populace, it peaceably established itself in every province of the Roman empire; as, by the same means, it is now penetrating every region of the globe.

Among the Anglo-Saxons, its conquest over the fierce paganism which our ancestors upheld, was not begun till both Ireland and France had submitted to her laws; but it was accomplished in a manner worthy of its benevolence and purity, as we have already detailed in the reigns of Ethelbert and Edwin.

Genuine piety led the first missionaries to our shores. Their zeal, their perseverance, and the excellence of the system they diffused, notwithstanding some peculiarities which, in conformity with their own taste, and with that of their age, they attached to it, made their labour successful.

How long the Saxon paganism continued among individuals in each district, after it ceased to be the religious establishment of the government, there are no materials for ascertaining. It was too irrational to have maintained a protracted contest with Christianity; but though it may have ceased to have had its temples and priests, or any visible existence, yet the influence of its prejudices, and of the habits it had generated, continued long to operate. These became insensibly mixed with so much of Christianity as each understood, and produced that motley character in religion and morals which was so often displayed in the Anglo-Saxon period.

But Christianity was a positive benefit to the nation, in every degree of its prevalence. Wherever it has penetrated, like the Guardian Angel of the human race, it has meliorated the heart and enlightened the understanding; and hence has become the religion of the most cultivated portions of the globe.

Every part of its moral system is directed to soften the asperities of the human character, to remove its selfishness, to intellectualize its sensualities, to restrain its malignity, and to animate its virtues. If it did not eradicate all the vices of the AngloSaxon by whom it was professed, it taught him to abandon many. It exhibited to his contemplation the idea of what human nature ought to be, and may attain. It gradually implanted a moral sense in his bosom, and taught his mind the habit of moral reasoning, and its application to life. It could not be known unless some portion of literature was attained or diffused. It therefore actually introduced learning into England, and taught the Anglo-Saxons to cultivate intellectual pursuits.

On the enslaved poor of the country its effects were most benign. It was always contributing to their emancipation, by urging their lords to grant this blessing as an act beneficial to their state after death; and while slavery continued in the country, the master was humanized, and the bondmen consoled, wherever Christianity was admitted and obeyed.

The effects of Christianity, in diminishing the superstitions of the day, were also considerable. The credulous fancies of an unlettered people are very gross, and usually hold the understanding in chains, from which it is difficult to emerge. The conversion of the nation destroyed this brutish slavery, and greatly strengthened and enlarged its general intellect. Monkish superstition introduced other follies; but the literature which accompanied them dispelled them as it spread, and reason in every age gained new conquests, which she never lost. Indeed, in nothing was the new religion more strikingly beneficial, than by introducing a moral and intellectual education. This could have neither been known nor understood till Christianity displayed the value, imparted the means, and produced the habit of adopting it.

The political effects of Christianity in England were as good as they could be in that age of general darkness; but it must be confessed that they were not so beneficial as its individual influence; and yet we are indebted for it to chivalry, and the highminded tone of spirit and character which that produced. We owe to its professors all the improvement that we have derived from the civil law, which they discovered, revived, explained, and patronized. Nor has Christianity been unserviceable to our constitutional liberty: every battle which the churchman fought against the king or noble, was for the advantage of general freedom; and by rearing an ecclesiastical power, which at one time opposed the king, and at another the aristocracy of the chiefs, it certainly favoured the rise of the political importance and influence of the middle and lower classes of the people. The independence, and even the ambition, of the church, could not be asserted without checking the royal power; and such opposition repeatedly compelled the crown to court popularity as its surest defence.

The defects which often accompanied these benefits, were the faults of a very partially enlightened age; of tempers sometimes sincerely zealous, and sometimes ambitiously selfish, but always violent and irascible; and of the system into which Christianity was distorted. They did not spring from the religion inculcated by the Scriptures. Monkish and papal Christianity became, in every age after the seventh, something different from Apostolical Christianity. Religion is enjoined by its Divine Author to be made the governing principle of life, but its true spirit and utility declines or disappears, when superstition, imposture, politics, folly, or violence is combined with it. Formed to suit, to influence, and to adorn every class of society, true piety mixes gracefully with every innocent pleasure which virtue sanctions; with every accomplishment which refined intellect values; and with all that business which life requires, and which enlightened pru

dence would cultivate. It forbids only, in every pursuit, that monopolizing absorption of mind which cannot be indulged without debasing ourselves or injuring others. It aims to form us to a species of celestial intellect, and celestial sensibility. Its true offspring is not the gloomy ascetic, fasting into atrophy in the solitude of a deşert; nor the self-tormenting monk, mortifying himself into imbecility, and mistaking delirium for inspiration. Its object is to lead us to a gradual approximation towards the Divine perfections; and its tuition for this purpose is that of parental tenderness and affectionate wisdom, imposing no restraints but such as accelerate our improvements; and distressing us with no vicissitudes but those which tend to make our happiness compatible with our virtue, and to render human life a series of continual progression. Inattentive to these great objects of the Christian Legislator, the papal hierarchy, though often producing men of the holiest lives and of the most spiritual devotion, yet has, from accident, fanaticism, and policy, pursued too often a spurious plan of forcing mankind to become technical automatons of rites and dreams; words and superstitions; and has supported a system which, if not originally framed, was at least applied to enforce a long-continued exertion of transferring the government of the world into the hands of ecclesiastics, and too often superseding the Christianity of the Gospels by that of tradition, policy, half delirious bigotry, feelings often fantastic, and unenlightened enthusiasm. These errors could not always support the noble aspirations of devout sensibility which were sometimes combined with them. But the mischievous additions usually formed the prevailing character of the multitude.

