NEW PUBLICATIONS.
HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE FALL OF WOLSEY TO THE DEATH OF ELIZABETH.
By James Anthony Froude, M.A., late fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Volumes I. and II. 8vo., pp. 447 and 501. New York: Charles Scribner & Company.
In these two luxurious volumes we have the first instalment of an important work upon the most important period of English history. Six other volumes are to follow. Mr. Froude is a thorough good Protestant. His main purpose in this history seems to have been the glorification of the English reformers. For the worst sovereigns of the house of Tudor he displays an enthusiastic admiration which, one is tempted to believe, is half genuine sentiment, and half love of paradox. Catholics, of course, he could not have expected to satisfy; but he has gone too far to please even the members of his own Church. Of Henry VIII., whose apologist he has appropriately been called, he draws a flattering portrait:
"If Henry VIII.," he says, "had died previous to the first agitation of the divorce, his loss would have been deplored as one of the heaviest misfortunes which had ever befallen the country; and he would have left a name which would have taken its place in history by the side of that of the Black [{716}] Prince or of the conqueror of Agincourt. Left at the most trying age, with his character unformed, with the means at his disposal of gratifying every inclination, and married by his ministers when a boy to an unattractive woman far his senior, he had lived for thirty-six years almost without blame, and bore through England the reputation of an upright and virtuous king. Nature had been prodigal to him of her rarest gifts. In person he is said to have resembled his grandfather, Edward IV., who was the handsomest man in Europe. His form and bearing were princely; and amidst the easy freedom of his address, his manner remained majestic. No knight in England could match him in the tournament except the Duke of Suffolk; he drew with ease as strong a bow as was borne by any yeoman of his guard; and these powers were sustained in unfailing vigor by a temperate habit and by constant exercise." His state papers and letters lose nothing by comparison with those of Wolsey and Cromwell. He was an accomplished musician; he wrote and spoke in four languages; he was one of the best physicians of his age, an engineer, and a theologian. "He was 'attentive,' as it is called, 'to his religious duties,' being present at the services in the chapel two or three times a day with unfailing regularity, and showing to outward appearance a real sense of religious obligation in the energy and purity of his life." In private he was good-humored and good-natured. But "like all princes of the Plantageuet blood, he was a person of a most intense and imperious will. His impulses, in general nobly directed, had never known contradiction; and late in life, when his character was formed, he was forced into collision with difficulties with which the experience of discipline had not fitted him to contend." "He had capacity, if his training had been equal to it, to be one of the greatest of men. With all his faults about him he was perhaps the greatest of his contemporaries."
Mr. Froude does not believe that the king's scruples respecting the validity of his marriage with Catharine of Aragon were inspired by his affection for Anne Boleyn. "They had arisen to their worst dimensions before he had ever seen Anne Boleyn." But Mr. Froude's narrative of the king's early intercourse with Anne is extremely unsatisfactory, not to say disingenuous. How long Henry may have cherished his scruples in secret, our author affords us no means of guessing; but the earliest intimation which he finds of an intended divorce was in June, 1527. It was in 1525, he says, that Anne came back from France and appeared at the English court. This is an error, and is inconsistent with other statements in the same chapter; the date was 1522; and almost immediately afterward the king began to pay Anne marked attention. Her celebrated love-passage with Lord Percy took place in 1523. Mr. Froude speaks of it as follows: "Lord Percy, eldest son of Lord Northumberland, as we all know, was said to have been engaged to her. He was in the household of Cardinal Wolsey; and Cavendish, who was with him there, tells a long romantic story of the affair, which, if his account be true, was ultimately interrupted by Lord Northumberland himself." Now what will be thought of our author's honesty when we say that Cavendish repeats again and again that the match was broken off by command of the king? Lord Northumberland did not appear in the matter at all until Wolsey, by his majesty's orders, had remonstrated with the young nobleman, and threatened him with dire consequences if he should persist in a pursuit which was displeasing to his sovereign. Mr. Froude carefully suppresses all allusion to intercourse between the king and his fair favorite, until the project of the divorce was well advanced,—not discussing or discrediting the statements of other historians respecting Henry's early passion for Anne Boleyn; but simply putting them behind his back, as matters of which it did not suit his purpose to take notice. This fashion of writing may do for romance, but not for history.
In demanding a divorce from his first queen, Henry has, as we might suppose, Mr. Froude's full approval:
"It may be admitted, or it ought to be admitted, that if Henry VIII. had been contented to rest his demand for a divorce merely on the interests of the kingdom; if he had forborne, while his request was pending, to affront the princess who had for many years been his companion and his queen; if he had shown her that respect which her [{717}] high character gave her a right to demand, and which her situation as a stranger ought to have made it impossible to him to refuse, his conduct would have been liable to no imputation, and our sympathies would without reserve have been on his side. … His kingdom demanded the security of a stable succession; his conscience, it may not be doubted, was seriously agitated by the loss of his children; and looking upon it as the sentence of heaven upon a connection the legality of which had from the first been violently disputed, he believed that he had been living in incest and that his misfortunes were the consequence of it. Under these circumstances he had a full right to apply for a divorce."
With all its faults, Mr. Froude's book tells many wholesome truths in a very forcible manner. Here is an admission which from such an out-and-out Protestant we should hardly have looked for; he is speaking of religious persecution:
"We think bitterly of these things, and yet we are but quarrelling with what is inevitable from the constitution of the world. … The value of a doctrine cannot be determined on its own apparent merits by men whose habits of mind are settled in other forms; while men of experience know well that out of the thousands of theories which rise in the fertile soil below them, it is but one here and there which grows to maturity; and the precarious chances of possible vitality, where the opposite probabilities are so enormous, oblige them to discourage and repress opinions which threaten to disturb established order, or which, by the rules of existing beliefs, imperil the souls of those who entertain them. Persecution has ceased among ourselves, because we do not any more believe that want of theoretic orthodoxy in matters of faith is necessarily fraught with the tremendous consequences which once were supposed to be attached to it. If, however, a school of Thugs were to rise among us, making murder a religious service; if they gained proselytes, and the proselytes put their teaching in execution, we should speedily begin again to persecute opinion. What teachers of Thuggism would appear to ourselves, the teachers of heresy actually appeared to Sir Thomas More, only being as much more hateful as the eternal death of the soul is more terrible than the single and momentary separation of it from the body. There is, I think, no just ground on which to condemn conscientious Catholics on the score of persecution, except only this: that as we are now convinced of the injustice of the persecuting laws, so among those who believed them to be just, there were some who were led by an instinctive protest of human feeling to be lenient in the execution of those laws; while others of harder nature and more narrow sympathies enforced them without reluctance, and even with exultation."
The following extract from an account of the feelings of the mass of the English people during the early stages of the divorce affair, must be rather unpalatable to the High-Church Episcopalians:
"They believed—and Wolsey was, perhaps, the only leading member of the privy council, except Archbishop Warham, who was not under the same delusion—that it was possible for a national church to separate itself from the unity of Christendom, and at the same time to crush or prevent innovation of doctrine; that faith in the sacramental system could still be maintained, though the priesthood by whom those mysteries were dispensed should minister in golden chains. This was the English historical theory handed down from William Rufus, the second Henry, and the Edwards; yet it was and is a mere phantasm, a thing of words and paper fictions, as Wolsey saw it to be. Wolsey knew well that an ecclesiastical revolt implied, as a certainty, innovation of doctrine; that plain men could not and would not continue to reverence the office of the priesthood, when the priests were treated as the paid officials of an earthly authority higher than their own. He was not to be blamed if he took the people at their word; if he believed that, in their doctrinal conservatism, they knew and meant what they were saying; and the reaction which took place under Queen Mary, when the Anglican system had been tried and failed, and the alternative was seen to be absolute union with Rome, or a forfeiture of Catholic orthodoxy, proves after all that he was wiser than in the immediate event he seemed to be; that if his policy had succeeded, and if, [{718}] strengthened by success, he had introduced into the Church those reforms which he had promised and desired, he would have satisfied the substantial wishes of the majority of the nation."
From an introductory chapter on the social condition of England in the early part of the sixteenth century, we extract the following graphic passage, as an example of Mr. Froude's fascinating style. Doubtless most of our readers will agree with us in wishing that so graceful a pen had been more worthily employed:
"The habits of all classes were open, free, and liberal. There are two expressions, corresponding one to the other, which we frequently meet with in old writings, and which are used as a kind of index, marking whether the condition of things was or was not what it ought to be. We read of 'merry England';—when England was not merry, things were not going well with it. We hear of the 'glory of hospitality,' England's pre-eminent boast,—by the rules of which all tables, from the table of the twenty-shilling freeholder to the table in the baron's hall and abbey refectory, were open at the dinner hour to all comers, without stint or reserve, or question asked: to every man, according to his degree, who chose to ask for it, there was free fare and free lodging; bread, beef, and beer for his dinner; for his lodging, perhaps, only a mat of rushes in a spare corner of the hall, with a billet of wood for a pillow, but freely offered and freely taken, the guest probably faring much as his host fared, neither worse nor better. There was little fear of an abuse of such licence, for suspicious characters had no leave to wander at pleasure; and for any man found at large, and unable to give a sufficient account of himself, there were the ever-ready parish stocks or town gaol. The 'glory of hospitality' lasted far down into Elizabeth's time; and then, as Camden says, 'came in great bravery of building, to the great beautifying of the realm, but to the decay' of what he valued more.
"In such frank style the people lived, hating three things with all their hearts: idleness, want, and cowardice; and for the rest, carrying their hearts high, and having their hands full. The hour of rising, winter and summer, was four o'clock, with breakfast at five, after which the laborers went to work, and the gentlemen to business, of which they had no little. In the country every unknown face was challenged and examined,—if the account given was insufficient, he was brought before the justice; if the village shopkeeper sold bad wares, if the village cobbler made 'unhonest' shoes, if servants and masters quarrelled, all was to be looked to by the justice; there was no fear lest time should hang heavy with him. At twelve he dined; after dinner he went hunting, or to his farm, or to do what be pleased. It was a life unrefined, perhaps, but colored with a broad, rosy English health."
THE AMERICAN ANNUAL CYCLOPEDIA AND REGISTER OF IMPORTANT EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1864.
8vo., pp. 838. New York: D. Appleton & Company.
The Annual Cyclopedia grows more and more valuable and interesting every year. The present volume is a great improvement upon all that have gone before it. The course of events has been unusually varied and startling, and the topics suggested by it appear to have been for the most part selected with good judgment and treated by competent writers. We have under the head of "Army Operations" an admirable history of Sherman's great march and of Grant's campaign in the wilderness, both illustrated with maps. The article on the "Army of the United States" abounds in information respecting the number of troops, organization, supplies, department and corps commanders, etc., such as everybody wants to have, but nobody knows where to look for. Under the titles of "Confederate" and "United States Congress" we have a complete political history of our country during the last year, while the condition and progress of the several foreign states are treated in their proper places. A great deal of interesting matter is given in the articles on the "Anglican" and "Greek" Churches, "Commerce" and "Commercial Intercourse," "Diplomatic Correspondence and Foreign Relations," "Finances of the United States," "Freedmen," "Freedom of the Press," "Geographical Explorations and Discoveries," "Literature and Literary Progress," "Military Surgery and Medicine" (profusely illustrated), "Navy," "Ordnance," "Petroleum," etc., etc. [{719}] Under the head of "Public Documents" is the most correct translation of the Pope's Encyclical and syllabus of errors condemned that has yet appeared in this country. Biographical sketches are also given of the most distinguished men who died during the course of the year.
SONGS FOR ALL SEASONS. By Alfred Tennyson. With illustrations by D. Maclise, T. Creswick, S. Eytinge, C. A. Barry, H. Fenn, and G. Perkins. 16mo., pp. 84. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
HOUSEHOLD POEMS. By Henry W. Longfellow. With illustrations by John Gilbert, Birket Foster, and John Absolon. 16mo., pp. 96. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
The series of "Companion Poets for the People," of which these two volumes are the first issues, deserves special commendation as an example of the way in which cheapness and elegance may be combined. For half a dollar Messrs. Ticknor & Fields offer us a neat little book, printed in the best style of typography, on rich tinted paper, with a clean broad margin, and some twelve or fifteen wood-cuts by reputable artists. The selections appear to have been made with good judgment, and include some late pieces of both Tennyson and Longfellow which are not to be found in previous editions of their works.
THE HISTORY OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN GERMANY AND SWITZERLAND, AND IN ENGLAND, IRELAND, SCOTLAND, THE NETHERLANDS, FRANCE, AND NORTHERN EUROPE.
IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS, REVIEWING D'AUBIGNÉ, MENZEL, HALLAM, BISHOP SHORT, PRESCOTT, RANKE, FRYXELL, AND OTHERS.
By M.J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop Baltimore. Fourth revised edition, Two volumes in one. 8vo., pp. 494 and 509. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.
We welcome this new and improved edition of the best antidote that has yet been prepared for English readers to the common misrepresentations of Protestant historians of the reformation. Archbishop Spalding's book has been so long before the public, and has been received with such general favor, that it would be superfluous at this late day to enter upon a general examination of its merits. It will prove a valuable guide to the student of English and continental history; he will find here the chief points made against the Church, by the long list of writers named in the title-page, taken up and answered by a prelate of high reputation for sound and thorough scholarship. Dr. Spalding of course does not deny that there were abuses in the 16th century which ought to have been abolished; but he contends that the gravity and extent of these disorders have been greatly exaggerated; that they generally originated in the world and its princes, not in the Church; most of them being due to the fact that bad men were thrust into high ecclesiastical places by worldly-minded and avaricious sovereigns; that there was a lawful and efficacious remedy for all such evils, which consisted in giving to the popes their due power and influence in the nomination of bishops and in the deliberations of general councils; in a word, that "reformation within the Church, and not revolution outside of it, was the only proper, lawful, and efficacious remedy for existing evils;" and finally, "that the fact of Christians having at length felt prepared to resort to the desperate and totally wrong remedy of revolution was owing to a train of circumstances which had caused faith to wane and grow cold, and which now appealed more to the passions than to reason, more to human considerations than to the principles of divine faith and the interests of eternity."
THE YEAR OF MARY; OR, THE TRUE SERVANT OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN.
Translated from the French of Rev. M. d'Arville, Apostolic Prothonotary. Edited, and in part translated, by Mrs. J. Sadlier. 12mo. Philadelphia: Peter F. Cunningham.
This is a work intended for the use either of private persons or of confraternities, sodalities, and similar associations formed in honor of the Blessed Virgin. The matter is distributed into exercises, the number of which is fixed at seventy-two, because our Lady is supposed to have lived seventy-two years on earth. One exercise is appropriated to each of the Sundays and principal festivals of the year.
The reverend author writes with simplicity and unction, and has given us a really devout book. The translation seems to be very well done.
CEREMONIAL, FOR THE USE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Published by order of the First Council of Baltimore, with the approbation of the Holy See. Third edition, carefully revised and considerably enlarged. With illustrations. 12mo., pp. 534. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.
This book is almost indispensable to clergymen, and very convenient for laymen who wish to understand the beautiful ceremonies which the Church has appointed for the various festivals and services of the ecclesiastical year. It was originally compiled by Bishop Rosati, of St. Louis, and formally adopted by the council of Baltimore in 1852. The extensive additions which are now published with it were made by direction of the late Archbishop Kenrick, of Baltimore. They consist of the ceremonies of low mass, low mass for the dead, and the manner of giving holy communion within the mass or at other times; instructions for the priest who is obliged to say two masses, from the decrees of the sacred congregation of rites, approved under the present pope; the manner of singing mass without deacon and sub-deacon, and the vespers without cope-bearers, in accordance with approved usages of the best-regulated churches in Italy; the mode of giving benediction with the blessed sacrament, in which the ceremonial of bishops and the various decrees of the sacred congregation of rites are strictly followed; Gregorian notes to guide the celebrant and sacred ministers in singing the prayers, gospel, epistle, confiteor, etc.
