T the time when Charlemagne was entrenched on the banks of the Ora at Wolmerstede, in East Saxony, the infidel prince Wedekind is related to have repaired to the royal camp in the disguise of a beggar, not through fear, as he was then reconciled, but in order to scrutinize the manners of the Christians. The paschal solemnities were at hand, and the king and all the host were commemorating the Lord's passion. Having crossed the river he joined the multitude of poor persons who daily flocked to court, but on the holy day of Easter when he applied for alms, he was recognised, and asked by the king what were the motives which had induced him to come in a manner so unworthy of his rank. He confessed that it was curiosity which had prompted him, in order to examine into their lives and customs. "Permit me now," said he, "most serene king, to demand what is it that hath this day so much delighted you? You appeared during the last few days wholly cast down, oppressed with sorrow, and I could not discover the cause, and lo, I beheld you this morning in your temple full of gladness and rapture, and so sudden and complete a change excites my astonishment ?" The king then explained to him the great mysteries of faith, and showed him the ground of his lamentation and of his joy.* * This little narrative will prepare you, reader, for the observations that I have now to offer; for you may perceive from it that sensible and deep impressions were made upon the minds of men during the ages of faith by supernatural motives; and it is my present object to show that the justice imparted to those who hungered and thirsted after perfection in this life was divine, and the whole tenor of morality of ages of faith, supernatural both in its motives and in its effects, superior and even perhaps sometimes contrary to what men would have conceived or practised, if left without the assistance of an express and positive revelation of their Creator's will. For though the natural law

• Alber Krantzii Metrop. Lib. I.

is promulgated to man as soon as he comes to the use of reason,' * and though he is wisely exhorted, by poets as well as by philosophers, to withdraw himself from ways that run not parallel to nature's course, yet in consequence of the incapacity of that law to meet the disarrangement introduced by sin into the original order, and from the uncertainty in which he stands respecting what is the direction of nature's course, from which corrupt passions are continually drawing him aside, a new law had become necessary for the government and restoration of his fallen state, and additional light was required to enable him to discern what was the original design, and the true principles, the observance of which was indispensable for the perfection and felicity of his nature. Savanorola was true to the Catholic faith in teaching the philosophers of Italy, that the Christian life could not have its roots in the natural love of man, or in the sensitive parts of his nature, or in the ima gination; nor again in the natural light of reason, for then faith would be only an opinion, nor in the influence of any natural cause, since the whole Christian life is spiritual, and independent of the body, and capable of universal practice; but that the root and foundation of the Christian life, is the grace of God, which is a supernatural gift infused into the soul. This was the Catholic doctrine acutely maintained. Those, indeed, whom, as the church says, "God had purged from all ancient corruption, and rendered capable of the holy novelty," had not cast off the grace and beauty of nature. The natural law was not abrogated; for to have supposed that God does not require its observation would have been the same thing as to suppose that it had no existence, which is absurd. That the Christian character, though in this sense supernatural, retained all that was truly amiable and good in the ancient manners, is admitted in the reply of the Pagan father of Cymodocee to Lasthenes the Christian, in the celebrated work, entitled

Ligorio Theolog. Lib. I. Tract. I.

+ Third Collect for Holy Week.

La Hogue Tractat. de Religione, I. 2.

the Martyrs, which paints with such historical fidelity the two societies which were dividing the world. "You appear to me," says the admirer of the Homeric life, "to be wholly of the ancient times, although I have not seen your words in Homer! Your silence has the dignity of that of the sages. You rise to sentiments full of majesty, not on the golden wings of Euripides, but on the celestial wings of Plato. In the midst of your sweet abundance you enjoy the graces of friendship. There is nothing about you forced or strained; all is content, persuasion, love."* Would you see this exemplified in history? Read the public and domestic life of Ferdinand and Isabella, in the Chronicles of Spain, by Lucius Marinæus, the Sicilian. What admirable pictures have you there! What Homeric simplicity! What tenderness! What poesy in all the detail of manners!+ Manzoni has admirably treated on the correspondence between Catholic morals with the natural sentiment of right and justice, the union and harmony of which are proved by the testimony not alone of history and experience, but also of ancient philosophers.

