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shews mankind divided into two grand divisions or cities, determined by the nature of their love. "Two loves made two cities. Civitatem mundi quæ et Babylonia dicitur, amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei. Civitatem Dei quæ et Jerusalem dicitur, amor Dei usque ad contemptum sui."1 That chivalry had nothing in common with the former, the examples already shewn have abundantly demonstrated. This love was the end as well as the beginning of its religion. "Noli ad præmium diligere Deum, ipse sit præmium tuum," was its motto.2 All men were loved, " propter Jesum, Jesus autem propter se ipsum."3 It was esteemed "a greater happiness to love others than to be loved by them."4 "In loving their enemies, they did not love evil, neither impiety, nor adultery, nor theft, but they loved a thief and an adulterer, and an impious man, not in that he sinned, but in that he was a man, and the work of God."5 This was the chivalrous, as well as the religious charity. All graces flowed from the pure and perfect love with which the Saviour of mankind was loved. This divine love is thus expressed by St. Anselm, "O quam bonus et suavis es, Domine Jesu, animæ quærenti te: O mi Domine—nihil quæro nisi teipsum, quamvis nulla merces repromitteretur; licet infernus, et paradisus non essent, tamen propter dulcem bonitatem tuam, propter te ipsum adhærere vellem tibi."6 But this flight is not for my wing! O how have we dared to mount to these serene regions, which, like Olympus, ever without a cloud in the dark blue vault of heaven, shadow forth the sublime and untroubled condition of the Christian soul!

Χρύσεαι δέ μοι πτέρυγες περὶ νώτῳ,

καὶ τὰ Σειρήνων πτερόεντα πέδιλα
ἁρμόζεται· βάσομαι δ ̓ εἰς αἰθέρα πολὺν
ἀερθεὶς, Ζανὶ προσμίξων.

Let us draw near, then, and listen to the heavenly accents of divine men, dwelling in brightness clearer than light, and clothed with majesty beyond all terrestrial honour.

De Civitat. Dei, lxiv. 28.

2 S. August. in Tract. in Johan. Evang.

3 De Imitat. Christ. ii. 8.

4 Eadmerus in Vit. S. Anselmi.

5 Clemens Alexand. Stromat. iv. 13.

6 S. Anselmi Meditationes, x.

7 Eurip. Fragment. in Clem. Alexand. Stromat. iv.

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It is an ancient opinion, come down to us from the heroic times, and sanctioned by the judgment of the most sublime philosophers, that they are the sins which proceed from the heart or will, rather than those which emanate principally from the mind, which will fix the eternal destiny of man. The same conclusion was drawn by the doctors of the church, and proposed to Christian chivalry. Bishop Doyle supports the opinion by a reference to the catalogue of vices, which the apostle enumerates as excluding from the kingdom of heaven, and to the sentence to be pronounced, by our Lord himself, upon the just and the reprobate on the last day. But the teachers of religion went farther than this. "Christianus per fidem debet ad intellectum proficere, non per intellectum ad fidem accedere." It is St. Anselm who says this. He alludes to that which Lewis Grenadensis calls the living faith, that which is joined with love, in opposition to the informal or dead faith which is without love; 2 according to the doctrine of St. Paul, that in Christ Jesus nothing availed but faith, " quæ

per charitatem operatur :"3 a distinction which was completely passed over by the innovators from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. "The grace of faith," says Roger Bacon," and the divine inspirations, illuminate not only in spiritual things, but even in the study of physics and philosophy:" and here mark what an incidental evidence occurs of the purity of some men's lives in these ages. "Virtue," continues the monk of Oxford, "illuminates the mind so as to make a man comprehend more easily, not only moral, but scientific questions; and this I have diligently proved in the case of many young men who made a progress in learning beyond what can be told, on account of the innocence of their lives. One sufficiently young, about twenty years of age, very poor and unable to have masters, learned great things in less than a year; yet he is not particularly clever, nor endowed with much memory: so that there can be no other cause but the grace of God, which, on account of the purity of his soul, bestowed on him such gifts as are denied to almost all students; for he was of spotless manners, nor could I discover in him any kind of mortal sin, although I examined diligently; and i Epist. ii. 41. 2 Catechism, ii, 2. 3 Ad Galat. v. 6.

therefore he has so clear a mind, and so quick in perceiving, that with very moderate instruction he learned more than can be said."1 "To be religious," says the great scholastic Doctor William, of Paris, "is the perfection for which we were born, which can only be approached in this life, but must be expected in the future to be fully accomplished: totum enim Deo vivere religionis consummatio est, et beatitudinis et gloriæ finalis plenitudo.”2 "The soul is not created for any sensible good; it naturally even loves spiritual and insensible good."3 It falls within our limits. to observe the wisdom and piety which were exercised in the interpretation of different passages of Holy Scripture ; inasmuch as these interpretations passed generally, and were received and acted upon by temporal men. "To heap coals of fire on the head of our enemies," was to repay evil with good, says Father Lewis of Granada, enflaming them with the desire of wishing us well."4 To hate the enemies of God with a perfect hate," as said by David, "is to hate their sin, and love their nature," according to St. Augustine and St. Gregory,—a distinction which St. Charles Borromeo directed his clergy to be careful in explaining to the people. St. Jerome interpreted the verse of the psalm, "Beatus qui tenebit et allidet parvulos tuos ad petram," to mean, "who stifles his evil passions in their first attacks." The Church interpreted the Psalms according to St. Augustine's rule, who found in them the whole of Christian morality. Without love in the heart, they cannot be understood as the ancients received them. Further, they held that it was unworthy of a theologian and a philosopher to expect that the vague, poetical, and often figurative expressions of the Bible, should determine questions of pure natural philosophy, which were totally foreign from the object of the sacred writers.5 On the other hand, where religious mysteries were concerned, they received the divine. words with humble submission, and refrained from attempting to give them any other meaning but that which was the first and obvious sense of the words. Thus St. Cyril of Jerusalem, quoting the words of our Lord: Touró μov ἐστι τὸ σῶμα adds, τίς τολμήσει ἀμφιβάλλειν λοιπόν; καὶ 2 De Fide, 1. Catechism, ii. 5.

