, as to be able to
afford to others the means of estimating, with any apjiroach to
accuracy, the exact merit or demerit of any one of his steps (and
countless are the millions of these steps) in his whole moral and
religious course.

Or, if the dissection of any man's soul could be completely eff"ect-
ed, what eye but must turn away from the spectacle ? Wisely has
the Church proclaimed the sanctity of the confessional. Who would
wish or dare to study this morbid anatomy ? Who would not loathe
the knowledge with which the memory of the priesthood, who study
it professionally, is soiled and burthened ? Who has courage enough
to tell how far our mutual affection and esteem may depend on our
imperfect knowledge of each other ? The same creative wisdom
which shelters from every human eye the processes of our animal

WILLIAM WI LIJKRFO UCK. 488

frame, has sliroudeJ from observation the workings of our spiritual
structure. The lowly and the contrite heart is a shrine in which He
who inhabiteth eternity condescends to dwell, but in whicli any
other presence would be an agony and a profanation.

We have three judges — ■ our Maker, ourselves, and our neighbour.
The first, looking on the heart, adjudicates infallibly. The second,
from a comparison of acts, and of motives imperfectly luiderstood,
determines inferentially. The third, observing only the outward
conduct, decides hypothetically. He who knew what was in man,
confined us to the use of a single clue in forming any such hypo-
thesis — ' By their fruits ye shall know them.' Whether we study
Mr. Wilberforce, or any other human model, it is safest to follow
this clue, and this alone.

Exceedingly dissimilar in abundance and in flavour, are the fruits
to be gathered from the different branches of the vine, which,
spreading out to the ends of the earth, and supplied with nutriment
from the same prolific stem, are yet all more or less propped on
some foreign stay. Some of those boughs hang like creepers from
a stiff lattice-work of forms and ceremonies ; and then the fruit is
dry and penurious. Others cling for support to the austere aisles
of conventual asceticism ; and then the produce is harsh and unpa-
latable. Others, again, sink down and sustain themselves on a
certain stunted and coarse shrubbery of irreverent, sensuous, and
erotic familiarity ; and then the vintage becomes watery and luscious.
But some abide in the all-sustaining and animating trunk, with the
firmest hold and in the closest union, and then the grapes they
yield are ponderous and racy, like the clusters of Eshcoll, glowing
with the richest bloom, and redolent of the most grateful odours.

The interpretation of the parable is to be found in every page of
the five volumes, in which two of the sons of Mr. Wilberforce have
recorded the life and writings of their father. Tried by literary
laws alone, they must be condemned as overladen with a mass of
superfluous details. But that redundance was indispensable to an
effect of a far higher kind than any mere artist ever had in view.

In these annals, or rather in this annual register of Mr. Wilber-
force's acts, the unity of design consists in the constant exhibition
and prominence of one great truth which it is impossible to express
aright, except in the words of an inspired Apostle. It is the story
of a life * hidden with Christ in God.' What that hidden life
really was in the person of William Wilberforce, none but himself
could know, and few indeed could even plausibly conjecture. But
even they who are the least able to solve the enigma, may acknow-
ledge and feel that there was some secret spring of action on
which his strength was altogether dependent.

I I 2

^H WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

It is indeed needless to allege any mystery (except as all things
are mysterious) to account for the more obvious phenomena. It
was no marvel that a man of great talents rejoiced to exercise and
exhibit them in the House of Commons ; or that a gentleman of
large estate maintained his parliamentary independence ; or that
a person of extraordinary powers of conversation delighted in
a generous hospitality; or that so fortunate a husband, father,
brother, and friend, was perfectly amiable in those relations, and
kind and temperate, just and true, in his dealings with the outer
world. To the eye ranging over the mere surface of society, the
master of almost every well-furnished mansion appears like an
undistinguishable monad in the vast and decorous company of the
obliging and the respectable.

But among the tasks to which frail man is subject, there is none
to which his unaided strength is more unequal, than that of pass-
ing many years among these legitimate advantages, without ever
being held in bondage by their enervating influence. Horse-hair
shirts and a scourge for the rebellious flesh, monastic rule for the
haughty spirit, poverty for the proud of purse, and for self-idola-
tors silence and seclusion ! But what is the outward discipline for
him who, bidden to travel on the highways of life, can take no
step heavenwards, unbeset or unobstructed by wealth, power, ad-
miration, and popularity ? How shall faith preserve her dominion
over him to whom the world is daily offering whatever can most
kindle the imagination, engage the understanding, or gratify
ambition ?

There is but one such corrective. It is to be found in that un-
broken communion with the indwelling Grod, in which Mr. Wil-
berforce habitually lived. He ' endured as seeing Him who is
invisible,' and as hearing Him who is inaudible. When most im-
mersed in political cares, or in social enjoyments, he invoked and
obeyed the voice which directed his path, while it tranquillised his
mind. That voice was still at hand to soften his most indignant
invectives, and to disarm his parliamentary polemics of all their
bitterness. It reduced his most impassioned statements to the
severe measure of truth. It chained down to many an irksome
study a mind disposed to flutter about every topic, and to fasten
upon none. It rendered him most tolerant of honest mediocrity
and well-meant dulness, though he was one in whom every spark of
genius instantly kindled a sympathetic flash. It made the keenest
of critics the most charitable of judges. It confined to well-
chosen channels the stream of bounty which his large heart was
willing to pour profusely into all. It rendered every remotest
interest of humanity sacred to him, although he was placed in

AVILIJAM AVILBEKl'UlUi:. 485

constant and immediate contact with whatever could most excite
his self-love or his domestic affections. It enabled him to concen-
trate his benevolence wdthin the narrow precincts of his own house,
or of any adjacent cottage, while he was expanding his vision to
the ends of the earth, and to remotest posterities. It at once
chastised and animated the happy temperament with wdiich he sin--
veyed the ways and the works of men, and tempered without blunt-
ing the edge of the playful wit with which he depicted them. It
taught him to rejoice, as a child, in the presence of a Father whom
he much loved and altogether trusted, and wdiose approljation w'as
infinitely more than an equivalent for whatever restraint, self-
denial, labour, or sacrifice, obedience to His will might render
necessary.

And thus were combined and reconciled the most profound
sense of the vanity of human pursuits, and the most lively in-
terest in them all. Obeying the precept which Mr. Taylor has
given to his ' Statesman,' he observed a sabbatical day in every
week, and a sabbatical hour in ever}^ day. Those days and hours
gave him back to the world, not merely with recruited strength,
but in a spirit the most favourable to the right discharge of his
worldly duties. Things, in themselves the most trivial, wearisome,
or even offensive, had, in his solitude, assumed a solemn interest
from their connection with the present or the future happiness of
mankind, while the alluring objects of human ambition had been
brought into a humiliating contrast with the great ends for which
life is given, and with the immortal hopes by which it should be
sustained. Nothing can be more heartfelt than the delight with
which he breathed the pure air of these devotional retirements.
Nothing more soothing than the tranquillity which they diffused
over a spirit harassed with the conflicts and the vexations which
track the path of all who labour in the service of the common-
wealth.

In such labours Mr. Wilberforce was sometimes preceded or fol-
lowed, but was ahvays accompanied, by that section of the Church
(the word, in our use of it, embraces all Christian people), which
has either assumed or acquired the distinctive title of ' Evangelical.'
They claimed him as their champion and leader, and not unjustJ3%
And yet the great change of character which he underwent, would
be most unfairly represented as a mere passing over to their camp.
He was exempt from bondage to that, or to any other religious
party. Except in his immutable attachment to the great funda-
mental doctrines of the Gospel, he was very much a latitudinarian.
Though conforming to the ritual of the Church of England, he
occasionally attended the public worship of those who dissent from

I I 3

486 WILLIAM AVILBEIU'ORCE.

her communion, and maintained a constant and affectionate fellow-
ship with many of them. He travelled the highways of life, and
conversed freely with all who thronged them. He knew little of
polemical divinity, and seemed to care for it but little. His heart
must quickly have overleapt the bounds of any narrow ecclesiastical
alliance which he might have contracted. His Catholic spirit, sus-
tained by a ready and capacious faith, was seldom harassed by
controversy or overclouded by scepticism. No man ever sought out
the meanino- of the sacred writers with more conscientious care,
and none ever acknowledged their divine authority with a more
childlike docility. Finding in his own bosom an echo to every
doctrine and every precept of the Gospel, he wisely and reverently
received this evidence of their truth, and instead of consuming life
in a protracted and still recurring scrutiny into the basis of his
belief, he busied himself in erecting on it a superstructure of piety
and active benevolence. Having solemnly consecrated his days to
the culture and improvement of his own spiritual nature, and to
the advancement of human happiness, he left it to men of a less
favoured destiny to debate the government of the churches, or to
untwist the finer intricacies of their creeds. ' The reformation of
manners, and the abolition of the slave trade,' having been delibe-
rately selected as his appropriate province of pubHc service, he
gave up to the faithful discharge of it every energy of his renovated
soul, until labour, age, and infirmity dissolved his mortal prison-
house, and set him free to partake of a purer and more perfect
renovation.

' Seated in the open air, at the root of an old tree, in Holwood,
just above the steep descent into the valley of Keston,' Mr. Wilber-
force discussed with Mr. Pitt the probabilities of success in a war-
fare against the slave trade ; and rose from that conference with a
settled resolution to take the earliest opportunity which might pre-
sent itself of announcing that design to the House of Commons.

This was no sudden impulse. While yet a schoolboy at Pock-
lington, he had contributed to a newspaper then published at York,
a letter, protesting against ' the odious traffic in human flesh.'
That early impression, from whatever source derived, had deepened
Avith increasing age. During the first six years of his parliamentary
life, he had instituted many inquiries into the real state of our
colonial slavery, and had conceived and avowed the hope that he
should live to redress the wrongs of the African race. He had in-
vestigated this gigantic evil, and had debated the arduous remedy
with James Eamsay, the first confessor and proto-martyr of this
faith, and with Ignatius Latrobe, the first of the missionaries who
raised the banner of the Cross against it, and with Sir Charles and

WJLLIA.M WILBERFORCE. 487

Lady JMiddleton, who had convened, in tlieir mansion in Kent, the
first council ever hekl in this kingdom for the gatlieriug and con-
duct of this new crusade.

In Later days, agitation for the accomplishment of gi'eat political
objects has taken a place among social arts. But sixty years since,
it was among the inventions slumbering in the womb of time, taught
by no professors, and illustrated by no examples. We have lived
to see many of the most ancient and solid edifices, erected by the
wisdom of our ancestors, totter at the blast of leagues, associations,
speeches, reports, and editorial articles, like the towers of Jericho
falling before the rams' horns of Joshua. But when Mr. Wilber-
force and his friends met to deliberate on their enterprise, the
contrast between the magnitude of their design and the poverty of
their resources, demanded a faith scarcely inferior to that which
encouraged the invaders of Palestine to assault with the sound of
their trumpets, the towers built up by the children of Anak to the
heavens. Truth, indeed, and justice were on their side ; and in the
flower of his youth, his eloquence, and his fame, Mr. Pitt had
given the bright augury of his adhesion to their cause. But, after
twenty years of ceaseless controversy had rolled away, the most
sanguine of them was constrained to ' stand in awe of the powers
of falsehood ' and of commercial cupidity, and to acknowledge,
that, in effecting so great a deliverance, Grod would not employ the
rulers nor the mere rhetoricians of the world, but would use, as His
instruments. His own devoted servants — men able to touch in the
bosoms of others the sacred springs of action which were working
in their own.

Among the foremost in this holy war, the names of Granville
Sharpe and Thomas Clarkson are ever to be mentioned with pecu-
liar reverence. To the former was committed the presidency of
the society, charged with the duty of collecting and diffusing in-
formation respecting the real character of the slave trade. INIr.
Clarkson became the zealous and indefatigable agent of that body.
To Mr. Wilberforce was assigned the general superintendence of
the cause, both in and out of Parliament.

In 1789 he first proposed the abolition of the slave trade to the
House of Commons, in a speech which Burke rewarded with one
of those imperishable eulogies which he alone had the skill and the
authority to pronounce. But a victory over Guinea merchants was
not to be numbered amongst the trivimphs of eloquence. Unable
to withstand the current of popular feeling which the novelty, as
much as the nature, of the proposal had stirred, they sagaciously
resolved to await the subsidence of this unwonted enthusiasm ;
soliciting only a suspension of the measure until Parliament

I I 4

488 ^ AVILLIAM WlLBERFOllCE.

should be in possession of the facts which they undertook to
substantiate.

To this Fabian policy, ever changing in its aspect, but uniform
in its design, the slave traders were indebted for the prolongation
of their guilty commerce. Nearly two years were worn away in
the examination of their witnesses ; and when Mr. Wilberforce had,
■with difficulty, succeeded in transferring the inquiry from the bar
of the House of Commons to the less dilatory tribunal of a Select
Committee, he had still to struggle laboriously for permission to
produce testimony in refutation of the evidence of his antagonists.
It was not, therefore, till April, 1791, that the question of the
abolition of the trade was directly brought to issue ; when a proof
was given of the foresight with which the Gruinea merchants had
calculated on the gradual subsidence of the public indignation.
Ominous were the forebodings with which the friends of Mr. Wil-
berforce looked forward to the approaching debate. By the Master
of St. John's College, Cambridge, his position was compared to
that of ' Episcopius in the infamous synod of Dort ; ' while John
Wesley exhorted him to proceed to the conflict as a new ' Atha-
nasivis contra munduni.^ Those divines had well interpreted the
temper of the times. The slave traders triumphed by an over-
whelming majority. In the political tumults of those days the
voice of humanity was no longer audible, and common sense had
ceased to discharge its office. The bad faith and fickleness of the
French Government had involved St. Domingo in confusion and
bloodshed ; and because the elements of society had broken loose
in that colony, it was judged dangerous to arrest the accumulation
of the materials of similar discord within our own ! Even Mr.
Pitt avowed his. opinion that it was wise to await more tranquil
times before the slave trade should be abolished. It was in vain
that Mr. Wilberforce urged on the House of Commons, in 1792,
the true inference from the calamitous state of St. Domingo. His
proposals were again defeated. Those were days in which every
chancre was branded as a revolution, and when the most sacred
rules of moral or political conduct, if adduced in favour of any re-
form, were denounced and abhorred as ' French principles.'

Reason, however, having gradually regained her dominion, the
procrastinating system of the slave traders assumed a new shape,
and obtained, in the person of Mr. Dundas, its most formidable
advocate. With perverse ingenuity, he proposed to substitute a
gradual for an immediate abolition ; fixing a remote period for the
entire cessation of the trade. Yet even in this cautious form the
bill found a cold reception in the House of Peers, where, after
consuming the session in the examination of two witnesses, their

WILLIA.M WlLBlOlU'OUCi:. 489

Lordships postponed the measure till the following year. ^Vith
the arrival of that period, INIr. Wilberforce had to sustain three
successive defeats. The House of Commons rejected first, the main
proposal of an immediate abolition of the trade; then, a motion
restricting the number of slaves to be annually imported into our
own colonies ; and, finally, a plan for prohibiting the employment
of British capital in the introduction of slaves into foreign settle-
ments. His perseverance, however, was not fruitless. A deep
impression had been made by his past efforts; and, in 1794, the
House of Commons, for the first time, passed a bill of immediate
abolition. The defenders of the slave trade were again rescued
from the impending blow by the interposition of the Peers ;
amongst whom a melancholy pre-eminence was thenceforth to be
assigned to a member of the Royal House, who lived to redeem
his early error, by assenting, in the decline of life, to the intro-
duction of the law for the abolition of slavery.

Thus far the difficulties of the contest had chiefly arisen from
the influence or the arts of his enemies ; but Mr. Wilberforce had
now to sustain the more depressing weight of the secession of one
of his most effective auxiliaries. Suffering imder nervous debility
and influenced by other motives, of which an explanation is to be
found in his ' History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade,' Mr.
Clarkson was reluctantly compelled to retire from the field. With
what deep regret he abandoned the contest may be learnt from his
own volumes ; and earnest as must have been his aspiration for its
success, he was unable, during the eleven years which followed, to
resume his place amidst the champions of the cause, though he
lived to witness and to share in the triumj)h.

Providence had gifted Mr. Wilberforce with greater nervous
energy ; and though sustaining labours not less severe, and a public
responsibility incomparably more anxious than that under Avhich
the health of his colleague had given way, he returned to the con-
flict with xmabated resolution. In 1795, and in the followinsr
3^ear, he again laboured in vain to induce the House of Commons
to resume the ground which they had already taken ; nor could his
all-believing charity repress the honest indignation with which he
records that a body of his supporters, sufficient to have carried the
bill, had been enticed from their places in the House, by the new
opera of the ' Two Hunchbacks,' in which a conspicuous part was
assigned to the great vocalist of that day. Signer Portugallo. A
rivalry more formidable even than that of the Haymarket had
now arisen. Parodying his father's celebrated maxim, Mr. Pitt
was engaged in conquering Europe in the West Indies; and, wifli
the acquisition of new colonies, the slave trade acquired an in-

400 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

creased extent, and its supporters bad obtained augmented Parlia-
mentary interest. Tbe result was to subject Mr. Wilberforce, in
tbe debate of 1797, to a defeat more signal than any of those
which he had hitherto endured. His opponents eagerly seized this
opportunity to render it irreparable. On the motion of Mr.
Charles Ellis, an address to the Crown was carried, which trans-
ferred to the legislative bodies of the different colonies the task of
preparing for tlie very measure which they had leagued together
to frustrate. It was with extreme difficulty, and not without the
most strenuous remonstrances, that Mr. Wilberforce dissuaded Mr.
Pitt from lending his support to this extravagant project. To
increase the value of his Transatlantic conquests, he had thrown
open the intercourse between our colonies and those of Spain, and
had offered, in the newly-acquired islands, fresh lands, on which
the slave traders might effect further settlements ; and though, by
ceaseless importunity, Mr. Wilberforce obtained the revocation of
the first of these measures, and the suspension of the second, yet
the cupidity of the slave traders, and their influence in the national
councils, were largely increased by these new prospects of gain.
Their augmented powers were attested by the ill success which
attended Mr. Wilberforce's annual motions in 1798 and 1799.

The contest had now endured for twelve years. Ten successive
efforts had been fruitlessly made to obtain the concurrence of the
Legislature in arresting this gigantic evil. Hopeless of success by
perseverance in the same tactics, and yet incapable of retiring
from the dvity he had assumed, Mr. Wilberforce now addressed
himself to the project of effecting, by a compromise, the end which
seemed unattainable by direct and open hostilities. The year
1800 was accordingly consumed in negotiations with the chief
West India proprietors, of which the object was to win their con-
currence in Hmiting the duration of the trade to a period of five or
at most seven years. Delusive hopes of success cheered him for a
Avhile, but it was ere long apparent that the phalanx of his enemies
was too firm to be penetrated. The peace of Amiens had brought
to the Court of London a minister from the French Eepublic, who
encouraged the hope that it might be possible to arrange a general
convention of all the European powers for the abandonment of the
traffic. Long and anxious were the endeavours made by Mr. Wil-
berforce for maturing this project. It is needless to say that they
were unavailing. The season of 1801 was about to close, and the
end in view appeared more distant than at any former time.

Mr. Addington seems to have regarded the great expedition to
St. Domingo as a kind of sedative, which would paralyse the re-
sistance of the oppressed negroes throughout the West Indies ; and

AVILLIA.M WlLI5i:UFURCE. 491

feared to check the operation of this anodyne. The charm which
these medical analogies exercised over the then occupant of the
Treasury bench did not, however, extend its influence to jNIr. Wil-
berforce. He announced his purpose to resume the Parliamentary
contest in the year 1802, when the attempt was accordingly made,
though under the most discouraging circumstances. The wit and
eloquence of Mr. Canning, remonstrating against the settlement of
new lands in Trinidad, had been repelled by the passive resistance
of the then Minister, and the time occupied in this discussion had
delayed, until the dissolution of Parliament rendered impossible,
the further progress of the Abolition Act. The tumult of war in
the succeeding year silenced every other sound ; and the advocate
of the slaves was condemned to a reluctant silence, whilst every
voice was raised in reprobation of Bonaparte, and in resentment of
the insult offered to Lord Whitworth.

At length the auguries of success became distinct and frequent.
Mr. Pitt had returned to office ; the dread of Jacobinism no lono-er
haunted the public mind, but, above all, the proprietors in the
Caribbean Islands had made the discovery, that, by encouraging
the slave trade, they were creating in the planters of the conquered
colonies the most dangerous rivals in their monopoly of the British
market. The union with Ireland had added a new host of friends.
Not a single representative from that country withheld his assist-
ance. Amidst all these encouragements, Mr. Wilberforce again
appealed to the House of Commons, and carried the bill with
overwhelming majorities. Cordial Avere now the congratulations
of his friends of every class, from the aged John Newton of St.
Mary Woolnoth, to Jeremy Bentham, whose celebrity as the most
original thinker of his age was then in its early dawn. But the
Peers had not yet yielded to the influence of Christian or Moral
Philosophy. ' The debate,' says Mr. Wilberforce's Diary, ' was
opened by the Chancellor in a very threatening speech, because
over-rating property, and full of all moral blunders. He showed
himself to labour with feelings as if he was the legitimate guardian
of property — Lord Stanhope's a wild speech — Lord Hawkesbury
spoke honourably and handsomely — Westmoreland like himself,
coarse and bullying, but not without talent. Grrenville spoke like
a man of high and honourable principles, who, like a truly great
statesman, regarded right and politic as identical.' Blunders and
bullying, however, prevailed ; and the question was adjourned to
the following session.

Before its arrival Lord Brougham, then travelling on tlie Con-
tinent as an American, and even ' venturing to pass a week in tlie
same house with several French Grenerals,' had offered Mr. Wilber-

4'J2 WILLIAM AVILBEKFUKCE.

force his assistance in pursuing various collateral inquiries through-
out Holland and Grermany, and in ' the great scenes of bondage
(as it is called) Poland, Kussia, and Hungary.' To this most
potent ally many others were added. Mr. Stephen and Mr. ]Ma-
caulay were unremitting in the use of the pen and the press. The
classical knowledge of jMr. Kobert Grant was put under contribu-
tion, to illustrate the state of slavery in the ancient w^orld ; and
even the daughters of Lord Muncaster were enlisted in the service
of methodising the contents of all African travels, ancient and
modern. High and sanguine as were the hopes of Mr. Wilberforce,
he had yet another disappointment to sustain. The House of
Commons of 1805, receding from their former resolutions, rejected
his bill, and drew from him, in his private journals, language of
distress and pain such as no former defeat had been able to extort.

The death of Mr. Pitt approached ; an event which the most
calm and impartial judgment must now regard as the necessary
precursor of the liberation of Africa. For seventeen years, since
the commencement of the contest, he had guided the counsels of
this country. Successful in almost every other Parliamentary
conflict, and triumphing over the most formidable antagonist, he
had been compelled, by the Dundases, and Jenkinsons, and Roses,
who on every other subject quailed under his eye, to go to the
grave without obliterating that which he himself had denounced
as the deepest stain on our national character, and the most enor-
mous guilt recorded in the history of mankind. During that long
period, millions of innocent victims had perished. Had he perilled
his political existence on the issue, no rational man can doubt that
an amount of guilt, of misery, of disgrace, and of loss, would have
been spared to England and to the civilised world, such as no
other man ever had it in his power to arrest.

The political antagonists of Mr. Pitt were men of a different
temper ; and although in the Cabinet of Mr. Fox there were not
wanting those who opposed him on this subject, yet it was an
opposition which, in the full tide of success, he could afford to
disregard and to pardon. Had it endangered for a single session
the abolition of the slave trade, these names, eminent as one at
least of them was, would infallibly have been erased from the list
of his Administration. Mr. Fox's Ministry had scarcely taken
their places, when Lord Grenville introduced into the House of
Lords, and speedily carried, two bills, of which the first abolished
the slave trade with all foreign powers, and the second forbade the
employment in that traffic of any British shipping which had not
already been engaged in it; whilst the House of Commons resolved
that the slave trade was ' contrary to the principles of justice,

W1L1.1A^[ WIf.nERFORCE. 49:1

humauit}', and sound policy ; and that tliey would proceed to
abolish it with all practicable expedition.' Faithfully was this
pledge redeemed. The death of Mr. Fox did not even delay its
fulfilment. Early in 1807 that great statesman, to whom at the
distance of twenty-six years it was rei^erved to propose the aholitidu
of slavery itself, introduced into the House of Commons a bill
which placed on the British statute-book the iinal condemnation
of the trade in slaves. Amidst the acclamations of Parliament,
the enthusiastic congratulations of his friends, and the applauses
of the world, Mr. Wilberforce witnessed the success of the great
object of his life Avith emotions, and in a spirit, which could not
have found admission into a mind less pure and elevated than his
own. The friendly shouts of victory which arose on every side
were scarcely observed or heeded in the delightful consciousness of
having rendered to mankind a service of unequalled magnitude.
He retired to prostrate himself before the Giver of all good things,
in profound humility and thankfulness, — wondering at the un-
merited bounty of Grod, who had carried him through twenty years
of unremitting labour, and bestowed on him a name of imperishable
glory.

There are those who have disputed his title to the station thus
assigned to him. Amongst the most recent is to be numbered one
whose esteem is of infinitely too high value to be lightly disre-
garded, and whose judgment will carry with it no common autho-
rity. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, in his ' Life of Charles Lamb,' refer-
ring to an interview which took place between Lamb and Mr.
Clarkson, uses the following expressions : — ' There he also met
with the true annihilator of the slave trade, Thomas Clarkson, who
was then enjoying a necessary respite from his stupendous labours
in a cottage on the borders of Ulswater. Lamb had no taste for
oratorical philanthropy, but he felt the grandeur and simplicity of
Clarkson's character.'

The contrast which is thus drawn between 'the true annihilator '
of the slave trade, and the oratorical philanthropist who declaimed
against it, might provoke and justify a retaliation, from which we
judge it wise, because charitaljle, to abstain. Let it rather be
acknowledged that ]Mr. Talfourd's disrelish for oratorical philan-
thropy is a reasonable and honest aversion. But neither let it be
concealed that the ' philanthropy of agitation ' is not generally
entitled to much higher esteem. It is for the common good that
the merit of all such services should be brought down from the
illuminated pinnacles of hyperbole, to the level of unadorned
truth.

We claim no place for Mr. Wilberforce among the heroes of

494 AVII.IJ.UI WILBEHFORCE.

benevolence, on the ground of his parliamentary labours in the
cause of Africa. Why not frankly admit, what everybody knows,
that the conduct of any great cause in the House of Commons is
contended for by the members of it with eager rivalry, and that the
celebrity and the influence which wait on the successful competitor,
are such as might vanquish any common amount of apathy or of
idleness. A gentleman of fortune may give himself up to labour
during half his life in that assembly to emancipate a continent, or
to repeal a corn law, without making one formidable enemy, or
losing a single friend, or missing one night's rest, or foregoing a
solitary dinner.

Neither is the noble army of martyrs recruited from that busy
class, who, taking for their point of departure some central com-
mittee in London, and for their periphery the circuit of our pro-
vincial cities, and for their conveyance our commodious public
vehicles, and for their solace much local hospitality, and for their
support a reasonable salary, are thus enabled to earn the applauses
of crowds, and the eulogies of poets.

The fact is, and we may all as well avow it, that the moral
sublime does not belong to our age and country. The labours
which the learned Serjeant admires as ' stupendous,' were probably
far less ' stupendous ' during each of the eight or nine years of
their continuance, than those of his biographer in his chambers or
on his Oxford circuit. ' The true annihilator of the slave trade '
had, during the eleven last and most irksome years of the contest,
just as much, and just as little, to do with it as Mr. Talfourd
himself.

But woe be to them whose joy is in the invasion of great names,
and in the overthrow of great reputations ! William Wilberforce
was one of the legitimate heirs of immortality, although his path
is in appearance the same with that which has since been trodden
by our Daniel O'Connells and our Eichard Cobdens. Thomas
Clarkson is a name to be for ever loved and honoured, despite the
vulgar herd who have imitated and rivalled his course of public
service. The just and genuine praise of both is the same. Their
exertions for the abolition of the slave trade were but in each as a
single strain in concord with that love to God and love to man
which, in the heart of each, rose in one unbroken harmony, from
early youth to extreme old age. Their common title to enduring
fame is, that in a gracious acknowledgment and reward of those
holy offices, Grod himself assigned to them, not the most arduous,
and certainly not the most self-denying, but the foremost places in
that enterprise — an enterprise, the memory of which could be
preserved to the remotest times only by being impersonated in

AVJIJ.IAM WlI.nERFOKCE. 495

some illustrious names, and therefore associated with theirs, not Ijy
any human caprice or fortuitous accident, but by the selection and
appointment of the INIaster they served. And therefore will
William Wilberforce be remembered with affectionate reverence as
long as the history and the language of England shall endure,
maugre such sarcasm as that which we have quoted ; and Thomas
Clarkson will be honoured by our latest posterity, in defiance of
the extravagance of his eulogists, and though degraded by the
citizens of London in their Gruildhall to the level of Beckford, the
insolent poltroon who stands beside him there.

It was not in the nature of JNIr. Wilberforce to concentrate all
his thoughts on this, or on anv other sintjle desigrn, however ma^--
nificent. He could not be a passive spectator of any undertaking,
which had the welfare of mankind for its object. ' God has set
before me the reformation of my country's manners,' was one part
of the solemn self-dedication of his twenty-seventh year, and he
descended to the grave with the unalterable conviction, that such
was the will of God concerning him.

The fort3^-seven years which intervened between those epochs,
embrace the most momentous era of modern history. Within that
period, greater changes occurred in the internal economy of Great
Britain, than had been witnessed in any two preceding centuries.
Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, revenue, and jiopulation ex-
panded with an unexampled elasticity. Never before had the
material world been made to pay so large a tribute to the material
wants of mankind. Under the half magical power of the steam-
engine, works which would have baffled the muscular strength of
all the inhabitants of the globe united, were performed in a
narrow district of this narrow island, with an ease, a precision, and
a rapidity, emulating some of the mighty operations of nature.
Wealth, such as avarice had scarcely pictured in her dreams, was
accumulated in those centres of mechanical industry, and the
higher class of English society, commercial as well as noble,
revelled in a sumptuousness of living, for which a description
or an example could be found nowhere but in the fabulous
East.

Mr. Wilberforce was hardly a far-sighted philosopher ; yet
behind this brilliant spectacle, his prescience saw the lowering of
that storm, the approach of which is now confessed by the fore-
bodings of every thoughtful man in Europe. His meditations and
his discourse continually pointed to the still widening gidpli be-
tween the two extremes of English society. He mourned over the
coming conflict between vice, ignorance, poverty, and discontent
on the one side, and selfishness, sensuality, hardness of heart, and

498 WILLIAM WILBERFURCE.

corruption on the other — betwee)i our loathsome cellars and our
luxuriant palaces. But it was not in his nature to abandon him-
self to that or to any other ineffectual grief.

To stay the advance of the plague, he addressed himself to the
promotion of every scheme which ingenuity, his own or others,
could devise for the religious, and intellectual, and social improve-
ment, either of the rich or of the poor. While Watt and Ark-
wricfht were astounding the world with the miracles which mecha-
nical art can produce by the aid of commercial capital, Mr.
Wilberforce was aiding Bell and Lancaster, under the conduct of
all the churches, conforming or non-conforming, to develope the
prodigies of mutual instruction. Factories did not spring up more
rapidly in Leeds and Manchester, than schemes of benevolence
beneath his roof; and though many years have passed since the
throng which daily gathered there has been dispersed, it is still
impossible to revive the remembrance of those strange assemblages,
without a smile which will check for a moment the more serious
feelings with which they are associated.

In the study might be seen the projector of the Bible Society,
who, in virtue of his privilege of the entree, was seated near the
table, upon and beneath which stood piles of subscription lists,
planSj and reports from countless kindred associations. Eloquent
deputies from Hibernian schools, were, meanwhile, restlessly ex-
pecting their audience in the drawing-room. In the ante-chamber,
the advocates for an improved prison discipline were themselves
undergoing a sort of temporary imprisonment. But it was in the
spacious library that philanthropic speculation rose to its highest
tide. There were ladies anxious to explain their plans of visiting
the sick, Quakers under a concern for transported convicts, the
founders of savings banks, missionaries from Serampore and the
Eed Eiver, and everywhere conspicuous amidst the crowd, the
ever-busy and well-satisfied countenance of his excellent friend
' Mendicity Martin,' so called from his presiding over the whole
department of mendicancy in this great eleemosynary government.
And then would emerge from his closet Mr. Wilberforce, the prime
minister of that disjointed state, passing from one group to
another, not without a smile, which revealed to the initiated his
involuntary perception of the comic aspect of the scene, but still
more clearly disclosing by his voice, his gestures, and his kindling
eye, the generous resentment, the glowing admiration, or the
tender sympathy with which he listened to one and another tale of
injustice, of self-denial, or of woe, until, gradually, the whole levy
had withdrawn, not merely forgiving their host the waste of the
morning, but more devoted than ever to a leader, whose exquisite

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 497

courtesy would have atoned for any thing, even if his mature
wisdom, his ahnost feminine tenderness, and his childlike gaiety,
had not swejDt away every less delightful remembrance.

There are those who can smile with him at the grotesque ap-
pearance occasionally assumed by the vast machinery established
amongst us for the propagation of Christian knowledge and for the
relief of human wretchedness, but who never glow, as he did, with
faith in the principle, hope of the success, or love for the agents of
that great voluntary system. And yet there is no other direction
in which it is easy to regard the future destinies of England with
complacency, or even with composure. Amidst the sins and the
miseries of our land, it is no light solace to remember, that in
every city and village, and in almost every private family in the
enjoyment of competency, some steady effort is made to diffuse the
light of the gospel, and to increase the sum of temporal comforts
amongst all over whom the dominion of Great Britain extends, or
to whom her influence reaches. But the aged remember when, as
yet, these things were not, and were not anticipated.

Of the schemes of public benevolence which were matured or
projected during the half century which followed the peace of 1783,
there was scarcely one of any magnitude in which Mr. Wilberforce
was not largely engaged. Whether churches and clergymen were
to be multiplied, or the Scriptures circulated, or missions sent to
the ends of the earth, or national education established, or the con-
dition of the poor impi'oved, or Ireland civilised, or good discipline
established in gaols, or obscure genius and piety enabled to emerge,
or in whatever other form philanthropy and patriotism laboured
for the improvement of his country, or of the world, — his sanction,
his eloquence, and his advice, were still regarded as indispensable
to success. No one man, however, nor any one hundred men,
could have assumed the actual superintendence of all the compli-
cated affairs in which he was thus immersed. To have conducted,
or understood, or even to have remembered them all, would have
been to live in the habitual performance of a miracle. His real
position was that of a minister of public charity, holding his ofhce
by popular acclamation, and delegating the more toilsome details
of that laborious administration to the friends and the partisans
who rejoiced to co-operate with him. He maintained his authority
over them by their affectionate reverence, by his own imfailing
bounty, and by the spell which he exercised over every one whom
he employed and trusted. No department in the state was ever so
zealously served, or so well administered. Yet it is impossible to
exhibit in any connected narrative the series and succession of
these labours which have no other connection or mutual depen-

K K

498 WILLIAM WILBEEFORCE.

dency than that which they derive from the identity of the agent,
and from the unity of his general design. The biographers of Mr.
Wilberforce have had no romantic tale to tell, nor have they been
required to exhibit human virtue on any gigantic or inimitable
scale. In promoting his schemes of beneficence, Mr. Wilberforce
moved with the graceful freedom which seemed to exclude every
notion of effort or of self-denial. Even in his most irksome works
of mercy, the refined ease of a gentleman attended him, for to be
turgid or ostentatious, was as impossible to him as to be unfeeling.
He would render the lowliest offices of personal kindness to his
domestic servants, or to any neighbouring cottager, with the same
flowing courtesy with which he interchanged the amenities of
society among his equals. During many years of his life, he
devoted to acts of munificence from a third to a foiirth part of his
annual income, and the money so freely given was ever accom-
panied by some greeting so kindly or so gay, as to soothe every
painful sense of obligation.

It must be confessed, however, that the joyful promptitude with
which he rendered every other service of love, forsook him when
the press was to be the instrument of his philanthropy. To build
up a literary edifice, in which chapter was to rise upon chapter, in
architectural proportion, was a task which suited him as ill as the
labours of the collier would agree with the taste of an aeronaut.
Yet the year 1797 witnessed the completion of an 8vo. volume
from his pen, bearing on its front the title of ' A Practical View of
the prevailing Eeligious System of Professed Christians in the
Higher and Middle Classes of this Country contrasted with real
Christianity.'

Tradition informs us, that this book was written under the roof
of two of the dearest and wisest of his friends, who had resort to
many affectionate artifices to promote this unusual concentration of
his discursive thoughts. Sometimes, when passages of peculiar
energy burst, in all their native warmth, from his lips, the lady of
the house would seize the happy moment, and become herself
his amanuensis. Sometimes she would gather up the scattered
leaves with which her guest had enriched her di-awing-room, or
her conservatory, and when the hour seemed projjitious to compo-
sition, would purposely leave him in an undisturbed and welcome
solitude. The story (pleasantly exaggerated perhaps) concludes
with the statement, that when, at length, she saw the volume
complete upon her table, she declared herself a convert to the
opinion, that a fortuitous concourse of atoms might, by some feli-
citous chance, combine themselves into the most perfect of forms, —
a moss-rose, or a bird of paradise.

WILLIAJI WILBERFORCE. 499

Such a treatise, by so conspicuous a member of the House of
Commons, could not but excite a lively interest at the time of its
appearance. But if there be sincerity in this world, it is in the
selection of the books we piu'chase, and neither rank nor any other
accident, in the circumstances of any author, ever yet produced
the sale of fifty editions of so large a work witliin the same num-
ber of years. It was little marvellous that ecclesiastics of every
rank and section greeted with the loudest applause the advent of
an ally at once so powerful and so unexpected. But that can have
been no common production, which compelled the author of ' The
Pursuits of Literature ' to throw aside his stilts, and to pour out a
heartfelt tribute of praise in his unpolluted mother tongue. Still
less is it possible to question the inherent life and energy of an
appeal, which drew from Edmund Burke his grateful acknowledo--
ments for the solace shed by it over the last two days of his event-
ful life.

Yet they who shall search this book for deep theology, or pro-
foimd investigation, will be disappointed. 'Philosophy,' says
Abraham Tucker, ' may be styled the art of marshalling the ideas
in the understanding, and religion that of disciplining the imao-i-
nation.' In the first of these arts Mr. Wilberforce did not excel ;
in the second he has scarcely ever been surpassed. The first three
chapters of his work are evidently inferior to the rest. He is
there upon a debateable land, contrasting the inspired text with
the prevalent opinions of his age on some points of Christian
doctrine. The accuracy of his own interpretations, or rather of
those which are received by that part of the Church of Eno-laud
usually designated as Evangelical, being assumed throughout these
discussions, they will scarcely convince such as read the New
Testament in a different sense. But when he emerges from these
defiles, and enters upon broader ground, comprising the precepts
of revelation with the conventional morality of the world's favoured
children, he speaks (for it is throughout a spoken rather than a
written language) with a persuasive energy which breathes the veiy
spirit of the inspired volume.

Here all is the mature result of profound meditation ; and his
thoughts, if not always methodical and compact, are at least always
poured out in words so earnest and affectionate, that philanthropy
never yet assumed a more appropriate or a more eloquent style.
It is the expostulation of a brother. Unwelcome truth is delivered
with scrupulous fidelity, and yet with a tenderness which demon-
strates that the monitor feels the pain which he reluctantly in-
flicts. It is this tone of human sympathy breathing in every page
which constitutes the essential charm of this book; and it is to

E K 2

coo WILLI AIM WILBERFORCE.

the honour of our common nature that we are all disposed to love
best that teacher, who, with the deepest compassion for our sorrows,
has the least indulgence for the errors or the faults by which they
have been occasioned.

Whatever objections may have been raised to Mr. Wilberforce's
theological opinions, there is but one which can be stated to the
exegetical part of his treatise. It is, that he has erected a standard
too pure and too sublime for this world's use, and proposes a scheme
of Utopian perfection which is calculated, by discouraging hope, to
repress exertion. The obvious answer is, that the design of every
rule which can be given for the conduct of life is to afford an
accurate measure of our deflection from the path of duty, and a
trustworthy guide for our return. Any system of religion or ethics
which tolerated the slightest compromise with moral evil, would be
so far subversive of its own purpose ; although it is from the
general prevalence of moral evil that such systems derive their
existence and their value. To mark distinctly the departure of the
luxurious, busy, care-worn, and ambitious age to which he be-
longed, from the theory and the practice of Christian morality,
was the task which Mr. Wilberforce proposed to himself. Never
were the sensuality, the gloom, and the selfishness which fester
below the polished surface of society, brought into more vivid
contrast Avith the faith, and hope, and charity, which in their com-
bination form the Christian character ; and never was that contrast
drawn with a firmer hand, with a more tender spirit, or with a purer
aspiration for the happiness of mankind.

To all these labours for the benefit of the world, were added
others, addressed, though less directly, to the same end, and
undertaken and pursued in a similar spirit. In his political career,
Mr. Wilberforce never ceased to act and to speak as one to whom
Providence had confided the sacred trust of advancing the moral
character, and promoting the welfare of his age and nation.

As a public speaker, he enjoyed great and well-merited cele-
brity. But it was not in the House of Commons that his powers
in this kind were exhibited to the greatest advantage. In all the
deliberations of Parliament may be discerned a tacit reference to
the Eoyal citation which has brought together the two Houses
* for the despatch of divers weighty and urgent affairs.' The
knights and burgesses are empliatically men of business, and have
but little indulgence for anything which tasks the understanding,
addresses itself to the heart, or elevates the imagination ; — least of
all for an ostentatious display of the resources of the speaker's
mind. He who can contribute a pertinent fact, or a weighty argu-
ment, may safely repose in the region of the bathos. The aspi-

W1L1>IAM AVILBERFORCE. 501

raut for fame must excel in perspicuity of statement, in prompti-
tude in the exposure or invention of sophistry, and in a ready
though abstemious use of wit, ridicule, and sarcasm.

In these requisites for success INIr. Wilberforce was deficient.
He had not much statistical knowledge, nor was he familiar with
any branch of Political Economy. His argumentation was not
usually perspicuous, and was seldom energetic. The habit of di-
gression, the parenthetical structure of his periods, and the minute
qualifications suggested by his reverence for trutli, impeded the
flow of his discourse, and frequently obscured its design. His
exquisite perception of the ridiculous kept him in the exercise of
habitual self-denial, and the satire which played upon his counte-
nance was suppressed by his universal charity, before it could form
itself into language. With these disadvantages he was still a great
Parliamentary speaker ; and there were occasions when, borne by
some sudden impulse, or carried by diligent preparation, over the
diffuseness which usually encumbered him, he delighted and sub-
dued his hearers.

His reputation in the House of Commons rested, however,
chiefly upon other grounds. In that assembly, any one speaks
with immense advantage whose character, station, or presumed
knowledge is such as to give importance to his opinions. The
dogmas of some men are of incomparably more value there than
the logic of others ; and no member, except the leaders of the
great contending parties, addressed the House with an authority
equal to that of Mr. Wilberforce. The homage rendered to his
personal character, his command over a small but compact party,
his representation of the county of York, the confidence of the
great religious bodies in every part of England, and, above all, his
independent neutrality, gave to his suflrage an almost unexampled
value. It was usually delivered with a demeanour of conscious
dignity, unalloyed by the slightest tinge of arrogance, and con-
trasting oddly enough with the insignificance of his slight and
shapeless person. Yet the spell he exercised was partly drawn
from still another source. Parliamentary eloquence is essentially
colloquial ; and, when most embellished or sustained, is rather
prolonged discourse than oratory properly so called. It was by a
constant, perhaps an unavoidable observance of this tone, that Mr.
Wilberforce exercised the charm which none could resist, but
which many were unable to explain. His speeches in the House
of Commons bore the closest resemblance to his familiar conver-
sation. There was the same earnest sincerity of manner, the same
natural and varied cadences, the same animation and ease, and the
same tone of polished society ; and while his affectionate, lively,

K K 3

502 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

and graceful talk flowed on without tlie slightest appearance of
effort or study, criticism itself scarcely perceived, or at least ex-
cused, the redundancy of his language.

But, as we have said, 'it was not in Parliament that his powers as
a public speaker had their highest exercise. His habitual trains of
thought, and the feelings which he most deeply cherished, could
rarely find utterance in that scene of strife and turmoil. At the
hustings, where the occasion justified the use of a more didactic
style, there was much simple majest}'- in the uncompromising avowal
of his principles, and in the admonitions suggested by them. He
there applied the grave eloquence of the pulpit to secular uses.
But it was in the great assemblages held for religious and charit-
able objects that the current of his eloquence moved with the
greatest impetus and volume. In them he at once felt his way to
the hearts of his eager and delighted hearers. In the fulness of
the charity which believeth all things, giving credit to the multi-
tude for feelings as pure and benevolent as his own, he possessed
the power of gracefully and decorously laying aside the reserve
which habitually shrouded from the irreverent and profane the
more secret and cherished feelings of his heart. Nothing was ever
more singular, or less framed upon any previous model of eloquence,
than were some of those addresses in which the chastened style of
the House of Commons (of all assemblies the most fastidious) was
emploj^ed to give utterance to thoughts which, though best becom-
ing the deepest retirement, retained, even in these crowded scenes,
their delicacy not less than their beauty. The most ardent of his
expressions bore the impress of indubitable sincerity, and of calm
and sober conviction ; and were instantly distinguished by the
instinct of his hearers from the less genuine enthusiasm of others
who dissolved their meaning in ecstasy, and soared beyond the
reach of human comprehension into the third heavens of arti-
ficial raptm-e. It was an example perhaps as full of danger as of
interest. Not a few are the offensive imitations which have been
attempted of a model which could be followed successfully, or even
innocently, by none whose bosoms did not really burn with the
same heavenly affections, who did not practise the same severe
observance of truth, or whose taste had not been refined to the
same degree of sensibility.

No part of Mr. Wilberforce's biography will be read with greater
interest than that which describes his political career. Holding
for forty-three years a conspicuous place in the House of Com-
mons, the current of public affairs, as it flowed past him, reflected
his character in a thousand different forms ; and exhibited, on the
most tumultuous theatre of action, the influence of those sacred

WILLIAM WILBEllFOKCH. o03

principles, with the workings of which we are for the uu)st part
conversant only in more quiet and secluded scenes.

'From anyone truth all truth may be inferred,'— a Baconian
text, from which certain commentators of the last century con-
cluded, that he who possessed a Bible might dispense with Grotius
and with Locke ; and that all other writings should disappear at
the approach of the Scriptures, as they had once vanished at the
presence of the Koran. The opinion which precisely reverses this
doctrine is recommended by less ingenuity, and by no better logic.
Mr. Wilberforce was far too wise a man to imagine that any reve-
lation from God could be designed to supersede the duty of patient
research into all other sources of knowledge. But neither did he
ever reject the vast body of ethical precepts delivered by Divine
inspiration, as irrelevant to the political questions with which he
was daily conversant. He invariably brought every conclusion
ch-awn from other studies to the test of their consistency with the
sacred oracles. They supplied him with an ordinate by which
to measure every curve. They gave him what most public
men egregiously want, — the firm hold of a body of unchanging
opinions. In his case this advantage was peculiarly momentous.
His neglected education, his inaptitude for severe and continuous
mental labour, the strength of his sympathies, and his strong per-
sonal attachment to Mr. Pitt, all seemed to give the promise of a
ductile, vacillating, uncertain course. Yet in reality no man ever
pursued in Parliament a career more entirely guided by fixed
principles, or more frequently at variance with his habitual incli-
nations. His connections, both public and private, not less than
his natural temper, disposed him to that line of policy which, in
our days, assumes the title of ' conservative ;' yet his conduct was
almost invariably such as is now distinguished by the epithets
' liberal and reforming.' A Tory by predilection, he was in action
a Whig. His heart was with Mr. Pitt ; but on all the cardinal
questions of the times, his vote was given to Mr. Fox.

This conflict of sentiment with principle did not, however, com-
mence in the earlier days of Mr. Pitt's administration ; for the
mortal foe of Jacobinism entered the House of Commons as a Par-
liamentary reformer; and Mr. Wilberforce executed a rapid journey
from Nice to London in the winter of 1784 to support, by his
eloquence and his vote, the Eeform Bill which his friend introduced
in the session of that year. The following broken sentences from
his diary record the result : — * At Pitt's all day — it goes on well —
sat up late chatting with Pitt — his hopes of the country and noble
patriotic heart — to town — Pitt's — House — Parliamentary reform —

E K 4

504 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE.

terribly disappointed and beat — extremely fatigued — spoke ex-
tremely ill but commended — called at Pitt's — met poor Wyvil.'

Of this 'ill spoken' but ' commended speech,' the following sen-
tence is preserved: — 'The consequence of this measure,' he said,
' will be that the freedom of opinion will be restored, and party
connexions in great measure vanish, for party on one side begets
party on the other;' — a prophecy which, rightly understood, is
perceptibly advancing towards its fulfilment.

The ill success of Mr. Pitt's proposal did not damp the zeal of
Mr. Wilberforce. He introduced into the House of Commons,
and even succeeded in carrying there, two of the most important
enactments of the Eeform Bill, in which, at the distance of nearly
half a century, Lord Grey obtained the reluctant concurrence of
the Peers. One of these measures provided for a general registra-
tion of voters ; the others for holding the poll, at the same time,
in several different parts of the same county.

From the commencement of the war with France is to be dated
the dissolution of the political alliance which had, till then, been
maintained with little interruption between Mr. Wilberforce and
Mr. Pitt. Though partaking more deeply than most men of the
prevalent abhorrence of the revolutionary doctrines of that day,
Mr. Wilberforce's resistance to the war was decided and persever-
ing. A written message from Mr. Pitt, delivered on the first
debate on that question, ' assuring him that his speaking then might
do irreparable mischief, and promising that he should have another
oiDportunity before war should be declared,' defeated his purpose of
protesting publicly against the approaching hostilities. Accident
prevented the redemption of Mr. Pitt's pledge, but Mr. Wilber-
force's purposes remained unshaken. ' Our Grovernment,' he says,
in a letter on this subject, ' had been for some months before the
breaking out of the war negotiating with the principal European
powers, for the purpose of obtaining a joint representation to
France, assuring her that if she would formally engage to keep
within her limits, and not molest her neighbours, she should be
suffered to settle her own internal government and constitution
without interference. I never was so earnest with Mr. Pitt on
any other occasion as I was in my entreaties, before the war broke
out, that he would openly declare in the House of Commons that
he had been, and then was, negotiating this treaty. I urged on
him that the declaration might possibly j)roduce an immediate
effect in France, where it was manifest there prevailed an opinion
that we were meditating some interference with their internal
affairs, and the restoration of Louis to his throne. At all events,
I hoped that in the first lucid interval, France would see how little

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. fi05

reason there was for continuiug the war with Great Britain ; and
at least, the declaration must silence all but the most determined
oppositionists in this country. How far this expectation would
have been realised you may estimate by Mr. Fox's language when
Mr. Pitt, at my instance, did make the declaration last winter
(1799). "If," he said, "the Right Honourable Gentleman had
made the declaration now delivered, to France, as well as to Russia,
Austria, and Prussia, I should have nothing more to say or to
desire." '

Experience and reflection confirmed these original impressions.
After the war had continued for a year, ' Mr. Wilber force was en-
gaged in making np his mind cautiously and maturely, and, there-
fore, slowly, as to the best conduct to be observed by Great Britain
in the present critical emei'gency.' With what a severe self-examina-
tion he was accustomed to conduct these inquiries, may be learnt from
an entry made at that period in his private journal. ' It is a proof
to me of my secret ambition, tliat though I foresee how much I
shall suffer in my feelings throughout from differing from Pitt, and
how indifferent a figure I shall most likely make, yet that motives
of ambition will insinuate themselves. Give me, Lord, a true
sense of the comparative value of earthly and of heavenly things ;
this will render me sober-minded, and fix my affections on things
above.'

Such was the solemn preparation with which he approached this
momentous question, and moved in the session of 1794 an amend-
ment to the address, recommending a more pacific policy. The
failure of that attempt did not shake his purpose ; for after the
interval of a few days he voted with ]\Ir. Grey on a direct motion
for the re-establishment of peace. The genuine self-denial with
which this submission to a clear sense of duty was attended, Mr.
Wilberforce has thus touchingly described. * No one who has not
seen a good deal of public life, and felt how difficult and painfid it
is to differ widely from those with whom you wish to agree, can
judge at what an expense of feeling such duties are performed.
Wednesday, February 4, dined at Lord Camden's. Pepper, and
Lady Arden, Steele, &c. I felt queer, and all day out of spirits —
wrong ! but hurt by the idea of Pitt's alienation. — 12th, party of
the old fii'm at the Speaker's ; I not there.'

