THE

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY;

IN A

COURSE OF LECTURES,

DELIVERED AT VIENNA,

BY FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN,

WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR,

BY JAMES BURTON ROBERTSON, ESQ.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

LONDON
SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET.

MDCCCXXXV.

B. BENSLEY, PRINTER.

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY.

LECTURE X.

On the Christian point of view in the Philosophy of History.—The origin of Christianity, considered in reference to the political world.—Decline of the Roman Empire.

A regular history of the life of our Saviour, recounted like any other historical occurrence, would in my opinion be out of place in a philosophy of history. The subject is either too vast for profane history, or in its first beginnings too obscure, whether we consider its internal importance, or in a mere historical point of view, its outward appearance. A thinking, and in his way well-thinking Roman, when he had obtained a more accurate knowledge of the life of our Saviour from the accounts of the Roman Procurator, or other Roman dignitaries in Palestine, might have expressed himself respecting the whole transaction in the following

terms: “This is a very extraordinary man, endued with wonderful and divine power, [for such vague and general admiration might well be indulged in by a Heathen, who yet adhered to the fundamental doctrines of his ancestral faith,]—a man, who, he would continue to say, has produced a great moral revolution in minds, and was, according to the most credible testimony, of the purest character and most rigid morals, who taught much that was sublime on the immortality of the soul and the secrets of futurity; but who was accused by his enemies, and delivered over to death by his own people.” Such, perhaps, would have been the judgment of a Tacitus, had he drawn his information from better and less polluted sources. So long however as all these transactions were confined to the small province of Judea, the soundest and best constituted Roman mind could have scarcely felt a more than passing regret at the perpetration of so signal an act of private injustice; and would, in other respects, have not regarded it as an event which could, in a Roman point of view, be termed historical, or worthy to occupy a place in the more extended circle of his own world.

It was only when Christianity had become a power in the world—the principle of a new life, and of a new form of life totally differing from all preceding forms of existence, that it began to attract the attention of the Romans, as a remarkable historical occurrence. How perfectly unintelligible, strange and mysterious this mighty

event at its origin, and for a long time afterwards, appeared to the Romans; how erroneous and absurd were their opinions and conduct in regard to the Christian religion, we have already shewn by some characteristic examples.

On the other hand, when we view the whole transaction with the eye of faith—when we consider all that has since grown up in the world out of beginnings apparently so small—the case changes its aspect in our regard; and we are then inclined to believe that the mysteries and miracles of our Saviour’s life and death, nay, the whole system of his doctrine, which is intimately connected with those mysteries and miracles, and is itself the greatest mystery and miracle, should be abandoned exclusively to religion, and, as they transcend the ordinary sphere of history, would be misplaced in a work of this nature. I will therefore pre-suppose a knowledge of these sacred mysteries, and, without entering into any examination of them, will endeavour to describe the state of the world, and the aspect of society, when the Christian religion first made its appearance. A notice of some particular points of doctrine, connected with politics and history, either in respect to the past or to the future, is by no means incompatible with my plan; but a complete examination of the whole system of Christian doctrines, as of any other great system of doctrine or philosophy, would, for the reason I have alleged, be quite misplaced in a work of this description. I will in the next

place endeavour to shew the historical influence which this divine power has exerted, and point out how from its very origin, and still more in its progress, it entirely renovated the face of the world.

Doubtless the philosophy of history forms an essential part of the science of divine and human things—things which in the mode of conceiving or treating them, should be rarely and even never entirely separated. For how is it possible to attain to a just and correct knowledge of human things, in any department of life and science, unless they be viewed in relation to and connection with the divine principle, which animates or directs them? A certain medium, however, is to be observed, and the limits must be clearly and accurately traced between divine and human things, lest the one department should be confounded with the other. For as it is very prejudicial to religion to make it merely a matter of learned historical research; so it is inconsistent with the object of historical philosophy to transform it into a mere series of religious meditations. Undoubtedly historical philosophy can and ought to assume the divine principle in man—the divine image implanted in the human breast—as the great pivot of human destiny, the main and essential point in universal history, and the restoration of that Image as the proper purpose of mankind.

Thus the philosophic historian may endeavour, as I have attempted, to point out the divine

truth contained in the primitive revelation, the original word which was current among the nations of the primitive age: in the second period of the world—the decisive crisis between ancient and modern times—he will discover in the Christian religion, the sole principle of the subsequent progress of mankind; and the distinctive character and intellectual importance of the third or last epoch of the world, he will find only in that light, which, emerging from the primitive revelation, and the religion of love established by the Redeemer, has shone ever clearer and brighter with the progress of ages, and has changed and regenerated not only government and science, but the whole system of human life. Here is the principle which furnishes the plan of classification for all the great epochs of history. From this philosophic survey of history, the historian, in the accomplishment of his task, may with great propriety point out and illustrate the ways and views of divine Providence in the conduct of particular nations and ages, and in the destiny of remarkable personages, or historical characters, when those views and ways are strikingly perceptible to our feelings. Yet it is better that this train of observations should not be too systematically prosecuted, but should be introduced occasionally only, and as it were episodically, in those passages of history, where such reflections naturally present themselves; and they should ever be confined within the limits of a modest suggestion; for

all these reflections are only the esoteric spirit—the internal religious idea of history. Otherwise the historian will be exposed to the danger of introducing a system of Providential designs prematurely formed according to human insight and human sagacity, into the yet unfinished drama of the world’s history, whose comprehensive vastness and hidden mysteries, besides, far exceed the narrow limits of all that man can conceive, judge and know with certainty. And this is a defect which many writers have not entirely avoided in their otherwise very religious meditations on universal history. So far, however, as the historian confines his train of reflections within the modest limits of a mere partial explanation, and does not prematurely anticipate the general scheme of divine polity, or plunge too deeply, and with presumptuous confidence into its details; he will find much and obvious matter for such considerations, in the visible selection of particular individuals, and particular nations and even ages for the accomplishment of certain ends, for the attainment on their part of prosperity, glory, or some high object in some particular sphere. But this power thus allotted to particular individuals or to particular nations, exerts even at the time a general influence on the fate of mankind, and evidently accomplishes the designs of Providence with regard to the world at large; forms a point of transition from past ages, or opens a passage to some manifestation of divine power, with respect

to the future. In the progress of human civilisation, such designs are frequently manifest. Nay, on the great question of the permission of evil, when it exerts a widely destructive influence in the moral and physical world, and on the views of God in that permission; the enlightened historian may sometimes succeed, if not in penetrating into the hidden decrees of divine wisdom, yet at least in uplifting a corner of the mysterious veil which covers them. In particular phenomena of history—such for example as the destruction of a whole nation, the Jews for instance; or in the overwhelming calamities, the general miseries inflicted on a corrupt age, manifesting, clearly as they do, the retributive justice of God—calamities which, when regarded from this point of view (and it is only from this point of view they can be rightly judged), appear like a partial judgment of the world—in all such historical phenomena, a modest reference to the final causes of such events may be exceedingly appropriate. This idea of divine justice, and of God’s judgments on the world exemplified in history, belongs undoubtedly to the province of historical philosophy; and, as man’s resemblance to his Maker constitutes the first foundation-stone of history, this more practical principle, relating as it does, to real life and all its mighty phenomena, forms the second.

But the Mystery of grace in the divine Redemption of mankind, transcends the sphere of

profane history. The Christian philosophy of history must indeed tacitly pre-suppose the truth of that mystery, and assume it as known, and indeed as self-evident to all well-thinking persons—it must even, under the inspiration of this faith, refer to it very many, the greater part, indeed almost all, of the facts and phenomena of history—but it should forbear to introduce it into its own province, and should leave it to the sanctuary of religion. In the same way, whenever philosophy attempts to incorporate and rank this mystery with her own speculative conceptions, the consequence must ever be hurtful to religion; for, as philosophy thus attempts to explain and, as it were, deduce this mystery from her own speculations, the mystery of Redemption ceases to be a divine fact, and it is only as such that it is and can be the true and eternal foundation of religion. I wish here expressly to do away with an opinion which is completely unhistorical, and even subversive of all history. I cannot more truly and succintly designate this opinion, than by stating it as follows:—Christ, to say it in one word, was a Jewish Socrates; and this purest, noblest, and sublimest of all ethical teachers (according to the rationalists’ interpretation of his history) met with a fate no less deplorable for mankind than that which befel the Athenian philosopher, and the wisest of all the Grecian sages. In reply to this, one observation only need be made—If Christ were not more than a Socrates, then a

Socrates He was not.[1] But this opinion is not only unhistorical, or, to speak more properly, anti-historical, because it is in utter opposition to all covenants, testimonies, authentic records, and even Christ’s express declarations; but fully as much, and even still more on this account, that if we once remove this divine keystone in the arch of universal history, the whole fabric of the world’s history falls to ruin—for its only foundation is this new manifestation of God’s power in the crisis of time—this hope in God abiding unto the end. For, although I do not consider a formal demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion as falling within the province of profane history; yet the belief of its truth—a faith in its dogmas, is the only clue in such investigations. Without this faith, the whole history of the world would be nought else than an insoluble enigma—an inextricable labyrinth—a huge pile of the blocks and fragments

of an unfinished edifice—and the great tragedy of humanity would remain devoid of all proper result.

Confining myself within those limits which the very nature of the subject, and the force of circumstances prescribe, and which I have here thought it necessary to mark out with exactness, I shall now, in order to see under what circumstances Christianity first arose in the world, and appeared on the domain of history, direct your attention more immediately to the Jewish state.

Dependant at first on the Grecian dynasty of Egypt, and at a subsequent period subdued by the Soverigns of the new Syrian monarchy, which sprang out of the dismemberment of the Macedonian empire, the more virtuous portion of the Hebrew people evinced under the religious persecution they had to sustain from the latter monarchs, much constancy in the old faith of their fathers; for which indeed several of the heroic family of the Maccabees had the courage to lay down their lives. From these rulers they were rescued by the Romans, who took them under their powerful protection, which, with the Jews, as with all other nations, was soon transformed into a systematic and very oppressive domination. The Jewish people were so far involved in the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey, that each party favoured that aspirant to the throne of Judea, most favourable to its own designs. Under the monarchy

of Augustus, Herod, who was created tributary sovereign of Palestine about forty years before the Christian æra, was the last who had been promoted to sovereignty amid this conflict of parties. The temple of Jerusalem, that had been rebuilt with the permission of Cyrus, still remained in all its pomp and grandeur. If a profane curiosity had tempted Crassus and Pompey to intrude within its sanctuary, on the other hand, the munificence of Herod had added to its size and increased its decorations. Although Herod ever retained a partiality for Roman customs, and still more for Grecian opinions, yet the temple of Jerusalem considered, not as the august sanctuary of Heaven’s revelations to the chosen people, but as the centre of attraction for the Jewish nation, situated as it was in the midst of a great commercial city, (one of the largest in all Western Asia), and forming at once the treasury, and by its close proximity to the citadel, the rampart, of the city and of the state, must have been regarded by Herod as the seat of his power, and the nearest object of his ambition. There were at that period among the Jews two parties, which, like those of the Patricians and Plebeians in the civil wars of Rome, bear some resemblance to the parties that at present divide the world: although in their relative position towards each other, as well as in their internal character and tendency, there are many important points which distinguish them from the parties at present

existing. Though from the predominant spirit and peculiar constitution of the Jewish people, the subjects of contention between the two parties related chiefly or more immediately to matters of religion; yet politics were not entirely excluded from their disputes, which embraced in general the whole of human life and its various relations. The Pharisees were the chief scribes and doctors of the law, and in the state, the honoured Patricians of the Hebrews, who sought to maintain the ancient faith and ancient constitution of their country with its rights and jurisprudence, adhering indeed with a rigid scupulosity, and a contentious subtilty to the letter of the old law, while they had long forgotten its divine spirit, and were notorious for their attachment to their own interests, their selfish feelings, and false and contracted views. As they acknowledged, and respected with the most scrupulous fidelity all existing laws, they sided, apparently at least, with the Romans; though they never entertained a cordial attachment for those conquerors; and indeed they ever cherished the hope of being able to ensnare the great Teacher, so beloved by the Jewish people, into a declaration against the Roman rule, as in their limited views they conceived He must, sooner or later, be necessarily driven to that expedient in order to sustain his popularity. But it cannot be doubted that the cause which the Pharisees defended was, on the whole, the legitimate cause of the Hebrews of

that period, since our Saviour himself expressly acknowledged this, when he said of the Pharisees,—“They sit in the chair of Moses, and whatsoever they command you, that do ye.” It was precisely because they had made the old law, and the cause of God, their own cause, that so much was exacted of them; and that they were judged with so much severity by our Saviour, apparently with greater severity than were the Sadducees themselves, who by an Epicurean philosophy, and a latitudinarian system of morals, had fallen almost entirely from the faith, had affixed a mere human interpretation to Scripture, and had even called in question the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. If in this sect there were individuals entertaining purer and more exalted notions of the truth, we must regard them rather as happy and honorable exceptions. We must not, besides, forget that the severe judgments on the Pharisees, which occur in Scripture, refer only to the more degenerate among them,—a great portion, doubtless, perhaps the greater part; but by no means include the whole sect or body, among whom were many worthy individuals.

We ought also to recollect that the apostle Paul was a Pharisee, and though a well-intentioned, yet a very zealous, one, for all his writings shew the man who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel: the latter again was the grandson of the illustrious Hillel, who is named as one of the last great doctors of the Hebrews, who was profoundly

versed in their sacred traditions, and was indeed one of the last pillars of the Synagogue. The Jewish history or tradition mentions seven species of false Pharisees, to whom all the reproaches of our Saviour are perfectly applicable. Many other Pharisees, besides the apostle Paul, are mentioned with honour in Holy Writ, as friends and disciples of our Redeemer, though they had not the courage openly to declare themselves his followers.

Whenever, in the history of mankind, we arrive at some epoch of great crisis, or momentous collision, we find invariably, and in all countries, two contending parties like these, appearing at once on the historical arena, though in forms or positions variously modified. The party defending antiquity, often adheres only to the dead letter of rigid law, forgetting its inward sense and living spirit; while the opposite party, which has a strong conviction that the world stands in need of a new legislation, and that the epoch of a new legislation approaches, is not entirely in the wrong. But when the members of the latter party have lost all faith in the sacred traditions of the past, and have consequently forgotten that the great work of regeneration can emanate from God only; they conceive that it is in their power to accomplish this work, nay, they fancy they have already succeeded in their enterprise, while all their futile attempts can accomplish nought but a total revolution in the past—a revolution

brought about either by external violence, or, in its best and mildest form, by the internal ruin of moral principle and feeling. Between these extreme and conflicting parties, individuals are often found who fly from the field of contention, and seek out a higher asylum, at least for themselves. Such were those small communities of holy contemplatives that then existed among the Jews, the Essenians in Palestine, and the Therapuntæ in Egypt; but these ascetics, limited in number, formed a trifling exception by the side of the two great predominant sects. It was between these two leading parties—on one hand, the narrow-minded and selfish Jewish legitimatists—stiff adherents to the letter of the law,—and, on the other hand, the liberal illuminés;—between the old promises and expectations of the Hebrews, and the Roman dominion, now become and acknowledged to be legitimate, that our Saviour had to steer; and it required a more than human prudence to traverse this critical period, unaffected by the spirit of contending factions. “Give unto Cæsar what belongs to Cæsar,” was his simple declaration, when men sought to entrap him by their worldly cunning: and this declaration has remained a fundamental precept of Christianity, and will continue unchanged to the end of time. So will that other oracle, “Thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my church;” in this there is a clear and distinct precept how Christians were to treat those Pagan pretensions of the Romans which

regarded acts of political idolatry, such as the sacrifice before the image of the Emperor, and acts of a similar kind; and how, as witnesses of the truth, against all the powers of earth, they were to seal their testimony with their blood. The capital error of the Jews lay in this, that in the Deliverer, promised to them of old, they now generally expected an earthly liberator destined to emancipate them from the oppressive yoke of the Romans, and to restore their national empire to its highest glory and splendour. And, indeed, had they not carried their notions on this point to such extreme lengths, and with such unyielding obstinacy, much might have been alleged in their excuse. According to the usual character of prophetic speech, the portrait of a spiritual Deliverer, invested with real glory and pomp, had been drawn in such vivid colours in those ancient prophecies, that the description might, in many passages at least, be easily mistaken for one of an earthly monarch. Or, to express my meaning with greater accuracy and precision, as it is the peculiar character of sacred prophecy to represent events about to follow, in immediate contact with the ultimate objects to which they tend, there are often in those prophetic descriptions of the future prosperity of the chosen people, many passages on the remote period of the last ages of the world, and on the universal triumph of Christianity throughout the earth at the end of time; there are often, we say, many of those passages

