use of the capital, and had by this time swelled into an episcopal city. No sooner was Alaric in possession of this important place, than he summoned the city to surrender, declaring that a refusal, for even one day, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the storehouses on which the lives of the Roman people depended. The clamours of the people, and the dread of famine, subdued the pride of the senate: they listened without reluctance to the proposal which Alaric made them of placing a new emperor on the throne, instead of the unworthy Honorius, and the suffrage of the Gothic chief conferred the purple on Attalus, then prefect of the city.

and

The new emperor, however, soon evinced his incompetency for the discharge of the duties of the high station to which he had been raised; and in the following year Alaric publicly despoiled him of the ensigns of royalty, and sent them as a pledge of peace and friendship to Honorius, at Ravenna. Some favourable occurrence, however, happening to turn up in the fortunes of this latter prince, at that particular juncture, the insolence of his ministers returned with it; and, instead of accepting the friendly overture of Alaric, a body of three hundred soldiers sallied out of the gates of Ravenna, who surprised and cut in pieces a considerable party of the Goths, after which they re-entered the city in triumph. The crime and folly of the court of Ravenna were now a third time expiated by the court of Rome. Alaric, who no longer dissembled his appetite for revenge plunder, appeared in arms under the walls of the capital, and the trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. They were unable, however, to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics, who, either from birth or interest, were attached to the cause of the enemy. At the hour of midnight, one of the gates of the city, called the Salarian gate, was silently opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. In the year 410, eleven hundred and sixty-three years from the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilized so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered up to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia, who during six days pillaged the city of all its gold and jewels, stripped the palaces of

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their splendid furniture-the sideboards of their massy plate, and the wardrobes of their silk and purple, which were loaded on waggons to follow the march of the Gothic army. The most cruel slaughter was made of the Romans-the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies-the females were delivered up to the brutal lust of the soldiers-and many of the noblest edifices of the city destroyed by fire.*

From what has now been said, some idea may be formed of the disastrous state of affairs which resulted from the irruption of the Gothic tribes into the provinces of the Roman empire; but the evil was far from terminating with the events which have just been narrated: it ended in nothing less than the total subversion of the empire. New invaders, from regions still more remote and barbarous, drove out or exterminated the

There is a very eloquent passage, referring to this particular subject, in a letter written by PELAGIUS, the author of the Pelagian heresy, to a Roman lady of the name of DEMETRIAS, and it deserves insertion in this place, were it only to exhibit to the reader a specimen of the superior talents which he possessed. history some further particulars will be given in a future Lecture.

Of his

Pelagius, whose original name was Morgan, was a native of Wales, and by profession a monk. He was far advanced in life before he began publicly to propagate his heretical sentiments, and until that period it seems that he had sustained a blameless reputation; for Augustine, who was contemporary with him, and combated all his errors, does him the justice to own that " he had the esteem of being a very pious man, and a Christian of no vulgar rank." Pelagius happened to be at Rome when that city was besieged by the Goths, and was probably a spectator of all that passed during the sacking of that metropolis. Soon after it was taken he set sail for Africa, and thence wrote to the Lady Demetrias the letter, of which the following is an extract, referring to the Gothic invasion.

"This dismal calamity is but just over, and you yourself are a witness how Rome that commanded the world was astonished at the alarm of the Gothic trumpet, when that barbarous and victorious nation stormed her walls, and made her way through the breach. Where were then the privileges of birth, and the distinctions of quality? Were not all ranks and degrees levelled at that time and promiscuously huddled together? Every house was then a scene of misery, and equally filled with grief and confusion. The slave and the man of quality were in the same circumstances, and every where the terror of death and slaughter was the same, unless we may say the fright made the greatest impression on those who had the greatest interest in living. Now, if flesh and blood has such power over our fears, and mortal men can terrify us to this degree, what will become of us when the trumpet sounds from the sky, and the archangel summons us to judgment? When we are not attacked by sword, or lance, or any thing so feeble as a human enemy; but when all the terrors of nature, the artillery of heaven, and the militia (if I may so speak) of Almighty God, are let loose upon us?" Letters of Augustine, No. 142.

former colonists, and Europe was successively ravaged, till the countries which had poured forth their myriads were drained of people, and the sword of slaughter was weary of destroying. "If

a man were called," says Dr. Robertson, "to fix upon the period, in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and afflicted, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius, A. D. 395, to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy, A. D. 571. The contemporary authors, who beheld that scene of desolation, labour and are at a loss for expression to describe the horrors of it.-The scourge of God-The destroyer of nations, are the dreadful epithets by which they distinguish the most noted of the barbarous leaders; and they compare the ruin which they had brought on the world to the havoc occasioned by earthquakes, conflagrations, or deluges-the most formidable and fatal calamities which the imagination of man can conceive."

