proposed by Augustine concerning the discipline to be established in the churches of England. In 597 Augustine, accompanied by a few monks, arrived in England as the missionary of the Pope, to teach the Anglo Saxon pagans a religion of love, peace, humility, and mercy. They thought themselves happy to be kindly received, and allowed food, shelter, and permission to expound their religion without molestation. In 601, only four years after, Augustine the missionary is bishop of London, authorized by his spiritual head the Pope to ordain other bishops, and to bring the British bishops under his ordinance; but they resisted alike the usurpations and the innovations of Rome, even to the death.*

*

In 602 Gregory wrote to all the bishops of the Byzacenian province, and also to Queen Brunehaut, who had employed his mediation to make peace with the empire; and he granted her some privileges which she had asked for two monasteries she had founded at Autun. There are in these privileges some extravagant clauses, which render them liable to the imputation of being false, or at least of the grossest falsification.

It is painful to see such a man as Gregory the First stooping to flattery, and yet it appears to be his leaning staff. Not content with flattering all the queens with whom he was in correspondence, including even the detestable Brunehaut; in 603 we find him adulating Phocas. This man having been treated with indignity by the Emperor Maurice, revolted, and took possession of the imperial throne, causing the emperor to be murdered, having first seen his five younger boys killed before his eyes; the eldest prince had been sent into Persia a short time before, but he too was taken and assassinated at Nicea. All the friends and relations of Maurice underwent the same fate, including the Empress Constantina and her three daughters, although the infamous Phocas had promised the Patriarch Cyriacus that they should be spared. Never, under the reign of any emperor, was there more innocent blood

* "The introduction of Christianity laid open to the Saxons a new field of literary labour, and its influence was exerted immediately on the national poetry. The minstrels now found that a song of Scripture lore was more attentively listened to than the traditional exploits of their own national heroes. The zeal of many of the more influential converts led them probably to encourage these compositions by all the means in their power." Some fragments of Saxon poetry still remain, and "among the many examples of the poetic feeling of the Saxons furnished by old historians, Bede gives us one which is peculiarly beautiful. When Paulinus preached the doctrines of Christ before the court of King Edwin, one of his nobles arose and said, "Thou hast seen, O king, when the fire blazed, and the hall was warm, and thou wast seated at the feast amidst thy nobles, whilst the winter storm raged without, and the snow fell, how some solitary sparrow has flown through, scarcely entered at one door before it disappeared by the other. Whilst it is in the hall it feels not the storm, but after the space of a moment it returns to whence it came, and thou beholdest it no longer, nor knowest where nor to what it may be exposed. Such, as it appears to me, is the life of man-a short moment of enjoyment, and we know not whence we came, nor whither we are going. If this new doctrine brings us any greater certitude of the future, I, for one, vote for its adoption."-Wright's Essay on the Literature and Learning of the Anglo-Saxons.

spilt, and never was the empire submitted to a more execrable tyrant than Phocas; and yet in letters addressed by himself to this contemptible wretch, Gregory the First thanks God for the accession of this man to the crown, as the greatest good which could happen to the empire. The fact was, that during the dispute concerning the term œcumenical bishop, the Emperor Maurice had sided with his patriarch, and now Gregory hoped to bring over the new emperor to his opinion. It only shows the point at which the Roman Church had already arrived; her interest, her aggrandizement weighed in the scale against every crime, would steady the balance and disculpate the criminal.

Notwithstanding the number of important affairs with which Gregory was overwhelmed from the very beginning of his Pontificate, he was constantly occupied in keeping the churches in repair, and undertook the reparation of the celebrated Basilisques of St. Peter and St. Paul. But whilst he was thinking only of re-establishing churches, and repairing the evils caused by war, he was harrassed by its breaking out again in Italy, and always to the disadvantage of the State; but at last a truce was concluded with the Lombards till the first of April, 605.

Some time after the Pope received letters from Queen Theodolinda, informing him of the birth and baptism of her son Adoaldus; she also sent him some writings which the Abbot Secondine had made on the fifth council, and begged his reply. Gregory congratulated her on having caused to be baptized in the Catholic faith the little prince who was destined to reign over the Lombards; but he excused himself from replying to the writings on account of his being too ill. He adds, "I send the Prince Adoaldus, your son, a cross, with the wood of the true cross, and the gospel in a Persian box; and to your daughter three rings, which I beg you to give them with your own hand, to give value to the present. I beg you also to thank the king your husband for me, for the peace he has made for us, and incite him to preserve it as you have already done." This letter, written in the month of January, 604, is the last of Gregory's which bears a date. He died on the 12th of March following, worn out with the labour and fatigue of his high office, and by violent and almost continual sufferings, after having held the Holy See thirteen years, six months, and ten days. It is believed that he was not more than sixty years old, and he was interred in the ancient sacristy of St. Peter's church, where already some other Popes were laid. He was buried without any pomp.