Mr. Pitt's alienation was not the only, nor the most severe penalty
which Mr. Wilberforce had to pay on this occasion. The sarcasms
of Windham, — the ironical compliments of Burke, — a cold re-
ception from the King, — and even Fox's congratulation upon his
approaching alliance with the Opposition, might have been endured.
But it was more hard to bear the rebukes, however tenderly con-

506 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE.

veyed, of his friend and early guide, the Dean of Carlisle ; the
reproaches of the whole body of his clerical allies for the counte-
nance which they conceived him to have given to the enemies
of religion and of order ; and the earnest remonstrances of
many of his most powerful supporters in Yorkshire. The temper
so accessible to all kindly influences was, however, sustained by the
invio-orating voice of an approving conscience. He resumed his
pacific proposals in the spring of 1795, and though still defeated,
it was by a decreasing majority. Before the close of that year,
Mr. Pitt himself had become a convert to the opinions of his
friend. The war had ceased to be popular, and Lord Malmesbury's
neo"otiation followed. The failure of that attempt at length con-
vinced Mr. Wilberforce that the war was inevitable ; and thence-
forward his opposition to it ceased. Yet, on the renewal of hos-
tilities in 1803, he joined Mr. Fox in opposing the ministry, not
merely with his vote, but with a speech, which he subsequently
published.

The impeachment of Lord Melville brought Mr. Wilberforce
into a direct and painful hostility to those with whom he had lived
in youthful intimacy, and who still retained their hold on his
heart. Mr. Pitt was still his chosen friend ; Lord Melville had
been his early companion. But though compelled to watch the
movements of the ' fascinating eye ' and ' the agitated countenance'
turned reproachfully to him from the Treasury Bench, he delivered,
on this occasion, one of the most memorable of his Parliamentary
speeches, — in which the sternest principles of public morality
were so touchingly combined with compassion for the errors he
condemned, that the effect was irresistible ; and the casting vote of
the Speaker can scarcely be said with greater truth to have de-
termined the decision of the House. Nothing more truly in the
spirit of the pure and lofty principles by which he was guided, is
recorded of him, than his defence to the charge of inconsistency
for declining to join the deputation which carried up to the King
the subsequent address for the removal of Lord Melville from the
Royal Councils. ' I am a little surprised,' he said, ' that it should
be imputed as a fault to any that they did not accompany the
procession to St. James's. I should have thought that men's own
feelings might have suggested to them that it was a case in which
the heart might be permitted to give a lesson to the judgment.
My country might justly demand that, in my decision on Lord
Melville's conduct, I should be governed by the rules of justice,
and the principles of the constitution, without suffering party con-
siderations, personal friendship, or any extrinsic motive whatever
to interfere ; -that, in all that was substantial, I should deem myself

WILLIAM WlLBERFORCi:. 507

as in the exercise of a judicial office. But when the sentence of
the law is past, is not that sufficient ? Am 1 to join in the execu-
tion of it ? Is it to be expected of me that I am to stifle the
natural feelings of the heart, and not even to shed a tear over the
very sentence I am pronouncing ? I know not what Spartan virtue
or stoical pride might require ; but I know that I am taught a
different, ay, and a better lesson by a greater than either Lycurgus
or Zeno. Christianity enforces no such sacrifice. She requires us
indeed to do justice, but to love mercy. I learn in her school not
to triumph even over a conquered enemy, and must I join the
triumph over a Mien friend ? '

Although the Historian of the reign of George III. will prol)ably
notice Mr. Wilberforce chiefly or exclusively as the author of two
great Parliamentary measures, the Annalist of the same times will
assign to him a place in almost every memorable debate of the
House of Commons, during the last forty years of that reign, and
during the first five years of the reign which followed it. But these
occurrences, so numerous and so disconnected, will hardly be
manageable as a whole, or capable of exhibition, as so many se-
quences, even in the hands of a Biographer, unless he shall treat
every incident which he shall glean from the debates and journals
of the House, as so many indications of the same unvarying con-
victions, or as examples of a lawgiver continually acting in the
spirit of a judge — seeking no guide but truth — refusing implicit
obedience to the voice of any commander — derided by the whole
body of partisans as irresolute, fluctuating, and unstable, — and yet
being almost the only member of the Legislature whose conscience
was perfectly clear of that reproach. From the commencement
to the close of his public service, he, and perhaps he alone, shaped
his course with an eye continually fixed on what he believed to be
the real welfare of his country, with which no personal and no
party interest was ever permitted to interfere.

Thus, in the tranquillity of the years 1785 and 178G, during the
alarms of 1809, and amidst the disaffection of 1822, Mr. Wilber-
force was alike a Parliamentary Eeformer, and always with equal
decision. For at all times, and under each new aspect of affairs,
he acknowledged the duty of wrestling, at whatever hazard, with
the great moral evils inseparable from the purchase and sale of
seats in the Legislature.

He was the zealous defender of the Toleration Act, against Mr.
Pitt and Bishop Prettyman in 1800, and against Lord Sidmouth in
1811. For he judged that the real interests of Christianity required
that all men should be free to diffuse their genuine religious opinions.
But he was the equally zealous antagonist of the Maynooth Grant

508 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE.

in 1807 and 1808, because he thought that the same interests for-
bade the intervention of the state itself to propagate doctrines
condemned by our ecclesiastical and civil polity as deadly errors,
and to maintain jjractices censured by the same polity as nothing
less than idolatrous.

In the perilous times of 1797 and 1800, and in the times of
supposed peril of 1817 and 1819, he defended the bills suspending
the Habeas Corpus Act, and in 1806 he opposed the admission into
the Cabinet of the Chief Justice of the King's Bench. For he
habitually regarded himself as the depository of the sacred trust of
transmitting our great national institutions unimpaired to future
times, whether they were assailed by democratic violence, or by
the personal predilections or the party spirit of the minister of the
day.

His zeal for public morality stimulated him not only to zealous
efforts for diminishing the number of oaths, for the abolition of
lotteries, and for rescuing the day of rest from profanation, but to
an effort, far more opposed to his natural temper, to bring -Warren
Hastings to the punishment which, under the shelter of the relaxed
and conventional morality of his j udges, he ultimately escaped.

Yet Mr. Wilberforce was not to be drawn into the support or
the rejection of any measure by arguments, however plausible or
popular, which he considered to be erroneously deduced from the
great laws of public morality ; and therefore, at the expense of
appearing to the multitude to abandon the standard under which
he had so often rallied them, he refused to condemn the seizure of
the Danish fleet at Copenhagen. Yet the same fixed resolve to
obey his own conscience at whatever immediate pain, induced him
to condemn, even with sternness, the ill-fated expedition to Wal-
cheren, although it had brought overwhelming ridicule on the
second Earl of Chatham, the brother of the most intimate of his
early friends.

And this lofty determination, fearlessly to pursue the right into
whatever consequences it might conduct him, supplied him, as it
not rarely happens, with much political truth, to which others more
tardily and imperfectly attained by a merely intellectual process.
This kind of intuitive wisdom made him a free trader in 1787 on
the debate of the French and Portuguese commercial treaties — a
bank restrictionist ten years later — the triumphant antagonist, in
1806, of a tax on iron, the raw material of one of our great staple
trades— and in 1816, the opponent of the Income Tax, which was
preventing those accumulations of capital on which the prosperity
of all trades depends.

Eidicule, though distinctly foreseen and keenly apprehended.

WILLIAM WILBERFOECE. C09

could not deter him from supporting an address to King George III.
to use his influence for the delivery of Lafayette from his prison at
Olmutz, Nor covdd his loyal attachment to that sovereign (who
lived in his family so wisely, and governed his kingdom so dis-
astrously) induce him to acquiesce in the grants to the Princes of
the Royal House, or to oppose them silenth^ though, as we learn,
Mr. Pitt was ' furious ' on the occasion. While others were regard-
ing the Australian continent only as a vast receptacle for convicts,
his Parliamentary influence was used for laying there the foimda-
tions of the Church which now occupies every inhahited district of
New South Wales. While others were diverting the whole current
of national expenditure to the support of the war, he was labour-
ing, in the House of Commons, to obtain for the Church of England
that increased assistance by which alone, as he believed, an effectual
barrier could be raised amongst us against ignorance and vice, dis-
affection and anarchy.

It is difficult to reconcile the great contemporary influence, with
the small posthumous celebrity, of so many of the eminent actors
on the theatre of the world. It is often difficult to detect, or even
to conjecture, what was the real secret of an authority long since
expended, and which no extant record renders intelligible. In
many of such cases it will be found that the power possessed by a
man in his own generation depended much more than we willingly
believe, on his having possessed, in his bodily organism, a meet in-
terpreter for the movements of liis sovd. He may be great who
addresses mankind by the pen, the pencil, or the chisel, if Minerva
alone be propitious to him. But half Olympus must favour him
who would rise to eminence by arts which bring him into daily
intercourse with his fellow-men. Every hero of history has been
a sort of Eoscius in his way ; as Louis XIV. became a kind of hero,
merely because he excelled all mankind in the role of the Grand
Monarque. Half the Parliamentary reputation of our own times
rests on no higher ground. We therefore derogate nothing from
Mr. Wilberforce in ascribing much of his influence in the House of
Commons to his unrivalled dramatic powers. The student of the
history of those times, who shall read some of the discourses which
won for him so high a reputation, will scarcely avoid the belief that
it was very ill merited. But if he had heard them flill from the
lips of the speaker — if he had seen him rising with a spirit and
self-reliance w^hich Mercutio might have envied, and had listened
to those tones so full, liquid, and penetrating, and had watched the
eye sparkling as each playful fancy crossed his field of vision, or
glowing when he spoke of the oppressions done upon the earth —
the fragile form elevating and expanding itself into heroic dignity

510 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

— and the transitions of his gestures, so rapid and so complete,
each successive attitude adapting itself so easily to each new
variation of his style— he would no more have wondered at the
efficacy even of ordinary topics and of common-place remarks from
such a speaker, than at the magic of the tamest speech from the
lips of Garrick or of Talma.

And yet it was neither in his Parliamentary life nor in the mixed
intercourse of society, nor in the throng of his almoners, nor amidst
the crowds with whom he was accustomed to interchange the sym-
pathies of great charitable meetings, that the range and force of his
power over the hearts of his associates was most effectually dis-
played. The most potent incantations of this great magician were
raised within the sacred circle of his home. Thei'e his wife, the
daughter of Isaac Spooner, a country gentleman in Warwickshire,
and their four sons (destined, afterwards, to become conspicuous
members of society), and their two daughters, and his only sister
and her husband, formed the interior of the many circles of which
he was the common centre. It was incomparably the dearest ; yet
he loved much the second group, composed, as it was, of his more
remote kindred, and of the chosen friends of his youth ; and much
he delighted in the third, thronged as it continually was, by the
associates of his labours for the commonwealth and for the Church ;
and much also it rejoiced him to regale, with hospitable cheer, and
kind or gay discourse, the remoter multitude who, from Grades to
Ganges, sought admittance at his house, some to gratify their
curiosity, some to explain every grievance suffered beneath the
sun, and some to solicit countenance for schemes of beneficence,
more numerous and more varied than ever were conceived in
Laputa, or accomplished in the New Atlantis.

But in proportion to the shortness of the radii was the warmth
and brightness at the circumference. With his wife and children
about him, the aged William Wilberforce became once more a child,
and seemed for the moment scarcely older than his boys. Their
glad voices found in his a no less joyous echo, or, rising spon-
taneously to the level of their mirth, his spirits would appear as
unbroken as their own. Nor were kind filial artifices wanting to
lure the old man to the sheltered walk where he liked best to stroll,
and there to guide him to those recollections on which he dwelt
with the fondest delight, and the most abounding affluence of
anecdote and of reflection. From such topics the transition was
easy, and indeed inevitable, to the thoughts which had settled down
into the lowest depths of his soul, but which he never poured out
in so full a current, or illustrated with such fertility as when his
sons had gathered round him. Then he would speak as if touch-

WILLIAJI WILBERB^ORCE. 511

ing the lyre of David, of all the relations between the divine nature
and the human, and would find in every incident of his past life,
in whatever he had observed of the lives of others, in each passage
of Holy Writ, and every well-remembered poem, in the whole world,
visible or audible, buttresses and ornaments for the two main pil-
lars of his creed — the first, that God is love ; the second, that God
is truth.

Whoever had wished to find fault with the social habits and
demeanour of Mr. Wilberforce, would have complained of his too
rapid movement and versatility of mind, which left no room for
repose, and for that deliberate interchange of intelligence and
opinion, to which repose is indispensable. But this excitement and
hurry of spirit was subdued, in the society of his wife and children,
by the jealous tenderness which deprecated the association, in their
minds, with the idea of himself, of any other than laudable, and
reverent, and affectionate remembrances. Even in their boyhood
he listened to his sons with a staid and sober quietness, foreign to
his ordinary manners ; and in their manhood invited their infor-
mation, courted their advice, and deferred to their judgment with
the same kindly confidence with which he stayed his feeble steps
by leaning on their more vigorous arms.

Friendship never assumed a more touching form. His paternal
tenderness had not, even in their early years, degenerated into
fondness, or expressed itself by caresses, or by a blind and par-
tial admiration. On the contrary, it was with an almost morbid
acuteness that he detected the germs of evil, moral or intellectual,
in his children, and watched the growth, or the decline, of any
wayward humour or dangerous propensity in them. When, how-
ever, the anxious days of their education were completed, then, if
ever, miglit be traced on his venerable countenance one flush of
human pride, as he would exclaim, ' I have had three sons at Ox-
ford, and all of them first-class men. Show me the man who can
make the same boast !' As years rolled on, and he saw two of
those sons presbyters of the Church of England, and the third self-
devoted to the same high office, there was no longer room in his
heart for any emotion less profound than that of adoring gratitude,
that his habitual prayer for them had been heard. If they had
brought home royal patents placing them among the chief nobles
of the realm, he would have regarded them as mean and worthless
honours, compared with that which their ordination to that sacred
function had conferred upon his house.

And who that ever witnessed can ever forget the solemn and
delighted complacency with which he took his seat among the con-
gregation to which either of his sons was to minister — the child-

512 WILLIAM WILBERFORCE.

like docility with which he listened to the voice of his child — how
he rejoiced to gather, for his own spiritvial nutriment, the ripe har-
vest of the seeds which, in earlier days, he had himself sown in
their minds — with what a grave and tender joy he partook of the
domestic devotions which they had learnt from himself to offer —
and in what tones of almost oppressive gratitude to Grod, he would
speak of the delight of accompanying one of them in his pastoral
visits, and of joining in the prayers which his yovmg messenger of
the Gospel of Peace had there poured forth by the beds of his sick
or dying parishioners.

Many years have since passed over those who, at that time
gazed upon that aged father, so joyous and so placid, his fading
eye and furrowed cheek reflecting the dawn of the eternal day then
about +0 rise upon him, his work on earth accomplished, and his
earthly hopes fulfilled, blessing his children, and blessed by them ;
and although those years have brought with them such events as
to render dim and obscure almost every other retrospect, the im-
perishable image of that old man — contemplating, so serenely,
from the narrow isthmus of life, the world he had loved and served
so long, and the world for which he had been so long maturing —
still possesses their memories in unimpaired distinctness ; attesting
to them that even the Valley of the Shadow of Death may smile
like the green pastures, and be tranquil as the waters of comfort,
to one who descends into it, sustained by the staff, and defended
by the rod, of the Grood Shepherd whose guidance he has followed
all his journey through.

The kind Providence which thus conducted him withdrew him
from the conflicts of public life before he had lost the strength
without which retirement can neither be really enjoyed nor fitly
improved. In the year 1825 he quitted Parliament to pass the
rest of his days in the bosom of his family. There, however, he
did not entirely escape those sorrows which usually gather round
us as the shadows grow long. He had to weep by the dying beds
of each of his two daughters ; and from that want of worldly wisdom
which always characterised him, he lost a considerable part of his
fortune in a speculation from which he had nothing to gain or to
hope but the gratification of parental kindness.

Never were such misfortunes more effectually baffled by the
invulnerable peace of a cheerful and self-approving heart. There
were not, indeed, wanting external circumstances of a painful cha-
racter which marked his comparative poverty, but the most close
and intimate, observer could never perceive in his countenance or
in his demeanour so much as a passing shade of dejection or
anxiety on that account. He might, indeed, have been supposed

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 513

to be unconscious that he had lost anything, but for tlie remarks
which occasionally fell from him on the divine goodness which had
converted the seeming calamity into a blessing to his children and
to Inmself.

Two of them had by this time become incumbents of parsonages,
— of which one stood on the pleasant hills which skirt the Med-
way, and the other on the slope which connects the high downs of
the Isle of Wight with the adjacent ocean. In his altered fortunes
he found a welcome apology for wthdrawing from society at large
to gladden by his almost constant presence those quiet homes of
the sons by whom his biography has since been written. Tliere,
surrounded by his wife, his children, and his grandchildren, he
yielded himself to the current of each successive desire ; for he had
now acquired that rare maturity of the moral stature, in which the
conflict between inclination and duty is over, and virtue and self-
indulgence are the same.

As his later years wore away, some decline of his intellectual
powers was occasionally perceptible to the friends of his earlier
and more active days. But in general it was otherwise ; and after
an evening saunter with him on the sands which stretch towards
the Needles, or beneath the holly hedges which skirt the hop-
gardens in the northern district of Kent, it was difficult not to
recall and (silently at least) to apply to him the apostrophe of
Cowley to the aged author of the ' Leviathan : ' —

' Xor can the snows wliich now cold ag-e liatli slietl
Upon tliy revereud head,
Quench or allay the noble fires within :
For all that thou hast been, and aU that youth can be,
Thou'rt yet — so fully still dost thou
Possess the manhood and the bloom of wit.
To things immortal time can do no wrong,
And that which never is to die, for ever must be young.'

The end of his pilgrimage was now drawing near, and gradual,
gentle, -and serene was his descent to the dark waters through
which all must pass to the imseen and unimaginable regions which
lie beyond. The heavenly guide who had thus far conducted him
did not desert him now. Looking back with gratitude — sometimes
eloquent, and sometimes striving in vain for utterance — to his
long career of usefulness, of honour, and of enjoyment, he watched,
with grave composure, the ebb of the current which was fast benr-
ing him to his eternal reward. After a very brief illness, and witli
no indication of bodily suffering, he died in his seventy-fifth year,
in undisturbed 'tranquillity, — breathing out to all who surrounded
him in his latest hours, benedictions full of love, and thoughts

L L

514 WILLIAM WILBERFOECE.

dictated by heavenly wisdom, not without the irradiation of one,
at least, of those bright gleams of gaiety which, in his happy
nature, no shadow was ever deep enough entirely to obscure.

He was laid in the grave in Westminster Abbey, in the presence
of a large nmiiber of the members of both Houses of Parliament,
and with all the solemnities which their zeal could devise to ex-
press their sense of the services, the dignity, and the worth of the
colleague they deplored. Never had the solemn ritual of the
Church been pronounced over the grave of any of her children
with more affecting or more appropriate truth. Never were re-
cited on a more fitting occasion the solemn words, ' I heard a voice
from Heaven saying unto me — Write. From henceforth blessed
are the dead which die in the Lord. Even so, saith the Spirit ;
for they rest from their labours.'

The book* to which (not unaided by other sources of knowledge)
we are chiefly indebted for the materials of this rapid survey of
the life and character of Mr. Wilberforce, contains some incidental
notices of the eminent persons with whom he associated. The
contribution thus made to the biographical history of that time is
less extensive than might have been anticipated ; and, indeed, less
interesting, except as it throws some light on the private life of
Mr. Pitt, of whose personal habits the world at large has scarcely
any intelligence. In these volumes a glimpse of him is caught at
one time as he passes an evening in classical studies or amusements
with Mr. Canning, and at another as, with the aid of Mr. Wilber-
force and Lord Gfrenville, he cuts a walk through his plantations at
Holwood. On the whole, however, the William Pitt of this work
is the austere Minister with whom we were already so well ac-
quainted, not the man himself, in his natural, or in his emancipated
state.

The following extract of a letter from Mr. Wilberforce is almost
the only passage which gives us an intimation of the careless
familiarity in which, for many years, they lived together : —

'And now, after having transacted my business with the Minis-
ter, a word or two to the man — a character in which, if it is
more pleasant to you, it is no less pleasant to me to address you.
I wish you may be passing your time half as salubriously and
comfortably as I am at Grisborne's, where I am breathing good air,
eating good mutton, keeping good hours, and enjoying the company
of good friends. You have only two of the four at command, nor

* The Life of WUliam Wilberforce, by bis sons, Robert^Tsaac Wilberforce,
M.A., and Samuel Wilberforce, M.A. In five volumes. London, 1838.
Murray.

WILLIAM WILBERFORCK. 515

these alwa^'S in so pure a state as in Need wood Forest; your town
mutton being apt to be woolly, and your town friends to be
interested : however, I sincerely believe you are, through the good-
ness of Providence, better off in the latter particular than has been
the fate of ninety-nine Ministers out of a hundred ; and as for the
former, the quantity you lay in may in some degree atone for the
quality ; and it is a sign that neither in friends nor mutton you
have yet lost your taste. Indeed, I shall reckon it a bad symptom
of your moral or corporeal state, as the case may be, when your
palate is so vitiated, that you cannot distinguish the true from the
false flavour. All this is sad stuff, but you must allow us gentle-
men who live in forests to be a little figm-ative. I will only add,
however (that I may not quite exhaust your patience), that I hope
you will never cease to relish me, and do me the justice to believe
the ingredients are good, though you may not altogether approve
of the cooking. Yours ever,

*W. WiLBERFORCE.

' P.S. — Remember me to all friends. I hope you have no more
gout, &c. If you will at any time give me a line (though it be
but a mouthful) I shall be glad of it. You will think me be-
Burked like yourself.'

On the occasion of Mr. Pitt's duel with Mr. Tierney, Mr. Wil-
berforce had designed to bring the subject under the notice of the
House of Commons. The intention was defeated by the following
kind and characteristic letter : —

* My dear Wilberforce,

' I am not the person to argue vnih. you on a subject in
which I am a good deal concerned. I hope, too, that I am in-
capable of doubting your kindness to me (however mistaken I may
think it), if you let any sentiment of that sort actuate you on the
present occasion. I must suppose that some such feelii g has
inadvertently operated upon you, because, whatever may be your
general sentiments on subjects of this nature, they can have ac-
quired no new tone or additional argument from anything that
has passed in this transaction. You must be supposed to bring
this forward in reference to the individual case.

* In doing so, you will be accessory in loading one of the parties
with unfair and immerited obloquy. With respect to the otlier
party, myself, I feel it a real duty to say to you frankly that your
motion is one for my removal. If any step on the subject is pro-
posed in Parliament and agreed to, I shall feel from that moment
that I can be of more use out of offtce than in it; for in it, accord-

L L 2

516 WILLIMI WILBEEFORCE.

ing to the feelings I entertain, I could be of none. I state to you,
as I think I ought, distinctly and explicitly, what I feel. I hope I
need not repeat what I always feel personally to yourself.— Yours
ever,

* William Pitt.

' Downing Street, Wednesday,
' May 30, 1798, 11 p.m.'

The following passage is worth transcribing as a graplnc, though
slight sketch of Mr. Pitt, from the pen of one who knew him so
well :—

' \Mien a statement had been made to the House of the cruel
practices, approaching certainly to torture, by which the discovery
of concealed arms had been enforced in Ireland, John Claudius
Beresford rose to reply, and said with a force and honesty, the
impression of which I never can forget, " I fear, and feel deep
shame in making the avowal — I fear it is too true — I defend it
not — but I trust I may be permitted to refer, as some palliation
of these atrocities, to the state of my unhappy country, where
rebellion and its attendant horrors had roused on both sides to
the highest pitch all the strongest passions of our nature." I was
with Pitt in the House of Lords when Lord Clare replied to a
similar charge — "Well, suppose it were so ; but surely," &c. I
shall never forget Pitt's look. He turned round to me with that
indignant stare which sometimes marked his countenance, and
stalked out of the House.'

It is not generally known that, at the period of Lord Melville's
trial, a coolness almost approaching to estrangement had arisen
between that Minister and Mr. Pitt. The following extract from
one of Mr. Wilberforce's Diaries on this subject affords an
authentic and curious illustration of Mr. Pitt's character : —

' I had perceived above a year before that Lord Melville had not
the power over Pitt's mind which he once possessed. Pitt was
taking me to Lord Camden's, and in our tete-a-tete he gave me an
account of the negotiations which had been on foot to induce him to
enter Addington's Administration. When they quitted office in
1801, Dundas proposed taking as his m.otto, Jam rude donatus. Pitt
suggested to him that, having always been an active man, he would
probably wish again to come into office, and then that his having
taken such a motto would be made a ground for ridicule. Dimdas
assented, and took another motto. Addington had not long been

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 517

in office, before Pitt's expectation was fulfilled, and Dundas under-
took to bring Pitt into the plan ; which was to appoint some tliird
person head, and bring in Pitt and Addington on e{[ual terms under
him. Dundas accordingly, confiding in his knowledge of all Pitt's
ways and feelings, set out for Walmer Castle ; and after dinner,
and port wine, began cautiously to open his proposals. But he saw
it would not do, and stopped abruptly. " Eeally," said Pitt, with
a sly severity, and it was almost the only sharp thing I ever heard
him say of any friend, " I had not the curiosity to ask what I was
to be." '

Amongst the letters addressed to Mr. Wilberforce, to be found
in these volumes, is one written by John Wesley from his death-
bed, on the day before he sank into the lethargy from which lie
was never roused. They are probably the last wiitten words of
that extraordinary man : —

'February 24, 1701.

*My dear Sir,

' Unless Divine power has raised you up to be iXfiAfluinaslKS
contra munduni, I see not how you can go through your glorious
enterprise, in opposing that execrable villany which is the scandal
of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has
raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out l)y the
opposition of men and devils : but 'if Grod be for you, who can be
against you ? Are all of them together stronger than Grod ? Oh !
be not weary of well doing. Gro on in the name of God, and in
the power of his might, till even American slavery, the vilest that
ever saw the sun, shall vanish away before it. That he who has guided
you from your youth up, may continue to strengthen you in this and
all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, your affectionate servant,

*JoHN Wesley.'

From a very different correspondent, Jeremy Bentham, Mr.
Wilberforce received two notes, for which, as they are the only ex-
amples we have seen in print of his epistolary style, we must find
a place : —

' Kind Sir,

'The next time you happen on Mr. Attorney-General, in
the House or elsewhere, be pleased to take a spike — the longer
and sharper the better — and apply it to him, by way of memoifo,
that the Penitentiary Contract Bill has, for I know not what length
of time, been sticking in his hands; and you will nuich oblige your
humble servant to command,

' Jeremy Bentifam.

* N.B. — A corking-pin was, yesterday, applied by Mr. Abbot.'

L L .3

518 WILLIAM WILBEEFOKCE.

* I sympathise with your now happily promising exertions in
behalf of the race of innocents, whose lot it has hitherto been to be
made the subject-matter of depredation, for the purpose of being
treated worse than the authors of such crimes are treated for those
crimes in other places.'

There are, in this work, some occasional additions to the stock
of political anecdotes. Of these we transcribe the following speci-
mens : —

' Franklin signed the Peace of Paris in his old spotted velvet
coat (it being the time of a court-mourning, which rendered it
more particular). " What," said my friend the negotiator, " is the
meaning of that harlequin coat?" — "It is that in which he was
abused by Wedderburne." He showed much rancour and personal
enmity to this country — would not grant the common passports
for trade, which were, however, easily got from Jay or Adams.

' Dined with Lord Camden ; he very chatty and pleasant. Abused
Thurlow for his duplicity and mystery. Said the King had said to
him occasionally he had wished Thurlow and Pitt to agree ; for that
both were necessary to him — one in the Lords, the other in the
Commons. Thurlow will never do anything to oblige Lord Cam-
den, because he is a friend of Pitt's. Lord Camden himself, though
he speaks of Pitt with evident affection, seems rather to complain
of his being too much under the influence of any one who is about
him ; particularly of Dundas, who prefers his countrymen when-
ever he can. Lord Camden is sure that Lord Bute got money by
the Peace of Paris. He can account for his sinking near 300,000^.
in land and houses ; and his paternal estate in the island which
bears his name, was not above 1500/. a year, and he is a life-tenant
only of Wortley, which may be 8000/. or 10,000/. Lord Camden
does not believe Lord Bute has any the least connection with the
King now, whatever he may have had. Lord Thurlow is giving
constant dinners to the Judges, to gain them over to his party.
***** was applied to by ***** , a wretched sort of dependant of
the Prince of Wales, to know if he would lend money on the joint
bond of the Prince and the Dukes of York and Clarence, to receive
double the sum lent, whenever the King should die, and either the
Prince of Wales, the Dukes of York and Clarence, come into the
inheritance. The sum intended to be raised is 200,000/.

''Tis only a hollow truce, not a peace, that is made between
Thurlow and Pitt. They can have no confidence in each other.' «

Boswell, the prince of biographers, has well nigh ruined the art

WlLLIAxM WILBEKFORCE. 519

of biography. For like every other art, it has its laws, or rather is
bound by those laws to which all composition is subject, whether
the pen or the pencil, the chisel or the musical chords, be the in-
strument with which we work. Of those canons, the chief is, that
the artist must aim at unity of effect, and must therefore bring all
the subordinate parts of his design into a tributary dependence on
his principal object. Boswell (a man of true genius, however
coarse his feelings, and however flagrant his self-conceit), knew how
to extract from every incident of his hero's life, and from the
meanest alike and the noblest of his hero's associates, a series of
ever-varying illustrations and embellishments of his hero's charac-
ter. The imagination of Cervantes scarcely produced a portrait
more single, harmonious, and prominent, in the centre of innu-
merable sketches, and of groups which fill without crowding the
canvass.

The imitators of this great master have aspired to the same suc-
cess by the simple collocation of all facts, all letters, and all sayings,
from which the moral, intellectual, or social nature of the main
figure on their biographical easel may be inferred. But in order
to truth of effect, a narrator must suppress much of the whole truth.
Charles V. of Spain, and Charles I. of England, still live in picture,
as they lived in the flesh, because Titian and Vandyke knew how
to exclude, to conceal, and to diminish, as well as how to copy.
Imagination cannot do her work unless she be free in the choice of
her materials ; and if the work of imagination be undone, nothing
is done which any distant times will hoard as a part of their literary
inheritance.

Mr. Wilberforce was an admirable subject for the exercise of the
dramatic power which converts a whole generation into a mirror,
reflecting all the different attitudes, and glowing with all the shift-
colours, of some one conspicuous and commanding form. A filial
hand could not, without some impropriety, have used, if it had
possessed, that power ; and the time is perhaps too recent for any
one to hazard such a performance. These volumes must therefore
be considered as 7nemolres jjoiir servir, in the composition of an
historical picture of English society, political and religious, as it ex-
isted in the most eventful epoch of the history of England, and as
it clustered round one of its most admirable members. Whoever
shall undertake that task, will find here guides to whom it is im-
possible to deny the praise of fidelity and diligence, and unaffected
modesty. Stiidiously withdrawing themselves from the notice of
their readers, they have made no display of their own theological,
scientific, and literary wealth. Their work has been executed with
ability, and with deep affection. If their father docs not live in

L L 4

520 WILLIAM WILBERFOKCE.

their pages as Madame de Stael described him — the most eloquent
and the -wittiest converser she had met in England — nor as tradi-
tion commemorates him — the ever bright and animating centre of
the social system which gTavitated round him — he is yet luminously
exhibited in his still nobler character, as consuming his existence
in labours for the Church, for the State, and for mankind, such as
no other man in that age, and such as no private man in any age
of his country's annals, had at once the genius and the will to
render.

521

THE CLAPHAM SECT.

In one of those collections of Essays which have recently been
detached from the main body of the Edinburgh Review (the
writers of that Journal following therein the policy of Constantine
and of Charlemagne, when dividing their otherwise too extensive
Empires into distinct though associated sovereignties), there occur
certain pleasant allusions, already rendered obscure by the lapse of
time, to a religious sect or society, which, as it appears, was flourish-
ing in this realm in the reign of Greorge III. What subtle theories,
what clouds of learned dust, might have been raised by future
Binghams, and by Du Pins yet unborn, to determine what was The
Patent Christianity, and what The Clajjham Sect of the nineteenth
century, had not a fair and a noble author appeared to dispel, or at
least to mitigate, the darkness ! Something, indeed, had been done
aforetime. The antiquities of Clapham, had they not been written
in the Britannia of Mr. Lysons ? Her beauties, had they not in-
spired the muse of Mr. Robins? But it was reserved for Mrs.
Milner, in her life of Dean Milner, and for Lord Teignmouth, in
his Life of his Father, to throw such light on her social and eccle-
siastical state as will render the facetious Journalist * intelligible to
future generations. Treading in their steps, and aided by their
information, it shall be our endeavour to clear up still more fully,
for the benefit of ages yet to come, this passage in the ecclesiastical
history of the age which has just passed away.

Though living amidst the throes of Empires, and the fall of
Dynasties, men are not merely warriors and politicians. Even in
such times they buy and sell, build and plant, marry, and are given
in marriage. And thus it happened, that during the war with re-
volutionary France, Henry Thornton, the then representative in

* The Rev. Sydney Smith.

522 THE CLAPIIA3I SECT.

Parliament of the borough of South vvark, having become a husband,
became also the owner of a spacious mansion on the confines of the
villa-cinctured common of Clapham.

It is difficult to consider the suburban retirement of a wealthy
banker sesthetically (as the Grermans have it) ; but, in this instance,
the intervention of William Pitt imparted some dignity to an oc-
currence otherwise so unpoetical. He dismissed for a moment his
budgets and his subsidies, for the amusement of planning an oval
saloon, to be added to this newly purchased residence. It arose at
his bidding, and yet remains, perhaps, a solitary monument of the
architectural skill of that imperial mind. Lofty and symmetrical,
it was curiously wainscoted with books on every side, except where
it opened on a far extended lawn, reposing beneath the giant arms
of aged elms and massive tulip-trees.

Few of the designs of the great Minister were equally successful.
Ere many years had elapsed, the chamber he had thus projected
became the scene of enjoyments which, amidst his proudest triumphs,
he mio-ht well have envied, and witnessed the growth of projects
more majestic than any which ever engaged the deliberations of
his Cabinet. For there, at the close of each succeeding day, drew
together a group of playful children, and with them a knot of
legislators, rehearsing, in sport or earnestly, some approaching de-
bate ; or travellers from distant lands ; or circumnavigators of the
worlds of literature and science ; or the Pastor of the neighbouring
Church, whose look announced him as the channel through which
benedictions passed to earth from heaven ; and, not seldom, a youth
who listened, while he seemed to read the book spread out before
him. There also was still a matronly presence, controlling, ani-
mating, and harmonising the elements of this little world, by a
kindly spell, of which none could trace the working, though the
charm was confessed by all. Dissolved in endless discourse, or
rather in audible soliloquy, flowing from springs deep and inex-
haustible, the lord of this well-peopled enclosure rejoiced over it
with a contagious joy. In a few paces, indeed, he might traverse
the whole extent of that patriarchal dominion. But within those
narrow precincts were his Porch, his Studio, his Judgment-Seat,
his Oratory, and ' the Church that was in his house,' — the reduced,
but not imperfect resemblance of that innumerable Company which
his Catholic spirit embraced and loved, under all the varying forms
which conceal their union from each other and from the world.
Discord never agitated that tranquil home ; lassitude never brooded
over it. Those demons quailed at the aspect of a man in whose
heart peace had found a resting-place, though his intellect was in-
capable of repose.

THE CLAPHAM SECT. 5J3

Heniy was the third sou of John Thornton, a merchant, re-
nowned in his generation for a munificence more than princely,
and commended to the reverence of posterity hy the letters and
the poetry of Cowper. The father was one of those rare men in
whom the desire to relieve distress assumes the form of a master
passion ; and, if faith he due to tradition, he indulged it with a
disdain, alternately ludicrous and sublime, of the good advice
which the eccentric have to undergo from the judicious. Conscious
of no aims but such as might invite the scrutiny of God and man,
he pursued them after his own fearless fashion — yielding to every
honest impulse, relishing a frolic when it fell in his way, choosing
his associates in scorn of mere worldly precepts, and worshipping
with any fellow Christian whose heart beat in unison with his own,
however inharmonious might be some of the articles of their
respective creeds.

His son was the heir of his benevolence, but not of his pecu-
liarities. If Lavater had been summoned to divine the occupation
of Henry Thornton, he would probably have assigned to him the
highest rank among the Judges of his native land. Brows capa-
cious and serene, a scrutinising eye, and lips slightly separated, as
of one who listens and prepares to speak, were the true interpreters
of the informing mind within. It was a countenance on which
were graven the traces of an industry alike quiet and persevering,
of a self-possession unassailable by any stjong excitement, and of
an understanding keen to detect and comprehensive to reconcile
distinctions. The judicial, like the poetical nature, is a birthright;
and by that imprescriptible title he possessed it. Forensic debates
were indeed beyond his province ; but even in Westminster Hall,
the noblest other temples, Themis had no more devoted worshipper.
To investigate the great controversies of his own and of all former
times, was the chosen employment : to pronounce sentence in them,
the dear delight of his leisure hours.

Nothing which fell within the range of his observation escaped
this curious inquiry. His own duties, motives, and habits, the
characters of those whom he loved best, the intellectual resources
and powers of his various friends and companions, the preposses-
sions, hereditary or conventional, to which he or they were subject,
the maxims of society, the dogmas of the Church, the problems
which were engaging the attention of Parliament or of political
economists, and those which affected his own commercial enter-
prises — all passed in review before him, and were all in their turn
adjudicated with the grave impartiality which the Keeper of the
Grreat Seal is expected to exhibit. Truth, the foe of falsehood —
truth, the antagonist of error — and truth, the exorcist of ambiguity

524 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

— was the object of his supreme homage; and so reverential were
the vows offered by him at her shrine, that he abjured the com-
munion of those less devout worshijjpers, who throw over her tlie
veil of fiction, or place her in epigrammatic attitudes, or disguise
her beneath the mask of wit or drollery. To contemplate truth in
the purest light, and in her own fair proportions, he was content
that she should be unadorned by any beauties but such as belong
to her celestial nature, and are inseparable from it. Hence his
disquisitions did not always escape the reproach of drought and
tediousness, or avoided it only by the cheerful tone and pungent
sense with which they were conducted. He had as little pretension
to the colloquial eloquence as to the multifarious learning and
transcendental revelations of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Yet the
pilgrimages to Clapham and to Plighgate were made with rival
zeal, and the relics brought back from each were regarded as of
almost equal sanctity. If the philosophical poet dismissed his
audience under the spell of theories compassing all knowledge, and
of imagery peopling all space, the practical philosopher sent his
hearers to their homes instructed in a doctrine cheerful, genial,
and active — a doctrine which taught them to be sociable and busy,
to augment to the utmost of their power the joint stock of human
happiness, and freely to take and freely to enjoy the share assigned
to each by the conditions of that universal partnership. And well
did the teacher illustrate his own maxims. The law of social dut}^,
as interpreted in his domestic academy, was never expounded more
clearly or more impressively than by his habitual example.

Having inherited an estate, which, though not splendid, was
enough for the support of his commercial credit, he adjudged that
it ought never to be increased by accumulation, nor diminished by
sumptuousness ; and he lived and died in the rigid practice of this
decision. In the division of his income between himself and the
jjoor, the share he originally assigned to them was nearly six-
sevenths of the whole; and, as appeared after his death, from
accounts kept with the most minute commercial accuracy, the
amount expended by him in one of his earlier years, for the relief
of distress, considerably exceeded nine thousand pounds. When
he had become the head of a family, he reviewed this decree, and
thenceforward regarded himself as trustee for the miserable, to the
extent only of one-third of his whole expenditure. The same
faithful record showed that the smallest annual payment ever paid
by him on this account amounted to two thousand pounds. As a
legislator, he had condemned the unequal pressure of the direct taxes
on the rich and the poor ; but, instead of solacing his defeat with
the narcotic of virtuous indignation, combined with discreet parsi-

THE CLAPIIA^I SECT. 5-25

mony, he silently raised liis own contribution to the level of his
censiu'e. Tidings of the commercial failure of a near kinsman
embarked him at once on an inquiry — how far he was obliged to
indemnify those who might have given credit to his relative, in a
reliance, however unauthorised, on his own resources; and again
the coffers of the banker were unlocked by the astuteness of the
casuist. A mercantile partnership (many a year has passed since
the disclosure could injure or affect any one), which without his
knowledge had obtained from his firm large and improvident
advances, became so hopelessly embarrassed, that their bankruptcy
was pressed on him as the only chance of averting from his own
house the most serious disasters. He overruled the proposal, on
the ground that they whose rashness had given to their debtors an
unmerited credit, had no right to call on others to divide with them
the consequent loss. To the last farthing he therefore discharged
the liabilities of the insolvents, at a cost of which his own share
exceeded twenty thousand pounds. Yet he was then declining in
health, and the father of nine young children. Enamoured of
truth, the living spirit of justice, he yielded the allegiance of the
heart to justice, the outward form of truth. The law engraven on
the tablet of his conscience, and executed by the ministry of his
affections, was strictly interpreted by his reason, as tlie supreme
earthly judge. Whatever might be his topic, or whatever his em-
ployment, he never laid aside the ermine.

And yet, for more than thirty years, he was a member of the
unreformed parliament, representing there that people, so few and
singular, who dare to think, and speak, and act for themselves. He
never gave one party vote, was never claimed as an adherent by
any of the contending factions of his times, and, of course, neither
won nor sought the favour of any. An impartial arbiter, whose
suffrage was the honourable reward of superior reason, he sat ajjart
and aloft, in a position which, though it provoked- a splenetic
sarcasm from Burke, commanded the respect even of those whom
it rebuked.

To the great Whig doctrines of Peace, Eeform, Economy, and
Toleration, he lent all the authority of his name, and occasionally
the aid of his voice. But he was an infrequent and unimpressive
speaker, and sought to influence the measures of his day rather by
the use of his pen, than by any participation in his rhetoric. His
writings, moral, religious, and political, were voluminous, though
destitute of any such mutual dependence as to unite them into one
comprehensive system ; or of any such graces of execution as to ob-
tain for them permanent acceptance. But in a domestic litin-gy
composed for the use of his own family, and made public aft«r his

52G THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

death, he encountered, with as much success as can attend it, the
difficulty of finding thoughts and language meet to be addressed by
the ephemeral dwellers on the earth to Him who inhabiteth eternity.
It is simple, grave, weighty, and reverential ; and forms a clear,
though a faint and subdued, echo of the voice in which the Deity
has revealed his sovereign will to man. That will he habitually
studied, adored, and laboured to adopt. Yet his piety was reserved
and unobtrusive. Like the life blood throbbing in every pulse and
visiting every fibre, it was the latent though perennial source of
his mental health and energy.

A peace, perfect and unbroken, seemed to possess him. His
tribute of pain and sorrow was paid with a submission so tranquil,
as sometimes to assume the appearance of a morbid insensibility.
But his affections, unimpaired by lawless indulgence, and constant
to their proper objects, were subject to a control to be acquired by
no feebler discipline. Ills from without assailed him, not as the
gloomy ministers of vengeance, but as the necessary exercise of
virtues not otherwise to be called into activity. They came as the
salutary lessons of a father, not as the penal inflictions of a judge.
Nor did the Father, to whom he so meekly bowed, see fit to lay on
him those griefs, under the pressure of which the bravest stagger.
He never witnessed the irruption of death into his domestic paradise,
nor the rending asunder by sin, the parent of death, of the bonds
of love and reverence which united to each other the inmates of
that happy home — a home happy in his presence from whose lips
no morose, or angry, or impatient word ever fell ; on whose brow
no cloud of anxiety or discontent was ever seen to rest. Surrounded
to his latest hours by those whom it had been his chief delight to
bless and to instruct, he bequeathed to them the recollection of a
wise, a good, and a happy man ; that so, if in future life a wider
acquaintance with the world should chill the heart with the scep-
ticism so often engendered by such knowledge, they might be
reassured in the belief that human virtue is no vain illusion ; but
that, nurtured by the dews of heaven, it may expand into fertility
and beauty, even in those fat places of the earth which romance
disowns, and on which no poet's eye will condescend to rest.

A goodly heritage ! yet to have transmitted it (if that were all)
would, it must be confessed, be an insufficient title to a place
amongst memorable men. Nor, except for what he accomplished
as the associate of others, could that claim be reasonably preferred
on behalf of Henry Thornton. Apart, and sustained only by his
own resources, he would neither have undertaken, nor conceived,
the more noble of those benevolent designs to which his life was
devoted. Affectionate, but passionless — with a fine and indeed a

THE CLAniAM SECT. 527

fastidious taste, but destitute of all creative imagination — gifted
rather with fortitude to endure calamity, than with courage to exult
in the struggle with danger — a lover of mankind, but not an
enthusiast in the cause of our common humanity — his serene and
perspicacious spirit was never haunted by the visions, nor borne
away by the resistless impulses, of which heroic natures, and they
alone, are conscious. Well qualified to impart to the highest
energies of others a wise direction, and inflexible perseverance, he
had to borrow from them the glowing temperament which hopes
against hope, and is wise in despite of prudence. He had not far
or long to seek for such an alliance.

On the bright evening of a day which had run its course some
thirty or forty summers ago, the usual group had formed themselves
in the library already celebrated. Addressing a nearer circle, might
be heard above the unbusy hum the voice of the Prelector, inves-
tigating the characteristics of Seneca's morality perhaps; or, not
improbably, the seizure of the Danish fleet ; or, it might be, the
various gradations of sanity as exhibited by Eobert Hall or Johanna
Southcote ; when all pastimes were suspended, and all speculations
put to flight, to welcome the approach of what seemed a dramatic
procession, emerging from the deep foliage by which the further
slopes of the now checkered lawn were overhung. In advance of
the rest two noisy urchins were putting to no common test the
philanthropy of a tall shaggy dog, their playfellow, and the parental
indulgence of the slight figm-e which followed them. Limbs
scarcely stouter than those of Asmodeus, sustaining a torso as un-
like as possible to that of Theseus, carried him along with the
agility of an antelope, though under the weight of two coat-pockets,
protuberant as the bags by which some learned brother of the coif
announces and secures his rank as leader of his circuit. Grasping
a pocket volume in one hand, he wielded in the other a spud,
caught up in his progress through the garden, but instinct at his
touch with more significance than a whole museum of horticultural
instruments. At one instant, a staff, on which he leant and listened
to the projector at his elbow developing his plan for the better cop-
pering of ships' bottoms, at the next it became a wand, pointing
out to a portly constituent from the Cloth Hall at Leeds some rich
effect of the sunset ; then a truncheon, beating time to the poetical
reminiscences of a gentleman of the Wesleyan persuasion, looking
painfully conscious of his best clothes and of his best behaviour ;
and ere the sacred cadence had reached its close, a cutlass, raised
in mimic mutiny against the robust form of William Smith, who,
as commodore of this ill-assorted squadron, was endeavouring
to convoy them to their destined port. But little availed the

528 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

sonorous word of command, or the heart-stirring laugh of the stout
member for Norwich, to shape a straight course for the volatile
representative of the county of York, now fairly under the canvass
of his own bright and joyous fancies. He moved in obedience
to some impulse like that which prompts the wheelings of the
swallow, or the dodgings of the barbel. But whether he advanced
or paused, or revolved, his steps were still measured by the ever-
changeful music of his own rich voice ranging over all the chords
expressive of mirth and tenderness, of curiosity or surprise, of de-
lio-ht or of indignation. Eheu, fugaces ! Those elder forms are
all now reposing beneath the clods of the valley ; those playful boys
are Right Reverend and Venerable dignitaries of the Church ; and
he who then seemed to read while he listened silently, is now in
the garrulity of declining years, telling old tales, and perhaps dis-
torting in the attempt to revive them, pictures which have long
since been fading from the memory. But for that misgiving, how
easy to depict the nearer approach of William Wilberforce, and of
the tail by which, like some Gaelic chief or Hibernian demagogue,
he was attended ! How easy to portray the joyous fusion of the
noisy strollers across the lawn, with the quieter but not less happy
assemblage which had watched and enjoyed their pantomime — to
trace the confluence of the two streams of discourse, imparting
o-race and rapidity to the one, and depth and volume to the other

to paint the brightening aspect of the grave censor, as his own

reveries were flashed back on him in picturesque forms and brilliant
colours — or to delineate the subdued countenance of his mercurial
associate, as he listened to profound contemplations on the capacities
and the duties of man !

Of Mr. Wilberforce, v>^e have had occasion to write so recently,
and so much at large, that though the Agamemnon of the host we
celebrate — the very sun of the Claphamic system — w||t pause not
now to describe him. His fair demesne was conterminous with
that of Mr. Thornton ; nor lacked there sunny banks, or sheltered
shrubberies, where in each change of season, they revolved the
captivity under which man was groaning, and projected schemes
for his deliverance. And although such conclaves might scarcely
be convened except in the presence of these two, yet were they
rarely held without the aid of others, especially of such as could
readily find their way thither from the other quarters of the sacred
village.

Yet to that village would not seldom resort guests from more
rural abodes which in that age, ignorant of iron railways, were re-
garded as sequestered dwellings in remote districts of our island.
Among them not the least frequent, or welcome, or honoured

THE CLAPIIAM SIXT. 5-29

visitor, was one who descended to the table-land of Clapliani
Common from that loftier table-land, once covered by the ancient
forest of Needwood. It is furrowed by several sloping valleys, each
forming the bed of a rapid brook, which chafes and twists itself
round the roots of oaks so venerable as to have sheltered the deer
beneath their branches in the time of the Heptarchy. In later
times a keeper's lodge, which takes its name from the adjacent
village of Yoxall, was erected for the protection of the game at the
confluence of two of these rivulets ; for the bolts of ' Gu}'- of good
Gisborne' had not rarely stricken down the noblest bucks as the}''
came to slake their thirst at those running waters. In the reign of
George II. a family, deriving their name from the same ' Gisborne,'
had added Yoxall Lodge to their large possessions, and pursued the
sports of the forest with scarcely less ardour than the bold outlaw
himself. But this hereditary passion for the chase did not descend
to Thomas Gisborne, the second of the race among the modern
proprietors of Yoxall Lodge. Though fortune had given him wealth,
and nature had endowed him with a fig-ure as graceful and as elastic
as that of the deer which peeped out on his mansion from the
neighbouring hollies, and though his spirit was brave and joyous,
yet his stout heart and masculine intellect were wedded to a feminine
soul. Though he never feared the face or the understanding
of mortal man, he shrank with a kind of virgin sensitiveness from
the coarse familiarities of the field and of the world. Though gay,
even to uproar, in the morning of life, and in his interior circle, he
appeared beyond those narrow precincts, like a man driven by con-
stitutional shyness into silence and seclusion. When, therefore,
the freeholders of his native county proposed to send him as their
representative to the House of Commons, he turned away with aver-
sion from such a plunge into the miry waters of parliamentary strife,
and from such an exile from the glades and the forest banks over
which he rejoiced. He was not a man to be cajoled out of his own
happiness by any concert of his neighbours' tongues, and escaped
the importunities of the electors of Derbyshire by taking sanctuary
in the Church. In early manhood he became one of her ministers,
and sheltered himself, for the rest of his days, among the ' patrician
trees' and the 'plebeian underwood' of his forest, from the con-
flicts of the aristocracy and commonalty of the Palace of West-
minster.

Though secluded, he was not solitary. A daughter of the ancient
family of Babington became the companion of his retirement,
during a period of almost sixty years ; staying her steps upon his
arm, imbibing wisdom from his lips, gathering hope and courage
from his eye, and rendering to him such an liomage, or rather such

JI M

530 THE CLAPlIA^r SECT.

a worship, as to draw from the object of it a raillery so playful, so
tender, and so full of meaning, that perhaps it ultimately enhanced
the affectionate error which, for the moment, it rebuked.

Husband, father, and householder as he was, a house was all but
a superfluity to Mr. Grisborne. From dawn till sunset he never
willingly passed an hour away from the tangled brakes or the sunny
uplands of Needwood, or the banks of the neighbouring Trent.
There it was his joyful and inexhaustible employment to study
the ways of nature, to investigate her laws, and to meditate
the books by which he maintained his intercourse with the outer
world. No plant lay in the large circuit of those daily walks, of
which he did not understand the history and the use. No animal
crossed his path or rose into the air before him, in which he did
not recognise a familiar acquaintance. No picturesque grouping of
the oaks and hollies in that ancient chase- — no play of light or
shade through their foliage — no glimpse of the remoter landscape
caught his eye, without being treasured in his memory and
transferred to his sketch-book. And when, as would occasionally
happen, 'one much pent in cities' was permitted to partake in
these forest rambles, Mr. Grisborne would throw aside, under the
genial influence of the place, the reserve which hung upon him in
crowded saloons, and would pour himself out in a stream of dis-
course, sometimes grave and speculative, but more frequently
sparkling with humorous conceits, or eddying into retrospects of
the comedy of life, of which he had been a most attentive, though
too often a silent spectator. Nothing could exceed the amiable good
humour with which, on such occasions, he would amuse himself
with the incapacity of his metropolitan companion to decipher,
without his aid, a single line of that fair scroll of beauty and of
wisdom which he himself could read in every scene through which
they passed. Their walks, however, would sometimes conduct
them to a spot, the charm of which it required no rural tastes to
feel, and no rural knowledge to interpret.

