famed for knowledge and piety, and was even a poet superior to his times. Gothechalcus was the author of a book on predestination, which excited strong sensation. Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, wrote what was called a Library of Religion. Charles, the Great, of France, usually called Charlemagne, laboured to restore learning, and to reform the clergy, in which he was followed by his son Louis the Pious. While Mahomed was destroying Christianity in the East, the Danes and the Swedes were received into the Romish, and the Russians into the Greek church. There was, in 854, a Pope, called John VIII., whom many writers affirm to have been a woman, to whom they give the name of Joan. The pride of the popes increased, until they literally trode on the necks of emperors and kings; but when several, at one time, claimed the honour of legitimate successors of St. Peter, their divisions broke their power, which had been rendered odious and intolerable by a succession of monsters, who were a disgrace, not only to the Christian, but even to the human name.

In the year 822, Paschasias Radbert, first broached what is called the doctrine of the real presence, in a treatise on the Eucharist, in which he asserts, "that the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper are, after consecration, turned into the very substance of the

body and blood of Christ." Though opposed by many, especially in England and France, this monstrous doctrine was seized by the Church of Rome, as affording a fine opportunity of exalting the priesthood, whom it invested with the power of creating the body and blood of the Saviour, and thus of exerting immense influence over the minds of men. When the first thousand years of the Christian era drew to a close, multitudes, believing that the world was coming to an end, suffered the public buildings to fall into decay. Time having confuted the error, many of the present buildings were erected in the eleventh century.

In the year 1077, flourished Theophylact, bishop of Bulgaria, who wrote Greek commentaries on the New Testament, which, though borrowed greatly from Chrysostom, would have done honour to a better age. Nicetas was the author of one of those works called Catenæ, or Chains, which consisted of sentences from the more ancient writers. The last of what are called the fathers was Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, who, though a monk of the Roman church, wrote with such piety and devotion as inspires the hope that there was more religion, even in that corrupt communion, than could have been expected. After this age, the principal ecclesiastical writers are called Schoolmen, and these again were followed

by Doctors of Theology. Lanfranc and Anselm, archbishops, of Canterbury, made our country famous by their learned works. Hugo de St. Victor, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, wrote four books of Sentences, which gave him the title of the Master of the Sentences, and laid the foundation of the corrupt Roman divinity.

The emperors of Germany began now to be elected heads of the Roman Empire, by the German princes; and the popes to be chosen to the chair of St. Peter by a new order of priests, called Cardinals; while the civil and ecclesiastical rulers were embroiled in disputes concerning the right of investiture, the emperors claiming the right of investing bishops with the civil prerogatives of their sees. In 1073, Pope Hildebrand, who took the title of Gregory VII, was a torment to kings and a pest to the world.

The Mahomedans having seized Palestine, and become masters of the places where our Lord lived and died, the pilgrims who visited the holy sepulchre, brought back to Europe doleful tales of the treatment they received from the Infidels. Peter, the Hermit, therefore, roused Christendom to what were called the holy wars, for the recovery of Palestine. Those who enlisted in this service, putting a cross on their armour, were called Crusaders, or crossbearers, and these wars, in which millions of men

and money were sacrificed, were termed the Crusades. Godfrey of Boulogne, the leader of the host, took Jerusalem, but refused to be crowned with gold where our Lord was crowned with thorns. These expeditions, in which our King Richard, called Cœur de Lion, or lion's heart, acted a conspicuous part, were the occasion of forming the orders of knighthood. The popes favoured the holy wars, because many who embarked in them, not expecting to return, bequeathed their property to the church; but in the end, this insanity, which terminated, in the total defeat of the Christians, raised Europe from its extreme depression. The supplies which the armies required gave rise to the spirit of commerce, and the knowledge which the Crusaders brought back from the East, where learning and the arts were much cultivated, taught men at length to burst the chains of the priesthood.

Learning prepared the way for the Reformation. The schoolmen refined on divinity to an amazing extent of metaphysical abstraction. From the school of Albert, called the Great, issued Thomas Aquinas, into whose body, it was said, the soul of Augustine had entered. From this paragon of acumen, who was the oracle of his day, John Dunse Scotus* took

* So called from being a Scotchman, born at Dunse.

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the liberty to differ, and thus gave rise to violent disputes, which distracted the church. For Aquinas having asserted that genus, species, and difference, were mere names for abstract ideas, Scotus maintained that they were expressive of real existence, and thus the Christian world was divided into Nominalists and Realists, or Thomists and Scotists, whose disputes not only filled the colleges, but even made the streets to run down with blood. Scotus invented the doctrine of the immaculate birth, or conception of the Virgin Mary. At this time was made a valuable arrangement of the Scriptures into chapters, for the sake of references in a Concordance which was provided for the use of the church. Two orders of monks arose, about the year 1170, the Dominicans were founded by Dominick Guzman, a Spaniard, and the Franciscans by Francis Assissi, an Italian: these two divided the popish world by their fiery disputes, the one of them maintaining the immaculate conception of the Virgin, and the other denying it.

But God had been preparing that deliverance for his church to which we must now turn.

CHAP. III.-FROM THE REFORMATION ΤΟ THE

PRESENT TIME.

This is the period of the preparation for the final

glories of Christ's kingdom.