clerical body; and it either proves the great forbearance and good nature of the priesthood of those days, or the high delight which the men who were powerful enough to yield protection, took in listening to the ridicule of the priests. Much inequality pervades the rude poems to which these observations relate. But, amid many prosaic and contemptible passages, fine bursts of sentiment occasionally break forth; and sublime, as well as tender emotions, are very powerfully produced. Their influence upon the progress of mind seems to have been salutary, and far from weak. By presenting something to delight in the vernacular tongue, the taste for reading was diffused; and the consciousness of exercising so flattering a power over a growing multitude of readers, increased the motive to improve the language, as well as to render it the vehicle of more important ideas. The astonishing perfection which, at this early period, and almost in its first attempts, the Italian poetry attained, in the hands of Dante and Petrarch, is one of the most remarkable circumstances of those obscure times. The character of this poetry is too generally known to require any description; and its superior refinement may in part be accounted for, by considering that the circumstances which made Rome the capital of the Christian world, made Italy the centre of all the little improvement which was then known. The degree to which the study of physics was carried in the period under our review, is by no means unworthy of consideration. Its origin, and the motive to it, were worthy, indeed, of the darkest periods of human history; but the pursuit itself was attended with great advantages. The studies to which we allude, it will readily be understood, were those of the alchymists, originally pursued for the discovery of the elixir of life, and the philosopher's stone. The absurdity of the end, of necessity, occasioned a great misapplication of the industry which was bestowed; but the greatness of the motive excited industry to the highest degree; and, of the innumerable experiments which were made, an important discovery was from time to time the result. At the same time that alchymy introduced in Europe one great branch of physical science, astrology kept alive the attention to another. By the opinion which prevailed, and prevailed to a late period, (for it was habitual with many of the most eminent persons in the court of Charles the Second,) that the positions of the heavenly bodies were prophetic of terrestrial events, men were powerfully excited to observe and to record the phenomena of the heavens; and the noble science of Astronomy arose in this manner out of the most absurd of superstitions. It is not, we suspect, sufficiently considered, to how great a degree we are indebted for that spirit of discovery in the physical sciences, which burst forth so wonderfully after the discovery of printing, to the ardour of the alchymistical and astrological studies of the antecedent times. It is not even considered how many of our most important inventions those times and those studies produced. If we mention only those of glass and of gunpowder, we shall convey no trivial idea to those who are unacquainted with the details. But it is now necessary to advert to what constituted the most important branch of the literary pursuits of the ages under our review, their Logic and Metaphysics. As this, however, is a subject which much care has been employed to illustrate, and with which most persons who read are to a certain degree acquainted, it will be less necessary for us to dwell long in the discussion. It is surprising, not only how much ardour, but how much talent was wasted upon the art of syllogizing, and of playing tricks with abstract and general terms. One remark may be considered of some importance that the passion for verbal subtleties and refinements, is one of the characteristics of a low stage of improvement, and will be found to have perverted the application of most nations in the infancy of their literary pursuits. The first speculators in Greece, for example, were the sophists, whose art consisted in puzzling and surprising their hearers, by the tricks of a quibbling dialectic; and the great merit of Socrates, and after him of Plato, consisted in exposing the folly of that verbal jugglery, and introducing a taste somewhat less irrational, into moral speculation. Among the Persians, the Hindus, and, generally speaking, all the lettered nations of Asia, the business of moral speculation never ascended beyond this inferior level; and their endless and mischievous distinctions in grammar (for they hardly get the length of logic) have been set down by superficial inquirers, as a proof of great civilization, and a high state of mental improvement. In considering the intricate and useless disquisitions into which the scholastic disputants were led by the obscurity of abstract, general terms, it is of great importance to observe, that they were the first to start a question, to which, in no former age, philosophy had been sufficiently improved to give birth. They originated the grand inquiry-What is the nature of abstract or general terms?-A question, upon the right understanding of which, more, perhaps, than on any other question whatsoever, the progress of the human mind depends. The disputes of the nominalists and realists, though not very wisely conducted, and of course not leading, in their hands, to any very definite results, pointed distinctly at the real difficulty; and led the way to that knowledge of the true character and use of general terms, which alone can explain the nature of general reasoning, and preserve the mind from those illusions which the abuse of general terms is so apt to impose upon it. The most important light, however, in which the scholastic studies are to be viewed, is that of the influence which they had in laying the foundation of the modern institutions of education; and the influence which, by their means, they continue to exert upon the existing generation. Before the prevalence of the scholastic ardour, the state of the schools is by our author thus described. "The subjects taught in the schools, were comprised under the general heads of Trivium and