There are Pagan moralists to whom we might have recourse in order to shame the admirers of the natural and passionate character; for even the manners of the blessed meek are recommended by an ancient Aristotelian philosopher, who makes mildness consist in being able to bear insult and neglect, and in not being quickly moved to anger, but having a sweetness of address and an imperturbable tranquillity in the soul, exempt from all desire of contention. Still it is no less true, that the morality of the Catholic society during ages of faith, if conformable to nature, in its original state, or Homeric, according to the ideal of poets and philosophers, was something also beyond and often even contrary to what was actually in the thoughts of man. Real humanity and goodness can have no existence without the action of an influence superior to nature; and this the poet discerns, saying,

are not sure and constant. Homer perceived what was the highest praise, and investing his hero with divine virtue, styles him πολύτλητον, which is the very character that is formed by the supernatural principles of the Catholic faith, and in perfection by them alone. Christian severity and Christian love are intimate relations, and therefore to the voluntary mortifications which we observed in a former book, to those spiritual and sacramental communions with God, not as reigning in heaven, but as suffering in his passion, the justice, the divine patience of the ages of faith must mainly be ascribed. With natural indulgence, you have hatred, jealousy, pride, and cruelty, for without an initiation into the mysteries of faith, from which springs the principle of the supernatural life, what is comformable to corrupt nature, or as Pindar says, "what is natural must, generally, prevail."

τὸ δὲ φυᾷ κράτιστον ἅπαν.*

"Hæc curare voluit Socrates, curare potest Deus. O quam miserum animal homo est," continues Marsilius Ficinus, "nisi aliquando evolet super hominem, commendet videlicet seipsum Deo. Deum amet propter Deum et cætera propter ipsum. Hæc unica problematum illorum solutio est, requiesque malorum."+

"I have remarked," says Bossuet, "that the apostle, speaking of those who love themselves and their pleasure, calls them

men cruel, without affection, without pity;' and I have been often astonished at so strange a union. In fact, this blind attachment to pleasure seems at first to be something gentle, that would shun cruelty and malevolence; but one is soon undeceived, and able to detect in this apparent gentleness, a malignant and pernicious sweetness. When I hear voluptuous persons speak in the Book of Wisdom, I can find nothing more smiling and agreeable; they speak of nothing but flowers and feasting, dancing and amusement. 'Let us crown our heads with flowers before they are faded.' They invite all the world to partake of their pleasures. How sweet are their words! how joyous their temper! how desirable their company! But attend to the conclusion of this discourse. Let us oppress the just and the poor; let us not pardon either the widow or the orphan.' What a change is here, Christians, and who would

have expected so unpitiable a cruelty from such sweetness? This is the genius of pleasure; it loves to oppress the just and the poor; the just who are contrary to it, the poor who are to be its prey.'

The Stoics said that the end of philosophy was to live according to nature, and the moderns, with a false idea of nature, say the same; but Plato, with higher wisdom and greater subtilty of penetration, maintained that it was to be made conformable to God, in which position he did but forestall the fundamental law of Catholic morals. The heresy of our age is the idolizing of nature, of the creature over the Creator. Whatever, we are told, is conformable to nature, and to nature as we find it, is right. "How times are changed!" cries a holy Benedictine of the present day, "our fathers sometimes followed the vicious impulses of corrupt nature through weakness, in our philosophic age they are followed by system." "Among nations which have departed from the principles of faith, we find," as Ventura justly remarks," that ethics, and all sacred discipline, have given way along with theology, and that a certain rational system of ethics has been substituted for that which derived its force from God, in the same manner as what is so falsely termed rational Christianity, was substituted for positive, in which the private reason was not guided by divine discipline, but divine discipline by private reason." Hence the astonishment and offence evinced by the moderns whenever presented with any of the especial virtues of the Catholic morality; for there are virtues which belong to it in a peculiar manner, having been, as it were, first revealed by the Gospel. The heathens felt the same surprise when they first beheld the fruits of divine faith; and St. Chrysostom had to show how little many who were called Christians differed from Pagans, either in their practice, or even in their notions of virtue. The disciples of the modern school seem at the best only in the number of those amongst whom Virgil counted himself, when guiding Dante—men

