signi armat frontem (what good catholic would not have crossed himself at such a sight!) The beast however was found to be more obliging in temper than might have been expected, and in reply to the saint's inquiry-'Whereabouts does the servant of God live?' he courteously pointed to the desired path, and then galloped off with the swiftness of a bird! The learned Jerome does not attempt to solve the weighty question, whether this centaur was a mere guise of the devil; or a real and substantial son of the wilderness. Be that as it might, St. Antony held on his way; but he had gone only a few steps further, when lo! he beheld, in a rocky glen, a negro-snouted urchin, whose forehead budded horns, while his inferior parts were those of a goat; in a word, it was a genuine satyr! St. Antony, scutum fidei, et loricam spei, ut bonus præliator, arripuit. Another friend however (whether beast or devil) presents himself under this ambiguous form; and one who was gifted, not merely with urbanity, and with the faculty of speech, but with reason and truth :—mortalis ego sum, et unus ex accolis eremi, quos vario delusa errore gentilitas, faunos, satyrosque et incubos vocans colit. To exclude the incredulity of his readers, Jerome assures them that an animal of this very species, which had been brought alive to Alexandria, had been sent in pickle to Antioch, where it had been examined by the emperor. We must however cut short our story, and bring the holy monk to the cave of the still holier Paul, an eremite indeed, who, utterly, and long forgotten by man, had passed nearly a century in this seclusion, clad only with a whisp of the leaves of the palm tree, which also during twenty years had supplied him with his only diet; since the failing of which he had received a ration of bread, daily, like Elijah, from heaven. Long did St. Antony knock, and earnestly did he pray before he could gain admittance. 'Qui bestias recipis,' said he, 'hominem cur repellis? . . . . Quod si non impetro, hic moriar ante postes tuos : certe sepelies vel meum cadaver!' The door opens at this appeal, and nothing could be more sweet than the greetings and the discourse of the two anchorets. While chatting, a crow perches on the branch of a neighbouring tree, and then lays a whole loaf on the table; integrum panem ante ora mirantium deposuit! Now it seems that, for sixty years or more, this same almoner had

....

brought the hermit, daily, half a loaf; but this day, a whole loaf! Dominus nobis prandium misit. . militibus suis duplicavit annonam! But now who should have the honour of splitting it in two? Long and ingeniously was this difficulty discussed, when at length it was agreed that, each holding his part, they should break it by their conjoined efforts! The reader should be told that all these edifying incidents are garnished with texts of Scripture, which I must take the liberty to omit.

Again, to cut short our instructive narrative, we must briefly say that the hermit Paul, knowing that his own departure was at hand, enjoined St. Antony to fulfil the functions of his undertaker, sexton, and executor; but first desired that he would return whence he came, and fetch from his monastery the pallium given him by Athanasius, and wherein he would fain be wrapped for interment. Antony complies, retraces his weary way with all speed, seizes the cloak, and returns breathless, fearing lest he should be too late to discharge the last offices to his dying friend. On his way he beholds a heavenly quire of Prophets and Apostles, and among them the departed Paul, in snow white robes! Too true a portent! The hermit had already breathed his last when St. Antony reached the cavern. After indulging his grief awhile, he bethinks himself of the duties of his office; but here comes the staggering difficulty! how shall he dig the grave, having neither spade nor shovel? While much perplexed, and well nigh in despair-Moriar ut dignum est: what should he see but a pair of lions scouring the hills, who, approaching the spot, and coming up to the corpse, signified, by many blandishments and by wagging their tails, and growling deeply, their sympathy with the saint on the sad occasion: nor was this all; for they forthwith most humanely set about digging a grave for the defunct! and, strange to say-as exact to the measure as the most expert sexton could have done it! unius hominis capacem locum foderunt; and then, having finished their tasks, and looking for their hire, they threw back their ears, licking St. Antony's hands and feet :— at ille animadvertit benedictionem eos a se precari !—nor did the saint refuse them a remuneration so well earned:-blessed lions! We We may leave them then, and him, to conclude the obsequies as they can, and shall here cut short the legend. It is enough; or need

we adduce more of like quality from the same great doctor's other ascetic memoirs ? *

I do not ask whether the above savours of truth and piety and reason, a question which would be insulting to the reader; but whether it be in any way more deserving of regard than is the vilest legendary trash of the most besotted times of monkery?— From this rhodomontade, mixed up as it is with the language of Scripture, every sound mind turns with utter disgust. It is hard to imagine what that condition of the conscience could be, which might allow a man such as Jerome, to sit down, and deliberately string together these miserable inanities. That a stupid monk, who never had had a nobler thought, should do so, is what one may understand; but in the case of a man of vigorous intellect, one is driven to the alternative, either of supposing something like a possession, or infatuation; or otherwise must believe that he, and some other of his contemporaries, the makers and venders of the like commodities, having forbidden the perusal of the gentile classic literature to the laity, laboured to supply the place of it with what should be entertaining, and at the same time of a sort to stimulate the fanaticism, and to debilitate the reason of the people. This however would not be very unlike the 'hypocrisy of liars.'