Quadrivium,-words which are sufficiently indicative of their barbarous origin. Trivium included, what were deemed the introductory and less noble arts-Grammar, Dialectics, and Rhetoric: Quadrivium closed the circle by Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. The following lines served to fix them in the memory. Gramm. loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat: Why the place of honour was rather given to the latter, than to the numbers of the Trivium, does not distinctly appear. But whatever may have been its temporary ascendant, Logic, or rather the scholastic art of disputation, was afterwards pursued with so much ardour, that it absorbed all its sister arts, and triumphed over the circle of the Quadrivium." It became in fact the leading object of education; and all other parts of tuition were regarded as only paving the way to this noble attainment. New institutions were erected, for the purpose of training up youth in this popular science;-institutions which were regarded as crowning the work of education. Never," says Roger Bacon, speaking of his own times, "never was there such a show of wisdom, such exercises in all branches, and in all kingdoms, as within these forty years. Teachers are everywhere 66 dispersed, in cities, in castles, and in villages, taken particularly from the new monastic orders." In fact, these new orders, whose activity was whetted by a desire to distinguish themselves, and who took up the ground of education, as left unoccupied by their predecessors, contributed not a little to diffuse the ardour for study, and to obtain the foundation of schools and colleges, for the advancement of their favourite science. Most of the universities and colleges, for the higher branches of education, throughout Europe, owetheir origin to those times, and to the passion for those studies. To the scholastic logic, after the fall of Constantinople, was added the study of the ancient Latin and Greek; and at that point, in most of the institutions of education in Europe, especially where unhappily they became united with a rich ecclesiastical establishment, the business of improvement stopt. THE RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY MERITS OF THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH.* We had thought that the merits of the Fathers were beginning to be pretty fairly estimated;-that, whatever reverence might still be due to those eminent men, for the sanctity of their lives, their laborious lucubrations, their zeal and intrepidity in the cause of the Church, and all those solemn and imposing lights, in which their nearness to the rising sun of Christianity places them;-yet, that the time of their authority over conscience and opinion was gone by; that they were no longer to be regarded as guides either in faith or in morals; and that we should be quite within the pale of orthodoxy insaying that, though admirable martyrs and saints, they were, after all, but indifferent Christians. In point of style, too, we had supposed that criticism was no longer dazzled by their sanctity; that few would now agree with the learned jesuit, Garasse, that a chapter of St. Augustin on the Trinity is worth all the Odes of Pindar;-that, in short, they had taken their due rank among those affected and rhetorical writers, who flourished in the decline of ancient literature, and were now, like many worthy authors we could mention, very much respected and never read. We had supposed all this; but we find we were mistaken. An eminent dignitary of the Church of England has lately shown that, in his opinion at least, these veterans are by no means invalided in the warfare of theology; for he has brought more than seventy volumes of them into the field against the Calvinists:-And here is Mr. Boyd, a gentleman of much Greek, who assures us that the Homilies of St. Chrysostom, the Orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen, and-proh pudor!-the Amours of Daphnis and Chloe, are models of eloquence, atticism, and fine writing. Mr. Boyd has certainly chosen the safer, as well as pleasanter path, through the neglected field of learning; for, tasteless as the metaphors of the Fathers are in general, they are much more innocent and digestible than their arguments;-as the learned bishop we have just alluded to may perhaps by this time acknowledge; having found, we suspect, that his seventy folios are, like elephants in battle, not only ponderous, but dangerous auxiliaries, which, when once let loose, may be at least as formidable to friends as to * Boyd's Translations from the Fathers.-Vol. xxiv. page 58. November, 1814. VOL. III. 6 foes. This, indeed, has always been a characteristic of the writings of the Fathers. This ambidexterous faculty-this sort of Swiss versatility in fighting equally well upon both sides of the question, has distinguished them through the whole history of Theological controversy :-The same authors, the same passages have been quoted with equal confidence, by Arians and Athanasians, Jesuits and Jansenists, Transubstantiators and Typifiers. Nor is it only the dull and bigoted who have had recourse to these self-refuted authorities for their purpose; we often find the same anxiety for their support, the same disposition to account them, as Chillingworth says, "Fathers when for, and children when against," in quarters where a greater degree of good sense and fairness might be expected. Even Middleton himself, who makes so light of the opinions of the Fathers, in his learned and manly Inquiry into Miracles, yet courts their sanction with much assiduity for his favourite system of allegorizing the Mosaic history of the creation;-a point on which, of all others, their alliance is most dangerous, as there is no subject upon which their Pagan imaginations have rioted more ungovernably. The errors of these primitive Doctors of the Church,-their Christian Heathenism and Heathen Christianity, which led them to look for the Trinity among those shadowy forms that peopled the twilight groves of the Academy, and to array the meek, self-humbling Christian in the proud and iron armour of the Portico-their bigoted rejection of the most obvious truths in natural science,-the bewildering vibration of their moral