Na

rosity, courage, friendship? If they love those only who love them, what is this but to follow the impulse of nature? No mysteries are required to teach that love; the Gentiles practised it. When do they love their enemies, obey men for God's sake, perform works of humility, and take up their cross? They are generous, brave, and moral; but so were Alcibiades, Achilles, and Julian. The heathen Saxons appeared at Rome, like their descendants at the present day, with the countenances of angels; but what the Catholic discipline required was that men should have the minds of angels, and possess that interior life which is implied in the various supplications in the divine prayer of our Redeemer, which used to be on every tongue. St. Theresa, in her, "Way of Perfection," examines each of these petitions, with a view to determine who are the persons that can repeat it with consistency. Clearly, it is more than mere human virtue which can justify men in calling God their father dwelling in heaven; which can enable them truly to hallow his name, to wish for the coming of his kingdom, and accomplishment of his will. ture of herself feels not the want of that daily bread, nor can she unassisted plead for mercy on the ground of having herself forgiven. Instead of wishing to be delivered from temptations, she daily impels men to search for them. Nor is there any evil from which she desires to be delivered, excepting disease, loss of property, the death of the body, or other calamities to which our frail and wretched flesh his heir. True, as St. Augustin says, speaking of the Romans, "they who refrain shameful lusts, not by the faith of piety emanating from the Holy Spirit, and by the love of intellectual beauty, but by the desire of human praise and glory, are not indeed holy, but less vile."+ Unquestionably there is much that is brilliant, and at times fascinating in the natural manners of men, and somewhat that seems austere and repulsive in those of Catholicism, though after all what do the virtues, and accomplishments, and transports of the worldly race amount to ? These are admirable men, we are told; but what is there in them admirable, if you approach nearer? What is there enviable? Read the testimonies collected by that anatomist of melancholy, who with all his pretensions to sit alone, was himself but one of the sad choir, and then methinks you will be less anxious to institute a comparison, with the view of

* De Civit. Dei, Lib. V. 13.

coming to a conclusion unfavourable to the effects of the supernatural morals inculcated by the Catholic religion. No; whenever the morality of the ages of faith is superseded by the manners of rationalism, the event, however it may be qualified, amounts, in fact, to the erecting the standard of Satan, naturally so glorious in the eyes of Adam's evil brood, and beating down that of Christ, which is, according to the same nature, its scorn and aversion. It is the triumph of ambition over humility, of pride over meekness, of pleasure over the mourning of the just, of vain-glory over justice, of hatred over charity, of lust and excess over purity and temperance, of passion and revenge over the spirit of forgiveness, and sacrifice, and peace, in imitation of the Lamb of God; in a word, it is the substitution of human misery for the beatitude announced and everlastingly imparted by the Gospel.

"Si

Yielding to philosophy all that truth and justice required, the Catholic writers, from the beginning, declared that the morality which was to accompany and verify faith, must be in its motives, in its end, and in its discipline, something far different from what is ordinarily understood by nature, in the thoughts and language of men. The laudable Roman disposition was a favourite expression in the mouths of the heathens in St. Augustin's time, and we hear the great doctor exclaiming, "O indoles Romana laudabilis ! O offspring of the Reguli, the Scævolas, the Scipios, the Fabricii, if any thing in you shines naturally laudable, only by true piety can it be purged and perfected."* enim veræ virtutes sunt," he adds, "" quæ nisi in eis quibus vera inest pietas esse non possunt;"+ for the virtues which seem to be such, unless referred to God, are rather vices than virtues. However true and worthy they may be thought, yet if they be referred to themselves, and to nothing higher, they are inflated and proud, and therefore are to be judged vices, not virtues. "Sometimes," says St. Augustin, most open vices are conquered by other hidden vices, which are thought to be virtues, in which reign pride, and a certain ruinous altitude of pleasing oneself; superbia et quædam sibi placendi altitudo ruinosa. Then only are vices conquered where they are conquered by the love of God."§ This is the novel morality to which the Church alludes, when she prays that men may be

De Civitate Dei, Lib. II. 29. + Id. Lib. XIX. 4.

+ Id. XIX. 25.

"the

§ Id. XXI. 16.

purified from all the encroachments of their former ways, and made capable of a holy renovation. This is that way of the cross, that life of obedience, that felicitous state, which is compared by the writers of the middle age to a garden of flowers, more beauteous than ever met mortal eye, and embalmed with a celestial fragrance. "Here," says Thomas à Kempis, "all things are bright, flourishing, odoriferous, and delightful. These flowers of the mysteries of Christ and his blessed mother, have so sweet an odour, so wondrous a flavour, so great a beauty, so powerful an ardour, that they expel from the languishing soul all temptation and carual love, all anger and indignation, all envy and pride, all indolence and indifference, all hardness and perturbation, all sadness and distrust, all wickedness and deceit, all turpitude and diabolic influence, alike from a man or a woman, from a youth or an old man, from a rich or a poor man, because Christ died to heal all men and to cleanse all men from sin."†

Giles

History can bear witness that in the middle ages, to every profession and mode of life there was a supernatural standard proposed, and that unless sanctified and directed by a divine motive, no state or employment was deemed secure from a fatal end. of Colonna shows, that in the government of himself, and of his family, and of his kingdom, a king must not place his happiness in pleasure or riches, or honour, or glory, or fame, or civil power, for then he would be only superficially good; but that he must place it in the love of God and in works which are the proofs of love." "We entreat our Saviour, in whose name we are here assembled," says Alexander, abbot of the Benedictine monastery of Telesi, in the kingdom of Naples to king Roger, "that he may cause you so to govern your kingdom that you may hereafter possess the eternal kingdom. For what did it profit Saul to possess the temporal kingdom by divine will, when afterwards he lost both; or what the Roman emperors Augustus and Domitian, and others, to have reigned over the universal world? That you may avoid such an end, inagnify and serve God, and study to please him, and if it be asked in what manner a king should govern so as to please God, we answer, a nation is rightly and well administered, when by the force of law all wickedness is expelled. Remember

Collect. 3rd fer. in holy week.