The gentile classic literature! May Plato and Xenophon and Cicero be mentioned in such a connexion ? It is not without an emotion profoundly painful that one turns from the turbid, frothy, and infectious stream of Jerome's ascetic writings, to the pellucid waters of pagan Greece and Rome.-Reason darkened indeed; but it is reason still, and moreover, reason struggling toward the light; and exempt from virulence, from hypocrisy, and from absurdity. Such a contrast powerfully impresses the mind with a sense of the infinite mischief that has been done to mankind by men who, when christianity, with its simple grandeur and its divine purity, was fairly lodged in their hands and committed to their care, could do nothing but madly heap upon it, and often for selfish purposes, every grossness and folly which might turn aside its influence, and expose it to contempt.

*Vita Pauli Erem.

It may be a christian-like and kindly office to palliate the errors, and to cloak the follies, and to give a reason for the false notions, of the nicene divines; but when, on the other side, one thinks of the long centuries of woe, ignorance, persecution, and religious debauchery, which took their character directly from the perversity of these doctors, it is hard to repress emotions of the liveliest indignation. As to Jerome, who coined afresh, and issued anew, all the superstitions of his age, and who sent them forward for fourteen hundred years, one can hardly think of him otherwise than as an enemy of his kind. By a line of causation, not very indirect, he has been the author of a hundred times more human misery (not to look into the hidden world) than was inflicted upon the nations by a Tamerlane.*

* In what manner Ambrose and Augustine treated the opposers of the ascetic system may be seen by referring to the following places:-Ambrose, addressing pope Syricius (Epist. 42, class. i.) his lord and well-beloved brother,' includes Jovinian in a list of condemned heretics-Manichees and others, to whom no indulgence can be shown. These, whom the most benign emperor had execrated, and who were indeed deserving, as he says, ' of all execration,' had been condemned, first at Rome, and then at Milan, whence they had been driven-quasi profugos. Jovinian's opinion that there was no difference of merit between the married and the unmarried, is termed a savage howling of ferocious wolves, scaring the flock.' It is curious to find the great church authorities, contending with the most acrid zeal, for the two doctrines of the merit of virginity, and the efficacy of fasting, as if inseparable principles. Thus Ambrose, Epist. 53, says, certain babblers had come in, qui dicant nullam esse abstinentiæ meritum, nullum frugalitatis, nullam virginitatis gratiam... Jovinian, it appears, had belonged to a monastery at Milan, where he had neither seen any luxury, nor been allowed any liberty of discussion. Augustine, in his Retractations, mentions the motives and occasions of his various works; speaking of the book de bono conjugali, he says, that the heresy of Jovinian had prevailed at Rome to such an extent, that several nuns, of whose purity there had been no previous suspicion, had been induced by it to fall into matrimony. But-huic monstro sancta ecclesia quæ ibi est, fidelissime et fortissime resistit. Nevertheless the poison, not having been altogether expelled, Augustine had thought himself called upon to apply a remedy. This remedy (with the bishop's mode of treating his adversary) is to be found in his several treatises-de continentia-de bono conjugali-de virginitate de conjugiis adulterinis-de nuptiis-de bono viduitatis-de opere monachorum-and, contra Julianum. In the book, de Hæresibus, Jovinian finds his place, and his alleged errors are particularly mentioned, c. 82. Cito tamen ista hæresis oppressa et extincta est, nec usque ad deceptionem aliquorum sacerdotum potuit pervenire.

347

MONKERY AND MIRACLE.

As every one knows that, in order to acquire a genuine acquaintance with history, we must examine the extant materials of the times in question, so every one knows that these contemporary materials are to be examined in the light of our modern criticism. To lose ourselves in the original documents, and to be charmed out of our wits by their antique fascinations, is to read Homer like a school-boy, who, for the moment at least, believes, not merely in Homer's heroes, but in his gods and goddesses. The lecturer upon history finds himself compelled, in giving his account of the ten years' war, to strip off from the Iliad a prodigious quantity of finery, and to make sad work with poetry and crests, before Achilles, and Ajax, and Agamemnon, are reduced to their true dimensions, as blustering leaders of brigands and pirates.*

Now is a similar operation to be performed upon the Iliad of nicene asceticism, or do we choose rather to keep a fool's paradise entire on this sacred ground? We have no need to go to Gibbon's school in this instance; and in truth the best security against the danger of finding ourselves there, in the end, is to be had in the prompt exercise of a vigorous good sense. Renounce our reason, and then we must either settle down in the flowery paths of Butler's Lives of the Saints, or of the Spiritual Meadow"-the fairy land of unbounded credulity; or else yield ourselves to a universal scepticism; and in fact, we should be very likely to follow a path through the former, into the latter; that is to say, if we take our first lessons from Butler, to take our last from Gibbon.

*Thucydides, lib. i. c. 5.