suspicion, too well grounded, that power, not the beneficial use of power, was its final object. It was occasionally popular, even democratic, in assisting the liberties of man, as in later times, in its alliance with the Italian republics; but it was too manifestly not from the high and disinterested love of freedom, but from ealousy of any other Lord over the liberties of men but itself. In this respect Gregory was the type, the absolute model and example of the spiritual monarch. Posterity demands whether his imperial views, like those of the older Cæsar, were not grounded on the total prostration of the real liberty of mankind—even in that of the liberty of the subordinate sacerdotal order. It was a magnificent idea, but how was it reconcileable with the genuine sublimity of Christianity, that an order of men-that one single man-had thrust himself without authority, to an extent men began early to question, between man and God-had arrayed himself, in fact, in secondary divinity. Against his decrees every insurrection of the human mind was treason-every attempt to limit his power impiety. Even if essentially true, this monarchical autocracy was undeniably taught and maintained, and by none more than by Hildebrand, through means utterly at variance with the essence of Christianity, at the sacrifice of all the higher principles, by bloody and desolating wars, by civil wars with all their horrors, by every kind of human misery. Allow the utmost privilege of the age-of a warlike, a ferocious age, in which human life had no sanctity or security-yet this demand of indulgence for the spirit of the times is surely destructive of the claim to be immutable Christianity: the awful incongruity between the Churchman and the Christian, between the Representative of the Prince of Peace and the Prince of Peace himself, is fatal to the whole. 'Yet in a lower view, not as a permanent, eternal, immutable law of Christianity, but as one of the temporary phases, through which Christianity, in its self-accommodation to the moral necessities of men, was to pass, the hierarchical, the Papal power of the Middle Ages, by its conservative fidelity as guardian of the most valuable relics of antiquity, of her arts, her laws, her language; by its assertion of the superiority of moral and religious motives over the brute force of man; by the safe guardianship of the great primitive and fundamental truths of religion, which were ever lurking under the exuberant mythology and ceremonial; above all by wonderful and stirring examples of the most profound, however ascetic devotion, of mortification and self-sacrifice and self-discipline, partially, at least, for the good of others; by splendid charities, munificent public works, cultivation of letters, the strong trust infused into the mind of man, that there was some being even on earth whose special duty it was to defend the defenceless, to succour the succourless, to be the refuge of the widow and orphan, to be the guardian of the poor; all these things, with all the poetry of the Middle Ages, in its various forms of legend, of verse, of building, of music, of art, may justify, or rather command mankind to look back upon these fallen idols with reverence, with admiration, and with gratitude. The hierarchy of the Middle Ages counterbalances its vast ambition, rapacity, cruelty, by the most essential benefits to human civilisation. The Papacy Papacy itself is not merely an awful, but a wonderful institution. Gregory VII. himself is not contemplated merely with awe, but in some respects, and with great drawbacks, as a benefactor of mankind." -vol. iii. pp. 199-202. There is one other series of events which has materially influenced the character of the two Churches, and which, though it has been amply discussed from almost every other point of view, has hardly been appreciated before in its relation to the two divisions of Christendom. We allude to the Crusades. Not only did these wonderful wars, as has been often remarked, tend to increase the authority of the Pope and the wealth of the clergy, and thus lend fresh strength to the hierarchical system of the Western Church, but they also tended to widen the breach between the Latin and Byzantine world, both directly by the hostile relations which they created, and indirectly by the deep and peculiar impression which the West received, but which the East failed to receive from their influence. The estrangement of the Eastern from the Western Church, as Dean Milman truly observes,* was effected by the Crusades more than by any other single cause. The conquest of Constantinople was, next to the conquest of Jerusalem, the prominent object of almost every crusade. The occupation of Palestine, and the creation of the Frank kingdom of Jerusalem, was carried out in a manner almost as offensive to the Greeks as it