Of all the Popes he has left the greatest number of writings, and the collection of his works has been reprinted several times. He knew well how to accommodate religion to his views, and it is probable that the superstition at times remarked in his writings and his conduct, was only adroit policy; he attached the vulgar to the rites of religion by that external pomp which dazzles and charms the senses, and with that aim he invented many new and striking ceremonies. Whatever might be the errors of this extraordinary man, we must take into account the dark and troublous times in which he lived; the patrician who could renounce every worldly advantage for the sake of leading a religious

life, was sincere in his religion; the bishop who in spite of suffering was vigilant in the discharge of his pastoral duties, was true to his vocation. And now the broad basis of the Papal power is laid, for the chair of St. Peter has been filled by GREGORY THE GREAT.

REVIEWS.

ROMANISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

"Vertus de MARIE; ou Imitation DE LA SAINTE VIERGE."

Par S. Alph. Marie de Liguori: Tournay, chez. I. Casterman, Libraire, Imprimeur de l'Evêche. "Virtues of MARY; or, Imitation of THE HOLY VIRGIN." By St. Alph. Marie de Liguori: Tournay, published by Casterman, Librarian and Printer for the Bishopric.

THIS work is divided into four principal compartments, the first consisting of discourses on the life and nature of the Blessed Virgin; the second of reflections upon her sufferings; the third of a treatise on her virtues; and the fourth and last, of a series of practical instructions and models of prayer in which it is most fitting to address her. Let us turn our attention, first, to the discourses on the Virgin's life and nature.

In the first discourse, then, on Mary's (not our Lord's) "Immaculate Conception," we are taught, wherefore it was most fitting for the Trinity to preserve her from original sin, otherwise common to all men. We are almost afraid to use the expression here employed, and will therefore only quote from the French text before us: "le Père la considerant comme sa Fille, le Fils comme sa Mère, le Saint Esprit comme son Epouse." She was, we are told, the eldest daughter, either because she was predestinated in God the Father's mind, as the Scottists assert, at the same time as the Eternal Son (what fearful Arian blasphemy!) or simply, as the Thenists assert, because she was the mother of Earth's Redeemer. Liguori leaves you perfectly free to adopt either conclusion. Again, he says, it was necessary that Mary should be created free from the possibility of sin, in absolute grace and glory, because she could not otherwise have been "the Restorer of human kind" and "the Mediatress betwixt God and man." 99 This is why Mary was figured forth in Noah's ark; the difference betwixt the two being, that the ark saved but a few, and Mary the whole of the human race. The blasphemous expressions of various so called "saints" are cited to prove the orthodoxy of this statement; and it is shown very clearly that no one, who was not wholly free from blame or sin, could act as Mediator in virtue of his or her sole merits; wherefore Mary, being assumed to be the Great Mediator, must needs be wholly free from sin. Again, we are asked, "how could our Lord (who is here spoken of with the most offensive and constant familiarity as 'Jesus Christ') how could he be separated from sinners, if his mother had been capable of sin?" Again, the whole Church, we are told, recognises that the Virgin absolutely MERITED to be the mother of our Lord. In that case, Lignori proceeds: "She must have been absolutely pure at all times; she can never have had a single taint of sin." Of course no notice whatever is taken of the

simple fact, that God's grace might have purged away that original sin (which, as a descendant of Eve, was necessarily her portion), long previous to the birth of our Lord: and that there was therefore no necessity whatever, from any point of view, for that suspension of the laws of nature, which is here declared indubitable. Finally, our author passes to some considerations respecting the Holy Spirit, which we cannot for our part ever venture plainly to allude to. From all this the conclusion is plainly drawn, fortified by various miraculous appearances, guaranteed as truths in the Bulls of divers sovereign Pontiffs, that the Virgin was immaculately conceived like our Lord himself; and, as an absolutely convincing circumstance, we are informed that the Romish Church has set apart a day to the celebration of this very "truth" "l'Immaculée Conception de Marie.”

And now, according to his usual custom, Liguori proceeds to give us two or three instances of miracles wrought by images of the "Immaculate Conception" in the kingdom of Naples, to the further support of this new article of faith. One begins thus: "In one of the houses tenanted by our congregation (Brotherhood) in the kingdom of Naples, a woman came to tell one of our fathers that her husband had not confessed for many years past, and that she knew not by what means to induce him, since he maltreated her as soon as she spoke to him of confession. The father replied to her that she should give an image of the Immaculate Conception. Towards the evening the wife begged her husband to confess, and as he, according to custom, would not hear a word upon this point, she gave him the image. No sooner had he received it, than he cried, 'Well, when do you wish me to confess? I am ready!' We need not further follow the course of this story. A prayer ensues to the Virgin, in which expressions of the most amatory nature are employed, which we should almost shudder to transcribe.