The illustrations, intended to show the proper form of various church utensils, church furniture, etc., constitute a valuable feature of the book.
MEDITATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS FOR A RETREAT OF ONE DAY IN EACH MONTH.
Compiled from the writings of Fathers of the Society of Jesus, by a Religious. Published with the approbation of the Most Rev. Archbishop of Baltimore. 18mo., pp. viii., 154. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.
This little book is designed for the use not only of religious communities, but of persons in the world who may feel disposed to devote a day now and then exclusively to the affairs of their souls. The exercises consist of three meditations and a "consideration," for each month in the year, arranged after the manner of the exercises of St. Ignatius.
STREET BALLADS, POPULAR POETRY, AND HOUSEHOLD SONGS OF IRELAND.
16mo., pp. 312. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.
The poems contained in this little volume are by a great number of authors, and of course of very different degrees of merit. Most of them are of a patriotic nature; a good many are amatory; and two or three seem to have no business in the collection at all. For example, Lieut-Colonel Halpine's "April 20, 1864," is a poem of the American rebellion. Mr. John Savage's "At Niagara" is certainly neither a street ballad nor a household song, nor is it part of the popular poetry of Ireland any more than of our own country. We dare say, however, that nobody will feel disposed to quarrel with the editor for including these spirited pieces, as well as others we might mention, which do not properly belong under the categories mentioned in the title-page.
Among the best known writers whose names appear in the table of contents are William Allinghain, Aubrey De Vere, Samuel Fergusson, Lady Wilde, Gerald Griffin, and Clarence Mangan.
THE MONTH OF MARY, FOR THE USE OF ECCLESIASTICS.
Translated from the French. 32mo., pp. 207. Baltimore: John Murphy & Company.
This little manual is intended exclusively for ecclesiastics, especially students in theological seminaries. It sets forth, for each day of the month, some trait of the life of the Blessed Virgin, first as an object of veneration and love, secondly, as a model of some virtue of the clerical state, and finally, as a motive of confidence. It is brief, suggestive, and practical.
The Man without a Country (Boston: Ticknor & Fields) is a reprint in pamphlet form of a remarkable narrative which appeared originally in The Atlantic Monthly.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. I., NO. 6. SEPTEMBER, 1865.
From The Dublin Review.
THE CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS OF ALEXANDRIA.—ORIGEN.
Origenis Opera Omnia. Ed. De la Rue, accurante J. P. MIGNE. Paris.
Origenes, Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre, von Dr. REDEPENNING. (Origen: A History of his Life and Doctrine. By Dr. REDEPENNING). 1841. Bonn.
In a former article we have given some account of the labors and teaching of Pantaenus and Clement in the twenty years after the death of Marcus Aurelius (180-202), during which the Church enjoyed comparative peace. Commodus was not a persecutor, like his philosophic father. Personally, he was a signal instance of the total break-down of philosophy as a training for a prince imperial; for whatever advantages the most enlightened methods and the most complete establishment of philosophic tutors could afford were his, probably to his great disgust. But the Church has often found that an imperial philosopher is something even worse than an imperial debauchee. Pertinax and Didius Julianus, who succeeded Commodus, had little time either for philosophy or pleasure, for they followed their predecessor, after the violent fashion so popular with conspirators and Praetorians, in less than a twelvemonth. Septimius Severus, the first, and, with one exception, the only Roman emperor who was a native African, during the earlier years of his reign protected the Christians rather than otherwise. How and why he saw occasion to change we shall have to consider further on.
During these twenty years of tranquillity the great Church of Alexandria had been making no little progress. Her children had not been entirely undisturbed. The populace, and sometimes the magistrates, often did not wait for an imperial edict to set upon the Christians, and the commotions that followed the death of Commodus were the occasion of more than one martyr's crown. We learn from Clement of Alexandria, speaking of this very time of comparative quiet, that burnings, beheadings, and crucifixions took place "daily;" whereby he seems to point to some particular local persecutions. But the Alexandrian Church, on the whole, was left in peace, and was rapidly extending herself among the student population of the city, among the Greeks, but, above all, among the poorer classes of the native Egyptians. Christianity seems to have spread in Egypt with a [{722}] rapidity almost unexampled elsewhere, and historians have taken much pains to point out that this was the effect of the considerable agreement there is between the asceticism of the early Church and that of the native worship. Without discussing the point, we may note that rapidity of extension was the rule, not the exception, when an apostle was the missionary; and that the Alexandrian Church was founded by direct commission from St. Peter, and, therefore, shared with Rome and Antioch the distinction of being the mother-city of Christianity. Moreover, the Nile valley, which above the Delta is nowhere more than eleven miles in width, contained a teeming population, the whole of which was thoroughly accessible by means of the river itself. For nearly five hundred miles every city and town, every least village and hamlet, stood right on the banks of the great water-way; and it is probable that half the inhabitants of Upper Egypt and the Thebaid were often floating on its bosom at one and the same time. The high road that was so serviceable for traffic and pleasure could be made of equal service to religion. How unweariedly the successors of St. Mark must have traversed it from end to end may be read in the history of those lauras and hermitages that at one time were to be found wherever its rocky barriers were indented by a sandy valley, and wherever the old builders of Thebes and Memphis had left a quarried opening in the limestone. There was not a stronger contrast between these monastic dwellings and the bosom of the gay river than there was between Egyptians Christian and Egyptians pagan. If the Church's converts rushed into the deserts and the caves, it was not especially because they liked them, but because there was absolutely no other means of getting out of a society not to be matched for immorality except, perhaps, by pagan Rome at its very worst. Of the number of Christians in Alexandria itself at the commencement of the third century we can only form an approximate judgment. On the one hand, Eusebius tells us that the Church had spread over the whole Thebaid. As the Thebaid was the southern division of Egypt proper, and, therefore, the most distant from Alexandria, we may safely say as much, at least, for the Delta and Middle Egypt. On the other hand, we are told by Origen that the Christians in the city were not so numerous as the pagans, or even the Jews. This will not appear surprising if we recollect that the Alexandrian Jews were more numerous, as well as richer and more powerful, than any other Jewish community in the world. We know enough to be quite sure that the Alexandrian Church was working quietly but vigorously. From the heads of the Catechetical school down to the humblest little child that was marked out by baptism in the great city of sin, there was a great work going on. The impulse that Pantaenus and Clement were giving was felt downward and around, and when Origen begins to rise on the scene, we can mark what an advance there has been even in the short twenty years since the death of Marcus Aurelius.
Septimus Severus had reigned for ten years, as we said above, before he began to persecute. He was undoubtedly an able and vigorous emperor; he could meet his enemies and get rid of his friends, bribe the Praetorians and slaughter his prisoners of war, with equal coolness and generally with equal success. In the course of a reign of twenty years he seems to have visited with hostile intent the greater part of his extensive empire, from the Syrtes of Africa, where he was born, to the banks of the Euphrates, and thence to Britain, where he died, at York, A.D. 211. At the time we speak of (198) he had just concluded a brilliant campaign against those pests of the Roman soldiery, the Parthians; and having then engaged the Arabs, still in arms for a chief whose head he had had the pleasure [{723}] of sending to Rome twelve months before, had got rather the worst of it in two battles. It was between this and the year 202 that he visited Alexandria. There can be no doubt he must have been received at Alexandria with no little triumph by one class of its citizens. Some six years before, he had restored to the Greek inhabitants their senate and municipal privileges. The Greeks, who, as far as intellect went, were the indisputable rulers of Alexandria, must have been highly elated at being now restored to civil importance; for though their senate was little more than an ornament, and their municipal rights confined to holding certain assemblies for the discussion of grievances, still, to have a recognized machinery of wards and tribes, and to be called "men of Macedon," as of old, was not without advantage, and was, indeed, all that their fathers had presumed to seek for, even in the days of the lamented Ptolemies. We cannot doubt, therefore, that by the Greeks Severus was received with much enthusiasm, and he, on his part, seems to have been equally satisfied with his reception, for we find that he enriched Alexandria with a temple of Rhea, and with public baths which he named after himself. But more came of this visit than compliments or temples. It was an hour of favor for the Greeks; the chief among them were also the chiefs and ruling spirits of the university; we know they must have come across Christianity during the preceding twenty years in many ways, but chiefly as a teaching that was gaining ground yearly among their best men; as philosophers, we know they loathed it; as worshippers of the immortal myths, they were burning to put it down. Does it seem in any way connected with these facts that Severus at this very time changes his policy of mildness, and issues a decree forbidding, under severest penalties, all conversions to Christianity or Judaism? There is something suggestive in the juxtaposition of facts, and it is not at all impossible that the commencement of the fifth persecution was a compliment to Clement of Alexandria. Severus, indeed, must have frequently come into contact with Christianity himself during the three or four years he spent in Syria and the East; he could not have visited Antioch, Edessa, and Caesarea without being obliged to notice the development of the Church. The Jews, too, had given him a great deal of trouble, which may account for that part of the edict which affected them, and perhaps the Montanist fanatics had helped to irritate him against the name of Christian. However these things may be, the prohibition, though apparently moderate in its scope, was the signal for the outburst of a tremendous persecution. Laetus, the prefect of Alexandria, was so zealous in his work, that it is impossible not to suspect that he was acting under the very eye of his imperial master. He was not content with torturing and slaying in the city itself, but sent his emissaries up the Nile to the very extremity of the Thebaid to hunt up the Christians and send them by boatloads to the capital for judgment and punishment. Numbers of the Alexandrian Christians fled to Palestine and elsewhere on the first intimation of danger. Pantaenus, who had returned from his Indian mission, had perhaps already left Alexandria; but Clement was at the head of the Catechisms, and he was of the number of those who fled. The great school was for a time broken up. The functions of the Church were suspended for want of ministers, or prevented by the impossibility of meeting in safety. It was taught in the Alexandrian Church that if they were persecuted in one city, they should flee into another; and, just at this time, the Motanist error, that it was unlawful to flee from persecution, caused this teaching to be acted upon with less hesitation than usual; and so, in the year 202, Christians in Alexandria, from being a comparatively flourishing community, became a proscribed and secret sect.
It would be very far from the truth, however, to suppose that the teachings of the Catechetical school had not been able to form martyrs. We know that multitudes stood up for their faith and shed their blood for it at Alexandria, during the first years of this persecution, and this amidst horrors so unusual even with persecutors, that it was thought they portended the coming of the last day. The name of Potamiana alone will serve to raise associations sufficient to picture both the heroism of the confessors and the enormities of the tyrants. But there is another name with which we are more nearly concerned at present. Leonides, the father of Origen, was one of those Christians who had not fled from the persecution. He was an inhabitant of Alexandria, a man of some position and substance, and when the troubles began he was living in Alexandria with his wife and family. It was not long before he was marked down by Laetus and dragged to prison. The martyr's crown was now within his grasp; but he left behind him in his desolate home another who was burning to share it by his side. His son, Origen, was not yet seventeen when his father was torn away by the Roman soldiers, and, in spite of the entreaties of his mother, he insisted upon following him to prison. His mother finally kept him beside her by a device which may raise a smile in this generation. She "hid all his clothes," says Eusebius, and so compelled him to stop at home. But his zeal was all aroused and on fire, and, indeed, in this, the earliest incident known to us of his life, we seem to read the zeal and fire of the man that was to be. He sent a message to his father in these words, "Be sure not to waver on our account." The exact words seem to have been handed down to us, and Eusebius, who gives them, probably received them from Origen's own disciples in Caesarea of Palestine. The boy well knew what would be the martyr's chief and only anxiety in his prison. The thought of the wife and seven young children whom he was leaving desolate would be a far bitterer martyrdom than the Roman prisons. But Leonides gloriously persevered, confessed the faith, and was beheaded, while the whole of his property was confiscated to the emperor.
Origen, as we have said, was not quite seventeen years old at his father's martyrdom, having been born about the year 185. Both his father and mother were Christians, and apparently had dwelt a long time in Alexandria. He had therefore been brought up from his infancy in that careful Christian training which it is the pride and joy of a good and earnest Christian father to bestow upon his son. The traces of this training, as we find them in Eusebius, are touching in the extreme. Leonides, to whom the teachings of Clement had made the Holy Scriptures a very fountain of life and sweetness, made them the principal means of the education of his son. Every day the child repeated to his father a portion of the holy books, and was instructed according to his capacity. Knowing what, in after life, was to be Origen's connection with the Holy Scriptures, we are not surprised to find that his father soon began to experience some difficulty in answering his questions. The boy, with true Alexandrian instinct, was not content with the bare letter of the book; he would know its hidden meaning and prophetic sense. Leonides discouraged these questions and speculations, not, it would seem, because he disapproved of them, but because he sensibly thought them premature in so young a child. But in the secret of his heart he was full of joy to see the ardor, eagerness, and amazing quickness of his dear child, and often, when the boy was asleep, would he uncover his breast and reverently kiss it, as the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is of very great importance for the right comprehension of the great Origen to bear in view this picture of his tender youth, and to reflect that he was no convert from heathenism, no [{725}] Christianized philosopher, whose early notions might from time to time be expected to crop up in the field of his orthodoxy, but a Christian child, born and bred in the Church's bosom, brought up by a father of unquestioned ability, who died a martyr and is honored as a saint. Origen began to think rightly as soon as he could think at all; his early education left him nothing to forget. As he grew up and began to be familiar with Alexandria the beautiful, he received that subtle education of the eye and imagination that every Alexandrian, like every Athenian, succeeded to as an heirloom. But with the heathen philosophers he had nothing to do, and it may be questioned whether he ever entered the walls of the Museum. His father had not neglected to teach him the ordinary branches of Greek learning. He attended the lectures of Clement, those brilliant and winning discourses, half apology, half exhortation, that he himself was afterward to emulate so well. He heard Pantaenus, also, after the venerable teacher had returned from his Indian mission. We may be sure that he dreaded worse than poison the society of the pagan youth of the university; this his subsequent conduct proves. But he had his circle of friends, and among them was a young man, somewhat older than himself, who was hereafter to leave an undying name as St. Alexander of Jerusalem. Thus, by ear and eye, by master and by fellow-student, by his father's labor, and by the workings of his own wonderful intellect and indomitable will, he was formed into a man. His education came to a premature end; but his father's martyrdom, though to outward seeming it left him a destitute orphan, really hardened the boy of seventeen into the man and the hero.
