defending past ages, a disciple of the ancient wisdom has no desire to express his thoughts as one who is angry with men or with times; nor, on the other hand, as one who is ready to flatter and to follow fortune. In our day, he need not dread much from the anger of other men. "Causa enin manet eadem, quæ mutari nullo modo potest temporis iniquitas atque invidia recessit, ut quod in tempore mali fuit, nihil obsit."1 Who formerly dared to say that the intellect of the house of Tudor was not competent to determine the religious views of all British subjects? Who now, at least before the Republic of Plato, dares to affirm that it was? Who then had doubts of the veracity of Titus Oates? Who now pretends to believe his evidence? Who then had scruples in affirming that the Pope was Antichrist, and that all our ancestors, "for eight hundred years or more," were "drowned in abominable idolatry?" Who now would venture to express such an opinion, though every one is ready to swear to it as a fact, treating the legislator like a doating or insane person, who is to be humoured in his weakness? And besides, though there are men enough in the world, whose example, as William of Paris says,2 can disprove the Platonic notion that the human soul is a harmony, there are not wanting others, endued with great generosity of nature, who, like the woman of Samaria, are rather edified than offended on being reminded of their own faults. Τοιοῦτον γὰρ αἱ γενναῖαι ψυχαί· ὑφ' ὧν ἕτεροι σκανδαλίζονται, ὑπὸ τούτων ἐκεῖναι Stopbouvraι. This is the remark of St. Chrysostom. Still, it is hard to be compelled to leave these peaceful scenes for the sombre realities, the direful discords, of the modern world, which, notwithstanding all the gifts of nature and the offers of grace, can be compared most truly to that city of grief filled with the lost people; or to that dark cave imagined by the sage, where men think there can be no safety, but where there is suspicion and eternal contention, where they either doze away years in sullen torpor, or else wander from side to side, hating and suspecting one another, and sigh and laugh and blaspheme in darkness and in chains.3 Alas! was it for these un 1 Cicero pro A. Cluentio. Lib. de Anima, iii. happy people to complain of the darkness of the day without? "The dark ages!" Yea, at all times the world lies in darkness. "Nox est Judaica perfidia; nox, ignorantia paganorum; nox, hæretica pravitas; nox etiam Catholicorum carnalis conversatio. An non nox, ubi non percipiuntur ea quæ sunt spiritus Dei?" They lived not in the dark ages; but well might their neglected and insulted guides have replied to them: "Vide ergo, ne lumen quod in te est, tenebræ sint." They accused the clergy of wishing to lead them back to darkness. What injustice! "O men," cries St. Augustine, "love not darkness! be not darkness! O homines, nolite esse tenebræ, nolite esse infideles, injusti, iniqui, rapaces, avari, amatores sæculi: hæ sunt enim tenebræ."2 Alas! must he not have slept a long and deadly sleep, who was not awakened with the sound of such a trumpet? St. Bernardin relates of a certain confessor, who, attending a rich man at the time of his death, could get no other words from him but "How sells wool? What price bears it at present?" And the priest still urging him, saying, "Sir, for God's sake, leave off this discourse, and take care of your soul, and confess your sins;" all he could get from him was, "I cannot ;" and with these words he died. Dion was no sooner acquainted with the philosophy of Plato than his whole soul caught the enthusiasm, and with the simplicity of a young man, who judges of the disposition of others by his own, he concluded that Plato's lectures would have the same effect upon Dionysius as they had produced in his mind; and he never rested till he persuaded the tyrant to hear Plato. Alas! these were vain hopes. Men of this character attended so much to what they themselves were saying, that the reply of the sage could never gain even a hearing. Plutarch records a saying of Plato, who, when he was desired by a certain people to give them a body of laws, and to settle their government upon wise principles, gave them this oracular answer, "It is very difficult to give laws to so prosperous a people." "I have heard, indeed, O dear So 1 S. Bernardi in Cantica Serm.; Herman Hugo, Pia Desideria, i. 5. 2 S. August. Tract. in S. Johan. Evang. c. i. crates," says the youth in Plato,1 "that whoever desires to be an orator need not learn what things are really just, but what seem to be so to the multitude, who relish not what are really good and honourable, but what seems to be so, and that in these the art of persuading lies; and not in truth,” ἐκ γὰρ τούτων εἶναι τὸ πείθειν, ἀλλ ̓ οὐκ ἐκ τῆς ἀλη Oɛías. After the religious troubles had given new forms for two generations, an instructive book might have been composed on the difficulties of truth. As the world wore, and as men were placed, it seemed, humanly speaking, impossible that any should have the wisdom or the courage to embrace a religion which offered them the rigours of penitence, tears of compunction, and the certainty of insults and outrage; which says to them, in the words of St. Remi to Clovis, when he received him at the door of the church at Rheims, "Mitis depone colla, adora quod incendisti, incende quod adorasti."2 If men of learning, they were proud, and resisted truth; they were not men of meditation, and perhaps they did