Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius in Africa, was a man of considerable mental power. He was engaged in continual controversy with the Donatists and other heretics. His writings are numerous; his most remarkable work is his Confessions, the earliest piece of autobiography that we possess. Augustine entered more deeply into the abstruse questions of grace, free will, and original sin, than the Fathers in general. He is regarded as the chief author of the opinions known by the name of Calvinism. Jerome, a native of Illyricum, had conceived such a passion for a monastic life, that he left his own country and shut himself up in a convent at Bethlehem, where he devoted all his days to devotion, study, and composition. He applied himself to the Hebrew language, and translated the Old Testament into Latin; and as a translator and critic he ranks far above his contemporaries. He also engaged warmly in controversy, and earned the fame of being the most foul-mouthed of all the Fathers. On heretics and reformers alike the vials of his wrath were poured forth; the opposers of mortification, celibacy, pilgrimage, saint-worship, and other superstitions which he chose to admire and recommend, however exemplary their lives, received no better treatment than the obstinate heretic or sinner, from this most choleric of saints. Even age brought no cooling to his fervent spirit; and his very latest writings are as fierce and fiery as those composed in his prime of life. Such were the principal Fathers of the fourth century; and, viewing their writings, and those of their predecessors and successors, we think that any person of candor will agree with us in saying, that neither in critical skill, in learning, in judgment, or in correct morality, can they stand a comparison with the Protestant divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or even with the Gallican divines of the same period. In gaudy, glittering, theatric eloquence, a Basil, a Gregory, a Chrysostom, may claim the precedence; but what work can the ancient church produce to be placed alongside of the Ecclesiastical Polity of Hooker? or where can we find in it reasoning equal to that of Chillingworth and Barrow? The Fathers may be read with profit, but cannot be safely taken as guides, unless we are willing to end in submission to the church of Rome. The Christian religion is contained in the New Testament alone, and is thence to be derived, by the application of the principles of sound criticism in a spirit actuated by the sincere love of truth. We will conclude this chapter by an account of the Manichean heresy. This heresy, which arose in the middle of the third century, may be regarded as the last and most permanent form of Gnosticism. Its founder, from whom it derived its name, was Manes, a Persian by birth, and one of the sacerdotal caste of the Magians, who embraced Christianity, and endeavored to amalgamate it with his original faith. Of the history of his life little is known with certainty. He is said to have been put to death by the Persian king Varanes I. As the foundation of his system, Manes laid down the two principles of Light and Darkness, with their respective chiefs (the Ormuzd and Ahriman of Persian theology) and their countless myriads of subordinate spirits. The prince of Darkness was long ignorant of the existence of the realm of light; but when he accidentally discovered it, he invaded it. The armies of Light, headed by the First Man, opposed him, but could not prevent his seizing a large portion of it, and mingling it with matter. The Living Spirit, the second leader of the troops of Light, had more success; yet still much of the pure element remained immersed in matter. From the mixture the prince of Darkness formed the parents of the human race, who had therefore a material body, in which were two souls, one sensitive and lustful, the other rational and immortal, as being produced of Light. The Living Spirit then created the earth out of matter, as a -habitation for the human race, in order to their gradual purification from the influence of corrupt matter; and to aid them in their efforts, God produced, from his own substance, two beings, named Christ and Holy Ghost, the former of whom, (the Persian Mithras,) a splendid substance, subsisting in and by himself, filled with life and infinite in wisdom, resided in the sun; while the latter, also luminous and animated, pervaded the atmosphere of the earth, illumining the minds of men, giving fertility to the soil, and drawing out from it the particles of celestial heat, and restoring them to their native region. The Supreme Deity sent a succession of angels and holy men to admonish and exhort the souls imprisoned in matter. At length, he directed Christ to quit his abode in the sun, and, taking on him the semblance of a body, to appear on earth. Christ obeyed the mandate, performed miracles, and gave precepts to man; but the prince of Darkness stirred up the Jews against him, and, in appearance, he suffered death on the cross. He reascended to the sun, having appointed apostles to propagate his religion, and promised a Paraclete or Comforter, who would add what was needful to his doctrine, and dispel all error from the minds of his servants. This great Paraclete was Manes; and those who obeyed the laws of Christ as enlarged by him, would gradually be freed from the influence of matter, but not wholly in this life; for, after death, they must