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There is another and very different class of miracles, of which Fuller* says that he who shall go about seriously to confute such tales, is as very a fool...as he was somewhat else who first impudently invented and vented them." I observe, Sir, that you and low-champions for the Romish cause are very sensitive concerning miracles of this class. You seem to think it ungenerous that they should be mentioned, and that you have a right to complain when a Protestant brings forward what you call "the† miserable story of St. Dunstan's pinching the Devil's nose, and other tales of this sort, and represents them as forming part of the faith or doctrines of the (Roman) Catholic Church." As part of its doctrines, Sir, they have never been brought forward, for with doctrine they have nothing to do, nor with faith, in the proper sense of that word; but in the looser acceptation wherein the latter word is frequently used to signify belief, they certainly form a part of that popular faith which it was and is the constant endeavour of the Romish Church to promote. They are brought forward, therefore, by Protestants, not as parts of the esoteric doctrines of the Romish Church,

* Worthies, vol. i. 527.

+ Page 49.

but of its exoteric mythology: they are quoted as showing what the fables were with which the people were deluded. The tale of St. Dunstan and the Devil's nose appears at present peculiarly offensive to the admirers and advocates of that worshipful Saint. It has only been so since Mr. Turner made the right use of it. In former times it was especially popular, and not with the vulgar and ignorant alone. Even in later days some of the most elegant scholars of the Romish Church exercised their pens upon it. The Jesuit Angelinus Gazæus versified it among other tales of the same kind in his Pia Hilaria,* for the edification of youth. You find it in the Lararium

* A book which was to supersede some of the classic poets, ... for thus saith Mr. Butler's author, Father Jones, called in religion F. Leander de St. Martino, in the Censura affixed to the first volume:

Hilares Iambi prodeant casto pede,
Tersi, rotundi, sed Latini, sed pii.

Mel à Poetis ethnicis simile petas?
Aconita potiùs. Ite, quò meritum vocat,
Ovidi, Catulle, Martialis, improbis
Maculare juvenes sordibus nati choros :
Habet hic abunde, quidquid est vobis, salis.
Habet et politum, et, quod deest vobis, pium.
Mea tu Juventus fugito Tartareos sales,
Et hos salubres legito cum fructu jocos,
Teretes, acutos, virgineos, summá pios.

Poeticum of Gregorius Bulzius, and in the Annus Sacert of the Jesuit Sautel. These men lived not in dark ages, nor in ignorant countries, and they thought that by embellishing this very story, and putting it into the hands of youth for edification, they were performing...I will not say a religious, but a professional‡ duty.

* Seu de Cœlitibus Epigrammata. Novocomi, 1665. The most remarkable thing in this book is the account which the author gives of himself, as finding two or three hours sleep sufficient. Being too much employed in his sacred functions to have any leisure for so light an occupation as poetry by day, he borrowed part of the night, he says, for the composition of these verses. Ut natura omnium, si velimus, paucis est contenta, sic mea breviori ut plurimum somno contentissima. Bina vel triná hora a cubitu experrectus, aliquod crebro spatium temporis, meditandis epigrammatum argumentis, pangendisque versibus insumebam, quos dein, appetente die, exscribebam, unde tandem hi duodecim de Calitibus libelli sunt enati. Ad Lectorem.

† Annus Sacer Poeticus, sive Selecta de Divis Cælitibus Epigrammata, in singulos Anni dies tributa.-Lugduni. 1679. 2 tom.

Sautel's work was published after his death by his friend and fellow Jesuit Calmels, to whom the manuscript had been bequeathed for that purpose; and the editor speaks thus of these Romish Fasti, which actually contain more fables than the Fasti of Ovid, with the Metamorphoses to boot. Ausim meo periculo spondere futurum, ut hoc egregium Viri optimi monumentum, non modò apud pium, sed et eruditum Lectorem recto stet talo, plausum et ɛñɩonpaoíav ferat, dum Religio Catholica stabit. Etenim Annus Sacer, Sanctorum qui per anni currentis singulos dies occurrunt elogia et zavηyvpíkoɩ λóyo, mirum dictu quantum hi valeant ad bene moratos homines efficiendos, &c.

Before we dismiss the story, it will be proper to notice Dr. Lingard's remark, that it was "unknown* to the contemporary author of his life." As if that author were so free from the original sin of monkish nature, that his work contains no such tales! If he does not relate this "nocturnal conflict with the Devil," (as the historian phrases it) does he relate no other conflicts with the same personage? no other interviews and adventures with him quite as miraculous,... and quite as authentic, though not indeed so picturesque, and therefore not so popular? Had the Romish historian of his Church forgotten that in this contemporary piece of biography the Devil figures in the various forms of a bear, a dog, a viper, and a fox?† that it relates how the Saint struck at him once with a stick, and, missing his blow, the sound of the stick against the wall was heard through the whole church? how he threw a stone§ at the Saint, which knocked off his cap; and how the Saint saw him dancing | for joy?...for it appears by these sanctified writers that the Devil dances and sings when he is pleased. Could he hope that Bredfirth's cha

* Anglo-Saxon Church, 397. N. 6.

+ Acta SS. Mai. t. iv. 352.

+ Ibid.

§ Ibid.

Il Ibid. 357.

racter for veracity or discretion (if he be indeed the author) was to be established by showing that he has not related this one fable, when so many other fables of the same kind are woyen with the web of his work! But these things are no more peculiar to Bredfirth than they are to Osbern, whom Dr. Lingard, and you, Sir, after him, would make the scape-goat on this occasion. Poets have not made more free in all ages with the Muse, than monkish biographers with the Devil. You and I, Sir, have been voluminous writers; but if all the anecdotes of the Devil which the Bollandists have inserted in their collection were selected and put together, they would fill more volumes than we have both committed to the press.

No man that ever wore a cowl could swallow camels more easily than the Spanish Benedictine Antonio de Yepes: an elephant, with a castle on his back, would not have choked him: yet he strains at a gnat sometimes; and, when relating how the verse for Bede's epitaph was completed by an invisible hand, boldly professes his incredulity, and delivers a grave opinion that it was a stratagem* of the Devil's to invent such tales and insert them in the lives

* Coronica de S. Benito, t. iii. ff. 55.

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