It was the populous village in which Mr. Gisborne ministered as
a country clergyman. Among its poor inhabitants he seemed to
remember nothing except that they were his flock, and he their
pastor. Happy in his books, his pencil, his writings, and his home,
he never was so happy as when, sitting by the poor man's hearth,
he chatted with him about crops and village politics, or with the
goodwife about her children, her chickens, and her bees, and then
gently deposited, in hearts softened by his kindness, some prolific
seeds of a more than human wisdom

From the lodge in the centre of the forest, to the fold thus
settled on the slopes of it, there was happily a distance of three

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 5:31

miles, wbica became to Mr. Gisborne a species of enlarged tboiigli
most secluded Study, wbere, from day to day, be revolved tliat
series of publications to wbicli be was indebted tlirougbout many
years for au extensive influence and celebrity. Tbat fame is now
dying away. Tbe tbougbts of bis times were widely dissimilar from
tliose of tbe present generation. A more impassioned poetry, a
severer pbilosopby, and a tbeology far more inquisitive and adven-
turous, are consigning to a premature oblivion many of bis books,
whicb bis contemporaries bailed witb deligbt, and witb predic-
tions of enduring renown. Nor were tbose predictions uttered witb-
out mucb apparent reason. For Mr. Grisborne contributed largely
to tbe formation of tbe national mind on subjects of tbe bigbest
importance to tbe national cbaracter. He was tbe expositor of
tbe ' Evangelical' system to tbose cultivated or fastidious readers,
wbo were intolerant of tbe ruder style of bis less refined bretbren.
He addressed tbem as a poet, as a moralist, as a natural pbilo-
sopber, and as a divine. But be wrougbt in a spirit, wbicb, tbough
perfectly free and independent, was yet imitative. Cowper was
bis model in poetry; Paley, wbom be opposed, was yet tbe
prompter of bis moral pbilosopby ; and Bisbop Tomline suggested
tbe most considerable of bis tbeological treatises. His literary
fame, if it sball indeed endure tbe competitions of a later age,
must rest on bis sermons. Tbey were regarded by bis contem-
poraries as models in a style of composition in wbicb tbe Englisb
language bas scarcely a single specimen of excellence. Except one
or two discourses of Soutb, and as many of Eobert Hall, we bave
absolutely notbing to put in competition witb tbe pulpit oratory of
France. We possess, indeed, many bomiletical essays of exuberant
power, wealtb, and eloquence, but scarcely an attempt attesting
even tbe consciousness of what constitutes tbe perfection of a
bomily. Mr. Grisborne approached more nearly than any Anglican
clergyman of bis time towards tbe ideal of that much neglected
art. His sermons were perspicuous in the analysis of truth, and
energetic in the inculcation of it. He knew how to assign to the
principal topic of each discourse its due predominance, and to the
collateral topics their just subordination. His sermons were re-
markable for that unity of design which is indispensable to beauty,
and that elevated singleness of purpose, without which the most
exquisite graces of composition are utterly worthless in the pulpit.
They were scriptural, uncompromising, and transparently luminous;
and deservedly obtained a cordial acceptance and a wide popu-
larity. If the unction of Mr. Gisborne's addresses bad been equal
to their vigour ; if the sentiment had been as profound as it was
genuine, or as elevated as it was just; if tbe style liad been as easy

532 THE CLAniAM SECT.

as it was correct ; if imagination had done her work as effectually
as taste performed her office ; if, in a word, those sermons had been
animated by the soul of an orator as fully as they were moulded by
the hand of an artist, a scholar, and a divine, they would have been
not merely the delight of his own times, but a part of the literary
inheritance of Englishmen in our own and in future ages.

There have been saints of every possible variety of Christian
heroism, — martyrs of truth and martyrs of humanity, thaumatm--
gists and ascetics, mystics and missionaries. But there is a form
of sanctity more rare than any of these, and more excellent than
most of them. It is that sanctity which ' passing through the
valley of Baca maketh it a well,' which throws over this dark world
an atmosphere like that of a yet unforfeited paradise. It is the
sanctity of happiness. It is the conversion of the life of man
into a continued eucharistic service, rendered to a gracious father
by a grateful and confiding child.

There are yet living some who passed many years in the closest
intimacy with Thomas Grisborne which can subsist between men of
different generations, who, looking back on that long familiar in-
tercourse, can recollect nothing which detracted from his appa-
rently unsullied innocency: — no irreverent forgetfulness of the
divine presence, and no ostentatious recognition of it ; no haughti-
ness of spirit, no morose or vindictive temper, no morbid desire
for human applause, no cold indifference to human affection, no
inordinate self-indulgence, no world idolatry. Such self-conquest
is the indispensable basis of whatever else is great in human cha-
racter. The philanthropists of vice and self-indulgence delineated
by Fielding and Sheridan are as absolute chimeras as the centaurs
and hypogriffs of romance. Yet no accumulation of mere nega-
tive virtues will render any man either great or good. To a con-
science void of offence, Mr. Gisborne added a kind of passion for
all the works of Grod, animate and inanimate, and a profound and
tranquil love of God himself. It was no unseemly or loquacious
affection, but a grave and cheerful complacency, resting on the
meek assurance that he was himself the ol)ject of the unceasing
benignity of his Maker. The sun shone with a mild and un-
clouded lustre on his path, as he pursued it from his youth to the
grave, with tranquil energy and undisturbed composure.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of
feasting; but it is better still to go to the house of heaven-de-
scended peace and heaven-ascending thankfulness. They who
once passed many happy days beneath the roof of Thomas Gis-
borne, have since visited many an abode of sorrow and of joy,
bearing with them a recollection which may have allayed both the

Tin: CLArilAM Si:CT. 533

tumultuous uiiith ami the depressing sorrows of this trausieut
state. It is the recollection of one to whom everything yielded
some innocent delight, and over whom nothing ever cast a cloud
of melancholy. Their memories recall the chamber in which he
passed such of his studious hours as were withdrawn from his out-
door life — a chamber which it might seem no dealer in household
furniture had ever been permitted to enter, but where books and
manuscripts, plants and pallets, tools and philosophical instru-
ments, birds perched on the shoulder, or nestling in the bosom of
the student, or birds curiously stuffed by his hands, usurped the
places usually assigned to the works of the upholsterer. They
can still revive the remembrance of his library, embellished witii
his own paintings, and thronged with kindred, friends, and neigh-
bours, among whom he would sometimes converse with the mature
wisdom of old age, and sometimes disjDort himself with the unre-
strained gaiety of boyhood. Theology, literature, art, natural his-
tory, gardening, and rambles through his forest, filled the leisure
of a life devoted to pastoral and to domestic duties. Yet they did
not deprive him either of the time or of the inclination to take
his share in those pursuits to which his friends at Clapham had
consecrated their existence. His heart was with them. His pen
and his purse were ever at their command.

During a period of more than fifty years, an intimacy the most
confiding and affectionate, united Thomas Grisborne to William
Wilberforce. The member for Yorkshire made Yoxall Lodge his
country residence, and the Staffordshire divine had his suburban
sojourn at the house of his friend at Clapham. Among the sec-
taries of that village he took his share in labour and in delibera-
tion, whether the abolition of the slave trade, the diffusion of
Christianity, the war against vice and ignorance, or the advance-
ment of evangelical theology, was the object of the passing day.
Yet, when he was engaged in these public duties, they who knew
him best would perceive that their publicity was painful, and their
seeming ostentation offensive to him. When seated at the cabinet
held in the library of Henry Thornton, it was obvious that the
heart of Thomas Gisborne was still turning to his parish, and that
his imagination was far away in the recesses of his forest. It had
been the cradle of his childhood; and there, at the age of eighty-
seven, his body was committed to the" grave in tlie fulness of that
sure and certain hope which had thrown her bright hues over
every passage of his protracted residence on earth. It was com-
mitted to the grave in the fulness of that soothing and grateful
memory, also, which they who stood together round his bier re-
tained of a father and of a friend, from whom they had learned

M M 3

534 THE CLAl'lIAM SECT.

very many lessons ; but above all, the lesson that though the path
through earth to heaven be usually pursued through a vale of
tears, it may also be sometimes pursued through green pastures,
and by waters of comfort, with a light from heaven itself lighten-
ing every step, and shining more and more unto the perfect day.

It is not permitted to any coterie altogether to escape the spirit
of coterie. Clapham Common, of course, thought itself the best
of all possible commons. Such, at least, was the opinion of the
less eminent of those who were entitled to house-bote and dinner-
bote there. If the common was attacked, the whole homage was
in a flame. If it was laughed at, there could be no remaining
sense of decency amongst men. The commoners admired in each
other the reflection of their own looks, and the echo of their own
voices. A critical race, they drew many of their canons of criti-
cism from books and talk of their own parentage ; and for those
on the outside of the pale, there might be, now and then, some
faikne of charity. Their festivities were not exhilarating. Ncav
faces, new toj)ics, and a less liberal expenditure of wisdom imme-
diately after dinner, would have improved them. Thus, even at
Clapham, the discerning might perceive the imperfections of our
common nature, and take up the lowly confession of the great
Thomas Erskine — " After all, gentlemen, I am but a man."

But if not more than men, they were not less. They had none
of the intellectual coxcombry since so prevalent. They did not
instil philosophic and political neology into young ladies and offi-
cers of the Guards, through the gentle medium of the fashionable
novel. They -mourned over the ills inseparable from the progress
of society, without shrieks or hysterics. They were not epicures
for whose languid palates the sweets of the rich man's banquet
must be seasoned with the acid of the poor man's discontent.
Their philanthropy did not languish without the stimulant of
satire ; nor did it degenerate into a mere ballet of tender attitudes
and sentimental pirouettes. Their philosophy was something better
than an array of hard words. Their religion was something more
than a collection of impalpable essences; too fine for analysis, and
too delicate for use. It was a hardy, serviceable, fruitbearing, and
patrimonial religion.

They were the sons, by natural or spiritual birth, of men who,
in the earlier days of Methodism, had shaken off the lethargy in
which, till then, the Church of England had been entranced — of
men, by whose agency the great evangelic doctrine of faith, emer-
ging in its primeval splendour, had not only overpowered the con-
trary heresies, but had perhaps obscured some kindred truths.
This earlier generation of the evangelic school had been too ingen-

THE CLAPlIAxM SECT. o33

nous, and too confident in the divine reality of their cause, to
heed much what hostility they might awaken. They had been
content to pass for fools, in a world whose boasted wisdom they
accounted folly. In their once central and all-pervading idea,
they had found an influence hardly less than magical. They had
esteemed it impossible to inculcate too emphatically, or too
widely, that truth which Paul had proclaimed indifferently to the
idolaters of Ephesus, the revellers of Corinth, the sophists of
Athens, and the debauched citizens of sanguinary Eome.

Their sons adopted the same creed with equal sincerity and im-
diminished earnestness, but with a far keener sense of the hindrances
opposed to the indiscriminate and rude exhibition of it. Absolute
as was the faith of Mr. Wilberforce and his associates, it was not
possible that the system called ' Evangelical ' should be asserted by
them in the blunt and uncompromising tone of their immediate
predecessors. A more elaborate education, greater familiarity with
the world and with human affairs, a deeper insight into science and
history, with a far nicer discernment of mere conventional pro-
prieties, had opened to them a range of thought, and had brought
them into relations with society, of which their fathers were com-
paratively destitute. Positiveness, dogmatism, and an ignorant
contempt of difficulties, may accompany the firmest convictions,
but not the convictions of the firmest minds. The freedom with
which the vessel swings at anchor, ascertains the soundness of her
anchorage. To be conscious of the force of prejudice in ourselves
and others, to feel the strength of the argument we resist, to knoAV
how to change places internally with oiu' antagonists, to understand
why it is that we provoke their scorn, disgust, or ridicule — and still
to be unshaken, still to adhere with fidelity to the standard we
Ijave chosen — this is a triumph, to be won by those alone on
whom is bestowed not merely the faith which overcomes the world,
but the pure and peaceable wisdom which is from above.

And such were they whom the second generation of the Evange-
lical party acknowledged as their secular chiefs. They fell on days
much unlike those which we, their children, have known — days less
softened by the charities and courtesies, but less enervated by the
frivolities of life. Since the fall of the Eoman republic, there had
not arisen within the bosom, and armed with the weapons, of
civilisation itself, a power so full of menace to the civilised world
as that which then overshadowed Europe. In the deep seriousness
of that dark era, they of whom we speak looked back for analogies
to that remote conflict of the nations, and drew evil auguries from
the event of the wars which, from Sylla to Octavius, had dyed the
earth with the blood of its inhabitants, to establish at length a

M M 4

53G THE CLAl'lLUI SECT.

militaiy despotism — ruthless, godless, and abominable. But they
also reverted to the advent, even in that age of lust and cruelty, of
a power destined to wage successful war, not with any external or
earthly potentate, but with the secret and internal spring of all
this wretchedness and wrong — the power of love, incarnate though
divine — of love exercised in toils and sufferings, and at length
yielding up life itself, that from that sacrifice might germinate the
seeds of a new and enduring life — the vital principle of man's
social existence, of his individual strength, and of his immortal
hopes.

And as, in that first age of Christianity, truth, and with it hea-
venly consolation, had been diffused, not alone or chiefly by the
lifeless text, but by living messengers proclaiming and illustrating
the renovating energy of the message entrusted to them; so to
those who, at the commencement of this century, were anxiously
watching the convulsions of their own age, it appeared that the
sorrows of mankind would be best assuaged, and the march of evil
most effectually stayed, by a humble imitation of that inspired ex-
ample. They therefore formed themselves into a confederacy,
carefully organised and fearlessly avowed, to send forth into all
lands, but above all into their own, the two witnesses of the Church
■ — Scripture and Tradition ; — scripture, to be interpreted by its
divine Author to the devout worshippers — tradition, not of doctrinal
tenets, but of that unextinguishable zeal, which, first kindled in the
apostolic times, has never since wanted either altars to receive, or
attendant ministers to feed and propagate the flame. Bibles,
schools, missionaries, the circulation of evangelical books, and the
training of evangelical clergymen, the possession of well-attended
pulpits, war through the press, and war in parliament, against
every form of injustice which either law or custom sanctioned —
such were the forces by which they hoped to extend the kingdom of
light, and to resist the tyranny with which the earth was threatened.

Nor was it difficult to distinguish or to grapple with their an-
tagonists. The slave trade was then brooding like a pestilence over
Africa ; that monster iniquity which fairly outstripped all abhor-
rence, and baffled all exaggeration — converting one quarter of this
fair earth into the nearest possible resemblance of what we conceive
of hell, reversing every law of Christ, and openly defying the ven-
geance of God. The formation of the holy league, of which we are
the chroniclers, synchronised with that unhappy illness which, half
a century ago, withdrew Thomas Clarkson from the strife to which
he was set apart and consecrated ; leaving his associates to pursue it
during the twelve concluding years, unaided by his presence, but
not without the aid of his example, his sympathy, and his prayers.

Tin: cLAriiA-M sect. C37

They have all long since passed away, while he still lives (long may
he live !) to enjoy honours and benedictions, for which the diadem
of Napoleon, even if wreathed with the laurels of Goethe, would be
a mean exchange. But, alas ! it is not given to any one, not even
to Thomas Clarkson, to enjoy a glory complete and unalloyed. Far
from us be the attempt to pluck one leaf from the crown which
rests on that time-honoured head. But with truth there may be
no compromise, and truth wrings from us the acknowledgment,
that Thomas Clarkson never lived at Clapham I

Not so that comrade in his holy war, whom, of all that served
under the same banner, he seems to have loved the best. At the
distance of a few bow-shots from the house of Henry Thornton,
was the happy home in which dwelt Granville Sharpe ; at once the
abiding guest and the bosom friend of his more wealthy brothers.
A critic, with the soul of a churchwarden, might indeed fasten on
certain metes and bounds, hostile to the parochial claims of the
family of Sharpe ; but in the wider ken and more liberal judgment
of the historian, the dignity of a true Claphamite is not to be re-
fused to one whose evening walk and moi^ning contemplations led
him so easily and so often within the hallowed precincts.

Would that the days of Isaac Walton could have been prolonged
to the time when Granville Sharpe was to be committed to the care
of the biographers ! His likeness from the easel of the good old
Angler would have been drawn with an outline as correct and firm,
and in colours as soft and as transparent as the portraits of Hooker
or of Herbert, of Donne or of Walton. A narrative, no longer than
the liturgy which they all so devoutly loved, would then have su-
perseded the annals which now embalm his memory beneath that
nonconforming prolixity which they all so devoutly hated.

The grandson of an Archbishop of York, the son of an Arclidea-
con of Northumberland, the brother of a Prebendary of Durham,
Granville Sharpe, descending to the rank from which Isaac Walton
rose, was apprenticed to a linen-draper of the name of Halsey, a
Quaker, who kept his shop on Tower Hill. When the Quaker died,
the indentures were transferred to a Presbyterian of the same craft.
When the Presbyterian retired, they were made over to an Irish
Papist. When the Papist quitted the trade, they passed to a fourth
master, whom the apprentice reports to have had no religion at all. At
one time a Socinian took up his abode at the draper's, and assaulted
the faith of the young apprentice in the mysteries of the Trinity
and the Atonement. Then a Jew came to lodge there, and con-
tested with him the truth of Christianity itself. But blow from
what quarter it might, the storm of controversy did but the more
endear to him the shelter of his native nest, built for him b}^ his

538 THE CLAl'lIAM SECT.

forefathers, like that of the swallow of the Psalmist, in the courts
and by the altar of his Grod. He studied Greek to wrestle with the
Socinian — he acquired Hebrew to refute the Israelite — he learned
to love the Quaker, to be kind to the Presbyterian, to pity the
Atheist, and to endure even the Eoman Catholic. Charity (so he
judged) was nurtured in his bosom by these early polemics, and
the affectionate spirit which warmed to the last the current of his
maturer thoughts, gi-ew up, as he believed, within him, while alter-
nately measuring crapes and muslins, and defending the faith
against infidels and heretics.

The cares of the mercer's shop engaged no less than seven years
of a life destined to be held in grateful remembrance as long as the
language, or the history of his native land shall be cultivated among
men. The next eighteen were consumed in the equally obscure
employment of a clerk in the office of Ordnance. Yet it was during
this period that Granville Sharpe disclosed to others, and probably to
himself, the nature, so singular and so lovely, which distinguished
him — the most inflexible of human wills, united to the gentlest of
human hearts — an almost audacious freedom of thought, combined
with profound reverence for hoar authority — a settled conviction of
the wickedness of our race, tempered by an infantine credulity in
the virtue of each separate member of it — a burning indignation
against injustice and wrong, reconciled with pity and long-suffering
towards the individual oppressor — all the sternness which Adam
has bequeathed to his -sons, wedded to all the tenderness which Eve
has transmitted to her daughters.

As long as Granville Sharpe survived, it was too soon to proclaim
that the age of chivalry was gone. The Ordnance clerk sat at his
desk with a soul as distended as that of a Paladin bestriding his
war-horse ; and encountered with his pen such giants, hydras, and
discourteous knights, as infested the world in the eighteenth cen-
tury. He found the lineal representative of the Willoughbys de
Parham in the person of a retired tradesman ; and buried himself
in pedigrees, feoffments, and sepulchral inscriptions, till he saw his
friend enjoying his ancestral privileges among the Peers of Par-
liament. He combated, on more than equal terms, the great
Hebraist, Dr. Kennicott, in defence of Ezra's catalogue of the sacred
vessels, chiefs, and families. He laboured long, and with good
success, to defeat an unjust grant made by the Treasury to Sir
James Lowther of the Forest of Inglewood, and the manor and
castle of Carlisle. He waged a less fortunate war against the thea-
trical practice of either sex appearing in the habiliments of the
other. He moved all the powers of his age, political and intellec-
tual, to abolish the impressment of seamen, and wound up a dialogue

Till': (^LAl'IIAxM SECT. 539

with Johnson on the subject, by opposing the scriptural warning,
' Woe to them that call evil good, and good evil,' to w^hat he de-
scribed as the 'plausible sophistry and important self-sufficiency' of
the Sage. Presenting himself to the then Secretary of State, Lord
Dartmouth, he denounced, with prophetic solemnity, the guilt of
despoiling and exterminating in the Charib war that miserable
remnant of the aboriginal race of the Antilles. As a citizen of Lon-
don, he came to the rescue of Crosby, the Lord Mayor, in his
struggle with the House of Commons. As a citizen of the world,
he called on earth and heaven to stay the plagues of slavery and
the slave-trade, and advocated the independence of America with
such ardour as to sacrifice to it his own. Orders had reached his
office to ship munitions of war to the revolted colonies. If his
hand had entered the account of such a cargo, it would have con-
tracted in his eyes the stain of innocent blood. To avoid that
pollution he resigned his place, and his means of subsistence, at a
period of life when he could no longer hope to find any other lucra-
tive employment. But he had brothers who loved and supported
him ; and his release from the fatigues of a subordinate office left
him free to obey the impulses of his own brave spirit, as the aven-
ger of the oppressed.

Wliile yet a chronicler of gunpowder and small arms, a negro,
abandoned to disease, had asked of him an alms. Silver and gold
he had none, but such as he had he gave him. He procured for the
poor sufferer medical aid, and watched over him with affectionate care
until his health was restored. The patient, once more become sleek
and strong, was an object on which Barbadian eyes could not look
Avithout cupidity ; and one Lisle, his former master, brought an
action against Grranville Sharpe for the illegal detention of his slave.
Three of the infallible doctors of the Church of Westminster —
Yorke, Talbot, and Mansfield — favoured the claim ; and Black-
stone, the great expositor of her traditions, hastened, at their
bidding, to retract a heresy on this article of the faith into which
his uninstructed reason had fallen. Not such the reverence paid
by the hard-working clerk to the inward light which God had
vouchsafed to him. He conned his entries indeed, and transcribed
his minutes all day long, just as if nothing had happened ; but
throughout two successive years he betook himself to his solitary
chamber, there, night by night, to explore the original sources of
the Law of England, in the hope that so he might be able to correct
the authoritative dogmas of Chancellors and Judges. His inquiries
closed with the firm conviction that, on this subject at least, these
most learned persons were but shallow pretenders to learning. In
three successive cases he struggled against them with various and

640 THE CLAPilAM SECT.

doubtful success ; when fortune, or, be it rather said, when Provi-
dence, threw in his way the negro Somerset.

For the vindication of the freedom of that man, followed a de-
bate, ever memorable in legal history for the ability with which it
was conducted ; — for the first introduction to Westminster Hall of
Francis Hargrave ; — for the audacious assertion then made by Dun-
ning, of the maxim, that a new brief will absolve an advocate from
the disgrace of publicly retracting any avowal however solemn, of
any principle however sacred ; — for the reluctant abandonment by
Lord Mansfield of a long-cherished judicial error ; — and for the
recognition of a rule of law of such importance, as almost to justify
the poets and rhetoricians in their subsequent embellishments of
it; — but above all memorable for the magnanimity of the prose-
cutor, who, though poor and dependent and immersed in the duties
of a toilsome calling, supplied the money, the leisure, the perse-
verance, and the learning, required for this great controversy — who,
wholly forgetting himself in his object, had studiously concealed his
connection with it, lest, perchance, a name so lowly should preju-
dice a cause so momentous — who, denying himself even the
indulgence of attending the argument he had provoked, had cir-
culated his own researches in the name, and as the work, of a
plagiarist who had rej)ublished them — and who, mean as was his
education, and humble as were his pursuits, had proved his supe-
riority as a Jurist, on one main branch of the law of England, to
some of the most illustrious Judges by whom that law had been
administered.

Never was abolitionist more scathless than Granville Sharpe by
the reproach to which their tribe has been exposed, of insensibility
to all human sorrows, unless the hair of the sufferer be thick as
wool, and the skin as black as ebony. His African clients may
indeed have usurped a larger share of his attachment than the
others ; and of his countless schemes of beneficence, that which he
loved the best was the settlement at Sierra Leone of a free colony,
to serve as a 'point-LVappui in the future campaigns against the
slave trade. But he may be quoted as an experimental proof of
the infinite divisibility of the kindly affections. Much he wrote,
and much he laboured, to conciliate Gfreat Britain and America;
much to promote the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures ; much to in-
terpret the prophecies contained in them ; much to refute the er-
rors of the Socinians ; much to sustain the cause of Grrattan and
the Irish volunteers ; much to recommend reform in Parliament ;
and much, it must be added, (for what is man in his best estate ?)
to dissuade the emancipation of the Catholics. Many also were the
benevolent societies which he formed or fostered ; and his publi-

THE CLAPIIAjr SECT. 541

cations, who can number? Their common aim was to advance the
highest interests of mankind ; bnt to none of them, with perhaps
one exception, could the praise either of learning or of originality
be justly given. For he possessed rather a great soul than a great
understanding ; and was less admirable for the extent of his re-
sources, than for the earnest affection and the quiet energy with
which he employed them.

Like all men of that cast of mind, his humour was gay and
festive. Among the barges which floated on a summer evening by
the villa of Pope, and the chateau of Horace Walpole, none was
more constant or more joyous than that in which Granville Sliarpe's
harp or kettle-drum sustained the flute of one brother, the hautboy
of another, and the melodious voices of their sisters. It was a
concord of sweet sounds, typical, as it might seem, of the fraternal
harmony which blessed their dwelling on the banks of that noble
river. Much honest mirth gladdened that affectionate circle, and
brother Granville's pencil could produce very passable caricatures
when he laid aside his harp, fashioned, as he maintained, in exact
imitation of that of the son of Jesse. To complete the resemblance,
it was his delight, at the break of day, to sing to it one of the songs
of Zion in his chamber — raised by many an intervening staircase
far above the Temple gardens, where young students of those times
would often pause in their morning stroll, to listen to the not un-
pleasing cadence, though the voice was broken by age, and the
language was to them an unknown tongue.

On one of their number he condescended to bestow a regard, tlie
memory of which would still warm the heart, even were it chilled
by as many years as had then blanched that venerable head. The
one might have passed for the grandson of the other ; but they met
with mutual pleasure, and conversed with a confidence not unlike
that of equals. And yet, at this period, Granville Sharpe was
passing into a state which, in a nature less active and benevolent
than his, would have been nothing better than dotage. In him it
assumed the form of a delirium, so calm, so busy, and giving birth
to whims so kind-hearted, as often to remind his young associate of
Isaac Walton's saying, that the very dreams of a good man are
acceptable to God. To illustrate by examples the state of a mind
thus hovering on the confines of wisdom and fatuity, may perhaps
suggest the suspicion that the old man's infirmities were contagious ;
but even at that risk they shall be hazarded ; for few of the inci-
dents of his more vigorous days delineate him so truly.

William Henry, the last Duke of Gloucester, (who possessed
many virtues, and even considerable talents, which his feeble talk
and manners concealed from his occasional associates,) had a great

542 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

love for Granville Sliarpe ; and nothing could be more amiable tlian
the intercom'se between them, though the one could never for a
moment forget that he was a prince of the blood-royal, and the
other never for a moment remembered that he was bred up as a
linen-draper's apprentice. Beneath the pompous bearing of the
Guelph lay a basis of genuine humility, and the free carriage of the
ex-clerk of the Ordnance was but the natural expression of a low-
liness unembarrassed by any desire of praise or dread of failure. A
little too gracious, perhaps, yet full of benignity, was the aspect
and the attitude of the Duke, when, at one of the many philan-
thropic assemblages held under his presidency, Granville Sharpe
(it was no common occurrence) rose, and requested leave to speak.
He had, he said, two schemes, which, if recommended by such
advocates, must greatly reduce the sum of human misery. To
bring to a close the calamities of Sierra Leone, he had prepared a
law for introducing there King Alfred's frank pledge, a sovereign
remedy for all such social woimds. At once to diminish the waste
of human life in the Peninsula, and to aid the depressed workmen
in England, he had devised a project for manufacturing portable
woolpacks ; under the shelter of which ever -ready intrenchments,
our troops might, without the least danger to themselves, mow
down the ranks of the oppressors of Spain.

A politician, as well as a strategist, he sought and obtained an
interview with Charles Fox, to whom he had advice of great
urgency to give for conducting the affairs of Europe. If the ghost
of Burke had appeared to lecture him. Fox could hardly have lis-
tened with greater astonishment, as his monitor, by the aid of the
Little Horn in Daniel, explained the future policy of Napoleon and
of the Czar. ' The Little Horn ! Mr. Sharpe,' at length exclaimed
the most amiable of men, ' what in the name of wonder do you
mean by the Little Horn?' ' See there,' said the dejected inter-
preter of prophecy to his companion, as they retired from the
Foreign Office — ' See there the fallacy of reputation ! Why, that
man passes for a statesman ; and yet it is evident to me that he
never before so much as heard of the Little Horn ! '

As his end drew nearer, he became less and less capable of seizing
the distinction between the prophecies and the newspapers. It
rained as heavily on the 18th of February, 1813, as on the after-
noon when Isaac Walton met the future Bishop of Worcester at
Bimhill Eow, and found, in the public-house which gave them
shelter, that double blessing of good ale and good discourse which
he has so piously commemorated. Not such is the fortvme of the
young Templar, who, in a storm at least as pitiless, met Granville
Sharpe at the later epoch moving down Long Acre as nimbly as

THE CLAPHAM SECT. 543

ever, with bis calm thoughtful countenance raised gently upwards,
as was usual with him — as though gazing on some object which it
pleased him well to look upon. But his discourse, though deli-
vered in a kind of shower-bath, to which his reverie made him
insensible, was as characteristic, if not as wise, as that of the learned
Sanderson. ' You have heard,' he began, ' my young friend, of this
scandalous proceeding of the Eabbi Ben Mendoli ? No ? Why,
then, read this brief account of it which I have been publishing.
About a year ago the Eabbi, being then at Damascus, saw a great
flame descend, and rest on one of the hills which surround the city.
Soon after, he came to Gribraltar. There he discovered how com-
pletely that celestial phenomenon verified my interpretation of the
words — " Arise, shine, for thy light is come," &c. ; and now he has
the audacity not only to deny that he ever saw such a flame, but to
declare that he never pretended to have seen it. Can you imagine
a clearer fulfilment of the predicted blindness and obduracy of
Israel before their restoration ? '

That great event was to have taken place within a few months,
when the still more awful event which happens to all living,
removed this aged servant of Grod and man from the world of sha-
dows to the world of light. To die at the precise moment when
the vast prophetic drama was just reaching its sublime catastrophe,
was a trial not easily borne, even by a faith so immovable as his.
But death had no other sting for him. It awakened his pure
spirit from the dreams which peopled it during the decay of his
fleshy tabernacle ; and if that change revealed to him that he had
ill-interpreted many of the hard sentences of old, it gave him the
assurance that he had well divined the meaning of one immutable
prophecy — the prophecy of a gracious welcome and an eternal
reward to those who, discerning the brethren of their Redeemer in
the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and the
prisoner, should for His sake feed, and shelter, and clothe, and visit,
and comfort them.

United in the bonds of that Christian charity, though wide as
the poles asunder in theological opinions, were Granville Sharpe
and William Smith ; that other denizen of Clapham who has
already crossed our path. He lived as if to show how much of the
coarser duties of this busy world may be undertaken by a man of
quick sensibility, without impairing the finer sense of the beautiful
in nature and in art ; and as if to prove how much a man of ardent
benevolence may enjoy of this world's happiness, without any steel-
ing of the heart to the wants and the calamities of others. When
he had nearly completed fourscore years, he could still gratefully
acknowledge that he had no remembrance of any bodily pain or

544 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

illness ; and tliat of the very numerous family of which he was the
head, every member still lived to support and to gladden his old
age. And yet, if he had gone mourning all his days, he could
scarcely have acquired a more tender pity for the miserable, or have
laboured more habitually for their relief. It was his ill fortune to
provoke the invective of Eobert Southey, and the posthumous
sneers of Walter Scott — the one resenting a too well merited
reproach, the other indulging that hate of Whigs and Whiggery
which, in that great mind, was sometimes stronger than the love of
justice. The enmity even of such men he, however, might well
endure, who possessed, not merely the attachment and confidence
of Charles Fox and his followers, but the almost brotherly love of
William Wilberforce, of Gfranville Sharpe, and of Thomas Clarkson.
Of all their fellow-labourers, there was none more devoted to their
cause, or whom they more entirely trusted. They, indeed, were all
to a man homo-ousians, and he a disciple of Belsham. But they
judged that many an erroneous opinion respecting the Redeemer's
person would not deprive of His gracious approbation, and oviglit
not to exclude from their own affectionate regards, a man in whom
they daily saw a transcript, however imperfect, of the Redeemer's
mercy and beneficence.

Thirty-seven years have rolled away since these men met at
Clapham, in joy and thanksgiving, and mutual gratulation, over
the abolition of the African slave trade. It was still either the
dwelling-place, or the haunt, of almost every one of the more
eminent supporters of that measure ; and it may be that they ex-
ulted beyond the limits of sober reason in the prospects which that
success had opened to them. Time has brought to light more than
they knew or believed of the inveteracy of the evil ; and of the
impotency of law in a protracted contest with avarice. But time
has also ascertained, that throughout the period assigned for the
birth and death of a whole generation of mankind, there has been
no proof, or reasonable suspicion, of so much as a single evasion
of this law in any one of the transatlantic British colonies. Time
has shown that to that law we may now confidently ascribe the
deliverance of our own land from this blood-guiltiness for ever.
Time has ascertained that the solemn practical assertion then made
of the great principles of justice, was to be prolific of consequences,
direct and indirect, of boundless magnitude. Time has enlisted on
our side all the powers and all the suffrages of the earth ; so that
no one any longer attempts to erase the brand of murder from the
brow of the slave trader. Above all, time has shown that, in the
extinction of the slave trade, was involved, by slow but inevitable
steps, the extinction of the slavery which it had created and sus-

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 545

tained. This, also, was a result of which, as far as human agency
is concerned, the mainsprings are to be found among that sect
to which, having first given a name, we would now build up a
monument.

It is with a trembling hand that we inscribe on that monument
the name of Zachary Macaulay ; for it is not without some mis-
giving lest pain should be inflicted on the living, while we pass,
however reverently, over the half-extinguished ashes of the dead.
The bosom shrines, erected in remembrance of them, may be yet
more intolerably profaned by rude eulogy than by unmerited re-
proach ; and the danger of such profanation is the more imminent,
when the judgment, though unbiassed by any ties of consangviinity,
is not exempt from influences almost as kindly and as powerful.
It is, however, an attempt which he who would write the sectarian
history of Clapham coukl not wholly decline, without an error like
that of omitting the name of Grotius in a sectarian histor)' of tlie
Arminians.

A few paces apart from each other, in the church of Westmin-
ster, are three monuments, to which, in Grod's appointed time, will
be added a fourth, to complete the sepulchral honours of those to
whom our remotest posterity will ascribe the deliverance of man-
kind from the woes of the African slave trade, and of colonial
slavery. There is a yet more enduring temple, where, engraven
by no human hands, abides a record, to be divulged in its season,
of services to that cause, worthy to be commemorated with those of
William Wilberforce, of Granville Sharj^e, of Zacliary INIacaulay,
and of Thomas Clarkson. But to that goodly fellowship the praise
will be emphatically given. Thomas Clarkson is his own biogra-
pher, and pious hands have celebrated the labours of two of his
colleagues. Of Mr. Macaulay no memorial has been made public,
excepting that which has been engraved on his tomb in Westmin-
ster Abbey, by some eulogist less skilful than affectionate. It is
no remediless omission ; although it would require talents of the
highest order, to exhibit a distinct and faithful image of a man
whose peculiarity it was to conceal, as far as possible, his interior
life, under the veil of his outward appearance. That his under-
standing was proof against sophistry, and his nerves against fear,
were, indeed, conclusions to which a stranger arrived at the first
interview with him. But what might be suggesting that expres-
sion of countenance, at once so earnest and so monotonous — by
what manner of feelings those gestures, so uniformly firm and de-
liberate, were prompted — whence the constant traces of fatigue on
those overhanging brows, and on that athletic though ungraceful
figure — what might be the charm which excited amongst his

N N

546 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

chosen circle a faith approaching to superstition, and a love rising
to enthusiasm, towards a man whose demeanour was so inanimate,
if not austere ? — it was a riddle of which neither Gall nor Lavater
could have found the key. That much was passing within, which
that ineloquent tongue and those taciturn features could not utter ;
that nature had compensated her other bounties by refusing him
the means of a ready interchange of thought ; and that he had
won, without knowing how to court, the attachment of all who ap-
proached him closely — these were discoveries which the most
casual acquaintance might make, but which they whom he
honom-ed with his intimacy, and they alone, could explain.

To them he appeared a man possessed by one idea, and ani-
mated by one master passion — an idea so comprehensive, as to
impart a profound interest to all which indicated its influence over
him— a passion so benevolent, that the coldest heart could not
withhold some sympathy from him who was the subject of it.
Trained in the hardy habits of Scotland in ancient times, he had
received from his father much instruction in theology, with some
Latin and a little Grreek, when not employed in cultivating his
father's glebe at Cardross, on the northern bank of the Clyde.
While yet a boy, he had watched as the iron entered into the soul
of the slaves, whose labours he was sent to superintend in Jamaica;
and, abandoning with abhorrence a pursuit which had promised
him early wealth and distinction, he pondered the question — how
shall the earth be delivered from this curse ? Turning to Sierra
Leone, he braved for many years that deadly climate, that he might
aid in the erection and in the defence of what was then the one
city of refuge for the Negro race ; and as he saw the slave trade
crushing to the dust the adjacent tribes of Africa, he again pon-
dered the question — how shall the earth be delivered from this
curse ?

That Grod had called him into being to wage war with this
gigantic evil, became his immutable conviction. During forty
successive years, he was ever burdened with this thought. It was
the subject of his visions by day, and of his dreams by night. To
give them reality, he laboured as men labour for the honours of a
profession, or for the subsistence of their children. The rising sun
ever found him at his task. He went abroad but to advance it.
His commerce, his studies, his friendships, his controversies, even
his discourse in the bosom of his family, were all bent to the pro-
motion of it. He edited voluminous periodical works ; but whether
theology, literature, or politics were the text, the design was still
the same — to train the public mind to a detestation of the slave
trade and of slavery. He attached himself to most of the religious

THE CLAniAM SECT. 547

and philanthropic societies of his age, that ho miglit enlist Iheni
as associates, more or less declared, in his holy war. To multiply
such allies, he called into existence one great association, and con-
tributed largely to the establishment of another. In that service
he sacrificed all that men may lawfully sacrifice — health, fortune,
repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a poor man, though wealth
was within his reach. He piu-sued the contest to the end, though
oppressed by such pains of body as strained to their utmost tension
the self-sustaining powers of the soul. He devoted himself to the
severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of
domestic and social intercourse such as few indeed can have
encountered. He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned
honom's, that no selfish controversy might desecrate their common
cause. He made no effort to obtain the praises of the world, though
he had talents to command and a tem^Der peculiarly disposed to
enjoy them. He drew on himself the poisoned shafts of calumny ;
and, while feeling their sting as generous spirits alone can feel it,
never turned a single step aside from his path to propitiate or to
crush the slanderers.

They have long since fallen, or are soon to fall into unhonoured
graves. His memory will be ever dear to those who hate injustice,
and revere the unostentatious consecration of a long life to the
deliverance of the oppressed. It will be especially dear to the few
who closely observed, and who can yet remember how that self-
devotion became the poetical element of a mind not naturally
imaginative ; what deep significance it imparted to an aspect and
a demeanour not otherwise impressive ; what energy to a temper,
which, if not so excited, might perhaps have been phlegmatic ; what
unity of design to a mind constitutionally discursive ; and what
dignity even to physical languor and suffering, contracted in such
a service. They can never forget that the most implacable enemy
of the tyrants of the plantation and of the slave ship, was the most
indulgent and generous and constant of friends ; that he spurned,
as men should spurn, the mere pageantry of life, that he might
use, as men should use, the means which life affords of advancing
the happiness of mankind ; that his earthward affections, active and
all-enduring as they were, could yet thrive without the support of
human sympathy, because they were sustained by so abiding a sense
of the Divine presence, and so absolute a submission to the Divine
will, as raised him habitually to that higher region, where the
reproach of man could not reach, and the praise of man might not
presume to follow him.

Although, to repeat a mournful acknowledgment, the tent of
Thomas Clarksou was pitched elsewhere, yet throughout the slave

N N 2

548 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

trade abolition war, the other chiefs who hailed him as the earliest,
and as among the mightiest of their host, kept their communica-
tions open by encamping in immediate vicinity to each other.
Even to Lord Brougham the same station may, with poetical truth
at least, be assigned by the Homer who shall hereafter sing these
battles; for though, at that period, his London domicile was in
the walks of the Inner Temple, yet might he not seldom be en-
countered in the less inviting walks which led him to the suburban
councils of his brethren in command. There he formed or ce-
mented attachments, of which no subsequent elevation of rank, or
intoxicating triumph of genius, or agony of political strife, have
ever rendered him forgetful. Of one of those denizens of Clapham
he has published a sketch, of which we avail ourselves, not as
subscribing altogether to the accuracy of it, but as we can thus fill
up, from the hand of so great a Master, a part of our canvas which
must have otherwise remained blank and colourless.

'Mr. Stephen was a person of great natural talents, which, if
accidental circumstances had permitted him fully to cultivate, and
early enough to bring into play upon the best scene of political
exertion— the House of Commons — would have placed him high
in the first rank of English orators. For he had, in an eminent
degree, that strenuous firmness of purpose and glowing ardour of
soul, which lies at the root of all eloquence ; he was gifted with
great industry, a retentive memory, an ingenuity which was rather
apt to err by excess than by defect. His imagination was, besides,
lively and powerful ; little, certainly, under the chastening disci-
pline of severe taste, but often enabling him to embody his own
feelings and recollections with great distinctness of outline, and
strength of colouring. He enjoyed, moreover, great natural
strength of constitution, and had as- much courage as falls to the
lot of most men. But having passed the most active part of his
life in one of the West Indian colonies, where he followed the
profession of a barrister, and having, after his return, addicted
himself to the practice of a court which affords no scope at all for
oratorical display, it happened to him, as it has to many other
men of natural genius for rhetorical pursuits, that he neither
gained the correct taste which the habit of frequenting refined
society, and above all, addressing a refined auditory, can alone
bestow, nor acquired the power of coudeasation, which is sure to
be lost altogether by those who address hearers compelled to listen,
like judges and juries, instead of having to retain them by close-
ness of reasoning, or felicity of illustration. * * *
* * * * * * * *It

must have struck all who heard him, when, early in 1808, he

THE CLArilA-M SECT. 549

entered Parliament under the auspices of Mr. Perceval, tliat what-
ever defects he had, arose entirely from accidental circumstances,
and not at all from intrinsic imperfections; nor could any one
doubt that his late entrance upon parliamentary life, and his
vehemence of temperament, alone kept him from the front rank of
debaters, if not of eloquence itself. With Mr. Perceval, his friend-
ship had been long and intimate. To this the similarity of their
religious character mainly contributed; for Mr. Stephen was a
distinguished member of the evangelical party to which the
minister manifestly leant without belonging to it ; and he was one
whose pious sentiments and devotional habits occupied a very
marked place in his whole scheme of life. No man has, however,
a right to question, be it ever so slightly, his perfect sincerity. To
this his blameless life bore the most irrefragable testimony. A
warm and steady friend — a man of the strictest integrity and
nicest sense of both honour and justice — in all the relations of
private society wholly without a stain — though envy might well
find whereon to perch, malice itself, in the exaspei-ating discords
of religious and civil controversy, never could descry a spot on
which to fasten. Let us add the bright praise, and which sets at
nought all lesser defects of mere taste, had he lived to read these
latter lines, he would infinitely rather have had this sketch stained
with all the darker shades of its critical matter, than been exalted,
without these latter lines, to the level of Demosthenes or of
Chatham, praised as the first of orators, or followed as the most
brilliant of statesmen. His opinions upon political questions were
clear and decided, taken up with the boldness, felt with the
ardour, asserted with the determination, which marked his zealous
and uncompromising spirit. Of all subjects, that of the slave
trade and slavery most engrossed his mind. His experience in
the West Indies, his religious feelings, and his near connexion
with Mr. Wilberforce, whose sister he married, all contributed to
give this great question a peculiarly sacred aspect in his eyes ; nor
could he either avoid mixing it up with almost all other discussions,
or prevent his views of its various relations from influencing his
sentiments on other matters of political discussion.' *

The author of the preceding portrait enjoyed the happiness
denied to the subject of it, not merely of witnessing, but of largely
participating in, the last great act by which the labours borne by
them in common, during so many preceding years, were con-
summated. It w^as a still more rare bounty of Providence, which
reserved the abolition of slavery throughout the British Einpire as

* Speoclies of Ilunry Lord IliDiipliani, vol. i. pp. 402 — i05.

N N 3

SCO THE CLAFHA:^! SECT.

a triumph for the statesman who, twenty-seven years before, had
introduced into the House of Commons the first great act of tardy
reparation to Africa. Crowned with honour and with length of
days, to Lord Grey it has further been given, by the same benignant
power, to watch, in the calm evening of life, the issues of the works
of justice and of mercy which God raised him up to accomplish.
With the evil omens, and mth the too glowing anticipations of
former times, he has been able to contrast the actual solution of
this great practical enigma. He has lived to witness eleven years
of unbroken tranqidllity throughout countries where, till then, a
single year undisturbed by insurrection was almost unknown — the
extinction of feuds apparently irreconcilable — positions full of
danger in former wars, now converted into bulwarks of our national
power — an equal administration of justice in the land of the slave-
courts and the cart- whip — a loyal and happy peasantry, where the
soil was so lately broken by the sullen hands of slaves — penury
exchanged for abundance — a population, once cursed by a constant
and rapid decay, now progressively increasing — Christian knowledge
and Christian worship universally diffused among a people so lately
debased by Pagan superstitions — and the conjugal duties, with all
their attendant charities, held in due honour by those to whom
laws, written in the English language, and sanctioned by the Kings
of England, had forbidden even the marriage vow. If, with these
blessings, have also come diminished harvests of the cane and the
coffee plant, even they who think that to export and to import are
the two great ends of the social existence of mankind, have before
them a bright and not very distant futurity. But he, under whose
auspices the heavy yoke was at length broken, is contemplating,
doubtless, with other and far higher thoughts, the interests of the
world, from which, at no remote period, the inexorable law of our
existence must summon him away. In that prospect, so full of
awe to the wisest and the best, he may well rejoice in the remem-
brance that, in conferring on him the capacity to discern, and the
heart to obey the supreme and immutable will, God enabled him
to grasp the only clue by which the rulers of the world can be
safely guided amidst the darkness and the intricacy of human
affairs.

Such at least is the doctrine which, if Clapham could have
claimed him for her own, Clapham would have instilled into that
great Minister of the British Crown, to whom, more than to any
other, she was prompt to offer her allegiance. Politics, however,
in that microcosm, were rather cosmopolitan than national. Every
human interest had its guardian, every region of the globe its re-
presentative. If the African continent and the Caribbean Archi-

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 551

pelago were assigned to an indefatigable protectorate. New llollaud
was not forgotten, nor was British India without a patron. It was
the special charge of Mr. Grant, better known to the present
generation by the celebrity of his sons, but regarded at the com-
mencement of this century as the real ruler of the rulers of the
East, the Director of the Court of Directors. At Leadenhall Street
he was celebrated for an integi-ity exercised by the severest trials ;
for an understanding large enough to embrace, without confusion,
the entire range and the intricate combinations of their whole civil
and military policy ; and for nerves which set fatigue at defiance.
At Clapham, his place of abode, he was hailed as a man whose
piety, though ever active, was too profound for much speech; a
praise to which, among their other glories, it was permitted to few
of his neighbours there to attain or to aspire. With the calm
dignity of those spacious brows, and of that stately figure, it seemed
impossible to reconcile the movement of any passion less pure than
that which continually urged him to requite the tribute of India
by a treasure, of which he who possessed it more largely than any
other of the sons of men has declared, that ' the merchandise of it
is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than
fine gold.' No less elevated topic (so judged the inquisitive vicinage)
could be the subject of his discourse, as he traversed their gorse-
covered common, attended by a youth, who, but for the fire of his
eye, and the occasional energy of his bearing, might have passed
for some studious and sickly competitor for medals and prize poems.
If such were the pursuits ascribed by Clapham to her occasional
visitant, it is but a proof that even ' patent Christianity ' is no
effectual safeguard against human fallibility.

Towards the middle of the last century, John Martyn of Truro
was working with his hands in the mines near that town. He was
a wise man, who, knowing the right use of leisure hours, employed
them so as to qualify himself for higher and more lucrative pur-
suits; and who, knowing the right use of money, devoted his
enlarged means to procure for his four children a liberal education.
Henry, the younger of his sons, was accordingly entered at the
University of Cambridge, where in January 1801, he obtained tlie
degree of bachelor of arts, with the honorary rank of senior
wi-angler. There also he became the disciple, and, as he himself
would have said, the convert of Charles Simeon. Under the
counsels of that eminent teacher, the guidance of Mr. Wilberforce,
and the active aid of Mr. Grrant, he entered the East India Com-
pany's service as a chaplain. After a residence in Hindostan of
about five years, he returned homewards through Persia in broken
health. Pausing at Shiraz, he laboured there diuing twelve months

N N 4

552 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

with the ardoar of a man, who, distinctly perceiving the near
approach of death, feared lest it should intercept the great work
for which alone he desired to live. That work (the translation of
the new Testament into Persian) at length accomplished, he re-
sumed his way towards Constantinople, following his Mihmander
(one Hassan Aga) at a gallop, nearly the whole distance from
Tabriz to Tocat, under the rays of a burning sun and the pressure
of continual fever. On the 6th of October 1812, in the thirty-
second year of his age, he broiight the Journal of his life to a pre-
mature close, by inscribing in it the following words, while he
sought a momentary repose under the shadow of some trees at the
foot of the Caramanian Mountains : ' I sat in the orchard, and
thought with sweet comfort and fear of Grod — in solitude, my com-
pany, my friend, and comforter. Oh, when shall time give place to
eternity ! When shall appear that new heaven and new earth,
wherein dwelleth righteousness and love ! There shall in nowise
enter anything that defileth ; none of that wickedness which has
made man worse than wild beasts ; none of those corruptions which
add still more to the miseries of mortality, shall be seen or heard
of any more.' Ten clays afterwards those aspirations were fulfilled.
His body was laid in the grave by the hands of strangers at
Tocat, and to his disembodied spirit was revealed that awfvd vision
which it is given to the pure in heart, and to them alone, to con-
template.

Amidst all the discords which agitate the Church of England,

her sons are unanimous in extolling the name of Henry Martyn.

And with reason : for it is in fact the one heroic name which adorns

her annals from the days of Elizabeth to our own. Her apostolic

men, the Wesleys and Elliotts and Brain erds of other times,

either quitted, or were cast out of her communion. Her Acta

Sanctorum may be read from end to end with a dry eye and an

unquickened pulse. Henry Martyn, the learned and the holy,

translating the Scriptures in his solitary bungalow at Dinapore, or

preaching to a congregation of five hundred beggars, or refuting

the Mahommedan doctors at Shiraz, is the bright exception. It is

not the less bright, because he was brought within the sphere of

those secular influences which so often draw down our Anglican

worthies from the Empyrean along which they would soar, to the

levels, flat through fertile, on which they must depasture. There

is no concealing the fact, that he annually received from the East

India Company an ugly allowance of twelve hundred pounds ; and

though he would be neither just nor prudent who should ascribe to

the attractive force of that stipend one hour of Henry Martyn's

residence in the East, yet the ideal would be better without it.

THE CLAl'lIAM SECT. 553

Oppressively conclusive as may he the arguments in favour of a
well-endowed and punctually paid ' Establishment,' they have,
a^ter all, an unpleasant earthly savoiu-. One would not like to
discover that Polycarp, or Bernard, or Bouiface, was waited on
every quarter-day by a plump bag of coin from the public treasury.
To receive a thousand rupees monthly from that source, was
perhaps the duty, it certainly was not the fault, of Henry
Martyn. Yet it was a misfortiuie, and had been better avoided if
possible.

