the general influence of Hume's general | more. Without doubt, in a subordinate repropositions can only be counteracted by a lation, all such inquiries are useful, but faithful development of the practice and they are only secondary and subordinate: doctrine, life and conversation, of the ages it is the bane of sound instruction to conand persons so recklessly defamed. The sider them in themselves as objects of task, we rejoice to say, has been nobly be- knowledge. History so treated, substitutes gun by Mr. Maitland, in his Essays upon the illuminated miniature of a manuscript, the Dark Ages, which have appeared in with its bright colors and false perspective, their present form, since this article was for a real view of the state of society. How first sent to the printer. Terse, witty, pow- has the study of classical antiquity been erful in reasoning, pious in spirit, and pro-rendered beneficial to the intellect? It is foundly learned, Mr. Maitland has, by a because the history and philosophy and litwell chosen selection of topics, enabled ev-erature of Greece and Rome have been ery reader to judge of the gross misrepre- rendered ethical; because they have been sentations which have been promulgated by pursued for the purpose of distinguishing those popular writers, who, in Professor between the transitory forms which they Smyth's words, have hitherto given the assume, and the principles of permanent tone and the law to the public mind. We application and utility which they include. trust that such a work as Mr. Maitland's To the Christian teachers of the middle will not be confined to the instruction of ages, we deny the honor and worship readers. Let us hope that it will produce which we lavish upon the wise amongst the students: encouraging those who, deriving heathen. In place of seeking the highest knowledge from original sources by patient utility, we play with the eccentricities and assiduity, thence acquire self-reliance and peculiarities which amuse us from their independence of judgment, so much needed novelty or singularity, which minister to inin this over-active age, when so many en-tellectual frivolity, which gratify the ear or deavor to be up and doing, and so few sit the eye-the baubles supplying the subject down and think. For this purpose there of a melo-drama or the drawing for an almust be a diligent study of medieval divin- bum, the arrangement of a tableau, the poity. etry of an annual, or the frippery of a fancy-ball.

Considered merely as affording the means of historical information, this pursuit will Very important are these doctrinal works, become indispensable, when, with more in explaining how the comparative paucity philosophy than has been hitherto exerted, of copies of the Holy Scriptures influenced, we endeavor to penetrate into the moral and, paradoxical as it may appear, promotorganization of mediaval society. Are we ed, their study during the middle ages. interested by the structure of the abbey or Until about the twelfth century, the prothe cathedral ?—Is it not at least as impor-ductions of the inspired writers were not tant to become acquainted with the doc- commonly found otherwise than in separate trines which were taught by those who min- manuscripts, as is the case in the East at istered at the altar? Our present love of the present day. So scarce are the coantiquity may lead to unsound conclusions. pies,' is the remark of a recent traveller, Many are tempted to a blind and indiscrim-that I have not found but a single Nestoinate worship of past times, not only shut-rian, and that was the patriarch, who posting their eyes against unfavorable facts, sessed an entire Bible; even that was in however clearly proved-but ascribing to half-a-dozen volumes. One man has the the middle ages gifts of impeccability and Gospels, another the Epistles, and so on.'* perfect holiness, which revelation teaches us It was, therefore, only with much trouble to be incompatible with human nature; and expense that a complete set of the deothers, constituting a more numerous class, tached pieces of Holy Writ could be formare caught by the vulgar bait of antiqua-ed. The donor of the Book of Kings or rianism. Our attention is in danger of be- the Book of Chronicles, is recorded as a ing engrossed by the archæology of the curiosity shops. Unless the tendency be corrected, we shall be overwhelmed with literary dealers of the rococo of history-Archæology, if pursued merely with reference to art or decoration, to manners and customs, to incident and romance, is little

benefactor in the annals of the monastery. Few libraries before the Hildebrandian era-the great era of revival-possessed Law and Prophets, and historical and poetical books, and Gospels, and Acts, and Epistles, and Apocalypse, transcribed uniformly in the * Grant on the Nestorians, p. 67.

one volume which we call the Bible-a the fire of London!

