returns upon his path, in order to set before the people-the plebs sancta, this exemplar of virtue, or compendium of christian graces. It is certain therefore that this highly finished portrait of one so well known to him, and so fondly admired, will contain whatever was, in the preacher's opinion, most important to the christian character:—the instance is every thing we could wish for, considered as a criterion of ancient christianity, in the concrete. Without a play upon words, it may properly be called an experimentum crucis. We proceed then to analyze this most conclusive record. What were the virtues and graces of Satyrus-a perfect christian after the nicene model?

First comes his reverential regard to the rites of religion: of which a striking instance is afforded. The vessel in which Satyrus was returning to Italy having got on the rocks, he, not as yet initiated in the higher mysteries, and not regenerated, yet not fearing death, but fearing lest he should die without them, had recourse to those on board who had in their custody the consecrated elements (ordinarily carried, in a journey, as a safeguard against all perils) and having obtained them, wrapped them in a stole, or sacrificial kerchief, which he tied about his neck; and thus armed in any event, fearlessly threw himself into the sea: itaque his se tectum atque munitum satis credens, alia auxilia non desideravit. A good beginning, is it not? The modern admirers of antiquity seem to be offended when they are accused of 'putting the sacraments in the place of the Saviour;' but now they are turning us over to masters of divinity who recommend what, if it do not imply some such substitution, is altogether unintelligible. Thrust this same incident into the memoirs of any one of the insulted fathers of the english reformation: will it suit the connexion, and consist with the spirit and doctrine of the context? It would not; and those are miserably betraying the english church, who, under cover of a mystification of plain and untoward facts, are striving to put the debased christianity of Ambrose, Jerome, and Basil, in the place of the Gospel recovered by its founders.

But we proceed with the virtues of Satyrus, the list of which includes fortitude, and pious gratitude, Denique primus servatus ex undis, et in portum terrenæ stationis evectus, præsulem suum, cui se crediderat, recognovit ;-gratitude, the expression of which

gave evidence of, and augmented his faith, and a faith such as had enabled him to confide almost as calmly in the efficacy of the consecrated elements tied about his neck, as he could have done had they actually passed into his stomach! Next comes an instance of his cautious regard to legitimate church authority. Then, the childlike simplicity of his disposition and manner, and his singular modesty-pudor, and purity, in speech as well as deportment and person. And such an admirer of chastity was he, and yet so abhorrent of ostentation, that, when urged by his family to marry, having resolved to maintain his purity, he rather dissembled his purpose, than professed his determination. Who then shall not admire a man who, not wanting in magnanimity (sense of distinction) and standing as he did between a sister professing virginity, and a brother of high rank in the Church, yet affected not the honours of either condition, while himself replete with the virtues of both?'

The frugality and temperance of Satyrus kept pace with his chastity; all which were cemented by the cardinal virtue justice, and a regard to the claims of all, whether those claims were of the definite or indefinite class, and not least those of the poor. Such is this portrait; and the preacher, having satisfied his own conception of the congeries of christian virtues, indulges again in the sorrow which yet he reproves, and concludes by commending the 'innocent soul,' as an offering to God. Innocent—that is to say, one of those whom Ambrose, in another place,* says it was easier to find, than any who had duly practised penitence.

But not one line does this funereal panegyric contain breathing an evangelic feeling, or adverting to the great principles of the Gospel! It would be wrong to speak of this elaborate composition as defective, or ambiguous, or erroneous, in relation to the leading truths of christianity; for it touches them not even in the remotest manner. As well say that the Phædo of Plato is wanting in evangelic perspicuity, or that Cicero, De natura deorum, does not fully express the doctrine of the thirty-nine articles. Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, any one we may choose to name, is as evangelic as Ambrose, so far as the composition before us goes. Nor is the contrast more violent between the writings of heathen * De Pœnitentia, lib. ii. cap. 10.

moralists, and the epistles of Paul, than that which offers itself, when by the side of the inspired writings we place this nicene oration.

The inference I draw from so signal an instance would be in no degree invalidated by adducing from the same writer, passages of an evangelic aspect. Such passages would either come under the designation of dry dogmatic statements; or they would express those occasional outbursts of a better feeling which enable us yet to believe that these writers were personally better than their system. But then the romanist writers, even those of the darkest times, may readily be supplied with a similar apology. And how much more full and satisfactory is such an apology in the instance of more modern romanists, as for example, those of the Port Royal school! Whatever may be the demerits of romanism, as compared with nicene christianity, it is not to be denied that, in fervour and evangelic feeling too, its best writers are decidedly superior to those of the earlier time. In fact, it would be extremely difficult to collect, anywhere, from those distinctively called-the Fathers, a mass of christian sentiment, such as might be brought together, with the greatest ease, from the devotional and practical works of the middle and later ages. It would be perfectly safe to accept a challenge to adduce three passages from romanist authors, for every one from the nicene fathers such as would satisfy a modern protestant ear.