which also refer and indeed contain the closest allusions to the commencement of the Christian redemption. In the same way, although in a different sort of subject, we see our Saviour himself foretell the impending ruin of Jerusalem and of the Jewish nation, while his lamentations are closely linked, and almost confounded with, prophetic warnings respecting the awful and terrific scenes of latter times, and the approaching day of general account; although both these events, the ruin of the temporal Jerusalem, and the last glorious transformation of nature, when creation shall be consummated, and a new heaven and a new earth shall spring into existence, are to be strictly regarded as real and historical. So close an attention, and so great a power of discrimination are requisite to distinguish between parts, to combine the whole, and place each particular fact in its proper point of view. But the best excuse that can be offered for the Jews, in this respect, is the fact, as the scripture clearly showeth, that all the followers of our Saviour, and his most trusty disciples, were at first under the same delusion, and for a long time believed that, though the right moment had not yet arrived, still their master would certainly appear as the earthly Deliverer and Monarch of his nation; and indeed the idea of his sufferings and death was so abhorrent to their feelings, that they even dared to express their disapprobation, and upbraid their Saviour for entertaining such thoughts; for it was only at a much

later period the bandage fell from their eyes. And the great reproach which we are to make the Jews is that they should have adhered with such obstinacy to an error, very excusable under certain circumstances, and that after all they had heard, seen and experienced, they should have still closed their eyes against the light. The conduct of our Saviour towards the Jews is often represented in a manner little conformable to historic truth, and to the spirit and character of this mighty revolution, when it is said that he entirely abrogated the whole system of the Mosaic law. The outward scaffolding was indeed removed, when it had ceased to be necessary; such were all those laws which applied only to that state of strict separation from Heathen nations, which at an earlier period had been of such absolute importance. Very many things were still retained; and all now received in the fulfilment a higher spiritual signification; and this was natural, when we consider that in Judaism itself every thing which had not been designed merely for local and temporary wants, from the very commencement of that dispensation, was typical of Christianity. The twelve apostles, as well as the first seventy-two disciples, were taken exclusively from the chosen people, and even, in this respect, the divine promises were completely fulfilled, and literally observed. The constitution of the ancient hierarchy has very evidently furnished the pattern for that of the Christian priesthood; though this of course

has been adapted to the wider circle of a higher and more spiritual system. The expression, “My kingdom is not of this world,” does not imply that it was not to be in this world a real and effective power, with a form and organization clearly defined. Many have read so much, or inferred so much, from this declaration, that they could not adopt an easier or more polite method of shutting out this divine empire of truth from the world. In the hours of the greatest solemnity, the divine Master revealed to his disciples the hidden sense of the ancient revelation in all the plenitude of its mysteries. As the Saviour himself said that every word and syllable of the old law must be literally fulfilled; as in general the spiritual interpretation of the divine oracles is by no means inconsistent with their literal truth and inviolable sanctity; so the same remark will apply to the new revelation, in which every word and every syllable of prophecy will receive a full and practical accomplishment before the consummation of time. Even in another point of view, particularly worthy the consideration of the historian, Christianity must be regarded only as a divine continuation, a higher and more expansive form, or spiritual renovation, of the Mosaic institution; and was so intended by its divine Founder; namely in those aspirations after futurity, which now so exclusively directed the whole of human life, and its various views.

That law of divine wisdom, by which earthly

existence is to be looked upon only as a state of expectation, of preparation, and of struggle—a view of life alone accordant with human nature—that law has retained its full force in the new covenant. For the primitive Christians, death was what the Saviour said of himself, a return, a passing unto the Father, but life was one ceaseless struggle. For him who unto the end fought steadfast in this struggle, the angel of death was divested of his terrors; he was a celestial messenger of peace, that brought to the Christian the bright garland of victory, and the crown of eternal life; in this faith and in these sentiments, did the Saints live, and the martyrs die. And as every human soul is conducted to the realms above by the gentle hand of its divine guardian; so the Saviour himself has announced to all mankind, in many prophetic passages, that when the period of the dissolution of the world shall approach, he himself will return to the earth, will renovate the face of all things, and bring them to a close. So lively an assurance had the first Christians of the immediate presence of their invisible lord and guide, so vivid a hope did they entertain of his speedy return to the earth; that, in order to check the aspirations of a zeal that would accelerate the period of consummation so ardently desired, divine Providence judged it necessary that the Prophet of the New Testament should close the volume of eternal revelation with that long succession of ages that were to witness the progressive

struggle of humanity—all those centuries of Christianity that mankind was yet to traverse, before the promise should be fulfilled, and in the fulness of time the final and universal triumph of Christianity throughout the earth should be accomplished, for all mankind must be gathered into one fold, and under one Shepherd. According to the spirit and precept of the Christian religion, man must at every moment be prepared; but he must not, in a presumptuous ardour, accelerate the term of existence fixed by the wisdom of Almighty God. Thus all those Christians who, during the times of the most violent persecution of the church under the Romans, courted the danger, and would not await the honour of martyrdom, were warned that such conduct was by no means conformable to the will of God; as it often happened that those who, by such an overweening confidence in their own strength, had wantonly rushed to the field of danger, succumbed under their torments, and fell from the faith.

Had the Jews but opened their eyes in the right time; had they acknowledged the divine fulfilment of ancient promises in the mission of Christ, which was in fact far more exalted and more splendid than any thing they had expected; and had all, or even the greater part, of the nation embraced Christianity; they would have become the mighty stem—the great foundation—the central point of all modern history, and all modern life. But as they did

not correspond to this call of divine Providence, a call fully justified by their circumstances, their early history, and the prerogatives which the Almighty had once accorded to them above all other nations; the justice of God required that they should now receive a signal chastisement, that they should be deprived of their national existence, dispersed among all the nations of the earth; and that, in this state of ruin and dispersion, they should serve as a memorable example to the world. But this humiliation of the Jews, which was calculated to draw down the contempt of the Heathen, who looked only to outward things, should have never given rise to oppression or ill-treatment among Christian nations; and the more so, as it is still a problem whether any other people placed in a similar situation, and warped by selfish prejudices, and old and deep rooted errors, would have done better; or whether mankind in general, subjected to a similar trial, would have come off more successfully.

The old temple of the holy city was not, like the idolatrous temples of the Heathens, a mere magnificent monument of national glory, adorned with all the splendour of art; but the idea and plan of the whole structure, its minutest parts, every stone, and every cipher, were clearly indicative and profoundly symbolical of that invisible temple, that mighty city, that divine kingdom of peace, which Christ was to establish on earth, and which he had now at

length come to establish. Even the name of Jerusalem, according to the Hebrew signification of the word, has the emblematic sense of revelation and foundation, or city of peace, by which is understood not a mere earthly and transitory peace, but that higher and divine peace which forms the subject of all the promises made unto the chosen people. This prophetic sense and typical design of the holy city is so closely connected with the origin and whole idea of the city, that in some passages of the Old Testament such figurative expressions are used, as if the whole business, nay the whole life, of man had no other object “than to build up the walls of Jerusalem;” in the same sense as if a Christian moralist were to say; the proper end and ultimate object of mankind, and of the history of all nations and ages, is the kingdom of God, that is to say, the ever wider diffusion and firmer consolidation of Christian truth and Christian perfection throughout the world. When the spiritual and internal sense of this mighty and historical hieroglyph of the Jewish people was no longer understood; when the mighty truths which it embodied, at the very moment they were about to receive their full explanation and perfect development, were misunderstood and rejected; what was more natural than that the emblem, which had lost its meaning, should be effaced, the temple destroyed, and the city itself levelled and razed by the arm of divine justice? This is the view which the Christian

historian must take of that mighty and fearful catastrophe which now befell Jerusalem, and the whole Jewish people under Vespasian; and indeed the impression which this event made on the Jews, though somewhat diversified by national sentiments, is in all essential points conformable to our own feelings. That in every such widely destructive disaster, which by divine permission may afflict any portion of the human race, the loving wisdom of God will know how to take each individual soul under its special protection, and will guard and spare it, at least, in its immortal part, is a truth so evident to every religious mind, that it is unnecessary to enforce it at any length. If, as the Scripture saith, “the hairs on a man’s head are numbered,” so will each day, nay each hour, each pulsation of human existence be counted; yea, every heartfelt tear the eye of sorrow shall shed, will be reckoned by the guardian spirit of eternal love. But this religious regard for the fate of individuals, and this humane sympathy with their misfortunes, must be kept within its proper sphere in historical disquisitions, where the principal design is to study and observe, as far as the limited perception of man will permit, the mighty course of divine justice, through all ages of the world.

When the Jews were disappointed in the hope they had entertained of a liberator, who was to be sent from above, armed with divine power to deliver them from the stern yoke of

Roman domination; exasperated by the ever increasing tyranny of their masters, after several partial insurrections, the whole nation, three and thirty years after the death of our Lord, broke out into open rebellion; and the whole country, torn by infuriated factions, which fanatic hate inspired with the courage of despair, exhibited all the horrors of the most terrific revolution. The savage warfare of the Romans in such a deadly struggle, we have already learned from the example of Carthage; for however mild and benevolent might be the personal character of Titus, it was out of his power to introduce any change in the system of war; and the number of men that perished in the siege and ravage of the holy city is estimated at 1,300,000; including the small number that were led away captives, or reserved to grace the triumph of the conqueror. The Emperor Hadrian rebuilt the city, which had been totally destroyed, under the new and Pagan name of Ælia Capitolina, and even erected within it a temple to Jupiter: but no Jew was permitted to enter within its walls. At a later period the Emperor Julian had intended to re-establish the Jews in their ancient city, and in all probability it was his hostility to Christianity which had inspired him with the design; but unexpected events and physical obstacles[2] opposed the execution of this plan.

The Jewish covenant and the old revelation of the Hebrews formed the chief corner-stone on which Christianity was founded; and the first apostles of the new religion were all chosen from among that people. The scriptures of the new covenant were composed in the Greek tongue, and the first apologies, and other expositions of faith, or books of instruction by the primitive fathers, were mostly written in the same language. We may therefore consider this language as forming the second foundation-stone of the Christian edifice. Though the political consequences of the Macedonian conquests in Asia were not of any permanence, yet the influence which these conquests have exerted on the intellectual character of nations, the ascendancy which they gave to the Greeks over the whole civilized world of that period, were by no means unimportant. It was by means of these conquests that the philosophy and literature of the Greeks became, along with their language, predominant in Egypt and the Western countries of Asia; and hence this language was adopted as the original tongue of Christianity; because no other at that period had attained such intellectual refinement, or such general diffusion. As in human society every class and condition of life, nay, every individual, by the peculiar rights and advantages which each exclusively enjoys, still serves the community, and contributes to the weal of others, unconsciously and without precisely wishing it;

so in the history of the world, and in the progress of nations, all things are closely interlinked, and one serves as the instrument, auxiliary, or bond of union to the other; and it was not one of the least important results of the Greek science and language, that the two points wherein that nation had risen to the greatest eminence, and was endowed with the greatest power, should both have been so nearly allied with the cause of Christianity, even from its origin. The Roman empire was the third foundation-stone of the Christian religion; for its vast extent facilitated in a singular manner the early and very rapid diffusion of Christianity, and formed indeed the ground-work on which the fabric of the new church was first constructed.

In the history of the primitive church, historians are wont to separate the different branches of their subject, which form so many different parts of a single whole, and thus to describe separately the dogmas and doctrines of the church, its holy rites and sacraments, its liturgies and festivals, and next its moral condition and external relations; and this division of the subject may, no doubt, very well answer the special design of such ecclesiastical histories. But if we wish to take a more general view of the subject, to seize the spirit of Christianity, and form a just, true and lively conception of the primitive church, we must be particularly careful not to forget in the investigation of those

several heads, that they formed one undivided and living whole in the eyes of the first Christians, amid the overflowing fulness of a new moral life; and of this spirit of unity, as well as of the wonderful energy of faith and love which was its never-failing source, it is almost impossible for us to form a full and adequate notion. Christianity in its primitive influence, was like an electric stroke, which traversed the world with the rapidity of lightning—like a magnetic fluid of life, which united even the most distant members of humanity in one animating pulsation. Public prayer and the sacred mysteries formed a stronger and closer bond of love among men, than the still sacred ties of kindred and earthly affection. Some persons have affected to compare the secret assemblies of the primitive Christians with the pagan Mysteries; and undoubtedly it was only in secret, and in the retired and obscure oratory, that the first followers of Christ could gather together amid the fury of general persecution. But, from a competent knowledge which we possess of the import of those pagan Mysteries, they had about as much resemblance to the religious assemblies of the primitive Christians, as the divine sacrifice of holy commemoration, and the chalice consecrated with the blood of the eternal Covenant, bore to the human sacrifices of the Cainites. The Christians saw and felt the presence of their invisible King and eternal Lord; and when their souls overflowed with the plenitude of

spiritual and heavenly life, how could they value earthly existence, and how must they not have been willing to sacrifice it in the struggle against the powers of darkness; for that struggle formed the whole and proper business of their lives?—Hence we can understand the reason of the otherwise incredibly rapid diffusion of Christianity through all the provinces, and even sometimes beyond the limits, of the vast empire of Rome;—like a heavenly flame, it ran through all life, kindling, where it found congenial sympathy, all that it touched into a kindred fervour. Hence, along with that mighty spirit of love which produced so rapid a spread of the Christian religion, and which united in the closest bonds the first Christian communities, that energy of faith which inspired such heroic fortitude under the dreadful and oft renewed persecutions of the Romans. The first persecution under Nero was only a momentary freak of blood-thirsty tyranny—a passing trait of that monster’s cruelty. The first regular edict against the Christians in the Roman empire was passed by Domitian in the 87th year of our era, and, according to a custom which had been borrowed from the Jews, he assimilated the offence of dissent from the national religion to the crime of high treason. The better Nerva softened the rigour of this law, and declared that the denunciations of slaves against their masters were not to be received, but, on the contrary, such informers were to be severely punished. Trajan

also, on the before-mentioned report of the younger Pliny, decided, in the 120th year of our era, that the Christians, who were then uncommonly numerous, were not to be sought after, but that, when denounced, they should be punished according to the law existing against such religious associations and communities. But notwithstanding all these apparent mitigations of severity introduced by the better emperors, the criminal jurisprudence of the Romans, like their foreign warfare, ever remained most atrocious; and the passages and allusions which are to be found in ancient historians, concur with the general voice of Christian tradition in stating the prodigious cruelties inflicted on the Christians in those persecutions. In general Hadrian pursued that milder and middle course of policy which Trajan had commenced before him; he approved of legal and judicial persecutions against the Christians, but he strictly prohibited those tumultuary attacks which were the mere ebullitions of popular hatred. With many vicissitudes, Christianity remained in this state until the reign of Diocletian, who, pursuing a far more systematic plan than most of his predecessors, attempted entirely to root it out; but this was no longer possible, and the growing church received its first formal edict of pacification at the hands of the emperor Constantine. The pagan enthusiast Julian attempted a second time to subvert it, but it was now too late. In the struggle against pagan cruelty and Roman

persecution, Christianity had come off victorious; in bondage, and under every species of suffering, it had proved the invincible might of the divine arm;—and, next to the apostles, the martyrs, so highly revered by the gratitude of Christians, must occupy the second place among those who were instrumental in bringing about this mighty renovation of society, and who sealed their efforts with their blood. But we must not imagine that the martyrs, as mere men, and by their unassisted strength, could have endured such dreadful torments with such unshaken constancy; or, again, that they were the mere unconscious instruments of a divine fatality, without the co-operation of their free, clear and steadfast will. By the side of those who were constant, many individuals were found that were not so,—many, who, overcome by suffering, delivered up the holy scriptures, or entirely apostatized from the faith and sacrificed to idols; so that it was afterwards a matter of dispute, how far the lapsed could be pardoned and received again into the church.