could have been to the Turks; and the quarrels which yearly distract the peace of Syria, and have now broken up the peace of the world, within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, are only continuations of the deadly feud of the fourth Crusade, when Dandolo planted the banner of St. Mark on the church of St. Sophia. But it was not merely by its hostility to the Byzantine empire, but by the new character which the Latin Church then first acquired, that the gulf between them was widened. The Greek Church has always been, and is still, stiff, intolerant, unwilling to lose any of its ancient privileges or prescriptive rights; but it has never on any large scale been a persecuting power. The Latin Church, in like manner, down to the time of the Crusades, never, except in peculiar and isolated cases, urged the adoption of its faith by other than gentle means. But the fierce spirit nursed in the bosom of Western Christendom by the dread and the hatred of Mahometanism lasted long after Mahometanism had ceased to be punishable. First it fell upon the unfortunate Jews. Next it was directed against the still unconverted heathens of Northern Germany; and the Teutonic Knights were the brothers-in-arms of the Templars and Hospitallers † of the Holy Land. Then it Vol. iii. p. 250. *Vol. iii. p. 240. discharged discharged its fury on all heretics and opposers of the Papal See. The persecution of the Albigenses was a crusade. The Inquisition was a crusade. The expedition against our own King John was a crusade. The conquest of Mexico by Cortes was a crusade. The expulsion of the Moors was almost the last impulse of the irreconcileable hostility which had been kindled in the heart of Christendom by the speech of Pope Urban at Clermont. The wars of the Low Countries were crusades, and finally the Spanish armada-the last crusade-was swallowed up, we trust but we dare not vaticinate, with the crusading spirit, for ever in the ocean' (vol. iii. p. 251). One further result must be added chivalry, or at least the religious tone which chivalry assumed in all its acts, language, and ceremonial' (vol. iii. p. 251). The conflict with Mahometanism awakened a spark in the breast of the Romanesque and Teutonic nations which was never kindled in the nearer circle of the Oriental Christians. France, the birthplace of chivalry, was also the chief nursery of the crusading armies. France, Frenchmen, Frank-rather than any neighbouring people-became, in the East, the synonymes. for Europe and Europeans. Through the influence of chivalry was developed the delicacy, the courtesy, the regard for the female sex, which is almost, though not quite, as little known to the Christians as it is to the Mahometans of the East-alike in its perversions and in its excellences. On the one hand, it was a Greek council that invented the theological definition which Western Christianity has translated Mother of God;' but it was reserved for the succeeding ages of Latin Christendom to carry out the dogmatic statement into the passionate adoration of 'Our Lady.' On the other hand, the peculiarly Western word 'courtesy designates a new virtue, not ordained by our religion; and words are not formed but out of the wants, usages, and sentiments of men; and courtesy is not yet an obsolete term. Even gallantry, now too often sunk to a frivolous or unnatural sense, yet retains something of its old nobility, when it comprehended valour, frankness, honourable devotion to woman. The age of chivalry may be gone, but the influences of chivalry, it may be hoped, mingling with and softened by purer religion, will be the imperishable heirloom of social man.'—vol. iii., p. 256. There is always something sad in closing any great work on ecclesiastical history-the contrast between what such a story ought to have been, and what it has been-'no steady, unwavering advance of heavenly spirits, but one continually interrupted, checked, diverted from its course, driven backward, as of men possessed by some bewildering spell-wasting their strength upon imaginary obstacles-hindering each other's progress and 68 Latin Christianity. flo tricourt teorotni meinamitne di their own by stopping to analyse and dispute about the nature of the sun's light till all were blinded by it-instead of thankfully using its aid to show them the true path onward.' 