"When his father was martyred," continues Eusebius, writing, in all probability, from the relation of those who had heard Origen's own account, "he was left an orphan, with his mother and six young brothers and sisters, being of the age of seventeen. All his father's property was confiscated to the emperor's treasury, and they were in the utmost destitution; but God's providence took care of Origen." A rich and illustrious lady of Alexandria received him into her house. Whether this lady was professedly a Christian, a pagan, or a heretic, history does not say. She can hardly have been a pagan, though it is not impossible that a philosophic and liberal pagan lady should have taken a fancy to help such a youth as Origen. It is not likely that she was a heretic, for in that case Origen would never have entered her door. Thanks to the Gnostics, heretics in those days were looked upon in Alexandria as more to be dreaded than pagans. She was probably, by outward profession at least, a Christian, "illustrious," says the historian, "for what she had done, and illustrious in every other way." What she had done we are not permitted even to guess; but one fact in her history we do know, and it is very significant. She had living in her house, on the footing of an adopted son, one Paul, a native of Antioch, and one of the chiefs of the Alexandrian heretics. It is certain that Origen's patroness must have had either very uncertain or very easy notions of Christianity, if she could lend her house, her money, and her influence to an arch-heretic, who had come from Syria to trouble the Church of Alexandria, as Basilides and Valentine had come before him. Gnosticism had probably lost ground in the city, under the eloquent attacks of St. Clement. This Paul was a man of great eloquence, and his reputation attracted great numbers to hear him, not only of heretics, but also of Christians. He came from Antioch, the headquarters of an unknown number of Gnostic sects, and, with the usual instinct of false teachers, he had "led captive" this Alexandrian lady. Mark, of infamous memory, had already done the same thing by others, and perhaps by her, and Paul had succeeded to his position and was now [{726}] the rival of the head of the Catechisms. Such a state of things makes it easier to understand why St. Clement, in his Stromata, calls those who lean to heresy "traitors to Christ," and compares perverts to the companions of Ulysses in the sty of Circe, and why he makes the very treating with heretics to be nothing less than desertion in the soldier of Christ. It does seem a little strange, at first sight, that the uncompromising Origen should have consented to receive assistance from one whose orthodoxy must have been in such bad odor. The difficulty grows less, however, if we consider the circumstances. It was in the very heat of a terrible persecution, when the canons of the Church must have been suspended. Origen had lost his father, and had nowhere to turn for bare subsistence. We can hardly wonder if, in such a strait as this, he asked few questions when the charitable lady wished to take him in. But when the grief and agitation of his orphaned state had somewhat subsided, and when the persecutors had begun to slacken their fury, we may suppose that he began to examine the harbor of his refuge, and that it pleased him not. He was under the same roof as Paul of Antioch, a heretic and a leader of heretics; but never, young as he was, could he be induced to associate with him in prayer, or in any way that could violate the canons of the Church, as far as it was possible to keep them in such times. "From his childhood," says his biographer, "he kept the canons, and execrated the teachings of heretics;" and he tells us that this last phrase is Origen's own. And it seems that he took the most energetic measures to get away from a companionship that he must have loathed. He had been well instructed, as we have said, by his father in the ordinary branches of education. After his father's death he again applied himself to study with greater ardor than before, for he had an object in view now. It was not long before he was offering himself as a public teacher of those sciences that are designated by the general term "Grammatica." It was the first public step in a life that was afterward to be little less than the entire history of the Eastern Church. He was not yet eighteen, but there was no help for it. He must have bread, and he could not eat of the loaf that was shared by Paul of Antioch. Early writers lay much stress on this first exhibition of orthodox zeal in him who was afterward to be the "hammer" of heretics, from Egypt to Greece. Certain it is that his conduct as a boy was the same as his sentiments when he was in his sixtieth year. "To err in morals," he wrote in his commentary on Matthew, at Caesarea, forty years after his first essay as a teacher of grammar,—"to err in morals is bad, but to err in dogma and to contradict Holy Writ is much worse." If in after life he was to be so singularly earnest and so unaffectedly devout, so enthusiastic for the Gospel, so eager in exploring the depths of sacred science, and so unwavering in his faith, all this was but the growth and development of what was already springing in his soul in those early years of his trials and zeal. The strong will was already trying its first flights, the sensitive heart was being schooled to throw all its motive power into duty, and the quick, clear apprehension and the wonderful memory for which he was to be so famous, were already beginning to show what they would one day be.
Origen was now a teacher of grammar and the sciences, but he had not kept school for many months when his teachings took a turn that he can hardly have anticipated. His text-books were the common pagan historians, poets, and philosophers that have been thumbed by the school-boy from that generation to this. It was no part of Origen's character to leave his hearers in error when plain speaking would prevent it; and so it happened that his exposition of his author often took in hand not merely the parts of speech, but the doctrine. Though he was only [{727}] school-master by profession, his scholars soon found out he was a Christian, and a Christian of uncommon power and clear-sightedness. The Catechetical school was closed; masters and scholars were scattered in flight or in concealment. It was not long, therefore, before the young teacher found himself applied to by first one heathen and then another, who, under other circumstances, would have applied to the school of the Catechisms. Among these were Plutarchus, who soon afterward showed how a young Alexandrian student could die a glorious martyr; and Heraclas, his brother, who, after his conversion, left everything to remain with his master, became his assistant and successor in his catechetical work, and finally died Patriarch of Alexandria. These were the first-fruits of his zeal for souls. Many others followed; and as the persecution was somewhat abating, Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, looking round for men to resume the work of the schools, saw no one better fitted to be intrusted with its direction than Origen himself. He was accordingly, though not yet eighteen, appointed the successor of Clement.
Laetus, prefect of Alexandria, who had exerted himself so strenuously to please Severus when the persecution commenced, had now been recalled; probably he had reaped the reward of his zeal, and was promoted. His successor, Aquila, signalized his entering upon office by an activity that outdid that of Laetus himself. The persecution that had calmed down a little toward the end of the first year and when Laetus was leaving, now raged with redoubled fury. We have already said that the authoritative tradition, and, in great measure, also the practice, of the Alexandrian Church was flight at a time like this. Origen, however, was very far from fleeing; never at any time of his life did he display such fearless baldness, such energetic contempt for the enemy, as during these years of blood, from 204 to 211. There was no prison so well-guarded, no dungeon so deep, that he could not hold communication with the confessors of Christ. He went up to the tribunals with them, and stood beside them at the interrogatory and at the torture. He went back with them in a sort of defiant triumph, after sentence of death had been pronounced. He walked undauntedly by their side up to the stake and the beheading block, and kissed them and bade them adieu when it was time for them to die. It is no wonder that Eusebius sets down his own safety to a miraculous interposition of the right hand of God. Once, as he stood by a dying martyr, embracing him as he expired, the Alexandrian mob set on him with stones and nearly killed him; how he escaped none could tell. Again and again the persecutors tried to seize him; as often ("it is impossible," says the historian, "to tell how often") was he delivered from their hands. He was nowhere safe: no sooner did the mob get a suspicion of where he was than they surrounded the house, and hounded in the soldiers to drag him out. He fled from house to house; perhaps he was assisted to escape by some of his numerous friends; perhaps he hid himself, as St. Athanasius in the next century did, in some of those underground wells and cisterns with which every house in Alexander's city was provided, and then sought other quarters when the mob had gone off. But it was not long before he was again discovered. The numbers that came to hear him soon let the infuriated pagans know where their victim was, and he was again besieged and hunted out. Once, St. Epiphanius relates, he was caught, apparently by a street-mob, and some of the low Egyptian priests as their leaders. It was near the Egyptian quarter of the city; perhaps, even, he was visiting some poor native convert in the dirty streets of the Rhacôtis itself. If so, the name of Origen would have been enough to empty the whole quarter of its pariah race, and bring them yelling and cursing into the [{728}] Heptastadion. They showed him no mercy; they abused him horribly; they beat him and bruised him; they dragged him along the ground. But before killing him outright, the idea seized them that they should make him deny his religion, and at the same time make a shameful exhibition of himself. There must have been Greeks in the crowd, for Egyptians would never have had patience to spare him so long. The Serapeion, however, was at hand, and thither they dragged him. As they hauled him along, "they shaved his head," says St. Epiphanius—that is, they tried to make him look like the Egyptian priests, who were distinguished by a womanish smoothness of face; and we may imagine that they did it with no gentle hands. When at length the rushing mob had surged up the steps of the great temple, their victim in the midst of them, they set him on his feet, and gave him some palm branches, telling him to act the priest and distribute them to the votaries of Serapis. The palm, we know, was a favorite tree with the Egyptian priests; it was sculptured and painted on the walls of their huge temples, and it was borne in the hands of worshippers on solemn festivals. On the present occasion there were, probably, priests of one rank or another standing before the vestibule of the Serapeion, ready to supply those who should enter. It was, therefore, the work of a moment to seize the stock of one of these ministers, and force Origen to take his place. If they anticipated the pleasure of seeing the hated Christian teacher humiliated to the position of an ostiarius of an idolatrous temple, they were never more mistaken in their lives. Origen took the palms, and began without hesitation to distribute them; but, as he did so, he cried out in a voice as loud and steady as if neither suffering nor danger could affect him, "Take the palms, good people!—not the palms of idols, but the palms of Christ!" How he escaped after this piece of daring, we are only left to conjecture. Perhaps the Roman troops came suddenly on the scene to quell the riot; and as they hated the dwellers in the Rhacôtis almost as much as the latter hated Origen, the neighborhood of the Serapeion would have been speedily cleared of Egyptians. However it came about, Origen was saved.
Meanwhile, he saw his own scholars daily going to death. The young student Plutarchus fell among the first victims of Aquila's new vigor; Origen was by his side when he was led to execution, was recognized by the mob, and once more narrowly escaped with his life. Serenus, another of his disciples, was burnt; Heraclides, a catechumen, and Hero, who had just been baptized, were beheaded; a second Serenus, after enduring many torments, suffered in the same way. A woman named Heraeis, one of his converts, was burned before she could be baptized, receiving the baptism of fire, as her instructor said. Another who is numbered among his disciples is Basilides, the soldier who protected St. Potamiana from the insults of the mob, and whom she converted by appealing to him three nights afterward. We are told that the brethren, and we know who would be foremost among the brethren in such a case, visited him in prison as soon as they heard of his wonderful and unexpected confession. He told them his vision, was baptized, and the following day died a martyr. Probably it was Origen who addressed to him the few hurried words of instruction there was time to say. "All the martyrs," says Eusebius, "whether he knew them or knew them not, he ministered to with the most eager affection." His reputation, it may well be conceived, suffered no diminution as these things came to be known. The horrors of the persecution could not keep scholars away from him, nor prevent increasing numbers from coming to seek him. Many of the unbelieving pagans, full of admiration for a holiness of life and a heroism they could not comprehend, came to his [{729}] instructions; and even literary Greeks who had gone through the curriculum of the Museum, and were deeply versed in Platonic myths and Pythagorean theories of mortification, came to listen to this fearless young philosopher, in whom they found a learning that could not be gainsaid, combined with a practical contempt for the things of the body that was quite unknown in their own schools.
The persecution seems to have died down and gone out toward the year 211, nine years after its commencement. Origen's labors became the more extraordinary in proportion as he had freer scope for pursuing them. The feature in his life at this time, which is most characteristic of the time and the city, and which more than anything else attracted the cultivated heathens to listen to him, was his severe asceticism. Times of persecution may be considered to dispense with asceticism; but Origen did not think so. It was a saying of his master, St. Clement, and, indeed, appears to have been a common proverb in that reformed school of heathen philosophy which resulted in Neo-Platonism, "As your words, so be your life." A philosopher in Alexandria at that time, if he would not be thought to belong to an effete race of thinkers who had long been left behind, or who only survived in the well-paid and well-fed professorships of the university, was of necessity a man whose strict and sober living corresponded to the high and serious truths which he considered it his mission to utter. St. Clement did not forget this, either in principle or in practice, when he undertook to win the heathen men of science to Christ. Origen, born a Christian, made a teacher apparently by chance and in the confusion of a persecution, cared little, in the first instance, for what pagan philosophy would think of him. The fact that all who pretended to be philosophers pretended also to asceticism may, indeed, have caused him to embrace a life of denial more as a matter of course. But the holy gospels and the teachings of Clement were the reasons of his asceticism. It is amazing that Protestant writers, when they write of the asceticism of the early Church, can see in it nothing but the reflection of Buddhism, or Judaism, or of the tenets of Pythagoras, and that they always seem nervously glad to prove by the assistance of the Egyptian climate or the Platonic hatred of matter, that it was not the carrying out of the law of Christ, but merely a self-imposed burden. Climate, doubtless, has great influence on food, and English dinners would no more suit an Egyptian sun than would the two regulation paximatia of the Abbot Moses in Cassian be enough for even the most willing of English Cistercians. But why go to climate, to Plato, to Pythagoras, and to Buddha, to account for what is one of the most striking recommendations of the gospels? We need not stop to inquire the reason, but we may be sure that a child who had been taught the Holy Scriptures by heart would not be unlikely to know something of their teaching. His biographer tells us expressly, with regard to several of his acts of mortification, that they were done in the endeavor to carry out literally our Lord's commands. And yet it is very remarkable, and a trait of the times, that Eusebius, in describing his mode of life, uses the word philosophy three times where we should use asceticism. Origen, soon after being appointed head of the Catechetic school, found he could not do his duty by his hearers as thoroughly as he could wish, on account of his other occupation of teacher of grammar. He therefore resolved to give it up. It was his only means of subsistence, but he might reasonably have expected "to live by the gospel" as long as he was in such a post as chief catechist. If he had expected this he would not have been disappointed, for there would have been no lack of charity. But he had an entirely different view of the matter. He would be a burden [{730}] to no one, and would live a life of the strictest poverty. Simple, straightforward, and great, here as ever, we may conceive how he would appreciate the fetters of a rich man's patronage. But, if we may trust the utterances of his whole life, his love for holy poverty was such that, while it makes some refer once more to Pythagoras, to a Catholic it rather suggests St. Francis of Assisi. "I tremble," he said thirty years afterward, "when I think how Jesus commands his children to leave all they have. For my own part, I plead guilty to my accusers and I pronounce my own sentence; I will not conceal my guiltiness lest I become doubly guilty. I will preach the precepts of the Lord, though I am conscious of not having followed them myself. Let us now at least lose no time in becoming true priests of the Lord, whose inheritance is not on earth but in heaven." Such language from one who can hardly be said to have possessed anything during his whole life can only be explained on one hypothesis. In order, therefore, at once to secure his independence in God's work, and to oblige himself to practise rigorous poverty, he made a sacrifice which none but a poor student can appreciate. He sold his manuscripts, and secured to himself, from the sale, a sum of four oboli a day, which was to be his whole income. This sum, which was about the ordinary pay of a common sailor, who had his food and lodging provided for him, was little enough to live upon; but miserable as it was, Origen must have paid a dear premium to obtain it. Those manuscripts of "ancient authors" were probably the fruits and the assistance of his early studies; he must have written many of them under the eye of his martyred father. He had "labored with care and love to write them out fairly," we are told, and doubtless he prized them at once as a scholar prizes his library and a laborious worker the work of his hands. For many years, probably until he went to Rome in 211, he continued to receive his twopence or threepence every day from the person who had bought his books. But we cease in great part to wonder how little he lived on when we know how he lived. In obedience to our Lord's command, and in opposition to the prevailing practice of all but the poorest classes, he wore the tunic single, and as for the pallium, he seems either to have dispensed with it altogether, or only to have worn it whilst teaching. For many years he went entirely barefoot. He fasted continually from all that was not absolutely necessary to keep him alive; he never touched wine; he worked hard all day in teaching and visiting the poor; and after studying what we should call theology the greater part of the night, he did not go to bed, but took a little rest on the floor. This "vehemently philosophic" life, as Eusebius calls it, reduced him in time, as might have been expected, to a mere wreck; insufficient food and scanty clothing brought on severe stomachic complaints, which nearly caused his death. It is not to be supposed that his disciples and the Church in general looked on with indifference whilst he practised these austerities. On the contrary, he was solicited over and over again to receive assistance and to take care of himself; and many were even somewhat offended because he refused their well-meant offers. But Origen had chosen to put his hand to the plough, and he would not have been Origen if he had turned back. It is probable, indeed, that he somewhat moderated his austerities when his health began to give way seriously; but hard work and hard living were his lot to the end, and the name of Adamantine, which he received at this time, and which all ages and countries have confirmed to him, shows what the popular impression was of what he actually went through. As might have been expected, a man of such singleness and determination had many imitators. We have seen that the very pagan philosophers came to listen to him. [{731}] The young scholars whom he instructed, and many of whom he converted, did more than listen to him; they joined him, and imitated as nearly as they could what Eusebius again calls the "philosophy" of his life. It was no barren aping of externals, such as might have been seen going on a little way off at the Museum; he, on his part, taught them deep and earnest lessons in the deepest and most earnest of all philosophies; they, on theirs, proved that his words were power by the severest of all tests—they stood firm in the horrors of a fearful persecution, and more than one of them witnessed to them by a cruel death.