Historical belief and

term unknown until about the thirteenth doctrinal belief are inseparably combined: century, such a volume being previously take either away, the other fails. Reject designated as the Bibliotheca, or the Pan- the historical event, and you destroy the dects. The scarcity of a complete textual sacrament which it typifies. Even the copy of the entire Scriptures-the deep mystery of stage-play, in which the events feeling of their inestimable value-the ex- of Scripture were dramatized, was benefiertions bestowed by monks and clergy for cial. In certain states of society, there is their diffusion; all appear from a remarkable scarcely any sense of the ridiculous. The anecdote in the life of St. Ceolfrid (ob. 716) rude dramas which amuse the half-scoffing This holy man, the abbot of Wearmouth and antiquary, conveyed sound instruction to Jarrow, caused three Pandects to be copied. the wondering multitude. The more the Two were placed in his monastery, in order volumes of the Holy Scriptures were that the whole body of Scriptures might be scarce, the more was Scripture knowledge conveniently ready and at hand for consult- valued. Scripture knowledge acquired acation or perusal in any particular chapter; tivity from concentration. The narrowthe third he himself conveyed to Rome, and ness of the stream added to the force of the presented to St. Peter's thus proving equally the value of the volume and the diligence of the Anglo-Saxon Church-Northumbria, so lately a pagan realm, aiding by her industry and learning the capital of the Christian world.

current; what was lost in breadth was gained in intensity. Scripture was forced upon the reader, upon the hearer, upon the monk in his cell, upon the crowd assembled round the cross. Consult the mediaval sermons and homilies: what are they but New generations arose ; time advanced; continuous lectures upon the Holy Scripthe patient industry of the inmates of the tures? The Song of Songs alone furnishes Scriptorium multiplied the copies of Holy eighty-six sermons to St. Bernard, of sinWrit, until the wider diffusion of Scripture gular excellence. Their treatises of divinwas permitted by a process-art, it cannot ity, properly so called, (for the scholastic dibe called so easy, so familiar, so long alectics belong to a different class,) overknown, that the concealment of the print- flow with Scriptural knowledge; and gening-press from mankind until these our laterally may be designated as Scripture exter ages, is one of the most remarkable instances, revealing to us the constant control exercised over human intellect by the Power from whom it flows. In the meanwhile, and until printing was thus called into operation, the whole course of religious instruction consisted in a constant endeavor to imbue the learned clergy and the unlettered laity with the knowledge of the word of God. Hence, for the clergy, the formation of the Concordance, binding, as it were, the Holy Scriptures into one whole, and rendering the inspired writers their own commentators; and it was in the 'darkness' of the thirteenth century, that, by Hugo de Sancto Caro, this great and laborious work was performed. Hence, for the laity, the common use of pictures. Objectionable as such a mode of instruction may become, it was then beneficially employed as the means of realizing an historical knowledge of Holy Writ. How few amongst us identify, in our own minds, the personality of the individuals, and the actual occurrence of the events, mentioned or recorded in sacred history! How rarely do we strengthen ourselves in the conviction, that the Deluge is as real an event as

tracts connected by ample glosses and expositions. Above all, was the Bible brought home to the people by the constant appeal to Holy Writ-in discourse or in argument, in theory or in practice, for support or example-connecting it with all the affairs of human life. The Scriptures entered as an element of all learning, of all literature, of jurisprudence, and of all knowledge. Theology was honored as the queen of science. The opening speeches to Parliament were scriptural discourses; and this circumstance has been alluded to with ridicule, by the very writers who most strongly condemn the middle ages for their neglect and concealment of Holy Writ. Every theory, every investigation, was based and founded upon Scripture; for, in the memorable words of the venerable Primate of our Church, mankind truly and practically acknowledged the all-important duty of'approaching the oracles of Divine truth with that humble docility and that prostration of the understanding and the will, which are indispensable to Christian instruction."

*

the Primary Visitation, 1814, by William, Lord Charge delivered to the Clergy of London, at Bishop of London.