5. This melancholy feeling, as has been often truly observed, is best relieved when we look at individual instances of the power of Christian faith and love in the lives and deaths of good men. But it is relieved also in proportion as the view opened before ous is wide in proportion as we are able, kindly and calmly * eas from a summit, to regard' the rise and progress of churches and sects old # am varied to oʻni teen shem mor Despicere, unde queas, alios,, passimque videre, What seemed, hear at hand, to be mere deformities, fromĮ a more distant point are lost in the sense of the vast prospect, to which each feature contributes its peculiar part. A philosophical view of ecclesiastical history is not necessarily a cold or ala contemptuous view; it may be, if it is truly philosophical, full & of far more genuine sympathy, inspired by a far deeper sense of humility, than a description written by one who has plunged into the thick of the fray, or made himself master of every corner of the labyrinthine maze.n bot And thus when, as in the present case, we look at Greek, and -Latin, and Teutonic Christianity--not apart from each other, but in their mutual relations-not in the details of any particular controversy which divides each from each, but in relation to the general causes from which those controversies have sprung-conclusions force themselves upon us, as consoling as they are to tranquillising T - We may, if we choose, look on the Greek Church as the dead trunk of Christendom, from which all sap and life has departed, fit only to be cut down, because it cumbers the ground, But we may also see in it the aged tree, under whose shade the rest of Christendom has sprung up; we may ask whether its roots have --not struck too widely and too deeply in its native soil to allow of to any other permanent form of religious life in those regions which does not in some degree engraft itself on that ancient stem; we may remember with gratitude, that to the Councils of Nicara and Constantinople we owe the venerable Creeds,. which, even if they bear the marks of their Byzantine origin, yet probably are the most comprehensive forms that such an age could have devised, to and have given a stability and breadth to a theology which might to else have been dissolved in its own endless subdivisions. We may * We quote from a remarkable work which has hardly attracted the attention it deserves; a work disfigured by obvious faults, but containing many striking passages and noble thoughts,-Wilson's Bampton Lectures, on the Communion of Saints. regard •pturosterul isto I 83 109s mode ofequarian interest, the memorials of the દા older Churches, fossilised within its ancient and unchangeable Titual we may thankfully accept even the shigrisli barbarism and stagnation which has, humanly speaking, saved so large and so venerable a portion of Christendom from the consolidation of the decrees of Trent we may remember with satisfaction that, if the hour should ever come for the reawakening of the Churches of the East, there is no infallible pontiff at Constantinople, no hierarchy separated from all the domestic charities of life, to prevent the religious" and social elements of those vast regions from amalgamating into one harmonious whole. -2592 bas Or, if we' efix our view on that colossal figure which has chiefly occupied our attention, it is consolatory to reflect that Latin Christendom the Christendom in which our fathers were boin and bred, and in which were laid the foundations of all our "institutions civil and religious was not always the Babylonian "monster which no doubt it has in some points and at particular periods strongly resembled, and with which some of our friends would believe it to be absolutely identical. When so good a "Protestant as the Dean of St. Paul's is fain to ask, as he looks impartially on the seven first centuries of European history, 'Where, without this vast uniform hierarchical influence where, in those ages of anarchy and ignorance, of brute force had been Christianity itself? we need not fear to acknowledge— nay rather, we ought thankfully to welcome-the fact that the Papacy was the most important outward instrument, then existing in the world for the propagation and preservation of the Gospel. Its earlier crimes, its present decrepitude, the enormous vices of its sixth Alexander, the benevolent weaknesses of its ninth Pius, must not blind us to the blessings which it bestowed upon us whilst it stood in the vanguard of civilization, "whilst it represented the unborn Protestantism of Europe. toe And now when we find that there is yet a third element of Christian life, younger than the other two-less defined, indeed, in its outlines, less vast in its proportions, but, like those older systems, springing out of the heart of a mighty race, under the pressure of a great historical crisis can we fail to hope that the Christianity which first appeared on the stage of the world's history, in the bosom of the German nations, at the Reformation, is not less surely a step in God's Providence-an instrument in the ultimate formation of Christendom-than the forms of ecclesiastical and religious life which rose out of the Greek race under the sway of Constantine, and out of the ruins of Rome under the auspices of Leo and Gregory? We will not anticipate the future volumes of |