might well consent to throw into the gulf of oblivion one of the most voluminous of the Fathers-even Jerom himself, as the price of recovering an authentic statement of the opinions and arguments of these two early dissidents, of whom in fact we can now learn nothing more trustworthy than what a good catholic of Spain or Ireland may know of the doctrines of Luther and Calvin by the favour of his priest. That they were men of unblemished faith and piety, as well as of vigorous understanding, cannot be absolutely ascertained, nor are even their specific opinions to be clearly determined. Contumelious exaggeration swells every sentence of the passages in which their opponents depict them.10 It may however be inferred pretty clearly that the one, as well as the other, inveighed against each of the principal superstitions of the times;- especially against the vow of virginity, and the merits of monkery the mediation of saints the worship of relics, and the usage of promiscuous vigils. It seems also that the absolving power assumed by the clergy, and the secular usurpations of the hierarchy were called in question by them. No valid suspicion attaches to the proper orthodoxy of these men ;" but it is plain 10 Ais Vigilantius os fœtidum rursus aperire, et putorem spurcissimum contra sanctorum martyrum proferre reliquias. "Jerom, in his Catalogue of Church Writers, assigns Vigilantius a place among heretics, only on the ground of his opposition to the points above mentioned: had his orthodoxy been assailable, there is no doubt we should have heard of his delinquency. that the assault they made, though directed against single points only, or adjuncts of the faith and practice of the Church, involved inseparably the fate of the entire edifice of Religionreligion such as doctors and monks had made it. Every thing must have fallen to the groundthe polity, the creeds, the power of Rome, the monasteries:-not a stone could have been left upon another, if Jovinian and Vigilantius had succeeded in awakening the people of Christendom from their trance, and had brought emperors and secular men of rank to listen to them favourably. Had these Reformers led back the minds of men to the Scriptures, and to the simplicity of faith and the soundness of morality-the horrors of more than a thousand years of superstition might have been saved. Alas! another destiny awaited the nations. The Church had reached, at the close of the fourth century, the edge of a steep; but it yet stood upon ground whence a return was practicable. Learning and intelligence were widely diffused; and of the aliment of knowledge there was no dearth : a seal had not yet been set upon the volume of Scripture. The separate existence and independence of the Eastern and Western-the Greek and the Latin Churches, secured, or might have secured, an asylum to liberty. Indications too may be discerned of the fact, that, although high personages and dignitaries and eloquent writers, held together, Y and understood their common interest, there were individuals perhaps multitudes, who were far from assenting to the superstitions of the age, and who, with the Scriptures in their hands, dared to doubt, though hardly to speak or act. 12 - The regeneration of the Church was in that age hypothetically possible, and actually attempted; yet it utterly failed. The men whose intelligence and expansion of mind should have taught them to listen to reproof, and who should have entertained-if it had been but for a moment, the suspicion that the course of things might be unsafe — these, with a headlong intemperance, rushed upon the objectors, and triumphed. Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerom, the three illustrious leaders of the age, joined their giant strength, and gave to the Church the plunge which sent it down to the abyss. Whatever of degrading superstition, whatever of sanguinary fanaticism, whatever folly, whatever corruption, whatever cruelty, belonged to the The frequency and the seriousness of Augustine's references to the heresy of Jovinian prove that it had spread to an alarming extent; the same may be gathered from the anxiety of Jerom. The former, De Bono Conjugali, and Retract. b. ii. c 22, says-Joviniani hæresis sacrarum virginum meritum æquando pudicitiæ conjugali tantum valuit in urbe Roma, ut nonnullas etiam sanctimoniales, de quarum pudicitia suspicio nulla præcesserat, dejecisse in nuptias diceretur.... Although repressed by the Church, the monstrous doctrine continued, it is added, to be whispered and insinuated during several years. Jovinian himself was exiled to the island of Boa-a rock on the Illyrian coast, where he died: -such was the tolerance of the fourth century! religious condition of Europe under the sway of Hildebrand, may be assigned (as a true consequence) to the part taken and the course pursued by the great men we have named :-the fate of mankind through a long night of ignorance and malign tyranny was sealed when Ambrose, Augustin, and Jerom, combined to crush dissent. Shall we apportion the blame among the three? If it were attempted to do so, a distinction, often requisite, must be made between personal criminality, and the actual ill consequence of a fatal course of conduct; for while it is Jerom who must bear almost alone the blame of indulging a despotic and malignant temper, it was the opposite qualities of Augustine- his mildness and his piety, that gave to his influence a permanent efficacy. Mankind would have sickened at the arrogance of the one, if the other had not stood by his side. The bishop of Milan perhaps should take station between the two.13 13 Jerom had much more to do with these dissidents than either Ambrose or Augustine. The bishop of Milan, in an epistle to pope Syricius, reporting the result of a council of seven or eight bishops, held there for the condemnation of certain heretics, assures his holiness of their perfect concurrence with the papal court :--Jovinianum, &c. &c. quos Sanctitas Tua damnavit, scias apud nos quoque, secundum judicium tuum, esse damnatos. All were no better than Manichees, whose impious doctrine clementissimus exsecratus est imperator (Theodosius)-and whose sectators had been expelled from Milan. The allusions made by Augustine to Jovinian are in a somewhat better style; and it appears from them that his opinion was formed upon hearsay. See De Pec. Merit. et remis. b. iii. c. 7, and De Nupt. b. ii. c. 5; where we learn that Jovinian had first dared to call Fanaticism, as we assume, combines always malign and imaginative sentiments, and in some instances the former, in others the latter, predominate. Thus, in the case of the despotic champion of existing establishments, the darker ingredient prevails over the brighter, or quite excludes it. But with the ambitious propagator of novel dogmas, or the factious chief of a sect, the imaginative element is ordinarily paramount; and it is not until after the temper has been impaired by exposure to irritation that the irascible and vindictive passions take the lead in the character. The religious demagogue is at first an Enthusiast only, and rises to fanaticism upon the winds of strife. Moreover the natural progression of his sentiments involves another unfavourable turn; for the public course he pursues, and the emergencies which, as head of a party, he encounters, present many occasions wherein neither his enthusiasm nor his fanaticism-neither poetry nor tragedy, will bear him clear of the perplexing embarrassments that surround him.-He has recourse therefore to guile; and from that fatal moment every sentiment assumes a new relative - Ambrose Manichee the common epithet then of theological contempt, and flung from side to side like Methodist or Calvinist. Taking Augustine's own account of the matter, as stated a little further on, in the same treatise, it must be granted that Jovinian had some reason on his side when he charged the Church with favouring Manichæism by her idolatry of virginity. To the same purport see Contra duas epist. Pelag. b. i. c. 1. Contra Julian. b. i. c. 2. |