When Mackenzie was sketching his 3Ian of Feeling, he coidd
have desired no better model than Henry Martyn, the young and
successful competitor for academical honours ; a man born to love
with ardour and to hate with vehemence ; amorous, irascible,
ambitious, and vain ; without one torpid nerve about him ; aiming
at universal excellence in science, in literature, in conversation, in
horsemanship, and even in dress ; not without some gay fancies,
but more prone to austere and melancholy thoughts ; patient of the
most toilsome inquiries, though not wooiiig philosophy for her own
sake ; animated by the poetical temperament, though unvisited by
any poetical inspiration ; eager for enterprise, though thinking
meanly of the rewards to which the adventurous aspire ; uniting in
himself, though as yet unable to concentrate or to harmonise them,
many keen desires, many high powers, and much constitutional
dejection — the chaotic materials of a great character, destined to
combine, as the future events of life should determine, into no
common forms, whether of beauty and delight, or of deformity and
terror.

Among those events, the most momentous was his connection
with Charles Simeon, and with such of his disciples as sought
learning at Cambridge, and learned leisure at Clapham. A mind
so beset by sympathies of every other kind could not but be
peculiarly susceptible to the contagion of opinion. From that
circle he adopted, in all its unadorned simplicity, the system called
Evangelical — that system of which (if Augustine, Luther, Calvin,
Knox, and the writers of the English Homilies may be credited)
Christ himself was the author, and Paul the first and greatest
interpreter.

Through shallow heads and voluble tongues, such a creed (or
indeed any creed) filtrates so easily, that of the multitude who
maintain it, comparatively few are aware of the conflict of their
faith with the natural and unaided reason of mankind. Indeed he
who makes such an avowal will hardly escape the charge of affec-
tation or of impiety. Yet if any truth be clearly revealed, it is,
that the apostolic doctrine was foolishness to the sages of this

554 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

world. If any unrevealed truth be indisputable, it is, that such
sages are, at this day, making, as they have ever made, ill-disguised
efforts to escape the inferences, with which their own subscriptions
or admissions teem. Divine philosophy divorced from human
science — celestial things stripped of the mitigating veils woven by
man's wit and fancy to relieve them — form an abyss as impassable
at Oxford now, as it was at Athens eighteen centuries ago. To
Henry Martyn the gulf was visible, the self-renunciation painful,
the victory complete. His understanding embraced, and his heart
reposed in the two comprehensive and ever germinating tenets of
the school in which he studied. Eegarding his own heart as cor-
rupt, and his own reason as delusive, he exercised an unlimited
affiance in the holiness and the wisdom of Him, in whose person
the divine nature had been allied to the human, that so, in the
persons of his followers, the human might be allied to the divine.

Such was his religious theory — a theory which doctors may
combat, or admit, or qualify, but in which the readers of Henry
Martyn's biography, letters, and journals, cannot but acknowledge
that he found the resting-place of all the impetuous appetencies of
his mind, the spring of all his strange powers of activity and
endurance. Prostrating his soul before the real, though the
hidden. Presence he adored, his doubts were silenced, his anxieties
soothed, and every meaner passion hushed into repose. He
pursued divine truth (as all who would succeed in that pursuit
must pursue it), by the will rather than the understanding; by
sincerely and earnestly searching out the light which had come
into the world, by still going after it when perceived, by following
its slightest intimations with faith, with resignation, and with
constancy ; though the path it disclosed led him from the friends
and the home of his youth across wide oceans and burning deserts,
amidst contumely and contention, with a wasted frame and an
overburdened spirit. He rose to the sublime in character, neither
by the powers of his intellect, nor by the compass of his
learning, nor by the subtlety, or range, or the beauty of his con-
ceptions (for in all these he was surpassed by many), but by the
copiousness and the force of the living fountains by which his
spiritual life was nourished. Estranged from a world once too
fondly loved, his well-tutored heart learned to look back with a
calm though affectionate melancholy on its most bitter privations.
Insatiable in the thirst for freedom, holiness, and joeace, he
maintained an ardour of devotion which might have passed for an
erotic delirium, when contrasted with the Sadducean frigidity of
other worshippers. Eegarding all the members of the great human
family as his kindred in sorrow and in exile, his zeal for their

THE CLArilAM SECT. 655

welfare partook more of the fervour of domestic affection, than of
the kind but gentle warmth of a diffusive philanthropy. Elevated
in his own esteem by the consciousness of an intimate union with
the Eternal Source of all virtue, the meek missionary of the cross
exhibited no obscure resemblance to the unobtrusive dignity, the
unfaltering purpose, and the indestructible composure of Him by
whom the cross was borne. The ill-disciplined desires of youth,
now confined within one deep channel, flowed qviickly onward
towards one great consummation : nor was there any faculty of his
sovil, or any treasure of his accumulated knowledge, for which
appropriate exercise was not found in the high enterprise to which
he was devoted.

And yet nature, the great leveller, still asserting her rights even
against those whose trivnnph over her might seem the most perfect,
would not seldom extort a burst of passionate grief from the bosom
of the holy Henry Marty n, when memory recalled the image of
her to whom, in earlier days, the homage of his heart had been
rendered. The writer of his life, embarrassed with the task of recon-
ciling such an episode to the gravity befitting a hero so majestic, and
a biography so solemn, has concealed this passage of his story beneath
a veil at once transparent enough to excite, and impervious enough
to baffle curiosity. A form may be dimly distinguished of such
witchery as to have subdued at the first interview, if not at the first
casual glance, a spirit soaring above all the other attractions of
this sublunary sphere. We can faintly trace the pathway, not
always solitary, of the pious damsel, as she crossed the bare heaths
of Cornwall on some errand of mercy, and listened, not unmoved,
to a tremulous voice, pointing to those heights of devotion from
which the speaker had descended to this lower worship. Then the
shifting scene presents the figure — alas ! so common — of a
mother, prudent, and inexorable, as^ if she had been involved in no
romance of her own some brief twenty years before; and then
appears the form (deliciously out of place) of the apostolic Charles
Simeon, assuming, but assuming in vain, the tender intervenient
office. In sickness and in sorrow, in watchings and in fastings, in
toils and perils, and amidst the decay of all other earthly hopes,
this human love blends so touchingly with his diviner enthusiasm,
that even from the life of Henry Marty n there can scarcely be
dra-svn a more valuable truth, than that, in minds pure as his,
there may dwell together in most harmonious concord, affections
which a coarse, low-toned, ascetic morality would describe as dis-
tracting the heart between earth and heaven.

Yet it is a life pregnant with many other weighty truths. It
was passed in an age M'hen men whom genius itself cotdd scarcely

556 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

rescue from abhorrence, found in their constitutional sadness, real
or fictitious, not merely an excuse for grovelling in the style of
Epicurus, but even an apology for deifying their sensuality, pride,
malignity, and worldly-mindedness, by hymns due only to those
sacred influences, by which our better nature is sustained in the
warfare with its antagonist corruptions. Not such the gloom which
brooded over the heart of Henry Martyn. It solicited no sympathy,
was never betrayed into sullenness, and sought no unhallowed con-
solation. It assumed the form of a depressing consciousness of ill
desert ; mixed with fervent compassion for a world which he at
once longed to quit, and panted to improve. It was the sadness of
an exile gazing wistfully towards his distant home, even while
soothing the grief of his brethren in captivity. It was a sadness
akin to that which stole over the heart of his IMaster, while, pausing
on the slope of the hills which stand round about Jerusalem, he
wept over her crowded marts and cloud-capped pinnacles, hastening
to a desolation already visible to that prescient eye ; though hidden
by the glare and tumult of life from the obdurate multitude below.
It was a sadness soon to give place to an abiding serenity in the
presence of that compassionate Being who had condescended to
shed many bitter tears, that he might wipe away every tear from
the eyes of his faithful followers.

Tidings of the death of Henry Martyn reached England during
the Parliamentary debates on the renewal of the East India
Company's charter ; and gave new impetus to the zeal Avith which
the friends and patrons of his youth were then contending for the
establishment of an Episcopal see at Calcutta, and for the removal
of all restraints on the diffusion of Christianity within its limits.
In the roll of names most distinguished in that conflict, scarcely
one can be found which does not also grace the calendar of Clapham.
It was a cause emphatically Claphamic. John Venn, to whom the
whole sect looked up as their pastor and spiritual guide, was at that
time on his deathbed. He had been the projector, and one of the
original founders, of the society for sending missionaries of the
Anglican communion to Africa and the East — a body which,
under the name of the ' Church Missionary Society,' now commands
a wider field of action, and a more princely revenue, than any Pro-
testant association of the same character. To him who prompted
the deeper meditations, partook the counsels, and stimulated the
efforts of such disciples, some memorial should have been raised by
a Church which to him, more than to any of her sons, is indebted
for her most effective instrument for propagating her tenets and
enlarging her borders. But, linked though that name was to the
kindest and the holiest thoughts of so many of the wise and good.

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 557

it must be passed over in this place with this transient notice ; lest
the reverence due to it should he impaired, as it certainly could not
be strengthened, by a tribute on which might not unjustly rest some
grave suspicion of partiality.

The shepherd was taken from his flock immediately after the
success of the Parliamentary contest, and while their exultations,
and the forebodings of their opponents, predicted the glorious, or
the disastrous, results of Episcopacy, and of missions in India. At
this distance of time, we know that these prophecies, whether of
good or of evil, were uninspired. Neither Hindoos nor Mussulmen
have revolted on the discovery that their European sovereigns have
a belief and a worship of their own, which they seriously prefer to
the faith of Brama or of Mahomet. But neither has Benares yet
ceased to number her pilgrims by myriads ; nor is the Rammadan
violated from dawn to sunset. These results can hardly have sur-
prised those who derived their anticipations of the future from a
careful survey of the past.

The power before which the temples of pagan Rome fell down
(like the mighty agencies of the material creation), is a silent
invisible influence, obedient to no laws which human wisdom can
explore ; though, at length, manifesting its reality in results which
the dullest observation cannot overlook. It works by searching
out affinities in the elements of man's moral and social nature ; by
separating such as are incongruous, and by combining the rest into
organic forms, animated Ijy a common life. It works by the repul-
sive force of mutual antipathies, and by the plastic force of self-
denying love ; and exhibits its presence in the Christian system, as
in its noblest form, and most complete development. And though
the prolific energies of this renovating power may often appear to
slumber, and though, even when roused into activity, it operates
but slowly and imperfectly, yet is it the one vital principle of this
otherwise corrupt and corrupting world ; and is not less the source
of light and of order now, than when it brooded over the dark
primitive chaos.

Thus earth's history is but as some incoherent rhapsody of wild
joys and maddening sorrows, if not regarded as the progressive
fulfilment of the Supreme Will, effected by the ministry, some-
times spontaneous, at other times reluctant, of other wills subordi-
nate to the Supreme. And that passage of history which is to
unfold the religious and intellectual regeneration of Hindostan,
will, like the rest, delineate the strife, the reverses, and the long
delay, which must precede and allay the final triumph. It will
tell of men devoting themselves, in constancy and resignation, to
labours of which they must never witness the recompense ; and

558 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

obeying every intimation of the good pleasure of Grod, even wLen
He may have appeared to have abandoned to their own weakness
the champions of His truth. It will trace the path of the heralds
of peace, illuminated amidst the deep surrounding darkness by the
inward light of faith, and by the outward light which the inspired
records throw on the state, the prospects, and the duties of man.
And it will also tell of the restoration of those records to the
supremacy for which their Divine Author destined them, among
His instruments for the renewal of the image which He impressed
on his moral creation, at the first dawn of its existence.

To effect that restoration, became the chief design of the devout
men whose wiser Anglo-Catholic sons are now calling their fathers
fools. Of that folly the ecumenical seat was in the immediate
vicinity of our suburban common, reflecting from her glassy pools
the mansions by which she is begirt. From them came forth a
majority of the first members of the governing body of the ' Bible
Society,' its earliest ministers or secretaries, and, above all, the
first and greatest of its Presidents — John Lord Teignmouth ; to
the commemoration of whose life are dedicated the volumes from
which our devious course commenced, and to which it at length
returns.

As Mr. Carlyle has it, he was a noticeable man. While Napo-
leon had been founding an Empire in Europe, he had been ruling
an Empire in Asia. The greatest of commercial corporations had
made him their viceroy. The greatest of religious societies had
made him their head. He was a man of letters too, and a man of
hair-breadth escapes and strange adventures. He had been the
friend of Sir William Jones, the associate of Warren Hastings, the
adviser of Henry Dundas, and the choice of William Pitt when he
had a trust to confer, superior in splendour, perhaps in importance,
to his own. So, at least, said the chronicles of those times ; but
his own appearance seemed to say the contrary. If the fasces had
really once been borne before the quiet, everyday looking gentle-
man who was to be seen walking with his children on Clapham
Common, or holding petty sessions of the peace for the benefit of
his neighbours there, then Clapham Common had totally miscon-
ceived what manner of men governors-general are. The idea of
the common was as magnificent as that of a Lord Mayor in the
mind of Martinus Scriblerus. But a glance at our Arungzebe, in
the Clapham coach, was enough to dispel the illusion. How a man
who had sat on the Musnud of Calcutta, could now sit so patiently
between Messrs. Smith and Brown of St. Mildred's, Cornhill, and
listen to them on the Paving Rate Question, with such genuine
and good-humoured interest, was a question which long exercised

THE CLArilAM SECT. 559

the faith and the tongues of the commoners, and wliich has
ever since remained one of the dark problems of parochial history.

Lord Teignmoutli was an estimable, accomplished, and religious
man, on whom Providence bestowed extraordinary gifts of fortune,
without any extraordinary gifts of nature. He was exalted to one
of the highest places of the earth, but was not endowed with the
genius or the magnanimity for which such places afford their meet
exercise and full development. The roll of British viceroys in
India includes other names than those of the Immortals. Clive,
Hastings, and Wellesley transmitted empire, but could not transmit
imperial minds to Amherst, or to Minto, or to Shore. He was not
one of those who enlarge our conceptions of the powers occasionally
confided to man. He rose to the summit of delegated dominion,
without any sublime endurance or heroic daring. He wrote many
speculations, political, moral, and religious ; but without rendering
more clear our knowledge of the actual condition of mankind ; or
our conjectures respecting what awaits them. He also wrote many
verses ; but can scarcely ever have awakened an echo in the hearts
of others. The eminence of his position suggested comparisons
which it would otherwise have been unmeaning to form. There is
not room for many great men, in any age or in any dynasty ; and he
who, in the age of Napoleon and the dynasty of Clive, ruled with
spotless virtue, and aimed only to consolidate the conquests of his
predecessors, might justly deprecate the disparaging remark, that
he was not cast in their gigantic mould. But the good Vespasian
must always be prepared for invidious allusions to the mighty
Julius.

The son of a supercargo, and the grandson of a captain in the
marine of the East India Company, John Shore was destined from
his youth to the service of the same employers. He was prepared
for it at Harrow, where he recited Homer and Juvenal with
Nathaniel Halhed on the one hand, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan
on the other ; Samuel Parr being the common tutor of the three.
On the same form were seen, nearly forty years later, three other
boys, since known to fame as Lord Byron, Sir Robert Peel, and
Sir George Sinclair. In the first of these triumvirates Halhed, in
the second Sinclair, were pointed out by Harrovian divination as
the men destined to illuminate and command the ages which had
given them birth. The spirit of prophecy did not rest on the Hill
of Harrow ! Neither indeed was the United Company of Mer-
chants, trading to the East Indies at the first of those eras, precisely
a school of the prophets. The one qualification they required of
the future ministers and judges of their Empire, was a sound ac-
quaintance with book-keeping. Mr. Shore was accordingly re-

560 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

moved from Harrow to a commercial school at Hackney. Among
the students there was one who, at the distance of half a century,
he met again ; the stately JNIarquis of Hastings, who then came to
ask a lesson in the art of governing India, from the old school-
fellow with whom he had once taken lessons in the art of double
entry.

Enthusiasts are men of one idea. Heroes are men of one de-
sign. They who prosper in the world are usually men of one
maxim. When Mr. Shore was toiling up the steep ascent trodden
by writers, ' an old gentleman named Burgess ' chanced to say to
him, ' make yourself useful, and you will succeed.' Old Mr. Bur-
gess never said a better thing in his life. It became the text on
which the young civilian preached many a discourse to others, and
to himself. With his own hand he compiled several volumes of
the records of the secret political department. In a single year,
he decided six hundred causes at Moorshedabad. He acquired the
Hindostanee, Arabic, and Persian tongues ; and was summoned to
employ that knowledge at what was then called the ' Provincial
Council ' at Calcutta. He revised one of the philippics launched
by Francis against Warren Hastings, and lent his pen to j^repare a
memorial against the supreme court and Sir Elijah Impey. So
useful, indeed, did he make himself to the opponents of Hastings,
that he was ajjpointed by that great man (oriental and occidental
politics having much in common) to a seat in his supreme council
of four. But, whatever might be his change of party, Mr. Shore
never changed his maxim. He presided at the Board of Eevenue.
He acted as revenue commissioner in Dacca and Behar. He drew
up plans of judicial reform. Ever busy, and ever useful, he re-
mained in India till Hastings himself quitted it, when they re-
turned in the same ship to England — the ever -triumphant Hastings
to encounter Burke and the House of Commons ; the ever-useful
Mr. Shore to receive from the Court of Directors a seat in the
supreme council of three, established under Mr. Pitt's India
Bill.

Again he bent his way to the East, and again enjoyed, under the
rule of Lord Cornwallis, abundant opportunities of acting up to the
precept of old Mr. Burgess. He sustained nearly all the drudgery
which, in every such combination, falls to the lot of some single
person ; assuming, as his peculiar province, the settlement of the
revenues of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa. The result of his labours
was that momentous decision, remaining in force to this day, which
has recognised the right of the Zemindars to the land, in the
double character of renters and landlords — a measure against which
there is such an array of authority and argument, as to compel a

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 561

doubt whether, on this occasion at least, Mr. Shore did not render
a service useful rather to the sovereigns of India, than to their
subjects.

To himself the result was most important. The time had come
when Mr. Pitt hoped to witness the introduction into India of the
pacific system which, at his instance, Parliament had enjoined.
He committed that task to Mr. Shore; wisely judging that the
author of the territorial settlement possessed in an eminent degree
the habits, the principles, and the temper, which qualify men for
an unambitious and equitable course of policy. With that charge
he sailed a third time for the East, in the character of Governor-
Greneral.

He had been eminently useful, and had succeeded eminently.
But now the old maxim began to wear out. He who would climb
an oak must, as a great li'sdng writer has observed, change the
nature of his efforts, and quicken his pace after he has once fairly
set foot on the branches. Old Mr. Burgess had taught how the
highest advancement might be obtained. He had not taught how
it might be improved. Sir John Shore (such was now the title of
the Governor-Greneral) brought to that commanding station, know-
ledge, industry, courage, and disinterestedness ; with a philanthropy
as pure as ever warmed the bosom of any of the rulers of mankind.
But he did not bring to it the wide survey, the prompt decision,
and the invincible will, of the great statesmen who, before and
after him, wielded that delegated sceptre. The sense of subor-
dination, and the spirit of a subordinate, still clung to him. To be
useful to the Board of Control, to be useful to the Court of Directors,
to be useful to the Civil Service, to be useful to the Indian Army,
limited his ambition as an administrator ; and though the happiness
of the nations of India was the object of his highest aspirations, his
rule over them was barren, not only of any splendid enterprise, but
even of any memorable plan for their benefit.

The four years of Sir John Shore's government was a period of
peace, interrupted only by a single battle with the Eohilla chiefs.
But it was a peace pregnant with wars, more costly and dangerous
than any in which the British Empire in the East had been in-
volved since the days of Clive and Laurence. The charges advanced
against Sir John Shore by the more adventurous spirits who
followed him, are all summed up in the one accusation — that his
policy was temporising and timid. He acquiesced as an inert
spectator in the successful invasion of the dominions of the Nizam
by the Mahrattas. He fostered the power and the audacity of that
Avavlike nation. He unresistingly permitted the growth of a French
subsidiary force, in the service of three of the must considerable

562 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

native powers. He thwarted Lord Hobart's efforts for extending
the dominion or influence of Grreat Britain in Ceylon, in the
Carnatic, and in Tanjore. He allowed the growth and the aggres-
sions in Northern India of that power which, under Runjeet Singh,
afterwards became so formidable. He looked on passively while
Tippoo was prepariag for the contest into which he plunged, or
was driven, to his own ruin, and to our no light peril.

These, and such as these, are the charges. The answer is drawn
from the pacific injunctions of Parliament, and the pacific orders
of the Company ; and from the great truth, that ambitious wars
are the direst curse, and peace the most invaluable blessing to
mankind. In the course of his correspondence, Lord Teignmouth
takes frequent occasion to announce the new or philosophical
maxim, which as Governor-Greneral he had substituted for his old
or utilitarian maxim as a writer. It was that incontrovertible
verity, that ' honesty is the best polic3^' Sound doctrine, doubt-
less; but whether it is the best policy to be honest now and then,
may admit of more dispute. Millions of men never lived together
under a rule more severely just in intention than was that of Sir
John Shore. But the Rohillas distrusted his equity. The Mah-
rattas had no belief in his courage. The Nizam could not be con-
vinced of his good faith. The oppressed Eyots were incredulous
of his benevolence. Integrity, which, being only occasional and
transient, passes for weakness and caprice, may work out evils even
more intolerable than those of a consistent, resolute, and syste-
matic injustice. Under their pacific Grovernor-Greneral, the people
of the East remembered the conquests of his predecessors, and
were preparing to counteract, by secret or open hostilities, the
further conquests of the pro-consuls who were to succeed him.
His individual conscience could justly apj)laud the retrospect of
his Asiatic dominion ; but the natioDal conscience, of which we
have lately heard, had it any cause to exult in a pause of four
years in an otherwise unbroken chain of successful aggressions on
the princes and people of Hindostan ?

When Napoleon wrote bulletins about the star of Austerlitz and
the fulfilment of his destiny, we were all equally shocked at his
principles and his style. Yet the ajjologies still ringing in our
ears for the wars of Affghanistan, of Scinde, and of Grwalior, though
made but yesterday by the highest authorities on either side of the
House of Commons, were but a plagiarism from the Emperor of
the French, in more correct, though less animated language. Nor
could it be otherwise. Empire cannot be built up, either in the
West or in the East, in contempt of the laws of God, and then be
maintained according to the Decalogue. When the vessel must

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 5G3

either drive before the gale or founder, the hehnsmau no longer
looks at the chart. When the pedestals of the throne arc terror
and admiration, he who would sit there securely must consult
other rules than those of the Evangelists. Sir John Shore was the
St. Louis of Grovernors-Greneral. But if Clive had been like-
minded, we should have had no India to govern. If Hastings
had aspired to the title of ' The Just,' we should not have retained
our dominion. If Wellesley had ruled in the spirit of his con-
scientious predecessor, we should infallibly have lost it. With
profound respect for the contrary judgment of so good a man, we
venture to doubt whether the severe integrity which forbade him
to bear the sceptre of the Moguls as others had borne it, should
not have also forbidden his bearing it at all. Needlessly to assume
incompatible duties, is permitted to no man. Cato would have
ceased to be himself had he consented to act as a lieutenant of the
Usurper. The British viceroy who shall at once be true to his
employers, and strictly equitable to the princes of India and their
subjects, need not despair of squaring the circle.

Eeturning a third time to his native land. Lord Teignmouth
fell into the routine of common duties, and of common pleasures,
with the ease of a man who had taken no delight in the pomp or
in the exercise of power ; but whose heart had been with his home
and with his books, even while Nabobs and Eajahs were prostrating
themselves before him. He became eminent at the Quarter
Sessions, took down again the volumes in which Parr had lectm'ed
him, thinned out his shrubberies, visited at country-seats and
watering-places, watched over his family and his poor neighbours,
sent letters of good advice to his sons (to the perusal of which
the public are now invited with perhaps more of filial than of
fraternal piety), and, in short, lived the life so pleasant in reality,
so tedious in description, of a well-educated English gentleman, of
moderate fortune, moderate desires, and refined tastes ; with a
fruitful vine on the walls of his house, and many olive branches
round about his table.

If, as all Englishmen believe, this is the happiest condition of
human existence, it illustrates the remark that happiness is a serious,
not to say a heavy thing. The exhibition of it in these volumes is
rather amiable than exhilarating. India-House traditions tell,
that when a young aspirant for distinction there, requested one of
the Chairs to inform him what was the proper style of writing
political dispatches, the Chair made answer, ' The style we prefer
is the humdrum.'' This preference for the humdrum, enjoined
perhaps by the same high authority, clung to Lord Teignmouth
even after his return to Europe. He wrote as if to baffle the

o o 2

564 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

critics, and lived as if to perplex the biographers. A foreigner
amongst us might perhaps have sketched him as a specimen of a
class peculiar to England. But the portrait is too familiar for
exhibition to English eyes, though none is dearer to English hearts.
Who that has contemplated and loved (as who has not ?) the wise,
cheerful, and affectionate head of some large household, filling up
without hurry or lassitude the wide circle of domestic, neighbourly,
and magisterial duties, and aiming at nothing more — let him say
whether the second Lord Teignmouth could have rendered ani-
mating in description the tranquil years which the first Lord
Teignmouth probably found the most grateful of his life in
reality.

They were gliding quietly away, cheered by such retrospects as
few have enjoyed, and gilded by hopes which few could so reason-
ably indulge, when the Society, then for the first time formed for
the circulation of the Bible, placed him at their head ; not as a
mere titular chief, but as the President by whom all their deli-
berations were to be controlled, and as the dignitary by whom the
collective body were to be represented. So high a trust could not
have fallen into hands more curiously fitted for the discharge of
it. There met and blended in him as much of the spirit of the
world, and as much of the spirit of that sacred volume, as could
combine harmoniously with each other. To the capacious views
of a man long conversant with great affairs, he united a submission
the most childlike to the supreme authority of those sacred records.
To the high bearing of one for whose smile rival princes had
sued, he added that unostentatious simplicity which is equally
beyond the reach of those who solicit, and of those who really
despise, human admiration. Conversant with mankind under all
political and social aspects, and in every gradation of rank, it was at
once his habit and his delight to withdraw from that indiscriminate
intercourse into the interior circle where holy thoughts might be
best nourished ; and into the solitude where alone the modesty of his
nature would permit the utterance of his devout affections. An
Oriental scholar of no mean celebrity, and not without a cultivated
taste for classical learning, he daily passed from such pursuits to
the study of the Sacred Oracles — as one who, having sojourned in
a strange land, returns to the familiar voices, the faithful counsels,
and the well-proved loving-kindness of his father's house. To
scatter through every tongue and kindred of the earth, the inspired
leaves by which his own mind was sustained and comforted, was a
labour in which he found full scope and constant exercise for
virtues, hardly to be hazarded in the government of India.

Of India, indeed, and of the fame of his Indian administration.

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 565

he had become strangely regardless — witnessing silently, if not
with indifference, the overthrow of his polic}^ and the denial of
his claims to the respect and gratitude of mankind. Ordinary
men, it is true, are but seldom agitated by the temperament by
which men of genius expiate their formidable eminence ; but Lord
Teignmouth seems to have had more tlian his due share of constitu-
tional phlegm. He governed an empire without ambition, wrote
poetry without inspiration, and gave himself up to labours of love
and works of mercy without enthusiasm. He was, in fact, rather a
fatiguing man — of a narcotic influence in general society — with
a pen which not rarely dropped truisms ; sedate and satisfied under
all the vicissitudes of life ; the very antithesis and contradiction of
the Hero, whose too tardy advent Mr. Carlyle is continually in-
voking. Yet he was one of those whom we may be well content
to honour, while we yet wait the promised deliverer. He was a
witness to the truth, that talents such as multitudes possess, and
opportunities such as m.ultitudes enjoy, may, under the homely
guidance of perseverance and good sense, command the loftiest
ascent to which either ambition or philanthropy can aspire ; if that
steep path be trodden with a firm faith in the Divine wisdom, a
devout belief in the Divine goodness, and a filial promptitude of
conformity to the Divine will.

To Lord Teignmouth, and to the other founders of the Bible
Society, an amount of gratitude is due, which might, perhaps,
have been more freely rendered, if it had been a little less grandi-
loquently claimed by the periodic eloquence of their followers.
Her annual outbursts of self-applause are not quite justified by
any success which this great Protestant 'projpaganda has hitherto
achieved over her antagonists. Eome still maintains and multi-
plies her hostile positions — heathen and Mahomedan temples are
as numerous and as crowded as before — ignorance and sin continue
to scatter the too fertile seeds of sorrow through a groaning world
• — and it is no longer doubtful that the aspect of human affairs
may remain as dark as ever, though the earth be traversed by
countless millions of copies of the Holy Text. The only wonder
is, that such a doubt should ever have arisen — that reasonable
people should have anticipated the renovation of man to the
higher purposes of his being, by any single agency — without an
apparatus as complex as his own nature — or without influences as
vivifying as those which gave him birth. To quicken the inert
mass around us, and to render it prolific, it is necessary that the
primeval or patriarchal institute of parental training should be
combined with an assiduous education ; with the various discipline
of life ; with the fellowship of domestic, civil, and ecclesiastical

o o 3

5G6 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

society ; and, above all, with the re-creative power from on High
devoutly implored and diligently cherished. The wicked habita-
tions by which our globe is burdened, might, alas ! be wicked still,
though each of them were converted into a biblical library. And
yet with the belief of the inspiration, whether plenary or partial,
of the Scriptures, who can reconcile a disbelief of the momentous
results with which the mere knowledge of them by mankind at
large must be attended ? Who will presume to estimate the
workings of such an element of thought in such a world ? — or to
follow out the movements resulting from such a voice when raised
in every tongue and among all people, in opposition to the rude
clamour from without, or the still harsher dissonance from within ?
— or who will take on him to measure the consequences of exhi-
biting amongst all the tribes of men one immutable standard of
truth — one eternal rule of duty — one spotless model for imita-
tion?

If this vast confederacy of the Protestant and Greek churches
was regarded by the less initiated with some degree of superstitious
awe, and extolled beyond the severe limits of truth, the foundei'S
of the society were too well instructed in spiritual dynamics, to be
themselves in bondage to that vulgar error. The more eminent of
the Clapham sectarians thought of it but as one wheel in that ela-
borate mechanism, by which they believed that the world would at
length be moved. Bell and Lancaster were both their welcome
guests — schools, prison discipline. Savings' Banks, tracts, village
libraries, district visitings, and church buildings — each, for a time,
rivalled their cosmopolitan projects. But of their subordinate
schemes none were so dear to them as that of prepossessing, in
favour of their opinions and of their measures, the young men who
were then preparing for ordination at Cambridge. Hence they
held in special honour Isaac Milner, whose biography lies before us,
and Charles Simeon, whose life is shortly to be published — both
unavoidably residing at the university as their appointed sphere of
labour ; but both men of Clapham as frequent visitors, as habitual
associates, and as zealous allies.

The biography of Isaac Milner, as recorded in the dense volume
published by his niece, occupies a space nearly equal to that which
the extant writers of antiquity have devoted to the celebration of
all the worthies of Grreece and Rome and Palestine put together.
And yet of those who have still to reach the meridian of life, how
few are aware, either that such a man was famous in the last
generation, or what was the ground of his celebrity ! Oh ! ye can-
didates for fame, put not your faith in coteries. See here how
lavishly applause may be bestowed in one age, and how profound

THE CLAPHAM SECT. 567

the silence into wliich it may die away in the next ! See how a man
may have been extolled not thirty poor years ago, as a philosopher,
historian, divine, and academic, on whom ' young England ' has not
one passing remembrance to bestow ! And although the present
effort to revive and perpetuate his glory be made by a kinswoman,
prepared for that undertaking by knowledge, by ability, and by
zeal ; yet how avoid the conviction that the monument itself, like
the name to which it is erected, is already becoming a premature
ruin, and preaching one more unheeded sermon on the text which
proclaims the vanity of all things ?

If the several tendencies of Isaac Milner to moral and intellec-
tual greatness had been permitted to act freely, and if Fortune
had not caressed and enervated him by her too benigant smiles,
his name might have been now illustrious in the Fasti Ca)da-
brigienses. But she bestowed on him the rewards of eminence,
such as wealth, leisure, reputation and authority, without exacting
the appointed price of toil and self-denial. Humble as was his
hereditary station, he scarcely ever felt the invigorating influence
of depending on his own exertions for subsistence, for comforts, or
even for enjoyments. He soon obtained and soon resigned a fellow-
ship at Queen's College, Cambridge, to become the president of
that society ; an office to which ere long were added the deanery of
Carlisle, and the mathematical chair once occupied by Newton.
Three such sinecures were a burden, beneath which the most
buoyant spirit could scai-cely have moved with freedom. A splen-
did patrimony in the three per cents., or the golden repose of Lords
Arden or Ellenborough, might agree well enough with the pur-
suits of a scholar or a statesman. Not so the laborious idleness
of a deanery and a mastership, with their ceaseless round of
chapters and elections, and founders' feasts, and enclosure ques-
tions; and questions about new racks for the stables, and new
rollers for the garden ; and squabbles with contumacious canons
and much-digesting fellows. Newton himself could not, at the
same time, have given laws to the Butteries and explored the laws
of the universe; and therefore it happened that Newton's suc-
cessor was too busy for the duties of his lucrative professorship.
Delilah bound the strong man with cords supplied by Mammon for
the purpose.

IVom such toils he might have broken away, if the wily cour-
tezan had not thrown around him the more seductive bondage of
social and colloquial popularity. The keen sarcasm, that ' science
is his forte — omniscience, his foible,' though of later date, could
never have been aimed at any of the giants of Cambridge with
more truth, or with greater effect, than at the former president of

o o 4

568 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

Queen'a. He had looked into innumerable books, had dipped into
most subjects, whether of vulgar or of learned inquiry, and talked
with shrewdness, animation, and intrepidity, on them all. What-
ever the company and whatever the theme, his sonorous voice pre-
dominated over all other voices, even as his lofty stature, vast
girth, and superincumbent wig, defied all competition. He was
equally at home on a steeple -chase, and on final perseverance ;
and explained with the same confidence the economy of an ant-
hill and the policy of the Nizam. During the last half of his life
the Johnsonilatria was at its height ; and among the aspirants to
the vacant conversational throne, none appeared to have a fairer
title than himself. Parr, with his pipe and his pedantry, was
offensive. Bishop Watson was pompous and tiresome. Lord
Ellenborough, the first of that name, was but an eminent phrase-
manufacturer. But Isaac Milner, however inferior to the sage
of Bolt Court in genius, in wit, in practical wisdom, in philo-
logy, and in critical discernment, ranged over a wider field of
knowledge ; with a memory as ready and retentive, with higher
animal spirits, a broader humour, a less artificial style, and an en-
joyment so cordial and sociable of his own talk, as compelled every
one else to enjoy it. If less contentious than his great prototype,
he was not less authoritative. But his topics were more out of the
reach of controversy, his temper more serene, and his audience far
more subservient. In the whole of his career, he was probably
never once surrounded by such a circle as that which at ' The
Club ' reduced the dominion of Johnson to the form of a limited
monarchy. At Carlisle, the Dean was the life of an otherwise life-
less amalgam of country squires and well-endow^ed prebendaries.
At Cambridge, the Master was the soul of dinner and tea parties,
otherwise inanimate. At London, he was the centre of a circle,
ever prompt (as are all London circles) to render homage to literary
and intellectual rank; especially when it can condescend to be
amusing and natural, and can afford to disclaim all pretensions to
the elaborate refinements of metropolitan society. Thus the syren
Fortane raised her most alluring strain — the flattery which rewards
colloquial triumphs — that so she might induce the warrior to relax
his grasp of the weapons by which he might have achieved an en-
during reputation.

Lashing himself to the mast, he still might have pursued his
voyage to permanent reno^vn, if the Enchantress had not raised up
in his course certain fog-banks, to seduce him into the belief that
he had already reached the yet far-distant haven. The mode-
rators, arbiters of Cantabrigian honours, had not only assigned to
him the dignity of senior-wrangler, but with it the title of Tncom-

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 5G9

parabilis; the comparison having been ineffectually attempted
with his competitors of the year 1774. Among the 'Transactions
of the Eoyal Society,' the curious may discover three or four con-
tributions bearing the name of Isaac Milner, which, though little
noticed at the time, and wholly forgotten now, were allowed to
establish, in favour of one who sat in Newton's seat, a station
among men of science ; which, in an age not propitious to such
studies, few had the wish, and fewer still the power, to contest.
No scientific work or discovery illustrates his name, except the
discovery, much insisted on by his biographer, and much rejoiced
in by himself, that the invisible girl of Leicester Square was not a
Fairy enshrined in the brazen ball from which her speaking trum-
pets issued, but an old woman in the next room squeaking through
hidden tubes, the orifices of which were brought into nice contact
with corresponding apertures in the lips of those magical trumpets.
On the opposite side of the same Square rose an observatory, wliere,
a hundred years earlier, his great predecessor had investigated
enigmas of greater significance. In literature. Dr. Milner was
chiefly known as the Editor of the last two volumes of his brother's
Church History, which apparently received great additions and
improvements from his hands. They have been extolled as
containing the most comprehensive and authentic account of the
Keformation in Germany, and of the character of the great Ger-
man Eeformer ; — a praise to which it is impossible to subscribe,
for this, if for no other reason, that neither the Author nor the
Editor had ever seen, or would have been able to read, one line of
the many volumes written by Luther in his mother tongue, and
even yet untranslated into any other. A biographical preface of a
few pages, prefixed to a posthumous volume of the same brother's
sermons, with two controversial pamphlets, complete the catalogue
of the literary labours of more than half a century of learned and
well-beneficed leisure. Of those pamphlets one was an assault on
the ecclesiastical history of the late Dr. Haweis. The other made
havoc of the person and writings of Herbert Marsh, the late Bishop
of Peterborough. Marsh had denounced the sin and danger of
giving people the Bible to read unyoked to the Prayer-book ; and
Milner answered him by an examination much more curious than
civil, into the question — ' Who, and what is Dr. Herbert Marsh ? '
The indignant liturgist replied by an equally courteous attempt to
determine the who, and the what, touching Dr. Isaac Milner. With
cassocks torn, and reputations not much exalted, the combatants
retired from the field, and never again appeared among the aspi-
rants to literary renown. Adidation whispered to them both
that such glory was already theirs, and in her harlotry and her

570 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

blandishments betrayed them into the belief of that too welcome
assurance.

But Isaac Milner was no ordinary person. His body (the very
image of the informing mind) was athletic and capacious, yet
coarse and clumsy withal, and alive, far more than is usual with
the giant brood, to every vicissitude of pleasure and of pain. His
muscular and his nervous structure seemed to belong to two dif-
ferent men, or rather to be of different sexes. The sense of vast
physical power was unattended by animal courage ; and the con-
sciousness of great intellectual strength animated him to no
arduous undertakings. Eobust as he was and omnivorous, he was
haunted by imaginary maladies and ideal dangers ; shuddering at
the east wind, and flying to a hiding-place at the sound of thunder.
In the pursuit of knowledge, he was as an elephant forcing his way
through saplings, and bending them to his purpose with a pro-
boscis alike firm and flexible; yet at the next moment obeying the
feeblest hand, alarmed by the most transient blaze, and turned out
of his way by the first mournful gong or joyous cymbal. He was
a kind of Ajax-Andromache, combining such might Vvdth such sen-
sibility as made him at once admirable, loveable, and inefficient.
Call at the lodge at Queen's in the evening, and you heard him
with stentorian lungs tumbling out masses of knowledge, illumin-
ated by remarks so pungent, and embellished with stories, illustra-
tions, gestures, and phrases so broad and unceremonious, that you
half expected the appearance of the Lady Margaret, to remind the
master of the house that she had built that long gallery, and those
oriel windows, for meditation and studious silence. Call again in
the morning, and you found him broken-hearted over some of
the sorrows to which flesh is heir, or agitated by some collegiate
controversy, or debating with his apothecary how many scruples of
senna should enter into his next draught, as though life and death
were in the balances. Thus erratic in all his pursuits, and responsive
to every outward impression, he failed in that stern perseverance,
without which none may become the teachers, the rulers, or the
benefactors of mankind, and with which perhaps but few can be
much courted as companions, or much loved as friends.

But so to be loved and courted, should not be regarded as a
mere selfish luxury. A wise and good man (and such was Isaac
Milner) will regard popular acceptance as an advantage convertible
to many excellent uses ; and so he considered it. His great talents
were his social talents. In talk, ever ready, ever animated, and
usually pregnant with profound meaning, he found the law, and
fulfilled the end, of his sublimary existence. He talked with
children (his chosen associates) inimitably. It was like a theo-

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 571

logical lecture from Bunyan, or a geographical discourse from De
Foe. He talked with the great and the rich, as one who was
their equal in wealth, and their superior in worship. He talked
with pugilists, musicians, and graziers, at once to learn and to
interpret the mysteries of their several crafts. He talked with
physicians to convince them that their art was empirical. He
talked with politicians to rouse them to the dangers of Catholic
emancipation. He talked on paper to his correspondents pleasantly
and affectionately, though, on the chapter of his own affections,
too abundantly. He talked also to his chosen and intimate
friends, but not in the same fitful strain. To them, from the
ibundance of the heart, he spoke on the theme which alone gave
any unity of design to the otherwise incongruous habits of his life ;
and which alone harmonised the passages, droll and melancholy,
pompous and affectionate, bustling and energetic, of which it was
composed. It was that theme which engages the latest thoughts
of all men — the retrospect and the prospect; the mystery within,
and the dread presence without; the struggle, and the triumph,
and the fearful vengeance; and whatever else is involved in the
relations which subsist between mortal man and the eternal Source
of his existence. To search into those relations, and into the
duties and hopes and fears flowing from them, was the end which
Isaac Milner still proposed to himself, under all his ever-varying
moods. From his brother he had derived the theological tenets,
for the dissemination of which the History of the Church had been
written. Reposing in them with iuflexible constancy, he drew
from them hopes which, notwithstanding his constitutional infir-
mities, imparted dignity to his character, and peace to his closing
hours. He was the intellectual chief of his party, and the members
of it resorted to him at Cambridge, there to dispel doubts, and
thence to bring back responses, oracular, authoritative, and pro-
found. Nor could they have made a better choice; for to his
capacity, learning, and colloquial eloquence, he added a most
absolute sincerity and good faith. He had an instinct which
could detect at a glance, and a temper which loathed, all manner
of cant and false pretension ; and he estimated at their real
worth the several kinds of religious theatricals, liveries, and free-
masonries.

Kind-hearted, talkative, wise old man ! from the slumbers of
many bygone years how easy is it to raise his image — joyful, as when
he exulted over his exorcism of the clothes-tearing ghost of
Sawston ; or jocund, as when he chuckled over the remembrance
of the hearty box he inflicted on the ears of Lord Arcliibald
Hamilton, who, in all the pride of pugilism, had defied the assault

572 THE- CLAPHAM SECT.

of unscientific knuckles; or grandiloquent, as when he reviewed
the glories of his first vice-chancellorship, in which he had ex-
pelled from the Senate Lucius Catalina Frend ; or the triumphs of
his second consulate, when, having thundered his philippics against
Marcus Antonius Brown, he was hailed as Pater Academice.
Well I he is gone, and Alma Mater has still her heads of houses,
men of renown ; but if once again the table could be spread in
that hospitable old dining-room at Queen's, with the facetious
Dean at the head of it, there is not among the incomparable
wranglers, and conversing Encyclopaedias of them all, any one who
would be fit to sit over against him as Croupier.

As a member of the Confederation of the Common, the Dean of
Carlisle administered the province assigned to him rather by the
weight of his authority, than by any active exertions. Under the
shelter of his name his college flourished as the best cultured and
most fruitful nursery of the evangelical neophytes of Cambridge.
From a theological school maintained at Elland, in Yorkshire, at
the charge of the Clapham exchequer, an unbroken succession of
students were annually received there; destined, at the close of
their academical career, to ascend and animate the pulpits of the
national church. But if to the President of Queen's belonged the
dignity of Pra'positus of the evangelical youth of the University,
the far more arduous and responsible office oi Archididascalus was
occupied by a fellow of the adjacent royal college.

Long Chamber at Eton has been the dormitory of many memo-
rable men, and King's has been to many a famous Etonian little
better than a permament dormitory. But about seventy years ago
was elected, from the one to the other of those magnificent foun-
dations, a youth, destined thenceforward to wage irreconcilable
war with the slumbers and the slumberers of his age. Let none of
those (and they are a great multitude) who have enshrined the
memory of Charles Simeon in the inner sanctuary of their hearts,
suppose that it is in a trifling or irreverent spi^-it that the veil is
for a moment raised, which might otherwise conceal the infirmities
of so good a man. He was indeed one of those on whom the im-
press of the Divine image was distinct and vivid. But the reflected
glory of that image (such was his own teaching) is heightened, not
tarnished, by a contrast with the poverty of the material on which
it may be wrought, and of the ground from which it emerges.

They who recollect the late Mr. Terry, the friend of Walter
Scott, may imagine the countenance and manner of Charles
Simeon. To a casual acquaintance he must frequently have ap-
peared like some truant from the green-room, studying in clerical
costume for the part of Mercutio, and doing it scandalously ill.

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 573

Such adventurous attitudes, such a ceaseless play of the facial
muscles, so seeming a consciousness of the advantages of his figure,
with so seeming an unconsciousness of the disadvantages of his
carriage — a seat in the saddle so triumphant, badinage so pon-
derous, stories so exquisitely unbefitting him about the pedigree of
his horses or the vintages of his cellar — the caricaturists must have
been faithless to their calling, and the under-graduates false to
their nature, if pencil, pen, and tongue had not made him their
prey. Candid friends were compelled (of course, by the force of
truth and conscience) to admit that he was not altogether clear of
the sin of coxcombry; and the worshippers of Bacchus and of
Venus gave thanks that they were jolly fellows, and not like this
Pharisee.

To the reproach of affectation and conceit, his disciples made
answer, that their master had shed his original manner as soon and
as completely as his original teeth ; and that the new or artificial
manner was not only more deeply rooted than the old, but was in
fact as natural ; being but the honest though awkward effort of
the soul within, to give vent to the most genuine feelings for which
it could find no other utterance. To the charge of hypocris}'-, they
replied, that it was related to truth in that sense only in which
opposites and contradictions are related. They maintained that
even the superficial weaknesses of their teacher ministered to his
real designs ; just as the very offal of the Holocaust feeds the
sacred flame by Avhich the offering is consumed. Here, they said,
was a man beset by difficulties enough to have baffled the whole
school of Athens, as brought together by the imagination of
Eaphael D'Urbino — by inveterate affectations, by the want of
learning, by the want of social talents, by the want of general
ability of any kind, by the want of interest in the pursuits of his
neighbours, by their want of sympathy in his pursuits, by the
want of their good-will, nay, by the want of their decided and
hearty animosity. Yet thus unprovided for the contest, he gained a
victory which the sternest cynic in that glorious assemblage might
have condescended to envy, and the most eloquent of the half-
inspired sages there, to extol. Slowly, painfully, but with un-
faltering hopes, he toiled through more than fifty successive years,
in the same narrow chamber and among the same humble congre-
gation — requited by no emoluments, stimulated by no animating
occurrences, and unrewarded, until the near approach of old age,
by the gratitude or the cordial respect of the society amidst which
he lived. Love soaring to the Supreme with the lowliest self-
abasement, and stooping to the most abject with the meekest self-for-
getfulness,bore him onward, through fog or sunshine, through calm or

574 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

tempest. His whole life was but one long labour of love — a labour
often obscure, often misapplied, often unsuccessful, but never inter-
mitted, and at last triumphant.

At the close of each academical year, a crowd of youths, just
entering into the business of life, received from Charles Simeon his
parting counsels and benediction. They had been his pupils, his
associates, and his grateful admirers. Without money and without
price, he had sedulously imparted to them a science, which, to
many a simple mind, compensated for the want of any other
philosophy ; and which, to the best and ripest scholars, disclosed
the fountains whence all the streams of truth are salient, and the
boundless expanse of knowledge towards which they are all con-
vergent. It was the science of which God himself is the author,
and men sent of Grod the interpreters, the revelation, conscience,
and history the records. It was that science which explains the
internal connection of this world's history ; in which law and ethics
and politics have their common basis ; which alone imparts to
poetry and art their loftier character; without which the know-
ledge of mind and of mental operations is an empty boast, and
even the severer problems of the world's material economy are
insoluble. It was that science for the diffusion of which the halls
and colleges of that learned university had been almost exclusively
founded — the only science which Cambridge neglected, and which
Charles Simeon taught. And yet the teacher was neither historian,
poet, artist, lawyer, politician, nor philosopher. He was simply a
devout and believing man who, in the language of Bunyan, 'dwelt
far from the damp shadows of Doubting Castle,' amidst the sun-
shine of those everlasting hills whence stout Mr. Grreatheart and
brave Mr. Hopeful, in days of yore, surveyed the boundless
prospect, and inhaled the fresh breezes wliich welcomed them at
the close of their pilgrimage. Thither their modern follower con-
ducted his pilgrims by a way which Mr. Worldly-wisdom could
never find, and which Mr. Self-confidence despised, when it was
pointed out to him.

In the Church of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge, every Sunday,
during more than half a century, witnessed the gathering of a
crowd which hung on the lips of the preacher, as men hearken to
some unexpected intelligence of a deep but ever-varying interest.
Faces pale mth study or furrowed by bodily labour, eyes failing
with age or yet undimmed by sorrow, were bent towards him with a
gaze, of which (with whatever other meaning it might be combined)
fixed attention was the predominant character. Towards the close
of that long period, the pulpit of St. Mary's was, occasionally, the
centre of the same attraction, and with a still more impressive

THE CLAPIIAJI SECT. 575

result. For there were critics in tlieolog}% and critics in style and
manner, and critics in gastronomy, thronging and pressing on each
other, as once on Mars' Hill, to hear what this babbler might say ;
listening with the same curiosity, and adjudicating on what they
had heard, in very much the same spirit. Yet he to whom tliis
homage was rendered, was a man of ungraceful address ; with
features which ceased to be grotesque only when they became
impassioned ; with a voice weak and unmusical ; and to whom no
muse was propitious. His habits, and his very tlieory of composi-
tion, were such as seemed to promise empty pews and listless
auditors ; for every discourse was originally constructed (to use his
own phrase) as a ' skeleton,' witli all the hard processes and the fine
articulations as prominent as his logical anatomy could render
them — the bony dialectic being then clothed with the fibrous and
muscular rhetoric, in such manner as the meditations of the pre-
ceding, or the impulses of the passing liour might suggest. Such
was his faith in this new art of oratory, that, in a collection entitled
* Horm Homileticai^ he gave to the world many hundred of these
preparations, to be afterwards arrayed by other preachers in such
fleshly integuments as might best cover their ghastliness. Deplo-
rable as the operation must have been in other hands than those of
the inventor, he well knew how to make his dry bones live. They
restrained the otherwise undisciplined ardour of his feelings, and
corrected the tendency of that vital heat to disperse all solidity,
and to dissolve all coherence of thought. His argumentation
might occasionally irritate the understanding, his illustrations
wound the taste, and his discourses provoke the smiles of his
audience. But when, as was his wont, he insisted on fundamental
truths, or enforced the great duties of life, or detected the treache-
ries of the heart, or traced the march of retributive justice, or
caught and echoed the compassionate accents in which the Father
of mercies addresses his erring children, it was a voice which
penetrated and subdued the very soul. It was an eloquence which
silenced criticism. It was instinct with a contagious intensity of
belief. It sounded as the language of one to whom the mysteries
and the futurities of which he spoke had been disclosed in actual
vision, and so disclosed as to have dissipated every frivolous
thought, and calmed every turbid emotion.

If the Church of England were not in bondage with her chil-
dren to certain Acts of Parliament, she would long ere now have
had a religious order of the Simeonites ; and would have turned
out of her catalogue some of her saints of equivocal character,
and some of doubtful existence, to make room for St. Charles
of Cambridge. What have Dunstan, and George of Cappadocia,

576 THE CLAPIIAM SECT.

and Swithin the bishop, and Margaret the virgin, and Crispin
the martyr, done for us, that they should elbow out a man who,
through a long life, supplied from the resources of his own mind,
to the youth of one of our universities, the theological education
not otherwise to be obtained there ; and who, from the resources
of his own hereditary fortune, supplied the means of purchasing,
in the most populous cities of England, from forty to fifty advow-
sons, that so the ecclesiastical patronage of those vital organs of
our commonwealth might be ever thenceforward exercised in favour
of zealous, devout, and evangelical ministers ?

