The heresies of one generation become the commonplaces of the next; the History of the Jews is now called 'coulourless.' It was considered of so vivid a hue when first In some cases the passionless flow of his published, that its author's career in the history contrasts curiously with the picturChurch was stopped short at the mild re-esque account of the same scenes by a later pose of a deanery. He did not regret his fate; he was freer to speak what he thought. There was indeed but one post which he

noble eloquence to which the great Dean Then follows a most interesting dissertasometimes (although rarely) rises, of the tion on the different ways in which the grand impartiality, and yet of the deep conception of the Deity suffers at the hands feeling which formed so striking a combina- of men,' either by over subtlety removing tion in his mind, than is to be found in his him too far from us, or impersonating him account of the Trinitarian controversy in into a merely human being. Among the that very chapter. After describing how, causes,' he says, which contributed to the for the first time, a purely speculative successful propagation of Christianity, was tenet agitated the populace of great cities, the singular beauty and felicity with which occupied the councils of princes, and de- its theory of the conjunction of the divine termined the fall of kingdoms and the sov- and human nature, each preserving its sepereignty of a great part of Europe,' he pro- arate attributes, on the one hand enabled ceeds: In morals, in manners, in habits, the mind to preserve inviolate the pure conin usages, in church government, in relig- ception of the Deity, on the other to apious ceremonial, there was no difference proximate it, as it were, to human interests between the two parties which divided and sympathies. But this is done rather Christendom. The Gnostic sects inculcated by a process of instinctive feeling than by a severer asceticism, and differed in their strict logical reasoning.' usages from the general bodies of Christians. He next gives an account of the extent The Donatist factions began, at least, with to which a sort of Platonism, of a more a question of church discipline, and almost oriental and imaginative cast than that of grew into a strife for political ascendency. the Athenian sage, had become universal; The Arians and Athanasians first divided the idea of the Logos, the connecting link the world on a pure question of faith. between the unseen world and that of man, From this period we may date the introduc- which had entered all the religions of the tion of rigorous articles of belief, which world; it had modified Judaism, it had required the submissive assent of the mind allied itself to the Syrian worship. Alexto every word and letter of an established andria, the fatal and prolific soil of specucreed, and which raised the slightest heresy lative controversy, and where it was most of opinion into a more fatal offence against likely to madden into furious and lasting God, and a more odious crime in the esti- hostility, gave birth to this new element of mation of man, than the worst moral delin-disunion in the Christian world. Different quency or the most flagrant deviation from sects, the Sabellians, and the Patripassians, the spirit of Christianity.'

He goes on to show how the controversy could hardly be avoided, when the exquisite distinctness and subtlety of the Greek language were applied to religious opinions of an Oriental origin. Even the Greek of the New Testament retained something of the significant and reverenţial vagueness of Eastern expression. This vagueness, even philosophically speaking, may better convey to the mind those mysterious conceptions of the Deity which are beyond the province of reason than the anatomical precision of philosophical Greek.

The first Christians were content to worship the Deity as revealed in the Gospel; they assented devoutly to the words of the sacred writings; they did not decompose them, or with nice and scrupulous accuracy appropriate peculiar terms to each manifestation of the Godhead.'

6

had put forward their heretical interpretations, but the question was now taken up by the intellectual masters of the age. The contest was no longer for mastery over obscure communities, but for the Roman world. The proselytes whom it disputed were sovereigns. It is but judging on the common principles of human nature to conclude, that the grandeur of the prize supported the ambition and inflamed the passions of the contending parties, that human motives of political power and aggrandisement mingled with the more spiritual influences of the love of truth, and zeal for the purity of religion.'

The doctrine of the Trinity, that is, the divine nature of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, was acknowledged by all. To each of these distinct and separate beings, both parties attributed the attributes of Godhead, with the exception of self-ex

istence, which was restricted by the Arians found theological investigation; but Bernard to the Father. Both admitted the ante- would not spare them, and the objectionable mundane being of the Son and the Holy parts were read aloud in all their logical Spirit. But, according to the Arians, there was a time, before the commencement of the ages, when the Parent Being dwelt alone in undeveloped, undivided unity. At this time, immeasurably, incalculably, inconceivably remote, the majestic solitude ceased, the divine unity was broken by an act of the Sovereign Will, and the only begotten Son, the image of the Father, the Vicegerent of all the divine power, the intermediate Agent in all the long subsequent work of creation, began to be.'

aridity. The bishops, whose wits were quite unable to follow the flights of the audacious reasoner, still with unanimous chorus replied at the end of each proposition, "damnamus." As they grew weary they relieved their fatigue by wine; the wine and the weariness brought on sleep; the drowsy assembly sat on, some leaning on their elbows, some with cushions under their heads, some with their heads dropping on their knees. At each pause they murmured"damnamus," till at length some cut short the word, and faintly breathed "namus"—their orthodox horror continuing unwearied to the end.

Such was the question which led to all the evils of human strife-hatred, persecution, bloodshed. But, however profoundly humiliating this fact in the history of man- The world has made progress in the kind, and in the history of Christianity an seventy-eight years of his career, and it epoch of complete revolution from its gen- was as a mark how far the tide had risen, uine spirit, it may be fairly inquired whether quite as much as on account of any personal this was not an object more generous, more feeling, that he rejoiced in 1865 on having unselfish, and at least as wise, as many of been asked to preach at Oxford, and to those motives of personal and national publish his sermon, - that Oxford in which aggrandisement, or many of those magic he had been preached against, and in a words, which, embraced by two parties with manner ostracised, nearly forty years beblind and unintelligect fury, have led to the fore, for his History of the Jews, and where most disastrous and sanguinary events in his greatest work is now a text-book for the annals of man.' the period to which it belongs.