As long as the persecution lasted, anything like regularity and completeness in a work like that of Origen was clearly impossible. But a persecution at Alexandria, though generally furious as long as it lasted, happily seldom lasted very long. Popular opinion was, no doubt, very bitter against Christianity. But popular opinion was one thing; the will of the prince-governor another. Moreover, the popular opinion of the Greek philosophers was generally diametrically opposed to that of their Roman masters, and the beliefs and traditions of the Rhacôtis tended to the instant extermination of the Jews; and though these four antagonistic elements could, upon occasion, so far forget their differences as to unite in an onslaught against the Christians, yet, before long, quarrels arose and riots ensued among the allied parties to such an extent that the legionaries had no choice but to clear the streets in the most impartial manner. Again, it is quite certain that the Christian party included in it not a few men of rank; and, what is more important, of power and authority. This we know from the trouble St. Dionysius, one of Origen's scholars, afterward had with many such persons who had "lapsed" in the Decian persecution. As everything, therefore, depended on the humor of the governor, and as the governor was, as other men, liable to be influenced by bribes suggestions, and caprice, a furious persecution might suddenly die out, and the Church begin to enjoy comparative peace at the very time when things looked worst. Until the year 211, "Adamantius" taught, studied, prayed, and fasted amidst disturbance, martyrdoms, and fleeings from house to house; but that year wrought a change, not only in Alexandria, but over the whole world. It was simply the year of the death of Septimus Severus at York, and of the accession of Caracalla and Geta; but this was an event which, if precedents were to be trusted, invited all the nations that recognized the Roman eagle to be ready for any change, however unreasonable, beginning with the senate, and ending with the Christians. It was, probably, in this same year, 211, that Origen took advantage of the restoration of tranquillity to visit the city and Church of Rome. It would seem that this episode of his journey to Rome has not been sufficiently considered in the greater part of the accounts of his life. Protestant writers, as may be expected, pass it over quietly, either barely mentioning it, or, if they do put a gloss upon it, confining themselves to generalities about the interchange of ideas or the antiquity and renown of the Roman Church. But there is evidently more in it than this. Origen was just twenty-six years of age: though so young, he was already famous as a teacher and a holy liver in the most learned of cities, and one of the most ascetical of churches. His work was immense, and daily increasing. On the cessation of the persecution, the great school was to be reorganized, and put once more into that thorough working order which had made it so effective under Pantaenus and Clement. Yet, just at this busy crisis, he hurries off to Rome, stays there a short time, and hurries back again. In the first place, why go at all? What could Rome or any other church give him that he had not already at Alexandria? Not scientific learning, certainly; not a systematic [{732}] organization of work; not reverence for Holy Scripture; not the method of confuting learned philosophy. Again: why go specially to Rome? Was there not a high road, easy and comparatively short, to Caesarea of Palestine, and would he not find there facilities enough for the "interchange of thought?" For there, about fifteen years before, had assembled one of the first councils ever held since the council of Jerusalem. Was there not Jerusalem, the cradle of the Church? It was then, indeed, shorn of its glory, both spiritual and historical; for it was subject, at least not superior, to Caesarea, and was known to the empire by the name of Aelia Capitolina; but its aged bishop was a worker of miracles. Was there not Antioch, the great central see of busy, intellectual Syria, the see of St. Theophilus, wherein saintly bishops on the one hand, and Marcionite heresy and Paschal schism on the other, kept the traditions of the faith bright and polished? Were there not the Seven Churches? Was there not many a "mother-city" between the Mediterranean and the mountain ranges where apostolic teachings were strong yet, and apostolic men yet ruled? Origen's motive in going to "see Rome" is given us by himself, or, rather, by his biographer in his words; but, unfortunately, in such an ambiguous way that it is almost useless as an argument; he wished, says Eusebius, "to see the very ancient Church of Rome." The word we have translated "very ancient" (
.) may also mean, as we need not say, "first in dignity." It is hardly worth while to argue upon it, but it will not fail to strike the reader that Jerusalem and Antioch, not to mention other sees, were both older than Rome, if age was the only recommendation. Origen's visit to Rome, then, is a very remarkable event in his life, for it shows undoubtedly that the chief of the greatest school of the Church found he required something which could only be obtained in Rome, and that something can only have been an approach to the chief and supreme depositary of tradition. He was at the very beginning of his career, and he could begin no better than by invoking the blessing of that rock of the Church of whom his master, Clement, had taught him to think so nobly and lovingly. We shall see that, many a year after this, in the midst of troubles and calumnies, when his great life was nearly closed, the same see of Peter received the professions and obedience of his failing voice, as it had witnessed and blessed the ardor of his youth. He was not, indeed, the first who, though already great in his own country, had been drawn toward a greatness which something told them was without a rival. Three-quarters of a century before Rome had attracted from far-off Jerusalem that great St. Hegesippus, the founder of church history, whose works are lost, but whose fame remains. A convert from Judaism, he left his native city, travelled to Rome, and sojourned there for twenty years, busily learning and committing to writing those practices and traditions of the Roman Church which he afterward appears to have disseminated all over the East, and which he conveyed, toward the end of his life, to his own Jerusalem, where he died. From Assyria and beyond the Tigris the "perfume of Rome" had enticed the great Tatian—happy if, on his return, he had still kept pure that faith which, at Rome, he defended so well against Crescens the cynic. A great mind and a widely cultivated genius found the sphere of its rest in Rome, when St. Justin finished his wanderings there and sealed the workings of his active intellect by shedding his blood at the bidding of the ruling clique of Stoics—"philosophus et martyr" as the old martyrologies call him. A famous name, too, is that of Rhodon, of Asia, well known for his steady and able defence of the faith against Marcionites and other heretics. These, and such as these, had come from the world's ends to visit the great apostolic see before Origen's day dawned. But there were others, and as great, whom [{733}] he may actually have met in the city, either on a visit like himself, or because they were members of the Roman clergy. There was the great Carthaginian, Tertullian, who, for many years, lived, learned, and wrote in Rome; his works show how well he knew the Roman Church, and how often afterward he had occasion, in his polemical battles, to allude to the "Ecclesia transmarina" as Africa called Rome. A meeting between Origen and Tertullian is a very suggestive idea; the only misfortune is, that we have no warrant whatever for supposing it beyond the bare possibility. But by naming Tertullian we suggest one view, at least, of the ecclesiastical society which Origen would meet when he visited Rome. Another celebrated man, whom there is more likelihood that Origen did meet, is the convert Roman lawyer, Minucius Felix, who employed his recognized talents and trained skill in vigorous apologetic writings, one of which we still possess. A third was the priest Caius, one of the Roman clergy, famed as the adversary of Proclus the Montanist, unless he had already started on his missionary career as regionary bishop. Finally, there was St. Hippolytus, who, like Caius, was from the school of St. Irenaeus, and had come from Lyons to Rome, where he seems to have been no unworthy representative of his teacher's zeal against heretics. Nearly every step of the life of St. Hippolytus is encumbered by the ruin of a learned theory or the useless rubbish of an abandoned position; but he as far as we can conjecture, the chief scientific adviser of the Roman pontiffs in the measures they took at this time regarding Easter and against the Noetians. Until scientific men have settled their disputes as to who was the author of the Philosophumena, or Treatise against All Heresies, little more can be said about St. Hippolytus. The Treatise itself, however, whose recovery some twenty years ago excited so much interest, must have had an author, and it is nearly certain the author must have been one of the Roman clergy at this very time. It is still more certain that the matters therein discussed must represent very completely one view of Church matters at Rome in the early part of the third century; and, therefore, even if Origen did not meet the author in person, he must have met many who thought as he did. Now it is rather interesting to read the Philosophumena in this light, and to conjecture what Origen would think of some of its views. The leading idea of the work, which is not even yet extant complete, is to prove that all heresies have sprung from Greek philosophy. This it attempts to do by detailing, first, the systems of the philosophers, then those of the heretics, and showing their mutual connection. The scandalous attack on St. Callistus, in the ninth book, may or may not be an interpolation by a later hand; if not, the author must have been much more ingenious than reputable. There is no denying the historical and literary value of the Treatise; but where it professes to draw deductions and to give philosophical analyses of systems, it seems of comparatively moderate worth. For instance, the author's analysis and appreciation of the philosophy of Aristotle is little better than a libel on the great "maestro di lor chi sanno;" and Basilides, though doubtless a clever personage in his way, can hardly have taken the trouble to go so far for the small amount of philosophy that seasons his fantastical speculations. But a general opinion resembling the opinion maintained in the Treatise seems to have been common in the West; and when Tertullian says of the philosophy of Plato that it was "haereticorum omnium condimentarium," he was doubtless expressing the idea of many beside himself. To Origen, fresh from the school of Clement and the atmosphere of Alexandria, such language must have sounded startling, to say the least, and we cannot help feeling he would be rather [{734}] sorry, if not indignant, to hear the great names he had been taught to think of with so much admiration and compassion unfeelingly caricatured into a relationship of paternity with such men as the founders of Gnosticism. He does not appear to have been very familiar yet with the Greek systems; they had not come specially in his way, though he had heard of them in the Christian schools, and there is little doubt that he had already seen the necessity of studying them more closely, as he actually did on his return to Alexandria. What effect the views of the Western Church had on his teaching, and how he treated the philosophers, we shall have to consider in the sequel. Meanwhile, his stay at Rome was over; he had studied the faith and heresy, discipline and schism, church organization and sectarian rebellion, in the most important centre of the whole Church, and his school at Alexandria was awaiting him, to reap the benefit of his journey.
On the return of Origen to Alexandria, it would almost appear as if he had wished to decline, for a time, the office of chief of the Catechisms. The historian tells us that he only resumed it at the strongly expressed desire of his bishop, Demetrius, who was anxious for the "profit and advantage of the brethren." Perhaps he wished for greater leisure than such a post would permit of, in order to carry into execution certain projects that were forming in his mind. But neither the patriarch nor his scholars would hear of his giving up, and so he had to settle to his work again; "which he did," says Eusebius, "with the greatest zeal," as he did everything. From this time, with one or two short interruptions, he lived and taught in Alexandria for twenty years. His life as an authoritative teacher and "master in Israel" may be said to commence from this point. It was an epoch resembling in some degree that other epoch, thirty years before, when Pantaenus had been called upon to take the charge of chief teacher in the Alexandrian Church. Now, as then, the winter of a persecution had passed, and the season was sunny and promising. Now, as then, men were high in hope, and set to work with valiant hearts to repair the breaches the straggle had left, and to restore to the rock-built fortress that glory and comeliness that became her so well; but with which, if need was, she could securely dispense. But there was no slight difference between 180 and 211. The tide of Christianity had risen perceptibly all over the Church; most of all on the shores of its greatest scientific centre. The possibility of appealing to those who had heard the apostles had long been past, but now even the disciples of Polycarp, Simeon, and Ignatius had disappeared; instead of Irenaeus there was Hippolytus, and Demetrius of Alexandria was the eleventh successor of St. Mark. Heretics had multiplied, questions had been asked, tradition was developing itself, dogma was being fixed. The form of teaching was, therefore, in process of change as other things changed. Greater precision, more "positive theology," a more constant look-out for what authority had said or might say—these necessities would make the teacher's office more difficult, even if more definite. The position of the Church toward its enemies, also, was sensibly changing. The "gain-sayers" were not of the same class as had been addressed by St. Theophilus or St. Justin. The state of things had grown more distinctly marked. Christianity was no longer an idea that might, in a burst of noble rhetoric, be made to set on fire, for a moment, even the camp of the enemy. It was now known to the Gentile world as a stern and unyielding praxis; susceptible, perhaps, of scientific and literary treatment, but quite distinct from both science and letters. Enthusiastic but timid dilettanti had lost their enthusiasm, and gave full scope to their fears. Amiable philosophers took back the right hand of fellowship, and retreated behind those who, by a [{735}] special instinct, had always refused to be amiable, and now thought themselves more justified than ever. On the Christian side the war had lost much of the adventure which accompanies the first dashing inroads into an enemy's country. Surprises were not so easy, systematic opposition was frequent, and their writers were obliged to fight by tactics, and in the prosaic array of argument for argument. Documents, moral testimony, institutions, were the objects of attack from without. The apostles were vilified, faith was proved to be irrational, the Bible was ranked with Syrian impostures and Jewish charm-books. And here, in the matter of the Bible, was a mighty enterprise for the Christian teacher. The canon had not yet been officially promulgated. A generation that would despise an apocryphal book of Homer or a false Orphic hymn would not be easily satisfied with the credentials of a religion. Great, then, would be that Christian teacher who should at once teach the faithful, and yet not "take away from" the faith; win the philosophers, and yet fight them hand to hand; and give to the world a critical edition of the Bible, yet hold fast to ancient tradition. Such was the work of Origen.
He began by external organization; he divided the multitudes that flocked to the Catechisms into two grand classes; one of those who were commencing, another of those who were more advanced. The former class he gave to his first convert, Heraclas; the latter he kept to himself. Heraclas was "skilled in theology," and "in other respects a very eloquent man;" and, moreover, he was "fairly conversant with philosophy," three qualifications in an Alexandrian catechist none of which could be dispensed with. In any case, the division was a matter of absolute necessity, for these extraordinary Alexandrian scholars, models and patterns that deserve to be imitated more extensively than they have been, gave him no respite and kept no regular school-hours, but crowded in and out "from morning till night;" "not even a breathing-space did they afford him," says his biographer. In such circumstances theological study and scriptural labors were out of the question, even if he had been the man of adamant that his admirers, with the true Alexandrian passion for nicknames, had already begun to call him. He therefore looked about among "his familiars," those of his disciples who had attached themselves to him and lived with him a life of study and asceticism; and from them he chose out Heraclas, the brother of the martyred Plutarchus, to be the chief associate of his work.
