Also from the council of Tarragona, cap. viii. We have decreed that the order, of ancient custom, be observed, and that the dioceses be visited annually by their bishops, and if any church be found out of repair, the pastor be required to repair it. Let the bishop receive from all the third part, as was known to have been appointed by ancient custom. And if any bishop, by reason of illhealth, cannot personally visit his churches, let him depute the office of visitation to others. Whence it is read in the fourth council of Toledo, A bishop must go throughout all his dioceses and parishes every year to inquire what repairs are needed by each church. But if he be prevented by sickness, or so involved in other business as to be unable to fulfil this duty, he shall send approved presbyters or deacons to inquire into the revenues and repairs of churches, and the conduct of the clergy. But what bishops should inquire of the clergy in their visitations, and what they should teach them, is thus decreed and read in the second council of Braga, cap. i. It pleased all the bishops (to decree) that the bishops perambulating all the churches of their dioceses should examine first of their clergy, how they perform the office of baptism and of the eucharist, and how they celebrate all the offices in the church; and if they find that all is correctly done, let them return thanks to God; but if the reverse, they should instruct those who are ignorant, and by all means enjoin, according to the ancient canons, that the catechumens be purified by exorcism before the twenty days of baptism, in which days they should be specially instructed in the creed of catechumens, which is, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty," &c. After the bishops, therefore, have examined or taught these things to their clergy, let them, on another day, assemble the people of the same church, and teach them to avoid the errors of idols, and various other crimes, such as homicide, adultery, perjury, false witnessing, and other deadly sins, and not to do to others what they would not wish to be done to themselves, and to believe in the general resurrection, and the day of judgment, in which every one shall receive according to his deeds. And thus afterwards let the bishop go from that church to another.* Likewise from the same council of Toledo, iiii. But when a bishop visits his diocese, let him not be burdensome to any one by the number (of his attendants), nor ever exceed the number of five (the text of the canon law says fifty, instead of five, but the reading is incorrect) in his train, nor have permission to remain more than one day at each church."† The above extracts from Gratian's Decretum represent the rules on this subject which were in force in the Western church at the time when he compiled that work, i. e. about A.D. 1130. It is plain that the system of parochial visitation continued at this time in full vigour. We shall now pass on to the regulations contained in the Decretals collected by order of Gregory IX. in the following century. Gratiani Decretum, pars ii. causa x. quæstio i. col. 924. Ed. Paris, 1561. ̧ From the council of Lateran. Whereas the apostle determined that he and his companions should be supported by their own hands, that he might deprive the false apostles of the opportunity of preaching, and that he might not be burdensome to those whom he preached to, it is exceedingly grievous that some of the prelates are so oppressive in their procurations, (provision, &c. during their visitations,) that their subjects (clergy) are sometimes compelled to sell the ornaments of the churches, and the provision for a long time is consumed in a short hour. Wherefore we enact that archbishops in visiting parishes shall not exceed the number of forty or fifty attendants, according to the various wealth of provinces. and churches; that bishops shall not exceed twenty or thirty, cardinals, twenty-five; that archdeacons be satisfied with five or seven, and rural deans with two horses. Nor let them travel with hounds or hawks, but proceed so that they may appear not to seek their own profit, but that of Jesus Christ. Nor let them require sumptuous entertainments, but receive with thanksgiving whatever is ministered unto them with civility and in sufficient quantity.* This canon, authorizing bishops to visit their clergy with such numerous trains of attendants, imposed a very serious burden on the parochial clergy, and was undoubtedly amongst the causes which tended in after times to the abolition of the practice. It seems to have been founded on an erroneous reading of the canon of Toledo, above cited, which empowered bishops to carry with them no less than fifty attendants on their parochial visitations, whereas the council had fixed the number at five. It was a mistake, however, which suited the manners of the age, and the great opulence of bishops from the time of the emperor Charlemagne. Still, however, the canon evinces the continuance of the practice of parochial visitation, and the sense which was felt of its obligation. In another part of the same collection we find the following decretal of Pope Innocent III., who flourished in the former part of the thirteenth century, and which shows that the right of visitation and of receiving procurations, or food and lodging, from the clergy, were then considered as essential to the episcopal office, and that a bishop might visit more than once in the year, if he judged it expedient to do so. The decretal was made to determine certain doubts which had arisen, whether the bishop of Faenza, in commuting the dues payable to him from a church in his diocese for a money payment, had lost the right of receiving procurations in his visitations. Innocent decided in the following terms: We have known that the aforesaid bishop remitted unto the said church the dues which he and his predecessors had been accustomed to receive therefrom, and determined to impose no further service on it, * Decretales Gregorii IX. lib. iii. tit. xxxix. cap. vi. Ed. Paris, 1561. reserving to himself and his church an annual pension of three pounds. Because, therefore, procuration is annexed to visitation, and the bishop, by virtue of his episcopal jurisdiction which he has there, is bound to visit the aforesaid church for the sake of correction; and since that which has been imposed from the very foundation of the church, and by a general law, should not be regarded as a new burden; we decree that the said bishop, when he comes to the same church for the sake of correction, receive a moderate procuration twice in the year, but do not presume to exact or extort any thing beyond the prescribed pension and procurations." * Such was the condition of the ecclesiastical law of the Western church in the thirteenth century. The bishops were required to visit every parish in their diocese at least once in the year, and there to institute a careful examination into the state of the church-buildings, the conduct of the clergy, the administration of the sacraments, and to instruct the people in the doctrines and duties of religion. If the bishop was prevented by sickness, or by other more important business, from visiting