been in the number of St. Augustine's companions. How many thoughts of sweet remembrance, how many topics of edifying speech must the admonitus locorum have awakened ! "Here we prayed for England; here we almost fainted on our way; here our venerable father cheered our drooping spirits by this exhortation; here he struck awe among the beholders by that miracle." What pleasant recognitions, too, and mutual good offices, and interchanges of congratulation between the hospitable prelates and the representatives of the original mission! what questions about England, heathen and Christian, what rejoicing in its blessedness, what anticipation of its prospects!

By the hands of the new missionaries, the holy father sent all things necessary for the more solemn and edifying celebration of Divine worship; such as, "sacred vessels, altar-plate, and altar-coverings, ornaments for the Church, priestly and other clerical vestments, many relics of apostles and martyrs," (among which are believed to have been some of St. Peter and St. Paul, the tutelaries of the new metropolitan Church), "and a quantity of books 9."

When Christianity was first introduced, it made its way without the advantage of those exterior embellishments which came with its advance. It "travelled in the greatness" of its "own strength." First, it vanquished the world, in part, with weapons of its own celestial temper; next, it spoiled the vanquished of their arms, theirs by long possession indeed, yet not of inherent right; and thus, having "made the creature its weapon," it proceeded on its march of conquest. Was it not indeed thus ? Noble architecture, impressive pictures, thrilling music, glorious ceremonial; these were of later

9 S. Bede, H. E. i. 29.

growth and less native origin. The earliest Christian Church was an attic, the first baptisteries, way-side pools, St. Paul and St. Silvanus sang their nocturns in a dungeon. And yet, withal, “mightily grew the word of God, and prevailed,” till, at length, the Church awoke, like her Lord before her, from the tomb, and put on her strength, yea, “put on her beautiful garments." The order of her triumphs was the same here in England as in the world at large. She won her way by miracle, and kept her ground through sanctity, the outward and inward tokens of the Holy Ghost. Not until her foundations were laid deep and broad, did the great Master Builder see fit to rear the august superstructure and elaborate the curious details. Not less acceptable was the offering of the Adorable Sacrifice in St. Martin's or St. Pancras, though there were, as yet, no long-drawn aisles to give scope for stately processions, nor spacious courts to receive and circulate the undulations of holy psalmody— than, at a later time, when à Becket sang Mass, with all the means and appliances of solemn worship, in Lanfranc's goodly pile. Not, of course, that the infant Church of Saxon England was ever, even in its rudest state, any more than the Church of the Apostles, neglectful of those external proprieties which are as the beaming features of the Church's inward soul, significant of her beauty, and radiant with love. Liturgical writers have taught that the majestic forms and delicate proprieties of ceremonial were observed, as far as circumstances permitted, even in the days of the Apostles; and that ere, as yet, the world suffered the Church to do what she would have wished, the Church was yet fain, with loving Magdalene, to do what she could. And the solemn processions, the sacred insignia, the entoned litanies, the illuminated sanctuaries, of which we read as concomitant

with the earliest steps of the Church on its revival in our own country, are indicative, surely, of the like pious disposition. Still the general assertion remains untouched, that the Church gained hearts and consciences on her side before she disclosed herself in all the attributes of outward pomp and beauty; and this, both in the world at large, and specially in England. Let not such lessons be thrown away on those among ourselves to whom may seem to have been allotted a work not wholly dissimilar from that of our first missionaries. Let us not begin at the wrong end, by studying the forms of the sanctuary before the science of the Saints; but rather let us understand that outward beauty is the development of true piety, not its compensation. On the other hand, let us not be led by any fear of one extreme, to even so much as an apparent closing with its opposite, which, if men would but bear in mind the true nature and right place of religious ceremonial, must be accounted hardly a less pernicious one. That innate sense of the graceful and majestic, for why is it implanted by God, but that it may exercise itself upon His works, whether of nature or of grace? Those precious offerings of earth, those marvellous ingenuities of man, shall they be exhausted on this sorry world, to perish "with the using," yea, (must it not be said?) and too often "with the users"? That were surely to feign, with heretics of old, that creation is the work of some spirit of evil, radically and hopelessly corrupt, not the gift of our gracious Lord, which He made "very good," and which the Holy Ghost has re-made, in His Church, more glorious than at the first, even filling the whole world with His illustrious and Life-giving Presence, and so "making new the face of the earth."

CHAPTER XV.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ON THE ENGLISH CHURCH.

ONE of the first objects of St. Augustine, upon his return from Arles, was, as stated in the former Chapter, to obtain from Rome a series of authoritative directions for the ordering of the English Church.

A modern objector has ventured upon ascribing this desire to a discreditable want of learning; yet, not to speak of St. Gregory's own testimony to his high qualifications in this respect,1 nothing, surely, could be more natural than that a solitary bishop, in a distant land, and that a land but recently in any degree, and still but in part, reclaimed from the enormities of a dark and cruel superstition, should seek a solution of the many ecclesiastical problems to which the anomalies of the case would continually give rise; and should apply for it to the quarter to which all the feelings of duty prompted him, and all the sanctions of precedent required him, to look up with reverence and submission. Some of the following inquiries will be seen to refer directly to the case of an infant Church, others to local peculiarities of the Church in England, and all of them to bear upon subjects more or less incidental to St. Augustine's peculiar position.

The first Question submitted by the new Archbishop to the judgment of the Holy See, related to the manner

1 Vid. infra, p. 174.

in which bishops should live among their clergy, and the several objects for which, and proportions in which, the offerings of the faithful are to be distributed.

The former part of this Question St. Gregory answers by reminding the Archbishop of the different Scripture passages bearing upon the conduct and deportment of those whom God sets over His heritage; and more especially of the instructions to bishops contained in the Epistle of St. Paul to Timothy. He farther recommends under the actual circumstances of the English Church, that the bishops and clergy should live together, as in the primitive age; partaking of their meals at the same table, and throwing their property into a common stock. In other words, they were to conform precisely to the rules of monastic discipline; "in which" says St. Gregory to the Archbishop, "your Fraternity is well versed."2 So it is, indeed, that the words in the Acts of the Apostles which depict the life and conversation of the first Christians might be taken for the description of a monastic society. "The multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common."3 sometimes asked, where, in later times, has this primitive type been fulfilled? And certain separatists have tried, with more zeal than knowledge, to restore the life of the earliest Christians by abrupt, violent, and, therefore, unlawful methods. But, in truth, the question of the one class has been practically answered, and the attempts of the other anticipated and superseded, by an institution which has subsisted in regular form throughout all ages of the Church.

2 Cf. also S. Greg. ep. xi. 66. 3 Acts iv. 32.

It is