It need not be again mentioned that Origen's work, as that of Pantaenus and of Clement before him, had three classes of persons to deal with—catechumens, heretics, and philosophers. His dealings with the heretics and philosophers will be treated of more appropriately when we come to consider his journeys, the most important of which occurred after the expiration of the twenty years with which we are now concerned. As the school of Alexandria was chiefly and primarily connected with the catechumens, the account of the twenty years of his presidency will naturally be concerned chiefly and primarily with the latter, that is to say, with those whom that great school undertook to instruct in faith and discipline. And here we approach and stand close beneath one side of that monumental fane that bears upon it for all generations the name of Origen. The neophytes of Alexandria were chiefly taught out of one book; it was the custom handed from teacher to teacher; each held up the book and explained it, according to the "unvarying tradition of the ancients." For two hundred and ten years the work had gone on; but time has destroyed nearly every trace of what was written and spoken. For the first time since St. Mark wrote the gospel, Alexandria speaks now in history with a voice that shall commence a new era in the history of [{736}] Holy Scripture. Pantaemus had written "Commentaries" on the whole of the Bible; Clement had left, in the Hypotyposes, a summary exposition of all the canonical Scripture, not forgetting a glance at the "Contradictions" of heretics. Both these writings have perished long ago. When Origen came, in his turn, to take the same work in hand, a pressing want soon forced itself upon his mind. There was no authentic version of the sacred Word. The New Testament canon was still uncertain, one Church upholding a greater number of books, another less. The Roman canon was, indeed, from the first identical with the Tridentine (see Perrone, "De Locis Theologicis"). But the Church of Antioch, e.g., ignored no less than five of the canonical books. Alexandria, well supplied with learned expositors, and not a little influenced by the native Alexandrian instinct for criticism and grammar, had got further in the development of the canon than the majority of its sisters. Yet, so far, there had hardly been any distinct interference on the part of authority, and though, as we shall see, Origen's New Testament canon was the same as that of the Council of Trent, yet there were not wanting private writers who expressed doubts about the Epistle to the Hebrews or the Apocalypse. One thing, however, is very clear in all these somewhat troublesome disputes about the canon; whether we turn to Tertullian in Africa, to St. Jerome in Italy, to St. Irenaeus in the West, or to Clement and Origen in the East, we find one grand and large criterion put forth as the test of all authenticity, viz., the tradition of the ancients. "Go to the oldest churches," says St. Irenaeus. "The truest," says Tertullian, "is the oldest; the oldest is what always was; what always was is from the apostles; go therefore to the churches of the apostles, and find what is there held sacred." "We must not transgress the bounds set by our fathers," says Origen. It took several centuries to complete this process; but the principle was a strong and a living one, and its working out was only a matter of time. It was worked out something in this fashion. A provincial presbyter, we will say from Pelusium, or Syene, or Arsinoe, came up to Alexandria (he may easily have done so, thanks to the police arrangements and engineering enterprise of Ptolemy Philadelphus); having much ecclesiastical news to communicate, and perhaps important business to arrange on the part of his bishop, he would be thrown into close contact with the presbytery of the metropolitan Church. Let us suppose that, in order to support some point of practical morality, touching the "lapsed" or the converts, he quoted Hermas' "Shepherd" as canonical Scripture. The archdeacon with whom he was arguing would demur to such an authority; let him quote Paul, or Jude, or Peter, or John, but not Hernias; Hernias was not in the canon. The presbyter from the provinces would be a little amazed and even ruffled; how could he say it was not in the canon when he himself had heard it read on the Lord's day before the sacred mysteries in the patriarchal Church, in the presence of the very patriarch himself, seated on his throne, and surrounded by the clergy? A canonical book meant a book within the Church's general rule (
), and the rule of the Church was that a book read at such a time was thereby declared true Scripture. The archdeacon would reply that the presbyter was right in the main, both as to facts and principles; but would point out that at Alexandria they had a set of books which were read at the solemn time he mentioned, beside regular Scripture; and if he had known their usages better, or if he had asked any of the clergy, or the patriarch, he would be aware that such writings were only read to the people as pious exhortations, not defined as the repository of the faith. The presbyter would consider this inconvenient, and would doubtless be right in thinking so. The practice was [{737}] condemned by various councils in the next century. But he would at once admit that if the tradition were so, then the Alexandrian Church certainly appeared to reject Hernias. But he would have another difficulty. Did not Clement, of blessed memory, consider Hernias as authentic, or, at any rate, the Epistle of Barnabas, which was quite a parallel case? And did not Origen (whom we suppose to be then teaching) call the "Shepherd" "divinely inspired?" It was true, the archdeacon would rejoin, that both Clement in former years and Origen then spoke very highly of several writings of this class; but he must refer him once more to the authoritative tradition of the Alexandrian Church, to be learned, in the last instance, from the lips of Demetrius himself: this would at once show that Clement and Origen could not mean to put Hernias on a level with Paul, and Origen himself would certainly admit so much, if he were asked. The presbyter would inquire, during his stay, of the heads of the Catechetical school, of the ancient priests, and of the patriarch; he would be satisfied that what the archdeacon said was true; and he would return to his city on the Red Sea, or at the extremity of the Thebaid, or on the north-western coast of the continent, with authentic intelligence that the Apostolic Church of Alexandria rejected Hermas from the Scripture canon, and that, therefore, it certainly ought to be rejected by his own Church. He would, perhaps, in addition to this, bring the information that the metropolitan Church, so he had found out in his researches, upheld the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Apocalypse of the Apostle John, to be true and genuine Scripture; would it not, therefore, be well to consider whether these also should not be admitted by themselves? In this way, or in some way analogous, the Churches that lay within the "circumscription" of a patriarchal or apostolic see would by degrees be led to conform their canon to the canon of the principal Church. As time went on, the great metropolitan sees themselves became grouped round the three grand centres of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome; and, finally, in the process of the development of tradition, at least as early as A.D. 800, the whole Church had adopted the canon as approved by Rome in the decretal of Innocent I. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that Origen quotes the canon of the New Testament precisely as it now stands in the Vulgate. It would hardly be true to say that he formally states as exclusively authentic the complete list of the Catholic canon; but that he does enumerate it is certain. Moreover, in addition to the remarkable correctness of his investigations on the canon, Origen did much, in other ways, for a book that was emphatically the textbook of his school. The exemplars in general use were in a most unsatisfactory state: there were hardly two alike. Writers had been careless, audacious innovators had inserted their interpolations, honest but mistaken bunglers had added and taken away whenever the sense seemed to require it. It is Origen himself who makes these complaints, and nobody had better occasion to know how true they were. The manuscript used in the great Church probably differed from that used by the chief catechist; his, again, differed from every one of those brought to class by the wealthier of his scholars. One would bring up a copy of St. Matthew's Gospel, which, on investigation, would turn out to be full of Nazarite or Ebionite "improvements"—another would have an Acts of the Apostles, which had been bequeathed to him by some venerable Judaizant, and wherein St. James of Jerusalem would be found to have assumed more importance than St. Luke was generally supposed to have given him. A third would have a copy so full of monstrous corruptions in the way of mutilation and deliberate heretical glossing, that the orthodox ears of the [{738}] master would certainly have detected a quotation from it in two lines: it would be one of Valentine's editions. A fourth, newly arrived from some place where Tertullian had never been heard of, would appear with a bulky set of volumina, which Origen would find to his great disgust to be the New Testament "according to Marcion." That first and chief of reckless falsifiers had "circumcised" the New Testament, as St. Irenaeus calls it, to such an extent that he had to invent a quantity of new Acts and Apocalypses to keep up appearances, and what he retained he had freely cut and tortured into Marcionism; for he said openly that the apostles were moderately well-informed, but that his lights were far in advance of them. Such examples as these are, of course, extremes; but even in orthodox copies there must have been a bewildering number of variantes. Origen's position would bring him into contact with exemplars from many distant churches. The work of copying fresh ones for the "missions," or to supply the wants of the provinces, would necessitate some choice of manuscripts; and in a matter so important, we may be sure that his catechists, fellow-townsmen of Aristarchus, rather enjoyed than otherwise the vigorous critical disputes which the collation of MSS. has a special tendency to engender. It is nearly established—indeed, we may say, it is certain—that Origen wrote a copy of the New Testament with his own hand. It was not a new edition, apparently, but a corrected copy of the generally received version. He corrected the blunders of copyists; he struck out of the text everything that was evidently a mere gloss; he re-inserted what had clearly dropped out by mischance, and adopted a few readings that were unmistakable improvements. But he made no alteration of the text on mere conjecture. However faulty a reading might seem, he never changed it without authority; he had too much reverence for Holy Scripture, and probably, also, too bitter an experience of conjectural emendations, to sanction such dangerous proceedings by his own practice. This precious copy, the fruit of his labors and study, the depositary of his wide experience, and the record of his "adamantine" industry, was apparently the one from which he himself always quoted, and, therefore, we may conclude, which he always used. It lay, after his death, in the archives of Caesarea of Palestine, with his other Biblical MSS. Pamphilus the Martyr is related to have copied it; and in the time of Constantine, Eusebius sent many transcripts of it to the imperial city. Eusebius himself copied it with all the reverence he would necessarily feel for his hero, Origen; and by means of his copy, or of copies made by his direction, it became the basis of that recension of the New Testament known as the Alexandrine. St. Jerome was well acquainted with the library of Caesarea, and often mentions the "Codices Adamantii" which he was privileged to consult there; and we need not remind the reader of the well-known agreement of the Latin versions with those of Palestine and Alexandria. Now Palestine meant—first, Jerusalem, where was the celebrated library formed by St. Alexander, Origen's own college friend and an Alexandria man, as we should say, and partly under Origen's influence; and, secondly, Caesarea, which inherited Origen's traditions and teaching, at least equally with Alexandria, as we shall see later on, and in which the originals of his works were preserved with religious veneration, until war and sack of Persian or Moslem destroyed them. Thus the work of Origen on the New Testament, begun and mainly carried out during those twenty years at Alexandria, is living and active at this very day.
But if the New Testament needed setting to rights, it was correct and accurate in comparison with the Old. How he treated the Septuagint, and how the Hexapla and the Tetrapla grew under nimble hands and learned heads, we must for the present defer to tell.
From The Fortnightly Review.
MARTIN'S PUZZLE.
I.
There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
And her "Good morning, Martin!" "Ay, lass, how d'ye do?"
"Very well, thank you, Martin!" I can't understand;
I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
I can't understand it. She talks like a song:
Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
She seems to give gladness while limping along;
Yet sinner ne'er suffered like that little lass.
II.
Now, I'm a rough fellow—what's happen'd to me?
Since last I left Falmouth I've not had a fight
With a miner come down for a dip in the sea;
I cobble contented from morning to night.
The Lord gives me all that a man should require;
Protects me, and "cuddles me up," as it were.
But what have I done to be saved from the fire?
And why does his punishment fall upon her?
III.
First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
Then, her fool of a father—a blacksmith by trade—
Why the deuce does he tell us it hah broke his heart?
His heart!—where's the leg of the poor little maid!
Well, that's not enough; they must push her downstairs,
To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
If it's right to suppose that our human affairs
Are all order'd by heaven—there, bang goes my fist!
IV.
For if angels can look on such sights—never mind!
When you're next to blaspheming, it's best to be mum.
The parson declares that her woes weren't design'd;
But, then, with the parson it's all kingdom-come.
"Lose a leg, save a soul "—a convenient text;
I call it "Tea doctrine," not savoring of God.
When poor little Molly wants "chastening," why, next—
The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.
V.
But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
To read books to sick people!—and just of an age
When girls learn the meaning of ribbons and smiles,—
Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.
The more I push thinking, the more I resolve:
I never get further:—and as to her face,
It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
And says, "This crush'd body seems such a sad case."
VI.
Not that she's for complaining: she reads to earn pence;
And from those who can't pay, simple thanks are enough.
Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?
Howsoever, she's made up of wonderful stuff.
Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,
And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.
VII.
What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
If there's law above all? Answer that if you can!
Irreligious I'm not; but I look on this sphere
As a place where a man should just think like a man.
It isn't fair dealing! But, contrariwise,
Do bullets in battle the wicked select?
Why, then it's all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes,
She hold's a fixed something by which I am check'd.
VIII.
Yonder ribbon of sunshine aslope on the wall,
If you eye it a minute, 'll have the same look:
So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!
It's the very same lesson we get from thy book.
Then is life but a trial? Is that what is meant?
Some must toil, and some perish, for others below:
The injustice to each spreads a common content;
Ay! I've lost it again, for it can't be quite so.
IX.
She's the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.
On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
Why the Lord can permit them, we're still in the dark;
He does, and in some sort of way they're his tools.
It's a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
But, perhaps, it's the only way, though it's so bad;
In that case we'll bow down our heads, as we ought.
X.
But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head,
I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
Of humble acceptance: for, question I must!
Here's a creature made carefully—carefully made
Put together with craft, and then stampt on, and why?
The answer seems nowhere: it's discord that's play'd.
The sky's a blue dish!—an implacable sky!
XI.
Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
Is the universe one immense organ, that rolls
From devils to angels? I'm blind with the sight.
It pours such a splendor on heaps of poor souls!
Suppose I try kneeling with Molly to-night.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Translated from Der Katholik.
THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.
[Third and concluding Article.]
IV. THE HEART OF THE CHURCH.
Christ approves himself as the head of the Church inasmuch as her individual members are subject to his guidance, and live and move in him. [Footnote 151] This protracted influence of Christ is exercised by means of an innate harmonizing and vivifying principle of the Church. We have arrived at the heart of the Church. Our ancient theology bestows this epithet on the Holy Ghost. [Footnote 152] The Church receives the Holy Ghost through Christ. Such is the doctrine of Scripture, clearly expressed. Jesus promises his disciples to send them after his departure the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, in whom they will find a compensation for the Master. For it is the function of the Spirit to testify of Christ, and to bring all things to the remembrance of the Church, whatsoever Jesus has said. Thus are all things taught unto the Church. This efficacy, which has the glory of Christ for its aim, the Holy Ghost derives from the fulness of Christ's Godhead, de meo accipiet. The Holy Ghost was not given until after Jesus was glorified. Christ being exalted, and having received the Holy Ghost promised of the Father, sheds forth the Spirit upon the Church. Even the prior inspiration of the apostles was the result of an act of Christ. Jesus breathed on them and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.
[Footnote 151: St. Thomas, iii. 93, a. 6.]
[Footnote 152: Ibid, a. 1, ad. S: Caput habet manifestam eminentiam respectu caeterorum exteriorum membrorum; sed cor habet quandam influentiam occultam. Et ideo cordi comparatur Spiritus sanctus, qui invisibiliter ecclesiam viviflcat et unit.]
The Spirit acts as the heart of the Church under the control and influence of the head. The fundamental theological reason of this is not difficult of demonstration. The external relations [{742}] of the several divine persons, or their relations to the works of God, such as the one just described of the Holy Ghost to the Church, are intimately connected with the intro-divine relations of the members of the most Holy Trinity to each other. It is in this sense that Holy Writ makes mention of a mission of the Son and of the Spirit. The expression implies that the person concerning whom it is used, occupies toward the remaining divine persons a position admitting of the giving of a mission by them or one of them, that is to say, of a particular work done by the one by the power and at the delegation of the other. For one person of the Trinity to act in a mission, therefore, it is requisite that the power and the will to act must emanate from the person conferring the mission. Thus Jesus says that his doctrine is not his own, but the doctrine of him by whom he was sent. But one person of the Trinity can be a recipient from another in so far only as the recipient issues from the giver for ever and ever, or only in respect of the eternal procession. It follows that a divine person can receive a mission only in emanating from another, that is to say, none but the personae productae, the Son and the Holy Ghost, can be sent; while, on the other hand, only the personae producentes, the Father and the Son, can confer a mission. Hence the fundamental reason why the sway of the Spirit in the Church is exercised under the influence of Christ, is to be found in the manner of the eternal procession, i.e., in the coming of the Spirit from the Father and the Son.
The essence of Christianity consists in spiritual intercourse and spiritual influence. As distinguished from the old covenant, the characteristic of the New Testament dispensation consists in this: that it is done by the agency of the Holy Ghost, sent down from heaven. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets; but the same Spirit manifests a new activity since the mission from heaven. When the apostle desires to make the true foundation of faith clear to the Galatians, he contents himself with asking them whence they had received the Spirit? By its descent the blessing of Abraham came on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ, in fulfilment of the prophecies. The pouring out of the Holy Ghost is the crowning work of Christ's mediation.
But what is the badge of this more profuse dispensation of the Spirit, thus recognized in Scripture as the peculiar mark of Christianity? Under the ancient covenant, answers St. Gregory of Naziance, the Holy Ghost was present only by its efficacy (
); now it abides among us
i.e., in its essence, or substantialiter, as our theologians phrase it. The efficacy of the Spirit in the prophets is described by St. Cyril of Alexandria as a mere irradiation [
]; they received only the effulgence of the light, as those who follow a torch-bearer [
]; while the Spirit in proper person enters into the souls of those who believe in Christ, and dwells therein [
]. It is only since the ascension of Christ that the inhabitation of the Spirit in the souls of men has reached its completion as
. This is the reason assigned by St. Cyril for the declaration of the Lord that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John the Baptist, than whom there hath not risen a greater among them that are born of women. He interprets the kingdom of heaven here referred to to be the impartment [
] of the Holy Ghost. From this interpretation he deduces the reason wherefore the humblest citizen of the kingdom of heaven is above the Baptist. For the latter is born of woman, the former of God. In consequence of this regeneration we are partakers of the divine nature, which St. Cyril interprets to mean neither more nor less than the dwelling of the Holy Ghost in our souls. [Footnote 153 ]
[Footnote 153: Comment, in Joann. Evangel., lib. 5. Oper Lutet, 1638, A. IV., p. 474 et seq. ]
As the head of the Church, the Son [{743}] of man, being lifted up from the earth, draws all men unto him. The Scripture concludes the narration of the miraculous events of the first Christian Passover and of their immediate results with the remark that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved. Therefore, immediately after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, began the daily increase of the Church through the fructifying influence of the grace of its head. They were multiplied in proportion as they walked in the comfort, the [Greek text], of the Holy Ghost. By one Spirit the Church of Christ is baptized into one body, which Spirit overflows it and saturates it with its essence. In him we were sealed as the possession of Christ, and we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. On being received into the Church the members are built into an edifice, the foundation of which has its cornerstone in Christ. By this incorporation they are united into a mansion of God in the Spirit. In so far as we are joined unto the Lord we are one spirit with him, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.
