there were, I know not what whispers breathed into the ears of a few and delivered as a secret religion, that chastity and probity of life should be pursued. When and where," he adds, “they heard the precepts of sacred celestial chastity we know not t." The Greek poet styles chastity "the most beautiful gift of the gods."" στέργοι δέ με σωφροσύνα, δώρημα κάλλιστον θεῶν †. But the Christian revelation threw a new light upon the mysteries of our moral nature. "Although," says St. Augustin, “there are so many different nations on the earth, living according to different rites and manners, and distinguished by variety of languages, arms, and habits; yet there are not more than two races of human society existing, which we may call two cities; the one consisting of men who live after the flesh, and the other of those who live after the spirit §." The passions, indeed, given to us with life, as long as they remain pure and unabused, are under the protection of angels; but no light unearthly is required to show that when corrupted or misdirected, they are subjected to the empire of dæmons, and made the ready instruments of every error and vanity that oppose themselves to justice. Thus reason suffices to teach that there is a virtuous love and a guilty love, a pernicious anger, and a holy anger, a criminal pride and a noble sense of dignity. But those whom Christ had repaired by the new light of his immortality could see farther. The flight of Christian souls was higher still; for that belief in millions of spiritual creatures walking the earth unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep, those images, those chaunts, those crowns and reliquaries guarding the soul from the poisoned shafts of the impure dæmon, as if with a buckler of diamonds, that cleanness of heart which suggests that revolted spirits must seem to resemble even in shape and outward signs their sin and place of doom obscure and foul, that affirmation of the prophet, "ye are gods, and all sons of the Most High," that maxim of the bright school, "Christianus alter * De Civit. Dei, Lib. II. 6. Eurip. Medea, 635. § De Civitate Dei, Lib. XIV. cap. 1. + II. 26. Christus," without doubt produced an ideal of humanity corresponding to what was in the mind of God rather than to what was in the mind of man. Men of genius like Sir Philip Sidney, who set themselves, as in his letter to Queen Elizabeth, "against papists," indulged their imagination in the absence of the beauties of the angelic life, by forming the ideal of sensual excellence, as may be witnessed in his essay, entitled, “Valour Anatomized." This has always been and must ever continue the policy of those who attack the Catholic religion. Material is thus opposed to spiritual beauty, though the first is indebted to the latter for the attraction which it uses as a snare. As Novalis remarks, "the ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of the highest strength of the most powerful life, which is also termed the ideal of greatness. It is the maximum of barbarism:" so foreign to the spirit of the middle ages, that a great guide of the thirteenth century declared it more detestable to be intemperate than timid * : "but in these times of irregular cultivation, it has many adherents even amidst the utmost weakness. Through this ideal man would acquire a brute spirit and a brute intelligence †.” Through this every thing belonging to the holy discipline of faith is seen in a distorted shape; "O mortal lust! that canst not lift thy head above the waves which whelm and sink thee down." At present the ideal of humanity in the whole development of human genius is animal, in the ages of faith it was angelical, and this of itself is quite sufficient to explain the difference between the manners and creations of the middle ages, and those of the modern civilization; for the great heresy of latter times has been a gross application to manners of the principle of Jordano Bruno, who inculcated the identification of God with nature, that is, with nature in its present state. Many of the faithful seem not to be aware that if they consider their own ideal by the light of unimpassioned reason, and even by that of the ancient philosophy, they would find it amply justified. Novalis, whose remarkable writings may be said to represent the testimony of the human intelligence, says, "We must keep the body as well as the soul in our power. The *Egid. Rom. de Regim. II. 1. 16. Dante, Hell, XXVII. + Schriften, II. 285. 66 body is the instrument to form and modify the world: we must seek to form our body to all capacities. Modification of this is the modification of the world *." The Pythagoreans were exhorted to beware of pleasure as of a thing requiring the utmost caution, the source and instigator of all deceit and sin †. Aristotle said, that "it is brutish to indulge and delight in sensual pleasures, and that the most generous natures voluntarily refrain from them." He shows that the grand object of virtue is to resist pleasure, since it is still more difficult to fight against pleasure than against anger, according to Heraclitus. περὶ δὲ τὸ χαλεπώτερον αἰεὶ καὶ τέχνη γίνεται καὶ ἀρετή §. From the works of Plato a sublime defence might be derived for those features of Catholic morals which seem most repugnant to the feelings of flesh and blood. Socrates, in