After that period was past which had witnessed the reign of those inhuman tyrants that immediately succeeded Augustus, several of the more virtuous emperors sought by various expedients to bring about the moral regeneration of the people and empire of Rome. Trajan, who possessed much of the rectitude and old martial virtues that belonged to the elder and better period of Rome, sought to introduce these again;

and, though the effects of his policy were transient, they were still beneficial. Hadrian endeavoured to reanimate paganism, and to make it once more the basis of the empire and of public life; for this purpose, he had recourse especially to the more profound and austere Theology of Egypt; and that new Egyptian style, which characterizes the later monuments of Roman art, was connected with the emperor’s predilection for the old religion of Egypt. But the healthy vigour, the moral regeneration, of public life, and of the empire itself, could not now be obtained by the maintenance, or firmer consolidation, of the pagan religion; on the contrary, it is in the erroneous nature of the primitive paganism of Rome that we must seek for the principal cause why, even in that elder period now so highly extolled, and which certainly was at least better, a true, pure, and stable system of morals and politics could never take root and flourish. Under the two Antonines, the severe morality of Stoicism was regarded as the vital principle of moral regeneration, and political reform, and a practical application of its principles was sought for on all sides. And certainly if the stoical philosophy, with its mere dead letter of rigid justice, and correct morality, unsupported by the divine maxims of right faith, and that spirit of exalted love which true faith alone can impart, could have accomplished this high design;—if it had possessed within itself this mighty source, this creative energy of moral

and social life; the serious determination and personal virtues of those imperial stoics might indeed have promised to the declining age of Rome the fulfilment of the last hope to which Paganism yet clung. But that which doth not rest on the basis of truth can receive no life from any external cause; and it can impart no life to any thing without, because it is decayed within, and when the illusive bloom of first youth has fled, it sinks inevitably into its native corruption. “When the Lord doth not build the house,” saith the Psalmist, “those who would build it labour in vain.” To the better times that had witnessed the rule of the three or four great monarchs we have mentioned, the reign of a Commodus succeeded; and thus the Empire, down to the time of Diocletian, beheld a constant mutation of rulers, sometimes benevolent, or at least comparatively good, whose reigns however were often but of short duration, sometimes weak and spiritless, and sometimes again tyrants of the most abject and atrocious cast. Among these latter Sovereigns, however, who in cruelty and arbitrary caprice, resembled the first successors of Augustus, there were no characters possessed of that strong Roman sense which distinguished Tiberius; and the empire in their hands assumed daily more and more a thoroughly effeminate and oriental complexion.

Nothing was more subject to chance than the right of succession in the Roman empire, where the arbitrary application of the Roman

principle of adoption opened a wide field to the contention of parties; without including the frequent recurrence of conspiraces in a military empire, which, as it was formed by a military conspiracy, ever retained the stamp of its origin. Augustus had employed his whole life, not without apparent success, for a time at least, in endeavouring to give to authority, acquired by force of arms, the colour and forms of legitimacy. But how could it be ever forgotten that he, as well as Cæsar, had been raised to the Imperial throne by the army, and amid the struggles of factions, conspiracies, and civil wars. The soldiers knew this, and recollected but too well the source whence the supreme power in the state had emanated. The influence of the Prætorians, especially, was, from their origin, very considerable, as they surrounded the Emperor, and formed his body-guard. By virtue of his office the leader of the Prætorians had a sort of negative and controlling power, like that of the Censor and popular Tribune in the ancient republic, except that this functionary wielded the sword,—a power in some degree acknowledged by the Emperor himself, as it was accounted one of the highest merits of Trajan, that to the chief of that troop which defended the person, and often decided the fate, of the Emperor, he delivered the sword with these words: “For me, if I govern well—against me, if I should become a tyrant.”

Thus the empire was entirely abandoned to

chance and caprice, and as its origin was military, it remained unto the end essentially a military despotism. The more powerful legions that were quartered in the most important provinces, especially in those of the frontiers, soon began to feel that they were far superior in numbers and strength to the effeminate Prætorians of the capital. Several emperors were elected and proclaimed by these legions; and in the number, such even as were not Romans, and were of barbarian extraction; for it happened that, in the provincial legions, many foreigners, especially Germans, were engaged in the Roman service in the provinces on the North-western frontier. Several of the emperors thus chosen by the legions, continued to reside where the centre of their power existed—in the station, or in some provincial capital conveniently situated. The Senate had long been but a mere shadow of its former greatness; even the capital began to lose much of its importance.

At the same time the repeated incursions of the Northern nations ever rendered a general invasion more imminent, and the disaster, which men had foreseen from afar, appeared ever nearer its accomplishment. Already the first irruption of the Cimbri and Teutones, when not merely an army for the sake of booty, or to plant a military colony, but a whole tribe with wives and children had migrated into the Roman territory, threw Rome into consternation during the civil

wars, when she was at the very height of her military prowess. Cæsar had spared no exertion to reduce Gaul to complete subjection, and this country had ever since adopted more and more the language and customs of Rome. He experienced from no people such vigorous resistance, as from the Germanic tribes; and to protect against these nations the safety of the empire, by strongly fortifying the banks of the Rhine and Danube, constituted afterwards the first concern of the Roman Emperors. What a shock Augustus received from the defeat of Varus, by the German Arminius in his native woods! Even under the martial Trajan, who was almost the last conqueror in the line of Roman Emperors, men began to entertain serious apprehensions of the invasion of the Germanic tribes. The first great irruption was that of the Alemanni, who, under Marcus Aurelius burst into the Rhætian provinces, while similar movements occurred in Noricum and eastward towards Pannonia. However, Marcus Aurelius, by an energetic and successful resistance, repelled this first attempt, and thus was the means of deterring the barbarians for a long time from similar enterprises; and a hundred years elapsed before Aurelian drove them again from Italy, over the Alps as far as the Lech. Among the German nations, the Goths, who from the Scandinavian Isles had penetrated far into the interior of Germany, particularly towards the eastern, as afterwards towards the western, parts of

that country, were pre-eminent in power. They could not be prevented from obtaining a firm footing in the North-eastern provinces, by the Black Sea. The Emperor Decius perished in the war against this people; and the Romans were obliged to surrender to them by a formal treaty, the further Dacia. Constantine, indeed, was victorious in the war he waged against them; but he preferred to conclude an advantageous peace, to gain their friendship, and enlist their youth in the service of the Roman armies. Of the later reigns that of Diocletian displayed the greatest energy; but his cruel persecution of the Christians was, even to judge from the mere external state of society, as little adapted to the spirit of the age as it was reprehensible in itself, and hence his design remained unaccomplished. Although, after his abdication, Diocletian showed himself a thorough Roman in private life, yet, while he swayed the sceptre, he deemed it expedient to surround the throne with all the pomp and forms of Asiatic homage. The division of the empire among several sovereigns appeared then, as afterwards, under Constantine and his successors, an unavoidable and necessary evil; or, in other words, the several parts and members of the vast body of the Roman Empire, which approached nearer and nearer to its dissolution, began to fall to pieces, and that division itself accelerated again the destruction of the state, as it became the occasion of internal discord, and universal convulsion in the Roman

world. The revolution accomplished by Constantine, indeed, might have become a real, and by far the most comprehensive, regeneration of the Roman state, as it substituted for its originally defective, and now completely rotten, foundation of Paganism, a new principle of life, a higher and more potent energy of divine truth and eternal justice. But Christianity had not yet near become the universal religion of the people, and Empire of Rome—otherwise the great re-action, which took place under Julian, had not been possible. The peasantry, in particular, continued for a long time yet attached to the old idolatry; and hence the name of Pagans was derived.[3] Even Constantine, though he publicly declared himself a convert to Christianity, still did not dare to receive baptism immediately, and thus enter fully into the great community of Christians. The administration of the Roman state was so completely interwoven with Pagan rites and Pagan doctrines, that, from an act of this public nature, dangerous collisions might have at first easily ensued. On the whole, the old Roman maxims and principles of state-policy continued to prevail, even for a long time after the reign of Constantine; and the period had not yet arrived when Christianity was to work a fundamental reform throughout the whole political world,—and a Christian government, if I may so speak, was

to be established and organized on that eternal basis, and to strike deep root and grow into the faith and life of the people, and into their habits and their feelings; but this great revolution was reserved for another and a later period.

[1] In confirmation of this pithy sentence of Schlegel’s, I may cite a remarkable passage from the celebrated Lessing, which, as coming from an Infidel, may perhaps have more weight with the Unitarian. “If Christ,” he says, “is not truly God, then Mohammedanism was an undoubted improvement on the Christian religion: Mahomet, on such a supposition, would indisputably have been a greater man than Christ, as he would have been far more veracious, more circumspect, and more zealous for the honour of God, since Christ, by his expressions, would have given dangerous occasion for idolatry; while, on the other hand, not a single expression of the kind can be laid to the charge of Mahomet.”—Lessing’s Beiträge zur Geschichte und Litteratur. Vol. II. p. 410.—Trans.

[2] By this expression, Schlegel does not mean to question the supernatural agency that produced those obstacles.—Trans.

[3] From the Latin word Pagus, a rural district.

END OF LECTURE X.

LECTURE XI.

Of the ancient Germans, and of the invasion of the Northern tribes.—The march of Nature in the historical development of Nations.—Further diffusion and internal consolidation of Christianity.—Great corruption of the world.—Rise of Mahometanism.

The idolatry of the ancient Germans, like the less poetical, less artificial, and less elaborate Paganism of all primitive nations, consisted in a simple adoration of Nature, such as existed among the Persians, with whom they had a very close affinity in race and in language. Thus the objects of their worship were the stars, the sun and the moon, the celestial spirits, the various powers and elements of Nature, and in particular the mother earth, under the name of the goddess Hertha. In the German and English names for the days of the week, the names of the gods, Thun, Wodan, Thor, and Freya, are still preserved; and these in the Germanic mythology correspond to the planets, most clearly visible from our globe—Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,

and Venus; as it is also from these the Romanic languages have taken the names of the weekdays. It does not appear, indeed, that there existed in Germany quite so powerful, influential, and well-organized a body of priests, as the Druids composed in Gaul; and we can only discover the existence of certain secret rites and mysteries of a very primitive simplicity; as, for instance, the human sacrifice which was offered to the lake Hertha, in the Isle of Rugen, when a young man and maiden were thrown into its solitary waters. It was in the obscurity of woods, under the sacred oak, or by the Linden, the tree of Northern enchantment, and on the mountaintops, they celebrated their rites, festivals, and entertainments, or arranged the Runic sticks to search into futurity; and as, among the Greeks, the Delphic oracle in moments of general danger was consulted, and gave its advice on the most important concerns of the nation; so the prophetesses and sybils of the North, like the Velleda mentioned by the Romans, exerted a very decisive influence on the public councils. Old poetical traditions of gods, heroes, giants, and spirits (in many respects like those of Persia), formed the keystone of the sacred recollections and national existence of the Germanic nations.

Their original descent from Asia remained ever strong and lively in their remembrance, and allusions to it were interwoven into the whole body of their traditionary poetry; and as

in the Persian traditions, the Arii are celebrated as the most generous and heroic nation of the primitive ages, so the Asae occupy the most distinguished place in the Northern mythology. In the Scandinavian North, which remained Pagan for many centuries after Germany had become Christian, there are still extant many monuments and songs of a similar purport and strain; and of these, indeed, abundant vestiges are to be found every-where. These old historical traditions and this hereditary poetry had often a very powerful influence on real life, and on the martial enterprises and achievements of the tribes; and as in the heroic ages of the Greeks, according to the Homeric description, so in those times the bard, proclaiming the history of gods and heroes, and attending on the person of the prince or general of the army, was by no means an unimportant personage.

A monarchy of such wide extent, as the ancient kingdom of Persia, did not exist in Germany. The constitution, if we can apply such a term to the wild freedom of those early ages, was more like that of Greece in the heroic times, when she was governed by her noble families, and her territory was divided into a number of petty kingdoms, which only rarely united in a great league for a common enterprise. This primitive Germanic constitution was a very simple and free aristocracy of Nature. The tribe that composed the nation was an union or confederacy of freemen and nobles under an hereditary

tribe-prince, or chosen leader; and it was only at a later period that among some of the Germanic nations, this confederacy gave way to a regular regal government. Every freeman, and every man having a right to bear arms, was a member of the Hermannia, which was afterwards called the arriere-ban; and it was this ancient Hermannia that gave rise to the Roman name for Germany. The land was cultivated by bondsmen and slaves, who had been either purchased, or taken prisoners in war, or were the conquered remnant of the ancient inhabitants of the country, or even men who for some crime had forfeited their freedom and nobility. When the Romans became better acquainted with the Germanic nations, the latter had partly become an agricultural people; and they observed that very primitive custom of letting their fields lie alternately in fallow—a custom which has been so long retained in the North of Germany, under the name of dreyfelder-wirthschaft. Private property in land itself was not yet marked out nor enclosed within any exact limits—there was still much common land, and this was naturally an inducement for the different tribes, whenever they had a favourable opportunity, to change their abode and migrate. But this infant agriculture was still held subordinate to the occupations of the chace and of the pastoral life, which furnished the principal means of subsistence. The different forests that still exist in Germany are merely the remaining

fragments of the one, vast, boundless Hercynian forest, that once extended through the whole interior of the country. From the quantity of wood that yet remained, the soil of Germany was much more marshy, and its atmosphere incomparably colder, than at the present day. The buffalo and the elk, which at present are so very rarely to be met with in Germany, were then animals indigenous to our country.

That this condition of the soil, and this unsettled mode of life, in a growing population are circumstances quite sufficient to account for a partial, though (without other co-operating causes) not perhaps for the general, emigration of a whole tribe, must be evident to every person. Internal factions and wars are quite adequate causes for the emigration of a whole tribe, or, at least, of a considerable portion. In the early ages it was customary, when the population became too numerous, for the younger brothers, or a certain number of youths chosen by lot, to quit their country under the guidance of a leader of their choice, or of one marked out by Fame, and, proceeding on an expedition of adventure, conquer other homes for themselves, and seek out their fortunes towards the east, or towards the west, or beneath the fairer sky of a southern region. Even in a more advanced, nay in the most advanced, stage of civilization, every state and nation is necessitated by nature, if I may so speak, to disburthen

itself of a redundant population, and to extend itself in new settlements—in one word, to found colonies, and to possess colonies. This is the standing law,—the fundamental rule of health in the progressive development of nations; and where this necessity does not exist in an equal degree, we must consider it only a case of exception, and we shall be sure to find that some special cause precludes the operation of this principle for a time: for, sooner or later, nature will force us to this expedient. The commercial colonies of the Phœnicians and Greeks were in part founded, and certainly at least defended, extended and consolidated by force of arms; and it is only by similar means, that in modern times, Mexico and Peru have become colonies of Spain.

But in those early ages, and among those northern, warlike children of nature, this natural necessity of emigration could take no other course, nor have any other object but a military settlement. Such was the result of the first irruption of the northern nations, mentioned in history—the expedition of the Gauls into Thrace, which was soon succeeded by a second of a similar kind under Brennus; when that Gallic general marched at the head of his troops into Macedon and Greece, and became master of the rich temple of Apollo at Delphi, and of all its accumulated treasures. A remnant of these troops finally fixed their abode in Asia Minor, and established a Gallic settlement in a province

which from them received the name of Galatia. In this first great expedition, or irruption of the northern nations, the names of almost all the tribes and their leaders are Celtic; still some few German names are found amongst them; and this may be easily accounted for, when we recollect that the Gauls, who were then widely spread, and inhabited even the North of Italy, were undoubtedly in possession of most of the Alpine countries, and thus may easily have engaged in their service some German tribes. Who knows but what some marvellous tradition, and fabulous account of the lovely climate and delicious fruits of the Southern regions, together with recollections of their original descent from the Southern nations of Asia, may have contributed to bring the Cimbri and Teutones from the islands of Scandinavia to the plains of Italy? Had the Romans not dreaded the dangerous precedent, and had they but allotted lands to these nations, they might easily have kept terms of peace with them, and enlisted their most valiant youth in the service of their legions; as, indeed, under the later emperors, the flower of their troops was selected from the Gothic tribes.