On account of its intimate relations with Christ, the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Even the Lord himself is directly called the Spirit. By him, the Spirit of the Lord, we are transformed into his image, the image the Lord. Thereby the Spirit evinces itself the principle of our liberty.
The main result of the action of the Spirit in the Church is, therefore, the union of the latter and of her individual members with Christ, the Christ who is within us. The union between Christ and the Church is effected by the Spirit, who acts as the connecting link, while Christ himself is the efficient cause of the union, in so far as he sends his Spirit to accomplish it. How, then, is the inhabitation of the Spirit, which is identical with that of Christ, in the Church brought about? The answer to this question involves results decisive of the present investigation.
If the Church were an unattained ideal, according to the Protestant acceptation, the promise of Christ to be with his followers even unto the end of the world would admit of no more profound interpretation than that, after his personal departure, the Lord would continue to occupy the minds of his disciples, thus giving their thoughts a right direction through all time. The presence of Christ in the visible Church would no longer be vouchsafed by a substantial pledge, making the repletion of the Church with Christ, which is the ideal of that institution, a historical reality even at the present day, in so far as the pledge is actually present. If, on the other hand, the latter view is the only scriptural one, then the true Church is not to be handed over exclusively to the future and to the realm of ideas. She is herself within the sphere of reality, she belongs to the living present, if the inmost principle of her being is even now actually at work, as a gift coeval with her establishment, not the mere object of search and speculation.
The idea of Catholicism presupposes one thing more. Such a principle dwelling in the Church as a reality must necessarily exercise its functions in a single individual image only. Both of these positions are the necessary results of the teachings of Holy Writ.
The Scriptures describe the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, as something conferred upon us, per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis. In the capacity of abiding in our souls as something bestowed upon us, as donum, the fathers distinguish a personal attribute of the Holy Ghost, having its foundation in the peculiar manner of its eternal emanation from the Father and Son. This emanation is wrought as a common infusion of being from Father and Son, as an intro-divine overflowing of love. [Footnote 154] Together [{744}] with the Holy Ghost that is given unto us, that is to say, by means of the love shed abroad in our hearts through him, the two other persons of the Trinity likewise come and take up their abode within our souls. The unity of the three divine persons is not only the antetype of the unity of the Church, but is at the same time its fundamental principle. In his high sacerdotal invocation the Lord prays that all those who believe through the word may be one, even as the Father is in him and he in the Father; and that we may be one in the Father and the Son, ut et ipsi eis nolis unum sint. The unity of the Father and the Son, who take up their abode within us simultaneously with the Holy Ghost, is the foundation of our own ecclesiastical unity. There is the fundamental, the ultimate principle of Catholicism. In it, through the Holy Ghost, we have a fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
[Footnote 154: St. Augustinus, de Trinit., lib. v., cap. 14: Exiit enim non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus; et ideo non dicitur filius. Cap. 15: Quia sic procedebat ut esset donabile, jam donum erat et antequam esset cui daretur. Cap. 11: Spiritus sanctus ineffabilis est quaedam Patris Filiique communio. . . . hoc ipse proprie dicitur, quod illi communiter: quia et Pater spiritus et Filius spiritus et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus. Ut ergo ex nomine, quod utrique convenit, utriusque communio significetur, vocatur donum amborum Spiritus sanctus.]
The other functions ascribed to the Spirit by Holy Writ are also of such a nature as to constrain us to assume that the essence of the true Church is a reality even at this day. By the Holy Ghost we receive even now an earnest of the inheritance in store for us. Its testimony assures us that we are the children of God. We have become such even now, and through him. We are born of the Spirit. The renewal accomplished by him is a bath of regeneration, the putting on of a new man. In the hearts of believers he is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In this sense our justification may be regarded as a glorification in the germ. Christ has anointed the Church with a chrism which abides and exerts itself in her as a permanent teacher.
It is an entire misapprehension of the creative power of Christianity to ascribe to the Spirit of Christ which governs the Church no more profitable efficacy than the barren, resultless chase of an ideal which constantly eludes realization. The very idea that a law of steady development is to be traced in Christianity itself, this very favorite view of all the advocates of an ideal Church, ought to have led to a more profound appreciation of the essence and history of the Church. If the Church is to undergo a development, the realization of her ideal should not be postponed to the end of time. What is its course in history? This point is decisive of our position respecting the ideal Church.
The doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic acceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church, historically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The passage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the true Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual assemblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name—a condition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means patent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection with what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of' the Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority are ratified in heaven, and are valid before God. For—such is the logical thread of the discourse of Jesus—what the Church, as historically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the Holy Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the Lord then proceeds to show by the concluding illustration. The agreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the prayer: for where two or three are assembled together in the name of Christ, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is the presence and the countenance of Christ assured to the entire Church, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her [{745}] power! [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or three are assembled in his name; but the result of his presence corresponds to the extent of the assembly. There Christ simply effects the fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a few individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the essence of the Church, nowhere in the whole passage is there a word to confirm such an interpretation.
[Footnote 155: This is the interpretation of this passage by the council of Chalcedon, in its missive to Pope Leo the Great. Compare Ballerini, op. S. Leonis t. i., p. 1087.]
The advocates of the ideal Church also cite Eph. v. 27. [Footnote 156] There the Church is called holy and without blemish, not having spot or wrinkle; a description supposed to be applicable exclusively to the Church that is to be, and by no means to the Church as it is. The remark is an idle one, and does not touch the real question. In our view it is the work of the present to lay the foundation for the future glory of the Church. This position is fully borne out by the words of Scripture. For in verse 26 the apostle points out the sanctification of the Church as the immediate object of the sacrifice of Christ, and at the same time indicates the means by which the Church is to be sanctified. This is done by the washing of water, which owes its purifying efficacy to the simultaneous utterance of the word. The presentation of the Church in unblemished holiness and glory, the object of the sacrificial death of Christ, is therefore gradually effected in the present world in proportion as the purification by the sacrament, under the continued influence of Christ, exerts its efficacy in he Church.
[Footnote 156: Hase, Handbuch der prot. Polemik (Manual of Protestant Polemics), p. 42. ]
If the apostle were here speaking simply of a remote future holiness of the Church, his whole course of reasoning would lose its point. The love of Christ is here presented to husbands and wives as a model for their own connubial relations. As the self-sacrifice of Christ for the Church has for its object the sanctification of the latter, so the mutual self-devotion of husbands and wives is to invest their lives with a higher grace. It is not the mere act of the self-sacrifice of Christ which is to be emulated in marriage. No admonition would be needed for such a purpose. Marriage is necessarily a type of this relation. The discourse of the apostle tends, on the contrary, to recommend the motive of the sacrifice of Christ, and its influence upon the sanctification of the Church, to husbands and wives for imitation. How feeble, how little calculated to fortify the admonition of the apostle, would be their reference to the relation of Christ to the Church, if the sanctification of the Church by Christ, thus held up to husbands and wives for emulation, were something totally unreal, a mere creature of reflection! If the purpose of the sacrifice of Christ, the sanctification of the Church, were still unattained, how could husbands and wives be expected to make their intercourse bear those moral fruits by which it is to approve itself a type of the relation of Christ to the Church?
The holiness of the Church, then, has its origin in the sacraments. But that which makes the Church holy appertains to her essential character. It follows that this character also is evolved by means of the sacraments. This proves, finally, that this evolution of the character of the true Church is only possible in a single, individual historical manifestation, that is to say, only within, or at least by the agency [Footnote 157] of, that visible body politic which is in possession of the sacraments.
[Footnote 157: The means of grace administered by the Church sometimes exert their influence beyond the pale, i.e., outside of, her historical image. This is seen in the validity of the baptism of heretics. ]
Protestantism is untrue to its own principle in representing the administration of the sacraments according to their institution as an index of the true Church. The whole force of this position lies in the presumption of a [{746}] distinct historical organization as the necessary exponent of the inward essence of the true Church. A contrary doctrine is in danger of bestowing the name of the true Church on a society which may possibly be composed exclusively of hypocrites. The inference is obvious. If the essence of the true Church is only to be found in the domain of the mind, or if it even remains a mere ideal, where is the guarantee that the mantle of the sacramental organization covers that silent, invisible congregation of spirits in which alone the Protestant looks for the essence of the true Church? The reformer's idea of the Church is here entangled in a contradiction in terms. On the principle of justification by faith alone, the character of the true Church must be wholly expressed in something incorporeal. And yet the true Church is to be recognized by the use of the sacraments according to their institution. Where is the connecting link between the external and the internal Church? The congruence of the Spirit and the body of the Church, if it occurs, is purely accidental. The visible Church, taken by itself, is a mere external thing, possibly void of all substantial essence. The doctrine of sola fides is incapable of a profound appreciation of the visible Church. This, taken in connection with the old Protestant theory that the phase of the Church manifested in preaching and in the sacraments is of the essence of the Church, makes it clear that the attempt of the reformers to spiritualize Christianity leads on the contrary to a materialization of the idea of the Church.
The modern Protestant theology was far from being deterred by its reverence for the reformers from laying bare this unsound portion of their system. They attempted to make up for it by the well known theory of the ideal Church, which begins by renouncing, in entire consistency with the Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, every outward manifestation of the essence of the Church.
The manifold forms in which Christianity becomes palpable as a power in history are here treated as something purely accidental, easily capable of severance from the essence of the true Church. How does this explanation comport with the doctrine of Scripture just expounded?
The Church of Christ, says Holy Writ, receives her unseen bridal ornaments by means of the palpable sacraments. In consequence of their efficacy she conceals the germs of her future glory under the guise of her temporal image. The most profound and super-sensual characteristic of the Church is, therefore, closely though mysteriously allied with the palpable exterior. It is not our present task to show how this alliance is formed. We simply inquire into the foundation of this necessary combination of the spirit and the form of the Church. This foundation we claim to discover in the sublimity of the principle heretofore recognized by us as the marrow, the heart of the Church.
If that which constitutes the heart of the Church is supernatural, and beyond the reach of the natural powers of the human mind, its impartment and preservation necessarily presuppose a peculiar influence of God upon man, different from the creative power. Under these circumstances, the precise method of the divine influence pervading the Church is only to be learned with certainty from revelation. And here we find the most explicit teachings on this subject. According to the testimony of Scripture, the Lord promotes the growth of the Church by means palpable to the senses. This suggests inquiry into the laws under which these means of grace find their application. Those laws are derived from the object of their institution. It consists in the adhibition of instrumentalities in the production of a divine effect. Consequently the means employed, or the sacraments, can manifest their efficacy only under certain conditions divinely ordained.
The correct understanding of the [{747}] mutual relations subsisting between the spirit and the body of the Church is further assisted by reference to another idea also derived from the Church. The regular growth of the Church is made intelligible to us as a self-edification in love. The means required for the attainment of this purpose have been given into the hands of the Church herself. For this end Peter received the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He is not only the thread of the historical development of the Church, but the interior organization also necessarily presupposes a union with Peter. The organs of this organization are the sacraments. But they manifest their saving efficacy on those only who have not knowingly interrupted the chain of union between themselves and Peter, and their use is totally void of effect if the party by whom they are administered is not actuated by the desire of doing that which is done in sacramental ceremonies by the Church, united with Peter (intentio faciendi quod facit ecclesia.)
The inmost principle, the heart of the Church, is inseparably connected with these visible actions, which are efficaciously administered only according to the intention and in the name of the visible Church, and in virtue of their efficacy the latter approves herself as holy. Thus the present inquiry leads to the same result already reached by other investigations. The spirit and the body of Catholicism are not to be separated. The connecting link which binds them together is Peter, the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, who still lives in his successors. But the fountain-head of this necessary relationship is in the vital principle of the Church, in her supernatural principle.
The idea of a supernatural principle, and that of the papacy, together constitute the principle of Catholicism. In the former we behold its fundamental essence, in the latter the cement of its historical unity, as well as the connecting link between the interior and the exterior catholicity of the Church.
From The Month.
SONNET.
UNSPIRITUAL CIVILIZATION.
We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing;
Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea,
Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,
While all the ways with melody were ringing:
In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging,
Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;
Science made wise the nations; laws made free;
Art, like an angel ever onward winging,
Brightened the world. But, O great Lord and Father!
Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race,
That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather
His soul subjected? with a blind embrace
Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse
'Twixt God and man can set God's universe.
AUBREY DE VERE.
From The Month
CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.
CHAPTER XI.
During the two years which followed the Duke of Norfolk's death I did only see my Lady Surrey once, which was when she came to Arundel House, on a visit to her lord's grandfather; and her letters for a while were both scanty and brief. She made no mention of religion, and but little of her husband; and chiefly touched on such themes as Lady Margaret's nuptials with Mr. Sackville (Lord Dorset's heir) and Mistress Milicent's with Sir Hammond l'Estrange. She had great contentment, she wrote, to see them both so well married according to their degree; but that for herself she did very much miss her good sister's company and her gentlewoman's affectionate services, who would now reside all the year at her husband's seat in Norfolk; but she looked when my lord and herself should be at Kenninghall, when he left the university, that they might yet, being neighbors, spend some happy days together, if it so pleased God. Once she wrote in exceeding great joy, so that she said she hardly knew how to contain herself, for that my lord was coming in a few days to spend the long vacation at Lord Sussex's house at Bermondsey. But when she wrote again, methought—albeit her letter was cheerful, and she did jest in it somewhat more than was her wont—that there was a silence touching her husband, and her own contentment in his society, which betokened a reserve such as I had not noticed in her before. About that time it was bruited in London that my Lord Surrey had received no small detriment by the bad example he had at Cambridge, and the liberty permitted him.
And now, forsaking for a while the theme of that noble pair, whose mishaps and felicities have ever saddened and rejoiced mine heart almost equally with mine own good or evil fortune, I here purpose to set down such occurrences as should be worthy of note in the more obscure sphere in which my lot was cast.
When I was about sixteen, my cousin Kate was married to Mr. Lacy; first in a secret manner, in the night, by Mr. Plasden, a priest, in her father's library, and the next day at the parish church at Holborn. Methinks a fairer bride never rode to church than our Kate. Her mother went with her, which was the first time she had been out of doors for a long space of time, for she feared to catch cold if the wind did blow from the north or the east; and if from the south she feared it should bring noxious vapors from the river; and the west, infection from the city, and so stayed at home for greater safety. But on Kate's wedding day we did all protest the wind blew not at all, so that from no quarter of the sky should mischief arise; and in a closed litter, which she reckoned to be safer than a coach, she consented to go to church.
"Marry, good wife," cried Mr. Congleton, when she had been magnifying all the dangers she mostly feared, "thou dost forget the greatest of all in these days, which doth hold us all by the neck, as it were. For hearing mass, as we did in this room last night, we do all run the risk of being hanged, which should be a greater peril methinks than a breath of foul air."
She, being in a merry mood, replied: "Twittle twattle, Mr. Congleton; the one may be avoided, the other not. 'Tis no reason I should get a cold to-day because I be like to be hanged to-morrow."
"I' faith," cried Polly, "my mother hath well parried your thrust, sir; and methinks the holy Bishop of Rochester was of the same mind with her."
