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speres and sheldes flaming agenst the sonne, the baners, standards, and stremers wavering with the wynd. Then he sayd to hymself, Saynt Mary! what people are these? are they mortal men, or aungells of Paradyse? whoo may endure agenst them? A! Fraunce! an honurable country above al other; blessed be thou that nourishest up suche people * !"

The miniature painted by Renè d'Anjou in his book "Mortifiement de vaine Plaisance," to illustrate the spiritual combat there enjoined, will shew how chivalrous imagery was employed to explain and recommend divine graces. In the Songe du Vergier, the clerk says that when "Aucun est fait clerc il est chevalier celeste; et aussi est il ordonne son corps et son ame au service de Dieu." The proud and pedantic modern, who concludes from these instances, that the ancients were gross in their philosophy, does only expose the shallowness of his own judgment. His conventional phrases and circumlocutory terms, if he conceives that they approach to an expression of celestial things, do rather convict him of grossness and want of spiritual elevation. What belongs to heaven is beyond the language and the thoughts of mortals. They err not in describing the angels invested with such perfection and beauty as are capable of being expressed by speech, or figured in earthly forms. The moderns have gained nothing in spirituality by killing fancy, the elevating organ of nature, but as Solgar confesses they have only "lost themselves in the low level of vulgar sagacity; to live without God, and to glory in so living. Was it not the time of the most lovely flower of mankind, when God as a friend, as man, walked with man." The ancients had the most intellectual and sublime visions respecting the divine presence. The old scholastic doctors were almost too scrupulous in their judgment of the common opinions of men, as when William of Paris complains "that men cannot conceive the angels unless in the form of young men with wings, and that therefore, from this custom of eyes, some men are unable to discern their own souls † ;" and when that subtile divine, Scotus, expresses his opinion,

P. 414.
De Anima.

† Vide Rodriguez Christ. Perfection, Trait. VI. c. 2.

that " to understand and know objects by sensible representations passing through the gate of sense, and striking our imagination, is a punishment from original sin." Macrobius argued that "To teach truth by fictitious scenes and similitudes, is not contrary to philosophy, appealing to the example of Cicero and Plato * ;" and was not the same plan pursued by our blessed Saviour in his sublime parables and discourses? St. Anselm says, that when he was a little boy, hearing how God was seated on high in glory, he suspected, like a child bred among mountains, that heaven rested on their summits, in which was the court of God, and that by ascending their sides men might arrive there t. How beautiful, and in a child, how innocent was this idea? It may be well for profound theologians like Holden, to entertain purely abstract notions of heaven †, but it is certain that the greater part of mankind will gain nothing by an attempt to follow him. The moderns have only a vacant stare and a laugh for those old paintings of angels in glittering panoply, with wings of gorgeous feathers, weighing, sinking, and raising, the souls, of heavenly courts with walls of jaspar, and grottos of crystal; and yet it may be argued that these very forms serve the purpose of philosophy better than these proud and foolish discourses, in which things that surpass expression are set forth in long and empty sentences, deceiving men with the semblance of knowledge. A late writer has thought so, when he says, "How passing excellent may we hope to find the realities from which the offspring of our imagination are the shadows! seeing that offspring all shadowy as they are will yet often be finer than any sensible existence §." It is only ignorance and a shallow judgment which would condemn the romantic holy legend, and the strange but sublime figure in the painting. Eusebius Nieremberg, the Spanish Jesuit, relating a legend from Peter Cluniacensis, says, "When we read such like stories from the representations therein contained, we are to raise our thoughts to the substance therein represented

In Somn. Scip. 1. 2.

and

+ Eadmerus in vit. S. Anselm. Proposit. 12 ad finem Divinæ Fidei Analys. § Guesses at Truth. Treatise on the difference between the temporal and eternal book,

IV. c. x. 2.

with respect to the strange and improbable forms which excite astonishment, hear what a profound modern has said, "Not seldom the very majesty of the principle makes its sallies appear more extravagant; the higher the tree of virtue rises, the wider will be the range of its oscillations and in this sense is there but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. There is a sportive playfulness in true magnanimity, that, feeling the inadequateness of any earthly raiment, it is well pleased to clothe itself, like the godlike Ulysses, in rags "."

XXII. Sismondi says in one of his works, that in northern countries, or under the tropics, men may fear the Deity, and tremble at the idea of an evil principle. "Mais devant qui trembleroit-on en Italie;" he continues," where every thing smiles on man; How should all men's thoughts be directed to another life, when the present is so sweet †?" The religion of which we attempt to give an outline, admitted of no such geographical limits : for the heart of man was not formed to be satisfied with even the prospects of Italian landscape. "Where is God whom I love?" said St. Augustin, "I asked the earth, and it said, I am not him. I asked the sea, and the depths, and the creeping things, and they said we are not your God." Interrogavi auras flabiles et inquit universus aer cum incolis suis: Fallitur Anaximenes, non Deus ." It is so with every earthly object. Either it perishes, and we lament it, or our taste changes, and it is no longer able to give us pleasure. It is not our God! this is the conclusion of Joseph of Exeter, the poet, who was contemporary of the Paladins, and who had seen life in all its variety, having left the vallies of Devonshire for the holy land, where he had experience of war under the walls of Ascalon.

