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The credulous fancies of an unlettered people are very gross, and usually hold the understanding in chains, from which it is difficult to emerge. The conversion of the nation destroyed this brutish slavery, and greatly strengthened and enlarged its general intellect. Monkish superstitions introduced other follies; but the literature which accompanied them dispelled them as it spread, and reason in every age gained new conquests, which she never lost. Indeed, in nothing was the new religion more strikingly beneficial, than by introducing a moral and intellectual education. This could have neither been known nor understood till Christianity displayed the value, imparted the means, and produced the habit of adopting it.

The political effects of Christianity in England were as good as they could be in that age of general darkness; but it must be confessed that they were not so beneficial as its individual influence; and yet we are indebted to it for chivalry, and for the high-minded tone of spirit and character which that produced. We owe to its professors all the improvement that we have derived from the civil law, which they discovered, revived, explained, and patronised. Nor has Christianity been unserviceable to our constitutional liberty: every battle which the churchman fought against the king or noble, was for the advantage of general freedom ; and by rearing an ecclesiastical power, which at one time opposed the king, and at another the aristocracy of the chiefs, it certainly favoured the rise of the political importance and influence of the middle and lower classes of the people. The independence, and even the ambition, of the church, could not be asserted without checking the royal

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power; and such opposition repeatedly compelled CHAP.

; the crown to court popularity as its surest defence.

The defects which often accompanied these benefits, were the faults of a very partially enlightened age; of tempers sometimes sincerely zealous, and sometimes ambitiously selfish, but always violent and irascible; and of the system into which Christianity was distorted. They did not spring from the religion inculcated by the Scriptures. Monkish and papal Christianity became, in every age after the seventh, something different from Apostolical Christianity. Religion is enjoined by its Divine Author to be made the governing principle of life; but its true spirit and utility declines or disappears, when superstition, imposture, politics, folly, or violence is combined with it. Formed to suit, to influence, and to adorn every class of society, true piety mixes gracefully with every innocent pleasure which virtue sanctions; with every accomplishment which refined intellect values; and with all that business which life requires, and which enlightened prudence would cultivate. It forbids only, in every pursuit, that monopolising absorption of mind which cannot be indulged without debasing ourselves or injuring others. It aims to form us to a species of celestial intellect, and celestial sensibility. Its true offspring is not the gloomy ascetic in the solitude of a desert; nor the self-tormenting monk mortifying himself into imbecility, and mistaking delirium for inspiration. Its object is to lead us to a gradual approximation towards the Divine perfections; and its tuition for this purpose is that of parental tenderness and affectionate wisdom, imposing no restraints but such as accele

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rate our improvements; and distressing us with no vicissitudes but those which tend to make our happiness compatible with our virtue, and to render human life a series of continual progression. Inattentive to these great objects of the Christian Legislator, the papal hierarchy, though often producing men of the holiest lives and of the most spiritual devotion, yet has, from accident, fanaticism, and policy, pursued too often a spurious plan of forcing mankind to become technical automatons of rites and dreams; words and superstitions ; and has supported a system which, if not originally framed, was at least applied to enforce a long-continued exertion of transferring the government of the world into the hands of ecclesiastics, and too often superseding the Christianity of the Gospels by that of tradition, policy, half delirious bigotry, feelings often fantastic, and unenlightened enthusiasm. These errors could not always suppress the noble aspirations of devout sensibility which were sometimes combined with them. But the mischievous additions usually formed the prevailing character of the multitude. ?

2 The following table has been published as a conjectural, but probable representation of the progressive increase of the number of Christians in the world : 1st century, 500,000 10th century

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increasing, from the missionary spirit and exertions which are now distinguishing the chief Protestant nations in the world. The Jews, from the numbers which I have observed in every part of the globe, are between 6 and 8,000,000; the Mahometans not above 80,000,000; and the Pagans in the four quarters of the earth do not exceed 600,000,000.

CHAP. II.

Anglo-Saxons become Missionaries to other Nations.

of other nations.

1

BOOK Soon after the Anglo-Saxons had been converted

to Christianity, they became anxious to spread its Their con- consolations among their continental ancestors, and

the neighbouring nations.

WILLEBROD, with eleven of his companions, went as missionaries from England to Heligoland and Friesland in 692; and was made bishop of the city now called Utrecht.

His associates spread Christianity among the Westphalians and their neighbours.' BONIFACE, in 715, left our island to convert the Germans: he preached to the Thuringians, Hessians, and others. He founded the bishoprics of Wurtzburg, Bamburg, Erfurt, and Erchstadt. In 744 he raised the celebrated monastery of Fulda; and in 746, was made archbishop of Mentz. Returning to Friesland, in 755, he was there murdered, with fifty ecclesiastics who accompanied him. He had converted above one hundred thousand Germans. ? Lebuin was another Englishman who attempted to become a missionary; and Adalbert, son of a king of the Northumbrian kingdom of Deira, in 790, went to Germany for the same purpose.

We have an intimation of the plan of instruction

3