"How so, Polly?" quoth her father; and she, "There happened a false rumor to rise suddenly among the people when he was in the prison, so I have heard Mr. Roper relate, that he should be brought to execution on a certain day; wherefore his cook, that was wont to dress his dinner and carry it daily unto him, hearing of his execution, dressed him no dinner at all that day. Wherefore, at the cook's next repair unto him, he demanded the cause why he brought him not his dinner. 'Sir,' said the cook, 'it was commonly talked all over the town that you should have died to-day, and therefore I thought it but vain to dress anything for you.' 'Well,' quoth the bishop merrily, 'for all that report, thou seest me yet alive; and therefore, whatsoever news thou shalt hear of me hereafter, prithee let me no more lack my dinner, but make it ready; and if thou see me dead when thou comest, then eat it thyself. But I promise thee, if I be alive, by God's grace, to eat never a bit the less.'"
"And on the day he was verily executed," said Mistress Ward, "when the lieutenant came to fetch him, he said to his man, 'Reach me my furred tippet, to put about my neck.' 'O my lord!' said the lieutenant, 'what need you be so careful of your health for this little time, being not much above in hour?' 'I think no otherwise,' said this blessed father; 'but yet, in he mean time, I will keep myself as well as I can; for I tell you truth, though I have, I thank our Lord, a very good desire and a willing mind to die at this present, and so I trust of his infinite mercy and goodness he will continue it, yet I will not willingly hinder my health one minute of an hour, but still prolong the same as long as I can by such reasonable ways as Almighty God hath provided for me.'" Upon which my good aunt fastened her veil about her head, and said the holy bishop was the most wise saint and reasonablest martyr she had yet heard of.
Kate was dressed in a kirtle of white silk, her head attired with an habiliment of gold, and her hair, brighter itself than gold, woven about her face in cunningly wrought tresses. She was led to church between two gentlemen—Mr. Tresham and Mr. Hogdson—friends of the bridegroom, who had bride-laces and rosemary tied about their silken sleeves. There was a fair cup of silver gilt carried before her, wherein was a goodly branch of rosemary, gilded very fair, and hung about with silken ribbons of all colors. Musicians came next; then a group of maidens bearing garlands finely gilded; and thus we passed on to the church. The common people at the door cheered the bride, whose fair face was a passport to their favor; but as Muriel crept along, leaning on my arm, I caught sound of murmured blessings.
"Sweet saint," quoth an aged man, leaning on his staff, near the porch, "I ween thine espousals be not of earth." A woman, with a child in her arms, whispered to her as she past, "He thou knowest of is dead, and died praying for thee." A man, whose eyes had watched her painfully ascending the steps, called her an angel; whereupon a beggar with a crutch cried out, "Marry, a lame angel!" A sweet smile was on her face as she turned toward him; and drawing a piece of silver from her pocket, she bestowed it on him, with some such words as these—that she prayed they might both be so happy, albeit lame, as to hobble to heaven, and get there in good time, if it should please God. Then he fell to blessing her so loud, that she hurried me into the church, not content to be thanked in so public a manner.
After the ceremony, we returned in the same order to Ely Place. The banquet which followed, and the sports succeeding it, were conducted in a private and somewhat quiet fashion, and not many guests invited, by reason of the times, and Mr. Congleton misliking to draw notice to his house, which had hitherto been but little molested, partly for that Sir Francis Walsingham had a friendship for him, and also for his sister, Lady Egerton of Ridley, which procured for them greater favor, in the way of toleration, than is extended to others; and likewise the Portuguese ambassador was his very good friend, and his chapel open to us at all times; so that priests did not need to come to his house for the performance of any religious actions, except that one of the marriage, which had taken place the night before in his library. Howsoever, he was very well known to be a recusant, for that neither himself, nor any belonging to him, attended Protestant worship; and Sir Francis sometimes told him that the clemency with which he was treated was shown toward him with the hope that, by mild courses, he might be soon brought to some better conformity.
Mr. Lacy's house was in Gray's Inn Lane, a few doors from Mr. Swithin Wells's; and through this proximity an intimate acquaintanceship did arise between that worthy gentleman and his wife and Kate's friends. He was very good-natured, pleasant in conversation, courteous, and generous; and Mrs. Wells a most virtuous gentlewoman. Although he (Mr. Swithin) much delighted in hawking, hunting, and other suchlike diversions, yet he so soberly governed his affections therein, as to be content to deprive himself of a good part of those pleasures, and retire to a more profitable employment of training up young gentlemen in virtue and learning; and with such success that his house has been, as it were, a fruitful seminary to many worthy members of the Catholic Church. Among the young gentlemen who resided with him at that time was Mr. Hubert Rookwood, the youngest of the two sons of Mr. Rookwood, of Euston, whom I had seen at the inn at Bedford, when I was journeying to London. We did speedily enter into a somewhat close acquaintanceship, founded on a similarity of tastes and agreeable interchange of civilities, touching the lending of books and likewise pieces of music, which I did make fair copies of for him, and which we sometimes practiced in the evening; for he had a pleasant voice and an aptness to catch the trick of a song, albeit unlearned in the art, wherein he styled me proficient; and I, nothing loth to impart my knowledge, became his instructor, and did teach him both to sing and play the lute. He was not much taller than when I had seen him before; but his figure was changed, and his visage had grown pale, and his hair thick and flowing, especially toward the back of the head, discovering in front a high and thoughtful forehead. There was a great deal of good young company at that time in Mr. Wells's house; for some Catholics tabled there beside those that were his pupils, and others resorted to it by reason of the pleasant entertainment they found in the society of ingenuous persons, well qualified, and of their own religion. I had most days opportunities of conversing with Hubert, though we were never alone; and, by reason of the friendship which had existed between his father and mine, I allowed him a kindness I did not commonly afford to others.
Mr. Lacy had had his training in that house, and, albeit his natural parts did not title him to the praise of an eminent scholar, he had thence derived a great esteem for learning, a taste for books, of the which he did possess a great store (many hundred volumes), and a discreet manner of talking, though something tinctured with affectation, inasmuch as he should seem to be rather enamored of the words he uttered, than careful of the [{751}] substance. Hubert was wont to say that his speech was like to the drawing of a leaden sword out of a gilded sheath. He was a very virtuous young man; and his wife had never but one complaint to set forth, which was that his books took up so much of his time that she was almost as jealous of them as if they had been her rivals. She would have it he did kill himself with study; and, in a particular manner, with the writing of the life of one Thomas à Kempis, which was a work he had had a long time on hand. One day she comes into his library, and salutes him thus: "Mr. Lacy, I would I were a book; and then methinks you would a little more respect me." Polly, who was by, cried out, "Madam, you must then be an almanac, that he might change every year;" whereat she was not a little displeased. And another time, when her husband was sick, she said, if Mr. Lacy died, she would burn Thomas a Kempis for the killing of her husband. I, hearing this, answered that to do so were a great pity; to whom she replied, "Why, who was Thomas a Kempis?" to which I answered, "One of the saintliest men of the age wherein he lived." Wherewith she was so satisfied, that she said, then she would not do it for all the world.
Methinks I read more in that one year than in all the rest of my life beside. Mine aunt was more sick than usual, and Mistress Ward so taken up with the nursing of her, that she did not often leave her room. Polly was married in the winter to Sir Ralph Ingoldby, and went to reside for some months in the country. Muriel prevailed on her father to visit the prison with her, in Mistress Ward's stead, so that sometimes they were abroad the whole of the day; by reason of which, I was oftener in Gray's Inn Lane than at home, sometimes at Kate's house, and sometimes at Mistress Wells's mansion, where I became infected with a zeal for learning, which Hubert's example and conversation did greatly invite me to. He had the most winning tongue, and the aptest spirit in the world to divine the natural inclinations of those he consorted with. The books he advised me to read were mostly such as Mistress Ward, to whom I did faithfully recite their titles, accounted to be not otherwise than good and profitable, having learned so much from good men she consulted thereon, for she was herself no scholar; but they bred in me a great thirst for knowledge, a craving to converse with those who had more learning than myself, and withal so keen a relish for Hubert's society, that I had no contentment so welcome as to listen to his discourse, which was seasoned with a rare kind of eloquence and a discursive fancy, to which, also, the perfection of his carriage, his pronunciation of speech, and the deportment of his body lent no mean lustre. Naught arrogant or affected disfigured his conversation, in which did lie so efficacious a power of persuasion, and at times, when the occasion called for it, so great a vehemency of passion, as enforced admiration of his great parts, if not approval of his arguments. I made him at that time judge of the new thoughts which books, like so many keys opening secret chambers in the mind, did unlock in mine; and I mind me how eagerly I looked for his answers—how I hung on his lips when he was speaking, not from any singular affection toward his person, but by reason of the extraordinary fascination of his speech, and the interest of the themes we discoursed upon; one time touching on the histories of great men of past ages, at another on the changes wrought in our own by the new art of printing books, which had produced such great changes in the world, and yet greater to be expected. And as he was well skilled in the Italian as well as the French language, I came by his means to be acquainted with many great writers of those nations. He translated for me sundry passages from the divine play of Signor Dante Alighieri, in which [{752}] hell and purgatory and heaven are depicted, as it were by an eye-witness, with so much pregnancy of meaning and force of genius, that it should almost appear as if some special revelation had been vouchsafed to the poet beyond his natural thoughts, to disclose to him the secrets of other spheres. He also made me read a portion of that most fine and sweet poem on the delivery of the holy city Jerusalem, composed by Signor Torquato Tasso, a gentleman who resided at that time at the court of the Duke of Ferrara, and which one Mr. Fairfax has since done into English verse. The first four cantos thereof were given to Mr. Wells by a young gentleman, who had for a while studied at the University of Padua. This fair poem, and mostly the second book thereof, hath remained imprinted in my memory with a singular fixity, by reason that it proved the occasion of my discerning for the first time a special inclination on Hubert's side toward myself, who thought nothing of love, but was only glad to have acquired a friend endowed with so much wit and superior knowledge, and willing to impart it. This book, I say, did contain a narration which bred in me so great a resentment of the author's merits, and so quick a sympathy with the feigned subjects of his muse, that never before or since methinks has a fiction so moved me as the story of Olindo and Sophronisba.
Methinks this was partly ascribable to a certain likeness between the scenes described by the poet and some which take place at this time in our country. In the maiden of high and noble thoughts, fair, but heedless of her beauty, who stood in the presence of the soldan, once a Christian, then a renegade, taking on herself the sole guilt,—O virtuous guilt! O worthy crime!—of which all the Christians were accused, to wit, of rescuing sacred Mary's image from the hands of the infidels who did curse and blaspheme it, and, when all were to die for the act of one unknown, offered herself a ransom for all, and with a shamefaced courage, such as became a maid, and a bold modesty befitting a saint—a bosom moved indeed, but not dismayed, a fair but not pallid cheek—was content to perish for that the rest should live;—in her, I say, I saw a likeness in spirit to those who suffer nowadays for a like faith with hers, not at the hands of infidels, but of such whose parents did for the most part hold that same belief which they do now make out to be treason.
Hubert, observing me to be thus moved, smiled, and asked if, in the like case, I should have willed to die as Sophronisba.
"Yes," I answered, "if God did give me grace;" and then, as I uttered the words, I thought it should not be lawful to tell a lie, not for to save all the lives in the world; which doubt I imparted to him, who laughed and said he was of the poet's mind, who doth exclaim, touching this lie, "O noble deceit! worthier than truth itself!" and that he thought a soul should not suffer long in purgatory for such a sin. "Maybe not," I answered; "yet, I ween, there should be more faith in a sole commitment to God of the events than in doing the least evil so that good should come of it."
He said, "I marvel, Mistress Constance, what should be your thoughts thereon if the life of a priest was in your hands, and you able to save him by a lie."
"Verily," I answered, "I know not, Master Rookwood; but I have so much trust in Almighty God that he would, in such a case, put words into my mouth which should be true, and yet mislead evil-purposed men, or that he shall keep me from such fearful straits, or forgive me if, in the stress of a great peril, I unwittingly should err."
"And I pray you," Hubert then said, as if not greatly caring to pursue the theme, "what be your thought concerning the unhappy youth Olindo, who did so dote on this maiden that, fearful of offending there where above [{753}] all he desired to please, had, greatly as he loved, little hoped, nothing asked, and not so much as revealed his passion until a common fate bound both to an equal death?"
"I thought not at all on him," I answered; "but only on Sophronisba."
At which he sighed and read further: "That all wept for her who, albeit doomed to a cruel death, wept not for herself, but in this wise secretly reproved the fond youth's weeping: 'Friend,' quoth she, 'other thoughts, other tears, other sighs, do beseem this hour. Think of thy sins, and God's great recompense for the good. Suffer for his sole sake, and torment shall be sweet. See how fair the heavens do show, the sun how bright, as it were to cheer and lure us onward!'"
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "shame on him who did need to be so exhorted, who should have been the most valiant, being a man!" To the which he quickly replied:
"He willed to die of his own free will rather than to live without her whom he jewelled more than life: but in the matter of grieving love doth make cowards of those who should else have been brave."
"Me thinks, rather," I answered, "that in noble hearts love's effects should be noble."
"Bethink you, Mistress Constance," he then asked, "that Sophronisba did act commendably, insomuch that when an unlooked-for deliverance came, she refused not to be united in life to him that had willed to be united to her in death."
"You may think me ungrateful, sir," answered; "but other merits methinks than fondness for herself should have won so great a heart."
"You be hard to content, Mistress Constance," he answered somewhat resentfully. "To satisfy you, I perceive one should have a hard as well as a great heart."
"Nay," I cried, "I praise not hardness, but love not softness either. You that be so learned, I pray you find the word which doth express what pleaseth me in a man."
"I know not the word," he answered; "I would I knew the substance of your liking, that I might furnish myself with it."
Whereupon our discourse ended that day; but it ministered food to my thoughts, and I fear me also to a vain content that one so gifted with learning and great promise of future greatness should evince something of regard beyond a mutual friendship for one as ignorant and young as I then was.
Some months after Kate's marriage, matters became very troublesome, by reason of the killing of a great store, as was reported, of French Huguenots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's day, and afterward in many cities of France, which did consternate the English Catholics for more reasons than one, and awoke so much rage in the breasts of Protestants, that the French ambassador told Lady Tregony, a friend, of Mistress Wells, that he did scarce venture to show his face; and none, save only the queen herself, who is always his very good friend, would speak to him. I was one evening at the house of Lady Ingoldby, Polly's mother-in-law, some time after this dismal news had been bruited, and the company there assembled did for the most part discourse on these events, not only as deploring what had taken place, and condemning the authors thereof,—which, indeed, was what all good persons must needs have done,—but took occasion thence to use such vile terms and opprobrious language touching Catholic religion, and the cruelty and wickedness of such as did profess it, without so much as a thought of the miseries inflicted on them in England, that—albeit I had been schooled in the hard lesson of silence—so strong a passion overcame me then, that I had well nigh, as the Psalmist saith, spoken with my tongue, yea, young as I was, uttered words rising hot from my heart, in the midst of that adverse company, which I did know, them to be, if one had not at [{754}] that moment lifted up his voice, whose presence I had already noted, though not acquainted with his name; a man of reverent and exceedingly benevolent aspect; aged, but with an eye so bright, and silvery hair crowning a noble forehead, that so much excellence and dignity is seldom to be observed in any one as was apparent in this gentleman.
"Good friends," he said, and at the sound of his voice the speakers hushed their eager discoursing, "God defend I should in any way differ with you touching the massacres in France; for verily it has been a lamentable and horrible thing that so many persons should be killed, and religion to be the pretence for it; but to hear some speak of it, one should think none did suffer in this country for their faith, and bloody laws did not exist, whereby Papists are put to death in a legal, cold-blooded fashion, more terrible, if possible, than the sudden bursts of wild passions and civil strife, which revenge for late cruelties committed by the Huguenots, wherein many thousand Catholics had perished, the destruction of churches, havoc of fierce soldiery, and apprehension of the like attempts in Paris, had stirred up to fury; so that when the word went forth to fall on the leaders of the party, the savage work once begun, even as a fire in a city built of wood, raged as a madness for one while, and men in a panic struck at foes, whose gripe they did think to feel about their throats."
