or 'The Treatises of St. Cyprian,' and the 'Homilies of St. Chrysostom.'

Such are the main circumstances of the pending controversy concerning the alleged pre-eminent sanctity of the ancient church, and the authority assumed to attach to its opinions and practices; and such is the drift of the objections, almost in every instance, that have been advanced against what I have already written. Put the unquestionable evidence of a very low state of morals, in the ancient church, in the room of the evidence adduced, as to the actual state of the American churches; and put the existence, and the attested corruptions of monkery and asceticism in the room of the American slavery; and then the two cases are logically parallel. In the preceding numbers I hage affirmed, and have I think proved, that the ancient church, notwithstanding the piety and devotedness of many of its members, was very far from being such as its modern admirers have assumed; and that several special reasons utterly forbid our bowing to it submissively, or receiving from it even what is good, without the most watchful caution. My opponents have rushed forward with sundry proofs tending to show That things were not quite so bad as has been affirmed!'

We shall presently examine, with the utmost strictness, the alleged hypothesis, and the alleged theory, on the ground of which church principles may be thought to be defensible, even if the ground of fact were to be abandoned. But we have now to adduce evidence touching the fact. Let me repeat it in our present argument we are not compelled to prove the nicene era to have been worse than any other :-our inference stands firm unless it can be shown to have been far better.

That extraordinary corruption of principles and manners which is confessed to have attached to the church at the close of the sixth century, is not easily to be reconciled with the supposition of an extraordinary purity attaching to the fourth. But when the proof of this wide-spread profligacy, and of an almost universal diffusion of fanaticism and superstition, is found to belong to the middle of the fifth, then such a supposition appears scarcely credible. Could that system have been a wisely constructed one, or could it have been in a healthful condition, if, instead of carrying itself

forward, at least during a half century, it was instantly succeeded by the most extreme dissoluteness? If the church of the fourth century was in fact what some now seem to imagine, how came it in the fifth to be what we find it? Had all continuity of principle been suddenly destroyed? did the sons universally disgrace the training they had received from their fathers? It will be found that we are not compelled to adopt any such strange supposition the transition was natural, and by no means abrupt. Nothing had happened but what might have been anticipated. To imagine that the Gospel, when despoiled of its glory, might yet operate efficaciously in reforming the world, would be to assume that even its first principles are, in a practical sense, matters of indifference.

:

It need not here be shown what were the morals and the manners of the civilized world under the influence of the polytheism of Greece and Rome. By the promulgation of christianity, during the first hundred years from the death of the apostles, a visible and hopeful impression was made upon the sentiments and practices of, perhaps, a half of the community, in all countries around the Mediterranean. The superstition and fanaticism with which we have now to do (the church principles of the Oxford Tract writers) then gained an ascendency, superseding everywhere (a few spots excepted) the doctrine and morality of Christ; and at the end of another hundred years the nations are found to be in full course toward that stage of desperate corruption which they had reached in the fifth century.

What the state of morals really was, within the professedly christian world, in the east, in the west, and in north Africa, about the middle of the fifth century, or at the moment when the nicene divines had just receded from their places, we may learn, in all its details, from the pages of a writer who was in his prime, at that time; and who, although not often mentioned by modern writers, and actually read, perhaps, by very few, better deserves a perusal than many of his more favoured predecessors. We shall find however that his singular merits have not escaped the notice of eminent critics.

SALVIAN, a presbyter (not bishop, as some have erroneously affirmed) of Marseilles, is believed to have finished the treatise on

which his reputation chiefly rests, and which we are about to cite, in the year 440. He survived the publication of it many years; although not to the period which has absurdly been asserted. The report he makes of the condition of the christian world belongs therefore to the early part of the fifth century; that is to say, the time when Augustine's principal works were composed. Salvian was a native of Cologne; but he had resided some time at Treves, where he married a lady of gentile parentage, by whom he had a daughter. Travelling south, he came first to Vienne, then to Marseilles, where he was ordained priest; and in consequence, after the fashion of the age, he separated himself from his wife.*

The romish writers, and Bellarmine especially, resent Salvian's honesty, and such is the feeling which connects the champions of the same cause, in every age, that it is probable his testimony will be resisted by our modern Bellarmines. Meantime impartial writers acknowledge his integrity, and assign him no mean praise. So much of Cave's account of him I subjoin as concerns our present purpose. Gennadius, also of Marseilles, and who flourished a few years later, says of him, 'humanâ et divina literaturâ instructus, et, ut absque invidiâ loquar, episcoporum magister.' 'Eximius Scriptor, Salvianus, sane diligenti lectione dignus est.' Joseph Scaliger calls him, 'Scriptorem Christianissimum.'-'Salvianum vero qui pluris faciat quàm ipse facio,' says Casaubon, ' non facilè invenias.'‡

This writer, by his good judgment, his scriptural fervour, and manifest sincerity, as well as by the proofs he affords of an acquaintance with the open world, inspires confidence. He was

The joint epistle of Salvian and his wife Palladia (Epist. iv.) to her parents, who were incensed at the vow of continence which their daughter and granddaughter had been persuaded to take, is every way curious, as illustrating the temper of the times, and as a singular instance of eloquent ingenuity, employed to contravene at once the dictates of nature, and the express enactment of God.-1 Cor. vii. 5.