66

"Heu, heu quam tenui nutant mortalia filo.

Nil homini fixum; Fortunæ munera blandæ,
Insidias, non dona reor: semperque timebis
Syrenum turbæ simileis, sub sole sereno
Nubem, sub risu lacrymas, sub melle venenum.
Si tibi res, fallit casus; si forma, senectus;
Si vires, morbus; si nomen grande, litura
Postera; et in nullis fati constantia donis §."

Guesses at Truth.
Confess. x. 6.

sum

+ Hist. des repub. Ital. tom. VII. p. 4. § De Bello Trojano, lib. v. 511.

Fame and honour cannot stand the trial of St. Augustin's question. "Many thousand years are past," says Nieremberg," and no man knew thee, and of those who shall be born hereafter, few will remember thee; and although thou remainest in the memory of those, yet they also in the end must die, and with them, thine and their own memory must perish, and thou shalt, as before thou wert, continue a whole eternity, without being known or celebrated by any." How the heart shrinks from such solitude! Fame and honour are not our God! Shall we say that friendship has a higher claim? Let us first reply to the question of Aristotle: "In those friendships formed from early youth; if one should continue a boy in mind and disposition, (that is, should retain the simplicity of youth) and the other should become a famous man, (engrossed with the world, and with the cares of a political or ambitious life), how can they continue to be friends, who neither admire nor love the same things *." Alas! What can we reply to this question? What remains, but that we cry out with St. Augustin, "Tu fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te t."

The beauty of nature which seemed to Sismondi sufficient to induce an indifference to a future state, was regarded by the heathen philosopher as calculated to encourage the soul in its hopes of beholding more perfect beauty. "Hæc enim pulcritudo etiam in terris patriam illam et avitam, ut ait Theophrastus, philosophiam, cognitionis cupiditate incensam, excitavit. Præcipue vero fruentur ea, qui tum etiam, cum has terras incolentes, circumfusi erant caligine, tamen acie mentis dispicere cupiebant. Etenim si nunc aliquid assequi se putant, qui ostium ponti viderunt, et eas angustias, per quas penetravit ea, quæ est nominata,

'Argo, quia Argivi in ea, delecti viri,

Vecti, petebant pellem inauratam arietis:'

aut ii, qui Oceani freta illa viderunt,

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Europam Libyamque rapax ubi dividit unda :'

quod tandem spectaculum fore putamus, cum totam terram contueri licebit, ejusque cum situm, formam, circum+ Confess. i. 1.

Ethic. ix. 3.

scriptionem, tum et habitabiles regiones, et rursum omni cultu propter vim frigoris aut caloris vacantes* ?" The philosophers of the church likewise taught men to derive heavenly wisdom and peace, and hopes, from beholding all that was beautiful and admirable on the earth, and in nature. William of Paris calls the Word incarnate, "Facies ultimæ pulchritudinis." St. Thomas Aquinas says, "The great diversity of creatures in all the order of the world hath no other aim but to represent the Divinity by some image whatsoever: and insomuch as the sovereign essence is infinite, it was expedient to produce many things, that the one might supply the other's defects, and all conspire to express some character of divine perfections, so that God beholdeth himself figured in the variety of beauties which fill earth and heaven." Caussin applies this, "Would you behold God? observe these exquisite flowers, these waves which curl on the current of rivers, these gentle western blasts which bear comfort and health on their wings; these vast seas, that immense extent of plains, these snow-capt mountains, all that is seen, all that is heard, cease not to recount to us the love of our Father +." When men loved. God "they did not love beauty of person, nor the loveliness of the seasons, nor the splen dour of light; they did not love the melody of the voice, nor the sweet smell of flowers or perfumes; they did not love delicacy of taste, nor any thing which was subjected to the senses, but when they loved God, they loved a beauty and a loveliness far exceeding all that mortal eyes ever beheld, a light more powerful than all light, a voice surpassing every voice, a sweetness passing all sweetness." So Albertus Magnus says of the vision of God, "it shall be music to the ear, sweetness to the taste, balsam to the smell, flowers to the touch. There shall be the clear light of sum mer, the pleasantness of the spring, the abundance of autumn, and the repose of winter §." "If men should give to one person," says Eusebius Nieremberg, "all the wisdom of Solomon, all the sciences of Plato and Aristotle, all the strength of Aristomenes and Milo, all the beauty of Paris and Adonis, it would have no comparison to the delight

Cicero Tuscul. i. 20.
Vide August. Confess. x. 6.

Holy Court, 552. § In Comp. Theol. L. 7. c. 7.

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