The pretensions of Councils.

What came of

the Councils.

schism. That was a battle between two, sometimes three, bad men, a battle waged with every spiritual and every carnal weapon, to decide which was the Vicar of Christ, the father of the Universal Family. When the evil became intolerable, when every nation was rent asunder by it, the University of Paris by the mouth of Gerson and other illustrious doctors declared that the knot must be cut, that a Council must be summoned, that it must decree who were the false pretenders to divine authority, who was the appointed Judge and Dogmatist of mankind.

Every one must have felt the force of the argument, that if such a Judge and Dogmatist existed the pretension of a Council to be above him involved a strange contradiction. Gerson and his friends were. aware of the contradiction. They resolved to face it. Events for which they were not responsible, which they could not control, had produced a state of things which was flagrantly monstrous. The remedy might be dangerous, the disease must be fatal. Some have thought that nothing came out of the Councils which were summoned at that time except the murder of Huss, with the justification which it afforded for the strifes between Emperors and ecclesiastics, seeing that when they were agreed it was to commit a scandalous breach of faith as the prelude to an enormous crime. I should not undervalue that result, since I look upon. Huss as a martyr for truth, as an asserter of national righteousness against both the enemies of it. But the Councils produced other and wider, if not more important, consequences than this. The reasonings in favour of their interference, and in opposition to it, forced the thought on Europe-' Popes then and

thoughts

'Councils, these you think govern the Universe, sepa- The 'rately or together, as friendly or as hostile powers. which 'The Holy Empire you suppose is meant to use its their acts suggested. 'sword in obedience to them. You have deliberately, 'distinctly settled that God has left the earth to these 'rulers, that He takes no further charge of it. Then 'the Creed which you have taught us to utter, the 'Lord's Prayer which you give us indulgences for re'peating, clearly mean nothing. They are mockeries.' So men in many a shop and household, in many a lonely monastery, were beginning to speak. The speech might be deep not loud; it was the more perilous for that.

sion.

4. The principle of a Universal Family then had Conclumaintained itself in the West under different convery ditions from those which we examined in the last Lecture. It had not been merged in an Empire; had not generally been in alliance with one. It had not shrunk before the Mahometan proclamation; it had defied that proclamation. It had met the announcement of an Absolute Despot in Heaven with the assertion that there is a union between Heaven and Earth in a Son of God. All the order of the West had Contrast between borne testimony to this difference. There was no dead the East uniformity in Latin Europe though Churchmen had and West. tried to create one. Nations had started out of the Family; the Church in each land had assumed national characteristics. But it seemed that the offspring must destroy that from which they had sprung if the Family was only Latin; if it could not really make good its claim to be universal. In the midst of these doubts and speculations, when the Father of the West was once again holding an insecure seat in the old City,

for both.

The crisis came the news that the other City, the city of Constantine, was ready to fall. I alluded in my last Lecture to the efforts of the West-feeble and dishonest efforts -to avert that fall. When it actually came Nicholas V., a man of sincere purpose and high cultivation, trembled for the whole of Christendom. Could not he do something to repair the calamity? The Greek and Latin Churches had never been able to unite. Might not Greeks and Latins together constitute a commonwealth of letters; the first bringing the wisdom which was banished from its original home; the second, through their spiritual Ruler, diffusing human culture as they had once diffused divine doctrine? Dean Milman's clear historical instinct perceived in these thoughts of the Pope, and in the events which issued from them, the crisis of Latin Christianity. What Christianity was to succeed that we must consider in the next Lecture.

LECTURE XVII.

THE UNIVERSAL AND THE INDIVIDUAL MORALITY IN

CONFLICT.

V.

NICHOLAS V. was unlike his most eminent prede- Nicholas cessors. He did not aspire to convert barbarous tribes like Gregory I.; he did not dream of setting his foot on Kings like Gregory VII.; he did not suppose that the world could be held together by webs of policy like Innocent III. He did not appreciate the Medieval divinity or philosophy, or the speech in which they were expressed. He accepted the signs of the times. He mourned over Constantinople as if it had been not the centre of a doctrine or ecclesiastical government opposed to the Latin, but the centre of a culture by which Latins might benefit. He did not think that old Pagan learning would unchristianise Christendom. He hoped it might do much to humanise Christendom.

His aims

and hopes.

His aspirations-if they were of this kind-had ultimately, it seems to me, a higher fulfilment than he expected. Whether they were fulfilled during his own century, by what is called the Renaissance or Admirers the Revival of Letters, you will hear different judg- of the ments from persons eminently qualified by their know

Revival.

The wit

nesses on the other

side.

How we may learn

ledge and ability to pronounce a judgment. Mr. Roscoe, himself a merchant, felt an honourable sympathy with the Medicean Family, believing that it had converted trade from the pursuit of personal pelf into an instrument for civilising Italy and Europe. Mr. Hallam, uniting the man of letters to the constitutional politician, hailed with joy the time when students ceased to pore over questions about the relation of words to things, and busied themselves with the orators, poets, statesmen who had used words gracefully and effectually to explain things and the relations of men to each other. On the other hand, you will read in Mr. Browning's subtle and vigorous verse, in Mr. Ruskin's eloquent prose, many an exposure of the external affectations, of the inward heartlessness, of this brilliant time. And if you turn from these native critics to the patriots of Italy, you will hear still more fervent denunciations of Medicean princes and popes who trafficked with the liberty of Florence, and ratified a code of political morality that debased their own land and all lands for more than a century.

If you reflect on these testimonies and steadily from both, recognise the facts to which they appeal, you may gain lessons from them all; you will not be overpowered by any of them. You will thankfully acknowledge what innumerable benefits we owe to Greek literature; how Greek art has taught us to reverence the actual form and countenance of human beings; what a new impulse, what a sense of common Blessings fellowship philology has imparted to the thoughts of of the new learning. men; what treasures of political experience are con

tained in the histories of the old nations. Without