first proceed to the moon, which is composed of purifying water, after an abode in which of fif teen days, they were to ascend to the sun, whose fire would remove all remaining stains. The souls of the wicked were, after death, to migrate into the bodies of animals and other natures, till they should have expiated their guilt. The world was finally to be consumed with fire, and the prince and powers of Darkness be compelled to return to and abide forever in their original gloom and misery. The moral system of Manes was severe and rigorous in the extreme; but, aware that celibacy, long fasting, and mortification, were not suited to mankind in general, he made a distinction similar to one already noticed,* dividing his followers into the Elect and the Hearers, from the former of whom alone obedience was exacted to his ascetic system. Manes rejected all the books of both the Old and the New Testament, except St. Paul's Epistles, which, however, he regarded as greatly interpolated and corrupted. He gave his disciples a gospel of his own, named Ertang, dictated to him, as he said, by God himself. The Manichæan assemblies had always a president, who represented Jesus Christ, twelve rulers or masters, and seventy-two bishops, to correspond with the apostles and disciples; under the bishops were presbyters and deacons, all selected from the body of the Elect; and the hierarchy was thus completed. The Manichæan system long continued to flourish. It spread itself over both the empires. We believe there is little doubt, that those who, under the names of Albigenses, Paulicians, Cathari, and other denominations, were so cruelly persecuted by the church of Rome in the middle ages, were the descendants of the Manichæans. There is reason to suppose that the mistresses and the loves of the troubadours of the South of France were not earthly; that the conventional language, retained by the Soofees in Persia, had been carried by the Manichæans to Spain and France; * See above, p. 283. that in Italy, this language, which had hitherto been confined to religion, was, by Frederick II. and his friends, extended to politics, and made the bond of union of the Ghibellines; and that it is only by a knowledge of it, that the writings of Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, and the other writers of that age, can be understood.* In fine, it might appear that Manichæism eventually led to the Reformation.. VALENTIN BY RADAGAISUS. MURDER OF STILICHO. CLAUDIAN. ATTILA. THEODORIC. BATTLE A. U. 1148-1176. A. d. 395–423. WITH Theodosius the unity of the Roman empire terminated; it never again obeyed a single ruler, and henceforth the empires of the East and the West are as distinct as any independent kingdoms of ancient or modern times. As the history of that of the East, during the remaining period of our narrative, presents no events of much political impor *The proofs will be found in the various works of Signor Rossetti, the learned and sagacious expounder of Dante. Authorities: Zosimus, Claudian, Jornandes, the Ecclesiastical Historians, and the Chroniclers. tance, we will confine ourselves to that of the West, and rapidly relate its fall. Theodosius had two sons: to the elder, named Arcadius, a youth of eighteen years of age, who had been left behind in Constantinople, was assigned the empire of the East; to the younger, Honorius, a boy of eleven years, that of the West.* The care of both the emperors and their dominions was committed by Theodosius, on his death bed, to Stilicho, a man of great talent, civil and military, and of incorrupt integrity, to whom he had given his niece and adopted daughter Serena in marriage, and had raised him to the high rank of master of both the cavalry and infantry of the empire. After the decease of Theodosius, Stilicho remained in Italy with the young Honorius. The chief minister of Arcadius was Rufinus, the prefect of the East, a native of Gaul, who, having devoted himself to the practice of the law at Constantinople, by his talents and by his profound hypocrisy gained the favor of the late emperor, who had gradually raised him to his present dignity. As soon as death had relieved him from the restraint which his knowledge of the latent vigor of Theodosius's character imposed, Rufinus flung off the mask, and gave free course to his cruelty and his avarice. In the gratification of this last ignoble passion, he passed all bounds. Justice was sold, offices were sold, oppressive taxes were imposed, testaments were extorted or forged, ruinous fines were exacted, properties were confiscated on the slightest pretexts. The wealth thus acquired was retained by the most rigid parsimony, and Rufinus was consequently the object of hatred to many, and of sincere attachment to ng one. The ambitious prefect hoped to unite his only daughter to his youthful sovereign; but he seems not to have reflected on the secret machinations of a despotic court; and while he was absent on a journey of vengeance to Antioch, where, without even a shadow of proof, he judicially murdered the count of the East, a secret conspiracy in the palace, headed by the chamberlain Eutropius, undermined his power. covering that their young monarch had no affection for his destined bride, the confederates planned to substitute for her the fair Eudoxia, the orphan daughter of Bauto, a Frank general in the imperial service. They inflamed the imagina Dis * The province of Illyricum was divided between the two empires. |