In that last ugly epithet lies all the mischief. ' He is not a
Jansenist, may it please your majesty, but merely an atheist,' was
once accepted as a sufficient excuse of a candidate for royal favour.
He is not an evangelical clergyman, but merely a Parson Trulliber,
was an equally successful apology with the dispensers of fame and
promotion in the last age. Among them was the late BishojD Jebb,
who, in his posthumous correspondence, indulges in sneers on the
gospeller of Cambridge, as cold and as supercilious as if he had
himself belonged to the Trulliber school of divinity; instead of
being, as he was, an elegant inquirer into the curiosities of theolo-
gical literature. So great a master of parallelisms and contrasts
might have perceived how the splendour of his own mitre waned
before that nobler episcopate to which Charles Simeon had been
elevated, as in primitive times, by popular acclamation. His
diocese embraced almost every city of his native land, and extended
to many of the remote dependencies which then, as now, she held
in subjection. In every ecclesiastical section of the Empire he could
point to teachers who revered him as the guide of their youth, and
the counsellor of their later years. In his frequent visitations of
the churches of which he was the patron or the founder, love and
honour waited on him. His infirmities disappeared, or were for-
gotten, in the majesty of a character animated from early youth to
extreme old age by such pursuits as, we are taught to believe, are
most in harmony with the Divine will, and most conducive to the
happiness of mankind. He had passed his long life in the midst
of censors, who wanted neither the disposition nor the power to
inflict signal chastisement upon any offence which could be fastened
on him ; but he descended to the grave unassailed by any more
formidable weapons than a thick and constant flight of harmless
epigrams. He descended thither amidst the tears and the benedic-
tions of the poor ; and with such testimonies of esteem and attach-
ment from the learned, as Cambridge had never before endered
even to the most illustrious of her sons ; and there he was laid in
that sure and certain hope on which he enabled an almost count-

THE CLAPIIAM SECT. 577

less multitude to repose, ainiclst the wreck of this world's promises,
and in the grasp of their last and most dreaded enemy.

What is a party, political or religious, without a Eeview? A
bell swinging without a clapper. What is any society of men, if
not recruited from the rising generation ? A hive of neutral bees.
Reviewless, Clapham had scarcely been known beyond her own
Common. Youthless, her memory had never descended to the
present age. At once rapt into future times, and thoughtful of her
own, she addressed the world on the first day of each successive
month through the columns of the ' Christian Observer ; ' and em-
ployed the pen of him on whom her hopes most fondly rested, to
confer splendour and celebrity on pages not otherwise very alluring.
To Mr. Macaulay was assigned the arduous post of Editor. He
and his chief contributors enjoyed the advantage, permitted, alas !
to how few of their tribe, of living in the same village, and meeting
daily in the same walks or at the same table, and lightening, by
common counsel, the cares of that feudal sovereignty. The most
assiduous in doing suit and service to the Suzerain, was Henry
Thornton. But he whose homage was most highly valued, and
whose fealty was attested by the richest offerings, was the young,
the much loved, and the much lamented John Bowdler.

He was the scion of a house singularly happy in the virtues and
talents of its members ; and was hailed by the unanimous acclama-
tion of the whole of that circle of which Mr. Wilberforce was the
centre, as a man of genius, piety, and learning, who, in the gene-
ration by which they were to be succeeded, wovild prosecute their
own designs with powers far superior to theirs. A zeal too ardent
to be entirely discreet, which gave to the world two posthumous
volumes of his essays in verse and prose, has, unintentionally,
refuted such traditions as had assigned to him a place among philo-
sophers, or poets, or divines. And yet so rare were the component
parts of his character, and so just their combination, that, but for
his premature death, the bright auguries of his early days could
hardly have failed of their accomplishment. His course of life was,
indeed, uneventful. A school education, followed by the usual
training for the bar ; a brilliant, though brief success, closed by an
untimely death, complete a biography which has been that of mul-
titudes. But the interior life of John Bowdler, if it could be faith-
fully written, would be a record which none could read without
reverence, and few without self-reproach.

To those who lived in habitual intercourse with him, it was
evident that there dwelt on his mind a sense of self-dedication to
some high and remote object; and that the pursuits, which are as
ultimate ends to other men, were but as subservient means to him,

p P

578 TflE CLAPHA]\r SECT.

So intent was he on this design, as to appear incapable of fatigue,
frail as were his bodily powers ; and as to be unassailable by the
spirit of levity, though fertile and copious in discourse almost to a
fault. It is the testimony of one who for nearly twelve months
divided with him the same narrow Study, that during the whole of
that period he was never heard to utter an idle word, nor seen to
pass an idle minute. He stood aloof from all common familiarities,
yielding his affection to a very few, and, to the rest, a courtesy
somewhat reserved and stately. His friends were not seldom re-
minded how awful goodness is, as they watched his severe self-dis-
cipline, and listened, not without some wandering wishes for a
lighter strain, to discourses, didactic rather than conversational, in
which he was ever soaring to heights, and wrestling with problems
inaccessible to themselves. But they felt and loved the moral
sublimity of a devotion so pure and so devout, to purposes the most
exempt from selfishness. They were exulting in prospects which it
appeared irrational to distrust, and were hailing him as the future
architect of plans, to be executed or conceived only by minds like
his, when, from the darkness which shrouds the councils of the
Omniscient, went forth a decree, designed, as it might seem, at
once to rebuke the presvimption of mortal man, and to give him a
new assurance of his immortality. It rent asunder ties as many
and as dear as ever bound to this earth a soul ripe for translation
to a higher sphere of duty ; and was obeyed with an acquiescence
as meek and cheerful as ever acknowledged the real presence of
fatherly love under the severer forms of parental discipline. His
profound conviction of the magnitude of the trust, and of the en-
dowments confided to him, was really justified even when seemingly
defeated by the event ; for it showed that those powers had been
destined for an early exercise in some field of service commen-
surate with the holy ardour by which he had been consumed.
Of those who met round his grave, such as yet live are now in the
wane of life ; nor is it probable that, in their retrospect of many
years, any one of them can recall a name more insejDarably allied
than that of John Bowdler to all that teaches the vanity of the
hopes which terminate in this world, and the majesty of the hopes
which extend beyond it.

And thus closes, though it be far from exhausted, our chronicle
of the worthies of Clapham, of whom it may be said, as it was said
of those of whom the world was not worthy, 'These all died in
faith.' With but very few exceptions, they had all partaken largely
of those sorrows which probe the inmost heart, and exercise its for-
titude to the utmost. But sweet, and not less wise than sweet, is
the song in which George Herbert teaches, that when the Creator

THE CLAPHAM SECT. 579

had bestowed every other gift on his new creature man, he reserved
East to himself, that so the wearied heart in search of that last
highest blessing, might cheerfully return to Him who made it.
They died in the faith that for their descendants, at no remote
period, was reserved an epoch glorious, though probably awful,
beyond all former example. It was a belief derived from the inti-
mations, as they understood them, of the prophets of Israel ; but
it was also gathered from sources which to many will seem better
entitled to such confidence.

Eevolvingf the crreat dramatic action of which this earth has been
the scene, they perceived that it was made up of a protracted con-
flict between light and darkness. They saw that, on the one side,
science and religion — on the other, war and superstition — had
been the great agents on this wide theatre. They traced a general
movement of events towards the final triumph of good over evil ;
but observed that this tendency was the result of an all-controlling
Providence, which had almost invariably employed the bad passions
of man as the reluctant instruments of the Divine mercy — sending
forth a long succession of conquerors, barbarous or civilised, as mis-
sionaries of woe, to prepare the way for the heralds of peace. They
saw, or thought they saw, this economy of things drawing to its
close. Civilisation and, in name at least, Christianity, had at length
possessed the far greater and nobler regions of the globe. Goths
and Vandals were now the foremost amongst the nations. Even
the Scythians had become members of a vast and potent monarchy.
The Arabs had again taken refuge in their deserts. If Genghis or
Timour should reappear, their power would be broken against the
British empire of Hindostan. The mightiest of warriors had
triumphed and had fallen ; as if to prove how impregnable had
become the barriers of the European world against such aggres-
sions. On ever}^ side the same truth was proclaimed, that military
subjugation was no longer to be the purifying chastisement of
Christendom.

But the religion of Christ was eonqviering and to conquer.
Courting and exulting in the light, it had made a strict alliance
with philosophy — the only faith which could ever endure such an
association. Amidst the imbecility and dotage of every other form
of belief and worship, it alone flourished in perennial youth and
indomitable vigour. If anything in futurity could be certain, it
was the ultimate and not very remote dominion, over the whole
earth, of the faith professed by every nation which retained either
wisdom to investigate, or energy to act, or wealth to negotiate, or
power to interpose in the questions which most deeply affect the
entire race of man. If any duty was most especially incumbent

p p 2

580 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

on those who exercised an influence in the national councils of
England, it was that of contributing, as best they might, to speed
"onwards the approaching catastrophe of human affairs — the great
consummation whence is to arise that new era with which creation
travails and is in birth, which poets have sung and prophets fore-
told, and which shall justify to the world, and perhaps to other
worlds, all that Christians believe of the sacrifice, surpassing
thought and language, made for the deliverance and the exaltation
of mankind.

WTien such thoughts as these force themselves on the Grerman
mind, it forthwith soars towards the unapproachable, and indites
the unutterable. When the practical Englishman is the subject of
them, he betakes himself to form societies, to collect subscriptions,
to circulate books, to send forth teachers, to build platforms, and
to afflict his neighbours by an eloquence of which one is tempted
to wish that it were really unutterable. Such was the effect of
these bright anticipations on the Clapham mind — an effect per-
ceptible in many much better things, but, among the rest, in
much equivocal oratory, and in at least one great effort of archi-
tecture.

Midway between the Abbey of Westminster and the Church of
the Knights Templars, twin columns, emulating those of Hercules,
fling their long shadows across the strait through which the far-
resounding Strand pours the full current of human existence into
the deep recesses of Exeter Hall. Borne on that impetuous tide,
the mediterranean waters lift up their voice in a ceaseless swell of
exulting or pathetic declamation. The changeful strain rises with
the civilisation of Africa, or becomes plaintive over the wrongs of
chimney-boys, or peals anathemas against the successors of Peter,
or in rich diapason calls on the Protestant churches to awake and
evangelise the world. No hard task to discover here the causes
corruptee eloquentiw ! If the shades of Lucian or of Butler hover
near that elevated stage, how readily must they detect the anti-
types of Peregrinus or of Ealpho ! Criticise, for there is no lack
of extravagance. Laugh, for there is no stint of affectation. Yet
refuse not to believe, that, grotesque as her aspect may occasion-
ally be, Exeter Hall has a history, a doctrine, and a prophecy, of
no common significance.

Of that history, the preceding pages may afford some general
intimation. The doctrine is that of an all-embracing, all-enduring
charity — embracing every human interest, enduring much human
infirmity. The prophecy is a higher and more arduous theme.

It is a prophetical age. We have Nominalists who, from the
monosyllable ' Church,' educe a long line of shadowy forms, here-

THE CL.\rJIA.M SECT. 581

after to arise and reign on Episcopal or patriarchal thrones — and
Eealists, who foresee the moral regeneration of tlie land by means
of union workhouses, of emigrant ships, or of mechanics' institutes
— and Meditevals, who promise the return of AstrjBa in the
persons of Bede and Barnard redivivi — and Mr. Carlyle, who
offers most eloquent vows for the reappearance of the heroes who
are to set all things right — and profound interpreters of the Apo-
calypse, who discover the woes impending over England in chastise-
ment of the impiety which moved Lord Melbourne to introduce
Mr. Owen to the Queen of England.* In the midst of all these
predictions, Exeter Hall also prophesies. As to the events which
are coming upon us, she adopts the theory of her Claphamic pro-
genitor. In reducing that theory to practice, she is almost as
much a Socialist as Mr. Owen himself. The moral regeneration
which she foretells is to be brought about neither by chm-ch, by
workhouse, by monk, by hero, nor by the purifying of St. James's.
She believes in the continually decreasing power of individual, and
the as constantly augmenting power of associated, minds. She
looks on the age as characterised by a nearer approach than was
ever known before to intellectual equality. But Exeter Hall is no
croaker. Her temperament is as sanguine as her eloquence.
Enumerate to her the long list of illustrious men who, while
scarcely beyond their boyhood, had, at the commencement of this
century, reached the highest eminence in every path to distinction ;
and point out to her the impossibility of selecting now, from those
who have yet to complete their fortieth summer, any four names,
the loss of which would be deplored by any art, or science, or
calling in use amongst us ; — and, in despite of Oxford, and Young
England, and Mr. Carlyle, Exeter Hall makes answer — ' So much
the better. The sense of separate weakness is the secret of col-
lective strength.' Ours is the age of societies. For the redress of
every oppression that is done under the sun, there is a public
meeting. For the cure of every sorrow by which our land or our
race can be visited, there are patrons, vice-presidents, and secre-
taries. For the diffusion of every blessing of which mankind can
partake in common, there is a committee. That confederacy

. * One of the strange blemishes in a work very lately published by the Rev.
E. B. Elliott, under the title of Hora; Apocalypticce — a book of profound learn-
ing, singular ingenuity, and almost bewitching interest.

*»* The years which have elapsed since the preceding note was wiitten,
have ascertained that society at large has most cordially acknowledged the
charm to which it refers — a fact which the Historian of the Clapham Sect
must record with some exidtation, as Mr. Elliott himself was bred up in that
fraternity, and is one of the most eminent members of it in the second genera-
tion.

P P 3

582 THE CLAPHAM SECT.

which, when pent up within the narrow limits of Clapham, jocose
men invidiously called a * Sect,' is now spreading through the
habitable globe. The day is not distant when it will assume the
form, and be hailed by the glorious title, of ' The Universal
Church.'

Happy and animating hopes ! Who would destroy them if he
could ? Long may they warm many an honest bosom, and quicken
into activity many an otherwise sluggish temper ! The true Clap-
hamite will know how to separate the pure ore of truth from the
dross of nonsense to which the prophets of his time give utterance.
He will find sympathy for most, and indulgence for all, of the
schemes of benevolence which surround him. Like the founders
of his sect, he will rejoice in the progress and prospects of their
cause ; nor will he abandon his creed, however unpopular it may
be made by the presumption, or however ridiculous by the follies,
of some of the weaker brethren by whom it has been adopted.

583

THE HISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

The author of tlie ' Natural History of Enthusiasm ' has puLlished
many books since the appearance of that from which he takes the
title of his literary peerage. All of them have the indelible dye
and impress of his own peculiar feelings, tastes, and fancies. No
man is less chargeable with self-conceit, yet he can scarcely write
a paragraph which does not bear the stamp of his own distinctive
personality. In each of his volumes he has drawn his own por-
trait. He comes forth from his study in the character of a grave
and learned teacher, but immediately becomes a familiar acquaint-
ance, a member of any family circle into which he enters.

If the historian of Enthusiasm be as prudent as he is wise, he
will bequeath to the world his own biography. If not, it will be
compiled at hazard from the materials of which he has thus given
to the world so large a store. Some future Daniel De Foe will
put together * Memoirs of a late celebrated Author, written by
himself, and lately discovered among his papers.' Some Curl or
Tonson will be found to vouch for the authenticity of the narra-
tive. The hero of it will by that time have passed out of his
present, or planetary abode, into the solar sphere, which his
physical theory of a future state assigns as a future dwelling-place
to those who have faithfully discharged the duties committed to
them on earth. The organs of sight, which he is there to enjoy,
will enable him to cast an occasional glance over the works and
ways of this poor satellite, and to run over the whole literature of
one of our terrestrial years as a sublunary reader glides through
his newspaper. Even in that exalted state, his equanimity may
perhaps fail him, as he deciphers the posthumous and mendacious
story of his mundane parentage, education, pursuits, and em-
ployments.

The fabulist, however, will not be quite without excuse. It is a
natural and an honest wish to know something about a writer, in
whose company hour after hour has flown away so pleasantly. In
the absence of truth, fiction may, however imperfectly, minister to

P p 4

584 THE HISTOKIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

this want. It may delineate the author as he appears in his books,
if not as he actually appeared among his associates. It will create
opportunities for throwing out a judgment on those books with
greater ease and freedom than in a more didactic method ; and if
the pseudo-biographer should happen to have a heart to love what
is amiable, and to revere what is exalted, in his intellectual supe-
riors, his romance would enable him to give expression to such
feelings, without the embarrassment which besets a deliberate and
formal eulogist.

Will it then be an unpardonable liberty, if, while our teacher
still lives to adorn this lower world, and labours to improve it, we
venture to take such a conjectural survey of his life as may be
deduced from his writings, and such a siuwey of his writings as may
be suggested by the apparent course and habits of his life ? A
temper so frank and kindly as his, will not very sternly rebuke the
effrontery of assuming his person, and writing in his character,
without the slightest personal acquaintance with himself and his
affairs. But even the pain of such a rebuke would be tolerable,
if he should be further provoked to substitute a true and genuine
for the following imaginary autobiography.

One of those seemingly motionless rivers which wind their way
through the undulating surface of the south of England, sweeps
round the outskirts of a long succession of buildings, half town,
half village, where the meanness of the wattled cottages is relieved
by the usual neighbourhood of structures of greater dignity — the
moated grange — the mansion house, pierced by lines of high
narrow windows — the square tower of the church struggling
through a copse of elm trees — the grey parsonage, where the con-
servative rector meditates his daily newspaper and his weekly
discourse — the barn-fashioned meeting-house, coeval with the ac-
cession of the House of Hanover — and near it the decent resi-
dence in which, since that auspicious era, have dwelt the successive
pastors of that nonconformist flock, fanning a generous spirit of
resistance to tyrants, now to be encountered only in imagination,
or, in the records of times long since passed away.

In the close of the last century my father, a mild and venerable
man, ruled his household in that modest though not unornamented
abode ; for there might be seen the solemn portraits of the original
confessors of dissent, with many a relic commemorative of their suf-
ferings and their worth. With these were contrasted the lighter and

TIIK HISTORIAN OF ENT11US1AS.M. 585

curious embellishments which attest the presence of refined habits,
female taste, and domestic concord. There also were drawn up in
deep files the works and the biographies of the puritan divines, from
Thomas Cartwright, the great antagonist of Whitgift, to Matthew
Pool, who, in his Synopsis Criticorum, vindicated the claims of
the ejected ministers to profound biblical learning. This veteran
battalion was flanked by a company of lighter troops, drafted from
the polite literature of a more frivolous age. Eich in these trea-
sures, and in the happy family with whom he shared them, the good
man would chide or smile away such clouds as chequered his habi-
tual composure, when those little nameless courtesies, so pleasantly
exchanged between equals, were declined by the dignified incum-
bent, or were accepted wdth elaborate condescension by the wealthy
squire. Nor could the democratic sway of the ruling elders,
supreme over the finances and the discipline of the chapel, draw
from him an audible sigh, even when his delicate sense was writhing
under wounds imperceptible to their coarser vision. He had deli-
berately made his choice, and was content to pay the accustomed
penalties. Though denounced as a sectarian, he was at heart a
Catholic, generous enough to feel that the insolence of some of
his neighbours, and the vulgarity of others, were rather the acci-
dents of their position than the vices of their character. Such
vexations as these were beneath the regard of him, who maintained
in the village the sacred cause for which martyrs had sacrificed life
with all its enjoyments, and who designed to train up his son to
the same honourable service, however ill-requited by the distinc-
tions or by the riches of this transitory world.

That hope, however, was not to be fulfilled. I had been edu-
cated under the eye of my father, and had derived from him all
my elementary acquaintance with ancient and modern languages,
with theology, and with physical and moral science. I had early
learnt to venerate his magnanimity and his devotion, and had
derived from him his own thirst for knowledge. But his freedom
of thought was an inalienable part of my intellectual patrimony.
It was not in my nature to receive my opinions by inheritance.
"WTiether they were right or wi^ong, they were my own ; acquired,
not by descent from any one, but by severe and protracted labours.

I have studied and drawn the characters of too many men, to
have been a careless student of my own. I have invented too
many physiological theories, not to have one at hand for the in-
terpretation of whatever is peculiar in myself. My habitual intro-
spection has made me more than half a convert to the doctrine of
the duality of the human soul — the doctrine, that is, that each of
the two lobes of the braiti is inhabited by a distinct person — that

58G THE HISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

what we call a soliloquy, is nothing else than a dialogue between
them — that the internal conflict between the new Adam and the
old, is no metaphor or allegory, but a dry matter of fact — that a
good or a wise man is one, in forming whose volitions the healthy
side of the cranium is habitually triumphant — a knave or a fool,
one in whom such volitions are for the most part formed on the
opposite or diseased side.

By the aid of this h3rpothesis, I am able to explain the absence
of all apparent affinity between the elements of which my nature
was originally composed. It was as though the sensitive plant had
been grafted on the Norwegian pine, or as if a Spartan soldier had
been enthralled by the Idylls of Theocritus, or as if an anchorite
had devoted himself to the imitation of the cosmetic Earl of
Chesterfield. I shrank from the rude familiarities of the world,
while impatient for the world's applause. I was a worshipper of
hoar antiquity, and yet a libertine in the exercise of my own un-
fettered judgment. At one time I braced my nerves for controversy,
and at another relaxed them in romantic dreams. I buried myself
in solitude to fathom the mysteries of my own nature, and then
revealed my discoveries in a style like that of the most fashionable
Irish oratory. I grew up to manhood with a philanthropy as
fastidious as it was ardent. My passion for books was alternately
my delight and my torture. I narrowly escaped, in my youthful
days, producing a poem, in which the styles of Juvenal and of
Tibullus would have been reconciled with each other, as a kind of
compromise between the robust and indignant inmate of one half
of my brain, and the delicate and sentimental genius who possessed
the other half.

In the midst of this cerebral war, the necessity which comes to
all had come to me, of choosing a profession. The choice, indeed,
seemed made to my hand. I had been a theologian from my
boyhood, why not a teacher of Theology ? The ecclesiastical polity
of the Protestant dissenters possessed my earliest sympathies. My
most mature convictions had embraced their religious system.
Why not, then, mount the rostrum of my forefathers, and, like
them, sustain the interests and inculcate the doctrines of the least
prosperous of the churches of my native land ? So, indeed, re-
solved the Self inhabiting one of the phrenological hemispheres
within me. But the resolution was ultimately reversed by the
superior energy of the Self who reigned over the opposite hemi-
sphere.

I became an enthusiastic student of Divinity. My ardour grew
with my early progress in those researches. ' Grlorious science I ' I
exclaimed ; ' the substratum of all sciences I the perfection of

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 587

human knowledge ! the theme of the noblest intellects which have
appeared among the children of men ! the doctrine which has
the happiness of mankind for its object, and wliich, even in its
most abstruse and subtle forms, is still culminating towards uni-
versal love, and pointing to the abodes of the blessed ! ' Alas !
for the illusions of the library ! Not more weary to the soid of the
fainting traveller is the burning desert which the mirage had so
lately adorned with verdant fields and limpid waters, than is many
a barren waste of learning to the soul of him to whom, when
view^ed from some Pisgah of the imagination, it had appeared as a
land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.

In my theological inquiries, 1 had contemplated Christianity as
a system of truths to be harmonised, as a code of obligations to be
enforced, and as a succession of events to be developed. I com-
menced with an earnest and devout examination of the sacred
writings, and could have rejoiced to rest for ever within those
green pastures, and beside those waters of comfort. But I soon
perceived that he who would derive from that hallowed source
lights to guide the feet of others into the paths of life, must borrow
the means of illuminating the inspired pages from the intellectual
stores of uninspired men. Nothing more easy than to despise and
neglect interpreters. Nothing less possible than to advance a step
without interpretation. Divine knowledge presupposes human
knowledge. Without logic, criticism, languages, and (in the widest
sense of the word) history, the Bible is a sealed book; unless,
indeed, it be opened by the aid of miracle. I was neither so
indolent nor so presumptuous as to suppose that, by the mere bounty
of nature, I possessed within myself all the necessary aids for the
right understanding of Moses and of Isaiah, of Liike and of Paul.
From those infallible teachers I passed, though not without many
an anxious foreboding, to Eusebius and Fleury, to Augustin and
Luther.

Launched on this troubled sea, how fearful were the disclosm-es
forced upon me ! If the annals of the world are but the records of
crime and suffering, the chronicles of the Church have but little
more alluring to reveal. How rapid the decline from the apostolic
models — how early the growth of the meanest superstitions ! — how
swift the triumphs of spiritual despotism ! — how intimate, even in
the first ages, the alliance of the perverted Grospel with the logo-
machies of Grrecian philosophy, and the profane mysteries of hea-
then worship, and the pollutions of pagan idolatry ! And, as the
turbid stream descended to lower eras, how sadly was I constrained
to recognise a real though deplorable reformation even in the
establishment of the Papacy, and a merited chastisement of the

588 THE HISTOKIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

foul crimes of Christendom by tlie sword of Mahommed and his
followers, and by the hordes who, under the banners of Alaric and
Attila, of Grenseric and Odoacer, desolated the Latin Churches. I
saw the long night of mediseval darkness yield at length to the
dayspring from on high — a day too soon to be overcast by perse-
cutions which the Cassars would have abhorred, and by wars en-
venomed by the bitterest religious animosities, until the combatants
at lensfth laid down their arms — the Catholics to subside into a
licentious infidelity, the Protestants to yield up the soul to Mam-
mon, under the shelter of a lifeless orthodoxy, or of a merely
human philosophy.

From contemplating the speculative errors and the practical
misdeeds of the great multitude who, in former ages, had called
and professed themselves Christians, I turned aside to survey the
living societies who worship in that sacred name, not doubting that
among them I should find the image of that New Jerusalem which
it was permitted to the Prophet to see descending out of heaven.
With this hope I first applied myself to the perusal of the works
of their doctors. I did not, indeed, suppose that, in this modern
theological literature, I should meet with any of those prodigies of
industry and genius which had been produced by the fathers of the
Anglican Church, and by the original Puritans. But I knew that
I should discover in them the spirit of my own age ; that all-
controlling power, the dominion of which none may escape; and
which, in my future calling, it would be inevitable that I should
myself obey. To appreciate the theology of my own times, as
impressed on the writings, or as breathing in the discourses, of my
contemporaries, was therefore to see, by anticipation, the general
tendency and workings of my own mind, when I should be subse-
quently numbered among the ministers of the everlasting Grospel.

It was no attractive prospect. In vain I looked around for any
profound investigations into the interior sense, and into the genuine
readings of the sacred text. I could meet with no interpreters of
the connection between the recent developments of philosophy and
science, and those progressive revelations of truth which have pro-
ceeded from God to man. The mines of Church History lay
abandoned and unwrought. Nothing was undertaken, either to
sustain the foundations or to delineate the symmetry of the vast
fabric of Christian doctrine. Nor was any fresh ground broken
up on the wide field of morals, to satisfy the demands of an age
prolific in political and social changes, and with every such change
giving birth to problems, hitherto unexplained, of national and of
personal duty.

But while seeking in vain among my contemporaries for guides

THE ITISTORIAX OF EXTIIUSIASM. 589

or companions in such studies, I was constrained to encounter on
every side the ill-favoured demon of religious, or rather of eccle-
siastical controversy. When I would have scaled the heights of
divine knowledge, I was called away to listen to some acrimonious
dispute upon the rights, the symbolsf and the government of
Christian societies. From the celestial path wliich I desired to
ascend, the din of such debates would continually drag me down,
to witness and lament the mean jealousies, the petty passions, and
the disingenuous artifices of earthly disputants.

Generations long since passed away, had transmitted to the
generation to which I myself belonged, the interminable strife
between the hierarchy of the Elizabethan and the democracy of
the Puritan churches. The reluctant but inevitable attention
which I bestowed on this hereditaiy feud, contributed to my belief
in the duality of my own nature. War was declared within me
between my judgment and my imagination. To the advocates of
dissent I awarded the praise of maintaining the better cause, and
of supporting it with the weightier reasons. To their antagonists
I assigned the merit of conducting the war of words with the
greater dignity, or, shall I say, with less repulsive querulous-
ness. Sophistry and rancour can assume a not ungraceful veil, and
put on many specious disguises, when associated with wealth and
rank and other social distinctions. The asperities of my own
party could boast of no such embellishments. The episcopal charge
and the congregational pamphlet, emulated each other in bitterness
and "wrong. But in the courteous composure with which he in-
flicted pain, the advantage was ever on the side of the mitred
belligerent. My conscience, indeed, condemned alike either form
of malevolence ; but my taste was far more grievously offended by
the aspect it bore among the advocates of my own system. The
ascendant power could affect to be compassionate and serene. The
depressed body could not cease to be sore and acrimonious. A
dissenter is seldom disposed, and is still more rarely permitted, to
forget that he is a dissenter. The habitual sense of wrong is
among the most unamiable and unalluring of the tempers with
which man is afflicted.

Quitting the arena in which the polemics of the nineteenth
century fought, I turned to the temples in which they assembled.
Even there, alas ! raged the conflict within me, or rather between
the inmate of the one lobe of my brain, who judicially approved,
and the inhabitant of the other lobe, who fastidiously disliked,
the services in which I joined. In the assemblies of those among
whom I proposed, at some future time, to minister, my thoughts
would wander from the parsimonious simplicity of their sacred

590 THE HISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

edifices, from the obtrusive prominence of the leaders of their
worship, and from their isolation in the great Christian common-
wealth, to those august communions where the priesthoods of earth
symbolise the hierarchies of heaven; where the successors, in
unbroken lineage from the apostles, yet minister at their altars ;
where the creeds and the collects of the first confessors of the faith
still rise as incense at those venerable shrines, and where alone can
thrive those severe but unobtrusive graces which have an exact
subordination of ranks for their indispensable basis. From the
lono- drawn prayer, offered, in no blest cadence, beneath a roof
raised as in utter scorn of architecture, fancy would allure me
away to listen to the chant of some ancient liturgy, floating
down the fretted aisles of some cruciform cathedral ; and truth
would extort from me the acknowledgment that the ascent of
the human soul to the fountain of being, demanded other aids
than are to be found among those who measure their approach to
perfection by their distance from the models which, during fifteen
centuries, had been reverenced throughout the universal church.

But as in the Primitive, so in the Protestant churches, the
Pulpit was the stronghold and chief buttress of the faith ; and to
the pulpit I resolved to address my most assiduous attention, con-
vinced that it would yet be found to maintain its primeval su-
premacy in detecting error, in enlarging the powers and the range
of thought, in applying the divine oracles to all the purposes of
human life, and in quickening every holy, and kind, and generous
emotion. I had, indeed, neither the expectation nor the wish to
hear that honeyed discourse which steeps the soul in self-forgetful-
ness. I remembered that Christianity was for the daily use of
homely people. I knew that truth, when appearing among men in
her severe and native majesty, would reject the trivial succour of
rhetorical arts and of elaborated periods. ' From her chosen throne,
and from the lips of her consecrated ministers, she will discourse '
(I said) ' of the highest interests of time and of the glories of
eternity, with an eloquence of which the mere words will be un-
heeded alike by the speaker and by the hearer. Her weapons of
heavenly temper and resistless edge, must still be triumphant in
their native energy, however feeble may be the arm which wields
them. What, then, will not be their power, in hands diligently
trained to their use, and instinct with that spiritual life in which
alone we truly live ? '

With such hopes I listened, and on the basis of such anticipa-
tions I judged. Honeyed discourse! elaborate periods! artificial
eloquence ! No, verily. The severest censor can prefer no such
charge against the pulpits of the nineteenth centmy. Malignity

THE TIISTOKTAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 591

itself cannot accuse tliem of beguiling us by the witchcraft of
genius. They stand altogether clear of the guilt of torpifying the
disordered heart by the anodynes of wit or fancy. Abstruse and
profound sojDhistries are not in the number of their offences. It
is a mere calumny to accuse them of lulling the conscience to
repose by any siren songs of imagination. If the bolts of divine
truth are diverted from their aim, it is no longer b}'^ enticing words
of man's wisdom. Divinity fills up her weekly hour by the grave
and gentle excitement of an orthodox discourse, or by toiling
through her narrow round of systematic dogmas, or by creeping
along some low level of schoolboy morality, or by addressing the
initiated in some mythic phraseology ; but she has ceased to employ
such tongues as those of Chrysostom and Bourdaloue. The sanctity
of sacred things is lost in the familiar routine of sacred words.
Eeligion has acquired a set of technical terms and conventional
formulas ; somnolent and sleep-compelling. Her pulpits bear the
stamp and impress of an age, in which the art of ^\a•iting has proved
fatal to the power of thinking; when the desire to appropriate
gracefully has superseded the ambition to originate profoundly ;
when the commercial spirit envelopes and strangles genius in its
folds; when demigods and heroes have abandoned the field, and
the holiest affections of the heart die away in silence, and the ripest
fruits of the teeming mind drop ungathered into the reaper's bosom ;
an age of literary democracy and intellectual socialism, in which
no bequests are made to remote posterities, and no structures are
rising to command and break the universal mediocrity.

Such was the view of ancient and of modern Christianity dis-
closed to me by history and by my own observation. Unextin-
guished, indeed, by the mephitic vapours into which it has been
plunged, that celestial lamp has never ceased to illuminate and to
gladden many a lowly heart ; but from those eminences on which
it should have shone as a light to lighten the nations, it has emitted
a radiance for the most part faint and flickering, and but rarely to
be seen in its pure and native lustre. I had acquired a new and
more earnest love and reverence for the sacred volume, not only for
its own surpassing excellency, but for the contrast in which I found
it to stand to the corruptions of former ages, and to the languor
and feebleness of my own. Gladly would I have joined the great
company of the preachers, if my lot had been thrown in those days
when, in the strength of their divine mission, they overthrew the
imperial idolatry; or in those times when an awakened world
caught from their lips the cry of resistance to sacerdotal tyranny;
or even in that later generation when, in my own land, an Erastian
prelacy and their satellites fell down before them, liut to swell

5G2 THE HISTOKIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

the chorus of formality; to 'do duty' in a listless congregation;
to be the admired and the caressed of fashionable connoisseurs in
divinity, or to wage a puny war with timid critics and delicate ob-
jectors! — it was not in my nature. Better far, I judged, to engage
in some secular pursuit, where, freely measuring my strength with
my competitors, I might, perhaps, rise to an elevation from which
I could influence, if not control, the destinies of one of the great
families, of mankind.

For those of our well-educated youth who have neither the
interest to become placemen, the genius to live by art, nor the
capital required for commerce, it remains to minister to the sick in
mind, in body, or in estate. My abandonment of the clerical life
narrowed my choice to the two last of those pursuits. I might
not improbably have been a physician, if the loathsome duties of
the hospital and the dissecting-room could have been dispensed
with. Bat that being impossible, I quitted my parental home for
the remote and busy world in which the unjoyous science of special
pleading is taught to the future aspirants to the dignities of the
coif.

At this distance of time I never tread the flagstones of Fig-tree
Court, in the Inner Temple, without feelings akin to those with
which Gril Bias revisited the scene of the therapeutic labours in
which he assisted the learned Dr. Sangrado. With what eagerness
did I join in the onslaught on the purses and the reputations of
mankind, under the guidance of the atrabilious skeleton, my tutor,
whose keen eye twinkled from its deep socket, as it lit on a point
of law, fatal to some unlucky litigant ! To lie down at night with
the conviction that, since day-brealc, T had been working harder
than any other intellectual operative in London, was, in those
times, among my luxuries. It was a sturdy and invigorating dis-
cipline. It taught me a logic of more practical utility than I could
have acquired at Edinburgh or at Oxford. If the pleadings which
I drew in those murky chambers, contributed (as is but too pro-
bable) to damage any honest man, they were at least of singular
advantage to myself. They placed a curb on a vagrant imagi-
nation, and prepared me for controversies far more perilous than
the interminable hostilities between John Doe and Richard Roe,
in which I was then so zealous a partisan.

At the end of my novitiate, I took the gown, and, like other
barristers, traversed Westminster Hall, swinging to and fro an
empty bag. As my eye wandered from the plump, curly-headed
cherubs on the roof, to the wan and troubled visages, enveloped in
powdered wigs, below, I fancied that the architects of William
Rufus, gifted with a second sight of the Aula-Regia of the Greorgian

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 593

era, had carved those cliubby angels in a good-lnimoured mockery
of us all. For I soon learnt that in her glorious temple, the wor-
ship of Themis was conducted by a priesthood, whose spirit was but
too accurately expressed by those corroded countenances. Inces-
santly eulogising the incorruptil)ility of the Bench, the honour of
the Bar, and the respectability of the Attorneys, they were inces-
sautly depreciating each individual of each of those goodly fellow-
ships. Faint, indeed, was the resemblance between the original, or
Mosaic Decalogue, and that ' various reading ' of it, by which tlie
professional morality of our gens toc/ata was regulated. Apologies,
which would have been torn to shreds by their acuteness, if pre-
ferred on behalf of any Prisoner at the bar, were admitted by the
Gentlemen at the Bar, to justify their own acceptance of unearned
and excessive fees, to vindicate the calling evil good and good evil,
and to excuse the underhand game played by opposing advocates
for their own ease and profit, at the expense of their helpless and
ignorant clients. It was a life of rude familiarity, of bitter jealousy,
and of ceaseless gossip. There was not one of the twelve judges, or
of the leading counsel, whose character escaped daily dissection by
half a score of those learned anatomists. Over the gate of West-
minster Hall was the inscription, visible, at least, to my own eyes,
' All ye who enter here abandon modesty.' I found that it was well
to possess virtue, talents, scholarship ; well to know some little law ;
well to be eloquent ; and better still to be closely connected with
attorneys and their clients ; but that the one thing needful was in-
trepid assurance, animated by constitutional vivacity. So gifted
knavery, ignorance, and incapacity fattened. Without this gift,
worth, learning, and genius starved. What the plain of Elis was to
Greece, such is that venerable Hall to England ; and its Pindar
must sing of combatants who have rejoiced in the dust, the sweat,
the strife, and the turmoil of the contests. His heroes must be
painted with thick skins and hardy consciences, buoyant and fear-
less, prompt in resources, and unscrupulous in the use of them.
No place or vocation there for men of pensive spirits, delicate nerves,
a.nd high-wrought sensibilities ! When my mind at length opened
to this great truth, I threw aside my unprofitable gown, repeat-
ino- the old exclamation, 'What business have I at Kome — I
cannot lie ! '

I next turned for employment to the other ancient halls of West-
minster. Topics of deep and stirring interest were then engaging
the attention of parliament. These I diligently stuilied ; and in due
time I despatched to one of the most celebrated London news-
papers a series of articles, designed to support the advocates of
freedom, and to disperse the mists which had been purposely raised,

594 THE HISTORIAN OP ENTHUSIASM.

to darken and to distort their policy. My papers found acceptance,
and their author encouragement. But that ' blest folio of four
pages, which not even critics criticise,' existed only in the imagina-
tion of William Cowper. Never was an author's self-esteem exposed
to a keener torture than that to which I was sid3Jected. My edito-
rial censor and I had nothing in common but the advocacy of the
same political opinions. In everything else we were as far asunder
as the poles. Yet, in half an hour, he would completely assimilate
to his own style of thought and diction, any of my most elaborate
performances. The substance remained, but the form was absolutely
new. My facts, arguments, and conclusions reappeared in their
original order, but all my candid acknowledgments and cautious
qualifications had vanished away. My long and stately sentences
had become terse and pungent. The periods which had fallen from
my pen blushing, like so many moss roses, with the rich glow of
humanity, now bristled with points like so many cactuses. Their
graceful structure was broken up into epigram and antithesis. My
grave censures had passed into stinging sarcasms, and some equivo-
cal jest from ' Roderick Random ' had thrust out an exquisite
quotation which I had drawn from ' Comus.'

Smarting under this strange transmutation, though amazed at
the facility and the skill with which it was executed, I sought and
obtained an interview with my Procrustes. A transient access of
the spirit of James Boswell has enabled me to record, for the bene-
fit of others, the explanations which I then received from him.
* Adept as you are in many studies ' (such was the complimentary
commencement), 'you are but a t}TO in the mystery of journalism.
It is not a science, but a trade. Morals, philosophy, and patriotism
are our raw materials, and must be got up to the taste of our cus-
tomers. The worthy haberdasher at the next door, cannot watch
the turns of the market more anxiously than we do. Fashion is the
supreme arbiter with us as with him. From that tribunal neither
he nor we have an appeal to any higher. What have Ephemera to
say to Posterity ? To satisfy the demands of fashion, we must both
pass our wares through many successive hands — he, his ribands,
we, our articles ; the last hand, in either case, being that which gives
to the commodity its gloss or bloom. You, my good sir, may be
considered as the weaver, I as the hotpresser of the piecegoods we
have on sale. You will excuse my freedom, but the fabric, when
fresh from your loom, is either flattened down to the homiletical, or
wrought up to the poetical, or clouded by the metaphysical tone of
colouring. From my hand it receives the shape, the polish, and the
tint, demanded by the coffee-room or the club. For every purpose,
there is a time, a place, and a propriety. If either Locke or Milton

THE IIISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 595

had edited a newspaper, he would have discussed the interests and
the duties of mankind sbishingly, Litingly, and comically. His own
interest, and his duty to his proprietors, would have made him aim
at a wide and immediate sale, by winning the sufiVages of the idle,
the frivolous, and the malignant multitude.'

' Enough,' I exclaimed, in imitation of Easselas. ' Thou hast
convinced me that no one who aspires to be a teacher of mankind,
can ever be a newspaper editor.' ' It is indeed,' he replied, after
Imlac, ' exceedingly difficult.' ' So difficult,' I rejoined, in the words
of the Prince of Abyssinia, ' that I will have nothing more to do with
his labours.' At once, and for ever, I abandoned all concern in this
political haberdashery. The whole tribe of party writers, diurnal,
and hebdomadal, now appeared to me in a new and a truer light.
Like a flight of obscene birds, they overshadowed my path, polluting
by their touch, and distorting by their dissonance, those researches
into the state of the commonwealth, and the social duties of man-
kind, on which I desired to bestow a serene and unbiassed attention.
My heart assured, and my observation convinced me, that both the
leaders and the subalterns of contending factions, were far wiser and
better men than they appeared in those clever, reckless, and uncha-
ritable sketches, thrown off from day to day, by writers agitated by
ceaseless excitement, condemned to mercenary toil, and excluded
from the blessiags of studious leisure, and of self-acquaintance.

' When injured Thales bids the town farewell,' the less he says
or thinks of his wrongs the better. I quitted the great city with no
injustice, real or imaginary, to resent. Fortune, indeed, had not
smiled on my efforts ; but neither had I wooed her smiles with
much ardour or perseverance. Early in life, and with a mind un-
ruffled by disappointment, I retired to scenes in which I might
reasonably hope to reconcile my own tranquillity with the faithful
discharge of active duties, at least as useful and as honourable as
those which I had declined. There I resolved to labour in educa-
ting the young, and in instructing the adult of my own generation,
not without some cheerful hope of audience from generations yet to
be born. My pupils would not prevent my pursuing those literary
designs which must have perished beneath the shade of the pulpit,
the bar, or the daily journals. A school had not deterred the
Head of the younger House of Bourbon from aspiring to the
noblest of European Thrones, nor Samuel Johnson from claiming
the moral dictatorship of England, nor Milton from scaling the
Seventh Heaven.

In a rural retreat (the beauties of which nature has left to be
detected by the assiduity, perhaps to be created by the imagination,
of such as dwell there) I became a tutor, a husband, and a i^ither.

Q Q 2

596 TUB HISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

The blessings slied over my path by the two last of those relations
has, I am told, imparted to my writings a deeper glow of domestic
tenderness than might have been expected, from the almost femi-
nine reserve and delicacy which my critics have laid to my charge.
If so, I am at least not intentionally criminal. An old bachelor, like
the author of the 'Task,' or an old debauchee, to whom love and reve-
rence are incongruous ideas, like the author of the ' Social Contract,'
may, though for very different reasons, be induced to throw open
the sanctuary of home to the gaze of the inquisitive ; but I liave
neither their temptation nor their excuse for such loquacity. With
those hallowed secrets of my heart, the stranger intermeddleth not,
if I can help it.

My library is another matter. Any one is free to inspect, and, if
it must be so, to envy it. Mine is no bibliomaniac collection.
Tliere is not a volume there which is not either in active service, or
enjoying a well-earned repose as a faithful veteran. My teachers,
my companions, my comforters, my playfellows, my fellow-labour-
ers, and sometimes my antagonists, but always the cherished
inmates of my house, there they stand, my much-loved books,
eloquent or silent at my bidding, pleasant when I am pleased, me-
lancholy when I am sad, animating when I am languid, leaving no
sorrow unsoothed, no mood and temper of my mind unexpressed,
no science uninterpreted, no art unadorned, — bringing me into
hourly intercourse with all the noblest spirits who have sojourned
in this world, and with those whom the Author of all worlds has
inspired to give us some intimations of our origin, our destiny, and
our hopes.

In that presence-chamber I reigned the monarch of many a well-
peopled province, giving audience in turn to each of my many-
tongued subjects, and exacting from them all a tribute at my
pleasure. There might be seen, supreme in favour as in place, a
venerable copy of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. A troop of
tall, sad-coloured folios, the depositaries of the devout exercises and
anxious self-search in gs of the Puritan divines, was drawn up on
shelves within reach of my outstretched arm. With but little
more effort it could light on a tribe of more lofty discourse, bred in
the sacred solitudes of Port Eoyal, yet redolent of the passion of
their native land for an imposing and fanciful exterior. Honest
Greorge Latimer, with a long line of episcopal and episcopalian
successors, held a position a little too prominent perhaps, yet due
to their unrivalled worth and beauty, not less than to their aristo-
cratic pretensions. But the main power of my state consisted in a
race of ancient lineage and obsolete tongues, beginning with
Clement, Hermas, and Irenseus, and so onward through the long

THE IIISTORIAX OF EXTIIUSIAS.M. 597

series of Greek and Latin fathers, ecclesiastical historians, acts of
councils and of saints, decretals, missals, aud liturgies, all in turn
casting their transient lights and their deep shadows over the
checkered fortunes of the Christian Church. Broiight within the
precincts of my wide dominion. Homer, /Eschylus, Dante, Shak-
speare, and the humble partakers of their inspiration, awaited at a
greater distance my occasional summons. But perhaps in their
reverend aspect might be perceived something which confessed that
they were not among my habitual and chosen companions. Court
favour here, as elsewhere, may have been a little too diffusive and
capricious ; and writers on physiology, astronomy, plants, insects,
birds, and fishes, shared with metaphysicians, moralists, and the
writers of civil history, the hours occasionally withdrawn by their
ruler from more serious intercourse with his apostolic, patristic,
papal, and reformed counsellors. In short, it was one of those
chambers which he who can securely possess, quietly enjoy, and
wisely use, may in sober truth pity the owners of Versailles and
the Escurial.

There I conceived, and there I partly executed, the great labour
of my literary life. Deep as was the shadow which my earlier
inquiries threw over the progress of Christianity down the turbid
stream of time, my more mature researches had but enhanced the
gloom. I resolved, therefore, to become the author of a book,
which, in its complete form, might pei-haps be called ' Ecclesiastical
Nosology, or the Morbid Anatomy of the Church.' It was designed
* to exhibit at one view the principal forms of spurious religion.'
These consisted either first of the unavowed scepticism which believes
nothing ; or secondly, of the credulity which believes anything ; or
thirdly, of the enthusiasm which believes at the bidding of the
imagination ; or fourthly, of the fanaticism whose belief is the off-
spring of the morose and vindictive passions; or fifthly, of the
spiritual despotism which exacts a belief (or the profession of a
belief) determined not by conviction, but by authority ; or sixthly,
of the corruption of morals generated by each of these substitutes
for the simplicity of the Christian faith. Here, then, was an
analysis of my general subject, giving promise of six distinct
volumes, which collectively were to form a comprehensive, though
not a very Utopian, series of lectures on the perversions of the
Gospel in a sinful and deluded world.

Machiavelli, Bossuet, and Montesquieu were to be my models.
Like them, I hoped to throw broad masses of light on the prin-
ciples by which the various synchronisms and sequences of humaii
affairs may be cemented into one comprehensive whole. Like
them, I proposed to extract philosophy from chrouicles, and to

Q Q 3

598 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

elev.ate annals into history. Like them, I resolved to relieve the
dulness of the didactic style by narrative, but to render narrative
entirely subordinate to the proof and illustration of doctrine. But
neither ' The Prince,' ' The Universal History,' nor ' The Eoman
Grreatness and Decay,' could supply me with a model of style.
Our national taste (so at least I judged) demanded a prose more
richly inlaid with ornament and cadences more various, intricate,
and harmonious than theirs. I would learn from those g-reat
masters how to erect theories ; but from Dugald Stewart how to
construct paragraphs.

I commenced the execution of my scheme by my ' Natural His-
tory of Enthusiasm ' — the work to which I owe my distinctive title
in the world of letters. My success, if not splendid, was at least
decisive and encouraging. I had not, on the whole, much right to
complain of my critics. Some of them indeed turned my own guns
upon me : purloining from one half of my book, the materials with
which they assailed the other half; and with one voice they rebuked
my diction as stately, redundant, and obscure. But they all assigned
to me the praise of having imparted a definite shape to some momen-
tous questions, which till then had been floating up and down in
the form of loose popular discourse, and of having given a sound, if
not a perfect, solution to the problems I had raised. My incognito
contributed to my popularity; and in my retreat I enjoyed the
double pleasm-e of revising several editions of my histor}'-, and of
hearing of the various speculations which ascribed it to as many
different pens. I perceived that fame was within my grasp, and I
was convinced that it might be secured and extended by the honest
art of promulgating salutary, though unwelcome, truths. Had I
wanted motives for perseverance in my task, this conviction would
have furnished them.

Accordingly, at no distant intervals, I committed to the press two
more of the six main divisions of my 'Ecclesiastical Nosology.'
But neither my ' Essay on Fanaticism,' nor my * Treatise on
Spiritual Despotism,' enjoyed the favour, or attracted the notice,
which had been bestowed on their elder brother. Some indeed
there were, who gave to the last a decided preference over the rest
of the series. But it is impossible to deny that their reception was
cold and indifferent, when compared with that of my first-born.
This may be partly ascribed to the dropping of ray vizor, and the
consequent secession of the mere mystery hunters, and partly,
perhaps, to the public ear being cloyed by a style too rhythmical
and inflated ; but chiefly (I think) to an error in my original design,
which was brought but too distinctly to light by this repeated and
fiequent recurrence to it.

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 599

I discovered that my undertaking was too austere, and my
colours too dark to satisfy the popular taste. Three copious
volumes of grave censure, relieved by no digressions into gayer or
more animating topics, was, I found, more than mortal monitor
might hazard, and more than offending mortals would endure. I
reflected, though not till too late, that all the masters of the objur-
gatory art had been accustomed to medicate their reproofs ^vith
various condiments of verse, or wit, or pleasantry, or pathos. I
now remembered that the satirists themselves had been but flatter-
ers in disguise, by indirectly ascribing to those whom they addressed,
their own abhorrence (genuine or assumed) of the crimes which
they denoimced ; that even Juvenal supposes the moral sentiment
of his readers to be virtuous and uncontaminated, and that each of
them probably appropriated the fierce invective of the poet to his
neighbour, the implied compliment to himself. It now, also,
occurred to me, that some honest and respectable prejudices might
have been woimded by the gloom which my disquisitions threw
over the general character of the Christian world ; and that many
simple hearts might have thought themselves conducted, under my
guidance, to the brink of a fearful inference, to be avoided only by
the desertion of their guide. Such reflections came too late to
obviate the fundamental error of my design, but soon enough to
prevent the completion of it. My ' Morbid Anatomy of Spurious
Eeligion' remains an unfinished fragment.

I was disappointed, but not discouraged. The impulse which
urged me to participate in the great debates of my age and coun-
try, was too powerful to be thwarted or restrained. ]My faith in
myself, in the truths I sought to inculcate, and in the support from
on high, of which the devoted advocates of truth are assured, never
failed me ; and I contemplated from my retreat, with unabated
interest, the great intellectual movements of the world from
which I had withdrawn. They separated, as it seemed to me,
into two currents, moving in opposite directions, and with conflict-
ing purposes.

The tendency of the first was to degrade man's noblest works
and faculties into toys for the pastime of a luxurious generation —
to convert poetry into a mere vehicle for novels in rhyme —
history into a quarry for romance — the drama into an apology for
scene-painters, songsters, and buffoons — philosophy into an em-
bellishment of periodical garrulities — and theology itself into the
art of rescuing certain sabbatical hours from dulness, or from sleep.
The rival stream took its rise from Castalian fountains. To
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth might justly
be given the title of fathers of their country, because in their

Q Q 4

609 THE HISTOEIAN OF EXTHUSIASM.

minds first germinated the ideas wliich determined the character
of no insignificant part of the nation to which they belonged.
They taught some two or three of their disciples to think. They
taught to a vast multitude the use of a phraseology which has be-
come an admirable counterfeit and substitute for thought — a
style in which the colloquial freedoms of the stage are employed
to set otf the aj)ophthegmatic sententiousness of Burke, the shape-
less abstractions of the Schlegels, and the traditional doctrines and
maxims of the Vatican. In this motley dialect, men of large pre-
tensions to learning laid claim to the high office of the teachers
and benefactors of the world ; while they contemptuously de-
nounced the effeminate spirit which, like Cleopatra dissolving her
pearls in her goblet, was desecrating all art and human knowledge
into the recreation of an idle hour, and employing divine know-
ledge to feed a corrupt, effete, and emasculate rhetoric.

