to Lactantius, that he has generally been considered much more of a rhetorician than a divine, and that as a reasoner he has justly been held cheap; still, as a popular writer may always be presumed in some degree to represent the tone of feeling and acquirements of the period in which he lives, we may surely, without any breach of charity, attribute some portion of the ignorance here dis

by the Roman people. The strange blunder committed by Justin in mistaking a pillar erected on the island of the Tiber to Semo Sancus, an old Sabine deity, to whom allusion is made in the 20th chapter of the 8th book of Livy, for a monument in honor of the impostor Simon Magus, is a matter of notoriety. Now surely it is no exaggeration to assert, that had any writer of modern times committed a mistake of this gross character in relating an historical fact, the exposure would have been immediate, and his name would have ceased, as a matter of course, to be quoted as an authority. And yet on this occasion we find Eusebius, after an interval of no less than 150 years, from the time of Justin, repeating his statement without the slightest apparent misgiving as to its accuracy; although the inscription in question recorded upon a public monument, and the passage in Livy above referred to, might have put any common inquirer during the whole of that long period in possession of the real fact."

played to the contemporaries for whom he writes. Let me now add another specimen of this same author's mode of discussing points of Christian doctrine, and then leave the reader to judge of the state of the science of theology at that time, and how far the revelations of Scripture are likely to be rendered clearer by illustrations of the following description. "Our Saviour," says he, "is clearly of a different nature from the angels, inasmuch as he is the Word, whereas they are merely the Spirit (i. e. breath) of God. Now a word is not merely breath, but breath accompanied by speech; and as breath and speech proceed from different parts of the body, breath issuing from the nostrils, and speech from the mouth, there must of necessity be a vast difference between the Son of God and the angels '."

1 "Cautum est (in Scripturis) illum Dei Filium Dei esse sermonem itemque ceteros angelos Dei Spiritus esse. Nam sermo est spiritus cum voce aliquid significante prolatus. Sed tamen, quoniam spiritus et sermo diversis partibus proferuntur; siquidem spiritus naribus, ore sermo procedit,

From this period the progress of innovation advanced with a rapidly accelerated pace, so that before the close of the fourth century a vast portion of the abuses of the simple spirit of Christianity, which human invention, in the vain attempt to improve the best gift of Providence, has superadded to primitive revelation, and which have subsequently been matured into Popery in its worst form, had become almost completely established. Monkery, accompanied by a spirit of asceticism more worthy of the fakirs of Hindostan than of the followers of Christ; the adoration of relics; exorcisms; prayers for the dead; the sacrifice, as it now began generally to be called, of the Eucharist; with an unsuspecting readiness of belief in the most monstrous legends; form henceforward the leading characteristics of the period. The spiritual worship of God, as taught in scripture, and proximation to Him through faith in the one great Sacrifice, once offered, had now given

ap

magna in hunc Dei Filium et ceteros angelos differentia est." De Vera Sapientia, lib. iv. cap. 8.

place to unmeaning external ceremonies and rites, which, whilst professing to be part of the forms of Christian worship, had notwithstanding, much nearer resemblance to the superstitious usages of heathenism than to the pure soul-stirring devotion of the Gospel. The spirit of Christianity, indeed, still existed, but it existed under the superincumbent weight of a portentous mass of superstition. It is surely impossible not to perceive under how entire a misapprehension of the genius of our religion the world at that time lay, when we find even Augustine himself speaking with approbation of the performance of the Eucharistic sacrifice for the purpose of removing a murrain among cattle, supposed to have been produced by the operation of evil demons1; or again gravely recounting a miraculous vision sent by the Almighty for no better purpose than that of discovering the interred bones of Gervasius and Protasius, after their concealment during the space of

1 De Civitate Dei, lib. xxii. cap. 8.

two centuries, and affording a divine sanction. to a superstitious, not to say an idolatrous, species of worship'. Let the reader only cast his eye over the eighth chapter of the 22d book of the "De Civitate Dei," just now referred to, or to the still more strange legends gravely related by Sulpicius Severus, at about the same period, and he cannot but ad

1 Confessionum lib. ix. cap. 8.

2 Take, for instance, the following specimens:

"Monasterium beati viri (Martini) duobus a civitate erat millibus disparatum. Sed si, quoties venturus ad ecclesiam, pedem extra cellulæ suæ limen extulerat, videres per totam ecclesiam energumenos rugientes, et quasi adveniente judice, agmina damnanda trepidare, ut adventum episcopi clericis, qui venturum esse nescirent, dæmoniorum gemitus indicaret. Vidi quendam appropiante Martino in aere raptum, manibus extensis in sublime suspendi, ut nequaquam solum pedibus attingeret. Si quando autem exorcisandorum dæmonum Martinus operam recepisset, neminem manibus attrectabat, neminem sermonibus increpabat: sed, admotis energumenis, ceteros jubebat abscedere, ac foribus obseratis in medio ecclesiæ cilicio circumtectus, cinere respersus, solo stratus orabat. Tum vero cerneres miseros diverso exitu perurgeri: hos sublatis in sublime pedibus quasi de nube pendere.-At in parte alia videres sine interrogatione vexatos et sua crimina confitentes: no