+ Sermonum III. Pars 7.

Egid. Romanus de Regim. Prine. P. 1.

Lib. I.

In

that you bear the name of king in order that all under your dominion may be governed with the censure of justice in the bond of peace. Therefore be prudent, brave, and invincible. Moreover, with all vows we entreat you to be mindful of your condition, to have in your mind the Lord your creator, to know that he is your king, who is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, in whose hands are all the ends of the earth, who alone is to be feared and adored, in whom we live, and move, and from whose bounty you have all that you possess. the Gospel, Truth saith to his disciples, 'Sine me nihil potestis facere;' and if we must believe that the disciples Peter and Paul, Andrew, and the other apostles, without him could do nothing, how much more all we who in comparison with them are as nothing! Let not, then, thy heart be ever lifted up like the king of Babylon, but remember David the holy king, and imitate him, who was lowly in his own eyes, who though possessed of the kingdom of Israel, without contradiction danced before the ark of the Lord. Follow this humility, that with David you may pass from a kingdom to a kingdom, and from an empire which ends with time, may be removed to that heavenly empire in which, with Jesus Christ our Lord, you may deserve to reign for evermore."* To this representation of the kingly office in the twelfth century the type of every other condition was analogous. In no state were mere natural virtues or natural motives deemed sufficient. "What hope have merchants?" asks the disciple in a dialogue ascribed to St. Anselm. The master replies, Small; for by fraud and perjury they acquire the greatest part of what they gain. Do they not frequently visit holy places and give great alms? They do all this in order that God may increase their goods, and that they may preserve them, and in these they have their reward; for of such men it is said, qui confidunt in multitudine divitiarum

แ

suarum.

Like sheep they shall be brought down, and death shall feed upon them. What do you think of various artificers? Looking at the difficulties of their state, he replies, nearly all perish, for they work iniquity. Have players and jesters hope? None for with intention they are ministers of Satan. Of them it is said, Deum non cognoverunt: Deus sprevit eos. The number of the saved will be few, but yet Christ will gather his elect from men of all classes, as he hath already assumed some from

• Alexand. Abb. de Rebus Gest. Rogerii.

amongst thieves." What more legitimate in nature's eye than the pursuit of pleasure, if it can be obtained without injuring others? Yet the justice of the Catholic discipline was not satisfied with that limitation, for cupidity was defined by Raban Maur to be the desire of enjoying any thing, not on account of God.*

He

It is related of Atticus, that his humanity. and goodness did not spring from nature alone, which we all obey, but also from learning. "He did these things," says a Roman author, "not alone through nature, but also from principle; for he had so imbibed the principles of the chief philosophers, that he made use of them to direct his life, and not for the sake of ostentation. was a great imitator of the manners of his ancestors, and a lover of antiquity, which he understood thoroughly and explained in several books, than which nothing can be sweeter to those who have any desire of being acquainted with illustrious men." Making the proper substitutions, we may say it was thus with Catholic manners in the ages of faith. The force of traditionary duties and modes of life was felt in every rank of society, so that few could wholly resist it. While it was the object of legislators to establish a harmony between the moral destiny of man and his social condition, it was felt as the honour of families to transmit from generation to generation, rules and customs, and manners corresponding to the doctrines and spirit of the Catholic Church. Let us hope that the justice and propriety which belong to the genuine manners of a Catholic state, which are of custom, not of invention, social not individual, may never be worn out and forgotten amongst us, that in our cities some few aged ones may even still be found in whom the old-time chides the new. It is not by a written law or private speculation that early hours, assiduity in the church morning and evening, simplicity and peace in all the detail of domestic life, personal familiarity with the poor, catholicity in conversation and habits of living, such as we find it in countries where it is generally diffused, can be enforced. It is by the tradition of families and the force of common opinion and example. Reader, this wish will be for yourself and for all that can make life dear to you; for after having once had experience of the supernatural manners of Catholic society, would it not be tearful, like being

Rabani Mauri de Institutione Clericorum, Lib. III. cap. 13.