All my sympathies were at first with those who thus contended
against the debasement of learning to frivolous and unworthy
ends ; even though they themselves were sublimating whatever
they knew or thought into a gaseous poetry. But the passage
proved to be but short from these exercises of the imagination to
some of its most fatal disorders. The theological poets and the
poetical theologians of Oxford, were continually approaching nearer
to a communion with the theatrical ritual of Eome, to the adora-
tion of her demigods, and to the adoption of her creeds. From
the dark, though inspired oracles at the Lakes, they had learnt to
tread that enchanted ground on which everything, however homely,
becomes significant of the holiest things. From this poetical wor-
ship of nature in her humblest forms, they had advanced towards
the actual worship of the superhuman objects which those forms
seemed to them to symbolise. A soaring enthusiasm for the beau-
tiful had proved the entrance into a grovelling superstition.

My spirit was stirred within me as I watched this growing de-
cline from the faith of the Reformers. Nonconformist as I was,
the Church of England was scarcely more dear to the most zealous
of her sons than to me. Keen as was my perception of her errors,
I regarded her not only as the indispensable support, but as the
indispensable head, of the great Protestant league of Christendom
— as the one body possessing the cohesion, the stability, the learn-
ing, the temporal power, and the long tradition of illustrious
names which could be opposed to the similar pretensions of the
great Eoman confederacy. I bethought me, that in her defence I
might myself go forth to the combat with the Goliaths of Oxford, with
the greater advantage, because without the incumbrance of cope,
or gown or surplice. I was beyond the reach of those arguments

THE IIISTOEIAX OF ENTHUSIASM. 601

ad homines, by which such as wore them were but too successfully
assailed. Acknowledging no canon but that of Scripture, nor any
creeds but such as could be deduced from tiiat source, nor any
saint whose apotheosis is not there recorded, I was free to reject all
appeals to ancient Christianity and to modern liturgies, and to
esteem as a liar, every man whose teaching was opposed to the
truth of Grod.

Notwithstanding my antipathy to periodical literature, the tac-
tics of the enemy and the habits of the times compelled me to
adopt that mode of publication. Thus I became the author of a
series of Tracts, which opened with a lecture to the Ultra-Protes-
tants, who, in their zeal for ' the Bible only,' repudiate the autho-
rity of the Primitive Church, even as to matters of fact which
passed under their eyes, and even as to the meaning of words which
were vernacular in their mouths. I next proceeded to show that
superstition, priestcraft, and theosophy, had, like deadly creepers,
stunted the early growth, and poisoned the first fruits of that tree
which, springing as from a grain of mustard seed, was destined to cast
forth her branches to the ends of the earth — that the Mariolatry
of Tertullian had been quite as extravagant as that of Bernard, —
that the virgins of the age of Cyprian had rivalled, in licentious-
ness, the nuns of the age of Dominic, — that the Doctors of the
first four centuries had substituted a Gnostic Deity at war with
matter, for the Deity of the Gospels at war only with sin, — that
Chrysostom, Basil, and the two Gregories, in the East, and Am-
brose in the West, had either excluded, from their teaching and
from their creeds, the first great principle of the Gospel, or had
exhibited it in an order and position the very reverse of that which
is assigned to it by the inspired writers, — that virginity, fasting,
and almsgiving had been placed by patristic divinity, on the thrones
erected by Paul to Faith, and Hope, and Charity, — that with no
difference but that of names, the same daemons were worshipped in
the Pagan and in the Christian temples of the fourth century, — that
many of the most illustrious among the anchorites of the East, and
the Coelibates of the West, had better merited cells in some House
of Correction, than niches in the gallery of ecclesiastical heroes, —
that the greatest Saints and Doctors of that age had sanctioned
pious frauds, which, in our own times, would have conducted their
authors to the treadmill, — that Ambrose had been an impostor,
Chrysostom the promoter of a cheat, and Augustin a teacher of
what he must have known to be false, — that Popery had been a
reformation of ancient Christianity, — that the theology of jMa-
hommed and his caliphs had been superior to that wliich they
overthrew at Antioch and Alexandria, — and that Attila was an

G02 THE IIISTOEIAX OF ENTHUSIASM.

avenger of crimes rivalling those of the Egjrptian mysteries. I
next advanced to the proof of the Protestantism of the Anglican
Church, and showed how in her liturgies, her articles, and her ho-
milies, she had raised her voice against the errors and corruptions,
not of Eome merely, but of the Churches which twice sent their
bishops to hold a general synod at Nicsea ; and, warming with my
own movement, I closed my assault on the religion of the third
and fourth centuries, by an unsparing exposure of the inconsisten-
cies and the blunders committed by Ridley, and Jewell, and
Bucer, in their awkward attempts to shelter their allegiance to the
Apostles by an appeal, alike unsuccessful and unfair, to the autho-
rity of the Fathers,

Of all the labours of my literary life, this was the most arduous
and the most immediately effective ; as it was certainly not the
least popular. But a writer will seldom be left by his critics in
ignorance of such of his faults as lie on the surface. I was charged
with some few oversights in my translations from my Gfreek ori-
ginals ; and admonished that I had failed in the reverence due to
names had in honour by fifty generations ; and warned, that truth
would admit, and that justice required, some mitigation of my cen-
sures on the morals of their contemporaries. Censors of another
class distinguished between the style of my successive numbers,
condemning the earlier as turgid and diffuse, and ascribing only
to the latter the freedom and vivacity requisite in controversial
writing. They imputed to me a disregard of method and of
logical sequence in the evolution of my argument; and taunted
me with having paid the penalty of the periodical literature I had
so warmly condemned, by myself sacrificing to immediate effect,
materials and researches which, with greater leisure, and in a more
tranquil mood, I might have wrought (so they were pleased to add)
into a comprehensive and enduring commentary on the works, the
doctrines, and the lives of the Fathers of the first five centuries.

Whatever may have been the fairness of these strictures on my
* Ancient Christianity,' it was honoured by one result more than
sufficient to countervail them all. The great leader of the hostile
forces undertook to refute my accusations against Ambrose, and for
that purpose republished some chapters of the ' Ecclesiastical His-
tory of Fleury,' preceded by an ' Essay on Miracles ' from his own
pen. To vindicate the honesty and the prodigies of the Saints, he
was fain to rely on the alleged antecedent probability that some
such marvels as those ascribed to Ambrose would be performed by
some such person, at some such time, and in some such manner,
and was driven to assert that the vast majority of the mighty works
recorded in the Old Testament and the New, must stand or fall on

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 603

the same narrow basis. For the first time in my life I was able to
enter into the exultation with which Samuel Johnson had ex-
claimed, 'Sir, T reduced him to whistle.' After a brief interval,
the same antagonist bore a yet more conclusive testimony to the
truths I had inculcated. In his new character of a Roman Catholic
he inculcated them himself ! He published an octavo volume to
verify all I had said of the wide interval between the patristic and
the apostolic doctrine, and attempted to deduce from the dogmas
of Rome a solution of the problem I had proposed, of finding a
law by which developments of primitive truths into new forms
might be distinguished from each other as genuine and as false.
A treacherous ally, thus converted into an avowed enemy, ceased
to be formidable. I gladly laid down my controversial pen, and
turned aside, from the exhausted debates with the Church of Rome,
to pursuits far better suited to my temper, and more grateful to
my taste.

By the benignity of a kind Providence I lived like the patriarchs
of old, surrounded by the young, and especially by my own off-
spring. Alas ! for the Doctors placed by irrevocable vows beyond
the reach of those fountains of love and of wisdom. My pupils and
my children were my habitual study, as well as the daily joy and
interest of my existence. For their instruction or delight, I threw
off numberless pages in print or manuscript, for which, beyond
that gay circle, I sought neither eulogist nor reader ; though, for
the benefit of other schools and nurseries, I ultimately published
one of them — ' An English Version of Herodotus,' with such omis-
sions only as are needed to make his reception in a Christian house-
hold as decorous as it must ever be cordial. Thus my second
childhood was separated by no long interval from my first; for
there I was, the eldest, the gravest, and the least agile, indeed, of
the jocund group, but hardly less captivated than they were by the
lessons and the frolic of the passing hour. And when my little
ones were hushed into repose, the incidents of their bright and
busy lives would adjust themselves in my mind in the form of a
connected narrative, compared with which I found the delightful
tales of the great Father of History himself uninteresting. ' Feed
my lambs,' was nearly the latest injunction wliich fell from the
lips of Him of whom the whole family both in heaven and earth
is named. If obedience to his more arduous precepts, in the spirit
of a stern self-denial, is never unrewarded, even in this life, by
peace and joy, how exuberant the springs of happiness opened to
those on whom is laid a law, to which the first and deepest instincts
of their nature are continually responsive !

With me, by this time, to meditate was to write. If I could

604 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

have so far yielded to the levities of the day, or to its coarseness,
as to have laid bare the recesses of my home to the public gaze,
there were before me materials for a domestic novel, to which a
touch far inferior to that of Rousseau, might have imparted an in-
terest far superior to that of his Emilius. But I could just as soon
have delivered over my body as an anatomie vlvante to the sur-
geons for dissection. Reversing the ordinary method of conveying
moral precepts under the veil of narrative, I told my tale in the
form of precepts, leaving my readers to resolve a,s they might, the
admonitions I laid before them into the very scenes which, as I
wrote, were lying before myself — the quiet English country house,
the affectionate and not unlearned parents, the group of boys and
girls, gay, docile, and intelligent, each exhibiting some well-dis-
criminated mental powers, to the slow though complete develop-
ment of which, the pursuits of each were steadily and patiently
directed.

My book on ' Home Education,' was received rather with cordia-
lity by the few than with applause from the many. My self-con-
stituted judges were resolved to believe that I had been surveying
not the very England in which we live, but the Utopia in which
Sir Thomas More once sojourned. Admitting that, beneath the
tranquil shelter of such a house as I had unconsciously sketched,
many a youth and many a maid might have been trained to adorn
the land which gave them birth, they refused to admit the exist-
ence of such another abode north or south of Trent, except on the
authority of a report to be first made to that effect by a commission
of married men of six years' standing, at the least. What with
managing constituents and turnpike trusts, Avriting sermons and
prescriptions, meeting the hounds to-day and the Quarter Sessions
to-morrow, an English country gentleman, whether clerical or laic,
who should undertake the late development of the ' ideality,' and
the ' conceptive faculty,' and the ' sense of analogy ' of his children,
though he should address himself to the ' intuitive faculties ' alone,
and those ' gently stimulated by pleasurable emotions,' would, in a
myriad of cases to one (such were the assertions and such the slight-
ing quotations of my critics), end in something very different from
the promised result of ' putting their minds into a condition of
intellectual opulence.' Here and there (they added) may, perhaps,
be found such an Eden as the author of 'Home Education' has in-
habited and described ; where, exempt from the cares of earth, and
in habitual communion with the Father of Lights, parents train
their offspring ' to apprehend truth, to impart truth, and to discover
truth.' But lovely as the scene might be, and profound as was the
paternal love with which it was drawn (I am still quoting my

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTIIUSIASJ*!. 605

censors), the Belvidere Apollo did not contrast more forcibly with
an honest sportsman of our times, nor was the Godfrey of Tasso
more unlike an officer of her Majesty's Life Guards, than did the
rural philosopher, who had indited my book, differ from the ten
thousand respectable English gentlemen over whose country man-
sions fertile vines have crept, and whose tables are thickly set with
olive branches.

Such is criticism ! I have reflected much ; I have written much ;
and much have I been taken to task for my writings. But a critic,
in the current acceptation of that much abused term, I have never
been. Nor, if I have an enemy, do I wish for him any heavier
doom than that he should be inrollcd and serve among that super-
cilious brotherhood, until he shall have learnt justly to appreciate
his own position, and his own real importance, in the world of
letters.

I gradually became review-proof ; and, with very little concern
for what the month or the quarter might bring forth in that way,
I gave myself uf) to a series of contemplations on topics which had
caught without arresting my notice, while I was engaged on my
historical surveys, and in my polemical inquiries. Under the enig-
matical title of ' Saturday Evening,' I sketched, in a series of essays,
the hopes and prospects of the Christian Church, her lapse from
original purity, the fellowship of her members with each other, and
their isolation as individuals, the limits of revealed knowledge, the
dissolution of our nature, and its perpetuity, and the modes of our
future existence. It was not in my nature to acquiesce tamely in
any of the dogmatic systems of theolog}^, definite as they were, and,
therefore, cold, sterile, and earth-born. I aspired to reach that
upper region which the pure light visits, and from which alone it
is reflected in all its purity. I dared to propose to myself problems
of which Butler might have surmised the solution ; and of which
Milton, when shut out from the sight of material things, might
have discerned and depicted the latent glories. I attempted to
scale eminences in the presence of which the mightiest become
conscious of their weakness, and the boldest imagination is taught
the penury of its resources. To throw some conjectural, unstcad}',
and precarious light on such themes, ultimately became the limit
of my ambition and of my hopes. Yet I could not altogetlier al)-
stain from the endeavour to climb heiglits and to penetrate depths
undreamt of in our popular theology, and I applied myself, with
whatever success, to themes which, when examined with reverence
and freedom of thought, can never be unfruitful ; though the fruits
may often be unripe, and, to the great majority, distasteful.

Wise men read books that they may learn to read themselves,

606 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

and for this purpose not seldom quit their libraries for the open air.
The heath, the forest, or the river side is the true academy. There,
with no intrusive neighbour to dissipate his thoughts, and with no
importunate volume to chain them down, the student casts them
into such forms of soliloquy or dialogue, of verse or prose, as best
suits the humour of the passing time. This peripatetic discipline
is best observed under the cover of an angling rod, or a gun ; for
then may not the vicar or the major, without an evident breach of
privilege, detain you on the county-rate question ; nor can the
gentler voice of wife or daughter upbraid you with the sad list of
the visits you have received and neglected to return. Besides,
your country philosopher is apt to flatter himself that, in hooking
a trout, or flushing a pheasant, his eye is as true and his hand as
steady as those of the squire ; and from this weakness I was not
altogether exempt. Emerging from my library as one resolved to
bring home some score head of game, my stout purposes would
gradually die away, as I reached the brook, whose windings were
oddly associated in my mind with theories with which the world
was one day to be enlightened, and with half-conceived sections of
essays yet to be written.

There is a great want of a treatise on the choice, the uses, and the
treatment of hobby-horses. It would form a sort of connecting link
between the libraries of useful and of entertaining knowledge.
Scarcely a man (the made-up and artificial man alone excepted)
who could not be laid under contribution for such a work. I could
myself furnish a whole chapter. When it was not field day with
me, and I had no exercises in divinity to perform, I descended from
the great horse and ambled about, to my heart's content, on a
favourite pad, which, however, it was my whim to dress in the
housings of my tall charger, and to train to the same paces. In
leisure hours, my appointed duty was to extract from Church
History its pith and marrow ; my habitual recreation to construct
schemes of physiology. I emulated the zeal with which ' my Uncle
Toby ' threw up his entrenchments, and Mr. Shandy his theories.
My ' Home Education ' was founded on a diligent survey of the
formation of the brain. My solitary walks gave birth to a system
in which was exhibited the future condition of man, when he shall
be disencumbered of those viscous and muscular integuments which,
in his present state, serve as a kind of sheath to protect the sentient
soul within, from the intensities of delight or pain to which, with-
out such a shelter, it would be exposed. Dwelling habitually on
those scenes beyond the confines of earth, I became at last the pos-
sessor of a scheme, complete and coherent in all its parts, of that
glorious futurity to which, in their cravings for immortal bliss, all

THE IIISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. G09

men look forward, but which to nearly all presents itself only in ile,
dim, shapeless, and unalluring outline.

I did not, however, make this attempt to hurst through the
barriers of time and space, without first tracing the steps of those
who had preceded me in this daring adventure. First, and before
all, I reverently consulted the inspired writers, among whose pre-
rogatives it is not the least that, into Avhatever region of thought
they pass, sound sense is still the attendant minister b}^ whose aid
they invariably ascend a region far beyond the morbid dreams of
an excited fancy. Of such dreams, none had a firmer hold on the
ancient sages of Greece and Italy, than the notion that, after death,
man was to pass into a state of pure incorporeity, ' the naked
ascending to the naked,' to be absorbed into the great mundane
soul. In opposition to this dogma, the New Testament places
human felicity, on either side of the grave, in the union of sound
mind with a sound body. The same creed, as Irenseus and Tertul-
lian testify, was held by their immediate successors. Origen
advanced further, and taught that to exist wholly detached and
separate from matter, is the incommunicable attribute of Deity — •
that the ' spiritual body' of St. Paul is identical with the ' luciform
body' of Plato — and that any created and subordinate mind
destitute of such a covering, and of such an instrument, must be
cut off from all commerce with things external, and degenerate into
a mere contemplative, insulated, and inert entity.

With these earlier fathers of the Church, I found the later of
that venerable order in unbroken harmony. In their copious
inquiries into the nature of good and bad daemons, they assign,
indeed, to the angelic host the nearest possible resemblance, and to
the evil spirits the greatest possible dissimilarity, to the ' defecated
intelligences' of the schoolmen; and represent the first as impas-
sive to sensual pleasures, and the others as inhaling, with an unholy
relish, the savoury fumes of the heathen sacrifices; but they
exhibit both, whether angels or devils, as still clad with some
material integument, though it be subtilised to an indefinite and
imponderable tenuity. From the same erudite doctors, and espe-
ciall}^ from St. Augustine, I learnt what is the manner in whicli
the spiritual inhabitants of these ethereal vehicles hold intercourse
with each other, and what are the shapes in which their presence
is made manifest to those exquisite organs of sensation to which
alone they are perceptible.

After thus mastering the discoveries of the patristic voyagers
into the regions of the blessed, I turned to the other guides across
that pathless ocean. One contemptuous glance at the Koran, and
the Paradise it reveals, was sufficient. I paused a while to con-

608 THE IIISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

template tlie dark Homeric Hades peopled by tlie victims of the
inexorable fate with which they had wrestled so bravely on earth.
Over the Elysian fields of Virgil I saw satiety reigning in eternal
and undisputed sway, and thought that the great poet had made
an advantageous exchange, when, at the distance of thirteen cen-
turies, he took up his abode on the outskirts of the Inferno, and
made an occasional pilgrimage through its gloomy mansions. The
awful magician whom he conducted to those abodes of woe, lost
(as it seemed to me) much of his own inspiration when, consigned
to the guidance of Beatrice, he traversed the seven heavens in her
company, and listened, fii'st in the Sun, and then in the Planet
Jupiter, to the lectures of St. Thomas, and to the metaphysical
comments on the mystery of the Divine decrees, delivered by the
saints, congregated into the form of a celestial eagle.

From the poets I passed to the philosophers. In Cudworth and
Brucker, I found a perfect analysis and interpretation of the doc-
trines of the schools, both ancient and modern, respecting the state
of departed spirits ; but the latitudinarian was as cold as the creed
he professed, and the commentator as dry as the parchments among
which he lived. I at length fell in with two volumes of far less
pretensions than theirs, in which the post-sepulchral condition of
man is delineated with an eloquence, a tenderness, and a warmth
of heart worthy of such a theme. One of them was the treatise
of Thomas Burnett, De Statu Mortuorum et Resur gentium.
Burnett, it may be supposed, best knew his own strength and weak-
ness, and therefore judged rightly in choosing scientific subjects,
and in discussing them in a dead language ; but to the world at
large, it must ever remain a mystery why he subjected to such
fetters a mind which, as by some necessity of its nature, threw a
gorgeous veil of impassioned poetry over every topic which it
touched. My other conductor across the abyss which separates the
living from the dead, was Abraham Tucker, the author of the
* Light of Nature,' a man unrivalled in the power of illustrating
the obscure by the familiar, and blest with a mind so habitually
gay, benevolent, and serene, that every page he has written is an
undesigned and captivating reflection of his own happy tempera-
ment. I gladly soared away with him, in one of his atomic vehicles,
to that boundless expanse in which he met the departed worthies of
this world, shooting so pleasantly from star to star, conversing
without the clog of words, putting forth at their will, organs with
which to feel or to perceive all exterior objects, or retiring for medi-
tation into a solitude which, when those organs were retracted, was
utterly impregnable by any invader from without.

At the close of a winter's evening which had been passed in such

THE IIISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 609

compan}^ and with such books, I drew my chair to my fire-side,
and yielded myself passively to the incursion of the trains of
thouglit to which my employment had given birth. At first they
sustained themselves (like creepers hanging on a trellis-work) by
the whimsical relations which they spontaneousl}^ f(jrmed with the
dancing flames before me, and with the dark rocks, the illuminated
caves, and the glowing pinnacles on which I was gazing. In the
microcosm which blazed on my hearth, it was given to me to dis-
cover the present abodes of the former generations of mankind,
and to watch them as they discharged the various offices which are
there reserved for the departed. But, ere long, I ceased to see
those mimic mountains of man's future dwelling-place, and to ex-
plore the interminable vistas of light and shade by which they
were perforated, or to hear the flapping of the fiery pennons which
rose above their summits ; for, while I was thus rvuninating on the
occupations of those who had passed through the gates of death,
sleep had closed her portals on myself.

The time (so it seemed to me) had arrived at which I was to join
the solemn troops and bright societies who people the eternal world.
One universal bewilderment of thought, one passing agony, and all
was still. I had emerged from the confines of life, and yet I lived.
Time, place, and sensation were extinct. Memory had lost her
office, and the activity of my reasoning powers was suspended.
Apart from every other being, and entombed in the solitude of my
own nature, all my faculties were absorbed and concentrated in one
intense perception of self-consciousness. Before me lay expanded,
as in a vast panorama, the entire course of my mortal life. I was
at once the actor and the spectator of the whole eventful scene ;
every thought as distinct, every word as articulate, and every in-
cident as fresh as at the moment of their birth. The enigmas of
my existence were solved. That material and intellectual mecha-
nism of which, for threescore years and ten, I had been the subject,
was laid bare, with all the mutual dependencies of the coiuitless
events, great and trivial, of my sviblunary days. Grasping, at length,
the threads of that vast labyrinth, I perceived that they had all
been woven by the same Divine Artificer. At each step of the way
by which I had come, I now traced the intervention of an ever-
watchful Providence. Complicated and perplexing as the condition
of human life had formerly appeared to me, I at length discovered
the great ultimate object to which each movement of that intricate
apparatus had been designed to minister. I saw that the whole
had been one harmonious and comprehensive scheme for purifying
the affections of my nature, and invigorating them for nobler and
more arduous exercises. I had gone down to Hades, and Deity was

R R

610 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

there. On earth His existence had been demonstrated by reason-
ing. Here it was felt by a consciousness intuitive and irresistible.
A prisoner in the flesh, I had been wont to adore the majesty of
the Creator. A disembodied spirit, I was awake to the conviction
that He exists as the perennial source of happiness, which, concen-
trated in His own nature, is thence diffused throughout the imiverse,
although in degrees immeasurably distant from each other, and ac-
cording to laws unsearchable by any finite understanding. Thus
imbibing knowledge of myself and of Deity, and alive only to the
emotions inspired by this ever-present spectacle, I became the pas-
sive recipient of influences instinct with a delight so tranquil, and
with a peace so unbroken, that weariness, satiety, and the desire
for change appeared to have departed from me for ever.

Change, however, awaited me. So slight and imperfect was the
alliance between my disembodied spirit and the world of matter,
that, destitute of all sensation, I had lost all measure of time, and
knew not whether ages had revolved, or but a moment had passed
away during my isolated state of being. Heir to ten thousand
infirmities, the body I had tenanted on earth had returned to the
dust, there to be dissolved and recompounded into other forms
and new substances. Yet the seminal principle of that mortal
frame had adhered to me ; and at the appointed season there
brooded over it from on high a reproductive and plastic influence.
Fearfully and wonderfully as I had been made when a denizen of
the world, the chemical affinities, and the complex organisation of
my animal structure, had borne the impress of decay, of a transi-
sory state, and of powers restricted in their free exercise. Passing
all comprehension as had been the wisdom with which it was
adapted to the purposes of my sublunary being, those purposes had
been ephemeral, and circumscribed within precincts which now
seemed to me scarcely wider than those within which the emmet
plies her daily task. In the career which was now opening to
me, I required a far different instrumentality to give scope to my
new faculties, and to accomplish the ends to which I had learned
to aspire. Emancipated from the petty cares and the mean pur-
suits in which, during the period of my humanity, I had been im-
mersed, I now inhabited and informed a spiritual body, not dis-
similar in outward semblance to that which I had bequeathed to
the worms, but uniform in its texture, homogeneous in every part,
and drawn from elements which were blended together into one
simple, pure, and uncompounded whole. Into such perfect unison
had my mental and my corporeal nature been drawn, that it was
not without difficulty I admitted the belief that I was once again
clothed with a material integument. Experience was soon to con-

THE HISTORIAN OP ENTHUSIASM. GU

vince me that such an association was indispensable to the use
and to the enlargement of my intellectual and moral powers.

Emerging from the region of separate spirits into my next scene
of activity and social intercourse, I found myself an inhabitant of
the great luminary, around which Mercury and his more distant
satellites eternally revolve. In all their unmitigated radiance
were floating around me those effulgent beams of light and heat
which so faintly visit the obscure and distant planets. Ever-
lasting day, the intense glories of an endless summer-noon, rested
on the numbers without- number of intelligent and sentient crea-
tures who shared with me my new abode. Incorruptible, exempt
from lassitude, and undesirous of repose, they imbibed energy from
rays which, in the twinkling of an eye, would have dissipated into
thin vapour the world and all that it inherits. On that opaque
globe, the principles which sustain, and those which destroy life
had been engaged within me in a constant but unequal conflict.
The quickening spirit on earth, though continually recruited by
rest and sleep, had at length yielded to the still-recurring assaults
of her more potent adversaries. Here the vital powers had no foes
to encounter, and demanded no respite from their ceaseless occu-
pation. In the world below, from man the universal sovereign,
to the animalculge who people a drop of turbid water, I had seen all
animated things sustaining themselves by the mutual extermination
of each other. In the solar sphere I found all pursuing their ap-
pointed course of duty or enjoyment, in immortal youth and unde-
caying vigour. Death had found no entrance ; life demanded no
renewal.

I am anticipating the results of the observations which I gradually
learned to make of the difference between solar and planetary
existence ; for on my first entrance into this untried state of being,
my thoughts were long riveted to the change which I had myself
undergone. While incarcerated in my tenement of clay, I had
given law to my nerves, muscles, and tendons; but they had in turn
imposed restraints on me against which it had been vain to struggle.
My corporeal mechanism had moved in prompt obedience to each
successive mandate of my mind ; but so fragile were the materials
of which it was wrought, that, yielding to inexorable necessity, my
mil had repressed innumerable desires which, if matured into abso-
lute volitions, would have rent asunder that frail apparatus. I had
relaxed the grasp, and abandoned the chase, and thrown aside the
uplifted weapon, as often as my overstrained limbs admonished me
that their chords would give way beneath any increased impetus.
And when the living power within me had subjected my fibres to
the highest pressure which they could safely endure, the arrange-

R R 2

612 THE HISTOEIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

ment, and the reLative position of my joints and muscles, had
impeded all my movements, except in some circumscribed and
unalterable directions. But my spiritual body, incapable of waste
or of fracture, and responsive at every point to the impact of the
indwelling mind, advanced, receded, rose or fell, in prompt obedience
to each new volition, with a rapidity unimpeded, though not unli-
mited, by the gravitating influence of the mighty orb over the sur-
face of which I passed. At one time I soared as with the wings of
eagles, and at another plunged into the abysses of the deep. My
spiritual body, the docile and indestructible instrument of my will,
could outstrip the flight of the swiftest arrow, or rend the knotted
oak, or shiver the primeval rocks ; and then, contracting its efforts,
could weave the threads of the gossamer in looms too subtle and
evanescent for the touch of the delicate Ariel.

While on earth I had, like Milton, bewailed that constitution of
my frame which, admitting the knowledge of visible objects only at
one entrance, forbade me to converse with them except through the
medium of a single nerve, and within the narrow limits of the retina.
Had the poet's wish been granted, and if, departing from her be-
nignant parsimony, nature had exposed his sensorium to the full
influx of the excitements of which it was inherently susceptible,
that insufferal)le glare would either have annihilated the percipient
faculty, or would have quickened it to agonies unimagined even by
his daring fancy. Under the shelter of my earthly tabernacle,
which at once admitted and mitigated the light, I had in my mor-
tal state been accustomed to point my telescope to the heavens ; and,
while measuring the curve described round their common centre by
stars which to the unaided eye were not even disunited, I had felt
how infinitely far the latent capacities of my soul for corresponding
with the aspect of the exterior world transcended such powers as
could be developed within me by nature or by art. An immortal,
I quaffed at my pleasure the streams of knowledge and of observa-
tion for which before I had thus panted in vain. I could now scan
and investigate at large the whole physical creation. At my will I
could call my visual powers into action to the utmost range of their
susceptibility ; for in my new body I possessed the properties of
every different lens in every possible variety of combination — ex-
panding, dissecting, and refracting at any required angle the beams
which, radiating from the various substances around me, brought
me intelligence of the forms, the colours, and the movements of
them all. Assisted by this optical incarnation, I could survey the
luminary on which I dwelt, the globes whose orbits were concentric
there, and, though less distinctly, the other solar spheres which
glowed in the firmament above me. Not more clearly had I deci-

THE IIISTOIIIAN or EXTIIUSIASM. G13

phered during my sojourn on earth the shapes and hues of tlie
various beings by ^Yhicll it is i-ep!enished, than 1 now discerned the
aspect and the movements of the countless species, animate and in-
animate, with which the prodigal munificence of creative will has
peopled the various planetary regions.

Nor was it through the intervention of light merely, that my
new corporeity brought me into communication with the works of
the Divine Architect. It attracted and combined for my study or
my delight, all the vibratory movements, and all the gustatory and
pungent emanations, by which the sense is aroused and gratified.
Celestial harmony floated around me, and I breathed odours such
as exhaled from Eden in the fresh da^vn of the world's nativity.
In that world, chained down by the coarse elements of flesh and
blood, I had caught some transient glimpses of exterior things,
through the five portals which opened — shall I say into my
fortress, or my prison house? From the glorious mansion which
my soul now inhabited, pervious to myself at every point, though
secure from every hostile or unwelcome aggression, I surveyed
the things around me in aspects till now unimagined. I did not
merely see and hear, taste, smell, and feel, but I exercised senses
for which the languages of earth have no names, and received
intimations of properties and conditions of matter unutterable in
human discourse. Employing this instrument of universal sensa-
tion, the inner forms of nature presented themselves before me as
vividly as her exterior types. Thus entering her secret laboratories,
I was present at the composition and the Ijlending together ot
those plastic energies of which mundane philosophy is content to
register some few of the superficial results. Each new disclosure
afforded me a wider and still lengthening measure of that un-
fathomable wisdom and power, with the more sublime emanations
of which I was thus becoming conversant. Yet such was the
flexibility of my spiritualised organs, that at my bidding they
could absolutely exclude every influence from without, leaving me
to enjoy the luxuries of meditation in profound and unassailable
solitude.

While thus I passed along the solar regions, and made endless
accessions of knowledge, I was at first alarmed lest my mind should
have been crushed beneath the weight of her own conquests, and
the whole should be merged in one chaotic assemblage of confused
recollections. From this danger I was rescued by another change
in my animal economy. During my planetary existence, the
structure and the health of my brain had exercised a des^iotic
authority over my intellectual powers. Then, my mind laboured
ineffectually over her most welcome tasks, if accident or indigestion

B B 3

614 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

relaxed, distended, or compressed my cerebral vessels. For the
time, the tools with which she wrought were deprived of their
brightness and their edge. At such seasons (and they were
frequent), the records of past sensations, and of the thoughts
associated with them, became illegible in my memory, or could be
read there only in disjointed fragments. An acid on his stomach
would have rendered vain the boast of Csesar, that he could address
each of his legionaries by name. Even when all my pulses were
beating with regularity and vigour, the best I could accomplish
was to grope backward througli my store of accumulated know-
ledge, holding by a single thread, to which my attention was
confined, and the loss of which defeated all my efforts.

How different the tablets on which my observations of the past
were recorded in my spiritual body! Unconscious of fatigue,
incapable of decay, and undistm-bed by any of those innumerable
processes essential to the conservation of mortal life, it enabled me
to inscribe in indelible lines, as on some outstretched map, each
successive perception, and every thought to which it had given
birth. At my pleasure, I could unroll and contemplate the entire
chart of my past being. I could render myself as absolutely con-
scious of the former, as of the present operations of my mind, and
at one retrospective glance could trace back to their various
fouutains all the tributary streams which combined to swell the
current of my immediate contemplations. Grliding over the various
provinces of the solar world, and gathering in each new treasures
of information, I deposited them all beyond the reach of the great
spoiler Time, in this ample storehouse of a plenary memory.
With the increase of my intellectual hoard, my cravings for such
wealth continually augmented. It was an avarice which no gains
could satiate, and to the indulgence of which imagination itself
could assign no limit.

I should, however, have become the victim of my own avidity
for knowledge, if my ideas had still obeyed those laws of association
to which, in my telluric state, they had been subject. Then it be-
hoved my reason to exercise a severe and watchful government.
When her control was relaxed, my thoughts would break loose from
all legitimate restraint. They arranged themselves into strange
groups and fantastic combinations, and established with each other
such alliances as whim, caprice, or accident suggested. These once
made were indissoluble. They asserted their power but too often,
in resistance to the sternest mandates of my judgment and my will.
But in times of debility, of disease, or of sleep, my ideas would
combine into heterogeneous masses, seething and mmgling together,
like the ingredients of some witch's cauldron, assembled by her

THE HISTORIAN OF EXTIIUSIASM. G15

incantations to work out some still more potent spell. Over the
whole of this intoxicating confusion presided Carnality, in all her
nervous, cerebral, vascular, and other forms, and working by means
of all her digestive, secretory, and assimilating processes.

Now, no longer the inmate of a tremulous and sordid tabernacle
of flesh, but inhabiting a shrine pure and enduring as her own
nature, my soul was rescued from this ignoble thraldom. Accident,
appetite, lassitude, the heat and fumes of my animal laboratory,
had ceased to disturb the supremacy of reason. Instead of congre-
gating as an undisciplined host, my ideas, as in some stately pro-
cession, followed each the other in meet order and predetermined
sequence, — their march unobstructed hj any suggestions or desires
originating in my sensuous frame. I had become, not the pas-
sive recipient of thought, but the unquestioned sovereign of my
owTi mental operations. The material organs, by the aid of
which I now wrought them out, obeyed a law like that on which
depend the involuntary movements of the heart and arteries, un-
attended by any conscious effort, and productive of no fatigue.
Every increment of knowledge sp(Jntaneously assiTmed in my
memory its proper place and relative position ; and the whole of
my intellectual resources fell into connected chains of argument or
illustration, which I could traverse at pleasure from end to end, still
finding the mutual dependence and adhesion of each successive
link unbroken

To contemplate any truth in all the relations in which it stands
to every other truth, is to possess the attribute of omniscience ; but
in proportion as any created intelligence can combine together
her ideas in their various species, genera, classes, and orders, in the
same degree is diminished the distance from the Supreme Mind,
immeasurable and infinite as the intervening gulf must ever remain.
On earth I had been compelled, by the feebleness of my cerebral
and nervous economy, to render my studies almost exclusively
analytical. There, I had toiled to disencumber every question of
whatever might obscure the view of the isolated point proposed as
the end of my inquiries. Morals apart from physics, are disunited
from logic, the science of numbers and of space detached from the
exercise of the imaginative power, even theology itself divorced from
the devout aspirations to which it tends, had each in turn engaged
my earnest pursuit. But to ascend those heights from which they
could be contemplated as parts of one harmonious whole — to seize
and to blend together the analogies pervading the works of poets
and mathematicians, of naturalists and divines — this was an attempt
which had convinced me how indissoluble were the fetters which
riveted my soul to her sluggish associate. Set free from this bond-

R n 4

G16 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

age, and supplied with an instrument of sensation which kept pace
with her own inherent activity, she found and desired no repose.
Solar time is measured by the revolutions of the planetary orbs,
and from the commencement to the completion of his career
tlirough the firmament, Uranus would often find me still engaged
in some unbroken contemplation. During that interval I had com-
pleted some vast synthesis, in which were at once combined and
distinguished all the various aspects under which some province of
knowledge had disclosed itself to my view. In the nether world,
high discourse had been held on the connection of the sciences ;
but now I discovered the mutual influence, the interaction, and the
simultaneous workings of their different laws. I no longer culti-
vated the exact sciences as a separate domain, but the most severe
physical truth was revealed to me in union with the richest hues of
ideal beauty, with the perfection of the imitative arts, with the
pure abstractions of metaphysical thought, with narratives both
historical and romantic, with the precepts of universal morals, and
the mysteries of the Divine government. Ontology — vain-glorious
word as used among men — ^the knowledge of universal being as
distinct from species, and of species as harmonised in universal
being, was the study which engaged the time and rewarded the
labours of immortal minds animating spiritual bodies.

Let not those who boast themselves in logic, Aristotelian or
Baconian, assume that their puny architecture of syllogistic or in-
ductive reasoning affords the rules by which the soul, rescued from
the hindrances of a carnal corporeity, erects for herself edifices of
knowledge, immovable in their base, beautiful in their proportions,
and towering in splendid domes and pinnacles to the skies. To
Newton and to Pascal the theories of the vulgar geometry were as
instinctively obvious as the preliminary axioms on which they rest.
While yet an infant, Mozart was possessed of all those complex
harmonies which a life of patient study scarcely reveals to inferior
masters of his art. In my planetary existence, I had rejoiced in
my habitual aptitude for physiology and historical researches, nor
had I regretted the years of ceaseless toil devoted to them. But
now I discovered that in myself, as in the great men I have men-
tioned, the apprehensiveness of truth had depended far more on
the animal than the mental framework. Quick and vigorous, in
high bodily health, but sluggish and inert under the pressure of
corporeal debility, I learned that logic, experiment, and calculation
had been but so many crutches to assist the movements of the halt
and feeble ; and that, with a physical instrumentality which study
could not exhaust nor disease assail, intuition took the place of
reasoning. I became rather the conscious witness, than the agent.

THE IIISTOIIIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 617

■of the process by wlncli consequences were evolved from tlie
premises brought under my notice.

In the society of which I had become a member, as in mundane
communities, discourse was amongst the chief springs both of
improvement and deHght. So cm-iously fashioned was the integu-
ment Avithiu which my mind was now enveloped, that, after the
manner of an e3^elid, it could either exclude the access of any ex-
ternal excitement, creating within me an absolute and impregnable
solitude, or lay open to the immediate survey of an associate any
thought or combination of thoughts which I desired to impart to
him. I had acquired two distinct languages, one of visible signs,
the other of audible symbols. The first was analogous to the mute
dialogue which is carried on in pantomime by gesture and the
varying expressions of the countenance ; though, unlike such
discourse, it was exempt from all conjectural and ambiguous mean-
ings. As in a camera-obscura, my corporeal organs reflected the
workings of the informing spirit; so that, like the ancient Peru-
vians, I could converse as by a series of pictures, produced and
shifted with instantaneous rapidity. This mode of communication
served my turn when I had any occurrences to relate, or any ques-
tion to discuss, of which sensuous objects formed the basis. But
when phenomena purely pyschological, destitute of all types in the
material creation, were to be conveyed to a companion, I had
audible symbols by which every intellectual conception, and each
fluctuating state of moral sentiment, might be expressed as dis-
tinctly as geometrical diagrams express the corresponding ideas to
which they are allied. By the intermixture of pictorial and
symbolical speech, I could thus render myself intelligible through-
out the whole range and compass of my mental operations, and
could give utterance to all those subtle refinements of thought or
of sensation, which even amongst those who spoke the vernacular
tongue of Plato, must, from the want of fit and determinate indi-
cations have either died away in silence, or have been exhaled in
some mystic and unintelligible jargon. "WTiatever distinctness of
expression the pencil or vibratory chords enabled Raphael or
Handel to give to their sublime but otherwise ineffectual concep-
tions, I had thus the j30wer to impart to each modification of
thought, and to every shade of feeling. Verbal controversies,
sophistry, and all the other 'idols of the cavern,' had disappeared.
Philosophy and her legitimate issue, wisdom, piety, and love, were
cultivated and treasured up by each member of the great solar
family, not as a private hoard to minister only to his own uses, but
as a fund universally communicable, and still augmenting by con-
stant interchange.

618 THE IIISTOKIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

It is difficult or impossible to speak intelligibly, in the language
of men, of the delights or of the duties of the state of being into
which I had thus entered. Borne along in the vehicle of my
spiritual body, I dreaded no fatigue, and was deterred by no danger
in the discharge of the most arduous enterprises. Aspects of the
creation, hidden from me while garmented in the gross elements of
flesh and blood, now burst on my perception as light visits him
who, in mature life, for the first time acquires the visual faculty.
Through each new avenue of sense thus successively opened to me,
my soul, mth raptures, such as seraphs feel, drew in from the still-
expanding circumference wonder and delight, and an ever-increasing
consciousness of the depths of her own being and resoiuces. Con-
templating the hidden forms and the occult mechanism of the
material universe, I left behind me the problems with which physical
science is conversant, and advanced to that higher philosophy
which investigates the properties of spiritual agents; and to a
theology, compared with which that which I had hitherto acquired
was as insignificant as the inarticulate babblings of the cradle.
My retrospective consciousness — for memory it can scarcely be
called — spread out before me scenes, the bright, harmonious, and
placid lights of which were mellowed, though unobscured, by dis-
tance. Misgivings as to the stability of my own opinions had fled
away, as the truths with which I was engaged presented themselves
to me simultaneously in their relative bearings and mutual depen-
dence. Love, pure and catliolic, warmed and expanded my heart,
as thoughts wise, equitable, and benign flowed from other minds
into my own in a continuous stream ; the pellucid waters of which,
in the inherent transparency of our regenerate nature, no deceit
could darken and no guile pollute. My corporeal fabric, now
become the passive instrument of my will, importuned me with no
unwelcome intrusions ; but buoyant, flexible, and instinct with life
and vigour, obeyed every volition, and obstructed the accomplish-
ment of none.

Yet had I not passed into that torpid elysium of which some
have dreamed, and over the descriptions of which many more have
slumbered. Virtue, and her stern associate. Self-control, exact
obedience not from the denizens of earth alone, but from the
rational inhabitants of every province of the universal empire.
"With each accession of knowledge and of mental power, my view
became continually wider and more extended of that gulf, which,
stretching out in measureless infinitude, separates the Source of
Being from the most exalted of his intelligent offspring. My
affiance in the Divine wisdom and rectitude, reposing on founda-
tions deep and firm in proportion to my larger acquaintance with

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 619

tlie ways of Providence, was still necessary to sustain my trembling
spirit as I meditated on the mysteries of the Divine government.
For, within the reach of my observation, were discernible agonising
intensities of suffering, abysses of pollution and of guilt, attesting
the awful powers both of endurance and of activity of minds
ejected from the defences, and despoiled of the narcotics, once
afforded them by their animal structure. Awakened to a sense of
their inherent though long-slumbering energies, they were captives.
Exposed to every painful excitement by which the sentient faculty
can be stimulated, they were naked. Beading on the face of
nature inscriptions till now illegible, they saw in them their o^vn
condemnation. Eemembering each incident of their former exist-
ence, they found in each fresh aliment for despair. Disabused
of the illusions of sophistry and self-love, truth shed on them the
appalling glare of inevitable light. Interchanging thoughts without
the possibility of disguise, every foul and malignant desire diffused
•amongst them a deadly contagion. Destitute of any separate
wants or interests, their bodies could no longer minister to them
the poor relief of an alternation of distress. The reluctant and
occasional spectator of such woes, I found in faith and hope, and
meek adoration, the solace which my labouring spirit required — a
task commensurate with my now-elevated powers, though the
firmest and the holiest of mortals, while yet detained in his tene-
ment of the flesh, would have been crushed and maddened beneath
the burden of that fearful sight.

In the schools of the world, I had wandered in the endless mazes
of fate and free-will, and the origin of evil. An inhabitant of the
great celestial luminary, I became aware of relations till then un-
heard of and inconceivable, between the Emanative Essence and
the hosts of subordinate spirits, and of questions thence resulting,
of such strange and mighty import, that, prostrating myself before
the wisdom and benevolence of the Most High, I was still com-
pelled, in reverential awe, to acknowledge how inscrutable, even
to my expanded capacity, was the thick darkness which shrouds
His secret pavilion.

Nor were there wanting tasks, which summoned to the utmost
height of daring the most courageous of the inhabitants of the
sphere to which I had been translated. Glorious recompense was to
be won by deeds such as immortal beings only could undertake or
meditate. Ministers of the Supreme, we braved at His bidding
the privation of all other joys in the delight of prompt obedience
to His will. We waged with His enemies fierce conflicts, and
exposed ourselves to ills, intense during their continuance, in pro-
portion to the exquisite sensibilities of our purified corporeity.

620 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTIIUSIASK

Impelled by irresistible compassion, by the cravings of insatiable
benevolence, or by the vehement desire to obtain or to impart
tidings affecting the happiness of our own or of other orders of
thinking beings, oui- active powers, with all our resources of con-
stancy, magnanimity, and prudence, were called into habitual
exercise; nor were there wanting dignities to be attained, or
sceptres to be won, as the meet reward of illustrious achievements.
A soft and protracted flow of vocal harmony, sustained by the
firmer cadence of vibrating chords, now broke in on my contem-
plations. It could (I at first thought) be nothing else than a
choir of seraphs hjrmning the glorious exploits of the immortals
among whom I sojoui'ned. Yet the notes seemed familiar as
household names, and the deepest springs of affection began to
rise within me as I listened to those young and well-remembered
voices. Then we heard the joj^ous laugh, the logs crackling on the
warm hearth, and the hissing urn ; while the gentle pressure on
my shoulder of a hand embellished with the still bright nuptial
ring, recalled me from the Empyrasau on high to my home on
earth, from the Paradise above to the Eden which I had been
graciously permitted to cultivate and adorn below. I cannot
truly say that I regretted the descent ; yet when the vespers of my
household had been sung, and the Divine presence invoked, and
the parental benedictions uttered, and my happy choristers dis-
missed to their light slumbers, I called once more for my trusty
pen, and drew up a sketch of ' The Physical Theory of a Future
State,' which, when matured by more patient labour, became one
of the most popular of the works wliich I have given to the world
without my name, though not without the hope to win an enduring
reputation among men.

When the author of the ' Natural History of Enthusiasm ' threw
away the scabbard in his war with the periodical tribe, he must
have been prepared for vindictive reprisals. But it is improbable
that he ever anticipated them in a form so audacious as this. To
invent and publish an autobiography for him ! to infer his personal
history from his historical and other inquiries ! to spell out even
his dreams from his physiological speculations ! all this is (he may
perhaps say) to be exceedingly impertinent. Yet we have studied
his wTitings to little purpose if such shall be his real sentence.
Supposing him to condescend so far as to read such pages as these
at all, he will (we doubt not) recognise in them rather the feelings
of attachment and reverence wnth which a grateful pupil looks up

THE IIISTORLVN OP ENTHUSIAS^r. G21

to his teacher, than the offensive familiarity which wouhl level the
distinctions of intellectual rank. The station he holds (or deserves
to hold) in the commonwealth of letters, would make such rude-
ness recoil with destructive force on the presumptuous author
of it.

His title to that station rests chiefly in the breadth and compre-
hensiveness of his views of the history, the prospects, and the
character of our race. His survey of human aff;xirs is conducted
from an elevation far above the mists of religious or political par-
tisanship. His most inquisitive readers could never have discovered
that he was a nonconformist, had he not announced himself in that
character. Unaided by that avowal, he must have been considered
only as a cosmopolitan student and teacher of Christian ethics and
polity ; as the grave censor of all ecclesiastical sects, the admirer of
none, the eulogist of none, the member of none ; as contemplating
the universal Church and each of her children (disunited and dis-
cordant as they are) with a fervent though foreboding affection,
and yet as pledged to a passionate and relentless hostility against
that sect (ever shifting its name but never changing its character),
which, under the semblance of superhuman virtues, and the pre-
text of divine authority, still aims at the establishment of a spiritual
despotism over the people, and the kingdom, of the Eedeemer.

The 'Natural History of Enthusiasm' and the kindred works
which followed it, constitute in effect a series of lectures on the
latent principles which govern the course of ecclesiastical affairs,
and which solve the enigmas, reconcile the contradictions, and har-
monise the jarring elements by which they are perplexed. Strid-
ing from one height of generalisation to another, the teacher leaves
far below him the lower world in which antiquarians, story-tellers,
biographers, and dramatists are seeking the materials of their several
crafts. He narrates no incidents, sketches no characters, and
delineates no aspect either of social or of solitary life. His readers
are supposed to be as familiar with the mere facts of history avS
himself (a very hazardous supposition), and must bring to the
perusal of these books either much knowledge, or unbounded
faith.

But though thus dwelling on the mountain tops of abstraction,
he never attempts to scale beyond tlie limits within which the
inspired volume has circumscribed all human inquiries. His
assent to Christianity is no faint admission that the balance of
conflicting arguments inclines in favour of that belief. It is a con-
viction rooted in the inmost recesses of his soul, the germinating
principle of all the thoughts which have taken the deepest root,
and which most luxuriantly flourish there. Though it is at once

G22 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

the labour and the solace of his life to scale the eminences and to
measure the depths of truth ; yet truth and the Christian revelation
are synonymes in his vocabulary. With an ear trained to listen to
the under tones of the Divine voice, and a heart exercised in
interpreting the inarticulate language of the Divine government,
he has studied the written word as they only can study it, to whom
it is the distinct echo or the vivid reflection of those interior senses.

"WTiile thus grappling with principles of the widest span, our
lecturer never indulges himself in so much as a momentary repose
in the lap of mysticism. He steadily refuses the too ready aid of
that familiar narcotic. His outline is drawn with, a hand as free
and bold as that of Gruizot, his speculations are scarcely less re-
condite than those of Coleridge, but his athletic good sense disdains
to enlarge itself by looming through a fog. Master as he is of the
chiaro-scuro, the love of truth is ever too strong in him for the
love of art. He has risen above the fashions of his age so far as
to shun the region in which sublimity and nonsense hold divided
rule ; remembering, perhaps, that it has never been frequented by
any of the master-spirits of the world, and that, among men
divinely inspired, he who was at once the greatest and the most
profoundly learned, had thought it better to speak five words to
edification, than to speak ten thousand words in an unknown
tongue.

And yet these works have never been rewarded by the full tide
of applause or of popularity to which they have so many titles.
The tribute rendered to their writer has been very inadequate to
his claims on the public gratitude. It is not difficult to assign the
reason.

Wisdom is lovely still, in every form and under every disguise ;
whether inspiring the merriment of Momus, — or prattling in
homely fables, — or carving on the mind of man, as on a tablet,
apothegmatic inscriptions for the use of all ages, — or employing
as her instrument the passions of the orator, the visions of the
poet, or the abstractions of the philosopher. But even wisdom
ceases to captivate, because she ceases to be recognised, when she
sustains at the same moment different and inharmonious offices, or
characters at variance with each other. Pasquin impassioned,
^sop rhetorical, Franklin visionary, Demosthenes clad in Jacques'
suit of motley, are so many masqueraders, from whom the studious
expect no instruction, and the idle no amusement. Congruity of
style is not less indispensable than unity of design, to the success
of any work of art.

To the neglect and want of that congi'uity, the historian of
' Enthusiasm,' of * Spiritual Despotism,' and of ' Fanaticism,' must

THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM. 623

ascribe the disproportion between the power which animates liis
writings, and the effect which they produce. That which should
be narrative is absorbed, and, as it were, dried up into apliorisnis,
and that which should be aphorism is dissolved and expanded in a
flood of rhetoric. His books contain neither occurrences for the
entertainment of the inquisitive, nor a body of carefully-digested
and well-measured doctrines for the meditation of the thought-
ful. The teaching and the eloquence jar with, and spoil one
another.

The eloquence, moreover, is none of the best. Be his theme
what it ma}'^, the march of the historian or lecturer is still the
same ; stately, studied, and wearisome, period rolls after period in
measured cadence, page answers page in scientific harmony. This
paragraph challenges applause for its melodious swell, that for its
skilful complexity, the next for the protracted simile with which it
brings some profound inquiry to a picturesque and graceful close.
But the free movement and the welcome repose, and the brave neglect
of embellishments, which are the usual badges of power, are want-
ing; and their absence suggests the very erroneous belief that the
power on which they usually wait is wanting also.

