truths in the Apostolic Creed. We may even imagine the Hierarchy receding into their older sphere, instructors, examples in their families as in themselves, of all the virtues and charities; the religious administrators of simpler rites. Yet who that calmly, philosophically, it may almost be said religiously, surveys the power and strength of the Latin religion, the religion of centuries, the religion of a continent-its extraordinary and felicitous adaptation to all the wants and necessities of man-its sympathy with some of the dominant faculties of our being, those especially developed at certain periods of civilisation-its unity-its magisterial authority-the depth to which it had sunk in the human heart-the feelings, affections, passions, fears, hopes, which it commanded: "who that surveys it in its vast standing army of the Clergy, and Monks and Friars, which had so long taken service in its defence, with its immense material strength of Churches, Monasteries, Established Laws, Rank; in its Letters, and in its Arts; in its charitable, educational, Institutions: who will not rather wonder at its dissolution, its abolition in so large a part of Christendom, than at its duration? It is not so marvellous that it resisted, and resisted with success; that it threw back in some kingdoms, for a time, the inevitable change; that it postponed in some until a more remote, more terrible and fatal rebellion some centuries after, the detrusion from its autocratic, despotic throne. Who shall be astonished that Latin Christianity so long maintained a large part of the world at least in nominal subjection; or finally, that it still maintains the contest with its rival Teutonic Christianity without, and the more dangerous, because unavowed, revolt within its own pale-the revolt of those who, in appearance

its subjects, either altogether disdain its control, and, not able to accept its belief and discipline, compromise by a hollow acquiescence, or an unregarded, unpunished neglect of all discipline, for total inward rejection of belief?

CHAPTER II.

Belief of Latin Christianity.

Unity of creed.

of the Holy

LATIN Christendom, or rather universal Christendom, was one (excepting those who were self-outlawed, or outlawed by the dominant authority from the Christian monarchy), not only in the organisation of the all-ruling Hierarchy and the admission of Monkhood, it was one in the great system of Belief. With the exception of the single article of the procession of the Holy Ghost, the Nicene formulary had been undisturbed, and had ruled with undisputed sway Procession for centuries. The procession of the Holy Ghost. Ghost from the Son as well as the Father was undoubtedly the doctrine of the early Latin writers; but this tenet stole noiselessly-it is not quite certain at what time-into the Creed. That Creed, framed at the great Council of Nicæa, had been received with equal unanimity by the Greek and Latin Churches. Both Churches had subscribed to the anathemas pronounced by the second Council of Constantinople, and ratified by the first Council of Ephesus, against any Church which should presume to add one word or letter to that Creed. Public documents in Rome showed that Pope Leo III. had inscribed on a silver tablet the Creed of Rome without the words "from the Son," as the authorised faith of the Latin Church. In the great quarrel with Photius, the Greeks discovered, and charged against the Latins, this audacious violation of the

A.D. 1053.

decrees of the Councils, this unauthorised impious addition to the unalterable Creed of Nicæa. The Patriarch of Constantinople charged it, justly or unjustly, against his own enemy, Nicolas I. In the strife with Michael Cerularius, at the final disruption between the two Churches, this was one of the inexpiable offences of the Latin Church. The admission of the obnoxious article by the Greeks at the Council of Florence was indignantly repudiated, on the return of the Legates from the Council, by the Greek Church. But the whole of Latin Christendom disdained to give ear to the protest of the Greeks; the article remained, with no remonstrance whatever from the West, in the general Latin Creed.

popular

But the Creeds-that of the Apostles, that of Nicæa, Unity of or even that ascribed to St. Athanasius, and religion. chanted in every church of the West-formed but a small part of the belief of Latin Christendom. That whole world was one in the popular religion. The same vast mythology commanded the general consent; the same angelology, demonology; the same worship of the Virgin and the Saints, the same reverence for pilgrimages and reliques, the same notions of the life to come, of Hell, Purgatory, Heaven. In general, as springing out of like tendencies and prepossessions of mind, prevailed the like or kindred traditions; the world was one in the same vulgar superstitions. Already, as has been seen, at the close of the sixth century, during the Pontificate of Gregory the Great, the Christianisation not only of the speculative belief of man, of

a I know no more brief or better summary of the controversy than the common one in Pearson on the Creed. I have some doubts whether the accu

sation of Photius, as to its introduction, is personal against Pope Nicolas or against the Roman Church.

that also which may justly be called the religion of man, was complete: but no less complete was the Christianisation, if it may be so said, of the lingering Paganism. Man had divinised all those objects of awe and veneration, which rose up in new forms out of his old religion, and which were intermediate between the Soul and God, -"God," that is, in "Christ," as revealed in the Gospels. Tradition claimed equal authority with the New Testament. There was supposed to be a perpetual power in the Church, and in the Hierarchy the Ruler and Teacher of the Church, of infinitely expanding and multiplying the objects of faith; at length, of gradually authorising and superinducing as integral parts of Christianity the whole imaginative belief of the Middle Ages. Even where such belief had not been canonically enacted by Pope or Council, the tacit acceptance by the general practice of Priest as well as of people was not less authoritative; popular adoration invested its own objects in uncontested sanctity. Already the angelic Hierarchy, if not in its full organisation, had taken its place between mankind and God; already the Virgin Mary was rising, or had fully risen, into Deity; already prayers rarely ascended directly to the throne of grace through the One Intercessor, a crowd of mediate agencies was almost necessary to speed the orison upward, and to commend its acceptance, as it might thwart its blessing. Places, things, had assumed an inalienable holiness, with a concentered and emanative power of imparting or withholding spiritual influences. Great prolific principles had been laid down, and had only to work in the congenial soil of the human mind. Now, by the infusion of the Barbaric or Teutonic element, as well as by the religious movement which had stirred to its depths the old Roman society, mankind might seem