But the case was widely different when the relations of peace and war, the proximity of frontiers, and the occupation of the German territory, brought the Romans in closer contact with the Germanic nations; as, for instance, in the campaigns which Cæsar conducted against

the chief of the Suevi, Ariovistus; Tiberius against Maroboduus, king of the Marcomanni; and the general of Augustus against the Saxon prince, Hermann. Here both parties diligently studied and observed each other’s excellencies and defects, and mixed in the most various intercourse. Thus Hermann’s father lived among the Romans; his brother bore a Roman name; and his nephew was educated at Rome. Maroboduus himself repaired thither, desirous like a prudent foe, to examine with his own eyes the capital of Roman greatness and power. Among the German tribes and their leaders, factions were sometimes formed even against Hermann and Maroboduus; and at a later period, these divisions had no inconsiderable influence on the relations of the Germanic nations with the Romans, and on their foreign enterprizes. The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, fortified by a long line of castles, fortresses, and cities, lay for the most part within the German territory, and was inhabited by some German tribes, or German settlers that had been attracted thither. Here the nations of Germany saw their brethren of a kindred race, living indeed under the controul of Roman laws, which those, who still retained their freedom, sought to repel by force of arms; but on the other hand, they observed the high cultivation of a country, blest with all the advantages of civilization, and adorned with so many of the arts of life, with the culture of the

vine, and a variety of the most exquisite fruits. And when, in the course of the almost incessant wars waged on the frontier, they either encountered a feeble resistance, or observed some defect in the mode of Roman defence, the desire to prosecute their fortune, and penetrate into those beautiful countries, must have considerably augmented. As, three centuries ago, the fabulous accounts of treasures of gold, and rich ores of silver, to be found in America, drew hosts of Spanish and other European adventurers over the Atlantic to the shores of the newly-discovered continent; so the charms of a southern sky, the rich fruits, the vineyards, the blooming gardens of a warm, lovely and highly cultivated region, wrought powerfully on the imaginations of the Northerns, and were often the motive of their expeditions and armed migrations.

The first irruptions of the Alemanni in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, and subsequent to it, appear to have arisen immediately and naturally, (as I have said,) out of the perpetual wars waged on the frontier, on the first advantage which those barbarians obtained over the Romans, and on the first defect or weakness which they espied in the defensive operations of their enemies. That the warfare on the frontier was perpetuated almost without intermission, it is the more natural to suppose, since the Germanic nations by two armed confederacies of their tribes, had on their side opposed to the

fortifications of the Roman boundaries a living frontier-wall. The name of the Marcomanni served to designate not a particular tribe, but an armed confederation for the defence of the whole nation; and the same remark holds good of the Alemanni. In the descriptions which the Romans have given of Germany, they were occasionally led, by their ignorance of the language, to mistake a league for a people, and to apply to a tribe the denomination intended to denote a district or a custom. But in these accounts it is very easy to trace the three or four leading nations of Germany, that figure afterwards in its history, and which, on the dissolution of the Roman empire, possessed themselves of its provinces, spread through the different Romanic countries, and in the course of time became the founders of the modern European states.

These three principal nations of Germany (and such they were considered by the Romans,) were the Suevi, the Saxons, and the Goths, who may be best distinguished by the course of the rivers, which flowed through the countries they inhabited. The whole of that extensive country, afterwards called Ancient Saxony, and which lay along the course and embouchures of the Elbe, the Eyder, the Ems and the Weser, including the whole sea-coast with Jutland and Denmark, all the Rhenish Netherlands with the Batavian shores, was inhabited by the Saxons; a people (for it was only later their name was

explained from a peculiar national weapon, or species of sword,) attached to the soil, and who were of all the Germanic tribes the least prone to emigration; for, as mariners, they kept to the sea-coasts, and the banks of rivers. It was only at the period when the tide of emigration had reached its highest point that the Saxons, issuing from their native seat, not only possessed themselves of, but as it were, peopled anew, the great British Isle; and it is very possible that this not widely dispersed, but closely connected low-German race, then out-numbered all the other nations of Germany. It was on the banks of the Upper Rhine and the Upper Danube that lay the original seat of the Suevi, a race perhaps more mixed, who occur in history under the name of the Alemanni, and were distinguished for a restless spirit of adventure and migratory enterprize. The name of the Franks, a people occupying so important a place in later history, denoted originally rather a league than a particular nation; and as their geographical seat lay between those of the Suevi and the Saxons, they were akin in character and by descent to both those nations. In their manners and mode of government they resembled the Alemanni; while in race and language they were originally more nearly allied to the Saxons. If the Franks are to be considered a distinct nation, it is the ancient Catti or Hessians (who have ever been included among that people) that we must regard as the main stock of the whole race.

But the second great primitive and leading race among the Germanic nations were the Goths, a people whose territory spread from the Scandinavian Peninsula, and the shores of the Baltic, along the whole course of the Vistula, as far as the Black Sea. Their language, as it exists in the yet extant Gothic bible of Ulphilas, is what we would now call the high Dutch dialect; though its form is more ancient, and is distinguished for a certain purity of structure, not without its peculiar charm. This Gothic dialect is, in tone and form, less akin to the Saxon and Scandinavian languages, except in so far as the branches of a stem, the nearer we approach the roots, reveal more clearly their common origin. In the Scandinavian North, the territories of these two principal Germanic races, the Goths and the Saxons, were contiguous; and, proceeding from this common source, the two nations branched out into separate and various streams. Of a similar, or at least of a kindred, race to the Goths, were the Burgundians and Vandals, who afterwards founded the kingdoms of that name in Gaul and Spain. Hereditary monarchy attained to a more settled form among the Goths than among any other of the Germanic nations; and, divided between two different dynasties, the Ostro-Goths were subject to the heroic family of the Amali, and the Visi-Goths to that of the Balti. The Roman historians of that age often speak of their martial

courage and magnanimity, as well as of their lofty and commanding stature.

The real emigration of the Northern tribes originated solely and immediately with the Goths; and, in the first period, was not produced by any commotion among the Asiatic nations, as was afterwards the case. As early as the third century, the Goths took possession of the countries situated on the Northern coast of the Euxine, and penetrated into Greece as far as Athens. The Emperor Decius fell in the war against them, and in the peace which they concluded with Aurelian, they retained the further Dacia which had been previously surrendered. They now became allies of the Romans, who were happy enough to cultivate the relations of peace with them, and to recruit their legions with the Gothic youth. A hundred years later, the Goths on the death of their king Hermanric, were disturbed in their settlements near the Black Sea by the Huns: a people who, according to the Chinese annals, originally inhabited the Northern frontier of China towards the Eastern parts of the Middle Asia, and who afterwards, bearing down westward, took up their abode for a long time on the Eastern shores of the Caspian, till at last they forced their way into the Caucasian regions, and the territory of the Goths on the borders of the Black Sea.

It was only now, when the minds of the German tribes of the West were at the same time rising to a higher and higher pitch of excitement,

and the old Empire of Rome was on every side crumbling into ruins, that the tide of Northern emigration burst out in all its full and fearful violence. In the first irruptions, the names of the different tribes, as well as of their leaders, were almost all without exception German; but now we meet with many foreign names, which discover not only the Asiatic Huns, but the Sclavonian, and even perhaps, occasionally, the Finnish tribes, that were undoubtedly then intermingled with the Goths in the vast empire of the latter. For fifty years after the first invasion, the Huns remained at peace in their new settlements between the Theiss and the Danube, nor did they disturb the Roman Empire till the time of Attila. The Goths offered to defend the frontier against these barbarians, and received in return the province to the south of the Danube.

The Goths readily embraced Christianity; but they received it in the Arian form; for at the time when religious instructors and the Gothic bishop Ulphilas were sent from Constantinople, the Arian party had the ascendancy in that capital. This circumstance had afterwards the most fatal influence on the destinies of the Roman Empire; for one of the chief causes of its downfal was this new contest in religious matters. It was on this very account the second conquest of Rome by the Vandal King Genseric was attended with far more devastation than the first under the Visi-Goth King Alaric; for the

former persecuted the Catholic church with all the animosity of an Arian. The Goths were not animated by feelings of hostility towards the Romans; but were rather disposed to admire the excellence and superiority of their civilization. When the Emperor Valens perished in the Gothic war, which Roman treachery had occasioned, Theodosius contrived to conclude an advantageous peace with this people, when they stood at the very gates of Constantinople, took forty thousand of their troops into his pay, and renewed the armed confederacy of the Goths which Constantine had formed. When the Gothic prince Athanaric had contemplated with astonishment the pomp and splendour of Constantinople, and had conceived sentiments of respect for the personal character of Theodosius; the Goths, moved by the representations of their prince, declared to Theodosius that as long as he lived, they wished to have no other king but himself. But the case was altered under the sons of Theodosius; and, to defend themselves from this people, these princes knew no other expedient than to let loose on Italy these barbarians, and to divert and point the storm of invasion towards that quarter. This policy produced the expedition of the Visi-Goth King Alaric to Rome, and the first conquest of the eternal and seven-hilled city.

The disputes between Rome and the new Byzantine court did not a little contribute to the downfal of the Roman Empire; and the dexterity,

or rather craftiness, which the politicians of Constantinople displayed on this, as on many other occasions, was often attended with consequences the most ruinous to Italy. As the universal empire of Rome had grown out of civil war, so it was undermined and ruined more by internal discord and corruption, than by the power of the Goths; a nation with whom the Romans might easily have contracted relations of amity, and induced to fraternize, and become by degrees one people with themselves; and indeed, at various periods, the policy of the better Emperors had prepared the way for such an union. As, of all the Germanic nations, the Goths were the most powerful; and as their assistance would have enabled the Romans to resist all the other tribes; such an alliance, as I here speak of, would have accomplished by pacific means the purpose of the great Northern migration, namely, the union of the sound, vigorous, native spirit of the Germans with the civilization of the Romans (then indeed sunk to the lowest state of debasement), and whose polity and public life Christianity itself was unable totally to regenerate. And thus a long intermediate period of conflict and confusion would have been rendered unnecessary.

During the troubles which followed the first conquest of Rome by Alaric, the Romans invoked from Africa the aid of Genseric, King of the Vandals,—a prince who both as a warrior, and as a ruler, was far more cruel than Alaric,

and who every where spread terror on his march. Jealous and suspicious of the Goths, he invited into Italy Attila, with all the nations which his martial prowess had subjected or attached to his authority, and occasioned the expedition of the latter into the West, where, in the great battle on the banks of the Marna, the Goths constituted the main portion of both the contending armies. The Huns and some other of the invading nations were still Pagans; and the history of that age amply demonstrated that wars are ever more destructive in proportion as the armies are more numerous, the throng of armed multitudes more dense, and the nations composing them more various and dissimilar. Still the general oppression, anarchy, desolation, and misery, in those times, are not to be traced solely to wars and battles; for, during the most flourishing and civilized ages of ancient Rome, wars were almost perpetually waged, and were generally more, and certainly not less, bloody and destructive than the present. The Bishop of Rome contrived to avert the torrent of hostilities from his capital, and the city was spared. On the death of Attila, the Huns ceased to be formidable; for the power of that prince, which depended far less on their numbers, than on his own military prowess and glory, perished at once with him.

Odoacer, Prince of the Heruli and Rugians, (nations also Gothic) was called to the Empire of Rome from the banks of the Danube. From

his conquest dates the downfal of the Western Empire, and the last Roman youth who was yet dignified with the name of emperor, was called Romulus, 1228 years after the first Romulus,—the founder of the eternal city—a city which after it had lost its outward and political power, became the centre of a vast sacerdotal dominion, and again occupied in succeeding times a mighty and important place in history. When the sway of the Heruli became an object of detestation in Rome and Italy, the Greek Emperor Zeno, in a formal document, conferred on the Ostro-Goth King Theodoric, who had been educated at Constantinople, the dominion of Italy; and the latter, after his victory over Odoacer, assumed the Roman purple, in lieu of the Gothic dress. He was highly esteemed in Rome, and by all the Germanic nations; his name, like that of Charlemagne after him, was celebrated in the heroic songs of the Germans, while political writers and historical critics commend alike his talents and his virtues. His rule was generous and noble; he loved and honoured the arts and sciences which his age still possessed, and the last of Roman writers, Cassiodorius and Boethius, were the ornaments of his reign. Factions which arose on the death of this great prince, and a crime perpetrated on the relics of his house,[4] afforded the active Emperor of the

East, Justinian, an opportunity to re-establish the Greek sway in Italy, by means of his successful General, Belisarius. Military commanders like Belisarius, and some worthier and more enterprizing princes on the throne of Byzantium, as well as that systematic course of policy I have before described, maintained the Byzantine Empire; while Rome itself was ruined, and Italy fell under the dominion of the Lombards, who succeeded the Goths, and were succeeded in their turn by the Franks—under whom the Roman Empire of Germany was re-established, and Rome became, and continued, united with that empire during the middle ages, though for the most part only in name.

This rapid but faithful sketch of the migration of the Northern nations seemed necessary to enable us to form a right opinion on this subject. For this period, which laid the mighty foundation on which the whole Teutonico—Romanic structure of the institutions, laws, manners, languages, opinions, and even the peculiar imaginative character of modern European nations, has been raised, has not always been fully understood, or justly appreciated by many writers, either led away by a partial enthusiasm for the antique, or enthralled by modern opinions and prejudices—writers who wish to trace in all parts of creation, and even in universal history, the same dead uniformity and monotony of plan. It is by no means common to meet with an Historical inquirer, possessing a flexibility of fancy,

a justness of feeling, and a soundness and correctness of judgment, capable of transporting him into the remote ages of history, and the mythic antiquity of nations. But in the present instance, and throughout the whole of this chaotic epoch, when the old fictions of the Titanic wars appear to be actually realized, and when the marvellous of events and sentiments is to be found in the obscure and meagre chronicles of that age, which often unite fragments of popular mythology and Pagan tradition, with real historic incidents; it is perhaps still more difficult to form an accurate judgment, and to discriminate between the elements of truth and falsehood. As we cannot figure to ourselves such a state of anarchy, we are unable to comprehend it. We should bear in mind how often in nature the fairest bloom of vegetation, and the richest fullness of organic life, spring out of a state of confusion and chaos, when the elemental powers, after a long strife and conflict, settle at last into a state of harmonious equipoise, unite and fructify, and in some creative moment, when the struggle of labour is over, give birth to new and more beautiful forms of existence. Ancient Egypt was indebted for its fertility to the periodic inundations of the Nile, which, had they not been provided against by mounds and dams, would have occasioned the utmost desolation. Nay, doth not this earth we inhabit, and which nourishes us, with all that fair and blooming vegetation spread over its surface, with all that boundless

wealth and variety of animal life, and with all the civility and refinement of man’s existence, whose abode it constitutes; doth not this earth, I say, teeming as it doth with fertility and life, rest on the gigantic remains of a primitive world submerged by the old floods, and which was often torn, convulsed and rent asunder by the eruptions of subterraneous fire? Well, the migration of the Northern nations brought about a sort of chaotic struggle between the various elements of society—it was a new Ogygean inundation of nations in the historical ages—but it laid the fruitful soil—the historical foundation of a new moral and intellectual form of life. This vast flux and reflux of nations, rolling in incessant waves from the East to the West, and from the North to the South, and back again to the East and to the North, this emission of immense armies issuing in all directions from a common centre, and returning again to that centre from every side—all this vast movement must be looked upon as a strife and contention between the elemental powers of human society. The first effect, indeed, of such a strife of nature’s elements let loose is to destroy, or at least, to impair all existing organic forms; and it must be confessed, this wild and protracted state of confusion and anarchy does not present the most pleasing and auspicious aspect to the eye of the historical observer. With respect to the latter circumstance, we must recollect that the extremely slow progress, and

often unexpected delays, in the advancement of human society, correspond not always, and indeed rarely, to our wishes and expectations; while, on the other hand, there are epochs in history, when we are amazed by the sudden out-burst of the most extraordinary events, and when a great splendour of moral and intellectual life surprises us of a sudden, like a bright morning in Spring. In other words, there is a strong, wise and Fatherly hand which guides and conducts the destinies of individuals, as well as the march of society, and the course of ages; or as the Scripture, with touching simplicity, saith, “the Father hath reserved times unto himself;” and Time in his march keepeth not pace with the rapidity of our desires, nor moveth according to our views and hopes. But whatever may be, if I may so speak, the fearful tardiness, wherewith the views of Providence over the destinies of the human race are accomplished;—a tardiness, whereof man has to bear the greatest blame; or whatever may be, if I may so say, the long delays of divine justice—the procrastination of the period of grace;—it cannot be doubted that the general result of the great Northern migration was most salutary, and that that mixture of the Germanic tribes with the degenerate population of Rome—that alliance between the healthy, vigorous, and native intellectual energy of Germany, and the rapidly decaying civilization of Rome, were productive of the mightiest and most beneficial consequences.