Can we say that the far greater diffusion of for the instruction of the extempore preachScriptural knowledge in our times produ-er, is there a single passage by which the ces that vital result? Do we, like them, payment of ecclesiastical alms or tithes is obey the whole tenor of the volume, which recommended, enforced, or enjoined. Nor teaches us the duty of bringing intellect into do we believe that, if the whole body of continual subjection to revelation? Con- mediæval divinity, printed or manuscript, sidered merely as a book, none was pe- were ransacked, any evidence could be rused with greater delight-no poem had so great a hold upon the imagination. The Bible, in all its variety, was presented to them, not as a huge bundle of texts, but as one wonderful epic, beginning before time -ending in eternity.

It would require years-years well employed to investigate the literature of mediæval divinity. Even the most moderate tincture is sufficient to correct the amazing misrepresentations which have been propagated respecting the religious morality of the middle ages; and, with respect to Hume's wholesale falsities, take the following passage::

found by which the calumny could be in the slightest degree sustained. The historian would not have dared to broach the falsity, had he not been able to rely upon an ignorance amongst his readers, to which his own impudence could be the only parallel.

As history unfolds, and each successive personage is put upon his trial before Hume, he very carefully examines into character. Can it be shown that king or statesman has reviled the Word of God, oppressed the priesthood, robbed the church-then the Judge charges the jury to take the evidence of good character into consideration. If, on the contrary, witnesses come forward, showing that the culprit has been guilty of 'However little versed in the Scriptures, Christianity-then, in passing sentence, they [the ecclesiastics] had been able to dis- this previous conviction calls for aggravation cover that, under the Jewish law, a tenth of all the produce of land was conferred on the of punishment. We have thus, in all priesthood; and, forgetting what they them- Hume's delineations of character-delineaselves taught, that the moral part only of that tions far more frequently displaying the law was obligatory on Christians, they insisted common-place contrasts of a theme, than that this donation conveyed a perpetual pro- the skill of a philosophical inquirer-a conperty, inherent, by divine right, in those who stant source of falsification. Rufus,' says officiated at the altar. During some centuries, Hume,' was a violent and tyrannical prince, the whole scope of sermons and homilies were directed to this purpose; and one would have a perfidious, encroaching, and dangerous imagined, from the general tenor of these dis- neighbour, an unkind and ungenerous recourses, that all the practical parts of Chris-lation, and was equally prodigal and rapatianity were comprised in the exact and faithful payment of tithes to the clergy.'—

cious in the management of his treasury. If he possessed abilities, he lay so much under the government of impetuous passions, that he made little use of them in his administration.' Yet Hume lets him off with many a good word. His open profaneness is excused, as the result of sharp wit ;' and, with great kindness and consideration, he warns us, that we inust be cautious of admitting every thing related by the monkish historians to the disadvantage of this prince;' he, flume, having already admited and enlarged upon every fact related by the monkish historians, which shows his profligate and reckless tyranny.

Such are the accusations preferred by the philosopher, who, denying the miracles of the Gospel, confessed that he had never read through the New Testament. Of the knowledge possessed by the clergy, whom the sneering enemy of revelation represents as little versed in Scripture,' we have already spoken. With respect to the accusation which charges the entire body of Christian teachers with the foul and deliberate perversion of the whole scope of their teaching, for the purpose of ministering to their own sordid avarice, it is not merely an un- Because Henry I. persecuted Archbishop truth, but an untruth destitute even of a Anselm, he receives Hume's highest praise pretence by which it could be suggested. for his 'prudence and moderation of temIn no one of the sermons or homilies of per;' the proofs of these good qualities beBede, Elfric, Gregory, Anselm, Bernard, ing, e.g., his cutting off the noses of his Gerson, or Thomas à Kempis (names grandchildren, the offspring of his illegitiamongst the most important of the minis- mate daughter, Juliana, and plucking out ters of the gospel during the middle ages), the eyes of Lucas de la Barre. or in the treatise of Alan de Lisle, destined

