the divided Churches always retained the same principle of veneration for Scripture, as interpreted by the doctrine of the universal Church in all past ages, and sincerely endeavoured to be re-united to their brethren in Christ.

CHAPTER X.

ON THE RISE OF ABUSES AND CORRUPTIONS.

A.D. 320-680.

THE strong faith of the early Christians in some instances degenerated into credulity. Accustomed to the contemplation of the miracles recorded in the holy Scriptures, and still continuing to hear of occasional miracles wrought for the conversion of the heathen, they received with too ready a credence many tales of wonders and signs which superstition or imposture spread abroad. In western Europe, the ignorance of a long night of political barbarism and warfare rendered the multitude prone to the reception of such errors. Men of eminent sanctity were supposed to have the power of working miracles by their prayers; and the veneration which attached to their persons when living followed them beyond the grave.

The Church has not always been gifted with a spirit of wisdom and foreknowledge to discern the future abuses of opinions and practices, which it originally permitted without reproof. Could the pious fathers of the fourth century, who in their orations apostrophised the departed saints and martyrs, and called for their prayers to God, have foreseen the abuses to which this practice was to lead; could they have known that these expressions of an ardent,

though somewhat unregulated feeling, were to induce others, in process of time, to adopt such invocations as a stated portion of their daily worship-to lead in later ages to actual prayers addressed to the saints themselves, and to cause such prayers and invocations almost to supplant the worship of God among the ignorant or superstitious,-they would have carefully avoided the introduction of a practice so dangerous to true religion. Yet during the period before us, the invocation of saints, however superfluous and unwise, neither usurped so large a portion of the worship of Christians, nor was in itself so censurable, as it became in after-ages. It consisted simply in addresses to the saints to pray to God for us; nor is there any evidence that it was a universal practice. The invocation of angels was directly prohibited by the council of Laodicea, in the fourth century; yet in the seventh it was introduced into some litanies of the western Church. The invocation of saints also appeared for the first time in public worship in these formularies.

The same affection, the same veneration, with which the spirits of the saints and martyrs were regarded by the early Christians, attended their earthly remains; and the same credulity of individuals led to the circulation of an opinion that even their inanimate relics could procure blessings for those who touched them with faith, since the dead bones of the prophet Elisha, the hem of our Lord's garment, and the handkerchiefs from St. Paul's body, had wrought miracles. Hence the relics of martyrs and saints were, in the fourth and following centuries, regarded with very great veneration in many parts of the Church; and they gradually even became temptations to the ignorant and enthusiastic, who too willingly received the tales of marvels which they were said to have worked, and sometimes seemed inclined to forget the Author

and Giver of all good things, in their admiration of the gifts which they attributed to his creatures. The desire of possessing such relics became so great in the fifth and following centuries, that it led dishonest men to produce a number of spurious relics; so that, after the lapse of some ages, it became almost impossible to distinguish the true from the false. The custom of placing relics in churches, which began in the fourth or fifth century, and became universal in the seventh, also contributed to swell the number of false relics. No one will deny that the remains of martyrs and holy men ought to be treated with honour and respect; but when this assumes the character of superstitious or idolatrous worship, the Church is bound to remove the cause of such abuses. It was this that led the Church of England, in the sixteenth century, to remove the alleged relics of saints,—a measure which was justified by a strong necessity.

It was a pious and natural feeling of love, which led many Christians, in the fourth and following centuries, to make pilgrimages to visit the scenes of our Saviour's life and death, and the tombs of the martyrs and saints whose virtues had adorned Christianity. But this custom led to serious abuses: it led clergy as well as laity to forsake the sphere of their appointed duties, and to consume their time in wandering over the earth. After the period of which I am now speaking, the evil increased much; and St. Boniface, about 750, complained of the disgrace which religion suffered from the sinful lives of many persons who had undertaken such journeys. This practice even became one means by which the ancient penitential discipline was subverted; for it was customary with some bishops, after the period now before us, to commute the lengthened canonical penances for pilgrimages to Jerusalem or to some other holy place.

The use of pictures or sculptures representing our

Saviour, the chief events of sacred history, or the saints, was not unfrequent in the fifth and sixth centuries. These pictures were only intended for ornament, for the information of the ignorant, or to excite pious recollections: all worship to them was forbidden. St. Epiphanius, A.D. 400, tore the vail of a church on which the picture of a saint was embroidered. Serenus, bishop of Marseilles, about 600, destroyed images which the people worshipped; and Pope Gregory the Great, while he questioned the propriety of the act, yet equally disapproved of the abuse it was designed to prevent.

The evils of which I have been speaking were all engrafted on opinions or practices in themselves blameless or excusable; and it was frequently difficult to distinguish precisely between right and wrong; to trace the boundary between piety and superstition. But as the Scriptures were still understood by many of the people, we have reason to believe that such evils could not yet have been of a very serious character or wide prevalence.

Another evil was slowly growing, at the close of the period now under consideration. When Christianity was first disseminated, the earliest gift of the Holy Spirit was that of tongues, in order that every nation might hear in its own language the wonderful works of God, and that every tongue might confess that Jesus is the Lord. Accordingly, at first, every nation employed its own language in the worship of God; for, as St. Paul said to those who celebrated the eucharist in a language unknown to their hearers, "When thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen, at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest?"* Guided by these apos

* 1 Cor. xiv. 16.

tolical instructions, the Greeks used their own language in divine service. The Churches of Syria and Mesopotamia used the Syriac language; the native Egyptians Coptic; the Grecian colonies at Alexandria, and in Sicily and Naples, prayed in Greek. The Ethiopic was used in Abyssinia, the Armenian in Armenia, Sclavonic in Russia, and Illyric in Illyria. The Latin was vernacular in Italy, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and was employed in the liturgy of those Churches. Even after the Goths and other barbarous nations had invaded the West, the mass of the Christian population still spoke the Latin language; and for several ages it did not become so corrupted by the admixture of foreign words as to be unintelligible to the people. The same observation may be applied generally to the eastern Churches, in which the language of the liturgy long continued to be more or less understood by the people. The period in which it ceased to be so, must be placed after the ages now under consideration; but an unwisely-applied reverence for the ancient liturgies of the Church led, in the sixth and following centuries, to the adoption of Latin services in the newly-founded Churches of England, Germany, and the northern nations; a measure which was certainly much less excusable than the retention of the ancient language in the other parts of the West. It is true, indeed, that the validity of the sacraments was not vitally affected by their being administered in a language understood only by the minister, provided that the recipients were instructed in the meaning of the essential rites and prayers, and taught to unite their supplications with those of the Church: but this could only be an indifferent substitute for that united worship in voice and heart, which the Church had universally received from the apostles; and it had a tendency to cause, in the less-informed part of the community, a blind and