Whoever doubts the truth of this observation, may cure his scepticism by comparing the splendour, activity and variety in the political and intellectual existence of the modern European states, that have sprung out of this union of the Germanic and Romanic nations, with the dull monotony, the thorough moral and intellectual stupor which prevailed in the later Byzantine Empire.

But I have more than once observed that, independently of that progressive power of reason, inherent in all the forms and departments of human activity; and independently of the operations of Divine Providence, which form that high mysterious chain of unity which links together the different periods of man’s social progress; independently, I say, of all these, there is a law of nature—a high, and secret principle of nature, presiding over the life and growth of human society—which, if kept in due subordination to the higher principle of Providence, will not be found incompatible with it. The prevalence of this law of nature may be clearly traced in the history of mankind, and even in that of particular nations, when their social progress is not impeded or interrupted by violent or irregular causes. And in following the current of events in History, the historical observer can accurately distinguish the different periods of national developement—the first period of artless, yet marvellous, childhood—the next of the first bloom and flush

of youth—later, the maturer vigour and activity of manhood—and at last the symptoms of approaching age, a state of general decay, and second childishness. This energy of nature, which, together with the other, higher and divine principle of human destiny, is inherent in mankind, displays itself even in the sphere of intellect, and particularly in the flourishing eras of art and science. It is even still more, or at least quite as, perceptible in those creative moments already described, of a new, though perhaps, at first, a chaotic epoch of human society: so far, at least, as those plastic, eventful moments are not the mere offspring and counterfeit production of revolutionary violence—but have issued from the very well-spring of nature. When the latter is the case, it will be found that the whole tendency of these periods of extraordinary ferment in society is conducive to the extension of the divine principle, and to the promotion of the views of Providence, as was eminently the case in the era of the great Northern migrations; an era, when a catastrophe, at first the most appalling, led to the further triumph of Christianity, which conferred on those robust, Northern children of nature the high consecration of an empire, which thereby, in its ulterior progress, far outshone the Roman, or any other old Pagan domination. But unquestionably the two conflicting elements in that eventful period, which contained the first germs of all modern civilization—the

free-born energy of Germanic nature, and the Romanic refinement, science, and language, were happily blended and harmonized by the Christian religion only, which on that account must be regarded as the all-connecting bond—the one all-animating principle of social life in modern ages. But without that new element of vital power furnished by the Northern emigrations, Christianity alone would not have regenerated the degraded people of Rome, nor have restored its intellectual energy, then sunk to too low a state of debasement. Above all, the primitive, innate, and deeply rooted corruption of the Roman government was beyond the power of remedy, and could only be removed by time.

The evils of the age were indeed, universal; for, even in the bosom of Christianity, discord had broken out; and where even faith was preserved in its purity, there, to use the expression of Holy Writ, “much of first love was gone.” But for this, the influence of Christianity on the Roman empire, and the Roman world, would have been far more extensive; and a miraculous cure would have been wrought on the moral distempers of society, as on the physical diseases of individuals. And as holy hermits were often able to command the elements of nature and the savage beasts of the desert; so a divine power, by its mild, conciliating, prompt and effective influence would in the first moment have allayed the wild jar and strife

of the social elements. But these effects were accomplished only by slow degrees, by the soothing influence of time, and by the gradual infusion of the spirit of Christianity into the human mind.

The progressive corruption and ever growing disorders of the Roman world were productive of consequences in some degree important to Christianity, particularly in relation to after-ages. To forsake and renounce that world of cruelty and vice, that kingdom of dissimulation, that age of confusion and barbarism, and to seek by preference an abode and asylum in the wilderness, in the neighbourhood of lions and other savage animals of the desert, required no extraordinary impulse of Christian feeling, and scarcely more than a high effort of human courage. And thus in that convulsed period of the Roman Empire, and under the accurst domination of its last tyrants, Christian anchorets peopled the solitudes of Thebais,—those solitudes where the old pyramids and other monuments of hoar antiquity still speak in mute signs to the traveller, their grave and earnest language. Self-contemplation did not shut up these Christian anchorites within a narrow and egotistical sphere of thought, as is the case with the Indian recluse, who, to outward appearance, leads the same mode of life. As the primitive Christians evinced the power of faith and charity by deeds and in sufferings, in words and in works of manifold kinds; so

prayer was to these solitaries the inward porch of a new and invisible world—a real business of life, and a bond of the closest and tenderest connection, whereby, though separated from the world, they remained, even at the remotest distance, intimately united with all who, like themselves, were firmly united to God.

Thus it was that the Primitive Christians displayed the power of divine Hope, and ardent Charity, not only in their heroic constancy under assaults, persecutions, sufferings and torments of all, even the most exquisite, kinds; but in their renunciation of society and of all earthly enjoyments, in their contempt and abandonment of a world, which seemed in truth eternally distracted and irretrievably undone. In the eremitical life, a simple handicraft was ordinarily coupled with the duty of spiritual contemplation. These first Christian Anchorites of Egypt were the original and model of all later monastic institutes; although, conformably to the living and quite practical spirit of Christianity, these institutes have generally admitted into their rules other useful and salutary exercises adapted either to the general circumstances of the age, or to the wants of individuals—such as the education of youth—the cultivation of the sciences—the relief of the poor—the care of the infirm—and the practice of other works of charity. The Anchorites, who lead a purely contemplative life, constitute a comparatively small and rare exception in the Christian church;

and they are tolerated only because the ways of human nature are so infinitely diversified, and often so strange and so singular.

To resist their internal foes, to withstand the assaults of the fiend—the spirit of discord and corruption, and to preserve inviolate the purity of morals, as well as of faith, the Primitive Christians as much needed the divine assistance, as to enable them to endure outwardly the torments of martyrdom, or to renounce in holy solitude the pleasures of the world. In this respect three different kinds of heresy, which were so many trials the Christian religion had to sustain, are well worthy of our attention. From the very birth of Christianity, the Gnostics gave loose to the ardour of an Oriental fancy, indulged in a variety of Theosophistic speculations, and with their systems of Divine Emanations, Eradiations, Incarnations, and Persons, formed an almost mythological concatenation of ideas; so that had it been possible for this sect to become predominant, and for Christianity to swerve into such a labyrinth of doctrines, our divine religion would have degenerated into a system of metaphysical fictions, not unlike the philosophic mythology and poetical creed of India. Happily these sects of Gnostics were not numerous, nor in general of long duration; and they were extremely divided among themselves; for a truly inventive fancy ever strikes out a path of enquiry for itself. But, when considered in an intellectual point of view, these sectaries, amid

all their strange and whimsical errors, must ever command the attention of mankind. It would seem from all appearance, (and indeed the nature of things would sufficiently warrant the inference) that many of these sects combined with their own peculiar notions, the opinions of other oriental sects, totally alien from Christianity. As the march of error is infinitely progressive, and as, from its very nature, false opinion is sure to branch out into a variety of ramifications, it is often difficult to determine with exactness whether some of these Gnostic sects, that spread through Central Asia, and were lost in a multitude of others, were or not of a Christian origin. Of all the sects belonging to the Gnostic family, the Manichæans alone appear to have had a longer existence; and during the middle ages, they secretly germinated in Europe.

The second corruption of Christianity was from Arianism, which corresponds to what in modern times is termed Rationalism; though the former appeared in another and more Christian form. That the dispute with Arianism was no mere verbal dispute—that it involved a capital article of faith—a question of life or death for Christianity—a question whether the real Foundation—the essential Corner-stone—and Beginning of our faith were really, truly, and in very deed divine, and from God, and equal with God, or merely in a certain sense like to God—(an opinion which the Platonic, or any other

system of philosophy might have included among its tenets)—that the dispute with Arianism was no mere verbal dispute, must be evident to every upright, ingenuous, and unprejudiced mind. No sect has ever been so widely diffused, nor has ever taken such deep root; and, by the arts and evasions of a prodigious subitlty it maintained its principles under the mask of apparent submission. It was now that for the first time, the importance and power of a general council became apparent, in order to oppose to the many-shaped, subtle, and intangible spirit of error, a brief, but clear, and definite formulary of that faith which animated the bosom, and was rooted in the conviction, of every Christian. This destructive rationalism of the early ages of Christianity was at last repressed, and became finally extinct; though the last ramifications of this sect have continued down to our times among the Eutychians of Armenia, and the Nestorians of Ethiopia.

How much the unhappy disputes of Arianism contributed in this period of general decline, towards the downfal of the Roman Empire, I have already had occasion to notice. But that passion for dispute, which, if not innate in man, has at least become his second nature, and is, as it were, the original sin of human intellect, displays itself in a more striking degree in certain sects, that did not question any article of faith, but merely some subordinate matters of opinion, or the rights of ecclesiastical authority, and who

conducted their disputes with the most unyielding obstinacy—such a passion, I say, displays itself more strikingly in these sects than in others, that called in question points of faith, and who, so far as they were conscientious in their errors, appear entitled to our respect and forbearance. Among the former class of disputants, must be ranked some of the smaller, less diffused, and obscurer sects of the first ages of the church, like the Montanists and Donatists;—sects, whose influence was on that account by no means unimportant, and who occupy no insignificant place in the history of their times; for their errors constitute the third form of deviation from universal Christianity. In the same category must we place the great schism of a later period, which severed the Greek from the Western church; for this unhappy separation, as is well known, had no relation to any important dogma of Christianity.

As the general councils of that period prove the self-preserving and self-sustaining power of Christianity, so the energy of Christian faith and Christian intellect displays its life, activity and scientific progress in the numberless and manifold productions of those first doctors of the church, so highly revered by all succeeding ages. The style and language of these works must be estimated by the standard of their age; and it would be absurd to expect them to possess, in a like degree, the attic simplicity of a Xenophon, or the full and elaborate periods of a Livy.

But with this single exception, these writings display the most varied talents for oratory and philosophy, united with extensive learning, the purest feelings of religious love, and the most correct views in religion. And, to cite but one or two examples out of the multitude of ecclesiastical writers, St. Augustine, by the extent of his historical information, by a philosophy zealous in its enquiries after truth, but still irresolute, presents the image of a Christian Cicero, in a language somewhat altered indeed, but distinguished for a similar employment of rhetoric. Nor was this great man destitute of political discernment and penetration; and he certainly possessed a much more decided talent for speculative enquiry, than the old Roman who flourished in the last age of the Republic. There was next that learned and holy recluse, St. Jerome, who was as well versed in classical literature as in the oriental languages, and who was gifted with a depth of critical discernment, and an original power of thought and expression, equalled by very few orators and thinkers in any age.

The dread of a false Gnosis was at that period, as often in subsequent ages, an obstacle to the progress of a profound Christian philosophy. The leaning of the great ecclesiastical writer, Origen, particularly in his youth, to some opinions of the Gnostics, excited long after his death many doubts and controversies respecting some points of his belief, and tended at least to

impair the reverence with which his philosophical genius was otherwise regarded. This was particularly the case when the Arians made use of some doubtful opinions of this great man for the support of their system; as indeed it often happens that an elevated system of philosophy if not completed in its parts, or at least that the individual errors it may contain are seized upon by the dull, innovating spirit of a superficial, and half-doubting faith, and debased to a quite alien and inferior sphere of speculation.

There is also another error, or rather illusion, which deserves to be noticed, as it is a characteristic incident in the history of those early ages of the church; for it was no regular system of error, nor did its partisans constitute a sect; but it was merely the exaggerated opinion of some individuals in the bosom of the church, who were animated by no intentions hostile to Christianity. I allude to the (so called) Millenarian doctrine, which, as it refers to the future historical destiny of Christianity, possesses a high historical interest. Though the Prophet of the New Testament marked out the period of a thousand years for the duration of the triumph of the church, he expressly intimated thereby that that period could not be discovered nor determined by human penetration, for, as the scripture saith, “a thousand years are as one day with the Lord, and one day as a thousand years;” and though the inspired writer expressly added, that as the great

combat, which man is doomed to on the earth and in earthly life, can never be completely terminated, a last combat awaited humanity at the close of those thousand years; many virtuous and praiseworthy men were still found, who depicted this kingdom of a thousand years in the most sensual colours of earthly felicity, and thus destroyed all faith in that prophetic warning, so necessary for man and for all ages—all belief in the ideal conception of the kingdom of divine truth: or, with reckless precipitancy equally misapplied the words of the prophet, and (as has often been the case in succeeding times) very unseasonably alarmed themselves and others; though that long series of ages marked out by the Apostle for the progress of Christianity might have opened their eyes, and taught them differently. But the principal cause which opposed, and must ever oppose an insurmountable difficulty to the Millenarian system of that and of all succeeding ages, is the limit assigned to the judgment of Christians in all that relates to the inscrutable decrees of Divine Providence; whether those decrees regard individuals or mankind in general. Surely nothing could be conceived more disquieting, more fatal to human life, than for every individual to know beforehand with the utmost certainty from his birth the day and hour of his death; and no greater calamity could happen to any man than a revelation of such a kind. The same remark is equally applicable to the world in general, where

such fore-knowledge would only produce the utmost disorder and confusion. As in the case of a sick man reduced to imminent danger from the increasing symptoms of dissolution; though no man, not even the physician, can positively know and determine with certainty the course of events, which is known to God alone, still every friend would wish that the patient should examine his interior, unite his thoughts to God, and set his house in order; so cases may be imagined, when this comparison would apply to mankind at large.

Thus then on the Roman soil, and amid that world once so brilliant, Christianity had grown up, like a tender, luminous plant, whose seed had come down from Heaven. For the further expansion of that heavenly seed, for the formation of the Christian state, and the political organization of Christian nations, we must allow that the all-wise and powerful Hand, which guides the destinies of men and of nations, the march of ages, and the course of events, found it necessary to employ at first very violent, and (if we may borrow a term of the medical art) almost heroic remedies. The cause of this undoubtedly must be sought for in the fact, that although many great and holy men are to be found in the first ages of the church, mankind on the whole had very imperfectly corresponded to that mighty and divine impulse which Christianity had imparted to the world; and had very soon and very quickly fallen into the most fearful disputes.

Scarce had that inundation of the Northern nations burst in upon the blooming garden of the Christian West, (and beneficial to mankind as have been the remote consequences and final results of that revolution, and defensible therefore as it may be in a historical Theodicea, still we cannot deny that its immediate effects were most terrible and destructive;)—scarce, we say, had this inundation of the Northern nations occurred, when, in the opposite quarter of the East, there broke out among the nations of Asia, that mighty Arabian conflagration, whose flames were scattered over the terrified globe, by the sons of the desert, guided by their new prophet of unbelief, and animated themselves with all the enthusiasm of destruction.

I am at a loss to conceive how some could have regarded it as a peculiar merit of this religion of empty arrogance and senseless pride, that it maintains and inculcates with purity a belief in one Almighty Deity. This, as the Scripture says, the demons themselves, in their realms of eternal darkness, believe, without being on that account at all the better; and it is only a profound ignorance of the world and himself that could ever make man forget and obliterate from his bosom that first foundation of all faith. All the elements of salvation, reconciliation, mercy, love, and happiness for mankind, to be found in eternal truth, and a belief in that truth, all these are wanting in the

religion of Mahomet. There is not a more decided contrast than that presented by the silent progress of the new and divine light of truth in the primitive church, amid oppression and persecution, in meek submission to every existing law, and, except in matters of faith, in a patient, unwearied, and cheerful submission to the hostile, but still legitimate, powers of the earth; and, on the other hand, that fanatic thirst of conquest inspired by Mahomet—that express precept to propagate by fire and sword throughout the four quarters of the globe the new Unitarian faith of Arabia. If some writers instead of studying the history of modern Europe, in order to deduce from their researches new matter and occasion for reviving the old contests about the respective rights and limits of the secular and ecclesiastical powers, would only examine with attention the history of the ancient Caliphate, they would soon satisfy themselves of the fearful character of that Institution, of the infernal spirit that produced that anti-Christian combination of spiritual and temporal authority, and of the horrible state of moral degradation to which it has reduced mankind in every country where it has prevailed.