Whenever it is possible, by misrepresent

ation, or by concealment, or by sophistry, surmised; the suit was to be decided, to calumniate any individual exercising re- therefore, by the construction of legal inligious functions, or to depreciate any one struments and by evidence. Archbishop in whose character religion forms an ele- Lanfranc brought his suit against Archment, or to carp at any action grounded bishop Thomas, in the same manner as upon religion, Hume never fails to improve two peers might have contested the posthe opportunity. We have thus a perpetu- session of a barony in Parliament. Moreal source of falsification in the biographies over, the claim was one which Lanfranc of the leading personages. Ecclesiastics could not surrender. Had he yielded, he were compelled, from their situation, to take would have sacrificed the rights of his a prominent part in the business of the successors, the liberties of the English world; they were statesmen, politicians; people. As primate, he was the first now the leaders of opposition, now the member of the Great Council of the realm. prime ministers of the sovereign. Whether Through the Archbishop, upon each coroit was expedient that the members of the nation, the compact was concluded behierarchy should be called upon thus to mix tween the sovereign and the subject. Furin secular affairs, whether it were a privilege thermore, Lanfranc's success established or a burthen, or a temptation, are questions the principle, that whatever rights had lewhich we shall not discuss. But this con- gally subsisted before the Conquest, were stant unfairness ruins the mere historical to be preserved and maintained, unaffected narrative. by the accession of the new dynasty. LanTake, for example, Lanfranc. 'Lan- franc, maintaining the rights of his see, franc was a Milanese monk.' Lanfranc protected all his successors-all his order. was not a Milanese monk; he was born in It is they who, at the present time, are an independent and hostile State, the city of still reaping the benefit: it was their batPavia. Hume, turning to Guthrie's Gram-tles which Lanfranc fought. The decision mar, and finding that Pavia was included given in Lanfranc's case, governed all simin the Duchy of Milan, supposed that it ilar cases; and, followed by the resistance was equally so in the eleventh century. of his successor Anslem to the spoliations Moreover, though Lanfranc was a monk, and oppressions of Rufus and Beauclerk, he did not become so till long after he had protected the rights of every diocese and crossed the Alps, when he professed in the diocesan, every dean and deanery, every rising monastery of Bec Hellouin after-parish priest and parish, throughout the wards he became abbot of Caen, whence kingdom. Every churchman in England he was translated to Canterbury. This holds his preferment as the heir of Lanprelate was rigid in defending the preroga- franc and of Anslem. tives of his station; and after a long pro- Hume accuses Lanfrance of zeal in cess before the Pope, he obliged Thomas, promoting the interests of the papacy, by a Norman monk, who had been appointed which he himself augmented his own auto the see of York, to acknowledge the thority.' But the fact is, that Lanfranc in primacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury. no manner augmented his authority through Where ambition can be so happy as to the Papacy; and his conduct contributed cover his enterprises, even to the person greatly to keep the Church of England himself, under the appearance of principle, in that state of isolation from the other it is the most incurable and inflexible of portions of the Western Church, which so human passions,' &c.-True enough, but remarkably characterizes the Conquerer's the maxim, ingeniously hitched in between reign. William, who had been willing the account of Lanfranc's contest and a enough to support his claims by the sancfalsified statement of his zeal for the papacy,tion of Alexander II., presented a firm does not apply to either. Whether Canter- front to Hildebrand. No Pope shall be bury or York should possess the primacy, acknowledged in England without my aswas a mixed question of legal right and sent,' was the declaration of the Conquerconstitutional privilege. The primacy had er. Lanfranc, the 'Milanese monk,' acted been long disputed, upon grounds as strict- so completely in conformity to this declaly technical as those which give an indi- ration, as to lead to the supposition that vidual a right to an estate. York acted he obeyed a course which he himself had with considerable pertinacity. Some of the earlier evidences were ambiguous. Adverse possession might, in some cases, be

advised. The 'process' before the Pope went off without effect. The contest between him and the Archbishop of York,

