that it is, we are rather induced to adopt a different conclusion; and albeit, with astonishment we find ourselves arrived at a fresh perception of the wisdom of our ancestors from having followed this path, which seemed at first so unlikely to terminate any where but in a fanciful and fruitless theory. In concluding these remarks on the humanity and moral graces of this religion, it is essential that we observe how, while men were thus humane and moral, morality was not their religion. The clergy did not preach upon keeping accounts and the way to succeed in life, upon attention to business, and the comfort of having lived decently, and of having a good character; but they preached on the four ends of man, on the delay of conversion, on the sacraments, on the commands of the decalogue, on the laws of the Church, on the mysteries of faith, on deadly sin. This naturally leads to a reflection on the spirituality and wisdom which produced such fruits; nor let it be thought foreign from the design and nature of these wanderings, to dwell upon this object; for, as a famous knight says, knights were to know all things: there have been such in former ages who have delivered as ingenious and learned a sermon or oration at the head of an army, as if they had taken their degrees at the university of Paris:" from which he infers, "that the lance never dulled the pen, nor the pen the lance:" and Madame la Baronne de Staël has admitted that the knights were often excellent Christians *. At least, there is enough in the examples we have lately seen to suggest some reflections respecting this divine study. In the first place, then, what is the inference to be derived from our late enquiries respecting the chief and distinguishing characteristic of the religion of the Christian chivalry. "If a Christian," said St. Augustin, “doth not aim at perfection, he is in danger to lose himself eternally. Si dixeris sufficit periisti." "But then," says a religious man to the nobility of France, "God hath, as it were, engrafted perfection with his own hands upon the sweetest stock in the world. Ask, I pray, of all divines, Wherein lies perfection? Ask of religious men where they place it. In sack-cloth, or hair-shirts? They will answer you no. In the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience? no. These are most undoubted ways to perfection, but they * De L'Allemagne, I. c. 4. · are not properly perfection. In what then? In the love of God, which St. Irenæus calleth the most eminent of all the gifts of God *." So said St. Augustin. "Nihil omnino esse virtutem affirmaverim nisi summum amorem Deit." So St. Thomas, Henricus, and Scotus, place love as the basis of virtue. The Count of Stolberg quotes St. Paul, "Charitas Dei diffusa est in cordibus nostris per Spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis ;" and then says, "This love is that for which man was created. It is the element of the soul. Without a restoration of nature through grace it is not in man, although its shadow in the hearts and intercourse of men with each other moves in various forms. They are shades of the dead. The kind of love in natural men, which pursues after the objects of passion, or which is reflected in the enthusiasm of selfenjoyment, at our pretended inward beauty and perfection, seeks only itself. In course of time, that vision totally vanishes, and leaves us in the darkness of horrible night, in chaotic confusion, or else it gently fades away like a morning dream before the beaming sun of righteousness, and we find ourselves in perfect harmony, in our element, in love ‡." Hence St. Augustin 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 §.” 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 ||. All men were loved, propter Jesum, Jesus autem propter se ipsum q." It was esteemed "a greater happiness to love others than to be loved by them**." "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 Holy Court, I. 1. +De Moribus Ecclesiæ Catholicæ, I. 2. Geschichte der Religion, VI. 694. * Eadmerus in Vit. S. Anselmi. work of God *." 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 quàm 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 f." 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, 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. 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 cata logue 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, *Clemens Alexand. Stromat. IV. 13. + S. Anselmi Meditationes X. Eurip. Fragment. in Clem. Alexandrin. Stromat. iv. § Epist. ii. 41. that which is joined with love, in opposition to the informal or dead faith which is without love; according to the doctrine of St. Paul, that in Christ Jesus nothing availed but faith, " quæ per charitatem operatur † :” a distinction which was completely passed over by the inno vators 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. 66 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 therefore he has so clear a mind, and so quick in perceiving, that with very moderate instruction he learned more than can be said ‡." "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 §." "The soul is not created for any sensible good, it naturally even loves spiritual and insensible good ||." 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 Catechism ii, 2. + Ad Galat. v. 6. 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." "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. Augustin and St. Gregory, a distinction which St. Charles Borromeo directed his clergy to be careful in explaining to the people. St. Jerom 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. Augustin'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 +. 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. Cyrill, of Jerusalem, quoting the words of our Lord: Τοῦτό μου ἐστι τὸ σῶμα· adds, τίς τολμήσει ἀμφιβάλλειν λοιπόν; καὶ αὐτοῦ βεβαιωσαμένου καὶ εἰρηκότος, Τοῦτό μού ἐστι τὸ αἷμα· τίς ἐνδοιάσει ποτέ, λέγων μὴ εἶναι αὐτοῦ τὸ αἷμα † ; Above all they were careful not to require the testimony of the senses for the truth of these mysteries. "Quod loquitur," says St. Bernard, "spiritus 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 *Catechism, ii. 5. |