It was with the rapidity of a destructive fire that this mighty mischief spread over the countries of Asia, and a large portion of Africa, till it soon menaced the Southern extremities of Europe. When Mahomet died, he was master of Arabia, a country that from the earliest antiquity

had remained in a state of absolute seclusion from the rest of the world; and consequently if this great revolution had remained confined within the limits of this region, the religion of Mahomet would never have exerted so mighty an historical influence on other nations and kingdoms. But only a few score years from his decease, and under his immediate successors, the whole Western Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates, as far as the Mediterranean, Syria, and Palestine, down to Mount Taurus and the frontiers of Asia Minor, and soon again the whole Northern coast of Africa, down to the opposite shores of Spain, were subdued by the disciples of the Koran; while at the same moment the Roman West and the Empire of Persia were menaced by the arms of these formidable invaders. It was a general principle with the Mahometan conquerors to extirpate all recollection of antiquity in the countries which they subdued, to give them an entirely new form and aspect—or, in other words, to destroy and obliterate every vestige of the higher and better civilization that had adorned those once flourishing regions.

[4] Schlegel alludes to the murder of Amalasontha, daughter of Theodoric, and to the usurpation of Theodatus.—Trans.

END OF LECTURE XI.

LECTURE XII.

Sketch of Mahomet and his religion.—Establishment of the Saracenic Empire.—New organization of the European West, and Restoration of the Christian Empire.

From the earliest period, the pastoral tribes of Arabia have lived under their Emirs, in all the wild independence of Nomade nations; they were not however without cities, as these were created and rendered necessary by the trade of the caravan, which in its journies through the wilderness, and in its passage from one inhabited province to another, required these points of rest. A few of the frontier-districts and maritime coasts were indeed possessed by some of the more ancient Egyptian Pharaohs; but the entire country was never subdued or conquered either by the Assyrians, the Persians, or the Macedonian conquerors. Nor were the Romans more successful; and it was only in the reign of Trajan, the last of Roman emperors, who meditated schemes of conquest, that a small frontier

tract of Arabia Petræa was taken possession of, and annexed to, the Roman Empire. Immediately on the death of Trajan, the Roman government recurred to the pacific policy of Augustus, who had considered it dangerous to enlarge the empire by any new conquests: and in consequence, this province of Arabia was abandoned by the Romans, and left to the enjoyment of its ancient freedom.

This long-established liberty and total independence on all foreign conquerors and rulers has not a little contributed to exalt among the Arabs a strong self-consciousness. Their origin, which is very nearly akin to that of the Hebrews, they deduce as descendants of Yoktan from Heber, who was an ancestor of Abraham, or from Ishmael, the son of Abraham, that was born in the desert. Among these free and warlike pastoral nations, the feelings of clanship, the pride of noble descent, and the glory of an ancient and renowned race, and again the mutual hostility of tribes transmitted from one generation to another, the never-to-be-cancelled debt of blood, form the ruling and animating principle, nay, the almost exclusive purport of existence. This tribe-spirit of the Arabians has had a mighty influence on the origin and first developement of the Mahometan religion, and has stamped on it a peculiar character. And among the Nomade nations in a similar stage of social advancement, and who combine the freedom of the pastoral life with

the commerce of caravans, and are not total strangers to the refinement of cities, the faith of Mahomet has not only obtained the easiest access, but has struck the deepest roots, and finds, as it were, its most natural disciples. For the Tartar nations in the interior parts of Asia, and the tribes of Berbers, who are the original inhabitants of the North of Africa, lead the same mode of life, though they cannot boast of the ancient origin and high descent ascribed to the Arabs. Compared with Roman degeneracy, with the corruption of the Byzantine court, with Assyrian effeminacy, and the immorality of the great Asiatic cities, this tribe-character of the Arabians, as preserved in its purity during their ancient freedom, appears undoubtedly to be of a less corrupt, more moral and more generous nature. Doubtless the Arabs possessed in the first ages of their history, a great moral energy of will and strength of character, and, even in the period of their decline, these qualities are still perceptible. On the other hand in this tribe-character, and in those feelings of clanship, which determine all the social relations among that people; pride, party-animosities, and the spirit of revenge, are the ruling elements of life, and the passions to which all things are made subservient, or are sacrificed. The moral corruption of the human race, the profound disorder of man’s whole being, is proved as well by the constant proneness of civilized nations towards a soft voluptuousness of morals, or by the innate

disposition of politer classes and ages to a spirit of speculative contention, as by the rude pride and animosities of tribes, which considered in a natural point of view, appear to be purer and less corrupt in their morals, or to possess greater strength and generosity of character. Those tribe-feelings and passions of pride and hatred, anger and revenge, so prevalent among the Arabians, are displayed in their ancient poetry, and even constitute its essential spirit and purport; for except those parables, riddles, and proverbial sayings in which the Orientals so much delight, this poetry has no mythological fictions, like that of the Indians and the Greeks, nor with the exception of a certain enthusiasm of passion, does it evince any truly fertile and inventive power of imagination.

The old Arabians never possessed, like the Indians, Egyptians, and Greeks, a poetical, high-wrought, and scientifically arranged system of Polytheism. The historical traditions of their different races had much analogy with those of the Hebrews, and coincided with them in a variety of points; for as they were of the Semitic race, they deduced their origin from Abraham and the other holy Patriarchs of the primitive world. Hence the tradition of a purer faith, and the simple, patriarchal worship of the Deity, appear to have never been totally extinguished among the Arabs; though indeed the veracious Herodotus asserts, that they adored the Assyrian Venus under the name of

Alilath. But such a mixture of religious doctrines and practices is by no means incredible, when we reflect on those periods in the history of the Hebrews, when though that people were in possession of the Mosaic revelation and code of laws, and though their whole arrangment of life were founded thereon; though mighty and zealous prophets perpetually arose to warn them of their errors; they still went after Baal, and still sacrificed their children to Moloch. In the age of Mahomet, and shortly before his time, various kinds of idolatry had found their way among the Arabs from the neighbouring nations, who if not now, had formerly been plunged in the errors of Paganism. At the same time several Jewish tribes existed in Arabia, and even some Christian communities, belonging mostly to the Oriental sects, mingled with the rest of the population. The neighbouring Christian monarch, or Negus of Æthiopia, also exerted considerable influence on the different tribes and communities of Arabia.

Mahomet felt the most decided aversion to all Pagan idolatry, and even to all veneration of images; and it is very possible, according to the opinion of a great historian, who on the whole does not judge the Arabian prophet unfavourably, that the expectation which the Jews still entertained of the future coming of a Deliverer and Prophet, should have operated very powerfully on the mind and imagination of Mahomet. In the same way as the Jews, then

incomparably more active than afterwards, still expected Him who had long since come; so certain Christian sects, totally misunderstanding the Scriptures, which they interpreted according to their own arbitrary sense, believed that the Holy Ghost and the divine Paraclete whom the Saviour had promised, was yet to come; although the Saviour had promised that the Holy Spirit should come down upon his disciples, immediatly after his ascension, and had added, that the same spirit should for ever abide with them. Now every one who professed himself a Christian, knew very well from the Holy Scriptures, that a supernatural light had descended on the Apostles in the first assembly they held, and when, as they thought, their Lord and Master had abandoned them; and that this light had transformed the disciples, till then weak, wavering, and trembling before the world, into apostolic men filled with the spirit of God, into prophets of eternal truth and divine love, humble, but energetic, and no less heroic than enlightened. That Assister and Comforter, or that guiding Paraclete promised by God to his disciples, which in the Apostles had proved itself a spirit of knowledge, of illumination, and of insight into the mysteries of faith—in the martyrs, a spirit of divine power and of heroic constancy under sufferings, was now in the great doctors of the church, and in the general councils the guiding spirit of wisdom, rightly discerning and steadfastly adhering to the truths of

revelation. But this truth did not prevent many leaders of those sects from regarding themselves in their own conceit as the Comforter and the Paraclete promised by God for the consolation of succeeding ages, or even from permitting themselves to be so considered by their own disciples. The supposition of the great historian just now cited, that these Judæo-Christian expectations of the future coming of an earthly Deliverer, Redeemer and Teacher, or Prophet of the world, may have exerted no inconsiderable influence on the mind of Mahomet, and may have awakened similar conceptions and imaginations in his own head, is confirmed by the fact, that the Koran itself contains no very obscure allusions and references to the notion of the Paraclete, and to a supernatural and divine power and force under the very denomination used among the later Hebrews, and according to the very word sanctioned for that peculiar object.

In the time of Mahomet, and shortly before him, the Caaba at Mecca constituted the great sanctuary of Arabian worship. This, if we may so designate it, was a simple chapel of Pagan pilgrimage, which contained the black stone, the object of the religious devotion of the Arabs from a very ancient period. The idolatrous worship of such shapeless or conical blocks of stone was by no means unknown to the wayward genius of ancient Polytheism. We meet with a similar form of idolatry in the mythology

of the Greeks, though set off and embellished by the peculiar fancy of that people; and instances of a like kind were to be found in the worship which the neighbouring people of Syria paid to Belus or Baal. Those stones which are frequently mentioned by ancient historians as having fallen from Heaven, may probably have given rise to this peculiar species of idolatry; and the fact itself (as now indeed is often the case with the general traditions of antiquity) is sufficently proved by the existence of those well-known meteor-stones, whose origin, though they have undergone chemical analysis, and mineralogical investigation, still remains, even in the present advanced state of modern science, a problem of no small difficulty.

The Arabian tribe from which Mahomet was sprung, had long been intrusted with the care and custody of the Caaba and the black stone, and placed its highest glory in this its allotted dignity. According to the Arabian tradition, Abraham had first erected the Caaba, and the Amalecites had afterwards repaired it. When the tribe of Koreish, who were invested with this high charge, had to rebuild this temple; they were at a loss to know how the sacred black stone should be fixed in the walls, and what hand should touch the consecrated piece, when quite unexpectedly, this honour fell to the lot of Mahomet, then a stripling of fifteen. For this reason we may well suppose that this ancient seat of Arabian worship—the Caaba—produced

one of those youthful impressions that determined the future destiny of this extraordinary man. Even in the religious system which he afterwards founded, this ancient sanctuary with its magical stone, has remained in every age a high object of veneration; and it is only in our times that the temple of Mecca has been exposed to the rage of the Wechabites, who though their religious fury has taken an opposite course, exhibit the old Arabian character in all its fanatical violence. But this old black stone-idol is a very remarkable feature in the history of Mahomet and of his religion. In the holy temple of the Caaba were kept and suspended the seven most remarkable poems which had won the prize over the other tribe-songs of the Arabs,—a species of poetry peculiar to this people, and breathing all the enthusiasm of pride and hatred. In these compositions, Mahomet held a very distinguished rank, and long before he announced himself as a prophet, his poetry, which far outshone that of his competitors, had raised him to a high degree of honour and consideration. It was only in the fortieth or forty-second year of his age, and after a long and solitary abode in a cavern during what the Mahometans term, “the night of divine decrees,” that Mahomet formed the first determination, and thought he felt the first inward calling to the mission of a prophet. The first person that believed in this mission, and acknowledged him for a prophet, was his own wife Cadijah, who, though a rich widow, had

bestowed her hand on Mahomet, when his sole patrimony consisted of five camels and an Ethiopian maid-servant, and had thus raised him to a station of wealth and independence. It is worthy of notice, that it is only in the epileptic fits to which he was subject, that he is represented as having mysterious colloquies with the angel Gabriel. Others represent him as a lunatic; and in connection with this charge I may mention the story, that he wished to pass with his disciples as a person transfigured in a supernatural light, and that the credulity of his followers saw the moon, or the moon’s light descend upon him, pierce his garments, and replenish him. That veneration for the moon, which still forms a national or rather religious characteristic of the Mahometans, may perhaps have its foundation in the elder superstition, or Pagan idolatry of the Arabs.

Modern historians have often complained of the difficulty of ascertaining the precise truth in the history of Mahomet, from the severity of his opponents on the one hand, and the enthusiastic admiration of his Eastern partisans, on the other. If we think proper to follow those writers only, who by their acquaintaince with the language have copied from Arabic authorities, we shall find that their narratives are much distorted by fanaticism, and rendered almost unintelligible by an absurd exaggeration. Independently of the evident traces in this religion of a demoniacal influence and operation; undoubted historical

facts will furnish us with sufficient data for forming a clear and definitive opinion on the character of Mahomet and the nature of his religion. Although the Arabs of that age, like other nations of that time, and the ancient Hebrews, universally thought that supernatural works were to be expected from a prophet; and that the high power of miracles was necessary to prove a divine mission; yet Mahomet found it more fitting or convenient to declare, that he could dispense with the aid of miracles, as he came not to found a new religion, but to restore the purity of the old—the faith of Abraham, and the other Patriarchs. Even though we had not such clear and positive historical proofs and testimonies, respecting the nature of that presentient faith of Abraham, and the other Patriarchs of the Old Testament—a faith which pointed to all the mysteries of futurity—still to suppose that the religion of those pious Fathers of hoar antiquity, were nothing more than that system of (so called) pure, but in reality shallow, and meaningless, Theism, which the pretended Arabian Reformer has announced to the world, would be little consonant with probability, and little conformable to the nature and march of the human mind. Considered in its true internal spirit, and divested of its outward garb of oriental customs and symbolical language, the religion of Mahomet on a closer investigation will be found rather to bear a stronger affinity to the inane and superficial philosophy of the

eighteenth century; and if that philosophy were honest and consistent, it would not hesitate loudly to proclaim and openly to revere Mahomet, if not as a prophet, still as a real Reformer of mankind, the first promulgator and mighty teacher of truth, and the founder of the pure religion of reason.

Such a dead empty Theism, such a mere negative Unitarian faith, is little adapted for the true purposes of a religion, though it may form the basis of some scholastic system of Rationalist Theology. Regarded as a religious system, the creed of Mahomet is neither old nor new; but is in part perfectly void and meaningless, and in part composed of very mixed materials. The part in it which is new, is that fanatic spirit of conquest it has inculcated and diffused through the world; and that part in it which is old, is copied from the Hebrew traditions and the Christian revelation, or contains allusions to the one or to the other, including some old Arabian customs and usages which this religion has still retained.

In the first infancy of the Mahometan faith, and during the first disputes and wars which occurred about that religion, a number of Mahomet’s followers were obliged to seek refuge in Æthiopia, when the Christian monarch of that country asked them whether they were Christians. They cited in reply several passages from the sayings and poems of their prophet, relating to the Saviour, to his birth, and to the

Virgin Mary. In these the Prophet spoke of the birth and origin of our Saviour, as of a Gnostic eradiation or emanation of divine power; and though such language was by no means consonant with the Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ, yet it was calculated to produce on the minds of some of the Eastern sectaries a very false and deceitful impression. Favourable to Christianity as some of these expressions might at first sight appear to the ignorant; there was much again that betrayed a spirit of the most decided hostility towards the Christian religion. Even the prohibition of wine was perhaps not so much intended for a moral precept, which, considered in that point of view, would be far too severe, as for answering a religious design of the founder; for he might hope that the express condemnation of a liquid which forms an essential element of the Christian sacrifice, would necessarily recoil on that sacrifice itself, and thus raise an insuperable barrier between his creed, and the religion of Christ. The peculiar spirit and true character of any religious system, must be judged not so much by the letter of its professed doctrines, as by its practice and prevailing usages. And thus that established custom is extremely remarkable, which makes it imperative on every Jew, who may wish to become a Mahometan, previously to receive the rite of baptism. Thus did Mahomet think to stand upon the basis of Christianity; and while addressing the Arabs, he appealed

solely to the religion of their first ancestor, and of the other Patriarchs, he assigned in his graduated scale of revelation, the first degree to Judaism, the second to Christianity, and the third and highest to his own Islam. That he was a mere fanatic, and entirely devoid of all ambitious or political views, I cannot admit; and although he himself had even been more unconscious of a deliberate hostility towards the mysteries of the true religion, another may have inspired him with that subtle design.

Such then was this new, or as the founder himself styled it, this pure old doctrine of all-conquering Islam and of all-surpassing faith, which this pretended restorer of the religion of Abraham—this false Paraclete of misconceived promise and idle phantasy, brought and announced to the world:—a prophet without miracles—a faith without mysteries—and a morality without love, which has encouraged the thirst of blood, and which began and terminated in the most unbounded sensuality. Supposing even, that one of the leading points in this system of morals, the re-establishment of polygamy to such a wide extent, and at a period of the world when this institution was formally abolished among many nations, and among others had fallen into disuse, could be in some measure excused by the customs of Asia, the wants of climate, and the general prejudices of the nation, or other like cause;—what must we think of a code of morals professing to be divine,

which in opposition to the Christian doctrine of the pure happiness enjoyed by the celestial spirits in the intuition of God, and to which man must even in this life, aspire by vigilant preparation, if he wishes to render himself worthy of that state—can form no other ideal of supreme felicity—can devise no other expedient to fill up the immense void which this religion has left in the supernatural world, than a boundless Harem—a paradise of lust, portrayed in the most glowing colours of sensuality!