Or the comparison might be instituted on a rather different ground, as for example, on that of the presence or absence of expressions, utterly offensive to every sound christian feeling: and which it is very hard to reconcile with the supposition of genuine piety in the writer. Now it must be confessed that many things meet the eye on the pages of the great writers of the nicene age, of a kind that finds no parallels in accredited romanist writers. Altogether, those proprieties, both moral and religious, which modern refinement demands-and properly demands, are far better observed by the later, than they were by the earlier authors and especially will this appear to be true, if we confine ourselves to those of the highest reputation, respectively. None, I think, will attempt to deny this advantage, as belonging to the romish church, in regard to the observance of the moral decencies

of style, or subject; nor do I see that it can be refused in relation to theological proprieties: as for instance.—

Ephrem the Syrian, a highly-esteemed writer of the nicene school, and one who, ascetic as he is, may be read with pleasure and advantage by those who are better taught than himself, and who know how to supply his deplorable deficiencies in evangelic principle, gives us a story to the following effect. Abraham the hermit, his own intimate friend, had had consigned to his care in the wilderness (alas the luckless girl!) an orphan niece, the heiress of an ample fortune, then in her seventh year, whom her relatives (such were the notions of the times) conveniently disposed of by incarcerating her in a cell, destitute of every comfort, adjoining that of the hermit. In this den the poor girl's hours were occupied in the performance of menial offices for her uncle, and in the routine of penance and devotion. It was her misfortune, moreover, to be very handsome, so the legend runs. Seen and seduced by a monk, who on pretence of spiritual perplexity, frequented the holy seclusion, she abandoned at once her profession, her prison, and her keeper; who, after awhile, discovers her shame, and the place of her sojourn; whither he follows her in disguise, acting a part the most foreign to his habits. At last discovering himself to the fair runaway, he brings her to tears and shame, and among the inducements by means of which he labours to restore her to virtue, and to the ascetic life, he says, with the view of obviating her despair of forgiveness, 'Mary-I will be answerable for thee before God in the day of judgment.-I will repent for thee on account of this course of sin.-Upon me be thy sin, my child; of my hands shall God require this thy sin; only listen to me, and return with me to thy place.'*

It is only the inferior class of romanist writers who, in any such way, are found to outrage all propriety. How miserably must those have lost the consciousness of their own position, as sinners, needing mercy, who could have fallen into the habit of making themselves responsible for the sins of others!

Until of late, in perusing the fathers, we have been accustomed to take very little, or no account, of flagrant impieties such as this: and passing them perhaps with a smile, have simply said-'Such

* Ephrem. p. 231. Oxford Edition.

was the style of the times.' But we must no longer allow ourselves this sort of easy philosophic indifference, for the nicene fathers, with their superstitions and their sooffeeism, are now to be forced upon the english church, in the room of her wise, holy, manly, and christian-like founders.

Now it will not do slightingly to say, 'Oh, the fathers had their blemishes, no doubt, and so have the best writers, of the best ages; and we leave these minor imperfections where we find them ; and we think the bringing them forward is an instance of ill directed industry.' This mode of disposing of the difficulty will not meet the occasion.—A blemish may either be a spot or stain, tarnishing the surface of a solid and precious substance; or it may be a corroded speck, or a worn point, or edge, in the mere gilding that hides a worthless material: a blemish of the former sort may be removed, with equal ease and advantage to the body to which it has attached: but to rub and scour an attenuated gilding, what is it but to reveal, at every stroke, the vile brass, or wood, or clay, to which we had fondly attributed a hundred times its intrinsic value?

english reformers, are But it is also true that,

The lives, labours, and writings of our disfigured by many blemishes; grant it. in making ourselves acquainted with them, our own minds being. imbued with biblical sentiments, we become more and more impressed with the conviction of their solid excellence :-they were men of God, and, taught as they were from above, whatever may have been their faults, they understood and professed what is the most momentous in the christian system. The result of an equally thorough examination of the nicene fathers, and under the guidance of genuine principles, will be, if not of an opposite, yet of a very different kind; and we shall be compelled to confess that those vital elements of truth which the one set of men had recovered, under the divine guidance, from the Scriptures, the other set did but dimly discern, and faintly hold, and were continually surrendering, for a mere phantom of piety.

Whenever we look at ancient christianity in the concrete, or as embodied in the lives, sentiments, and practices of those who enjoyed the highest reputation for sanctity, we find, ever and again, the same ingredients, and these placed nearly in the same