To detail, circumstantially, the appalling events of this period, would carry me far beyond the prescribed limits of my Lecture; let it therefore suffice to remark, in general, that, before the conclusion of the fifth century, the mighty fabric of empire, which valour and policy had founded upon the seven hills of Rome, was finally overthrown, in all the west of Europe, by the barbarous nations from the north, whose martial energy and whose numbers were irresistible. A race of men, formerly unknown or despised, had not only dismembered that proud sovereignty, but permanently settled themselves in its fairest provinces, and imposed their yoke upon its ancient possessors. Out of the ruins of the empire arose the kingdoms of modern Europe, of which the following account appears to me to be well authenticated: -1. Odoacer, a barbarian chief, who marched into Italy at the head of an army of confederates, deposed the reigning monarch Augustulus, in the year 476, and established himself as king in the city of Rome, whence he swayed his sceptre over the Italian plains for the succeeding seventeen years, when he was attacked by the Ostrogoths under Theodoric, who overthrew his kingdom and planted that of the Ostrogoths in Italy. 2. The Visigoths, under Alaric, established their kingdom in Spain, and part of Gaul. 3. The Vandals, under Genseric, settled in Africa. 4.

THE EMPIRE PARTITIONED INTO TEN KINGDOMS. 423

The Hunns established in Hungary a kingdom well known. 5. The Burgundians took possession of Switzerland, Piedmont, and the Grisons. 6. The kingdom of the Franks was founded under Childeric, in the year 482, in ancient Gaul, now called France. 7. The Suevi took possession of a part of Spain. 8. The Saxons invaded Britain, and settled here. 9. The kingdom of the Greeks was established at Ravenna, usually denominated the Exarchate of Ravenna; and, 10. The Lombards, a people originally from Pannonia, subdued the northern part of Italy, and founded the kingdom of the Lombards, of which Pavia was the capital. Thus we have the "ten horns" of which the prophet Daniel speaks, ch. vii. 7, or the "ten kings that should arise," according to ver. 24th of that chapter.*

The following condensed account of this matter, by a contemporary writer of high authority, may possibly be acceptable to some readers.

"The first Germanic people who yielded to the impulse (of migration) were the Goths, who claimed a Scandinavian origin, but whom history can clearly trace only to the countries between the Danube, the Vistula, and the Euxine. The Visigoths, or Western Goths, in the beginning of the fifth century (A. D. 409) broke into Italy and reduced Rome, but soon after turned their arms to Gaul and Spain, where they founded a powerful monarchy, extending from the Loire to Gibraltar. They were expelled about a century after from all their possessions in France, except Languedoc, by Clovis, at the head of the Franks, who, in the latter years of the fifth century, had established himself in the north-western part of France (A. D. 507), and whose successor, by the reduction of the Burgundians, a Vandalic people who conquered the north-eastern portion of that country, once more united the greater part of Gaul. The Visigoths, after their expulsion from the south of France, preserved their authority over Spain, till their total defeat by the Mahometans, in 711. The Vandals, a people originally seated between the Oder and the Vistula, forced their way through Gaul and Spain into Africa (A. D. 429), where their power continued for a century, till it was overthrown by Belisarius, in 534. The Ostrogoths, or Eastern Goths, acquired the sovereignty of Italy, under Theodoric (A. D. 493), and retained it, till it also was recovered by the generals of Justinian, in 553. The invasion of Britain was made by sea, and its slow progress depended on that peculiarity. The early contests of the Saxons with the Britons appear to have been confined to Kent. Fifty years elapsed before two petty principalities were established by the invaders, the one by the Jutes in Kent, the other by the south Saxons, only on the borders of Sussex-A. D. 457-477. It was not until 519, four score years after the disembarkation, that Cerdic, at the head of the West Saxons, made a lasting impression on the Western Britons in a series of battles, when he was probably resisted by the valiant king Arthur. It was considerably more than a century before the country from the Humber to the Tweed, and probably to the Frith of Forth, was reduced by the Angles to two principalities, known in our history by the Latinized names of Deira and Bernicia, of which the union at a later period formed the kingdom of Northumberland."-Sir James Mackintosh's History of England, Vol. I. p. 30.

It will appear from what has been already said respecting the habits, customs, manners, and usages, of these Gothic tribes, that there could be little in common between them and the inhabitants of the provinces they had subdued, and among whom they now took up their stated abode. their stated abode. And in what relates to the subject of religion the difference between them was, if possible, still greater. They were universally idolatrous heathens, who had been trained to the worship of Hosus and Taranis, two Pagan idols, in their native woods and forests, Humanly speaking, therefore, nothing could be more natural than to expect that they would have subverted the religious institutions as well as the civil government of the empire. The event, however, proved completely the reverse of such an anticipation. The article of religion was the only point in which the barbarian invaders condescended to conform to the institutions of the various nations among whom they settled. The conquerors submitted to the religion of the conquered-viz. the religion of the church of Rome, which at the period referred to, the middle of the fifth century, had become so corrupted by the inventions of men as to approximate closely to the superstition and idolatry of the ancient heathen. But whatever shades of difference there might be found among the numerous kingdoms into which the Roman western empire was at this time divided, whether in the forms of their government, or their civil and political institutions, they unanimously agreed to adopt a corrupted form of Christianity, to support the hierarchy of the church of Rome, and to defend and maintain it as the established religion of their respective states. And this is the extraordinary event which is referred to in Rev. xvii. 12, 13, "The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet (that is, the ten kingdoms had not risen into existence when the apostle John had the Apocalyptic visions) but they were to receive their power as kings one hour (or at the same period of time) with the beast (or Antichrist)—these ten kings have one mind (that is, they all agree in this one conclusion) to give their power and strength to the beast ;" in a word, they all concur in adopting the religion of the church of Rome as the religion of their respective kingdoms, and supporting it by the civil power. And here allow me to remind you that, in the case before us, we have one instance