cipal pupils; and though he continued to write to his patron, as when he sent him his corrected Bible, he was now engaged till his death, May 19, a.d. 804, in little else but the care of his soul.

He used to say of compunction, or conviction of sin, "It is a treasure in the heart better than a hoard of gold. Three things make up this sweet compunction: remembrance of sins past, consideration of our fleeting pilgrimage through this life of misery, and desire of our heavenly country. And when through prayer it finds utterance, sorrow flies away, and the Holy Ghost keeps watch in the heart."

Of the use of the holy Scriptures he said, "As the body is fed with meat, so is the soul fed with the words of God, as the psalmist speaks: Sweeter are thy words to my mouth-cheek than honey or bees' bread. He that would be much with God, let him often pray, and let him often read the holy Scripture. For when we pray, we speak to God; and when we read holy writ, then speaketh God to us." This was also a common saying of Aldhelm's, and appears to have been familiar with the Saxon Church.

Charlemagne and others of his court seem sometimes to have asked him questions on Scripture difficulties. Some questions of this kind may be found among his writings. "It is said, No man hath seen God at any time; and the apostle calls him the King immortal and invisible. Yet our Lord says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Answ. God may be seen according to the gift of his grace; that is, He may be understood in this either by angels, or by the souls of the saints. But the full nature of his godhead neither any angel nor saint can perfectly understand; therefore he is called invisible.'

There was one Felix, bishop of Urgel in Spain,

who wrote at this time against the godhead of our blessed Saviour, calling him only the adopted Son of God. Against him Alcuin wrote more than one treatise; and it is to be hoped that he sincerely retracted his error, for which a council of the Church degraded him from his bishopric. At least the controversy had a remarkable end; for Felix after his deposition lived on terms of friendship with Alcuin, and passed much of his time with him at his monastery of Tours.

A more remarkable dispute arose in Alcuin's time about the worship of images in churches. In A.D. 792, Charlemagne sent over into England a book which had been forwarded to him for that purpose from the East, containing the decrees of a council of the Greek Church in favour of the religious adoration of images. It seems that Alcuin was at this time on a visit to England; and the bishops of the English Church being of one mind in condemning this new doctrine, -a doctrine which, they declared," the Church of God holds accursed,”- engaged him to write to Charlemagne against it. He did so; and writing in the name and with the authority of the English Church, and using the soundest scriptural arguments, notwithstanding that Adrian, the pope of that time, had approved of the idolatrous practice, he effectually engaged Charlemagne to use his influence to check it. In A.D. 794, that monarch called together a council at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, in which three hundred bishops solemnly condemned the doctrine of the Greek council and the pope; and this step prevented for a long time afterwards the progress of the error in Great Britain.

Such were some of the services of this remarkable man, both to his own country, and that which had adopted him, and to the Church of Christ. His

writings were highly valued in England, and often made a portion of instruction from the pulpit; and to France he was a benefactor, whose good works left a blessing behind them more durable than the victories of Charlemagne.

CHAPTER X.

SHORT VIEW OF THE STATE OF THE CHURCH AT THE CLOSE OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS. REIGN OF EGBERT, ETHELWOLF, AND HIS SONS. INROADS OF THE DANES. DESTRUCTION OF THE CHURCHES IN THE NORTH.

To shake the Saxon's mild domain,
Rush'd in rude swarms the robber Dane,
From frozen wastes and caverns wild
To genial England's scenes beguil'd:
And in his clamorous van exulting came

The demons foul of famine and of flame;

Witness the sheep-clad summits, roughly crown'd
With many a frowning foss and airy mound,
Which yet his desultory march proclaim.

T. WARTON.

E must now return to the state of the Church in England, whose teachers and chief bishops, both in the north and south, were often in correspondence with their distinguished countrymen in France. During the period from the death of Ina of Wessex to the rise of Egbert, the Mercian kingdom had taken the lead among the Saxon states. All the kingdoms south of the Humber, when Bede wrote his history, had acknowledged the supremacy of Ethelbald, who reigned for a term of forty years, A.D. 716-756. Shortly after his death arose another powerful king, Offa, whose reign extended over forty years more, to A.D. 796. Offa, not content with the submission of the neighbouring kings, sought by force or treachery to put an end to their sovereignties. He is charged with the murder of a prince of East An

glia, whom he had invited in friendship to his court; and he made war upon the little kingdom of Kent, which stubbornly maintained its independence.

In this dispute the Churches of Canterbury and Rochester, and other seats of religion in Kent, were exposed to suffering. Offa thought it concerned the honour of his crown to diminish the honour of the see of Canterbury, and persuaded pope Adrian, the same who wrote in defence of image-worship, to send an archbishop's pall to Higbert, bishop of Lichfield, making the six other bishoprics between the Thames and Humber subject to him instead of archbishop Eanbert. It is no great credit to pope Adrian, that he consented so easily to this project, for which there was no reason but the worldly ambition of Offa; and his honesty is somewhat impeached by it, inasmuch as Offa began a practice, which was long afterwards continued, of sending a yearly present in money, called "Peter-pence," to Rome. The Saxon laws speak of this present as "the king's alms;" it was not a tax paid to the pope, but to the king's officers: it led, however, afterwards to help the encroachments of the bishops of Rome.1

The popes about this time were men of very different character from the good pope Gregory, who had given so freely of his own without expecting any return. The Romans, indeed, say that this Adrian Ï. did not degenerate from his predecessors, and that he is fit to be compared with the best of them. But archbishop Eanbert and the English bishops, who had opposed him on the question of image-worship, were probably of a different opinion; and this opinion might have been fostered when he was so easily

1 Peter-pence were paid on St. Peter's day for alms to the poor at Rome, and for lighting up the church in honour of St. Peter. The sum was 365 marks, a mark for every day in the year, or about 1207. ; no very great sum even in those days.