translate: cum suis furiis et furoribus, cum suis merdis et stercoribus cacantem cacatumque." Such were the vigorous elegancies of a controversy on the Seven Sacraments! Long after, the court of Rome had not lost the taste of these bitter herbs;" for in the bull of the canonisation of Ignatius Loyola in August, 1623, Luther is called monstrum teterrimum et detestabilis pestis.

Calvin was less tolerable, for he had no Melancthon! His adversaries are never others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards, and assassins! Sometimes they are characterized by the familiar appellatives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs! By him Catholic and Lutheran are alike hated. Yet, after having given vent to this virulent humour, he frequently boasts of his mildness. When he reads over his writings, he tells us, that he is astonished at his forbearance; but this, he adds, is the duty of every Christian! at the same time, he generally finishes a period with "Do you hear, you dog? Do you hear, madman?”

Beza, the disciple of Calvin, sometimes imitates the luxuriant abuse of his master. When he writes against Tilleman, a Lutheran minister, he bestows on him the following titles of honour: Polyphemus; an ape; a great ass who is distinguished from other asses by wearing a hat; an ass on two feet; a monster composed of part of an ape and wild ass; a villain who merits hang

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ing on the first tree we find." And Beza was, no doubt, desirous of the office of executioner!

The Catholic party is by no means inferior in the felicities of their style. The Jesuit Raynaud calls Erasmus "the Batavian buffoon," and accuses him of nourishing the egg which Luther hatched. These men were alike supposed by their friends to be the inspired regulators of Religion!

Bishop Bedell, a great and good man, respected even by his adversaries, in an address to his clergy, observes, "Our calling is to deal with errors, not to disgrace the man with scolding words. It is said of Alexander, I think, when he overheard one of his soldiers railing lustily against Darius his enemy, that he reproved him, and added, Friend, I entertain thee to fight against Darius, not to revile him;' and my sentiments of treating the Catholics," concludes Bedell, "are not conformable to the practice of Luther and Calvin; but they were but men, and perhaps we must confess they suffered themselves to yield to the violence of passion.

The Fathers of the church were proficients in the art of abuse, and very ingeniously defended it. St. Austin affirms that the keenest personality may produce a wonderful effect, in opening a man's eyes to his own follies. He illustrates his position with a story, given with great simplicity, of his mother Saint Monica with her

maid. Saint Monica certainly would have been a confirmed drunkard, had not her maid timely and outrageously abused her. The story will amuse." My mother had by little and little accustomed herself to relish wine. They used to send her to the cellar, as being one of the soberest in the family: she first sipped from the jug and tasted a few drops, for she abhorred wine, and did not care to drink. However, she gradually accustomed herself, and from sipping it on her lips she swallowed a draught. As people from the smallest faults insensibly increase, she at length liked wine, and drank bumpers. But one day being alone with the maid who usually attended her to the cellar, they quarrelled, and the maid bitterly reproached her with being a drunkard! That single word struck her so poignantly that it opened her understanding; and reflecting on the deformity of the vice, she desisted for ever from its use."

To jeer and play the droll, or, in his own words, de boufonner, was a mode of controversy the great Arnauld defended as permitted by the writings of the holy fathers. It is still more singular, when he not only brings forward an example of this ribaldry, Elijah mocking at the false divinities, but God himself bantering the first man after his fall. He justifies the injurious epithets which he has so liberally bestowed on his adversaries by the example of

Jesus Christ and the apostles! It was on these grounds also that the celebrated Pascal apologized for the invectives with which he has occasionally disfigured his Provincial Letters. A Jesuit, famous for twenty folios which contain his works, has collected "An Alphabetical Catalogue of the Names of Beasts by which the Fathers characterized the Heretics!" It may be found in Erotemata de malis ac bonis Libris, p. 93, 4to. 1653, of Father Raynaud. This list of brutes and insects, among which are, a vast variety of serpents, is accompanied by the names of the heretics designated!

-Ware, in his Irish Writers, informs us of one Henry Fitzsermon, an Irish Jesuit, who was imprisoned for his papistical designs and seditious preaching. During his confinement he proved himself to be a great amateur of controversy. He said, "he felt like a bear tied to a stake, and wanted somebody to bait him." A kind office, zealously undertaken by the learned Usher, then a young man. He engaged to dispute with him once a week on the subject of antichrist! They met several times. It appears that our bear was out-worried, and declined any further dog-baiting. This spread an universal joy through the Protestants in Dublin. Such was the spirit of those times, which appears to have been very different from our own. Dr. Disney gives an anecdote of a modern bishop who was just ad

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vanced to a mitre; his bookseller begged to republish a popular theological tract of his against another bishop, because he might now meet him on equal terms. My lord answered-" Mr. no more controversy now!" Our good bishop resembled Baldwin, who, from a simple monk, arrived to the honour of the see of Canterbury. The successive honours successively changed his manners. Urban the Second inscribed his brief to him in this concise description-Balduino Monastico ferventissimo, Abbate calido, Episcopo tepido, Archiepiscopo remisso!

On the subject of literary controversies we cannot pass over the various sects of the scholastics; a volume might easily be compiled of their ferocious wars, which in more than one instance were accompanied by stones and daggers. The most memorable, on account of the extent, the violence, and duration of their contests, are those of the NOMINALISTS and the REALISTS.

It was a most subtle question assuredly, and the world thought for a long while that their happiness depended on deciding, whether universals, that is genera, have a real essence, and exist independent of particulars, that is species:whether, for instance, we could form an idea of asses, prior to individual asses? Rosseline, in the eleventh century, adopted the opinion that universals have no real existence, either before, or in individuals, but are mere names and words by

VOL. II.

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