was decided as if it were entirely a civil in our libraries. But he also provided, as question, by the King and the Great Coun- far as he could, for futurity—by training up cil or Parliament-and not by papal au- many disciples for the same important task. thority, as Hume leads his readers to sup- Of Lanfranc's character and influence as pose. When Guibert of Ravenna was ap- prime minister, Hume says absolutely nopointed to the papacy by the Emperor, thing. Lanfranc's letters or despatches, to Lanfranc maintained an armed neutrality. which the historian never makes a single He refused to acknowledge Clement III., reference, display his vigilance and his and did not send his adhesion to Gregory charity. Whilst defending the power of VII. Had Lanfranc's successors adopted his sovereign, he became a father to the the same course, England would have English. He rejoiced to adopt the name of been lost to Rome. Yet all these import- Englishman. Rufus was educated by Lanant facts are concealed by Hume, in order franc. One of the most remarkable proofs to establish a charge of zeal for the papa- of the archbishop's intellectual power, and cy. Hume's notice of Lanfranc's learning, of the good use to which he turned that is confined to a silly sneer: 'He wrote a power, was that, so long as he lived, the defence of the real presence against Beren- wickedness and tyranny of his pupil were garius; and in those ages of stupidity and entirely restrained. Hence Lanfranc's ignorance, he was greatly applauded for death was lamented as the greatest calamithat performance.' Lanfranc's treatise pos- ty which England could sustain. Of all sesses singular dialectic acuteness and dex- these characteristics, not a word is to be terity. Without being in the least convinced by his arguments, we may fully admire his skill. Lanfranc contended for doctrines which he conceived he was bound to support: he appealed to public opinion, and by argument gained the victory.

found in Hume. Concerning all these practical effects of good sense, and learning, and talent, and piety, exhibited in the most distinguished character of the early Anglo-Norman era, the historian of England is entirely silent.

But Lanfranc's fame had been long since Bentham amused himself, and his readers established; it did not depend upon his also, by proposing that criminals should be polemic discussions. Lanfranc led the in- exhibited to public contempt, with masks, tellectual movement of his age: Lanfranc emblematical of the bad passions which sewas acknowledged to be the great teacher duced them to crime. Hume, as a writer, of Latin Christendom. Hume remarks, has anticipated the utilitarian jurist. He that 'knowledge and liberal education were has two sets of such masks, in which he somewhat more common in the southern usually exposes his churchmen to scorn and countries.' But the seat of liberal education contempt: the wolf-mask, and the fox-mask. was more truly in the North. From the remo- Gregory the Great is shown up as wolf: the test parts, not only of Latin or Western unwearied and successful labours of this Europe, but even of Greece, students of all pontiff for the conversion of the English, classes and ages resorted to Bec Hellouin, arise simply from raving, craving ambition. as to another Athens. Removed from his Augustine, the apostle of the English, wears university, for such his humble monastery the fox-mask: his mission is a consisten had become, to Caen, and thence exalted and successful course of hypocrisy. Whento the primacy of England, his pastoral ever religion can be laid to the charge of any duties compelled a new application of his individual, conclude him, says Hume, to be literary labors. He entered a less ambi- either knave or fool: consider it as an intious, but not less useful career. Lanfranc controvertible principle, that a general now employed himself upon his edition of presumption lies against either the underthe Holy Scriptures. The texts of the Bib-standing or the morals of any one who is lical books had been miserably corrupted, dignified with the title of Saint, in those igby the ignorance of the latter Anglo-Sax-norant ages.'

on transcribers, one of the many results of When victimizing Pope Gregory, or Authe calamitous invasion of the Danes, which gustine, or Lafranc, Hume knew he was on no exertion had been able wholly to re- the safe side, and that his readers would go move. Much of this correction was effect- with him; but what, if, by a strange coned by Lanfranc's own application and tingency, some individual thoroughly besot learning manuscripts, with his autograph ted and perverted by faith, should happen corrections, existed in France previous to to be a popular favorite? Now it does so

:

the Revolution; others may perhaps lurk happen that Hume, by the pressure from