seems as unnatural to class such a man with a Chrysostom or a Gregory Nazianzen, as it would have been in a later age to compare the thoughtless Abbés of the Versailles Court with the erudite disciples of St Maur or the stern followers of De Rancé1.

But although the verdict of history must assign their true relative positions to such very different ornaments of the clerical order as those we have above contrasted, yet it must be remarked that in the Bishop of Clermont is extant a representative of a mode of sacerdotal action, destined, under the Carlovingian Emperors, to stand forward in far greater prominence. I allude to what may be denominated the aesthetic influence of the priesthood. It shall be our task, in the ensuing section, to point out how the sacerdotal order was specially effective in prequosdam sui temporis scriptores, qui verborum sectabantur amœnitates, et ut sive utiles ac probas, sive inutiles atque improbas materias sibi delegissent, seriem tantum rerum nitore verborum illustrarent: Nos autem,' inquit, 'qui rerum magis quam verborum amatores utilia potius quam plausibilia sectamur, neque id quærimus, ut in nobis inania sæculorum ornamenta, sed ut salubria rerum emolumenta laudentur; in scriptiunculis nostris non lenocinia esse volumus, sed remedia, quæ scilicet non tam otiosorum auribus placeant, quam ægrotorum mentibus prosint, magnum ex utraque re cœlestibus donis fructum reportaturi.' (In Præf. ad Lib. 1. De Provid.)”

1 His incapacity for his office is acknowledged and lamented in the following terms (Ep. v. 3): "Ego autem infelicis conscientiæ mole defessus, vi febrium nuper extremum salutis accessi, utpote cui indignissimo tantæ professionis pondus impactum est, qui miser ante compulsus docere quam discere et ante præsumens bonum prædicare quam facere, tanquam sterilis arbor, cum non habeam opera pro pomis, spargo verba pro foliis."

serving, and finally imparting to the invading tribes, the blessings of an older civilization: nor can it escape our notice that the gentler arts and luxuries of Rome must have been in some measure influential in training those rugged Northern tempers; for rude and untaught minds are ever most easily accessible to the harmonizing powers of music, sculpture, and architecture. Accordingly, when we perceive in the fifth century the first stages of the gradual process by which those arts, lofty in themselves, were yet more ennobled by being enlisted in the service of religion, we cannot but recognize another portion of that complicated system of discipline by which the clergy were educated for the future emergencies of the world. The luxury of the Gallic prelates, objectionable as it undoubtedly was among the effeminate provincials, acquires a deeper significance when viewed in its intercourse with barbarian simplicity; and we can scarcely regret that Christian pastors found leisure for such comparatively frivolous recreations, if we remember that they were the destined transmitters of the intellectual torch from ancient to modern times.

In justice, however, to the early Church in Gaul, it must be observed that through much apparent thoughtlessness and worldliness there ran a vein of sincere piety1;

1 In the epistle (iv. 11), which contains the lines already quoted (p. 73) on the presbyter Claudius Mamercus's accomplishments, Sidonius Apollinaris thus describes his friend's ministerial character: "Conditionis humanæ per omnia memor clericos opere, sermone populares, exhortatione moerentes, destitutos solatio, captivos pretio, jejunos cibo, nudos operimento consolabatur." Patiens, bishop of

and that the predilection for profane studies was accompanied by a zeal in the discovery of truth, and an energy in its defence, not unworthy of the countrymen of Hilary*. A wide and interesting field of inquiry would lie before us, were we to investigate the several benefits which accrued to the cause of truth among their contemporaries from the theological champions of the Eastern and Western Empires; and it would be still farther to exceed our allotted province were we to undertake to show how far succeeding generations of the faithful have been preserved from evil, and strengthened in the knowledge of the Gospel, by the "great legacies of thought" transmitted to us through so many intervening centuries.

Before we pass from viewing the clerical influence on the body of the people during this the Roman period of Christianity, as we may term it, we must bestow a few words on the rise and progress of that monastic system, which, not unimportant in the age under our notice, was destined at so many times and by so many different methods to be the great religious lever of Europe. Although the support of those whom after ages learnt to

Lyons, displayed the greatest liberality, "usque in extimos terminos Galliarum," during the famine consequent on the ravages of the Goths (Ep. vi. 12; Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc. ii. 24); and Sidonius gives a long list of the towns which he had succoured. See also the testimony to the good qualities of Simplicius, which raised him to the see of Bourges (Concio post Ep. vii. 9).

* It is sufficient to mention the names of Prosper of Aquitaine and Vincentius Lirinensis, two of the leading opponents of Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresy.

term regular clergy had not yet been invoked by their secular brethren, and the connexion between episcopal powers and monastic privileges was wholly undefined, yet, in viewing the effect of the former, we can scarcely omit the consequences of the gradual development of the latter.

The Eastern Empire, so long the arena for contending theological schools, so fruitful of each heretical extravagancy, and so rank a hot-bed of flimsy religious systems, each varying more widely than its predecessor from the practical spirit of earlier times, was destined, as might indeed have been expected, to produce the most remarkable form of the consequent reaction. Amid the din of opposing factions, and a vain search after imaginary complications of a simple faith, the true Gospel spirit, the humility of Christianity, was forgotten or despised. It was natural then that, where these errors were most rife, where the pleasures of luxury on the one hand and of dogmatism on the other had seduced many of the guardians of the flock as well as its avowed enemies, earnest men should be found to look with horror on a world which called itself Christian, and was the theatre of so many vices. Accordingly it appears to have been despair of success in a contest with depravity, as well as the contemplative tendency of Oriental nations, which led the Anchorites of Egypt and Syria to devote to the conquest of self those powers which they shrunk from engaging in the reform of others. But even these, thoughtful and separate from the world as they had lived,

carried with them into deserts and caves numerous vestiges of the errors they had left behind. We can trace in the followers of Antony and Pachomius the same narrowness of religious views, the same forgetfulness of the truly spiritual part of the faith they professed, which had already more fatally displayed itself at Alexandria and Antioch. Hence all the strange fanaticism, which, as it appeared in the various sects of Stylites, Euchites, and Sarabaites, raised so high the ascetic renown of the Syrian and Egyptian Churches.

Turning our regards again to the Western Church, the future province of the fullest monastic developments, we are at once struck by the fact that, although the state of religious feeling, both among clergy and laity, differed essentially from what we have represented in the East, Monasticism was nevertheless successfully introduced, and that too in a form very closely resembling what it had assumed in Egypt. That the religious tone of the West was less elevated, less contemplative, and more practical than that of the East, appears from the distinction pervading all their theological controversies. Those of the latter related in general to the mystical union of the persons of the Holy Trinity, and the incarnate perfections of the Son of God, while those of the former tended rather to the decision of practical questions in church-government, and of the great contest between the supporters of grace and those of free-will in the salvation of man. Pelagianism was the main heresy of the West, as Arianism of the East. Hence it was to have