This superfine style is a besetting sin of modern nonconformist
literature. It has infected the sermons of Hall, their greatest
preacher, the essays of Foster, their greatest thinker, and the
commentary of Adam Clarke, their greatest biblicist. It may be
traced in other living authors among them not less distinctly than
in this their Praelector on Church History. It springs out of the
jealousy and the self-assertion incident to the place they occupy in
the social and the learned world. It says, or seems to say, though
Oxford rejects us, and Cambridge knows us not, and Lambeth
looks down on us, and May Fair eschews our company, yet you
shall see that we can be as refined and as elevated in sentiment,
and as abstruse in speculation as the best of them ; that we can
write as gorgeously as your public orators, and as learnedly as if
we wore scarlet hoods in St. Mary's. In very deed, good friends,
you can do all this, and many more and better things than these ;
and you would do them too, if you could but settle it in your
minds that from the scorn which galls, and the indignities which
ruffle you, you have an appeal both to Cis- and Trans-atlantic
England, and that your appeal will be most effectually made, when
made with the least seeming consciousness of the wrongs under
which you labour.

Style in literature is like manner in society — the superficial
index which all can read of internal qualities which few can
decipher. If the author of these lectures and essays had either

G24 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

written with ease and simplicity, or had disguised his meaning-
under spasmodic contortions, or had talked over these grave mat-
ters in the tone of a blunt humorist, or had flattened them down
to the level of a monotonous orthodoxy; if, in a word, he had
either risen to the graces of nature, or condescended to those of
affectation, his admirers would have been more numerous and more
enthusiastic. Language in his hands is an instrument of wonder-
ful volume, flexibility, and compass; but it is made to produce
harmonies of such subtle elaboration, that the ear aches for the
even flow of a few plain words quietly taking their proper places.
Felicitous expression is an excellent thing in its season ; but serve
up a whole octavo full of exquisite sentences, and neither the
guest nor the cook himself can clearly tell what the repast is made
of. In the didactic works of the Historian of Enthusiasm, as in
those of Dr. Channing, penury and affluence of thought are made
to look so like each other, that they must be undressed in order to
be distinguished ; and while he is making out which is which, the
courteous reader is apt to lose his courtesy. In proportion as he is
the more profound thinker of the two, the Englishman is the more
to be upbraided for the perverse ingenuity which thus mars his
own success. Objects so elevated as his ought not to have been
exposed to such hazard.

It is, however, chiefly, though not exclusively, when he fills the
Professor's chair, that he is to be numbered among the promoters
' corruptee eloquentias.' As an assailant of the heresiarchs of his
age, he was quite another man, and his war-cry rang sharp and
clear. His philosophic and his belligerent notes differed as the
contortions of the muscles differ from calisthenics; or as Samson
struggling with the cords which bound him, differed from Samson
falling with unfettered limbs on the hapless Philistines. Throwiiig
aside his gown, with all its elaborate and graceful folds, he girded
up his loins for the combat, and presented himself to his applaud-
ing friends and discomfited opponents a literary athlete, in good
wind and perfect training, his thoughts condensed and his words
compressed within the narrow limits of time and space permitted
him by the conditions of the controversy. Each successive number
became more nervous, pungent, and idiomatic, and he quitted the
field not without the praise (the last probably to which he ever
aspired) of considerable proficiency even in the arts of sarcasm and
banter.

In his speculations on the state and employments of the human
soul when clad with her post-sepulchral or spiritual body, he re-
sumed the abstract style of his preelections polished up to a height
of painful brilliancy, though their turgid and declamatory tone

THE IIISTORIAX OF ENTHUSIASM, 625

was exchanged for a manner more in nnison with themes so grave
and so exalted. Voyages of discovery in Utopia, when conducted
by skilful explorators, are, however, so rich in the returns they
make to this world of realities, that it would be mere captiousness
to complain of the phraseology of the journal or the log-book.

Since death entered into our world, every tribe of men, almost
every individual of our species, has been labouring to penetrate
the dark abyss into which it cond\icts one generation after another.
Scipio dreamt of colloquies with the wise and the good of all ages.
Mahomet taught the students of the Koran to dream (if Sale's
translation may be trusted) of ' rivers of incorruptible water and
rivers of milk, the taste whereof changeth not ; gardens i^lanted
with shady trees, in each of which shall be two flowing fountains ;
couches, the linings whereof shall be of thick silk, interwoven with
gold ; and beauteous damsels refraining their eyes from beholding
any but their spouses, having complexions like rubies and pearls,
and fine black eyes.' The Esquimaux also has his heaven, where
seal skins may be procured in placid seas, and undying lamps are
fed with inexhaustible supplies of the odorous grease of bears.

The stream can rise no higher than the fountain. Our ideas of
immortal good are but amplifications of our mortal enjoyments.
To associate together all innocent and not incompatible delights
known to us by actual experience, subtracting from them every
alloy of pain, satiety, and langour, and thus to sublimate and de-
fine our conceptions of felicity, is to be the creator of the only
heaven, by the contemplation of which hope can be sustained and
activity invigorated. He who most diligently and cheerfully sur-
veys the ' happy gardens ' to which a benign Providence may have
conducted him in this world, is the best qualified to depict the
Elysium which reason or imagination has laid out and planted for
the abode of the blessed beyond the grave.

The author of ' The Physical Theory of a Future Life,' judged
by this test, must be esteemed a wise and a happy man. Wise,
because, affecting no superhuman disdain of mere bodily gratifica-
tions, he has no fear of acknowledging to others, or to himself, the
dependence of his spiritual on his animal economy ; and happy,
because he must distinctly have experienced that unresisting ser-
vitude of the body to the soul, which he has so vividly described
as the great element of her serenity and freedom. Such as is his
solar Paradise, such must also have been his earthly Eden : the
first, his future blessedness in the highest conceivaljle measure ; the
last, his present happiness in the highest attainable degree. Sucli
a midsummer night's dream could have visited the slumbers of no
one whose fancy was tainted with sensual defilement, or wliose iu-

s s

626 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM,

tellect was untrained to active exercise and close self-inspection.
Or, if the theorist be really entitled to no higher praise than that
of having skilfully selected the most alluring possibilities of future
good from the many celestial schemes with which the poetry and
the fiction of all ages abound, yet even so it must be conceded that
the choice has been guided by opinions such as everyone must
wish to adopt, and by tastes which, in our better moments, we
bhould all desire to gratify.

If our theorist had constructed his heaven from the materials
gathered in his survey, not of his domestic, but of the outer world,
there would, we apprehend, have been but few aspirants for a trans-
lation to it. For, both the world Of active and the world of con-
templative life, as they exist beyond the precincts of his own
retirement, present themselves to him in dark and uninviting
aspects. He mourns over the low estate of theology among us,
and laments the degradation of all those higher intellectual pur-
suits with which theology maintains an indissoluble connection.
Acquainted, perhaps but too well, with the religious parties of our
State, their infirmities and their faults, he pours out eloquent
longings for the advent of a more catholic spirit, of piety more
intense and less ostentatious, and of a sacred literature animated
by some nobler impulse than the hire of booksellers and the praise
of ephemeral critics. His own labours for the happiness of man-
kind, do not seem to be well sustained by the cheering influence of
hope. His philanthropy is ever tinged with sadness. He loves
children, because they are exempt from the prevailing degeneracy ;
— and the face of nature, because it is the one unsullied reflection
of the benignity of the Creator ; — and the books of other times,
because they are the records of human wisdom, whose living voice
is no longer to be heard ; — and the Universal Church, because it
is the ark floating on the troubled waters of this evil time, freighted
with the best treasures, and charged with the destinies of our race.
Man also he loves, but with feeliags pensive if not melancholy,
and fastidious even when most benignant. In his many books
there is no tinge of spleen ; but they exhibit that disgust for the
follies and the vices of the world, which at once demands and
discourages exertion.

Casting off these depressing influences, he has, however, devoted
all the resources of a comprehensive understanding, and all the
affections of a benevolent heart, to correct the general debasement,
and to exhibit a model of those higher pursuits to which he would
reclaim his generation. Enthusiasts, fanatics, spiritual despots,
sciolists in education, the pastors who slumber within the fold, and
the robbers from without who spoil it, form a confederacy, tlie

THE IIISTORIAX OF ENTIIUSIASif. 627

assailant of which should be encouraged by llie gratitude of all
good men. If the soul of William Cowper yet breathes among
us, it is through the lips of the historian of Enthusiasm. Not,
indeed, that the poet has found a successor in the magic art of
establishing a personal and affectionate intimacy between himself
and his readers. There is no new fire-side like that of Olney
round which we can gather ; nor any walks like those of Weston
Underwood, of which we are the companions ; nor a heart at once
broken and playful, whose sorrows and amusements are our own ;
nor are we surrounded by a family group, with tame hares, spaniels,
bird-cages, and knitting-needles, as familiar to us as those of our
own boyhood, and almost as dear, — each in turn reflecting the
gentle, thoughtful, elevated mind of him to whom they belonged,
in all its vicissitudes of despondency and hope, of grave wsdom
and of a mirth as light and piu-e as that of infancy. This is the
high prerogative of genius, addressing mankind at large through
the vernacular idiom of one land in the universal language of all.
But Stanford Elvers has given birth to a succession of efforts to
exalt the national character, which might vie with those of Olney
and of Weston in piety and earnestness, in genuine freedom of
thought, in the relish for all the domestic pleasures and innocent
delights of life, in the filial love of God, and the brotherly love of
man.

Learning and logical acumen, and a wide acquaintance with the
history and the heart of man, which the poet neither possessed
nor needed, impart to the works of the essayist a charm, without
which it is vain, in these days, to interfere in the debates which
agitate society. There is a charm, too, even in his distaste for the
pursuits most in request amongst us ; for it springs from the gran-
deur of the ideal excellence by which his imagination is possessed.
He remembers that Omniscience, thouofh veiling its intimations in
the coarse mantle of human language, will occasionally emit some
gleams of that radiance which illumines the regions of the blessed ;
and these he would reverently gather and concentrate. He is
conscious that there is in Christianity an expansive power, some-
times repressed but never destroyed ; and that latent energy he
strives to draw forth into life and action. He perceives that the
mysteries which shroud the condition and the prospects of our
race, however inscrutable to the slaves of appetite, are not abso-
lately impervious to a soul purified by devout contemplation ; and
to these empyreal heights he aspires at once to point and to lead
the way. He knows that to him whose foot is firmly planted on
the eternal verities of Heaven, there belong motives of such force,
and a courage so imdaunted, as should burst through all resistance;

s s 2

6-28 THE HISTORIAN OF ENTHUSIASM.

and lie calls on those who enjoy this high privilege to assert their
native supremacy above the sordid ambition, the frivolities, and the
virulence of the lower world. The voice thus raised in expostu-
lation will die away, not indeed unheeded by the interior circle he
addresses, nor unblessed by a meet recompense ; bnt unrewarded,
we fear, by the accomplishment of these exalted purposes. Elo-
quent as is the indignation with which our anonymous monitor
regards the low level to which divine and human literature has
fallen amongst us, and mean as is his estimate of the pursuits in
which the men of his own days are engaged, a hope may perhaps,
without presumption, be indulged, that less fastidious and not less
capable judges will pronounce a more lenient sentence on us and
on our doings.

In the great cycle of human affairs there are many stages, each
essential to the consummation of the designs of Providence, and
each separated by broad distinctions from the rest. They whose
province it is to censure, and they wdiose desire it is to improve
their aofe, will never find their sacred fires extinct from the mere
want of fuel. History and theory are always at hand with humiliating
contrasts to the times we live in. That men have been better or
might be better than they are, has been true since the first fathers of
our race returned to their native dust, and will still be true as long
as our planet shall be inhabited by their descendants. But below
the agitated surface of the ocean, under-currents are silently urging
forward, on their destined path, the waters of the mighty deep,
themselves impelled by that Power which none may question or
resist. Human society obeys a similar influence. Laws as anoma-
lous in appearance, as uniform in reality, as those which direct the
planetary movements, determine the present state, and regulate
the progress of commonwealths, whether political, literary, or re-
ligious. Christianity demands the belief, and experience justifies
the hope, that their ultimate tendency is towards the universal
dominion of piety and virtue. But it is neither pious nor rational
to suppose, that this consummation can be attained by any sequence
of identical causes constantly working out similar effects.

The best generations, like the best men, are those which pos-
sess an individual and distinctive character. A chain of splendid
biographies constitutes the history of past centuries. Whoever
shall weave the chronicles of our own, must take for his staple not
biography but statistics, illuminated by a skilful generalisation.
Once every eye was directed to the leaders of the world ; now all
are turned to the masses of which it is composed. Instead of
Newtons presiding over Eoyal Societies, we have Dr. Birkbecks
lecturing at Mechanics' Institutes. If no \Yolseys arise to found

THE HISTORIAN OF EXTIIUSIASJf. 629

colleges like that of Cliristcliurch, Joseph Lancaster and William
Bell have emulated each other in works not less moment(jus at the
Borough Eoad and Baldwin's Gardens. We people continents,
though we have ceased to discover them. We al)]-idge folios for
the many, though we no longer write them for the few. Our
fathers compiled systems of divinity — we compose pocket theo-
logical libraries. They invented sciences, we apply them. Lite-
rature was once an oligarchy, it is now a republic. Our very
monitors are themselves infected by the degeneracy they dejjlore.
For the majestic cadence of JNlilton, and the ^voluptuous flow of
Jeremy Taylor's periods, they substitute the rhetorical philosophy,
invented some fifty years since, to countervail the philosophical
rhetoric of the French Eevolution ; and put forth, in a collection
of essays for the drawing-room, reproofs which the hands of
Prynne would have moulded into learned, fierce, and ponderous
folios.

It is impossible to prevent — is it wise to bewail ? — this change
in our social and intellectual habits. During the inundations of
the Nile, the worship of the mysterious river ceased, and no hymns
were heard to celebrate its glories. Idolatry had lost its stay, and
imagination her excitement : but the laud was fertilised. Learning,
once banked up in universities and cathedrals, is now diffused
through shops and factories. The stream, then so profovmd and
limpid, may now, perhaps, be both shallow and muddy. But i» it
better that the thirst of a whole nation should be thus slaked, or
that the immortals should be quaffing their nectar apart in sublime
abstraction from the multitude ? There is no immediate and
practicable reconcilement of these advantages. Genius, and wit,
and science, and whatever else raises man above his fellows, must
bend to the universal motives of human conduct. When honour,
wealth, public gratitude, and the sense of good desert, reward
those who teach elementary truth to the people at large, the
wisest and the best will devote to that office powers, which, in a
different age, would have been consecrated to more splendid,
though not perhaps to more worthy undertakings.

In the state of letters, there is no maintaining a polity in which
the three elements of power are blended together in harmonious
counterpoise. There a monarch infallibly becomes a despot, and a
democracy subjugates to itself whatever else is eminent or illus-
trious. Divines, poets, and philosophers, addressing millions of
readers and myriads of critics, are immediately rewarded by an
applause, or punished by a neglect, to which it is not given to
mortal man to be superior or indifferent. Inform the national
mind, and improve the general taste, up to a certain point, and to

630 THE IIISTOEUX OF EXTIIUSLiSM.

that point you inevitably depress the efforts of those who are boru
to instruct the rest. Had Spenser flourished in the nineteenth
century, would he have aspired to produce the Faery Queen ? Had
Walter Scott lived in the sixteenth, would he have condescended to
write the Lady of the Lake? Our great men are less great because
our ordinary men are less abject. These lamentations over the
results of this compromise are rather pathetic than just. It forms
one indispensable chapter in the natural history of a people's intel-
lectual progress. It is one of the stages through which the national
mind must pass towards the general elevation of literature, sacred
and profane. We know not how to regret that genius has for the
moment abdicated her austere supremacy, and stooped to be popular
and plain. Mackintosh suspended his philosophy for the compila-
tion of a familiar History of England. Faithless to his Peris and
Grlendoveers, Mr. Moore turned chronicler to teach to the reading
commonalty of the realm the sad tale of the woes inflicted on the
land of his birth. No longer emulous of Person, the Bishop of
London devotes his learned leisure to preparing cheap and easy
lessons for the householders of his diocese. Lord Brougham arrests
the current of his eloquence, to instruct mechanics in the principles
of the sciences which they are reducing to daily practice. Tracts
for the times are extorted from the depositories of ecclesiastical
tradition, obedient to the general impulse which they condemn,
and constrained to render the Church argumentative, that they may
render her oracular. Nay, the author of the • Natural History of
Enthusiasm ' himself, despite his own protests, yielding at length
to the current, has become the periodical writer of monthly tracts,
where, in good round controversial terms, the superficial multitude
are called to sit in judgment on the claims of the early fathers to
sound doctrine, good morals, and common sense. Let who will
repine at what has passed, and at what is passing, if they will
allow us to rejoice in what is to come. If we witness the growth
of no immortal reputations, we see the expansion of universal in-
telligence. The disparities of human understanding are much the
same in all times ; but Avhen the general level shall be the highest,
then \vill the mighty of the earth rise to the most commanding
eminences.

But whatever may be the justice of the hopes we thus indulge
for future generations, our business is with ourselves. If, as we
think, they are well judging who devote the best gifts of nature
and of learning to the instruction of the illiterate, the praise of
wisdom is not to be denied to such as write with the more ambi-
tious aim of stimulating the nobler intellects amongst us to enter-
prises commensurate with their elevated powers. No strenuous

THE IIISTORIAX OF EXTIIUSIASif. 631

effort for the goo I of inaukiud was ever yet marie altogetlier in
vaiu ; nor will those of our author be fruitless, though the results
may fall far short of his aspirations. The general currents of
thought and action can never be diverted from their chaimels, ex-
cept by minds as rarely produced as they are wonderfully endowed.
Energy, decision, and a self-reliance independent of human praise
or censure, are amongst the invariable characteristics of such
master intellects. To this sublime order of men the Recluse of
Stanford Rivers does not belong. Nor can a place be assigned to
him among those calmer spirits, whose inventive genius, or popular
eloquence, has enabled them from their solitudes to cast on the
agitated mass of society seeds of thought destined at some future
period to change the aspect of human affairs. He is an inde-
pendent more than an original thinker. He is rather exempt
from fear than animated by ardent courage in announcing the
fruits of his inquiries. A great master of language, he is himself
but too often mastered by it. He is too much the creature to
become the reformer of his age. His assiduity to please is fatal to
his desire to command. His efforts to move the will are defeated
by his success in dazzling the fancy. Yet his books exhibit a
character, .both moral and intellectual, from the study of which the
reader can hardly fail to rise a wiser and a better man. Standing
aloof from all vulgar excitements, heedless of the transient politics
and the fugitive literature of his times, and intent only on the
permanent interests of mankind, he has laboured to promote them
with an honest love of truth, aided by brilliant talents, compre-
hensive knowledge, and undaunted intrepidity. And thus he has
come under the guidance of principles, which no man can cultivate
in his own bosom, or earnestly impart to other minds, without
earning a reward which will render human applause insignificant,
or reduce the neglect of the world to a matter of comparative
indifference.

s s 4

G3-2

THE EPILOGUE.

On the original appearance in the 'Edinljurgh Review' of the
Essays contained in these volumes, they were condemned, by some,
as casting only a fm-tive and timid glance at those sacred topics
which must lie at the foundation of all ecclesiastial biography. To
the author himself, however, it had appeared impossible to assign
to such topics their due prominence in a journal devoted to science,
to literatvire, and to politics. But, on republishing these papers
in his own person, and with his name, he contracts and acknow-
ledges the obligation to supply, as far as may be in his power, the
omissions which formerly appeared to him inevitable. He is even
solicitous to avow, without reserve, the opinions which have been
rather suggested or assumed, than explicitly stated, in the preceding
pages. Having celebrated, with almost equal zeal, the characters
of many who maintained creeds and worshipped under forms
widely contrasted with each other, he is desirous to disclaim that
state of mind to which all religious distinctions are insignificant,
and to explain why the reverence of all the members of the great
Christian family is, in his judgment, due alike to many who have
belonged to each of the great sections of which it is composed.
Great as must be his liability to error on such a subject, he
rejoices to know that such errors can hardly be injurious to
any one. No authority will be attached by any other inquirer
to the mere ' Guesses at Truth ' of a man, who (unlike the
profound and large-minded scholars who have appropriated that
title to some of their maturest thoughts) is destitute of the
advantage of a theological education, and has throughout his
life been deeply involved, with scarcely any interval, in secular
affairs. Yet, to assist as far as possible in the detection of any
fallacies by which he may have been misled, he will attempt to
render an account of the reasons by which he has been guided ;
taking his departure from principles which he supposes to be
elementary.

From our Redeemer himself we have learnt what are the two
commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets.

THE EPILOfiUE. GJ3

From the disciple who lay in his bosom, and whom he selected as
the channel of his higher revelations, we have learnt what are the
two truths on which hang all the other doctrines of the Gospel.
The first is, that Grod is light — the second is, that God is love.

God is liglit. He is light, inherent, pure, and inexhaustible.
He is also light diffusive, or ' the Father of lights.' From him, as
from an ever-salient fountain, light flows out to his whole animate
creation. But to each different order of living beings it flows in
infinitely varied degrees of intensity and clearness. It comes to
each through various mediums by which it is refracted. It is dis-
coloured in each by the corruptions of the recipient, or obscured
by their infirmities. Light, though from Heaven itself, when
transmitted through the exhalations of earth, may mislead even
those whom it illuminates.

From God we derive the light of our Animal Instincts — that is,
om- natural appetencies, and our natural aversions towards material
things. But the sorrows of a world, groaning beneath the curse of
intemperance, proclaim that they who were formed in the ima^-e
and likeness of their Creator, can never be guided into the ways of
wisdom, or into the paths of peace by appetite alone.

From God we derive the light of our Sensitive Instincts — that is,
those sympathies and antipathies which are the bonds of attach-
ment or the sources of disvmion amongst mankind. But to trust to
our passions alone to conduct us to the repose of the soul — the
haven of our rest and our true happiness — would be as reasonable
as to navigate the ocean without rudder, chart, or compass, at the
bidding of each shifting breeze and devious current.

From God we derive the light of our Intellectual Instincts —
that is, those intuitions or convictions of the mind which are
common to the whole race of man, which form the latent basis of
all our argumentations, and to which we inevitably, though often
unconsciously, refer as the test by which to ascertain the soimdness
of all our inferences. Such, for example, is the indestructible
belief in our own individuality — in the reality of the relation of
cause and effect — in the real existence of the objects revealed to us
by our senses — in the recurrence of the same sequences when all
the antecedents are the same — with many other of those first
principles which are implied in all our words, and assumed in all
our thoughts. Yet how insufficient these first axioms are to lead
us to true wisdom, is attested by the incurable discords of the
wisest. There are depths of ignorance, and abysses of self-inflicted
misery, into which the possession of these great elements of know-
ledge has never prevented, and never can prevent, the great body
of mankind from plunging.

634 THE EPILOGUE.

From God we derive the light of our Judicial Instincts — that
is, of conscience, the interior tribunal by which we are either
approved or condemned, in the use we make of that measure
of free will and of free agency which is entrusted to us. This
is the restraint which the Author of that awful power has
imposed on the improper, the capricious, or the arbitrary use of
it. But the accuracy of all judicial sentences depends on the
knowledge, the capacity, the patience, and the impartiality of the
judge. Who will venture to claim for the judge within his own
bosom, the possession of those qualifications in a perfect, or even
in an eminent degree ? In what tongue or language has not the
blindness of self-love passed into a proverb ? Who is the man
whose mental vision is not obstructed by some beam, as often as it
is directed to the survey of his own heart, or of his own conduct ?

From Grod we derive the light of our Moral Instincts — that is,
of those pains and pleasures which wait on the judgments of the
conscience, and form the sanctions of the law written on the heart.
This sensibility renders us the executioners on ourselves of the sen-
tences authorised by that law, and promulgated by that judge. If
those sentences were invariably right, and if they as invariably
awakened in us the corresponding sentiment, whether pleasurable
or painful, in its proper measure and due intensity, the constitution
of our nature would be perfect, and sin and sorrow would take their
flight from our world. But the light of moral sentiment fails us
because our self-adjudications are so often erroneous, and because
our sensibility is svibject to a continual decay. Like our other
affections, it retains its vitality and power, just so far as it is per-
mitted to regulate our conduct, and no farther. Emotions, followed
by no practical results, first become dormant and then extinct ; and
this is true of self-complacency and of remorse, as much as of any
other of our feelings.

From God we derive the light of our Social Instincts — that is,
the reflected light of the judgments of other men. By adopting
their opinions, we become, as it were, spectators of the stage on
which we are ourselves the actors, and applaud or condemn our own
conduct with a sort of borrowed impartiality. But the same social
nature which bestows this light also obscures it. For that nature
induces or rather constrains us to adjust our own standard of right
and wrong to the level of the maxims, the habits, and the senti-
ments of the society of which we are members, however low that
level may happen to be.

From God we derive the light of Understanding — that is, of
the faculty which observes and reflects, which collects, premises,
and deduces inferences; which has truth for its object and logic

THE EriLOCiUE. (;35

for its guide. They who are most largely endowed with this mental
power, are accustomed to assign to it a supremacy to wliicli it is,
in their judgment, absurd to suppose that any other faculty of the
mind can be superior or co-ordinate. They maintain, that he wlio
argues against the absolute dominion of the intellect admits, in
effect, the very proposition which he denies in terms ; and attempts,
by a process of reasoning, to sliow that reasoning is not a pro-
cess on which reliance may be placed. Yet the idolators of tlie
human understanding had need be sustained by a very potent
faith. Our dialectics have indeed ascertained some of the laws of
the material world. But what is that problem, in the inquiries
which most concern us, of which they have afforded to mankind a
solution in which all unanimously acquiesce? What has the
logical faculty ascertained respecting our relations to Him who
made us — or our duties to Him or to each other — or our prospects
beyond the grave — or the structure of our minds — or tlie relation
of the mind to the body— or even respecting our highest tem-
poral interests in political, social, and domestic life ? On tliese
topics the logicians of every age have been labouring since the
creation of our race. Is there one moral truth which they have
placed beyond the reach of controversy? Is there any one false-
hood in moral science on which they have inflicted an incurable
death wound? One position, indeed, and only one, relating to
things not material, they seem to have made unassailably secure.
It is the position, that logic can discover for us guides more
trustworthy than itself, and can demonstrate their authority over us.
And to have conducted us to such guides is, in fact, the highest
triumph which the human understanding can boast.

From Grod we derive the light of Human Authority — that is,
the teaching of our fellow men, whether they address us by the
voice of ancient tradition, or of modern opinion — whether they
speak to us as parents or as preceptors, as philosophers or as divines.
Yet so inconsistent are the demands made upon our assent by our
various teachers, and so nearly do their claims to our confidence
seem to balance each other, that the injunction to 'call no man
master,' had been laid upon us by human wisdom, long before it
was sanctioned by Him in whom was impersonated the fulness of
the divine wisdom.

From God we derive the light of Revelation — and what tongue,
of men or of angels, can converse in terms befitting so lofty a
theme ? The Holy Scriptures differ from other writings in kind,
rather than in degree. They, and they alone, have taught us
whatever it most concerns us to know of Him who made us, and of
ourselves — of the relations in which we stand to Him, and of the

G36 THE EPILOGUE.

duties wliich those relations impose upon us. They, and they
only, have disclosed to us the nature, the consequences, and the
remedies of sin. In them we have the portniiture, not elsewhere
to be found, of the highest perfection attainable by our fallen
humanity, and of that infinitely higher perfection which, though
ideal in our race, was real and absolute in Him who lived and died
to redeem us. The Bible is the sanctuary from out of which issue
voices adapted to every exigency of human life, and to every
various form of human utterance ; but, amidst that boundless
variety, all harmonious in the inculcation of a holiness otherwise
unknown and unimagined amongst men. It is the point of con-
vergence where meet history and biography, sacred song and
weighty apophthegm, parable and proverb, law and prophecy, argu-
ment and expostulation, all steeped and imbued in the colours of
our mortal nature, and moulded into its forms, and yet all instinct
with the divinity of their common origin. It is the joint work of
princes and of peasants, of sages and of fishermen, of saints and of
publicans, all speaking in the same elevated tone, and all breath-
ing the same pure spirit, through a long succession of fifteen cen-
turies. It everywhere points to one great Being as the common
object and centre of all revealed truth ; an incarnation of deity,
towards whom prophets and evangelists alike direct their adoring
gaze, who imparts unity of design to the whole composition, and
in whom the incommunicable attributes of the divine nature are
reconciled with the essential conditions of the nature of man.

And yet what is that doctrine, what that ecclesiastical polity,
what that system of moral obligation, in support of which the Bible
is not confidently quoted by contending multitudes ? The Catholic
finds in it seven sacraments. The Quaker discovers t ' at in the
system of the sacred writers, sacraments have no place or existence
whatever. To the adherents of the Nicene Creed the Scriptures
disclose a doctrine which reduces the thoughts of the heart to the
silent adoration of a mystery incapable of adequate expression.
To those who reject that creed, the same pages appear to declare
that doctrine to be nothing less than a profane idolatry. To the
followers of Augustine, the Bible appears to teach fatalism ; to the
disciples of Pelagius, an arbitrary freedom of the human will, and
the consequent contingency of all the events of human life. Some
find in revelation commands to baptize infants, to keep holy the
first day of the week, and to revere in bishops the legitimate suc-
cessors of the apostles ; while others declare that it is absolutely
silent on all these subjects. The necessity of a virtuous life to a
happy existence after death is, to some eyes, disclosed in the Word
of God as with a sunbeam : and there are those who declare them-

THE EPILOGUE. €37

selves unable to discover in it the announcement of any sncl> in
dispensable connection. Thus, with the same end in view, and
with the same guide-book in their hands, crowds are thronging
different, nay, opposite paths, and all asserting, with apparently
equal confidence, that the path they pursue is that which the Book
prescribes.

Shall we then conclude that this celestial guide is erroneous or
ec[uivocal ? God forbid ! Or shall we say, that of the so many
paths thus pursued by so many contending sects, there is one, and
only one, which is trodden by the honest, the candid, and the up-
right, and that all who deviate from that one path, are the victims
of their own levity, or prejudice, or insincerity? Or may we not
find some other explanation of this phenomenon, compatible at
once Avith the reverence due to the sacred canon, and with the
charity due by every man to his brother ?

First, then, let it be considered that whenever the divine voice
breaks the otherwise uninterrupted silence between heaven and
earth, such an occurrence supposes either that man shall be pre-
pared for the reception of that voice by some organic change in his
nature, or that his Creator should address him in human language.
But human language being impressed with all the infirmities, and
darkened by all the mental obscurities of those wlio have invented,
employed, and modified it, must be a most imperfect vehicle and
exponent of thought. Consequently, communications reaching us,
even from the Deity himself, througli the channel of our own words
and ideas, must partake, more or less, of the indistinctness and
ambiguity inseparable from all our thoughts and all our discourse.

Nor must it be forgotten that the Scriptures are written in lan-
guages totally unknown to the vast body of those who read them,
and that incomparably the most important part of the Scriptures
(that is, the words of our Lord and Saviour himself) are known
to the most learned only by a translation. Here, then, is another
source of the diversity of our judgments about the real sense of
the Word of God. For example, the whole controversy regard-
ing transubstantiation rests on the- precise meaning of a Greek
sentence, tovto sari to aMfid [jlov; words which it is perfectly cer-
tain that Christ never uttered. In this, as in other cases, we can
only conjecture what his very words were ; and, in the wide field
of conjecture, it is morally impossible that a real unanimity of
judgment should prevail.

This source of doubt was inevitable. If our divine Master
had spoken to the multitudes which thronged him, or even to the
chosen twelve, in the tongues of Greece or of Rome, He would
have been unintelligible to them ; for, until the day of Pentecost

6?8 THE EPILOGUE.

even Peter and John were perceived to be ' unlearned and igno-
rant men.' The S3'ro-ChahU\ic was, therefore, the only articulate
speech through which it was possible that Christ should reach and
inform their understandings. Doubtless, indeed, had such been
His good pleasure. He might have employed for that purpose the
language of Plato or of Cicero, and might have miraculously en-
abled His auditors first to understand, and afterwards to record his
words. But adorable was the wisdom and the grace which de-
cided otherwise ! If we had possessed in Grreek or in Latin the
very expressions of Him who spake as never man spake, what
would have been the unavoidable result ? What but this — that
the Scaligers and the Bentleys of each successive age would have
usurped over the minds of their illiterate fellow Christians an
authority even more despotic than that which they have hitherto
claimed and exercised ? Our blessed Lord did not see fit that
linguists, and critics, and grammarians, and lexicographers should
thus be enabled to interpose between Himself and those whom,
until the end of time, He condescended to instruct. Speaking
through his original audience to all nations, and people, and
tongues, and kindred of the earth. He employed an universal lan-
guage — a language of which the sense is still essentially the same,
and is still perceptible, in substance, to every honest inquirer, in
all the various versions into which it has been translated, in all the
dialects and idioms of mankind. It is the language of parable
and proverb, of metaphor and of contrast. It is a language steeped
in an imagery drawn froin whatever is most familiar, pathetic,
and beautiful, in the homely realities of man's daily existence.
It is a language which at once interprets to us the life of Him
by whom it was uttered, and receives from His life its own
most constant, simple, and impressive interpretation. Suppose
that the story of the Prodigal Son, or of the Rich Man and Lazarus,
— that the parable of the Sower, or of the Talents, — that the
benediction on Mary of Bethany, or the lamentation over Jeru-
salem, — that tlie Sermon on the Mount, or the awful prayer
poiued out immediately before He entered into the garden with
his disciples, — had been pronounced, not in the Syro-Chaldaic
tongue, but in the language of the Academy, and had been re-
corded for our information in the precise form of words in which
they were so delivered, could they have conveyed their real mean-
ing with more precision or with greater force ? Could they have
been more universally welcomed, or more thoroughly digested by
all the families of man, in all the varying conditions of man's
mortal existence ? Would they have borne a more distinct or in-
delible impress of His divine love and wisdom ? Would they have

THE EPILOGUE. 639

better fulfilled those purposes of mercy which dictfited them ? Or
rather, would not such a transmission from one generation to an-
other of the very words of our Great Teacher, even though in the
glorious speech of Athens, have caused them to be degraded, still,
more than they have hitherto been degraded, into themes of philo-
logical debate, for learned trifling, for arrogant criticism, and for
the dogmatical interpretations of those who, at all times, aspire to
a scholastic lordship over the heritage of Christ ? How narrow
the capacity, how feeble the faith, which cannot or will not per-
ceive that, in employing not the noblest and the most subtle, but
one of the poorest and least elevated of the instruments of dis-
course ever used among civilised men, the Saviour of our race de-
monstrated that his thoughts were not as om- thoughts ; but that,
when enveloped in any garb of human speech, however humble,
they would pass freely and unmutilated from mind to mind, from
nation to nation, and from age to age, by a law applying to them
alone, and inapplicable to the highest conceptions, and to the most
eloquent discourse, of any created intelligence !

There are also large opportunites for honest differences of inter-
pretation of Holy Scripture, arising from the admitted variations
between the different books of the Bible, and the different parts of
the same books, in what respects the plenitude of the inspiration of
each. Without entering on a subject so replete with difficulty, it
may sufficiently explain the disagreements of Christians in the con-
clusions which they gather from the Bible, that the Bible of the
greater number of them contains many books which are excluded
from the Bible of the minority ; and that few, if any, educated
men, acknowledge the same authority in every passage of what they
receive as holy writ, or have come to any clear agreement as to the
passages to which the highest sanction belongs.

But a far more important explanation than any of these, of the
discord between interpreters, is to be found in the very structure
and design both of the Old Testament and of the New. Tbey are
not, and were never meant to be, what Urim and Thummim once
were. They have no positive mandates or oracular responses for
the guidance of individual inquirers in specific cases. The sortes
sanctorum were as gross a superstition as searching the entrails of
victims, or watching the flight of birds. The Bible speaks not to
the eye, but to the intellect — not to the ear, but to the soul. It
yields its precious ores not to those who merely search the surface,
but to those only who laboriously penetrate its mines. To extract
the real spirit of any one passage, many passages must be studied.

To become a scriptural interpreter, a man must have a scri})tural
mind, and be living a scriptural life. To those who approach this

643 THE EPILOGUE.

divine light, in any temper less diligent or less devout than this, it
opens innumerable sources of error. The Bible abounds in examples,
some of which were never designed to be models for the imitation
of any one, and many of which are unfit for our own imitation. It
abounds in threatenings and promises detached from their implied,
though real, conditions. It has many precepts thrown into the form
of paradox — many parables involved in purposed obsciuity — many
sacred songs in which the genius of jaoetry expands itself in the
abrupt, elliptical, and figurative language of imagination and pas-
sion — many proverbs in which epigram and antithesis are employed
to embellish the bald precision of moral truth — many dramatic
dialogues, in which the conflict of opinion supposes some of the in-
terlocutors to speak erroneously — many letters of which we under-
stand most imperfectly the occasions, the allusions, and the context

— and innumerable references to customs, to laws, to modes of
thought, and modes of action, many of which are utterly foreign to
our own.

Is it, then, any reasonable cause of surprise, that the different
students of the Bible should deduce from it so great a variety of
conflicting opinions, and of rules of conduct opposed to each other?

— or that so vast an accumulation of narratives and parables, of
threatenings and promises, of hymns and proverbs, of letters and
prophecies, thrown out in so free a spirit, and so usually discon-
nected from the restrictions and qualifications contemplated by their
authors, should be intelligible only to the few who carefully collate,
diligently balance, and devoutly meditate them ?

From God we derive that true light which lighteth every man
that Cometh into the world — that is, the light that emanates from
the person of Christ himself. He is revealed to us, not as a mere
teacher or prophet, but as in all ages a real and living presence in
his Church — as one to whom we bear a spiritual consanguinity —
as at once high and l.oly in a sense which no human language can
express, and yet a very man, bone of our bone, and flesh of our
flesh — as so intimately known to us, that in every exigency of our
own lives, imagination can place him before us as at once an ex-
ample and a monitor — as satisfying that craving of our nature,
which, in its abuse, conducts us to idolatry, by reducing what would
otherwise be an impersonal, and almost evanescent abstraction, into
a definite, palpable, and familiar form — as sympathising with all
our feelings which are either good or blameless, and as pitying,
even while he condemns, the feelings fatal to our own happiness —
as having partaken of all our sorrows, and of some of our innocent
and highest enjoyments — as at once our atoning sacrifice, and the
high priest by whom that sacrifice is offered — as Himself the Way,

THE EPILOGUE. 641

the Truth, and the Life — as the Head in wliich all the members
are united, the Stem from which all the branches draw their nutri-
ment, the Shepherd by whom all the flock are gathered and pro-
tected within the same fold.

From God, also, we derive that awful interior light which the
dying Saviour promised, and which the ascending Saviour bestowed
— that other glory of the Christian system, and inestimable privi-
lege of the Christian Church, by means of which the definite, the
palpable, and the familiar is withdrawn, to make way for a presence
(undefinable, imperceptible, yet not impersonal) of holiness, of
power, and of love — a j^resence dwelling in a silent, though real
communion with the intellect and the affections of man — a pre-
sence invoked by prayer, retained b}'' obedience, grieved by sin, and
excluded by obduracy — a presence which suggests to the soul all
heaven-born thoughts, and casts out all unhallowed imaginations,
and awakens that dawn of day which, if unobsfructed by our own
perverseness, Avill gradually heighten to the very noontide of spiri-
tual wisdom.

It may seem a mere contradiction to assert or to suppose that in
this rich effluence of light derived from Him whom we adore as
incarnate Deity, and from Him whom we revere as indwelling
Deity, darkness should yet overcast the faculties we derive from
Him whom we worship as creative Deity. It should, however, be
considered, that it is to the pure in heart, and to them alone, that
it is permitted to see Grod — that it is only if the eye be single that
the body can be full of light — that if the light within us be dark-
ness, there is no measure for the depth of that darkness — that as
to the production of vision by the material eye, it is necessary not
only that the pure rays of light should reach the retina, but that
the component humours of the eye itself should be blended toge-
ther in limpid purity; so light, though proceeding from Deity
himself, will produce no optical result on the mental lens which is
darkened by the predominance of sensuality, or worldly minded-
ness, or any other debasing passion.

Thus placed at the point of convergence of so many distinct
beams of light, all originally springing from the same heavenly
source, yet all distorted and discoloured or obstructed in their pro-
gress by the mediums through which they pass, man, even when
gifted with the clearest and the strongest vision, cannot but be to
a great extent perplexed and confused. His instincts, his under-
standing, his conscience, his moral sentiments, his human teachers,
his written oracles, his divine guides, all address him in voices
which, though capable of reconcilement, cannot always be promptly
reconciled. If he refuses his attention and reverence to any one

T T

G42 THE EPILOGUE.

of them, it is at the imminent hazard of inducing a misappre-
hension of the meaning of the rest. To perceive and seize the
harmony which pervades them all, is the great triumph and the
high reward of wisdom. To be deaf to that harmony, is the
almost universal condition of those who, without reason, claim to
be wise.

Perfectly to combine into one pencil all the confluent rays of
these various lights from heaven, — harmoniously to unite in one
strain all these voices, which reach us simultaneously from the
same divine source of knowledge, — is an attainment so sublime
and arduous, as to baffle the utmost efforts of our unaided reason.
Yet it is an attainment indispensable to the formation in the heart
of man of that living similitude to Christ himself in which all true
Christianity consists. Reverently, therefore, but with unhesitating
confidence, we turn to the revealed word of Grod for assistance in
this great exigency of our intellectual and moral nature, and in
that word we read that all-embracing truth, which Christ himself
lived to illustrate in action, and which it was given to His beloved
disciple to concentrate in speech, — the truth, namely, that ' God
is love.'

The Hebrew psalmist knew, and even the Grecian rhapsodists
occasionally surmised, that ' God is loving unto every man, and
that His mercy is over all His works.' That God is love, is an
infinitely deeper discovery. It reveals to us that awful Being, who
is so infinitely exalted above our knowledge, as admitting of some
approach to definition by that sentiment which, of all others, is
the most familiar to our consciousness. It enables us to discern,
however faintly and obscurely, the moral nature of our Creator in
the yet remaining traces in ourselves of His own image and like-
ness, in which our first progenitor was created.

He who acknowledges Deity, must also acknowledge that He is
the ' Father Almighty, the Maker of all things visible and invisi-
ble.' This is, indeed, the indispensable basis of all truth, physical,
moral, and religious. It is denied by no man possessing a reason-
able imderstanding, — probably by no man of a sane mind. But
the inferences deduced from it by some of our teachers are of far
inferior authority. Of those inferences, one of the most ancient,
and the most commonly received is, that the eternity of matter is
a dogma inconsistent with theism. For (it is alleged) the cause
must of necessity precede the effect. The produce can never exist
except in sequence to the producer. The maker of any thing
must needs have existed in priority to that which he has made.
The maker of all things must have had his being when as yet there
was no other thing. But that being could itself have had no com-

THE EPILOGUE. 643

mencement. There was, therefore (so it is inferred), an eternity
inhabited by Deity alone, in a profound and unbroken solitude,
before the creation of the material or immaterial universe.

Now they who thus reason are taking for granted, that whatever
is universally true of those modes of existence with which we are
conversant, must also be true of all other modes of existence.
They assume that time — that is, the succession of events or of
thoughts, — is an eternal, an universal, and a necessary part of the
law of all being. They thus ascribe the properties of time to
eternity, — that is, to a state in which, by the hypothesis, time was
not. They venture to discourse of an eternity, which, on reaching
a certain epoch, came to an end ! and indulge in the use of words,
to which it is impossible either for themselves or for any one else to
attach any real meaning. This extravagant and presumptuous dog-
matising in the science of universal ontology is, however, only one
of the futile attempts which man so continually makes to overleap
the impassable limits of his knowledge. Speculations so wild and
so audacious w^ould be best opposed by silence, were they not urgent
to consequences which demand at least a transient notice. Among
those consequences is the irreverent assumption that until some
definite era. He who is love had no object and no exercise for that
essential condition of his very being. But, apart from such as-
sumption, the purest theism has nothing at variance with the belief
that the eternal fountain of life has been salient from all eternity —
that the creation is coeval with the Creator — that to impart ex-
istence to subordinate intelligence is one of the inherent attributes
of Grod — and that the Almighty Source of such derivative minds,
has ever been pleased to assign to them some local abode and some
bodily integument.

As the objects of saints were formed not for themselves, but for
the sentient minds to whose wants they minister ; so those sentient
minds were called into existence not for themselves, but for Him by
whose fiat they were made. And that prolific volition, what else
was it, but the will of Him who is love, tlaat His throne should be
girt about by a countless host of spirits, whom He might regard with
complacency, and enrich by His beneficence ?

But for complacency, that is, for the love of a moral agent, there
can be no place unless that agent possesses some inherent power
within the limits of which he is free. A mere machine, though the
mechanism be intellectual or moral, can never be the object of ap-
probation or of esteem to any one who is aware that it has no spon-
taneous movements. Compulsory action can never win for him by
whom it is performed the favour or the kindly regards of any one ;
not even of him in whose service the agent is employed.

T T 2

644 "THE EriLOGUE".

Man was thus created free, that he might be one of the objects
of the love of his Creator. Hence it followed, as an inevitable con-
sequence, that the Creator demanded from that free agent a return
of love. To human apprehension, at least, it is an impossibility
that the subject of love should not desire to be the object of love.
Accordingly, the first and great commandment was, ' Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.' And the second was
like unto it. The common Father of all mankind, regarding all His
children with love, could not but desire, for the sake of all, that
mutual love should prevail among them. He therefore commanded
each one to love his neighbour as himself.

But love which is not spontaneous, is love in name only, not in
reality. It was of necessity left in the choice of man, either to
render to his Maker the required tribute of affection, or to with-
hold it. The very purpose of his creation required that he should
be free to fulfil the great commandment, or to infringe it ; that he
should be at liberty to do good, or to do evil — to be holy, or to be
sinful. In a world created by Him who is love, in order to satisf}^
that immutable condition of his own being, there must there-
fore of necessity have been a place for the appearance of moral
evil.

But moral evil, or the withholding from the Author of our being
the love which He demands, must be the parent of physical evil,
that is, of pain, of suffering, or of sorrow. For that which infinite
love, directed by omniscience, commands, must be the highest
good of him to whom the command is addressed ; and disobedience
to such commands must consequently be the suicidal abandonment
and rejection of haj^piness. To prevent that suicide, or to reclaim
the self-destroyer into the ways of peace, love will resort to a dis-
cipline as stern, severe, and formidable as the inveteracy of the
moral disorder may require. Such love will never degenerate into
fondness, nor shrink from the infliction of any remedial punish-
ment, however protracted or acute.

As love can clothe and conceal itself in a wholesome rigour to
the disobedient, so it cannot but manifest itself in an indignant
jealousy to the faithless. The first injunction of the Decalogue is,
that we regard Jehovah as our only Grod ; the last is, in effect, that
we do not alienate our hearts from Him to any sublunary good.
The commands which intervene between these two, are all denun-
ciations of His rivals in our hearts ; that is, of idol worship, of
irreverence, of irreligion, of self-will, of selfishness, of sensuality, of
fraud, and of falsehood. With such rivals, He bids us know that
He will endure no compromise.

THE EPILOGUE. GJ5

But love is prompt to pardon, easily entreated, long suffering,
and kind. The parental love, beneath the care of which we live,
arrests the discipline, and restrains the holy jealousy which we
provoke. He remembers that we are but dust, and will not always
chide, nor keep His anger for ever ; but exhibits to us a mercy as
high as the heavens are above the earth, and puts away our sins
from us, as far as the east is from the west.

Love is indulgent, ingenious, and profuse, in the multiplication
of its bounties, and especially of those bounties which have blame-
less delight for their only assignable object. Hence all the in-
definitely varied tastes, desires, and appetites of man, and tlie
endless resources provided for the gratification of them. Philoso[)hy
has laboured to explain what is the sublime, and what the beau-
tiful. Theology, declining these problems, finds that the sublime
and the beautiful reside in that correspondence between the mind
and the objects of its perception, which the love of the Creator has
established, in order to elevate the thoughts, and to gladden the
hearts of His family on earth.

Love necessarily seeks an intercourse with those towards whom
it is directed ; and therefore, in infinite condescension to our weak-
ness, our Father in heaven was pleased to infuse the Divine Logos*,
his own communicative energy, into one of the children of Adam,
and through him, to impart to us the loftiest thoughts and the
holiest aspirations of which our humanity is susceptible. When
that presence was withdrawn, and that once audible discourse
became silent, the same love opened another channel of intercourse

* If, as I have been informed, this expression, and some similar words in a
following' page, are susceptible of a meaning opposed to that of the creeds and
articles of the Church of England, I have been most infelicitous in my choice
of language. To myself mj^ words appear nothing else than a faithfvd ti-ansla-
tiou of those formidaries on the subject of the incarnation, into tenns less
scholastic and more popular. But if anyone finds in them more or less respect-
ing that mysterious doctrine than he finds in the Book of Common Prayer, let
him be assured that the seeming contradiction results from my unskilfidness in
the use of theological phraseology, and not from the A'cry slightest pui-pose of
mine to dogmatise on a topic so sacred, and which to me at least is so impene-
trably dark, obscure, and incomprehensible. Without the aid to be derived
from the primeval traditions of the Church, it would be utterly impossible to
myself (I do not believe that it woidd be in the power of any other man) to
exhibit this or any other of the great mysteries of the Christian faith in a series
of coherent, definite, and intelligible propositions. But believing the Chiu"ch of
England to be one of the depositoiies of those traditions, I gratefully accept her
guidance in the darkness by which I am siuTOunded. I regard her creeds and
her other fonnularies as accurate and faithful representations of divine truth ;
though not, 1 confess, without venturing to think that they also exhibit many
traces of the infirmities of the wisest, and of the faults of the best of the children
of men.

T T 3

646 THE EPILOGUE.

with maukind ; even that iutercourse which the indwelling Com-
forter maintains with the spirit and the intellect of every true
Christian, soothing his cares, animating his resolves, renewing his
strength, enlarging his capacity, enlightening his path, and sancti-
fying his affections.

And love is ever prompt to make costly self-sacrifices. No speech
or language in use among mankind can express, because no human
intelligence can conceive, the true sense of that revelation which
exhibits to us Him who is love, as becoming, in the person of His
Son, a sacrifice for us. Alas, for the foolishness which has agitated
the world in the attempt to embrace or to analyse so profound a
mystery ! Our debates about the incarnation and the atonement,
resemble nothing more than the discussions which some one has
supposed to take place among the animalculse detected by our mi-
croscopes, about the mechanism of the celestial orbs, made known
to us by our telescopes. Our real knowledge, however distorted,
inflated, and magnified by our phraseology, amounts to little more
than our acquaintance with the fact, that by sin, that is, withhold-
ing from our Maker and from om- brethren our appointed tribute
of love, man has raised an obstacle to his future happiness, for the
removal of which the Divine Logos* united himself to one of the
sons of men, and in that human person, lived in humiliation, and
died in agony. But a darkness, which no inquiry tends to dissipate,
and which no conjecture contributes in any measure to dispel,
broods over all questions respecting the nature and the reasons of
that obstacle, and respecting the meaning of the hypostatic union
of the Logos with our humanity, and respecting the nature of Him
by whom and in whom that union is effected, and respecting the
sense in which His sufferings have made a propitiation for our sins.
All that is permitted to us is to adore, in silence, the awful image
set before us of holiness, of woe, and of love unutterable. That
God is love, is proclaimed from Bethlehem, and from Calvary, in a
voice penetrating the inmost heart ; but in a voice which addresses
the heart only, and which summons us not to investigate, but to
worship and to love.

We learn from Lord Bacon that, in the prophetic emblem which
exhibits the Deity as upborne in His transit through the universe
by the wings of ministering angels, the Cherubim represented the
heralds of love — the Seraphim the messengers of light. In their
progress through our fallen world, those celestial visitants have
different enemies to combat, and different hindrances to subdue.
By what clouds the light diffused by the flaming Seraphim is

* See the note on page 645.

TIIK i:iML<>(iUi:. 647

quenched or darkened, we have ah-eady attempted, thotigli liriefly
and most imperfectly, to intimate. How the genial warmth of love,
radiating from the glowing Cherubim, is chilled and arrested, we
all but too familiarly know.

That divine affection is rendered ineffectual in some by the
superstition which regards as poisonous the legitimate indulgence
of our animal appetites, the enjoyment of our domestic affections,
the pleasures of our intellectual tastes, and the delights of interro-
gating nature, and of resolving her enigmas. The love of God will
scarcely penetrate the heart of any man who believes that God is
the author of instincts created but to be thwarted, and of desires
which must be either snares, if satisfied, or temptations, if debarred
from their appropriate objects. Asceticism is, therefore, the enemy
of that holy affection Avhich He who is love demands of His
creatures.

