It is with men's minds "as it was with the apostles' eyes; for as they, seeing our Lord walk upon the sea, took him for a ghost, so these seeing him in their heart, deem him but a fancy, being not yet acquainted with his spiritual power." No marvel, then, that they mistrust others. It was in such an hour that the knight, "faith without pity," in Tirante the White, asked King Arthur, through the bars of his iron cage, what were the faults of men? for, looking upon his sword, the desponding king replied, "Wise without good works, old without honour, young without obedience, rich without compassion, a bishop without watchfulness, a knight without goodness, poor without humility, a soldier without truth, a deceiver without remorse." Then we are ready to reply in the words of Telemachus to Nestor, ὦ γέρον, οὔπω τοῦτο ἔπος τελέεσθαι δΐω· λίην γὰρ μέγα εἶπες· ἄγη μ' ἔχει· οὐκ ἂν ἔμοιγε The scholar in Cicero describes his dejection in affecting simplicity when he says, "and I truly have been enraptured on reading Plato's Phædo, sed nescio quomodo dum lego adsentior: cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cœpi cogitare, adsensio illa omnis elabitur." This most bitter cup reserved for men was drank by the divine Saviour, when he cried from the cross, "Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid dereliquisti me?" But let men rally their desponding spirits, and take courage to examine the extent of the evil, that their fears may not magnify it beyond its true proportion. They are told of nothing but the vices, and superstition, and ignorance of these ages, And still they hear The sottish rabble all things rashly brand, And question most what least they understand.3 In the first place, they should take heed that their judgment be not vitiated by the immoral indulgence of a suspicious censorious spirit; for such sweeping censures as those of Cornelius Agrippa are both foolish and sinful. I speak not to you who Catholic are hight; but to those, 1 Southwell. 3 Ariosto, Stewart Rose. 2 Od. iii. 226. albeit οὐ φιλῶ φρενοῦν ἀμούσους καὶ μεμηνότας ξένους: οι Was known to him, with all their cunning lore, And from his own, was ready with such store Of sounder judgment, 'mid that company, Was inly wroth, and could no longer hold: He turned; and, "Many things we have been told," And he a larger field for speaking well Will find, than blaming woman-kind withal; regard suspi"velis remis It was thus that chivalry taught men to cion as a miserable and detestable weakness, que fugiendum." They did not search for examples of vice, but they felt confident of the existence of virtue,— Things hardly known, and foreign to our time; though not unknown or contrary to the philosophy of the ancients, as Cotta bears testimony, saying, "Mihi enim non tam facile in mentem venire solet, quare verum sit aliquid, quam quare falsum."4 Sismondi, in his history of the French, apologises for the dryness of his pages by comparing his subject to the disgusting researches of the 'Euripid. Io. 528. 3 Cant. xxviii., Stewart Rose. 2 Lib. ii. 435. dissecting-room. But the truth is, that it is often these! writers themselves who are to blame; for with their leaden mace they smite the muse of history, and then peep into horrible recesses, and finger and lay bare deformity which they create, turning every object the wrong side out, "and never giving to truth and virtue that which simpleness and merit purchaseth." "Qui multum peregrinantur raro sanctificantur," says a holy book; and in this respect historians are like travellers, for the quick, and unnatural, and forced succession of evil, which is made to pass before them, diminishes their confidence in virtue, and deadens their susceptibility, and prevents them from looking inwardly at the evil which lies within themselves. Even poets have been guilty of calumniating mankind. If the divine muse of Sophocles painted men as they ought to be, Euripides represented them worse than they are; he seemed to cherish a most odious pride in bringing down the greatest of men to a level with the base and vulgar; and his mantle has been eagerly caught up and worn by many in our time. "Nos in vitium credula turba sumus." Those who have studied our Christian antiquity speak of generous knights and of holy men, who had celestial revelations, the deeds of chivalry and the sacrifices of the just, "les dits et gestes des bons trépassés. Negemus omnia; comburamus annales; ficta hæc esse dicamus: quidvis denique potius quam virtutem apud homines inveniri, quam Deum res humanas curare fateamur." But how unjust and how feeble are you who thus condemn antiquity! As the gallant Benedick says with Shakespeare, "You break jests as braggarts do their blades, which, God be thanked, hurt not." You have not shaken the confidence of honourable men, nor shall you even hear them condemning