2. THE GOTHS, VANDALS, AND HUNS. The Goths were Christians of a sort: they professed Arianism, and their conquests were somehow capable of being harmonized with the Imperial power of New Rome. But had they made themselves permanent masters of the West, Arianism, which the Council of Nicæa had proved to be at war with the catholic faith of Scripture, must have overspread the West. It pleased God to subject Rome to fresh humiliations under the savages of Genseric, who also ravaged Northern Africa and its primitive seats of Latin Christianity. Then came the onset of Attila, "the Scourge of God," more general in its sweep of flame than all that had devoured before. The Goths and Ostrogoths, however, who enjoyed a temporary occupation of Italy for two generations, made themselves a satrapy of the Empire, and after the extinction of Augustulus somewhat prolonged the Imperial fiction in the West.

Meantime, God was raising up the Franks. They became a Christian race under Clovis, in whose name we recognize that of Louis, familiarized to us by subsequent history. If one considers the changes brought upon Europe by the invasions of Italy, Gothic and Teutonic,- by the overflow upon Spain, from all sides, of Goths, Moors, Franks, and nameless hordes brought with them and after them, as also the corresponding movements along the Rhine and through all Germany and ancient Belgium, -the rise of such a creature and creator as could mass them and

give shape to their destinies must be recognized as proof of a God who rules and overrules the universe. Referring you to the usual sources of information upon this meagre outline of the grand movements of Providence for developing Modern Europe, we now come to the dread and imposing career of Charlemagne. It was his to reconstruct after devastation, to regulate after nomadic chaos, and to prepare the way for forms of civilization which are perpetuated even in our own times.

3. RETROSPECT.

Let us return for a moment to the period of the Councils, and trace the hand of Providence in putting an effectual close to it by what is called the Disunion of East and West. Since that "disunion"- the mild word for a schism, which suspends functional unity, but does not destroy organic life and spiritual communion — it is manifest that no œcumenical or catholic council has been possible. The Greeks might meet in Eastern synods, or the West in Occidental ones; but no catholic action is possible without the free and united consent of Greeks and Latins. The old patriarchates of the East must be heard in any synod truly œcumenical; but even they cannot make any canons or customs for Christendom without the free acceptance of all the Western churches. The patriarchate of Rome never was allowed to consent in the name of the entire West, for the Catholic Church restricted its jurisdiction to Lower Italy and adjacent islands; if, indeed, the "sub

urbicarian" limits included so great a range as this.

Bearing this in mind, we must take a retrospective glance at certain provincial councils, ambitious of the cecumenical name, in which the Synodical Period found its limits; like a majestic river, losing itself at last amid marshes and lagoons, in petty mouths and friths, which leave undistinguishable the unity of its current, or the point where the name of the river belongs to any one division of its tides.

4. MINOR COUNCILS.

The Fifth and Sixth Councils failed to enact canons, and hence a council (A. D. 692) which aimed to supply this defect is called the QuiniSext, to indicate its supplementary character, as a sequel to both. It was held in Constantinople. The Latins, however, would not accept it. It displeased Rome, because it maintained the old canonical equality of New Rome, and also the rights of the married clergy, which Rome was trying to suppress in Italy. Early in the next century, the walls of churches in the East and West alike had become disfigured by wretched caricatures of our Lord and of the saints, known as Icons; not graven or molten images, but miserable daubs with tinsel decorations; bits of tinfoil silvered or gilded, often covering all but the face and hands of the absurd figures. Against these objects all the canons of good taste cried out; but every page of the early fathers which assailed the heathen images not less bore witness

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that Christianity abhorred such things. It is disgraceful to reflect, however, that it was left to a semi-barbarian Emperor to imitate the zeal of Epiphanius, who had torn to shreds the first thing of the kind of which we hear in history. Leo III., the Isaurian, issued his edict (A. D. 724) against them. It caused him endless confusions and distresses to sustain this policy, till he died, in A. D., 741. The excesses of his zeal, not always according to knowledge, had rendered the name of "the Iconoclasts" not a little odious, when his very able but unfortunate son and successor, Constantine V., to whom clings the scornful name Copronymus, called a council to settle the matter. It was attended by more than three hundred Eastern bishops, who condemned the Icons, with unquestionable fidelity to antiquity. This council has no claim to œcumenical character; but when, not long afterwards, the Western churches bore precisely the same testimony in one of the most memorable of Western councils, we have irrefragable evidence, putting both together, that such was the unbiassed testimony of the Catholic Church in the eighth century, and long after its close.

5. IRENE.

Leo IV., the feeble son of the fifth Constantine, was the "husband of his wife," the Athenian. Irene, who did not wait till he died to “reign in his stead." When he died, under a dose administered by her, she became regent for her son, and with a taste for art quite feminine, but hardly Attic, she

Her

made herself the fanatical patroness of pictures which Zeuxis would have laughed at. Beautiful, but infamous, the poisoner of her husband afterwards slew her son, the boy Emperor, usurping his throne and making herself the first Empress in the line of the Cæsars. She bewitched the court, and was able to carry all before her by corrupting many of the clergy and banishing powerful nobles. At one time she had a scheme to marry the great King of the Franks; but, Bluebeard as he was with his nine wives, he had tastes and schemes of his own, and did not care to be poisoned. name means peace, but Alecto and her sister furies all seemed incarnate in her. This was the Jezebel whom Adrian, the Roman patriarch, forgetting the warnings of the Apocalypse, encouraged and patronized in mingling her cup of fornications. Thank God, our English Alcuin rebuked her for presuming to teach in the church, against the inspired command of St. Paul. This wicked woman convened a council at Nicæa (A. D. 787), which except in its name has no claim to any association with the great Nicene Synod. Just as "RomulusAugustus" was the name of the poor creature in whom Old Rome perished ignominiously, so the council called with solemn irony Deutero-Nicene overruled the second commandment and all Christian antiquity, and established image-worship.

6. A COUNTER COUNCIL.

The Roman patriarch accepted it, and officially proclaimed its acceptance in the West; but Adrian