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comes us to aspire, with all humility, to that eternal joy, where there is no fear of death, no temptation of the devil; where there is youth without age, light without darkness, gladness without sorrow, rest without labour; where the vernal roses bloom, where nothing decays; where groans, or lamentation, or weeping is never heard; where pain is never seen or felt, where no degree of sorrow or bitterness is found; where the thunder does not roar, nor the lightnings flash; where is heard the constant harmony of angels and archangels in the presence of the supreme King. Wherefore, dearest men, let us remember how short, sinful, frail, fleeting, wretched, and deceitful, the life in which we live to all who love it; that in trouble we live, in sorrow we die; and that, after this life, the miserable sinners who now refuse to do penance for their transgression * and to give alms, shall be led away to everlasting torments. Thus the afflicted soul shall be suspended over the hot fire, shall be beaten, bound, and sent into utter darkness, -the fate especially of those who show no mercy in this life towards other sinners. Let us direct our minds towards a better state, and strive for an everlasting kingdom with Christ and his saints. Amen."

The preceding discourse is sufficiently rude; displaying no enlightened notions of religion, little taste, less judgment. It is vehement, enthusiastic, unconnected, seeking to amend rather by fleeting impressions than by established principles; calculated for present effect, rather than for permanent utility; appealing to transient feeling, not to sober reasoning. How different this strain from the sober, rational, yet not less earnest tone of St. Cesarius of Arles! + Doubtless, however, the motive of fear in that age would be most powerful; the minds of the people in general might probably be too hardened to be affected by one more amiable, by the principle of love; they might be more easily terrified from sin than allured to virtue. The Saxon ecclesiastics have their imitators in our own day. Whoever wishes to see more of our ancient vernacular literature may turn to Mr. Turner's History, valuable with all its faults, to Wanley on the Saxon MS.; to Conybeare's Illustrations of Saxon Poetry.‡

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"Who would not repent." Turner's translation.

+ Vol. II. p. 226.

Liber Legum Ecclesiasticarum, p. 171. (apud Wilkins, Leges AngloSaxonicæ.)

Before we leave this subject, however, we must say a few words in praise of archbishop Elfric:

"It had been the frequent complaint of Alfred, that every species of learning was concealed under the obscurity of a foreign language; and Elfric, after the example of the king, laboured to instruct the ignorance of his countrymen, by translating and publishing several treatises in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Of these the most celebrated are his versions of different parts of the Holy Scriptures, and his three books of catholic homilies. As a translator he cannot claim the praise of fidelity. Many passages of the original he has thought proper to omit: some he has condescended to improve by explanatory additions; and in others, where he conceives the Latin text to be obscure, he has not scrupled to substitute his own interpretation for the expressions of the inspired writer. Through the whole of the work he appears to have been alarmed lest his illiterate countrymen should assume the conduct of the ancient patriarchs as a justification of their own irregularities. To prevent so dangerous an error, he anxiously inculcates the difference between the Old and the New Testaments; remarks that the former was a figure of the latter; and exhorts his reader to observe the law of Moses according to the spirit, that of Christ according to the letter. His homilies were written with the benevolent intention of assisting those clergymen who were too indolent or too illiterate to compose sermons for themselves. They are not original compositions. The only merit to which he aspires, is that of selecting, from preceding writers, passages appropriate to the gospel of the day; and of presenting them in a language adapted to the capacity of his hearers. As soon as the work was finished, he dedicated it to the archbishop Sigari, and humbly desired him to correct every error which his superior learning might discover. The labours of Elfric were not unrewarded. From the monastery of Abingdon he was transferred to the school at Winchester, and was successively made visitor of Cernly, abbot of St. Albans, bishop of Wilton, and archbishop of Canterbury."

Elfric was not the only ecclesiastic who translated from the Latin into the vulgar tongue. Bede himself, as we shall see in the relation of his life in the present chapter, was engaged on the gospel of St. John, when death summoned him away; Alfred the Great attempted that of the Psalms, but died before half his task was

completed; and before his time the priest Aldred of Northumbria gave an interlineary version of the four gospels, now in the British Museum. Elfric's versions were very considerable; they comprehended Judges, part of Kings, Esther, Judith, and the Maccabees-proof enough that even, at this age, the books which criticism must regard as apocryphal, were received as canonical.*