That part of the Mussulman morality relating to our fellow-beings, the precept of alms-deeds which it prescribes, is the only part entitled to praise, which we willingly accord; and we sincerely trust, that not merely the commandment, but the custom and practice of charity among Christians may never prove inferior. But in every other respect, this religion permits not only hatred and vengeance, in opposition to that Christian precept so repeatedly inculcated, and so deeply engraven on our minds—the pardon of our enemies; but it encourages, and even commands irreconcileable hostility, eternal warfare, eternal slaughter, to propagate thoughout the world a belief in this blood-stained prophet of pride and lust. Perhaps all the Heathen nations put together, in the long series of ages, have not offered to their false gods so many human victims, as in this new Arabian idolatry have been sacrificed to this highly extolled, anti-Christian prophet. For the essence of idolatry

is not in names or in words, in rites or in sacrifices; but in the nature of things, in the actual transactions of life, in unchristian customs, and anti-christian sentiments; and there is even that old black stone-idol, of which I said before in a figurative sense, that it has ever remained firmly fixed in the religion of Mahomet. The commencement of this religion was not marked by any contest about mysteries of faith, or points of doctrine; but by combats of another kind more congenial to the spirit of the Arabs, by a war which broke out between the party of Mahomet, and the hostile tribe which refused to acknowledge him for a prophet, and whose refusal occasioned his flight from Mecca. In this contest he drew the sword, fought courageously against the unbelievers, and by overpowering by force of arms all who refused to recognize him as a prophet, thought to prove his divine mission. He met however with much resistance, and had many factions to overcome, before he succeeded in subduing the various tribes of his nation. This contest lasted for ten years, up to the very moment of his death, when he died master of all Arabia. Shortly before that event, he wrote very insolent letters to the Emperor Heraclius, and to the great king of Persia, summoning them to acknowledge him for a Prophet, and to believe in his mission. Both gave rather evasive replies, than positive refusals;—so great was the terror which this new power of Hell had already struck into the world.

Immediately on the death of Mahomet, a great contest arose among his disciples. On one side Ali, his son-in-law, by marriage with his daughter Fatima, and on the other Abubeker, his father-in-law, whose daughter Ayesha was the surviving widow of the Prophet, and who was afterwards succeeded by Omar, contended with all the might of their respective adherents for superiority and dominion; and this bloody family-quarrel, which distracted the very infancy of the Arabian Empire, has produced among Mahometan nations a long and protracted religious schism, which has continued down to the present day. This was originally a mere personal dispute, and not a dogmatic controversy as among Christian sects; for the religion of Mahomet furnishes no matter for such controversies, as in reality it contains little of a doctrinal nature, and recognizes no dogmas but the two contained in the seven Arabic words of the well-known symbol of Islam:—“There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the Apostle of God.” The one of these is a declaration of the self-evident tenet of the unity of God, but levelled indirectly against the Christian dogma of the Trinity; while the other expresses the divine mission of Mahomet, and by calling forth a veneration that leads to the contempt and rejection of all things besides, has in a practical point of view, really established a new species of idolatry. Abubeker and Omar asserted that they alone were the

legitimate Caliphs and successors of Mahomet; and as the Partisans of Ali rejected the supplement founded on oral tradition, to the poems and maxims of the Prophet, they were stigmatized as schismatics by the opposite party. In Persia, the sect of Ali has remained predominant down to the present day; and as in that country, the ancient traditions and old national poetry have been partly preserved, and have been combined in a very peculiar manner with the tenets of Mahometanism, many bolder, freer, and less contracted notions have found their way among this people. Hence it is very possible that on a closer investigation, we could discover a great difference in the intellectual character of these two sects, not so much perhaps in religious doctrines, about which there is here little room for enquiry, as in moral feelings and views of life.

The progress of the Arabian conquests was not checked by these internal disputes. Five years after the death of Mahomet, and fifteen from the commencement of the Hegira, the city of Jerusalem was conquered by the arms of the Arabs; and in the eighteenth year of the same era, Egypt became a Mussulman province. The thirtieth year of the Hegira was not yet terminated, before the whole Empire of Persia was subdued, and its last monarch of the race of the Sassanides, Yezdegerd had perished in foreign parts, a suppliant and a fugitive. In the fiftieth year of the Hegira, Arabian vessels menaced

and beseiged Constantinople, which was indebted for its deliverance chiefly to the use of the Greek fire. In the ninetieth year of the same era, while on one side the Arabs extended their victorious arms over India, they subverted on the other the Visigoth kingdom in Spain and Portugal, and became masters of the whole Hesperian Peninsula, as far as those inaccessible mountains, in whose fastnesses a fugitive remnant of the ruling Goths, and of the old inhabitants of the country had intrenched themselves, thence to carry on that struggle for freedom, which till the final conquest of Granada, and the complete expulsion of the Moors from Spain, lasted for a period of eight hundred years. After the downfal of the first dynasty of Caliphs of the house of Ommiyah, and the subsequent accession of the Abbassides to the empire, a separate and independent Caliphate was established in Mussulman Spain, and lasted there for several ages. The Arabs had scarce achieved the conquest of Spain, when they aspired to the possession of the Visi-Goth and Burgundian provinces of France. But a term was at last put to the progress of their arms, by the mighty victory which the Frank hero, Charles Martel, gained between Tours and Poitiers, over their General Abderame, who fell on the field with the flower of his troops, in the twentieth year after the conquest of Spain, and in the hundred and tenth year of the Hegira. Thus did the arm of Charles Martel save and deliver

the Christian nations of the West, from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam. In Asia the universal dominion of the Arabs was more and more firmly consolidated, and the second of the Abbassides, Almansor, erected the city of Bagdad, or the new Babylon, not far from the country where the old was situated, and which was thenceforth the vast metropolis of an immense empire.[5]

The new religion and conquests of the Arabs may be considered in the light of a new migration of nations, as no inconsiderable portion of the Moorish population passed into Spain; and this Arabian migration has exerted in Asia

in Africa, a far more extensive influence on empire, language, manners, political institutions, and intellectual cultivation, than the invasion of the Germanic tribes has exercised in Europe. When we compare the immigrations of the Germanic tribes with those of the Arabs, and consider the violence which characterized the latter, the pernicious influence they have exerted on the human mind, and on civilization, and the despotism they have invariably introduced into political and domestic society, we may look upon the migrating tribes of Germany, almost as Colonies, which though originally they partook of a warlike character, yet inclined more and more and

to a peaceful nature, and ultimately assumed that spirit, when the tumult of intermediate anarchy had subsided, and Christianity had more intimately blended and finally incorporated the new settlers and the old inhabitants.

As the divine author of Christianity had promised his disciples, that the high power of God should ever abide with them, should guide and defend them; and that the assisting and counselling Spirit of truth, of peaceful order, and of active zeal should never be removed from them; the efficay of this divine promise was now manifested during this intermediate period of anarchy; and though in a different form from what it appeared in the earlier ages of the church, yet was it perfectly adapted to the exigencies of the time. The great problem of the age was first in this new agglomeration of nations, to endeavour to allay the agitated elements of society, till after that agitation had subsided, they should grow and strengthen into organic life and form; and next, to preserve the heritage of European science and letters, and thus sow the seeds of a richer and more flourishing harvest for future ages. And to effect this by the mild and genial influence of Christianity, was the object, the task, and the work of the distinguished ecclesiastics, bishops, dignitaries, and other apostolic men of those ages. The two great popes, Leo and Gregory, shone conspicuous above all their contemporaries, and were in that period of anarchy, a pillar of strength

and a shield of safety to afflicted Rome and Italy—the guardians of European society and of Christian science. Both by their practical and instructive writings, are considered as the last of the ancient fathers; and Leo even is remarkable for great purity of diction and force of eloquence. In point of science and learning, the succeeding bishops and dignitaries of the church cannot indeed be compared with the ancient fathers; but on the other hand, they united with a true Christian piety a practical sense that never failed to discern everywhere what was fitting for the emergency of the moment. The Monastic schools founded by St. Benedict were indeed of a very different nature from the primitive eremitical institutes of Egypt; and entirely adapted to the exigencies of Europe in that age, they were the asylums and seminaries of learning and philosophic contemplation; and while they promoted the interests of education, they were equally conducive to the progress of agriculture. A number of works have sufficiently shewn how much the influence of the Benedictine order, which for many centuries extended over all the countries of the West, has advanced the intellectual civilization of modern Europe, and indeed sown its first seeds.

By Bishop Boniface the Christian religion was established and widely diffused in the interior of Germany. At an earlier period, other holy men animated with an apostolic zeal, forty of whom were sent by Pope Gregory the Great,

carried the light of the gospel into Britain; where it was received with peculiar avidity by the Picts and Scots, and the old inhabitants of Erin, as well as by the Anglo-Saxons. In true Christian piety, and in such knowledge and science as the age possessed, England during this Saxon period, prior and down to the reign of Alfred, maintained nearly a pre-eminence above the other kingdoms of the West. Even that apostle of the Germans, Boniface, originally named Winfried, came from England; and among the writers of the age, Alcuin asserted the intellectual superiority of the Anglo-Saxon Christians. Limited as was the knowledge of the Western world in those ages, and narrow the circle of European science and learning, still we find in those times, but almost only in the West, writers of very original powers, and peculiar turn of mind, whose writings, composed either in a barbarous Latin, or in a half-formed Romanic vernacular tongue, are the faithful and instructive mirrors of the spirit of the times. On the other hand, the later Byzantine writers, though they possessed incomparably greater resources, and much more extensive philological acquirements, have produced nothing but learned compilations.

Now there arose in the West, Christian kings, heroes and legislators, both among the Franks and the Saxons, such as Charlemagne and Alfred, who as men were not indeed faultless, but who should be judged and appreciated

according to the character of their times; a knowledge of which is necessary for rightly understanding the spirit of these extraordinary men. In peace and in war they endeavoured firmly to establish a new model society on Christian principles and maxims; and they restored the Western in the form of a great Christian Empire, destined to defend and protect all Christian states—all the civilized nations of the European Confederacy against Barbarian invasion and internal anarchy.

If we compare these Frank and Saxon Kings and Emperors, valiant and chivalrous as they were, thirsting for glory, yet seeking and establishing peace, honouring justice, and founding or restoring laws, on one hand with those Saracen rulers and caliphs, ever burning with a rage for conquest and destruction, and on the other hand, with that Byzantine court, presenting almost always the uniform picture of corruption, and ruling over an empire pining in hopeless decay—if we contrast those flashes of genius which distinguished the writings of the Western nations, with the dead, spiritless monotony pervading all the productions of the Byzantine intellect, superior as the Greeks were to the rest of Europe in erudition, science and literary stores; we shall find in this comparison, (taking into consideration the imperfection of all human things, and actions, and persons, for even in this period of the world, errors and defects are to be found in the conduct of individuals mixed

up with the most praiseworthy qualities,) we shall find, I say, in this comparison, the best vindication and the highest eulogium of the Catholic West and its earlier history. The misrepresentation of that history formerly so frequently made by the passion, the exaggerations, and the prejudices of party, has still an injurious influence, but is with us no longer in season; for the moment has arrived, when fixed in the right centre, we must now begin to take a more complete and comprehensive survey of the primitive world, and classical antiquity, next of the history of the middle age, and of modern times, down to the present day, and to that approaching futurity still in the crisis of its formation; and when we must judge them with more correctness in all their details, and understand them better by examining their relative position in the great plan of history, and estimate them all by the standard given to us by God, which is the only true one. Then we shall judge these particulars without predilection, and without aversion, “sine odio et sine dilectione,” which is somewhat more than that excellent and greatest of all ancient historians, who gave utterance to this saying, really accomplished, or was indeed in his time and with his principles capable of accomplishing. For it is only the knowledge and complete comprehension of the great scheme of history, which can enable us to rise above the particular transactions of our own, or of a foreign nation, of the present times or of past ages; and

it is this knowledge which can alone clearly and safely determine the feeling with which we should regard particular historical facts. But for that end, the ancient historian, as well as all antiquity, wanted the clue which Christianity alone has given us, to the internal connexion of the world’s history, and which they who seek for it elsewhere but in this religion, will certainly seek in vain.

In this period of anarchy, and during the sway of the Lombards, the circumstances of the times gave to the Popes a paramount authority in the internal administration of the city and district of Rome; as well as a general political influence over all Italy;—an influence which was for the most part very salutary, and tended effectually to ensure the public peace and prosperity. I must here observe that this political position and power of the Popes, so naturally adapted to the circumstances of the times, and to the general situation of the Western world, was first put in a clear and correct point of view by writers not belonging to the Catholic church. For the political historians on the Catholic side have, in almost every country, retained too lively a recollection of the warm disputes as to the respective limits and rights of the ecclesiastical and secular power, not to be swayed by such feelings in their conception and accounts of an age long gone by; and this has certainly weakened the impartiality becoming the tribunal of history.

After the subversion of the Ostro-Goth dominion in Italy, the disgrace or even dissatisfaction of the Byzantine General, Narses, provoked the incursion of the Lombards into Italy. This people were not so exclusively devoted to the Arian party, as a portion of them, and several among their kings, professed the Catholic religion; but they were far from possessing the mild, generous character of the Goths, and their sway often proved oppressive in Italy. Yet every thing appeared more desirable and more tolerable in the opinion of many otherwise unprejudiced historians, than the impending danger of Byzantine rule. When in the middle of the seventh century, the Greek Emperor Constans II. waged war in Italy against the Lombards, and in the course of the war conquered Rome, the plunder, especially of the treasures of ancient art, was so immense, that compared with these Greek devastations, all the earlier and destructive ravages of the Goths appeared to be nothing. The ships which were conveying to Constantinople all these plundered treasures of art, fell into the hands of the Arabs, and were destroyed, so that it was never known what became of their valuable freight. So true it is, that Rome perished solely and entirely by her own hand, by internal discord, and the weight of her own corruption, and not by the hands of Germans or of Goths.

When at the commencement of the eighth century, the dominion of the rude Lombards

became oppressive, and the Greek sway under the Iconoclast Leo was still more detested, and all the cities and provinces of Italy had revolted against it; Pope Gregory II. without any previous concert, and by unanimous consent, was placed at the head of the Italian league, and declared its chief; but he warned his countrymen against the dangers of precipitation, exhorted them to the maintenance of peace, and ever cherished the hope of obtaining a friendly reconciliation with the Byzantine Emperor. The rigid prohibition of the religious use of images was proper in those cases only, where the use of them was not confined to a mere devotional respect, but was likely to degenerate into a real adoration and idolatry, and where a strict separation from Pagan nations and their rites was a matter of primary importance, as was the case in the Jewish dispensation of old. But now that the Mahomedan proscription, and scornful rejection of all holy emblems and images of devotion, arose from a decidedly anti-christian spirit, that displayed itself either in open violence or secret machination against the Christian religion; this Byzantine attack on images, and this furious war against all symbols of piety, which in its ulterior consequences might and must have proceeded to much greater lengths, can be regarded only as a mad contagion of the moral disease of the age. This disorder and phrenzy indeed subsided; and the Greeks of the Byzantine Empire in their religious

rites, as well as dogmas, have remained Christians, and faithful to the old Christian traditions. Yet this controversy on the use of images, and the animosites and jealousies which it enkindled between the Christians of the East and West, did not a little contribute to that perfectly groundless, irrational, and unhappy schism which has severed the Greeks from the universal church.