that magnificent passage at the end of the Gorgias, where he describes the punishment of the wicked after death, says, that the souls which have been defiled with lust and avarice, will then appear horribly disfigured, as if with great scars and wounds which these vile passions had left imprinted on them ||." Dionysius praises the manners of the first Romans on account of their abstemious life, being hardened against all enjoyment of pleasure; and for their having estimated happiness by virtue not by fortune. In expressing his admiration for Romulus, observing how austere he was, and how he hated all crime, he concludes with this remarkable expression, καὶ πολλὴν ἔχουσα πρὸς τοὺς ἡρωϊκοὺς Biovs opciórηra **. In fact, according to Pindar it was the boast of Achilles, the type of heroism, that he had been imbued with the learning of Chiron, and that he had passed the first twenty years of his life in a cave, where he was educated by the chaste daughters of the centaur, to whom he never even uttered an unseemly word↑↑. Without doubt the heathen moralist in general knew little of that trial to which Hugo of St. Victor alludes, when he says that youth has to bear the burden and heat Schriften, II. 157. Jamblich. de Pythagoric. Vita, cap. 31. || Plato, Gorgias. Antiquit. Roman. Lib. II. c. 11. tt Id. Pyth. Od. IV. § Id. Lib. II. 3. ** II. c. 24. of the day, materially the weight of labour and heat of the sun, and morally the weight of the carnal fragility and heat of concupiscence*. Yet Euripides, in drawing the character of Hippolytus, furnished proof that the Greeks were capable of conceiving the beauty of such a character as that of a young man wholly innocent, unwilling to pollute his ears or eyes with anything against modesty, παρθένον ψυχὴν ἔχων †. Nay, how well they understood the importance of guarding the senses with a view to the preservation of such virtue, may be collected from the double signification of the word cóon with the Greeks, and the alliance between pupillæ and pupulæ with the Latins. We, indeed, have abundant testimonies from ancient authors, to the excellence of many of the supernatural features of Catholic manners during the ages of faith. Cicero, after alluding to the internal division which involves the necessity of self government, adds, "Est in animis omnium fere natura molle quiddam, demissum, humile, enervatum, quodammodo et languidum, senile. Si nihil aliud, nihil esset homine deformiust." And yet this is what the modern sophists would teach youth to follow! "Arrianus Maturius est princeps," says Pliny, quum dico Princeps, non de facultatibus loquor, sed de castitate, justitia, gravitate, prudentia §." The ancient philosophers even admit expressly the necessity of placing morals upon a supernatural basis, and of imparting motives to action higher than the mere principles of humanity. Varro thought it useful that brave men should fancy themselves sprung from the gods. "The human mind," he said, "in consequence of that persuasion, would undertake greater things, pursue them with more ardour, and perfect them with greater felicity." We no where meet with an idea of morality independent of sacrifice and the fear of the Deity. Hermippus says that Chiron the Centaur first led the race of mortals to justice, teaching them oaths and propitiatory sacrifices, and καὶ σχήματ ̓ Ολύμπου. 66 It is a singular fact, that even for the institution of confession, apparently so beyond mortal ken, there might be testimonies produced from some of the ancient philo De Claustro Animæ, Lib. II. 14. + 1006. sophers. Plato enforces the duty of disclosing one's sin and injustice to others; and Plutarch speaks as follows, in his treatise entitled, "How to perceive one's Progress in Virtue." "As for those who voluntarily give themselves up to the men that will reprove them, who confess their errors, and who disclose their own poverty, not being at ease until it be known, not wishing to be secret, but confessing and praying those who reprove and admonish them to prescribe a remedy, such a conduct is certainly not one of the worst signs of amendment and of progress in virtue." To this divine principle, which produced such an influence on Catholic manners, our attention must now be directed, which is an inquiry that will not lead us aside from the path of an historian; for the learned Scotti, in his Theory of Christian Politicks, remarks justly, that it is often necessary for a writer on civil government to enter upon doctrinal discussions, as in the very instance which calls for that observation, where he shows the utility which the state derives from the doctrines of purgatory and indulgence. There is no historian of Charles the Fifth, who has not been obliged to notice the curious petition of his Lutheran subjects, that by his imperial authority men might be compelled to return to the ancient discipline of confession, when experience had taught them that its abolition produced a visible deterioration in morals, and opened a prospect of interminable evils to society. To this point now, reader, let us therefore turn, and mark how just God decrees our debts be cancelled. CHAPTER VIII. In the symbol of our faith, immediately after the commemoration of the holy church, we find mention made of the remission of sins, because, as St. Augustin says, "it VOL. VI. D d |