Here the speaker paused an instant. This so bold opening of his speech did seem to take all present by surprise, and almost robbed me of my breath; for it is well known that nowadays a word, yea a piece of a word, or a nod of the head, whereby any suspicion may arise of a favorable disposition toward Catholics, is often-times a sufficient cause for a man to be accused and cast into prison; and I waited his next words (which every one, peradventure from curiosity, did likewise seem inclined to hear) with downcast eyes, which dared not to glance at any one's face, and cheeks which burned like hot coals.
"It is well known," quoth he, "that the sufferings which be endured by recusants at this time in our country are such, that many should prefer to die at once than to be subjected to so constant a fear and terror as doth beset them. I speak not now of the truth or the falsity of their religion, which, if it be ever so damnable and wicked, is no new invention of their own, but what all Christian people did agree in, one hundred years ago; so that the aged do but abide by what they were taught by undoubted authority in their youth, and the young have received from their parents as true. But I do solely aver that Papists are subjected to a thousand vexations, both of bonds, imprisonments, and torments worse than death, yea and oftentimes to death itself; and that so dreadful, that to be slain by the sword, or drowned, yea even burned at the stake, is not so terrible; for they do hang a man and then cut him down yet alive, and butcher him in such ways—plucking out his heart and tearing his limbs asunder—that nothing more horrible can be thought of."
"They be traitors who are so used," cried one gentleman, somewhat recovering from the surprise which these bold words had caused.
"If to be of a different religion from the sovereign of the country be a proof of treason," continued the venerable speaker, "then were the Huguenots, which have perished in France, a whole mass and nest of traitors."
A gentleman seated behind me, who had a trick of sleeping in his chair, woke up and cried out, "Not half a one, sirs; not so much as half a one is allowed," meaning the mass, which he did suppose to have been spoken of.
"And if so, deserved all to die,' continued the speaker.
"Ay, and so they do, sir," quoth the sleeper. "I pray you let them all be hanged." Upon which every one [{755}] laughed, and the aged gentleman also; and then he said,
"Good my friends, I ween 'tis a rash thing to speak in favor of recusants nowadays, and what few could dare to do but such as cannot be suspected of disloyalty to the queen and the country, and who, having drunk of the cup of affliction in their youth, even to the dregs, and held life for a long time as a burden which hath need to be borne day by day, until the wished for hour of release doth come—and the sooner, the more welcome—have no enemies to fear, and no object to attain. And if so be that you will bear with me for a few moments, yea, if ye procure me to be hanged to-morrow" (this he said with a pleasant smile; and, "Marry, fear not, Mr. Roper," and "I' faith, speak on, sir," was bruited round him by his astonished auditors), "I will recite to you some small part of the miseries which have been endured of late years by such as cannot be charged with the least thought of treason, or so much as the least offence against the laws, except in what touches the secret practice of their religion. Women have, to my certain knowledge, been hung up by the hands in prisons (which do overflow with recusants, so that at this time there remaineth no room for common malefactors), and cruelly scourged, for that they would not confess by which priest they had been reconciled or absolved, or where they had heard mass. Priests are often tortured to force them to declare what they hear in confession, who harbor priests and Papists, where such and such recusants are to be found, and the like questions; and in so strenuous a manner, that needles have been thrust under their nails, and one man, not long since, died of his racking. O sirs and gentle ladies, I have seen with mine own eyes a youth, the son of one of my friends—young Mark Typper, born of honest and rich parents, skilful in human learning, having left his study for a time, and going home to see his friends—whipped through the streets of London, and burnt in the ear, because, forsooth, a forward judge, to whom he had been accused as a Papist, and finding no proof thereof, condemned him as a vagabond. And what think you, good people, of the death of Sir Robert Tyrwit's son, who was accused for hearing of a mass at the marriage of his sister, and albeit at the time of his arrest in a grievous fever, was pulled out of the house and thrust into prison, even as he then was, feeble, faint, and grievously sick? His afflicted parents entreat, make intercession, and use all the means they can to move the justices to have consideration of the sick; not to heap sorrow upon sorrow, nor affliction on the afflicted; not to take away the life of so comely a young gentleman, whom the physicians come and affirm will certainly die if he should be removed. All this is nothing regarded. They lay hold on the sick man, pull him away, shut him up in prison, and within two days next after he dies. They bury him, and make no scruple or regard at all. O sirs, bethink you what these parents do feel when they hear Englishmen speak of the murders of Protestants in France as an unheard of crime. If, in these days, one in a family of recusants doth covet the inheritance of an elder brother—yea, of a father—he hath but to conform to the now established religion (I leave you to think with how much of piety and conscience), and denounce his parent as a Papist, and straightway he doth procure him to be despoiled, and his lands given up to him. Thus the seeds of strife and bitter enmity have been sown broadcast through the land, the bands of love in families destroyed, the foundations of honor and beneficence blown up, the veins and sinews of the common society of men cut asunder, and a fiendly force of violence and a deadly poison of suspicion used against such as are accused of no other crime than their religion, which they yet adhere to; albeit their fortunes be ruined by fines and their lives in [{756}] constant jeopardy from strenuous laws made yet more urgent by private malice. My friends, I would that not one hair of the head of so much as one Huguenot had been touched in France; that not one Protestant had perished in the flames in the late queen's reign, or in that of her present majesty; and also that the persecution now framed in this country against Papists, and so handled as to blind men's eyes and work in them a strange hypocrisy, yea and in some an innocent belief that freedom of men's souls be the offspring of Protestant religion, should pass away from this land. I care not how soon (as mine honored father-in-law, and in God too, I verily might add, was wont to say),—I care not how soon I be sewn up in a bag and cast into the Thames, if so be I might first see religious differences at an end, and men of one mind touching God's truth."
Here this noble and courageous speaker ceased, and various murmurs rose among the company. One lady remarked to her neighbor: "A marvellous preacher that of seditious doctrines, methinks."
And one gentleman said that if such talk were suffered to pass unpunished in her majesty's subjects, he should look to see massing and Popery to rear again their heads in the land.
And many loudly affirmed none could be Papists, or wish them well, and be friends to the queen's government, and so it did stand to reason that Papists were traitors.
And another said that, for his part, he should desire to see them less mercifully dealt with; and that the great clemency shown to such as did refuse to come to church, by only laying fines on them, and not dealing so roundly as should compel them to obedience, did but maintain them in their obstinacy; and he himself would as lief shoot down a seminary priest as a wolf, or any other evil beast.
I noticed this last speaker to be one of those who had spoken with most abhorrence of the massacres in France.
One lady called out in a loud voice that Papists, and such as take their part, among which she did lament to see Mr. Roper, should be ashamed so much as to speak of persecution; and began to relate the cruelties practised upon Protestants twenty years back, and the burning at Oxford of those excellent godly men, the bishops of London and Worcester.
Mr. Roper listened to her with an attentive countenance, and then said:
"I' faith, madam, I cannot choose but think Dr. Latimer, if it be he you speak of, did somewhat approve of such a method of dealing with persons obstinate touching religion, when others than himself and those of his own way of thinking were the subjects of it, if we judge by a letter he wrote in 1538 to his singular good friend the Lord Privy Seal Cromwell, at the time he was appointed to preach at the burning at Smithfield of Friar Forest of Greenwich, a learned divine I often did converse with in my young years."
"What wrote the good bishop?" two or three persons asked; and the lady who had spoken before said she should warrant it to be something pious, for a more virtuous Protestant never did live than this holy martyr.
Whereupon Mr. Roper: "This holy bishop did open his discourse right merrily, for in a pleasant manner he thus begins his letter: 'And, sir, if it be your pleasure, as it is, that I shall play the fool in my customable manner when Forest shall suffer, I would wish my stage stood near unto Forest; for I would endeavor myself so to content the people that therewith I might also convert Forest, God so helping.' And further on he doth greatly lament that the White Friars of Doncaster had access to the prisoner, and through the fault of the sheriff or jailers, or both, he should be allowed to hear mass and receive the sacrament, by which he is rather comforted in his way than discouraged. And such is his foolishness, this good [{757}] doth humbly say, that if Forest would abjure his religion, he should yet (for all his past obstinacy) wish him pardoned. O sirs, think you that when at Oxford this aged man, seventeen years after, did see the flames gather round himself, that he did not call to mind what time he preached, playing the fool, as he saith, before a man in like agonies, and never urged so much as one word against his sentence?"
"Marry, if he did not," said one, whom I take to have been Sir Christopher Wray, who had been a silent listener until then, "if his conscience pricked him not thereon, it must needs have been by the same rule as the lawyer used to the countryman, who did put to him this question: 'Sir, if my cow should stray into your field and feed there one whole day, what should be the law touching compensation therefor?' 'Marry, friend, assuredly to pay the damage to the full, which thou art bounden at once to do.' 'Ay,' quoth the countryman; 'but 'tis your cow hath strayed into my field.' Upon which, 'Go to, go to,' cries the lawyer; 'for I warrant thee that doth altogether alter the law.'"
Some smiled, and others murmured at this story; and meanwhile one of the company, who from his dress I perceived to be a minister, and moreover to hold some dignity in the Protestant Church, rose from his place, and crossing the room, came up to Mr. Roper (for that bold speaker was no other than Sir Thomas More's son-in—law, whose great charity and goodness I had often heard of), and, shaking hands with him, said: "I be of the same mind with you, friend Roper, in every word you have uttered tonight. And I pray to God my soul may be with yours after this life, and our end in heaven, albeit I should not sail there in the same boat with thou."
"Good Mr. Dean," quoth Mr. Roper, "I do say amen to your prayer." and then he added somewhat in a low voice, and methinks it was that there is but one ship chartered for safety in such a voyage.
At the which the other shook his head and waved his hand, and then calling to him a youth not more than twelve or thirteen years old, his son, he did present him to Mr. Roper. I had observed this young gentleman to listen, with an eagerness betokening more keenness for information than is usually to be found in youths of his years, to the discourses held that evening. His father told Mr. Roper that this his son's parts and quick apprehension in learning did lead him to hope he should be one day, if it pleased God, an ornament to the church. Mr. Roper smiled as he saluted the youth, and said a few words to him, which he answered very readily. I never saw again that father or that son. The one was Dr. Mathews, whom the queen made Bishop of Durham; and the other, Toby Mathews, his son, who was reconciled some years ago, and, as I have heard from some, is now a Jesuit.
The venerable aspect of the good Mr. Roper so engaged my thoughts, that I asked Lady Tregony, by whose side I was sitting, if she was acquainted with him, and if his virtue was as great as his appearance was noble. She smiled, and answered that his appearance, albeit honorable and comely, was not one half so honorable as his life had been, or so comely as his mind. That he had been the husband of Sir Thomas More's never-to-be-forgotten daughter, Margaret, whose memory he so reverently did cherish that he had never so much as thought of a second marriage; and of late years, since he had resigned the office of sub-notary in the Queen's Bench to his son, he did give his whole substance and his time to the service of the poor, and especially to prisoners, by reason of which he was called the staff of the sorrowful, and sure refuge of the afflicted. Now, then, I looked on the face of this good aged man with a deeper reverence than heretofore. Now I longed to be favored with so [{758}] much of his notice as one passing word. Now I watched for an opportunity to compass my desire, and I thank God not without effect; for I do count it as a chief blessing to have been honored, during the remaining years of this virtuous gentleman's life, with so much of his condescending goodness, that if the word friendship may be used in regard to such affectionate feelings as can exist between one verging on four-score years of age and of such exalted merit, and a foolish creature yet in her teens, whom he honored with his notice, it should be so in this instance; wherein on the one side a singular reverence and humble great affection did arise almost on first acquaintance, and on the other so much benignity and goodness shown in the pains taken to cultivate such good dispositions as had been implanted in this young person's heart by careful parents, and to guard her mind against the evils of the times, that nothing could be greater.
Mr. Roper chancing to come near us, Lady Tregony said somewhat, which caused him to address me in this wise:
"And are there, then, maidens in these days not averse to the sight of gray hairs, and who mislike not to converse with aged men?"
This was said with so kindly a smile that timidity vanished, and confidence took its place.
"Oh, sir," I cried, "when I was not so much as five years old, my good father showed me a picture of Sir Thomas More, and told me he was a man of such angelic wit as England never had the like before, nor is ever like to have again, and of a most famous and holy memory; and methinks, sir, that you, being his son-in-law, who knew his doings and his mind so well, and lived so long in his house, must needs in many things resemble him."
"As to his doings and his mind," Mr. Roper replied, "no man living knoweth them so well, and if my mean wit, memory, and knowledge could serve me now, could declare so much thereof. But touching resemblance, alas! there was but one in all the world that represented the likeness of his virtues and perfections; one whom he loved in a particular manner, and who was worthiest of that love more than any creature God has made."
Here the good man's voice faltered a little, and he made a stop in his discourse; but in a little while said that he had thought it behoved him to set down in writing such matters concerning Sir Thomas's life as he could then call to remembrance, and that he would lend me the manuscript to read, which I did esteem an exceeding great favor, and one I could not sufficiently thank him for. Then he spoke somewhat of the times, which were waxing every day more troublesome, and told me he often called to mind a conversation he once had with Sir Thomas, walking along the side of the Thames at Chelsea, which he related in these words:
"'Now would to God, my son Roper,' quoth Sir Thomas, 'I were put in a sack, and presently cast into the Thames, upon condition that three things were well established throughout Christendom.' 'And what mighty things are those, sir?' I asked. Whereupon he: 'Wouldst thou know, son Roper, what they be?' 'Yea, marry, sir, with a good will, if it please you,' quoth I. 'I' faith, son, they be these,' he said: 'The first is that, whereas the most part of Christian princes are at mortal wars, they were all at peace; the second that, whereas the church of Christ is at present sorely afflicted with so many heresies, it were settled in perfect uniformity of religion; the third that, where the matter of the king's marriage is now come in question, it were, to the glory of God and the quietness of all parties, brought to a good conclusion.' 'Ay, sir,' quoth I, 'those were indeed three things greatly to be desired; but'—I continued with a certain joy—'where shall one see a happier state than in this realm, that has so Catholic a prince that no heretic [{759}] durst show his face; so virtuous and learned a clergy; so grave and sound a nobility; and so loving, obedient subjects, all in one faith agreeing together?' 'Truth it is indeed, son Roper,' quoth he; and in all degrees and estates of the same went far beyond me in commendation thereof. 'And yet, son Roper, I pray God,' said he, 'that some of us, as high as we seem to sit on the mountains, treading heretics under our feet like ants, live not the day that we would gladly be at league and composition with them, to let them have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.' After I had told him many considerations why he had no cause to say so: 'Well,' said he, 'I pray God, son Roper, some of us will live not to see that day.' To whom I replied: 'By my troth, sir, it is very desperately spoken.' These vile terms, I cry God mercy, did I give him, who, perceiving me to be in a passion, said merrily unto me, 'It shall not be so; it shall not be so.' In sixteen years and more, being in the house conversing with him, I could not perceive him to be so much as once out of temper."
This was the first of many conversations I held, during the years I lived in Holborn, with this worthy gentleman, who was not more pleased to relate, than I to hear, sundry anecdotes concerning Sir Thomas More, his house, and his family.
Before he left me that day, I did make bold to ask him if he feared not ill consequences from the courageous words he had used in a mixed, yea rather, with few exceptions, wholly adverse, company.
"Not much," he answered. "Mine age; the knowledge that there are those who would not willingly see me roughly handled, and have power to prevent it; and withal no great concern, if it should be so, to have my liberty constrained, yea, my life shortened by a few years, or rather days,—doth move me to a greater freedom of speech than may generally be used, and a notable indifference to the results of such freedom."
Having whispered the like fears I had expressed to him to Lady Tregony, she did assure me his confidence was well based, and that he had connexions which would by no means suffer him to be thrown into prison, which should be the fate of any one else in that room who had spoken but one half, yea one tenth part, as boldly as he had ventured on.