which he was being ejected by Divine power, and who have perhaps been led to refer the mysterious sufferings of holy persons on their death-bed to some similar conflict between the Holy Spirit labouring to put His final seal upon an elect soul, and the Tempter trying to regain his possession of it by a last and desperate effort, will see nothing to startle them in the fact of the Devil even visibly contending for a familiar haunt, when Christ first glorified it by His presence, and leaving the vestiges of his malice when precluded from displaying the trophies of his victory.

The royal grant of the building which was afterwards converted into the church of St. Pancras, included, as we have said, the plot of ground adjoining; and this ground became the site of the celebrated monastery of St. Peter and Paul, afterwards known by the name of St. Augustine's. So great a work and conspicuous a memorial of our Saint, where his sacred ashes long reposed, and which remained as a standing monument of his piety and apostolical labours, till, with the other religious houses of England, it fell under the sacrilegious hand of the tyrant, will require more than a passing notice in these pages, and shall accordingly form the subject of a distinct chapter.

8 Mark ix. 25, 26.

CHAPTER XIII.

MONASTERY OF ST. AUGUSTINE.

We have already seen that both at the house in Stablegate, and still more at Ethelbert's palace, St. Augustine and his companions had formed themselves into something of a regular community, and exemplified, as far as circumstances allowed, the practice of the religious life. Indeed, their course in this respect may be said to have been chalked out for them, independently of any private preferences of their own, or of any view which might be taken of the expediency of such a mode of life towards the purposes of their mission. When at Rome, they had been brethren of a monastery; and, so far as they had fallen during their travels into less orderly ways, the change had been attended, as we have seen, with obvious inconveniences. These evils St. Gregory had sought to correct, by giving St. Augustine a more absolute authority over the rest, and so reconstituting the body a strictly religious one. As soon, therefore, as the missionaries were once more settled under the same roof, they returned, quite as a matter of course, to their old habits and arrangements; St. Augustine taking his place among them as their rightful Superior. Thus they carried out the evident intentions, or more probably the express instructions, of the Supreme Pontiff.

Still, their missionary avocations must have left them but little time for the proper and characteristic exercises

of the religious state. From the day of their arrival at Canterbury, they were constantly abroad in the streets and lanes of the city, preaching the Gospel to every creature. In our own time, when the essence of religion is so commonly thought to consist in its social duties alone, the importance even of the monastic institute is apt to be measured principally by the facilities which it offers towards the practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. But it must not be forgotten, that, under the Gospel, the first and great commandment is the love of God, and the love of our brethren but the second. Beneficial then beyond expression as religious communities have been in ameliorating the condition of the poor, and evangelizing the heathen, it is chiefly as they have given scope for contemplation of Divine mysteries, the practice of complete obedience, and the cultivation of the interior life, that they have been bright centres of light, and gushing fountains of health, in the midst of a darkened and diseased world. It has been observed, that some of the principal Gospel types of the Church represent her as a witness, rather than a herald; a calm and clear and dazzling “light” in a dark place; a "city set on an hill;" a beautiful and expansive "tree," which sheds its fragrance around, and draws the lonely under its shelter. These and the like figures give an idea of the calm majesty which gradually gains upon the world, rather than of the zealous ministrations which tell by their immediate effects; though, of course, among the manifold operations of the One Spirit, these also have a chief place in the Church of Christ.

Such an earthly transcript in epitome of the "Jerusalem which is above" would our holy Archbishop and his royal disciple leave behind them in our fair English land; even a godly company, who should "wait on the

Lord without distraction," and help our country by their prayers, while others were engaged in more laborious offices of charity.

ance.

The more immediate motive, however, which led to the foundation of St. Augustine's monastery seems to have been a desire on the part both of St. Augustine and St. Ethelbert to provide a suitable burial-place for themselves and their successors. This was an object which the incipient and unformed state of the Church in England would render one of no little interest and importVery different, indeed, from that over-sensitiveness on the score of posthumous respect, so common in the world, are the precautions which even a Saint might wish to take, with the object of securing his own poor body from the chance of abuse; since, whether his own, or another's, that body is equally the temple of the Holy Spirit, whose honour is accordingly concerned in its safe disposal and reverential treatment. The same consideration may lead Saints to deprecate insults to their remains after death, which has sometimes led them to acquiesce in the veneration paid them by the world. during their lives; a regard, namely, to God's honour, which they might endanger by a different course.9 Moreover, in the last and highest stage of humility, a Christian comes to feel as indifferent about himself, any way, as if he were some other person, and so deals with himself just as he would with what does not belong to him; and thus the effects of self-conceit, and of self-contempt, will often wear the same appearance in the eyes of a superficial observer. While one Saint, from deep consciousness of personal demerit, studies to be wholly

9 See Rodriguez, on Christian Perfection, vol. ii. Tract 3. c. 31. Also a remarkable anecdote to the same point in A. Butler's Life of St. Francis of Assisium.

K

overlooked and forgotten; another, no less humble, may manifest so entire an indifference on points which concern himself either way, as even to incur the imputation of vain-glory in the midst of the most abject selfrenunciation. It is said (as illustrative of the former view of humility), that St. Francis Borgia positively refused to let his picture be taken when on his deathbed, as accounting the bodily likeness of such a sinner unworthy to be preserved; whereas others, whose names are no less venerated in the Church, have yielded to the wishes of their friends in such trifles without the least hesitation and misgiving.1

In the same way, it is possible to conceive Saints acting quite oppositely with respect to the disposal of their own remains after death: one being prepared to encounter the imputation of selfishness and vanity through zeal for God's honour, or rather thinking of this alone; another being so penetrated with the sense of his own nothingness as to be quite careless of the whereabout, or disposal, of those ashes, which at all events are to be recollected and re-animated at the Great Day. St. Augustine and St. Ethelbert are instances on the one side, and St. Monica, St. Swithin, St. Francis of Assisium, &c., on the reverse. And yet, that the side of indifference about this matter is not clearly the more religious in itself, seems to be proved by the fact of its having suggested itself as natural to some infidels and scoffers.

Even then did St. Augustine and St. Ethelbert (or rather probably the latter) look to themselves only in their desire of securing an appropriate receptacle for their mortal remains, the reverence claimed by God's tabernacle, even after death, and the charity which seeks to take away the occasions of sin and scandal from

See Life of St. Francis Borgia, in Alban Butler.