which they adopted for the change of the pagan CHAP.

II. mind, in the following judicious directions of Alcuin for a progressive information :

“ This order should be pursued in teaching mature persons : 1st. They should be instructed in the immortality of the soul; in the future life; in its retribution of good and evil, and in the eternal duration of both conditions.

“ 2d. They should then be informed for what sins and crimes they will have to suffer with the Devil everlasting punishments; and for what good and beneficial deeds they will enjoy unceasing glory with Christ.

“ 3d. The faith of the Holy Trinity is then to be most diligently taught: and the coming of our Saviour into the world for the salvation of the human race. Afterwards impress the mystery of His passion ; the truth of His resurrection ; His glorious ascension; His future advent to judge all nations, and the resurrection of our bodies.

“ Thus prepared and strengthened, the man may be baptized." 4

4 Alc. Op. p. 1484.

CHAP. III.

View of the Form of Christianity introduced among the Anglo

Saxons; and of some of the Religious Rites and Notions.

X.

BOOK The form and spirit of Christianity introduced

among the Anglo-Saxons by Gregory's monks were unquestionably the best which he and the Roman church then knew and valued. And as the form and spirit of every institution arise from the mind and disposition of some portion of its contemporaries, and are adapted to their feelings or occasions, so we may assume that the doctrines, rites, and formulæ of Christianity, which the papal see established in England in the seventh century, were congenial with the mind, character, taste, and circumstances of the nation, and of Europe at that period. It is therefore no reproach to the memory of Gregory or of his missionaries, if we now appreciate differently the merit of what they taught with the most benevolent integrity and with merited

The world has become a new world of knowlege, feeling, taste, habit, and reason since that period. Their religious education suited their comparative babyhood of knowlege and intellect, and formed an interesting and improving child. New agencies occurred afterwards to rear this infant to a noble youth. Better views of religion have since united with expanded science and progressive reason to conduct the national character and mind to a still superior manhood. Each preceding stage was necessary to the formation of the

III.

subsequent. Each has produced its appropriate CHAP. utilities, and each has passed away from our estima. tion as soon as higher degrees of improvement were attained, and better systems became visible. The Scriptures are the imperishable records of our faith and hope; and if their lessons only had been allowed to be the guides of man's opinions and practice, all the absurdities and superstitions which we lament or ridicule would have been prevented or soon removed. But in every age the human mind has chosen to blend religion with its own dreams and passions; and has made these, and not the Gospel, the paramount, though always erring, dictators of our theological knowlege and religious sensibility. It is the glory of the present age, that the cultivated understanding is emancipating itself from all the dogmatism and prejudices both of scepticism and superstition, and is advancing to those just and clear views of impartial truth, of human weakness, and of the need and efficacy of divine assistance, which will unite faith with philosophy, knowlege with hope, divine love with moral beauty, and self-comfort with an active, kind, and magnanimous charity.

With these views we may smile without insult at some of the questions, and condemn without bitterness others, on which Augustine requests the directions of Gregory, as to the ecclesiastical government, discipline, rules, and restrictions to which he is to subject his new converts. We are surprised that some of the points adverted to should have been made the subjects of sacerdotal notice; but the gravity and earnestness with which they are put and answered, show that they were then deemed proper objects of such attention, and were consi

X.

dered by priest and votary to be important and interesting to the consciences of both.

The detail of all the ecclesiastical rites and notions of the Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics would be tedious and unimproving in a general history. They have been discussed and disputed professionally by some, and as matters of antiquarian curiosity by others. The present chapter will be limited to the selection of a few points, on which some original information can be given, and which may be more interesting to the philosophical reader.

Among the religious institutions of the AngloSaxons, their monastic establishments attained a great though fluctuating popularity. In the first period of their Christianity, when a general ardour of belief impelled those who sincerely embraced it, several kings and nobles withdrew from the business and vexations of the world to enjoy the de.

I See Bede's 27th chapter of his first book, of which the eighth and ninth articles are the most objectionable. But there is a liberality in the pope's answer to the second question that deserves notice. “ You know the custom of the Roman church, in which you remember you was brought up. But I am willing, if you have found any thing in the Roman or Gallican, or in any other church, which will be more pleasing to the Almighty, that you carefully select it; and infuse into the English church, which is yet new in the faith, in its leading institution, those things which you may have collected from many churches. Things are not to be loved for places, but places for good things. Choose then from every church whatever things are pious, religious, and right, and, collecting them as into a bundle, place them as a habit in the minds of the English.” Bede, lib. i. c. 27. If the papal see had continued to act on this wise rule, as society advanced, it would have improved with every succeeding age, and have still held the dominion of the religious world. But it ever afterwards deviated into a narrow, peculiar, selfish, and unchangeable system, that has become in every following generation more incompatible with the human progress; and thus it has irretrievably lost the government of the intellectual world. A new and wiser system, that has yet to receive its being, can alone obtain that universal sceptre to which both ancient and modern Rome so long aspired, and for a brief interval attained.

а

III.

vout serenity of the cloister. Such a taste has CHAP. been too hastily censured as a mental imbecility. The system of monasteries, though pernicious when abused, and defective in its intellectual regulations, yet contained much that was fairly interesting both to the imagination and the heart of the Anglo-Saxons, and that actually contributed to increase the happiness of life in their day. Even now, in the opinion of many thinking men, if they were confined to the middle and declining periods of life; if they were frequented by those only, who, after having discharged all their social duties, desired to withdraw from the occupations, troubles, and fascinations of the world, to a halcyon calm of mind, uninterrupted study, tranquil meditation, or devotional sensibility ; if they were not shackled by indissoluble vows of continuance, imprisoning the repining; if they were made seminaries of education, and allowed to be temporary asylums of unprovided youth ; and if their rules and habits were framed on such moral plans and religious formulæ as should be found worthy of an intellectual age, which seeks to combine the fancy

, and the feeling in a sweet harmony with its knowlege and its reason : thus formed and directed, such institutions might again contribute to the happiness of the aged, the destitute, the sorrowful, the lonely, the abstracted, the studious, the pensive, the unambitious, the embarrassed, and the devout, as well as to the instruction of the young, the relief of the poor, and the revival of religious sensibility in the community at large. The spiritual piety of the more fervent sympathies had the advantage of these asylums under the catholic institutions.

But when monasteries were founded among the