of excellence in contemplative virtues and in elaborate purifications. By this decline of the patriotic sentiment the progress of the new faith was greatly aided. In all matters of religion the opinions of men are governed much more by their sympathies than by their judgments, and it rarely or never happens that a religion which is opposed to a strong national sentiment, as Christianity was in Judea, as Catholicism and Episcopalian Protestantism have been in Scotland, and as Anglicanism is even now in Ireland, can win the acceptance of the people.

The relations of Christianity to the sentiment of patriotism were from the first very unfortunate. While the Christians were, from obvious reasons, completely separated from the national spirit of Judea, they found themselves equally at variance with the lingering remnants of Roman patriotism. Rome was to them the power of Antichrist, and its overthrow the necessary prelude to the millennial reign. They formed an illegal organisation, directly opposed to the genius of the empire, anticipating its speedy destruction, looking back with something more than despondency to the fate of the heroes. who had adorned its past, and refusing resolutely to participate in those national spectacles which were the symbols and the expressions of patriotic feeling. Though scrupulously averse to all rebellion, they rarely concealed their sentiments, and the whole tendency of their teaching was to withdraw men as far as possible both from the functions and the enthusiasm of public life. It was at once their confession and their boast, that no interests were more indifferent to them than those of their country.1 They regarded the lawfulness of taking arms as very questionable, and all those proud and aspiring qualities

16

Nec ulla res aliena magis quam publica.'-Tertullian, Apol. ch. xxxviii.

that constitute the distinctive beauty of the soldier's character as emphatically unchristian. Their home and their interests were in another world, and, provided only they were unmolested in their worship, they avowed with frankness, long after the empire had become Christian, that it was a matter of indifference to them under what rule they lived. Asceticism, drawing all the enthusiasm of Christendom to the desert life, and elevating as an ideal the extreme and absolute abnegation of all patriotism,2 formed the culmination of the movement, and was undoubtedly one cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire.

There are, probably, few subjects on which popular judgments are commonly more erroneous than upon the relations between positive religions and moral enthusiasm.

1 'Quid interest sub cujus imperio vivat homo moriturus, si illi qui imperant, ad impia et iniqua non cogant.'-St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, v. 17.

2 Monachum in patria sua perfectum esse non posse, perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est.'-Hieron. Ep. xiv. Dean Milman well says of a later period, According to the monastic view of Christianity, the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects of ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes of salvation. Why should they fight for a perishing world, from which it was better to be estranged? . . . It is singular, indeed, that while we have seen the Eastern monks turned into fierce undisciplined soldiers, perilling their own lives and shedding the blood of others without remorse, in assertion of some shadowy shade of orthodox expression, hardly anywhere do we find them asserting their liberties or their religion with intrepid resistance. Hatred of heresy was a more stirring motive than the dread or the danger of Islamism. After the first defeats the Christian mind was still further prostrated by the common notion that the invasion was a just and heaven-commissioned visitation; . . . resistance a vain, almost an impious struggle to avert inevitable punishment.' - Milman's Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 206. Compare Massillon's famous Discours au Régiment de Catinat:- Ce qu'il y a ici de plus déplorable, c'est que dans une vie rude et pénible, dans des emplois dont les devoirs passent quelquefois la rigueur des cloîtres les plus austères, vous souffrez toujours en vain pour l'autre vie. . . . Dix ans de services ont plus usé votre corps qu'une vie entière de pénitence . . . un seul jour de ces souffrances, consacré au Seigneur, vous aurait peut-être valu un bonheur éternel.'

6

Religions have, no doubt, a most real power of evoking a latent energy which, without their existence, would never have been called into action; but their influence is on the whole probably more attractive than creative. They supply the channel in which moral enthusiasm flows, the banner under which it is enlisted, the mould in which it is cast, the ideal to which it tends. The first idea the phrase a very good man' would have suggested to an early Roman, would probably have been that of great and distinguished patriotism, and the passion and interest of such a man in his country's cause were in direct proportion to his moral elevation. Ascetic Christianity decisively diverted moral enthusiasm into another channel, and the civic virtues, in consequence, necessarily declined. The extinction of all public spirit, the base treachery and corruption pervading every department of the Government, the cowardice of the army, the despicable frivolity of character that led the people of Treves, when fresh from their burning city, to call for theatres and circuses, and the people of Roman Carthage to plunge wildly into the excitement of the chariot races, on the very day when their city succumbed beneath the Vandal; all these things coexisted with extraordinary displays of ascetic and of missionary devotion. The genius and the virtue that might have defended the empire were engaged in fierce disputes about the Pelagian controversy, at the very time when Attila was encircling Rome with his armies,2 and there was no subtlety of theological metaphysics which did not kindle a deeper interest in the Christian leaders than