1 Opus Majus, vi. 1.

3 De Anima.

5 Holden Divinæ Fidei Analysis, i. 5.

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αὐτοῦ βεβαιωσαμένου καὶ εἰρηκότος, Τοῦτό μού ἐστι τὸ αἷμα· τίς ἐνδοιάσει ποτὲ, λέγων μὴ εἶναι αὐτοῦ τὸ αἷμα ;1 Above all, they were careful not to require the testimony of the senses for the truth of these mysteries. "Quod loquitur," says St. Bernard, “ Ispiritus et vita est; quod apparet, mortale et mors. Aliud cernitur, et aliud creditur. Truly this man was the Son of God,' said the centurion, being, perhaps, one of those of whom Jesus said, • Oves meæ vocem meam audiunt;' while his eyes beheld a miserable object hanging from a cross between two thieves. We must first learn to hear and obey Christ, before we can behold him and say, 'Sicut audivimus, sic vidimus.' Isaac was a wise man, yet, with the exception of hearing, he was deceived by his senses. Heaven, and earth, and all that is subjected to the eye of man, shall pass away, before one jot or one tittle of what God hath spoken shall fail. Noli me tangere,' said our Lord. Escape from the power of the senses; take refuge in faith. Faith cannot err; faith comprehends what is invisible. Ask not the eye concerning what surpasses its reach; and let not the hand seek to explore what is above it. 'Noli me tangere, nondum enim ascendi ad Patrem meum.' As if, when he shall have ascended, he may be touched; but while in this time of mortality, it is only by faith that we can apprehend him. Noli me tangere: Why do you wish to touch me in this humble habit, in this servile form, in this abject condition? Touch me when clad with celestial beauty, with glory and honour." 2

Nor should we overlook the exceeding wisdom with which they drew beautiful and awful lessons from various facts and passages in the holy Scripture. "As evils are cured by their contraries," says St. Augustine, 66 so God Ideals with men. Quia ergo per superbiam homo lapsus est, humilitatem adhibuit ad sanandum. Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur: and because deceived by a woman, so by a man born of a woman are we redeemed." "Requirebant Jesum'inter cognatos et notos, et non invenerunt.” On these words St. Bernard comments: "Quomodo te, bone Jesu, inter cognatos meos inveniam, qui inter tuos minime es inventus?" Hear William of Paris:

1 Catechesis xxii. Mystag. iv. 2.

2 In Cantica Serm. 28.

"Death need not be painful, else would not Jesus have waited for Lazarus, whom he loved, to die. Yet it is awful; for Jesus wept when he heard that he was dead." Lewis of Granada considers our Lord's silence before the judges as an evidence of his divinity. St. Paul appealed to Cæsar; and he thinks a good man would have been bound to answer. Such an example as that of our Saviour's silence has been never witnessed since the creation of the world. "It was a divine patience; not a human patience.”1 "Remark,” says this holy friar, "the immense goodness of God, who compares himself to an unjust judge, who neither feared God nor man, to conquer our doubts as to the efficacy of prayer." Again, "All the attributes of God being equal, since such has been his mercy (he has given an eloquent account of the mystery of redemption), O what will be his justice!" Every line of this Dominican shews that, like Socrates, he had learned to analyse carefully the meaning of all the terms and opinions which he admitted, that he was a thinker, and not a mere speaker or writer. Treating on the redemption, he is not content with commonly received phrases and conventional words, but he clearly convinces the reader that it has been the subject of his deep meditation. "It is much to be reflected on," says Eusebius Nieremberg, "that those who enjoyed not that great supper were not deprived of it by doing any thing which was a sin in itself; to have bought a farm, to be trying oxen, to have married a wife, none of these were sins; but for the preferring them to the kingdom of heaven." "Ut comprehendamus cum omnibus sanctis. Sancti igitur comprehendunt," adds St. Bernard. "Quæris quomodo? Si sanctus es, comprehendisti, et nosti; si non, esto, et tuo experimento scies."3 So that men who sought after divine wisdom were to pursue their object not by hearing sermons or reading the holy Scriptures, but by keeping a watch over their own hearts; by visiting the sick, comforting the poor; by being humble, generous, charitable, and condescending to others, fulfilling the commandments of Jesus Christ; so that becoming holy in their works and affections, they might understand what was preached and read. "Quoniam ipsorum est regna cœlorum."4 "Magna quædam penna est

Catechism, iii. 18.

3 De Consideratione, lib. v. 14.

2 Ibid. ii. 5.
+ Matt. v. 3.

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