2. But it is in her Latin literature that the chief glory of England must be sought during the Anglo-Saxon times. Fortunate has it been for the interests of learning, if not of religion, that the performance of the church service in the Latin tongue was obligatory. "For the instruction of the people," says Lingard, "the epistle and gospel were read, and the sermon was delivered in their native tongue; but God was always addressed by the ministers of religion in the language of Rome. The missionaries, who, from whatever country they came, had been accustomed to this rite from their infancy, would have deemed it a degradation of the sacrifice to subject it to the caprice and varieties of a barbarous idiom; and their disciples, who felt not the thirst of innovation, were proud to tread in the footsteps of their teachers." Though service in an unknown tongue is an evil, we know not whether, with these peculiar opinions as to the mass, the Roman catholics are not right. The mass was a sacrifice, in which, though the people were exhorted to join, they were not expected to repeat all the prayers of the priest; but mental ones, more suitable to their wants and comprehension. It is certain, too, that, though they were present to adore and to pray, the chief means of edification were understood to consist in preaching, catechetical instruction, confession, penance, and the sacraments. Whether this policy was good or bad, is no concern of ours: it was at least consistent with itself. What follows is more to the point:" The practice has been severely reprobated by the reformed theologians; but it was fortunate for

Lingard, Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, p. 422. See also Wanley's MSS. passim.

mankind that the apostles of the northern nations were less wise than their modern critics. Had they adopted in the liturgy the language of their proselytes, the literature would probably have perished with the empire of Rome. By preserving the use of the Latin tongue, they imposed on the clergy the necessity of study, kept alive the spirit of improvement, and transmitted to future generations the writings of the classics, and the remnants of profane and ecclesiastical history." There can, indeed, be no doubt that to this policy of the Roman catholic church we are indebted for much of our modern civilisation. The functions of the priesthood necessarily required some portion of learning: they were exhorted to study the holy scripture, and the canons of the church: hence, if they must understand the service at all, they must have some acquaintance with the language in which it was contained. The experience of many centuries has proved beneficial to literature. The clergy have not always, nor indeed often, been satisfied with the moderate degree of learning necessary to interpret the service, or even to peruse the scriptures: they have recurred to the ancient fathers, and they have deviated into the wide field not only of classical, but of profane literature and history. Go wherever they might, the missionaries carried with them the torch of civilisation, often of erudition; and to their instructions, to their example, is modern Europe indebted for its intellectual glory. But for them, the treasures of the ancients would never have been transmitted to us: they preserved the originals; they multiplied by transcription the copies of the immortal authors, and rendered these authors intelligible from generation to generation. In this noble labour, the monks were particularly conspicuous. To those of England, Germany owes a vast debt of gratitude. They not only introduced the gospel into that wide empire, but from their monastery of Fulda* they diffused, as

*For the foundation of this celebrated monastery, and the labours of St. Boniface and other English missionaries, see Vol. II. p. 193, &c.

from a centre, the light of knowledge on every side. But that light England must have had before she could impart it to others. With St. Augustine arrived the dawn of a new glory. Of the books which he brought, or which pope St. Gregory transmitted to him, some are still extant in our public libraries. At Canterbury a school was immediately established: East Anglia had soon another; while several youths flocked to Ireland, a country comparatively free from political convulsion, to prosecute their studies in tranquillity. As the other kingdoms of the heptarchy received the faith of Christ, they also received a desire of knowledge, and were soon provided with schools and teachers. Both the monasteries and the colleges of secular clergy were filled with students. Of this mental culture Augustine and his companions laid the foundation only: the structure was raised by the hands of St. Theodore and Adrian the abbot. Though Theodore was sixty-six on his elevation to the see of Canterbury, he exhibited all the vigour of youth in the improvement of the people, no less than in the reformation of the clergy. Eminently versed in the languages of Greece and Rome, in all the literature and all the science of the period, in history civil and ecclesiastical, he and his friend made Kent the common fountain whence knowledge was poured over the land. The thanes, who had hitherto trampled on every species of mental improvement, now sent their children to be educated in the monasteries; several princes were soon ranked among the scholars of the period; and those who had no such ambition, had one scarcely less useful, that of patronising learning in others. To the success of Theodore and the abbot of St. Augustine in the noblest work ever undertaken by man, we have the unquestionable evidence of the venerable Bede, who says that some of their scholars were alive when he wrote, and were as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in the Saxon. "Never," he emphatically adds, "since the Angles arrived in Britain, were there more happy times

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