not even understand the meaning of the term; pursuing divine things in the way rather of a study or a speculation: and their study did not bring them nearer to a comprehension of truth: "Sunt enim literæ multis instrumenta dementiæ, cunctis fere superbiæ, nisi quod raro in aliquam bonam et bene institutam animam inciderunt."4 Learned men and men of genius had a difficult sacrifice to make before they could embrace this philosophy, which condemned so much of their intellectual treasures to be divided among the needy; for, as St. Bernard says of those who are against it, "Omnibus una intentio semper fuit captare gloriam de singularitate scientiæ."5 The study of antiquity was abandoned by the moderns to men who were content to write volumes in folio, on its dry bones and fibres, or to others who searched into its detail only that they might be enabled to pay their court to men in power, and to perplex those who adhered to its spirit with the cavils of an erudite fancy. Men of noble minds were deterred from a study which was thus made subservient to adulation. On the 1 Phædrus. 2 Hincmar, Vita S. Rem. 3 Lewis Grenadensis, Catechism, iii. 21. 5 In Cantica Serm. 64. other hand, to what could love without knowledge lead in such an age? "To error," says St. Bernard. The evidence of St. Ignatius, St. Irenæus, Tertullian, St. Cyprian, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, and the other lights of the early church, was lost upon men wholly unacquainted with the history of Christianity; and to those who had never studied the Fathers of the first ages, the ignorant and rash appeal of a Jewel to their evidence would seem decisive and unanswerable. Daily experience shews that while men firmly maintain and act upon the axioms which are used in the practice of their own profession, they are often wholly unprepared to discern the importance of others, which are no less essential, in a different study. This was the case with the men who joined the standard of those who opposed the church. All their thoughts and experience had been employed in another cause, either in the pursuit of science, or in the cultivation of modern literature; so that in pressing them with the principles of the primitive Christians respecting the unity and authority of the Church, men produced as much effect as if, in reasoning with a ploughman, they had quoted the demonstrations of Euclid. If, again, men were led towards the sanctuary by the suggestions of others, or by the impulse of their own genius, then they were poor, and could not starve for conscience; they were generous, and they could not wound the feelings of a friend; if rich, they were too gross and sensual and overcharged with cares of this life, to admire its excellence; if young, they were sedulously kept from embracing it by parents and governors, and perhaps by the terrors of law,-Suetonius relates of Nero, that his mother had inspired him with aversion to philosophy, teaching him that it was contrary to the character of one who was to rule an empire; -if old, the world had gained too great an ascendancy over their minds to suffer the entrance of celestial inspiration. "I know, indeed," says Dion Chrysostom, "that it is hard to teach men, but easy to deceive them; and they learn with pain, if they do attain to learn, by means of the few who are wise, but they are deceived most readily by the multitude of the ignorant, and not only by others, but by themselves." 1 Lastly, there were others for whom 1 Orat. xi. it might have been said, "evacuatum est scandalum crucis;" who had learning and meekness, who had a strong inclination for the truth, who had no dread of poverty, who had no friends that would be grieved, who had youth and no obstacles, age and no perverse prejudices, and yet who chose rather to die than to return to the household of faith. "Probatum est," says St. Bernard, "mori magis eligunt, quam converti."2 Still, however, it was not for Christians to despair. Jordan was turned back; And a less wonder than the refluent sea Might, at God's pleasure, work amendment here. A reasonable hope might have been expressed in the words of St. Augustine, "O utinam possetis intelligere quæ dicta sunt! Confestim abjiceretis omnes ineptias fabellarum, totosque vos magna alacritate, sincero amore, firmissima fide, sanctissimo Ecclesiæ Catholicæ gremio conderetis."3 But within how few minutes has this melancholy shade come on! The objects which are soon to pass along our path, like the train of spectres through the woods of romance, which give notice of approaching wars to the empire, making the night hideous with the rattle of direful wheels, are casting a gloom before them. "Eppɛ tà kaλá.4 It is as if the night had closed in upon us. Nothing is to be seen of those gallant sons of chivalry decked with jewels, and adorned with glittering armour, who, with banners richly wrought, reflecting the sun's rays, passed in such solemnity before us; it is as when the belated pilgrim learns from the last toll of the bell of a distant convent, that he has wandered far from the track, when the light fails him, and the ground is overspread with tangled thorns, and there is no sound but the screech of the nightheron to awaken the echoes of the forest. As Landor bids adieu to his Cato and Lucullus, we leave our Tancred and the Cid; we leave Saint Bernard and the Paladins, the 1 Epist. ad Galat. v. 11. 2 Serm. lxvi. in Cantica. 3 St. August. de Moribus Eccles. Cathol. 32. |