personally, he was authorized to depute presbyters or deacons in his stead; but the duty of parochial visitation was not to be left undone. The power which was thus given led to the employment of archdeacons as the deputies of bishops in their visitations; and as many of the dioceses were large, and many of the bishops, after the time of Charlemagne, were engaged in temporal affairs to an extent which most seriously interfered with the due performance of their spiritual duties, the archdeacons were very frequently called on to act for their bishops, or to aid them in visiting their dioceses; and the long continuance of this practice led, in some countries, to the establishment of the power of visitation as an ordinary jurisdiction in the archdeacons. There is reason to believe that in England the archdeacons were invested with this jurisdiction not long after the Norman conquest, and the councils of the thirteenth century consider them and the rural deans to be in possession of it. Their visitations, like those of the bishops, were parochial; they went from one church to another, in imitation of the chief pastors of the church; and there is reason to suspect that in some dioceses the bishops began to be satisfied with the personal visitation of only a portion of their parishes in each year. * Decretal. Greg. IX. lib. iii. tit. xxxix. cap. xxi. col. 1478. I. p. 49 TABLE TALK. I. THIS world, says the sceptic, looking at the starry immensity of space, is of too little importance to occupy so much of God's attention and care as the Gospel assigns to it. The celebrated Dr. Chalmers has devoted a volume of discourses to the refutation of this position, which are full of his usual imagination and eloquence, but which constitute, we think, at best a very roundabout way of settling the point. For the objection is sufficiently answered by protesting against the words "of too little importance." They might be applicable, were the Creator only removed in degree of greatness from His creatures. But everything that is, is important in truth; and nothing is insignificant, except to finite minds, which, unable to comprehend all, must dwell on some things to the total or comparative exclusion of others. However, we would put Dr. Chalmers's volume into the hands of every young person of the upper classes with whose education we were concerned, only being careful to guard against one or two opinions hazarded by the eloquent writer, and to put in a protest in favour of good English. II. The religious enthusiast is so often in the right, that we need not wonder some should think he never can be wrong: so often in the wrong, that others are not without excuse for believing he never can be right. III. Johnson observes, and the observation is perhaps a deeper one than his critical remarks generally were, that Milton has not been able to give so distinct a picture of Mirth in L'Allegro, as he has done of Melancholy in Il Penseroso; that, whether or not there be joy in the melancholy images of the one, there is some melancholy in the mirth of the other. Many characters, and those often the most vivacious and sparkling, are in this predicament. Their mirth, at its most thrilling point, has something about it which might make a thoughtful and sensitive man "wish to steal away and weep ;" and, amid all its exhilaration, gives a surer pledge of their susceptibility of suffering, than of rejoicing. But, if the joy of such partake of the melancholy, how sweet is sometimes their sorrow! It is theirs, in an especial manner, to make us feel that the world of grief has its shady Elysium, as well as its lurid Tartarus; and, even while we half shrink from the doubtful shadow that nestles in the very core of their delights, In their deportment, shape, and mien, appear Brought from a pensive, though a happy place, IV. The more abstruse, remote, and in every way uncommon the subject of discussion may be, so much the more do a numerous class of thinkers expatiate on the necessity and sufficiency of common sense. We think they might at least give their vaunted panacea for all error and ill their great instrument of all good-some name, which, if not more dignified, should at least be in such cases a little less incongruous than that of common sense. But let us examine into this a little more closely. Common sense is surely not, what many have thought it, a separate faculty. Is it any thing besides the exercise of our faculties on common matters? A man with, it may be, no inconsiderable share of judgment on subjects out of the usual track, refuses to exercise that same judgment on the humbler points which his every day circumstances bring before him; and consequently falls into all manner of absurd practical errors. Such a man is, in conversational language, said to want common sense. A stronger minded man despises the thought of ever acting except under the control of his judgment, which therefore directs him in small matters as well as in great; and he is held to possess com mon sense. of What then do people mean, when, on being presented with any the higher matters of philosophical speculation, or, more transcendent still, the deep things of the Spirit," they cry out for the exercise of common sense. Possibly they merely wish to recommend wellordered and dispassionate, instead of flighty and heated thought; in which case I object only to their way of expressing themselves. But too often they have quite another meaning, and a very bad one. By the phrase "common sense" they intend those deductions and canons, at which the judgment has arrived on common matters, and by which they would regulate their sentiments and conduct on uncommon ones also. The intellectual absurdity of this proceeding might be made manifest to the understanding of a child would that its moral evil could be brought home to the conscience of every hard-headed man! V. In some things Eternity is not merely different from Time, but its very opposite. In Time, our joys are too often the causes of our sorrows; but, if we extend our view beyond the grave, then our sorrows are found the causes of our joys. Life here is only a gradual introduction to death; but there, death is our rapid usher into realms of life. Here, almost every thing is better, more kindling to our thoughts, and worthier of our affections, than the present; but there, our satisfaction will be that the present is to last for ever. VI. We have been led to take a higher view of the place and functions of versification, or at least of metre, in poetry, than is common. It seems to us, we own, to be not accidental or ornamental, but necessary; so that, without it, a man may exercise many gifts suited to poetry, but nevertheless does not produce real poetry. In opposition to this, many may be ready to appeal to their favourite passages in imaginative prose, say, from Jeremy Taylor, Leighton, or, to come to more modern times, from Burke or Coleridge,-passages of which they have loved to declare that they possess every attribute of poetry, but the accident of verse. Now we maintain that, for want of this falsely-called accident, the passages in question differ from poetry altogether; that their general scope and purpose will, on close exami |