the odious object which you take such pains to expose. They say with Socrates, "I will not reprove him; for I am not fond of reproving, οὐ γὰρ εἰμὶ φιλόμωμος. there is no end to the number of the unwise; so that if any one takes pleasure in reproving, he may be satiated with reproving them.”1 But what then? Are there no objects for those who seek rather to love, to admire, and to bow down with reverence? Crito indeed, when he looked 1 Plato, Protagoras. For Socrates upon the men who professed philosophy, had not courage to turn youth ¿ñì piλooopiav· but Socrates reproved him, saying, Ὦ φίλε Κρίτων, οὐκ οἶσθ' ὅτι ἐν παντὶ ἐπιτηδεύματι οἱ μὲν φαῦλοι πολλοὶ καὶ οὐδένος ἄξιοι, οἱ δὲ σπουδαῖοι ὀλίγοι καὶ παντὸς ἄξιοι ; In every profession τοὺς πολλοὺς οὐ καταγε λάστους ὁρᾷς ; therefore he argues we are not to consider the men who embrace a profession, but the profession itself. Still it is a difficult, and one of the most glorious triumphs of wisdom, when a person is able to separate in his mind the truth from the folly and vices of the vulgar, and weak, and undisciplined men who may happen to be its nominal supporters. But it is even a dangerous error to be unacquainted with the wickedness of men. shews that the opinion that all men are good leads one to a hatred of the species; for when he discovers his error, μσεῖ τε πάντας, καὶ ἡγεῖται οὐδένος οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς εἶναι τοπαραTár. It only remains to say with St. Bernard, we do not accuse all, but neither can we excuse all. "Reliquit sibi Dominus multa millia;" but the multitude of the wicked, even in the brightest ages of chivalry, who can count? René d'Anjou wrote his book, L'Abuzé en Court, to shew the vanity of ambition at court; and in that we find that all hateful vices existed then as they do now. Edward the Confessor lived in a corrupt age: St. Bernard had to determine between Innocent and Anaclet, both nominated to the Pontifical chair: there were scenes of debauchery close to the tent of Saint Louis. Our modern sagacious adversaries, who are ever raking and grubbing into old folios to discover corruption, do only lose their time; for it is ecclesiastical writers who are ever the most anxious to discover and record these horrible examples, for the purpose of their own instruction. We must all come to St. Augustine's conclusion, "Vera justitia non est, nisi in ea republica, cujus conditor rectorque Christus est." It is in vain you point out the liability to abuse : Omnia perversas possunt corrumpere mente The piety of the adulterous Ægistheus, πολλὰ δὲ μηρί ̓ ἔκῃε θεῶν ἱεροῖς ἐπὶ βωμοῖς, 1 Plato, Euthydemus. 3 De Civitate Dei, lib. ii. 21. 4 2 Plato, Phædo. 4 Od. iii. 273. may have had imitators in that very England, where a pope's legate declared, "God accepts no pay, nor even holocausts for sin." Christian knights may have had to entreat Christian knights in words like those of Edipus to the Athenians, when he warned them not to make their piety an excuse for crime: καὶ μὴ θεοὺς τιμῶντες, εἶτα τῶν θεῶν βλέπειν μὲν αὐτοὺς πρὸς τὸν εὐσεβῆ βροτῶν, βλέπειν δὲ πρὸς τοὺς δυσσεβεῖς. "It is for the sins of Christians," said Lewis of Grenada, "that so much of Europe, Asia, and Africa, formerly filled with churches, is now possessed by the barbarians; and so far from wondering that so many have fallen from the Church in these days, I give God thanks for what remains sound amidst so much depravity." But then our modern adversaries must be addressed in the words of St. Augustine: "Nunc vos illud admoneo, ut aliquando ecclesiæ Catholicæ maledicere desinatis, vituperando mores hominum, quos et ipsa condemnat, et quos quotidie tamquam malos filios corrigere studet."2 As for the violence and disorders which characterised these ages when society had no artificial and hollow surface, much may be advanced in extenuation. How many brave and generous men were incited by them to devote themselves to the protection of the weak! And were not these disorders accompanied with virtues of the most exalted kind? ĥoieɩ rà μεγάλα αδικήματα καὶ τὴν ἄκρατον πονηρίαν ἐκ φαύλης ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐκ νεανικῆς φυσέως τροφῇ διολομένης γίγνεσθαι, ἀσθενῆ δὲ φύσιν μεγάλων οὔτε ἀγαθῶν οὔτε κακῶν αἰτίαν ποτὲ ἔσεσθαι; this is the question of Socrates. Formerly," says Sismondi, "greedy and unjust men seized the goods of others by violence; to-day they obtain them by fraudulent bankruptcies. Every attempt formerly was open; to-day every thing is secret."4 "It may be noted," says Izaak Walton, "that in this age there are a people so unlike the God of mercy, so void of the bowels of pity, that they love only themselves and children; love them so as not to be con 66 Othobon was the Legate in 1268. 2 De Moribus Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, 76. Hist. des Répub. Ital. iii. 259. 1 |