Neither will love to God take up her abode in the heart of him
who, having learnt to consider his reasoning faculty as not merely
a fallible, but a dangerous guide, has transferred to his fellow-men
the responsibility of solving all the great practical problems of his
life. For freedom is the indispensable aliment of love. It is of a
nature too generous to live in spiritual chains and bondage. It can
animate the subordinate intelligence only when entrusted by the
superior power with a liberal confidence, and permitted to exercise
some large measure of self-direction. The slaves of a spiritual
despotism can hardly invoke a Father in heaven with filial affiance.

To the full expansion and development of that child-like affec-
tion, it is also necessary that the conscience should retain her
supremacy uninvaded by any rival power, and uncontrolled by any
human dictation. If that most sensitive of all the plants which are
cultivated in the garden of the soul, be grasped, and bent, and
pruned by the rude hands of the stranger, it will quickly cease to
vibrate to every touch, and to indicate every change in the sur-
rounding atmosphere. It is necessary to the life of all our passions
in their healthful exercise, and therefore of divine love, that we
cherish our own moral sensibility, and rescue it from the narcotic
influence of too close a contact with other minds. The presence of
the confessor may sometimes illuminate the conscience ; but in such
a presence, when habitual, it will lose all those finer delicacies of
perception by which every infidelity of the heart, to its source and
centre, is visited with a prompt rebuke and an effective penalty.

It is essential to that allegiance of the heart, that we contemplate
the object of it in the light in which He has been pleased to reveal
himself to us, and in no other. If the God in our minds be not
the very God of our Bibles, as revealed in the jierson of His Son,

T T 4

648 THE EPILOGUE.

and communicating with us in the person of His Spirit, He will not
be the object of that supreme veneration and affiance which He
demands from us. Divine love, therefore, will not readily thrive
in the soul of him who worships God as He is depicted by human
imagination — or as He is impersonated by an earthly vicar — or as
He utters oracular responses, through that shapeless, boundless,
placeless abstraction, which presumptuously usurps to itself the
name of the Church — or as He is approached, like some poor
earthly sovereign, by a throng of mediators and intercessors, of
favourites and courtiers. From such representations of Him who
challenges, as His own, the whole heart, and mind, and soul, and
strength, who but must tm-n away, as from allusions at variance
with this great law of his moral existence, and cheating him in that
very field of vision in which, above every other, it concerns him to
see distinctly ?

And for this reason it is, that so fatal a lethargy of the heart has
benumbed so large a proportion of those who have learnt from the
Church of Kome to regard monastic solitude and ascetic rigours as
essential to perfection; and to prostrate their minds to human
judgments, and their consciences to human authority; and to
render their worship to the idols of the human imagination. And
therefore it is that every one who is anxious for the happiness and
the improvement of mankind, is bound to ' 'protest,'' as our Ee-
formers protested, against a system which, by thus darkening the
great truth that ' Grod is love,' has in the same measure, defeated
the great commandment of loving God supremely.

But they who make that protestation with the most profound
seriousness, will not be the last to acknowledge and to lament, that
the same consequences have, in no light measure, followed from
some parts of the creeds, or at least from some of the mental habits,
of the Churches to which they themselves belong.

For the absolute devotion of the whole spirit to God will hardly
be practicable to those who, attributing an undue authority to the
light to be derived from the animal instincts, follow their guidance
with but little habitual watchfulness, self-restraint, or self-distrust ;
— nor to those who attach so much importance to the instincts of
natural affection, as to be ever prompt, at their bidding, to abandon
the loftier and more sublime pm-poses of the Christian life ; — nor
to those who, referring conscience to the control of feeling, senti-
ment, and emotion, do not usually subjugate that interior judge
to the dominion of any positive and well-ascertained law; nor to
those who, while casting down all other idols, are secretly erecting
in their hearts shrines to the human intellect, regarding logic as the
single guide to truth, even after logic itself has conducted them to

THE EPILOGUE. C49

higher and to surer guides ; — nor to those who accept and regard
the revealed Word of God as if life were given, not by the spirit
but by the letter of it, nay, by the letter of some modern version ;
— nor to those who search the ScriiJtures as if they were not a
mine, which yields its treasures to such as faithfully and labori-
ously toil for them, but a mint, stored with coins fitted for imme-
diate use, each bearing an indelible impress, and disclosing, at a
glance, its exact Aveight, and quality, and value, and significance ; —
nor to those who, having become accustomed to contemplate the
one central object and omnipresent Idea of the Grospel with a gaze
either indecorously familiar or coldly critical, debase that Idea by
a homage erotic and irreverent, or render it unimpressive by scho-
lastic inquiries into some imaginary plan or economy of human
salvation. And for these reasons it is that a lethargy, scarcely less
fatal than that of so many in the communion of the Church of
Rome, has benumbed no small proportion of those who hold the
purer creeds, and worship in the more apostolical forms of the
Protestant Churches.

Thus, then, in each of the two great divisions of the Christian
world, the j^erception of the great central truth that ' God is love,'
and the performance of the great all-embracing duty of loving
Him supremely, have been obstructed by the too frequent rejection
of some of those rays of light which He has bestowed on mankind,
or by the inability to gather and to combine them all into one
congruous whole. And yet, in neither of those provinces of the
kingdom of Christ, has the obscurity or the disobedience ever been
so total as would be inferred by those who listen only to their
reciprocal anathemas. Imperfectly, indeed, and through many an
intervening mist of prejudice and error, the convergent beams of
the divine light have yet deeply penetrated many an intellect, and
gladdened many a heart, and directed many a life, which either
the Doctors of Rome or the Doctors of Geneva would teach us to
regard as having been abandoned to a hopeless reprobation.

For, in the midst of their mutual strife, the true followers of
Christ have everywhere, and at all times, learnt that ' God is love,'
even from the comparatively faint light of their mere animal
instincts. They have gratefully observed how the conservation of
our race, and of each member of it, is effected neither by pain,
nor by terror, nor by any irresistible compulsion, but by the instru-
mentality of desires which rouse mankind to healthful pursuits,
and of hopes attended by much pleasurable excitement.

From the clearer intimations of our sensitive instincts they
have drawn the same lesson. They have perceived how the sys-
tem of social life is carried on by means of affections which are

650 THE EPILOGUE.

delightful exactly in proportion as they are benevolent, and which
are enduring and intense exactly in proportion to the degree
in which the objects of them are dependent upon us. Those
feelings, whether conjugal, parental, fraternal, friendly, social, patri-
otic, or philanthropic, which impel us to exertion and reconcile
us to suffering, are also the sources of our greatest enjoyments ;
and sluggivsh, indeed, must be the understanding or the heart,
which can miss the inference, that He who thus constituted our
nature must have willed that we should be happy.

Our intellectual instincts also bear their testimony to the Divine
benevolence — a testimony which has been accepted by every
genuine member of the Church in all her various divisions. For
it is by means of those instincts alone, that we ever attain to truth,
or to any measure of intellectual repose. Those indestructible and
ultimate foundations of reasoning which are possessed by the whole
family of man in common, are the invaluable patrimony of each
memljer of that family. Without them, there could be no inter-
community of opinions amongst mankind, no enduring fellowship
of mutual interests, no sure co-operation in the same general
designs. They hold us all together by bonds never entirely to be
broken; and, however wide may have been our deviations into
error or crime, they are still the landmarks of the mind, indicating
the paths by which we may return to virtue and to truth.

The light of our judicial and moral instincts lend their powerful
aid in disclosing to us all, in whatever part of the ' City of Crod '
our dwelling may be cast, the same consolatory view of Him in
whom we have our being. If conscience lays bare the infirmities,
the waywardness, and the corruption of our wills, it also proclaims
that He has provided us with a continual corrective of those dis-
orders, — that He has not left himself without a witness and a
vicegerent in our hearts ■ — that His love is exerted, not only in His
parental discipline of us, but also in our own discipline of ourselves
— that our Father has not left His feeble children to incur all the
dangers which beset their paths, without the presence of a guardian
and a monitor, by obedience to whom they may attain to an abiding
tranqiullity, and to a continual increase of power.

The social instincts of every disciple of Christ contribute also to
assure him that he is one of the children of that gracious Being,
whose mercy is over all His works. For the great safeguard of our
social happiness consists in the general diffusion, by means of
those instincts, of the sympathy which constrains the several
members of society to unite in regarding any sentiment or action
as the fit subject of commendation or of censure. On this basis
rests the rightful dominion of the noblest spirits, and the willing,

TilK KriLOGUE. 651

though often uucuuscious subjection of subordiuiite niiiids. To
this we owe that social economy which inflicts on crime the most
efifective punishment, and secures for virtue an eventual thouo-h
often a tardy triumph. Nor is the liyperbole, VoxpopuU vox Dei,
a mere extravagance, if it be understood only as recognisino- that
beneficent constitution of our common nature which renders every
concurrence of mankind in their moral judgments at once so
terrible to guilt and so encouraging to good desert.

Neither will any peculiarity in his theological opinions exclude
any true Christian from the assurance that ' God is love,' which he
derives from the light of understanding. For God has placed us
here in the centre of enigmas to engage our mental powers as well
as of mysteries to control our natural presumption ; and of all the
gratifications of which we are capable, the most habitual, the
most unfailing, and the least contaminated by any admixture of
guilt, are those which we derive from a solution of those enigmas,
and from that measure of success which attends the ardent pursuit
of truth. Thus the whole interior life of every studious man is
giving him continued assurance of the beneficence of his Creator,
because he lives in a ceaseless succession of healthful stimulants,
and of rewards which animate without satiating his curiosity.

And thus, to all who contemplate it in a devout spirit, human
life presents itself as a scene which, though beset with many trials,
and not much abounding in intense delights or in positive plea-
sures, is yet replete (to borrow the distinction of Locke) with ever-
recurring satisfactions. Contracted as our range of choice usually
is, and frequently as we are reduced to choose between paths, each
of which is dangerous and painful, yet, whoever will attentively
consider the nature, the varieties, and the amount of the minute
occurrences which collectively compose the chronicle of his hours,
his days, or his life, will be constrained to acknowledge that his
instincts, animal, sensitive, intellectual, judicial, moral, and social,
yield him an amount of pleasurable occupation, thought, and feel-
ing, transcending incomparably the sum of his occupations,
thoughts, and feelings, in which pain preponderates. He who
judges othermse, is usually the dupe of his own imagination, which,
by placing him in positions vmfamiliar, and therefore distasteful to
him, induces him to ascribe to the great mass of mankind, the
suffering which an exchange into their circumstances would, at first,
inflict on the observer himself. But the fishermen at the Orkneys,
the miner in Northumberland, the occupant of a cellar in St. Giles's,
the manual labourer in the cotton factory, are all, in their various
ways, quickened into grateful activity by some or other of these
various instincts throucrhout the weariest hours of the longest dav ;

652 THE EPILOGUE.

and all find in the success of that activity, the continually re-
curring satisfaction which the great Author of human society has
designed for all the members of it.

Christians of all creeds discover, in the light of human authority,
proofs of the love of Him from whom, as the fountain head, pro-
ceeds all legitimate power. Nothing was apparently more prac-
ticable than that each human being should have derived the light
required for his guidance through the world directly from God him-
self, without the intervention of any human teacher. But man has
been made the channel through which truth is disclosed to man,
and the appointed instrument by which precej^ts of duty are
impressed on him, in order that room may be provided for the
development, and occasion for the exercise, of many of the happiest
affections and propensities of his nature. By dividing our race
into the two classes, of instructors clothed with authority, and of
pupils bound to submission, God has provided for the gi-owth, in
the superior relation of fidelity, diligence, condescension, and
tenderness, and, in the inferior relation of teachableness, reverence,
gratitude, and humility. By thus knitting together our best
affections and oiu- highest wisdom. He has given to the Church
much of the endearing character of the Family, and to the Family
much of the sacred character of the Church, and has so framed the
constitution, both of ecclesiastical and of domestic society, as to
render each of them one of the highest and purest elements of our
happiness.

These intimations of the parental character of God, are, indeed,
made to all men, and not to those only to whom He has imparted
the light of revelation ; although to them the truth that ' God is
love,' is disclosed in terms incomparably more distinct than any
which were ever employed by Natural Eeligion. And it is chiefly
by the light which the inspired volume throws on the condition of
human nature and of human society, that we are enabled to discern
in that system of things so many evidences of the divine bene-
volence, and of our own corresponding obligation to render our
tribute of filial love to Him by whom that economy has been
constructed.

And yet, whoever meditated on the character of God, and on
the divine dispensations as they are made known to us in the
Holy Scriptures, without the oppressive sense of a mystery beyond
expression, momentous, fearful, and inscrutable ? How terrific is
the emphasis which the history of the Bible gives to the menaces
of the Bible ! Retribution is stamped on every page and line of
that awful volume ; and he who does not discern that impress on
the sacred text, must interpret it by some canons of criticism which

THE EPILOGUE. 653

would be uuiversally rejected as altogether extravagant and wild,
if applied to any other writing. Such canons are, however, in our
own times, diligently employed by the learned, and eagerly wel-
comed by the unlearned. That mystic theory, of which Strauss is
the great modern teacher, when filtered through various mediums,
and purged of its coarser ingredients, is imbibed by m\dtitudes
amongst us, and is producing in their minds results not dissimilar
in kind, and scarcely inferior in degree, to those which were induced
by the scepticism of the eighteenth century.

The real, though often unavowed, groun'd of the doubts wLich
are thus overclouding the spirits of so many of the nominal dis-
ciples of Christ, is the hopeless dejection with which they contem-
plate that part of the Christian scheme which is supposed to con-
sign the vast majority of our race to a future state, in which woe
inconceivable in amount, is also eternal in duration. PVom this
doctrine the hearts of most men turn aside, not only with an in-
stinctive horror, but with an invincible incredulity ; and of those
who believe that it really proceeded from the lips of Christ him-
self, many are sorely tempted by it either to doubt the divine
authority of any of His words, or to destroy their meaning by
conjectural evasions of their force.

There are, indeed, others to whom it appears irreverent and even
impious to hold parley with such doubts at all. They forbid us to
inquire whether the generally-received sense of our Eedeemer's
language on this melancholy and overwhelming theme, be really
the sense in which He spoke. They resent, as mere conceit and
arrogance, the opposition of the human understanding to what
they consider as the unequivocal declarations of the Son of God
himself ; and demand that every voice which would presume to
controvert those declarations should be subdued into a submissive
silence. And most just is the rebuke, and most reasonable the de-
mand, if it be indeed the fact that our Divine Teacher has really
revealed to us the eternity of the punishment inflicted in a future
state for the sins of men in this life. For, as the truth of God is
the corner stone of all religion, so the truth of Christ is the corner
stone of Christianity.

Disclaiming, therefore, the very slightest sympathy with that
arrogance which would reject any part of divine revelation on the
ground of its inconsistency with the dogmas of human wisdom, we
would yet (in the exercise of that freedom which all Protestants, in
terms at least, assert for themselves and allow to others) venture to
inquire, or rather to suggest the inquiry, whether any suflScient
authority really exists for asserting that either Christ himself, or
His apostles, taught the doctrine of a penal retribution, which is to

654 THE EPILOGUE.

be * eternal' in the sense in which we believe the Deity himself to
be ' eternal.'

With the exception of one dubious expression in the book of
Daniel, the Old Testament is entirely silent on the subject of the
eternity of future punishment. The same thing is true of a very
large majority of the books of the New Testament. But in the
44th, the 46th, and the 48th verses of the ninth chapter of the
Grospel of St. JMark, we find our Saviour speaking with the most
emphatic iteration of ' their worm ' which ' dieth not ' and of ' the
fire ' which ' is not quenched ; ' and in the 43rd and 45th verses of
the same chapter, He, with yet deeper emphasis, refers to ' the fire
that never shall be quenched.' Words, doubtless, of fearful sig-
nificance ! — words which, however understood, can intimate
nothing less than a danger, at the thought of which the stoutest
heart should quake, and the holiest stand in awe ! But while the
reverence due to our Divine Teacher forbids us to subtract one
jot or tittle from the force of His expressions, it no less distinctly
forbids us to enhance their force by adding one jot or tittle to
them.

Let it, then, be considered, ^rs^, that the words quoted from the
43rd and 45th verses (' the fire that never shall be quenched'), are
rejected by some eminent critics as a spurious interpolation ; and,
secondly, that, supjDOsing the text to be genuine, the words irvp to
ao-ySscTToy mean, not 'the fire that never shall be quenched,' but
* the inextinguishable fire ; ' and, thirdly, that no one of these five
verses in St. Mark's Grospel asserts, either in express terms or by
any necessary implication, that the pains to which they refer will
be endured throughout eternity. They assert only that the agent
or instrument by means of which those pains, are to be inflicted is
of an immortal or an indestructible nature.

It must, however, be acknowledged that the language of Christ,
in the closing verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew, is
perfectly clear and unambiguous, as it stands in our English Bibles.
'These,' He says, 'shall go aw^ay into everlasting punisIwienV It
therefore is of infinite moment to inquire whether the words which
our translators have thus given us really correspond with the words
which our Saviour himself uttered.

Now no human being knows, or ever can know, what were the
very words which thus fell from the lips of Christ. They were
spoken in a dialect of the Syro-Chaldaic. No one even knows with
any certainty whether our extant Gfreek version of them proceeded
from the pen of St. Matthew. On the hypothesis adopted by many
high critical authorities, of an intermediate Hebrew gospel, we must
believe the contrary. Assuming, however, that the hand of an in-

THE EPILOGUi:. 655

spired writer did trace the very wortls sl^- KoXaaiv aiuiVLov, it will
yet not necessarily follow that either of those words is a precise
equivalent for the original which it represents ; because, for terms
so abstract, perfectly precise equivalents can seldom, if ever, be
found in languages so essentially dissimilar in their structure and
genius as the Syro-Chakiaic and the Greek. I^et, however, the
sacred text be read on the supposition, however unfounded, that
our Kedeemer himself actually pronounced the very terms which
now stand in the Greek Testament. On that supposition can we
really find in them the terrific and overwhelming sense which tluj
popular opinion attributes to them ?

It would be a mere impertinence if the writer of these pages
should presume to engage in a critical discussion of the precise force
and meaning of any passage in a Greek author. It would be still
more extravagant, if he should lay claim to the skill requisite for
nnal3^sing the sense of any Greek expressions deeply imbued in
Syriac and Hebraic idioms and allusions. It is sufficient for the
immediate purpose to say, in reference to the merely critical or
grammatical inquiry, that the words in question are manifestly
susceptible of the different meanings which so many scholai"s have
at different times pointed out. They might, for example, be ren-
dered with literal accuracy either by the words ' into lifelong punish-
ment' — or by the words 'into perpetual abscission.' But if the
meaning of those expressions be really ambiguous or equivocal,
then are we not only free, but bound, to adopt such a construction
of them as may be derived from the probablities in favour of any
one or other of the possible meanings. What, then, are those pro-
bablities ?

First, then, let it be considered, that the doctrine of the eternity
of the future retribution forms no necessary substratum of any
other Christian doctrine. If it could be completely disproved, its
disappearance from the Christian system would not dissolve, nor
apparently impair, the strength of any other part of that mighty
fabric. Every argument, eveiy narrative, every expostulation, every
warning in the Bible would be as complete and as intelligible, if
not as emphatical, without it as with it. The same thing cannot be
said of any other of the main truths revealed in the Holy Scriptures.
Each of them is an integral part of the system to which it l)el()ngs.
Is it, then, probable, that a doctrine which, if true, infinitely out-
weighs in importance all the rest of the articles of our creeds, should
have been propounded as a mere isolated truth, standing In no
necessary connection with the rest? Is it not far more probable
that there is an error in that construction of our Saviour's words,
which would render Him the promulgator of it ?

656 THE EPILOGUE.

The angel who descended from heaven and proclaimed to the
shepherds the incarnation of the Redeemer, anouneed himself as
the herald ' of good tidings of great joy which should be to all
people.' But if it be indeed true, that He who was thus made in-
carnate, proclaimed an eternity of unutterable woe to the vast ma-
jority of those who, from generation to generation, throng our streets,
our marts, and our churches, how shall we reconcile the angelic an-
nouncement with this awful proclamation ? The Gospel is, indeed,
intelligence of blessedness, surpassing imagination, to ' the few who
are chosen ; ' but that same Grospel is, on the popular hypothesis,
not less intelligence of wretchedness, surpassing imagination, to
* the TYiany who are called.' Is not, therefore, the accuracy of that
hypothesis involved in much improbability ?

The Bible teaches us that Christ came into the world to bruise
the serpent's head, to destroy the works of the devil, and to establish
the kingdom of Grod; and Christ himself declared that 'He saw
Satan like lightning fall from Heaven.' Is it reasonable to accept
any construction of the other words of Christ, which would seem to
ascribe to the Spirit of Evil an eternal triumph over the Spirit of
Good, in the persons of the vast majority of the race whom He
lived and died to redeem ?

In our present life, trouble, pain, and sorrow are, indeed, thickly
sown. But they exist among us as anomalies, not as laws, — as the
medicinal and remedial provisions which the Creative wisdom has
infused into this economy of things, not as the ultimate end con-
templated by that wisdom. In this world ' nothing terminates on
evil ; ' although, in this world, evil so unhappily abounds. Do not,
therefore, all the analogies of the Divine government raise a strong
presumption against that interpretation of our Saviour's discourse,
which represents Him as foretelling a future economy of things, in
which evil, not remedial but penal, not transient but eternal, is to
be the doom of the vast majority of the children of Adam?

Throughout the Holy Scriptures a constant appeal is made to
those moral -sentiments which God has himself implanted in our
nature. Our heavenly Father has graciously condescended every-
where to point out to us the sacred harmony between His law as
revealed by prophets and evangelists, and His law as written by
himself on our hearts ; and from that harmony we are taught to
draw the best and highest proof of the inspiration of those sacred
writings. Deeply conscious with what profound reverence it be-
hoves us to apply that test of truth to any opinion deduced by the
Church at large from Holy Scripture, we may yet venture to inquire
whether it could be successfully applied in the case under consider-
ation ? If the words ascribed to our Saviour are not inexorably

THE EPILOGUE. 657

bound down to the construction they usually receive, by the abso-
lutely inflexible force of the text and of the context, is it not most
reasonable to adopt some otlier construction, to which our own
natural sense of justice and equity can respond as clearly as it re-
S2:)onds to all the rest of the inspired canon ?

So inveterate is the corruption of the human heart, that in the
judgment of some, the infliction and announcement of no penalty
less than that of eternal misery would be sufficient to turn it aside
from present sinfulness. But does the dread of that terrific
penalty really stem the headlong current of iniquity ? Is it really
productive of any corresponding alarm ? Does it produce an alarm
equal to that which would have been excited by the announcement
of a penalty of infinitely less amount, but definite and intelligible ?
Does the world — does the Church — do her ministers — do her
saints — really believe this part of the language of our Redeemer
in that sense in which they familiarly interpret it ? Is any human
mind so constituted as to bear the incumbent weight of so fearful
a probability of an evil so utterly beyond the reach of exaggera-
tion ? Is the texture of any human body vigorous enough to sus-
tain the throes of so agonising an anticipation ? What means the
whole course and system of life which is passing hourly before our
eyes, and through which we are ourselves passing? Why have
our preachers time to engage in study, to harmonise the periods of
their sermons, to give heed to our wretched ecclesiastical disputes,
to devote one superfluous instant to food, to repose, or to occupy
themselves with any other thing than the proclamation of the hor-
rors of the approaching calamity, and the explanation of the only
way of escape from it ? Let any honest man fairly propose to
himself, and fairly answer the question, whether the unutterable
disparity between his actual interest in all the frivolities of life,
and his professed belief in an eternity of woe, impending probably
over himself, but certainly over the vast majority of the human
race, does not convict him of professing to believe more than he
actually believes ? And, if so, is there not some reason to doubt
whether he has not erred in attributing to his Saviour a meaning,
for which, after all, he cannot find any real place in his own mind,
or any vital influence on his own heart ?

Nothing can be more remote from the design with which these
pages are written than to suggest a doubt whether penal retribu-
tion in the future state does really await ' the many who are called,'
but who throng ' the broad way which leadeth to destruction.' Nei-
ther does the writer of these pages presume to intimate that either
the nature or the continuance of that penalty are such as to be fitly
contemplated by any soul of man without the most profound awe

u u

658 THE EPILOGUE.

and the most lively alarm. To propagate or to entertaiD such opi-
nions would be to question the truth of Him who is emphatically
himself ' The Truth.' The questions proposed for inquiry are — whe-
ther He, or any one of His inspired Apostles, has really affirmed, in
express words, that the retribution shall be endured eternally by
those on whom it shall fall? — whether all the words employed by
Him, or by them, on the subject are not satisfied by understanding
that the punishment is eternal only inasmuch as it involves the
ultimate destruction, or annihilation, of those on whom it is to be
inflicted? — whether the sense usually ascribed to this part of Holy
Scripture is congruous with the spirit of the rest of the revealed
Avill of Grod? — whether it is not really derived from ecclesiastical
traditions, rather than from any sound and unbiassed criticism? —
and whether our own translators have not been induced, by those
traditions, to enhance the real force of our Saviour's words by a
forced and exaggerated version of them.

These suggestions or surmises are, however, opposed to the
commonly-received opinion of, perhaps, all the Christian Churches.
The most learned could not, therefore, offer them, except with the
most extreme diffidence. By one who can make no claim whatever
to learning, properly so called, either as a theologian or as a lin-
guist, they are proposed with the deepest possible consciousness of
his liability to error. He knows how weighty is the presumption
in favour of the construction which the Church of Christ has, in
all ages, given to words which, however understood, are the most
terrific which have ever been spoken in the ears of man. And if,
indeed, that construction truly represents the real meaning of those
fearful words, what remains for him who revolves the prospect they
open to that great human family of which he is a member, except
to repose the aching heart on those declarations, so copious, so
unequivocal, so interwoven with the whole scheme, structure, and
system of our faith, which concur in assuring us that " Grod is
love," and which will still encourage or rather constrain us to hope
even against hope, that no rational being throughout His vast uni-
verse shall ever be so entirely exiled from His fatherly presence, as
to be unable to turn to Him with penitence, or as to be beyond
the reach of that mercy of which we are so often assured that it
' endureth for ever.'

This digression (if such it be) from the more immediate subject
of these pages, has been suggested, and may, it is hoped, be vindi-
cated, by the consideration, that the generally-received opinion
regarding the endless duration of the state of punishment, is
among the most effective of all the causes which are at present
inducing amongst us that vu-tiial abandonment of Christianity,

THE EPILOGUE. G59

wliich assigns a mythic sense to almost every part of the sacred
oracles. Ijearnedly and wisely as that fixllacy has been coml)ated
by many, their yet more serious attention miglit, perhaps, be ad-
vantageously given to the inquiry whether hat opinion, which is
to so large a number an insuperable rock of offence, might not be
either retracted or qualified without any sacrifice of truth ; and
whether, if so, they would not contribute, by such an acknowledg-
ment, to reclaim the deserters to the camp much more effectually
than by any assault on the positions in which they have openly
entrenched themselves.

Except so far as it is overcast by the portentous cloud which the
doctrine of the eternity of penal retribution throws over it, the
Word of Grod reveals the love of Grod with all the effulgence of a
noontide sun. It makes that disclosure chiefly, of course, to such
as most freely receive that Word, and as most devoutly revolve it.
Yet so bright are those * shafts of day,' that, by many a reflec-
tion, they irradiate even those to whom spiritual despotism forbids
an unrestrained access to the inspired volume. For, in those
pages, love is exhibited, not as an abstract quality or affection, but
as a living person ; and that impersonation, whether it be presented
to us under the veil of a tutelary and national Deity, as in the last
four books of the Pentateuch, or under the veil of Christ's huma-
nity, as in the four Gospels, is still ever one and ever the same, —
ever yearning over our fallen race with more than parental tender-
ness, and ever resisting our suicidal self-will with the wholesome,
though reluctant, severity of a Father. And the love thus imper-
sonated to all Christian people, is no more the object of the exclu-
sive knowledge, or of the exclusive adoration, of any single society
of Christians, than the air we breathe, the ocean we navigate, or
the sunshine by which we are warmed. To shut the gates of
mercy on all who will not adopt our opinions, join in our solem-
nities, and attach themselves to our party, is one of the most
inveterate of human infirmities ; because it is one of the most
inveterate of human habits, to avert the eye from some of the
many rays of light by which it is the good purpose of God that
we should illuminate our minds and guide our steps. To throw
open those gates as widely as Love desires, and as Truth allows, is,
on the other hand, the delight of those by whom all those con-
fluent rays are received, and welcomed, and harmonised.

There is, therefore, a catholic Belief and a catholic Morality,
broad and comprehensive enough to form the eternal basis of a
catholic Church and of a true Christian Unity. That Belief is,
tliat ' God is light,' and that ' God is love.' That Morality is, that
we love him supremely, and each other as ourselves. That ChurcJi

V V -2

660 THE EPILOGUE.

is composed of all who, in the strength of this belief, are habitually
striving to practise this morality. That Unity is effected not by
any external conformities, but by the same interior spirit and hidden
life manifesting itself, in the members of all Christian communities,
by acts of devotion, of humility, of self-sacrifice, of temperance, of
justice, of truth, and of peace.

Holding these opinions, we have presumed, in the preceding
pages, to record the acts, and to celebrate the virtues, of some of
the saints both of Eome, and of our native land. Om* Hagiology
is drawn from many distant, and, as some may think, from many
incongruous, sources. We have ventured to extol the heroic daring
of Hildebrand, and the tender enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. We
have dared to applaud the energies, at once so passionate and so
calm, so widely diffused and yet so concentrated, of Loyola and his
first associates. We have celebrated cordially, however faintly, the
fervent zeal of Martin Luther, steeped in every human affection,
even when most instinct with a diviner influence. We have ren-
dered homage to the piety which sustained the intellectual prowess
of Mabillon and his companions ; and have deeply felt our incom-
petency to render any meet tribute to the memories of the wise and
holy men of Port-Royal and of her illustrious daughters. Passing
to our own land — our glorious land — and, above all other things,
glorious in the parentage of the mighty transatlantic nation to
which God has so largely committed the future destinies of man-
kind, — we have attempted to depict Richard Baxter, dwelling on
the confines of the temporal and of the eternal states, and perform-
ing miracles of industry and of devotedness, over the truth of
which no scepticism can cast a shade of doubt ; and Whitfield and
his disciples, labouring to evangelise the world with an energy
almost as rare as miracle, and with a faith in themselves, in their
cause, and in their Divine Leader, which no scepticism could ever
cloud, and which no disappointment could ever weaken. And
then, contracting our vision within a narrower, a more familiar,
and, in truth, a domestic circle, we have hazarded the exhibition of
a series of portraitures drawn from the life, and which, until they
shall be superseded by some more skilful hand, may serve as sketches
of a society, to which England and the wvi'ld at large owe no com-
mon debt of gratitude. But since, in that society, no such benefactor
of mankind could be found, who did not worship within the pale of
our national Church, we have ventured to draw, from his own books,
a conjectmal likeness of a Nonconformist, whom that society would
have received as a brother, if his times had fallen in their genera-
tion.

To our own apprehension, at least, there is, in these attempts at

THE EPILOGUE. G61

ecclesiastical biography, a certain unity of design, because all tlie
subjects of it held that Belief, practised that Morality, and were
members of that Church wliich, in the sense already explained, we
regard as catholic. They all believed that ' God is light,' and
reverently sought that divine illumination. They all believed that
* God is love,' and devoutly surrendered their highest affections to
Him. They all loved their brethren of mankind as the common
children of their Father in heaven. They have all deserved, and
some few of them have found, an infinitely nobler memorial among
men than it is permitted to the author of tliese pages to raise to
any man. Yet he will not think that these pages have been
written in vain, if they shall stimulate any one gifted with the re-
quisite abilities and learning, to give to the Christian world a
Protestant Hagiology, celebrating the Saints of that universal
Church, which embraces within its ample fold every faithful servant
of Christ, whatever may be the peculiarities of his ecclesiastical
system, or of his theological creed.

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CLASSIFIED INDEX

Agriculture and Kural

Affairs. Pases.

Bavldon on Valuing Rents, &c. - 3
Cecil's Stud Farm - - - fi

Hoskyns's Talpa - - - - 10
Loudon's Agriculture - - - Vi
Low's Elements of Agriculture - l'^

Arts, Manufactures, and
Architecture.

Bourne on the Screw Propeller - 4

Braude's Dictionary of Science, &c. 4

" Organic Chemistry- - 4

Chevreul on Colour - . _ 6

Cresy's Civil Engineering - - 6

Fairhairn's Informa. for Engineers 7

Gwilt's F.ncyclo. of Architecture - 8

Harford's Plates Irom M. Ange'.o - S

Humphreys's Parables Illuminated 10

Jameson's Sacred & Legendary Art 11

" Commonplace-Bcrok - 11

Konig's Pictorial Life of Luther - 8

Loudon's Rural Architecture - 13

JIacDougall's Theory of War - 13

Malan's Aphorisms on Drawing - 14

Most-ley's Engineering - - - 16

Piesse's Art of Perfumery - - 17

Richardson's Art of Horsemanship 18

Scrivenor on the Iron Trade - - 19

Stark's Printing - - - - 22

Stcam-Engine, by the Artisan Club 4

Ure's Dictionary of Arts, &c. - 23

Biography.

Arago's Autobiography - - ;

" Lives of'Scientific Men -
Bodenstedt and Wagner's Schamyl ',
Buckingham's (J. S.) Memoirs
Bunsen's Hippolytus - - .
Cockayne's Marshal Tureune - !
Crosse's (Andrew) Memorials
Forster's De Foe and Churchill - I
Green's Princesses of England
Harford's Life of Michael Angelo -
Hayward's c hesterfield and Selwyn
Holcroft'3 Memoirs
Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia -
Maunder's Biographical Treasurv-
Memoir of the Duke of Wellington
Memoirs of James Montgomery -
Merivale's Memoirs of Cicero
Mountain's (Col.) Memoirs -
Parry's (Admiral) .Memoirs - - :
Rogers's Life and Genius of Fuller ;
Russell's Memoirs of Moore -
Southey's Life of Wesley - - :

*' Life and Correspondence '

" Select Correspondence - '.

Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biogranhy ;
Strickland's Queens of England - '
Sydney Smith's Memoirs - - ;
Symoiid's (Admiral) Memoirs - !
Taylor's Loyola - - - _ ;

" Wesley - - - _ ;
Waterton's Autobiography &Essnys ;

Books of General Utility,

Acton's Bread-Book - - . 3

" Cookery - - - _ 3

Black's Treatise on Brewing - - 4

Cabinet Gazetteer - - - - 5

" Lawyer - - - - 6

Cust's Invalid's Own Book - 7
Gilbart's Logic for the Million - 8
Hints on Etiquette ... 9
How to Nurse Sick Children - - 10
Hudson'sEsecutor's Guide - - 10
" on Making Wills - - 10
Kesteven's Domestic Medicine - 11
Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia - 12
Loudon's Lady's Country Compa-
nion - - - - - - 13

Maunder'8 Treasury of Knowledge 14

** Biographical Treasury 14

** Geographical Treasury 14

Maunder's Scientific Treasury - 11

" Treasury of History - 14

" Natural History - - 1 1

Piesse's Art of Perfumery - - 17

Pocket and the Stud - - - 8

Pycroft's English Reading - - 17

Recce's Medical Guide - - - 18

Rich's Comp. to Latin Dictionary 18

Richardson's Art of Horsemanship 18

Riddle's Latin Dictionaries - - 18

Roget's English Thesaurus - - 18

Rowton's Debater - - . - 18

Short Whist ----- 19

Thomson's Interest Tables - - 21

Webster's Domestic Economy - 24

Wes*on Children's Diseases - - 24

Willich's Popular Tables - - 21

Wilmot's Blackstone - - - 24

Botany and Gardening.

Hassall's British Freshwater Algae 9
Hooker's British Flora - - - 9
" Guide to Kew Gardens - 9
" " " Kew ^luseum - 9
Lindley's Introduction to Botany 11
" Theory of Horticulture - 11
Loudon's Hortus Britannicus - 13
*' .Amateur Gardener - 13
" Trees and Shrubs - - 12
" Gardening - - - 12
" Plants - - - - 13
" Self-lnstructionfor Gar-
deners, &c. - - - - 13
Pereira's Materia Medica - - 17
Rivers's Rose-Amateur's Guide - Is
Wilson's British Mosses - - 24

Chronology.

Blair's Chronological Tables - 4

Brewer's Historical Atlas - - 4

Bunsen's Ancient Egypt - - 5

Calendars of English State Papers 5

Haydn's Beitson's Index - - 9

Jaquemet's Chronology - - 11

Nicolas's Chronology of History - 12

Commerce and Mercantile
Affairs.

Gilbart's Treatise on Banking - S

Lorimer's Young Muster Mariner 12

MacUod's Banking - - - 13
M*Culloch'BCommerce& Navigation 14

Scrivenor on Iron Trade ■- - 19

Thomson's Interest Tables - - 21

Tooke's History of Pi ices - - 21

Criticism, History, and
Memoirs.

Blair's Chron. and Histor. Tables - 4

Brewer's Historical Atlas - - - 4

Bunsen's Ancient Egypt - - 6

** Hippolytus - - - 6

Burton's History of Scctland - 5

Calendars of English State Papers 5

Chapman's Gustavus Adolphus - 6

Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul 6

Connolly's Sappers and Miners - 6

Gleig'8 Leipsic Campaign - - 22

Gurney's Historical Sketches - 8

Herschel's Essays and Addresses - 9

Jefl'rey's (Lord)'Contribution8 - 11

Kemble's Ano;lo-Saxons . - 11

Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia - 12

Macaulay's Crit. and Hist. Essays 13

" History of England - 13

'* Speeclies - - - 13

Mackintosh's Miscellaneous Works 13

** Historv of England - 13

M'Culloch'sGeographicalDictionary 14

Maunder's Treasury of History - 14

Memoir of the Uuke of Wellington 22

Merivale's History of Rome - - 15

" Roman Republic - - 15

Milner's Church History - - 15

Moore's (Thomas) Memoirs,&c. - 15

Mure's Greek Literature - 16

Perry's Franks - - - - 17

tory 20

Raikes's Journal - . . .
Runke's Ferdinand & Maximilian
Riddle's Latin Dictionaries
Rogers's Essays from Edinb. Revii
Roget's English Thesaurus -
Schmitz's History of Greece
Southey's Doctor - . . -
Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography
'' Lectures on French History
Sydney Smith's Works -

" Select Works - 22

*' Lectures - - 20

*' Memoirs - - 20

Taylor's Loyola - - - - 21

AVesley - - - - 21

Thirlwall'B History of Greece - 21

Thomas's Historical Notes - - 21

Thornburv's Shakspearc's England 21

Townsend's State Trials - - 21

Turkey and Christendom - - 22

Turner's Anglo Saions - - 23

" Middle Ages - - - 23

" Sacred Hist, of the World 23

Vehse's Austrian Court - - - 23

Wade's England's Greatness - 21

Whitclocke's Swedish Embassy - 24

Young's Christ of History - - 21

Geography and Atlases.

Brewer's Historical Atlas - - 4

Butler's Geography and Atlases - 6

Cabinet Gazetteer - - - - 5

Cornwall : Its Mines, &c. - - 22

Durrieu's Morocco - - - 22

Huglies's Australian Colonies - 22

Johnston's General Gazetteer - 11
M'Culloch's Geographical Dictionary 14

** Russia and Turkey - 22

Maunder's Treasury of Geography 14

Mayne's Arctic Discoveries - - 22

Murray's Encyclo. of Geography - Hi

Sharp's British Gazetteer - - 19

Juvenile Books.

Amy Herbert - - - - 19

Ck-ve Hall ----- 19

Earl's Daughter (The) - - - 19

Experience of Life - - - 19

Gertrude - - - - 19

Howilfs Boy's Country Book - 10

" (Mary)Children's Year - 10

Ivors - - - - - - rj

Katharine Ashton ... i>j

Laneton Parsonage - - - 19

Margaret Percival - - - - 19

Medicine and Surgery.

Brodie's Psychological Inquiries - 4

Bull's Hints to Mothers - - - 4

" Managementof Children - 4

Copland's Dictionary of Mtdicine - 6

Cust's Invalid's Own Book - - 7

Holland's Mental Physiology - 9
" Medical Notes and Reflect. 9

How to Nurse Sick Children - - 10

Kesteven's Domestic Medicine - 11

Pereira's Materia Medica - - 17

Reece's Medical Guide - - - 18

Ricliardson's Cold- Water Cure - 18

West on Diseases of Infancy - - 24

Miscellaneous and General
Literature.

Bacon's (Lord) Works - - . 3

Carlisle's Lectures and Addresses 22

Defence o! Eclipse oj Faith - - 7

Eclipse of Failh - - - 7

Greg's Political and Social Essays 8

Grevsoil's Select Correspondence - 8

Gurney's Evening Recreations - 8
HassalVsAdultcratlons Detecled,&c. 9

Havdn's Book of Dignities ■ - 9

Holland's Mental Physiology - 9

Hooker's Kew Guides - . - 9

Howitt's Rural Life of England - lo
" Visitsto RemarkahlePlaCM lo

Hutton's 100 Years Ago - - lo

Jameson's Commonpl.ice. Book - Ij

Jell'rey's (Lord) Contributions - 1]

CLASSIFIED INDEX.

Johns's Lands of Silence and of

Darkness - - - - - 11

Last of the Old Squires - - 16

Macaulay's Crit. and Hist. Essays 13

" Speeches - - - 13

Mackintosh's Miscellaneous Works 13

Memoirs of a Maitre-d'Armes - 22

Maitland's Church in the Catacombs 14

Martineau's Miscellanies - - 14

Moore's Church Cases - - - 16

Printing: Its Origin, &c. - - 22

Pycroft's English Reading - - 17

Rich's Comp. to Latin Dictionary 18

Riddle's Latin Dictionaries - - 18

Rowton's Debater - - 18
Seaward's Narrative of his Shipwreckl9

Sir Roger De Coverley - - - 19

Smith's (Rev. Sydney) Works - 20

Southey's Common -place Books - 20

The Doctor &e. - - 20

Sonvestre's .\ttic Philosopher - 22

" Confessions of a Working Man 22

Stephen's Essays - - - - 20

Stow's Training System - - 21

Thomson's Laws of Thought - 21

Townsend's State Trials - - 21

WiUich's Popular Tables - - 24

Yonge's English-Greek Lexicon - 24

'' Latin Gradus - - 24

Zurapt's Latin Grammar - - 24

Natural History in general.

CatloWs Popular Conchology - 6

Ephemera and Young on the Salmon 7

Garratt's Marvels of Instinct - &

Gosse's Natural History of Jamaica 8

Kemp's Natural History of Creation 22

Kirby and Spence's Entomology - II

Lee's Elements of Natural History 11

Maunder's Natural History - - 14

Turton's Shells oftheBritishlslands 23

Van der Hoeven's Zoology - - 23

Von Tschudi's Sketches in the Alps 22

Waterton'sEssayson Natural Hist. 24

Touatt's The Dog - - - - 24

" The Horse - - - 24

l-Volume Encyclopaedias
and Dictionaries.

Blaine's Rural Sports - - - 4

Brande's Science, Literature, and Art 4

Copland's Dictionary of Medicine - 6

Cresy's Civil Engineering - - 6

Gwilt's Architecture - - - 8

Johnston's Geographical Dictionary 11

Loudon's Agriculture - - - 12

" Rural Architecture - 13

** Gardening - - - 12

" Plants - - - - 13

" Trees and Shrubs - - 12

M'Culloch'sGeographicalDictionary 14

" DictionaryofCommerce 14

Murrav's Encvclo. of Geography - 16

Sharp's British Gazetteer - - 19

Ure's Dictionary of Arts , &c. - - 23

Webster's Domestic Economy - 24

Eieligious & Moral V/orks.

Amy Herbert - - - - 19

Bloomfield's Greek Testament - 4

Calvert's Wife's Manual _ - 6

Cleve Hall 19

Convbeare's Essavs - _ - 6

Conybeare and Howson's St. Paul 6
Cotton's Instructions in Christianity 6

Dale's Domestic Liturgy - - 7

Defence of Eclipse of Faith - - 7

Discipline - - - - - 7

Earl's Daughter (The) - - - 19

Eclipse of Faith - - - 7

Englishman's Greek Concordance 7

" Heb.&C'hald. Concord. 7

Experience (The) of Life - 19

Gertrude ----- 19

Harrison's Light of the Forge - 8

Hook's Lectures on Passion Week 9

Home's Introduction to Scriptures 9

" Abridgment of ditto - 10

Hue's Christianity in China - - 10

Humphrevs's Parables Illuminated 10

Ivors ------ 19

Jameson's Sacred Legends - - 11
" Monastic Legends - - 11
" Legendsof the Madonna 11
" Lectures on Female Em-
ployment ----- 11

Jeremy Taylor's Works - - - 11

Katharine Ashton - - - 19

Konig's Pictorial Life of Luther - 8

Laneton Parsonage - - 19

Letters to ray Unknown Friends - 11

" on Happiness - - - 11

LyraGermamca - - - - 5

Macnaught on Inspiration - - 14

■ Ro

Maitland '9 Church inCatacombs
Margaret Percival - - -

Martineau's Christian Life - - 14

" Hymns - - - 14

Merivale's Christian Records - 15

Milner's Church of Christ - - 15

Moore on the Use of the Body - 15

" " Soul and Body - 15

" 's Man and his Motives - 15

Mormonism ----- 22

Morning Clouds - - - - 16

Neale's Closing Scene - - - Ifi

Ranke's Ferdinand & Maximilian 22

Readings for Lent - - - 19

" Confirmation - - 19

Riddle's Household Prayers - - 18

Robinson's Lexicon to the Greek

Testament 18

Saints our Example . - - 18

Sermon in the Mount - - 19

Sinclair's Journey of Life - - 19

Smith's (Sydnevj'Moral Philosophy 20

" (G.V.)AssyrianProphecies 20

" (G.) Wesleyan Methodism 19

" (J.) St. Paul's Shipwreck - 20

Southey's Life of Wesley - - 20

Stephen's Ecclesiastical Biography 20

Taylor's Loyola - _ - - 21

" Wesley - - - - 21

Theologia Germanica - - - 5

Thumb Bible (The) - - 21

Tomline's Introduction to the Sible 21

Turner's Sacred History - - - 23

Young's Christ of History - - 24

** Mystery - - - - 24

Poetry and the Drama.

Aikin's (Dr.) British Poets - - 3

Arnold's Poems _ - - - 3

Baillie's (Joanna) Poetical Works 3

Calvert's VVife's Manual _ - 6

De Vere's May Carols - - - 7

Estcourt's Music of Creation - 7

Fairy Family (The) - - - 7

Goldsmith's Poems, illustrated - 8

L. E. L.'s Poetical Works - U

Liawood's Anthologia Oxoniensis - 13

Lyra Germanica - - - - 5

Macaulav's Lavs of Ancient Rome 13

Mac Donald's Within and Without 13

" Poems - - - 13

Montgomery's Poetical Works - 15

Moore's Poetical Works - - 15

•' Selections (illustrated) - 15

" Lalla Rookh - - - 16

" Irish Melodies - - - 16

" Songs and Ballads - - 15

Reade's Poetical Works - - 1"

Shakspeare,bv Bowdler - - 19

Southey's Poetical Works - - 20

" British Poets - - - 20

Thomson's Seasons, illustrated - 21

Political Economy and
Statistics.

Dodd's Food of London - - 7

Greg's Political and Social Essays 8

Laing's Notes of a Traveller- - 22

M'CuUoch's Geog. Statist. &c. Diet. 14
" Dictionary of Commerce 14

'* London - - - 22

Willich's Popular Tables - - 24

The Sciences in general
and Mathematics.

Arago's Meteorological Essays - 3

" Popular Astronomy - - 3

Bourne on the Screw Propeller - 4

" 's Catechism of Steam- Engine 4

Boyd's Naval Cadet's Manual - 4

Brande's Dictionary of Science, &c. 4

" Lectures on Organic Chemistry 4

Cresv's Civil Engineering - - 6
DelaBeche'sGeologyofCorn-wall.&c. 7

De la Rive's Electricity - - 7

Grove's Correla. of Physrcal Forces 8

Herschel's Outlines ol Astronomy 9

Holland's Mental Physiology - 9

Humboldt's Aspects of Nature - 10

" Cosmos - - - 10

Hunt on Light . - - - 10

Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia - 12

Marcet's (Mrs.) Conversations - 15

Morell's Elements of Psychology - 16
Moseley'sEngineering&Architecture 16

Our Coal-Fields and our Coal-Pits 22

Owen's Lectures on Comp. Anatomy 1 7

Pereira on Polarised Light - - 17

Peschel's Elements of Physics - 17

Phillips's Fossils of Cornwall, &o. 17

" Mineralogy - - - 17

" Guide to Geology - - 17

Portlock's Geology of Londonderry 17

Powells Unity of Worlds - - 17

Smee's Electro-Metallurgy - - 19

Steam-Engine(The) - - - 4

Wilson's Electric Telegraph - - 23

Rural Sports.

Baker's Rifle and Houndin Ceylon ^'

Berkeley's Forests of France - ^

Blaine'sDictionary of Sports - *

Cecil's Stable Practice - - - 6

" Stud Farm - - - - 6

The Cricket-Field - - - - 6

Davy'sFishing Excursions,2Series 7

Ephemera on Angling - - - 7

" 's Book of the Salmon • 7

Hawker's Young Sportsman - - 9

The Hunting-Field . . - 8

Idle's Hints on Shooting - - 10

Pocket and the Stud - - - 8

Practical Horsemanship - - 8

Richardson's Horsemanship - - 18

Ronalds' Fly-Fisher's Entomology 18

Stable Talk and Table Talk - - 8

Stonehenge on the Greyhound 20

Thacker's Courser's Guide - - 21

The Stud, for Practical Purposes- 8

Veterinary Medicine, Sec.

Cecil's Stable Practice - - 6

" Stud Farm . - - 6

Hunting-Field (The) - - - 8

Miles's Horse-Shoeing - - - 15

" on the Horse's Foot - - 15

Pocket and the Stud _ - - 8

Practical Horsemanship - - 8

Richardson's Horsemanship - 18

Stable Talk and Table Talk - - 9

Stud (The) - - - - 8

Youatt's The Dog - - - - 24

" The Horse - - - 24

Voyages and Travels.

Auldjo's Ascent of Mont Blanc - 22

Haines's Yaudois of Piedmont - 22

Baker's Wanderings in Ceylon - 3

Barrow's ContinenUl Tour - - 22

Earth's African Travels - - 3

Berkeley's Forests of France - 4

Burton's East Africa - - - 5

" Medina and Mecca - - 6

Carlisle's Turkey and Greece - 6

De Custine's Russia - - 22

Eothen ------ 22

Ferguson's Swiss Travels - - 22

Flemish Interiors - - - - 7

Forester's Rambles in Norway - 22

*' Sardinia and Corsica - 8

Gironi^re's Philippines - - - 22

Gregorovius's Corsica - - - 22

Halloran's Japan - - - - 8

Hill's Travels in Siberia - - 9

Hinchliff's Travels in the Alps - 9

Hope's Brittany and the Bible - 25

" Chase in Brittany - - 23

Hewitt's Art-Student in Munich - 10

" (W.) Victoria - - - 10

Hue's Chinese Empire - - - 10

Hue and Gabet's Tartary & Thibet 23
Hudson and Kennedy's Mont

Blanc - - - - - 10

Hughes's Australian Colonies - 22

Humboldt's Aspects of Nature - 10

Hurlbut's Pictures from Cuba - 22

Hutchinson's African Exploration 22

Jameson's Canada - - - - 22

Jerrmann's St. Petersburg - - 22

Laing's Norway - - - - 23

" Notes of a Traveller - 32

M'Clure's North- West Passage - 17
MacDougall'sVovage of theUesoltite 13

Mason's Zulus of Natal - - 22

Miles's Rambles in Iceland - - 22

Osborn's Quedah - - - - M

Pfeiffer's Voyage round the World 23

'« Second ditto - - - 17
Scherier's Ccntril America - - 18
Seaward's Narrative - - - 19
Snow's Tierra del Fuego - - 20
Spottiswoode's Eastern Russia - 2C
Von Tempsky's Mexico and Gua-
temala ----- 24
Weld's Vacations in Ireland- - 24
■• United States and Canada- 2^
Weme's African Wanderings - 25
Wilberforce's Brazil* Slave-Trade 22

Works of Fiction.

Cruikshank's Fals'afF - - - t

Hewitt's Tallangetta - - - It

Macdonald's Villa Verocchio - li

Melville's Confidence-Man - - 1{

Moore s Epicurean - - - 1;

Sir Roser De Coverley - - - 1!

Sketches (The), Three Tales - 1!

Southey's The Doctor *c. - - 21

TroUope's Barchester Towers - 2!

" Warden - - - 21

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