Pass we to the second discourse, "On the Birth of Mary." We need scarce observe that almost all the passages in Holy Writ referring to the Church are interpreted by Romanists of the Virgin. But we are told that Israel called her the mountain of God: and again she is said to be typified by wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes. In this discourse it is asserted that she was absolutely full of grace and wisdom at the very moment of her birth: and the reason assigned for this is the presumed fact of the salvation of all men through her. Here, however, a distinction is drawn after the following fashion betwixt her saving mediation and that of our Lord. Her merit is said to be a merit of congruity, through which she has obtained for the lost world the benefits of redemption. But "Jesus Christ" is admitted to be our only Mediator by the merit "de condigno." On the contrary Liguori proceeds: "Mary is the Mediatress by means of simple intercession and merit de congruo, having thus, as all the theologians admit, offered to God her merits for the salvation of all men, and God having by grace accepted them together with those of 'Jesus Christ.' So that every good, every gift of eternal life which any one of the saints has received of God, has been dispensed to him through the means of Mary."

This may appear sufficiently confuted, but the result is that Mary becomes our all in all. For, by way of justice, through Christ Jesus none of us could be saved: we all need grace, and therefore require the mediation of the Virgin, which alone rescues us from perdition. So that Liguori draws the final conclusion, which he says is maintained by St. Bernard, that the Church holds "Mary to be the Universal Mediatress of our salvation.”

It would be surely needless here to observe how completely a faith like this must change the object of the soul's devotions, and substitute Mary in the place of Christ. This is indeed the most fearful of all idolatries; for virtually

the sinner is altogether separated from his Redeemer, and directed to another Mediator and another throne of grace. And such is the authorized teaching of all the first "saints" within the Church of Rome. We need not pause to dwell on Liguori's assertion, that Mary was born in the possession of perfect knowledge as well as of perfect grace; whilst the Bible tells us of our blessed Lord himself, that he "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

Without pausing to notice all the other blasphemous follies narrated in this discourse, pass we to the third, "On the Presentation of Mary in the Temple at the supposed age of three years." Of this a most particular account is given, many of the facts of which are derived from "Miraculous Revelations" made by the blessed Virgin to various female saints.

St. Jerome, we are told, gives us the very fullest details respecting the manner in which Mary employed her time during her abode in the Temple. Amongst other things, we are informed that immediately after the evening prayer an angel made his appearance, who was in the constant habit of supplying her with nightly repast. Finally, in confirmation of all these circumstances, a remarkable incident is narrated to us respecting a certain sister Dominica, who led a very good life at a village in the environs of Florence. To her came one day, when she was ten years old, a beautiful woman carrying a little child, both demanding alms. But we pause. The whole story is too blasphemous, and we cannot bear to transfer it to our pages. So much though we may say. The child was wounded in the hands and feet. Dominica asked with what balsam it was healed. She was told "the balsam of faith and good works." Finally a transformation was operated, and the Virgin and child appeared in all their glory. And this tale is told of the Risen Lord, the Conqueror, the Creator of the Universe! It is followed by another blasphemous prayer.

The Annunciation is the subject treated of in the next discourse. It may be easily conceived that the simple words spoken by the angel are felt by Romanists as altogether insufficient for their purpose. Accordingly Liguori tells us that a more perfect and correct revelation of the words spoken by the angel has been given to a certain St. Elizabeth, and this he accordingly lays before us. He then proceeds to declare that Mary by her FIAT, "be it with me according unto thy word," made God become a man like unto us. "Thus was she elevated," he proceeds to say, “to a grace which could not more completely partake of Deity, unless it were the Deity itself. We are not to be astonished that the Evangelists did not say more of the prerogatives and powers of Mary, since they bore witness to her being "the Mother of God," which comprehended all things in itself. Now it will not be perhaps altogether needless to say here that the Evangelists never do declare this, and that the Blessed Virgin cannot with strictness be called the Mother of God. For there were two natures in our Blessed Lord, the divine and the human. He was perfect GoD and perfect man. As perfect man he was indeed the child of the Blessed Virgin, but as God he was not her child. Only his Godhead was mysteriously blended with that manhood of which she was indeed the earthly source. We may therefore correctly call her "the Mother of our Lord," or even "the Mother of Him who was God;" but not "the Mother of God."

Returning from this perhaps necessary digression, see we the further conclusions which Liguori deduces from the employment of this overstrained phraseology. Thus we are told, on the presumed authority of St. Bernard, that God actually created the world for the sake of the Virgin who was to be his Mother, and that the very preservation of the world, from the Fall to this day, can only be attributed to her intercession. We are further instructed