Dr. Milman concludes by giving credit 'to the opponents of Arius for a vague, and however perhaps overstrained, neither ungenerous nor unnatural jealousy, lest the dignity of the Redeemer might in some way be lowered by the new hypothesis.' How many of the disputants who use the word as a sort of missile have any clear idea of what Arian means according to this definition ?

Again, in a different line of thought, although it is somewhat singular how rarely the sense of humour which so strongly characterised the Dean's social intercourse found expression in his books, yet the quiet ironical touch which one would expect from his hand comes out occasionally with wonderful force, as in his account of the condemnation at Sens of Abelard's religious heresies when he had himself appealed to Rome: The martial unlearned prelates on the council vainly hoped that as they had lost the excitement of the fray, they might escape the trouble and fatigue of this pro

Why don't they attack me? that is my heresy,' he has been heard to say when the Holy Inquisitors of Convocation or Congresses or Synods have been worrying some helpless parson. But it was known that it would not answer to assault one so extremely well able to defend himself, and to set forth all reasons, historical, metaphysical, and moral, for the faith that was in him; one so little swayed by passion or prejudice, so correct, so learned, so patient and so wise.

Besides which, sheltered in such large and thick octavos from the observation of most of the reverend gentlemen who aspire to decide these questions for their brethren, if not for the public, such expressions of thought seem to pass unnoticed. It might indeed be well so far to interfere with the liberty of the subject to be ignorant if he pleases as to institute an examination in the Dean's nine volumes of the History of Christianity, before any Pope (with the belief at least in his own infallibility), in or

out of Convocation, presumes to offer an | Book of the Chronicles' of the religions of opinion on any matter therein discussed. our race? Difficult perhaps for him even It is indeed a misfortune to have lost the not to feel a touch of that contempt with man who had a right out of his own expe- which the great old communions of East and rience of both books and life to tell the West regard the disputes of our most insurising generation of thinking men, whose lar and most self-sufficient of Churches. minds refuse to run in the rut of Puseyism Whenever the scattered portions of his or Evangelism, that there is a philosophy work in the world of thought are collected, of religion which has survived the contests it will be seen, however, in how many dif of the Monophysites and Monothelites, the ferent ways he vindicated freedom, as in Nestorians and Eutychians, the heresies his paper read before the Church Comwith strange names born of the contact of mission on getting rid of the subscription Christianity with the ancient faiths of the to the Articles, which was published in this world both East and West, which he has Magazine, where he shows how the docdescribed so well- a faith which is common trines of the English Church are not only to both the Trinitarians and the Arians, the more simply but more fully, assuredly monks of the Thebaid and the comfortable more winningly, taught in our liturgy and. English rector. In recounting indeed that our formularies than in our Articles.' He History of Human Error' (which he lived goes on to trace how some of these were to complete, though Mr. Caxton' did not), directed against opinions now entirely obone would fancy that he must have become solete, that they are silent and ignorant nearly desperate if he could not have shown inevitably about those which are new, and his conviction that there was a unity deeper no safeguard or security against them,' that than all the differences which those good however justly and wisely it is said that men thought so important, a truth under all their blunders and blindnesses, and shortcomings of intellect and heart, which lives and grows with the world's growth, though the progress may be slow to trace, which belongs to all time and all nations, as the human expression of the infinite- a true glimpse, though it must be a dim one, of that God who has not left us without a witness of Him at any time; or, as St. Augustine words the same idea, that matter which is now called the Christian religion was in existence among the ancients; and has never been wanting from the beginning

of the human race.'

Again he was tolerant even of the intolerant, and loved to show how the beauty of Christianity could underlie even the most extreme opinions; the love of human nature which could survive Calvinism and Predestination in their most terrible shapes, Augustine and Luther, the Roman Catholic Jansenists, the Puritans, and the Methodists, showing that many of the best and noblest Christians could yet hold the most frightful and godless forms of faith. Such is the triumph of the Christianised heart over the logic of the Christian understanding.'

It must have been difficult with such evidence constantly before his eyes, to give even their legitimate value to the questions of vestments and candles, of discipline, and infinitesimally small heresies; of how far in short the mantle of the Church may be stretched in different directions by her discordant children. Have not these things been written' over and over again, in the

the eternal truths of Christianity shall never pass away, religious thought and opinion, and above all religious language, are not exempt from the great law of universal progression and variation.' He then enters on the different controversies of the last thirty years to show the utter inadequacy of Articles written in the sixteenth century to meet the religious wants and necessities of the nineteenth.' 'I am an old man,' he winds up, with touching emphasis, and fully sensible of the blessings of a quiet life. Still I am bound not to disguise or suppress my judgment.' I stand absolutely alone in moving this resolution. I know that I speak the sentiments of a very large and I think increasing body even among the clergy. But all my life I have kept aloof from party, and this is no party move. Liberavi animam meam.'

As he began so he ended. The value of the spirit beyond the letter; of the substance above the form; the truth under divers forms of error, the error mingled with what we take to be the truth. The passage from one of his earliest works has already been given; in his latest published sermon he says: Orthodoxy of creed? has that insured the orthodoxy of the Christian heart which breathes only Christian love? I am one of those who believe torturing our fellow creatures a worse heresy against the Gospel than the most perverse of those opinions of the miserable victims led by thousands to the stake.'

In the last chapter of his last work, he sums up with his characteristic calm impar