+ Salvianus, gente non quidem Afer, ut quidam volunt, sed Gallus, ipsomet Galliam solum patrium appellante.. Claruit ab anno 440, et deinceps magis magisque inclarescere cœpit.

videtur, sæculo. Hist. Lit. p. 279.

.....

.....

Obiit grandævus, exeunte, ut

Quoted by Blount, Censura, p. 213, and by the editor of Salvian, C. Rit

tershusius.

not the mere creature of the cloister; for, as a layman, he had mixed with men of all conditions, on even terms. He did not enter the church till middle life, and he therefore brought with him, not only a personally-acquired knowledge of the world; but a free and ripened judgment. It is true that, at least in his after years, he conformed himself to the distorted notions prevalent in his times; and, in a treatise (Contra Avaritiam) of later date than the one now to be quoted, he goes a great length in urging those false maxims of morality which the church had then adopted.

The Treatise on Providence, or, de Gubernatione Dei, appeared ten years only after the death of Augustine; twenty-eight years after the publication of the Civitas Dei; twenty years after the death of Jerome; and during the life-time of several writers ordinarily appealed to as authorities, along with the nicene fathers, such as Isidore, Vincent of Lerins, Theodoret, Socrates, Sozomen, and Leo the Great. We are therefore in this instance coming as near to the nicene age as we ought to come, if we would fairly estimate the moral condition of the church, considered as the product of the doctrines it promoted, and which were its characteristics, and which, in the main, are the very points now in controversy, and now in course of being substituted for the doctrines of the Reformation.

Salvian, like Augustine when he composed the Civitas Dei, felt the weight of those objections which, it appears, were then frequently urged against the christian doctrine of a particular providence, and which drew their force from the disorders that troubled, and from the wide-spread corruptions that disgraced, the then professedly christian world. If there be a sovereign and righteous administration of human affairs, and if this administration be in the hands of Him of whom you say that he is ever with the church, and is now speaking through its ministers, how are we to understand the actual course of affairs, or what are we to think of the condition of the church itself?' Augustine's reply to such objections is elaborate and refined. Salvian takes lower ground, and, in a style of plain good sense, meets the cavil in this way. You think there can be no divine government of human affairs, inasmuch as the professed servants of God obtain no favour at his hands; and that the church itself is left to its fate.-But

see what christians actually are, everywhere, and then ask whether, under the administration of a righteous and holy God, such men can expect any favour? What happens every day, under our eyes, is rather an evidence of the doctrine of Providence, as it exhibits the divine displeasure, provoked by the debauchery of the church itself.'

quid est aliud quàm exacer

The purport of very many pages of this treatise, which however it will be necessary to cite at some length, is condensed in the following sentences: 'Quotusquisque est,' asks Salvian, 'qui non se luto fornicationis involvat? Et quid plura? Grave et luctuosum est quod dicturus sum. IPSA DEI ECCLESIA, quæ in omnibus esse debet placatrix Dei, batrix Dei? aut, præter paucissimos quosdam, qui mala fugiunt, quid est aliud penè omnis cœtus christianorum, quam sentina vitiorum ? . . . . . In hanc enim morum probrositatem propè omnis ecclesiastica plebs redacta est, ut in cuncto populo Christiano, genus quodammodo sanctitatis sit, minus esse vitiosum !'

Assuredly no such expressions as these could be applied, even by the most splenetic modern writer, to the christian community of our own times, and in this country. The most prejudiced censor of the religious world,' if he knows what he is speaking of, must admit that the general tone of morals in England and Scotland gives good evidence of the efficacious influence of christianity; and that there are many more than the 'paucissimi quidam,' in all communions among us, whose lives, though not faultless, are,

in the main, pure. If then Salvian's representations shall appear

to be correct, there will be no room to deny the superiority, as to piety and morality, of our own times: in other words, it will be a simple matter of fact that the Reformation has worked better than did nicene church principles ;—that christianity, as restored by the Reformers, has gradually regenerated the countries which have freely entertained it; while, on the contrary, christianity, as debased by the nicene divines, after quickly spending its healthful forces, only served to hurry the nations downward into-to use Salvian's language, a sink of debauchery.' In taking this review we shall become better qualified to form an opinion of the wisdom of the enterprise now in progress for carrying the church backward, fourteen hundred years.