17. ARNOBIUS AND LACTANTIUS.

Nor let any accept the unjust judgment of Coleridge about Arnobius, in whom we have a great layman, like himself, not half as faulty, and quite as praiseworthy.1 His scornful rhetoric was privileged to chase the hosts of heathenism, already conquered, and to put them to an ignominious rout. He mocks them, like another Elijah dealing with Baalim; he pursues them with the artillery of his genius, as they flee before him,

"Chased on their night-steeds by the star of day."

And so we reach Lactantius, dear Lactantius! I feel as if I had known him personally. He emerges, with the persecuted Church, from the Diocletian persecution, like gold tried in the fire. In him, we meet the earliest Christian who has leisure to cultivate his style. He adorns the court of Constantine; he wins the title of the Christian Cicero; he closes the blessed march of the AnteNicene legions, and his flourish of trumpets is not of "sounding brass." We hear the silver trumpets of the angels in his notes of triumph. Less harmonious than his other writings is his account of the persecutors and their retributive deaths. Gibbon, indeed, affects to doubt if it be his; but the fascination of those pages is created, not by their style, but by the downright honest words, in which they give the testimony of one who seems

to say,

"All which I saw, and part of which I was."

1 See Note U.

18. MAXIMS OF LACTANTIUS.

Let me add, young gentlemen, if you would know why I speak so warmly of Lactantius, two of his maxims which became dear to me in early life: would that, I might transfer them to you, to make a better use of them than I have done. I can only atone for my failure by urging you to catch from them the inspiration of a future which you may render tributary to God's glory and to the good of mankind. "If life is to be desired by a wise man," says this charming instructor, "truly for no other reason could I wish to live than to effect something worthy of a lifetime." Again, he says: "I shall judge myself to have lived satisfactorily, and to have fulfilled the duty of manhood, if only my efforts may liberate some from error, and direct them into the heavenly way."

19. HARMONY OF THEOLOGIANS.

And so must end my insufficient testimony to the school of Carthage, while I point you forward to its noblest example, in the imperial genius of Augustine. Vainly have recent writers tried to set him over against Athanasius, as an antagonist, not a helper. Brain and heart, heart and brain: do they conflict, or harmonize, because their functions are so diverse? In the attempts of the West to fathom the mystery of the Human, we find the complement of what the East had done to illustrate the Divine. The Alexandrians understood,

1 See Note V.

however, that the Infinite was past finding out: the genius of the great Bishop of Hippo shrank from no investigation of humanity, felt no similar restraints. He paused, indeed, to take breath, and went no further; but just there the remorseless genius of Calvin found his task incomplete, and scrupled not to give it a logical conclusion. It was a test of strength and courage not inferior to Samson's; it was on a larger scale, and involved even more terrible consequences, than "the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds." Warned by this experiment, we may accept Augustine, while we reject the Epimetheus that ventured further. To Augustine we owe the true exposition of the doctrines of grace, though the Church has only accepted it filtered from the lees. In his immortal works and the immense literature they have created, Carthage still asserts her moral grandeur, though bats and owls infest and hoot where Marius once sat among her ruins.

20. THE ROMAN DIOCESE.

If I have not yet noted among Christian schools even in the West that see which claims to be "the mother and mistress of churches," it is only because the facts compel me to say nothing where nothing can be said. Her first bishop, St. Clement, indeed, leads the noble array of the Apostolic Fathers; but he writes in Greek, not in Latin, and is himself a striking witness to the colonial and dependent character of the church in Rome, of which I have spoken. In his time, this colony of

Jewish converts, and their faithful Gentile brethren, had lost nothing of the faith which was said by St. Paul to be "spoken of throughout the world." But it was a church of works, not words; 1 of noble suffering, not of study and teaching. Her children, always exposed to fierce eyes that glared upon them from the Palatine, lived in daily expectation of being thrown to the jaws that gaped for them in the Coliseum. Their circumstances were little favourable to the cultivation of letters, and even their bishops, though generally pious men, were taken from a class greatly inferior to that of their Eastern brethren. A pleasing picture of the age of the first Bishop of Rome, who bore the name of Pius, comes to us in the pages of the "Shepherd" of Hermas, who was the brother of that prelate. Little interesting as this allegory is in our day, it illustrates the simple piety and habits of the primitive Romans, their character as "a Greek colony," and their gentle efforts to repel heresy by persuasion rather than by anathemas.

21. IRENÆUS, -HIS PLACE IN THE WEST.2

How it came to pass that such depraved and ignorant creatures as Zephyrinus and Callistus are found at an early period in the Roman succession, is to be accounted for, perhaps, by their personal history, which suggests that they were ambitious to fill a place not coveted by better men, because they meant to betray their brethren and save themselves while making gain their godliness.

1 See Note W.

2 See Note X.

Of these I shall soon speak more particularly, but must now mention the illustrious name of Irenæus as the great light of Western Europe, in whom we find the teaching of Polycarp transferred from the Orient to Gaul, and thence echoed back to Rome, to supply her lack of knowledge and of wisdom. He was, spiritually, the grandson of St. John, as the disciple of Polycarp, and twice did his gentle interposition, in the spirit of the beloved disciple, save Rome from peril of schism and heresy. When Eleutherus was patronizing Montanism, and when Victor was violating the sacred compact which Anicetus had accepted from Polycarp, the voice of Irenæus sounded forth from the Rhone, and restored truth and peace to the church upon the Tiber. Pacific, as his name implies, he was yet, like St. John himself, "a son of thunder" when he confronted the great army of heretics who stole the Christian name, in early times, only to corrupt and trade upon it, after the example of Simon Magus. When the sun rises upon a pestilent marsh, its very light and warmth breed fogs and evil exhalations, and it was not possible that many in a population like that of Antioch, when it was smitten by the glory of the Gospel, should fail to borrow its lustre to set off their false philosophies and monstrous superstitions. These they strove to make at once a snare to the faithful, and a palatable bait to ungodly men for accepting themselves instead of Christ as teachers and masters. Irenæus, in an elaborate treatise, exposes their artifices and their base counterfeits of Christian gold; and his great work, of which only a small part