doctrines, never resting between the extremes of laxity and rigour,—their credulity, their inconsistencies of conduct and opinion, and, worst of all, their forgeries and falsehoods, have already been so often and so ably exposed by divines of all countries, religions and sects-the Dupins, Mosheims, Middletons, Clarkes, Jortins, etc., that it seems superfluous to add another line upon the subject; though we are not quite sure that, in the present state of Europe, a discussion of the merits of the Fathers is not as seasonable and even fashionable a topic as we could select-At a time when the Inquisition is re-established by our "beloved Ferdinand;" when the Pope again brandishes the keys of St. Peter with an air worthy of a successor of the Hildebrands and Perettis; when canonization is about to be inflicted on another Louis, and little silver models of embryo princes are gravely vowed at the shrine of the virgin;-in times like these, it is not too much to expect that such enlightened authors as St. Jerome and Tertullian may soon become the classics of most of the Continental courts. We shall therefore make no further apology for prefacing our remarks upon Mr. Boyd's translations with a few brief and desultory notices of some of the most distinguished Fathers and their works. St. Justin, the Martyr, is usually considered as the well-spring of most of those strange errors which flowed so abundantly through the early ages of the Church, and spread around them in their course such luxuriance of absurdity. The most amiable, and therefore the least contagious of his heterodoxies,* was that which led him to patronize the souls of Socrates and other Pagans, in consideration of those glimmerings of the divine Logos which his fancy discovered through the dark night of Heathenism. The absurd part of his opinion remained, while its tolerant spirit evaporated: * Still more benevolent was Origen's never-to-be-forgiven dissent from the doctrine of eternal damnation. To this amiable weakness, more than any thing else, this Father seems to have owed the forfeiture of his rank in the Calendar;-and in return for his anxiety to rescue the human race from hell, he has been sent thither himself by more than one Catholic theologian. and while these Pagans were still allowed to have known something of the Trinity, they were yet damned for not knowing more, with most unrelenting orthodoxy. The belief of an intercourse between angels and women-founded upon a false version of a text in Genesis-and of an abundant progeny of demons in consequence, is one of those monstrous notions of St. Justin and other Fathers, which show how little they had yet purged off the grossness of Heathen mythology, and in how many respects their Heaven was but Olympus with other names* :-Yet we can hardly be angry with them for this one error, when we recollect, that possibly to their enamoured Angels we owe the beautiful world of Sylphs and Gnomes; and that perhaps at this moment we might have wanted Pope's most exquisite Poem, if the Septuagint Version had translated the book of Genesis correctly. This doctrine, as far as it concerned angelic natures, was at length indignantly disavowed by St. Chrysostom. But Demons were much too useful a race to be easily surrendered to reasoning or ridicule;—there was no getting up decent miracle without them; exorcists would have been out of employ, and saints at a loss for temptation :-Accordingly, the writings of these holy Doctors abound with such stories of demoniacal possession, as make us alternately smile at their weakness and blush for their dishonesty.‡ Nor are they chargeable only with the impostures of their own times; the sanction they gave to this petty diabolism has made them responsible for whole centuries of juggling. Indeed, whoever is anxious to contemplate a picture of human folly and human knavery, at the same time ludicrous and melancholy, may find it in a history of the exploits of Demons from the days of the Fathers down to modern times;-from about the date of that theatrical little devil of Tertullian (so triumphantly referred to by Jeremy Collier), who claimed a right to take possession of a woman in the theatre, "because he there found her on his own ground," to the gallant demons commemorated by Bodin § and Remigius ||, and such tragical farces as the possession of the nuns of Loudun. The same features of craft and dupery are discoverable through the whole from beginning to end; and when we have read of that miraculous person, Gregory Thaumaturgus, writing a familiar epistle to Satan, and then turn to the story of the Young Nun, in Bodin, in whose box was found a love-letter "à son cher dæmon ** " we need not ask more perfect specimens of the two wretched extremes of imposture and credulity, than these two very different letter-writers afford. The only class of demons whose loss we regret, and whose visitations we would gladly have restored us, are those "seducing spirits, who," as Theo * See, for their reveries on this subject, Clem. Alex. Stromat. lib. v. p. 550. Ed. Lutet. 1629 -Tertullian. de Habitu Mulieb. cap. 2. and the extraordinary passage of this Father (de Virgin. veland.), where his editor Pamelius endeavours to save his morality at the expense of his Latinity, by the substitution of the word "excussat" for "excusat." See also St. Basil de verâ Virginitate, tom. i. p. 747. edit. Paris; though it is but fair to say, that Basil's biographer Hermant, and others, think this treatise spurious; and it certainly contains many things not of the most sanctified description. i Le Comte de Gabalis. Middleton's Free inquiry. It would be difficult to add any thing new to this writer upon the subject; and he is too well known to render extracts necessary. De la Démonomanie des Sorciers. Demonolatreia, lib. i. cap. 6. The depositions of the two sorceresses, Alexia Dirigæa and Claudia Fellæa, are particularly curious. He quotes the story from Wier, a great patron of the demons of that time, who, we are told, invented a "Monarchie Diabolique avec les noms et les surnoms de cinq cent soixante-douze Princes de Démons, et de sept millions quatre cent cinq mille neuf cent vingt-six diables, sauf erreur de calcul."-Teissier, Eloges des Hommes Savans. |