CHAPTER II.

Anglo-Saxons become Missionaries to other Nations.

Soon after the Anglo-Saxons had been converted to Christianity they became anxious to spread its consolations among their Continental ancestors, and the neighbouring nations.

Willebrod, with eleven of his companions, went as missionaries from England to Heligoland and Friesland in 692; and was made bishop of the city now called Utrecht. His associates spread Christianity among the Westphalians and their neigh

bours. Boniface, in 715, left our island to convert the Germans: he preached to the Thuringians, Hessians, and others. He founded the bishoprics of Wurtzburg, Buraburg, Erfurt, and Erchstadt. In 744 he raised the celebrated monastery of Fulda; and in 746, was made archbishop of Mentz. Returning to Friesland, in 755, he was there murdered, with fifty ecclesiastics who accompanied him. He had converted above one hundred thousand Germans.b Lebuin was another Englishman who attempted to become a missionary; and Adalbert, son of a king of the Northumbrian kingdom of Deira, in 790, went to Germany for the same purpose.

We have an intimation of the plan of instruction which they adopted for the change of the pagan mind, in the following judicious directions of Alcuin for a progressive information:

"This order should be pursued in teaching mature persons: 1st. They should be instructed in the immortality of the soul; in the future life; in its retribution of good and evil, and in the eternal duration of both conditions.

"2d. They should then be informed for what sins and crimes they will have to suffer with the Devil everlasting punishments; and for what good and beneficial deeds they will enjoy unceasing glory with Christ.

"3d. The faith of the Holy Trinity is then to be most diligently taught: and the coming of our Saviour into the world for the salvation of the human race. Afterwards impress the mystery of his passion; the truth of his resurrection; his glorious ascension; his future advent to judge all nations, and the resurrection of our bodies.

"Thus prepared and strengthened, the man may be baptized."d

CHAPTER III.

View of the Form of Christianity introduced among the Anglo-Saxons; and of some of the Religious Rites and Notions.

THE form and spirit of Christianity introduced among the Anglo-Saxons by Gregory's monks were unquestionably the best which he and the Roman church then knew and valued. And as the form and spirit of every institution arise from the mind and disposition of some portion of its contemporaries, and are adapted to their feelings or occasions, so we may assume that the doc

Alcuin, Vita Willeb.

b Sce his Letters. 15 Bib. Mag. Pat.; and see Mosheim Eccl. Hist. cent. 8.

c Tanner, Not. Mon. 4. Ireland was also successful in its missionary exertions. Its Columbanus taught in Gaul, and among the Suevi and Boioi; one of his companions, St. Gall, converted many of the Helvetii and Suevi; and St. Kilian visited the Eastern Franks.

d Alc. Op. p. 1484.

trines, rites, and formulæ of Christianity, which the papal see established in England in the seventh century, were congenial with the mind, character, taste, and circumstances of the nation, and of Europe at that period. It is therefore no reproach to the memory of Gregory or of his missionaries, if we now appreciate differently the merit of what they taught with the most benevolent integrity and merited success. The world has become a new world of knowledge, feeling, taste, habit, and reason since that period. Their religious education suited their comparative babyhood of knowledge and intellect, and formed an interesting and improving child. New agencies occurred afterwards to rear this infant to a noble youth. Better views of religion have since united with expanded science and progressive reason to conduct the national character and mind to a still superior manhood. Each preceding stage was necessary to the formation of the subsequent. Each has produced its appropriate utilities, and each has passed away from our estimation as soon as higher degrees of improvement were attained, and better systems became visible. The Scriptures are the imperishable records of our faith and hope; and if their lessons only had been allowed to be the guides of man's opinions and practice, all the absurdities and superstitions which we lament or ridicule would have been prevented or soon removed. But in every age the human mind has chosen to blend religion with its own dreams and passions; and has made these, and not the Gospel, the paramount, though always erring, dictators of our theological knowledge and religious sensibility. It is the glory of the present age, that the cultivated understanding is emancipating itself from all the dogmatism and prejudices both of scepticism and superstition, and is advancing to those just and clear views of impartial truth, of human weakness, and of the need and efficacy of divine assistance, which will unite faith with philosophy, knowledge with hope, divine love with moral beauty, and self-comfort with an active, kind, and magnanimous charity.

With these views we may smile without insult at some of the questions, and condemn without bitterness others, on which Augustine requests the directions of Gregory, as to the ecclesiastical government, discipline, rules, and restrictions to which he is to subject his new converts. We are surprised that some of the points adverted to should have been made the subjects of sacerdotal notice; but the gravity and earnestness with which they are put and answered, show that they were then deemed proper objects of such attention, and were considered by priest and votary to be important and interesting to the consciences of both.

a See Bede's 27th chapter of his first book, of which the eighth and ninth articles are the most objectionable. But there is a liberality in the pope's answer to the