1 See a very striking passage in Salvian, De Gubern. Div. lib. vi.

a

2 Chateaubriand very truly says, 'qu'Orose et saint Augustin étoient plus occupés du schisme de Pélage que de la désolation de l'Afrique et des Gaules.-Études histor. vime discours, 2de partie. The remark might certainly be extended much further.

the throes of their expiring country. The moral enthusiasm that in other days would have fired the armies of Rome with an invincible valour, impelled thousands to abandon their country and their homes, and consume the weary hours in a long routine of useless and horrible macerations. When the Goths had captured Rome, St. Augustine, as we have seen, pointed with a just pride to the Christian Church, which remained an unviolated sanctuary during the horrors of the sack, as a proof that a new spirit of sanctity and of reverence had descended upon the world. The Pagan, in his turn, pointed to what he deemed a not less significant fact-the golden statues of Valour and of Fortune were melted down to pay the ransom to the conquerors.1 Many of the Christians contemplated with an indifference that almost amounted to complacency what they regarded as the predicted ruin of the city of the fallen gods. When the Vandals swept over Africa, the Donatists, maddened by the persecution of the orthodox, received them with open arms, and contributed their share to that deadly blow.3 The immortal pass of Thermopyla was surrendered without a struggle to the Goths. A Pagan writer accused the monks of having betrayed it. It is more probable that they had absorbed or diverted the heroism that in other days would have defended it. The conquest, at a later date, of Egypt by the Mahommedans, was in a great measure due to an invitation from the persecuted Monophysites. Subsequent religious wars have again and again exhibited the

1 Zosimus, Hist. v. 41. This was on the first occasion when Rome was menaced by Alaric.

2 See Merivale's Conversion of the Northern Nations, pp. 207-210.

3 See Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome i. p. 230. Eunapius. There is no other authority for the story of the treachery, which is not believed by Gibbon.

Sismondi, Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire romain, tome ii. pp. 52-54; Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity, vol. ii. p. 213. The Monophysites were

same phenomenon. The treachery of a religionist to his country no longer argued an absence of all moral feeling. It had become compatible with the deepest religious enthusiasm, and with all the courage of a martyr.

It is somewhat difficult to form a just estimate of how far the attitude assumed by the Church to the barbarian invaders has on the whole proved beneficial to mankind. The empire, as we have seen, had already been, both morally and politically, in a condition of manifest decline; its fall, though it might have been retarded, could scarcely have been averted, and the new religion, even in its most superstitious form, while it did much to displace, did also much to elicit moral enthusiasm. It is impossible to deny that the Christian priesthood contributed very materially, both by their charity and by their arbitration, to mitigate the calamities that accompanied the dissolution of the empire;1 and it is equally impossible to doubt that their political attitude greatly increased their power for good. Standing between the conflicting forces, almost indifferent to the issue, and notoriously exempt from the passions of the combat, they obtained with the conqueror, and used for the benefit of the conquered, a degree of influence they would never have possessed, had they been regarded as Roman patriots. Their attitude, however, marked a complete, and, as it has proved, a permanent change in

greatly afflicted because, after the conquest, the Mahommedans tolerated the orthodox, who believed that two concurring wills existed in Christ, as well as themselves, who believed that Christ had only one will. In Gaul, the orthodox clergy favoured the invasions of the Franks, who alone, of the barbarous conquerors of Gaul, were Catholics, and St. Aprunculus was obliged to fly, the Burgundians desiring to kill him on account of his suspected connivance with the invaders. (Greg. Tur. ii. 23.)

1 Dean Milman says of the Church, 'If treacherous to the interests of the Roman Empire, it was true to those of mankind.'-Hist. of Christianity, vol. iii. p. 48. So Gibbon, 'If the decline of the Roman Empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, the victorious religion broke the violence of the fall and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.'-Ch. xxxviii.