The protracted contest between the kings of Lombardy and the Greek Exarchs of Ravenna, (during whose disputes the Popes felt the calling and inclination, but had not the power, to exercise the high functions of Protectors to oppressed Italy,) naturally provoked the arbitration of the Franks, led to the establishment of their Protectorate over Italy, and was thus the first occasion of the restoration of the Western Empire, and of the foundation of the great Christian imperial monarchy. The sublime idea of such an empire sprang solely and entirely out of circumstances and events, as they arose, and had not by any individual been fully anticipated, much less clearly understood. Hence we cannot attribute to any persons the blame or entire merit of events that really took place of themselves, by the mere force of circumstances, the spirit of the times, and the happy impulse of a lofty inspiration. Nor can we at this remote distance of time, and under circumstances so totally dissimilar, institute a formal discussion (in the manner of the Jurists) on the lawfulness or unlawfulness

of any particular measure in this great series of public acts. No country besides was oppressed by so many and such contending rulers, as that Italy which had once bowed all nations beneath her yoke. Sicily, which had been conquered by the Arabs, laboured under the most cruel oppression; and it was the tyrannical conduct of the Greek governors that had paved the way for the conquest of that island. In the third century, the Franks had already migrated into Gaul; their rulers were from the origin of their empire most devoted to Christianity; and had besides in their conduct towards kindred or neighbouring nations, evinced a more judicious, prudent, and systematic policy, than had been shewn by any other Germanic or Gothic tribe, in the invasion and subsequent government of the Roman provinces. This nation, which from its origin had ever been warmly attached to the Catholic church, which had subdued the Visi-Goth kingdom in Gaul, had become masters of the Burgundian provinces, while it perpetually strove to extend and consolidate its dominion in the interior of Germany; was now, after its splendid victory over the Saracens, and the general protection which this victory had ensured to all Christendom, called into Italy, less by the Pope and the Romans, than by the state of affairs, and the urgency of times and circumstances, there to terminate anarchy, and re-establish the ancient order of things, or one better adapted to the exigencies

of the age. The Empire of the Franks was henceforward the most powerful state in the West, and was indeed the great centre of the civilized world; as afterwards became, though on a higher and more extended scale, the great Christian Empire of the middle age in Germany and in Italy. Here we find that high clue in human history to which we should ever adhere—on one side, the luminous trace of the more immediate providence of God—and on the other, the gradual unfolding of the human mind, evinced in science as in language, in feelings as in modes of thinking—an intellectual developement, which though often concealed, and, as it were, buried beneath the agitated surface of external events, forms (together with the conduct of divine providence,) the real and essential matter and purport in the history and progress of human communities. In this respect, if we regard either of the then two great rival powers in the East, we shall find that neither the dead monotony of the Byzantine Empire, sinking ever lower in the scale of moral, political and intellectual degradation, nor the more hasty growth and the internal distraction of the Saracenic Empire, (presenting, as it does, in its long series of political catastrophes, military revolutions, and frequent changes of dynasty, the same tedious uniformity of despotism,) will furnish much matter of interest or of moment to the philosophic historian. It is in this period of the world, the gradual organization of the Christian state, as

in a later age, the developement of Christian science, which chiefly commands our regard, naturally so curious after all that relates to the concerns and destinies of mankind, and fixes our attention exclusively, or more particularly, on that European West, where all now displayed a fuller life, and a more constant movement and activity.

The territorial partitions, and the various feuds and dissensions which occurred between the Frank kings, possess but little, or at best a subordinate interest, amid the great events of the times—it is the leading idea of the age, the progressive march of society at this period, which offers matter of instruction to the historian. Many faults and errors, however, stained the first execution of this grand plan of a Christian Empire;—such for instance, were those wars which Charlemagne waged against the Saxons, as well as similar wars under his predecessors in the preceding age; for the propagation of the Christian religion by such means of coercion, can scarcely ever be excused, and in no case entirely justified. The best excuse is perhaps in the fact, that all wars between tribes nearly allied, are like family disputes, usually conducted with greater stubbornness and animosity. However, in the year 784, Charlemagne concluded with the Saxons a peace which was very advantageous to the latter; and the extremely prosperous and flourishing condition of the empire, and even of the countries in the North of Germany, under Henry the first

king of the Saxon race, proves at least that the evil was confined within very narrow limits, and had not been productive of such wide-spread and protracted desolation.

In the transition from the Carlovingian, to the Capetian dynasty, we should not forget that the monarchy was not strictly hereditary in any German state, but was for the most part merely elective; and it was only he, who had proved himself a valiant, prudent, and powerful defender of his nation, that became the man of the public choice. Royalty was then considered more in the light of an office, a charge, a peculiar calling, than of an inheritance or patrimony. The general idea of the Christian Empire, was a universal protectorate over all Christian nations and countries—a mighty central dominion founded on justice, while the great connecting and pervading power of the whole system was supposed to reside in the perfect unity of religious principles. When this religious unity was destroyed, the whole political edifice fell to pieces; and in the struggles of later times, the artificial relations founded on a mere mechanical balance of power, on a republican equality of states, without the foundation of Christian or any other solid principles, have furnished, as experience has shewn, but a very bad substitute for that old Christian brotherhood of the European states and nations; and have in the general subversion of Christian morality, produced a sort of polite disorder and refined anarchy.

In the partition of the Carlovingian Empire—a partition which was only in accordance with those principles of descent which regulated the inheritance of the great families—we can trace an almost heroic, and if we might use the expression, a naïve patriarchal confidence in the duration of that religious unity; for it was only on such a basis that men deemed it possible to combine the advantage of the domestic, internal government of a country limited in extent, with the controul of one general superintending monarchy. When a man of such consummate prudence, such long foresight, and powerful understanding as Charlemagne deemed such a scheme not impracticable, and thought it possible to maintain the political unity of his empire, under the joint dominion of his sons, and by their subordination to their eldest brother; we should learn not to judge the plan with too much precipitation, and according to the notions of our times, and our present systems of policy. This first partition which Charlemagne had designed, was prevented by the hand of death. The entire division of the whole Carlovingian Empire into three distinct portions, was first effected by Lewis the Pious; but the perpetual family dissensions which occurred under his successors, the weakness or violence of their characters, and the various factions which arose, rendered totally impossible the maintenance of that union, which was originally sought to be perpetuated in the empire, and led

to the final dismemberment and total dissolution of the old Empire of the Franks, when another dynasty succeeded to the imperial crown.

In the primitive monarchy of the Germans, however, the existence of the four great national dutchies, which were subordinate to the imperial crown, far more happily accomplished this union of a local, domestic, and paternal government with the controul of one powerful and superintending monarchy; so long at least as internal union subsisted, and discord had not obtained the supremacy. There then existed, though mostly in a different form than afterwards, a division of powers in the state as well as in the church; but unity in this division, or with this division, was sought for only in Christian and National sentiments; and as long as these subsisted in their integrity, the body politic remained unimpaired. At no time has a political constitution or mode of government been devised, which could permanently supply the place of principle.

In the national meetings of the great and smaller states of that age, in their assembled councils of dukes and princes, bishops, counts and lords, nobles and freemen (to whom were added the Commons of the cities, when by their rights and privileges they began to obtain importance), we must look for the first germ of all the succeeding parliaments and states-general of the European nations, and of the rights of the different orders of society, and the privileges and

corporate immunities of the cities. All these rights and liberties were purely local—they grew up on the root of national customs—they were founded on no speculative theory of universal equality, but on positive usage, and special laws. The union and stability of an empire was then sought for not in the balance of artificial forms, but in the holy heritage of ancient customs, in principle in short.

On this basis, first of Christian, then of national sentiments, do all Christian states repose; and when this foundation is destroyed, those states are undone. Ecclesiastical power had then a real and substantial weight, and a very extended circle of operation; although its limits and relations with secular authority were not so rigidly circumscribed as afterwards. To be sensible that this division of power will not necessarily impair the unity of strength and spirit in the social frame, as long as principle remains pure, and religious concord is preserved; we need only call to our recollection the fact, that all Christian states and kingdoms have sprung from this happy agreement between secular and ecclesiastical authority, and that this union was the sure foundation of their stability. And so long as both powers remained in harmonious accord, the times were prosperous, peace and justice ever increased, and the condition of nations was flourishing and happy. Christianity, says a great historian, who manifests a greater predilection for antiquity,

and even for the oriental world, but whose comprehensive intellect often rightly appreciates the benign influence of this religion, which with us must have the priority; Christianity was the electric spark which first roused the warlike nations of the North, rendered them susceptible of a higher civilization, stamped the peculiar character, and founded the political institutions of modern nations, which have sprung out of such heterogeneous elements. And we may add, Christianity was the connecting power which linked together the great community of European nations, not only in the moral and political relations of life, but in science and modes of thinking. The church was like the all-embracing vault of heaven, beneath whose kindly shelter, those warlike nations began to settle in peace, and gradually to frame their laws and institutions. Even the office of instruction, the heritage of ancient knowledge, the promotion of science, and of all that tended to advance the progress of the human mind, devolved to the care of the church, and were exclusively confined to the Christian schools. If science was then of a very limited range, it was still quite proportioned to the exigencies and intellectual cultivation of the age; for mankind cannot transcend all the degrees of civilization by a single bound, but must mount slowly and in succession its various grades; and at any rate, science was not at that time unprofitably buried in libraries and in the closets of the learned, as

was afterwards the case in Europe, and even partly then among the Byzantines. The little knowledge which was then possessed, was by the more active spirit, and the sound understanding and practical sense of the European nations, and their better priesthood, applied with general advantage to the interests of society. Science was not then, as in the later period of its proud ascendancy, in open hostility with the pure dictates of faith and the institutions of life. On that world so variously excited in peace, as in war, and by the different pursuits of art and industry, useful knowledge and wholesome speculation descended, not like a violent flood, but like the soft distillations of the refreshing dew, or the gentle drops of fertilizing rain, from the Heaven of faith which overarched the whole.

[5] It may not perhaps be uninteresting to the reader to compare with Schlegel’s account of Mohammedanism, an admirable, though briefer sketch of the same religion by the hand of another great master—the illustrious Goerres. In the Synopsis which he has published of the Lectures on Universal History, that he has been for several years delivering at Munich, we find the following remarkable passage on the Mohammedan religion. The author after speaking of the various trials which the Christian church had to endure, says “Hence the young church must wrestle with all the forms of error in the Gnostic doctrines and in the other heresies; one after the other she remains the triumphant conqueress over all, and maintains against every attack her well-balanced equilibrium. At length, when the contest has raged for centuries, the enemy combines in one focus all the scattered rays of error; and the Prophet of Mecca knows how to balance himself therein. The rigid Monotheism of his doctrine, which by denying the Trinity, and with it all personal manifestation of the Deity, limits its idea to the depths of Eternity, without admitting any true or living communication of the God-head with what appertains to time, naturally allures the metaphysical pride which in this abstraction hath made itself its own God. The ethical Pantheism which this religion professes, while it furnishes a pretext, a motive and a palliation to all the pretensions of the mighty, to the ambition of usurpers, the violence of pride, and the arrogance of tyranny, and at the same time consoles and disarms the injured and the oppressed, by the inevitableness of destiny, must draw to its preacher the men of the sword, of violence, and of blood, and link those once bound indissolubly to him. The sensual Eudaimonism, to which his creed opens so free a scope both in this world and the next, must rally round the apostle of lust, the multitude that burns with all the passionate glow of that fervid zone, and place under his controul all the wild fiery energies of that region. And thus do the cold doctrine, the cutting steel, and the destroying flame go before him as his missionaries; and the South and the East, and soon even a part of the European West, are bowed under the yoke of his religion: and while in the Caliphate he founds for it a new spiritual and secular empire, the modern world between Christianity and Mohammedanism becomes divided into night and day.”—Goerres Uber die Grundlage der Weltgeschicte, page 99-100. Breslaw, 1830.—Trans.

END OF LECTURE XII.

LECTURE XIII.

On the formation and consolidation of the Christian Government in modern times.—On the principle which led to the establishment of the old German Empire.

The first three centuries of the Christian era and of modern history compose the epoch when, by a second fiat of creation, the light of Christianity spread through the whole Roman world, and when after undergoing long persecutions, the religion of Christ under Constantine came victorious out of the struggle. The second epoch or the succeeding five centuries comprehend that chaotic and intermediate state in the history of mankind, or the transition from declining antiquity to modern times, growing out of the ruins of the ancient world—the fermenting mixture of many and various elements of social life. But when at last the tempest had disburthened itself of its fury, the clouds had broken asunder, and the pure firmament of Christian

faith had stretched out its ample vault to shelter the rise of new communities; when the wild waters of that mighty inundation of nations had begun gradually to flow off; then the Germanic tribes incorporated with the Romanic nations, laid the deep firm soil on which modern European society was to spring up and flourish. For it was Charlemagne who laid the sure foundation for Christian government, and all the improvements of its subsequent superstructure. On this basis of Christian government, and Christian manners, and under the cover and vivifying influence of the luminous firmament of Christian faith, sprang human science out of the small fragments of ancient art and learning, which had survived all these mighty devastations, till at last it expanded into a fuller bloom, and grew into a more heavenly and Christian form. This new progress of social man under the Christian form of government, and this progress of the human mind in Christian science, mark the third epoch of modern history, or the seven centuries which elapsed from the reign of Charlemagne, to the discovery of the New World, and the commencement of the Reformation. It may naturally be supposed that these seven centuries which witnessed the progressive civilization of modern nations, and the vigorous growth and wide spread of Christian principles, were at the same time a period of struggle both in the state and in science, and that in each of these departments, the spirit of Christianity

was intermixed with, and most injuriously and fatally thwarted and opposed by, many unchristian elements. And indeed, to discover and discriminate between these conflicting elements, to comprehend and determine their mutual bearings one towards the other, is the fit problem for historical philosophy. The progress of the Christian state and the advancement of Christian science, form during this period the main subject of an universal history, when this is not a mere collection of special or national histories, but truly universal, in the philosophic sense of the term; treating solely of those subjects common to all mankind, or which illustrate the general march of humanity. Hence all other historical views, dictated by a predilection for one’s own country—inquiries into the political institutions of one, or several, or all existing states—a review of the circle of mercantile operations, and their gradual extension, and of the progress of the mechanical arts—and lastly, curious and erudite dissertations on literature, philology and the fine arts (however interesting, instructive, and in many respects useful, such special dissertations may be in themselves)—all these must be either entirely excluded from general history, or must at least occupy a place very subordinate to, and are deserving of notice only as far as they illustrate, what must ever constitute the main subject of the Philosophy of History. In the first ages of the world, it is often difficult to obtain satisfactory information,

and a competent degree of certainty on the subjects which are alone, or at least chiefly, worthy of attention. But in modern times, it is a far more arduous task to select out of the immense multitude and variety of facts susceptible of historical proof, those which are of a general interest for mankind, and amid the crowd of details steadily to preserve the general outline of history.

It would be a great error to refer to the Christian constitution of the state and of science, every remarkable or important incident in the history of government and of science, merely because such incidents have occurred in the middle age, or among Christian nations of later times. We must strive to form a loftier idea of the Christian model both in science and in government, so that the highest and noblest monuments in either, should from human infirmity be considered but faint approximations, I do not say, to the unattainable standard of an imaginary perfection, but to the sober reality of Christian truth. Although it is not possible rigidly to separate public life from public opinions, on account of the intimate union between both, and the mutual influence which government and science exercise over one another; yet as the state is the groundwork for the cultivation of science, and the former must precede the latter, I shall follow this historical order, and commence with the constitution of the Christian state.

As here the question is not as to the Beau Ideal of supreme perfection, or as to a precise, rigid, and scientific theory of the Christian state, (for which here at least, if not for the present age, the time may not have arrived)—but merely as to a general outline of such a theory—I shall only observe, that the Christian state must rest on the basis of religious feelings. For without feeling its relation to religion cannot be conceived—and such a mere relation, considered in itself, would lose its religious character. But the government which is founded on Christianity, is on that account limited, and is consequently in its very nature abhorrent either from absolute despotism, or the uncontrolled tyranny of popular factions. In the next place, the government founded on religion, is one in which sentiment, personal spirit, and personal character are the primary and ruling elements, and not the dead letter, and the written formula of a mere artificial constitution. In this last respect one may say, that the Christian government inclines very strongly towards monarchy; for in monarchy, it is the sacred person of the king, the character of the ruler, the spirit of his administration, confidence in his person, and attachment to the hereditary dynasty, which form the basis, the animating spirit, and vivifying principle of the social system. In a republic it is not the person, but the law which governs; nay, the written word of the law is there of the utmost importance; and thus the dead letter of

the constitution is in a republic almost as sacred, as in a monarchy the person called and consecrated to the functions of government by divine right. But more than this we should not say—namely, that the Christian government, founded as it is on personality and on sentiment, inclines on the whole strongly towards the monarchical form—a leaning which is by no means incompatible with many Republican usages and Republican Institutions of a subordinate kind. Still less should we exaggerate this idea so far, as to maintain that the Christian government is entirely and necessarily monarchical, even in its outward form; and that a Republic is objectionable at all times and under all circumstances without distinction. Such absolutism in the doctrines of public law, and in the theory of government, is very remote from true Christian principles. The unhistorical government of mere Reason—the destructive principle of revolution—is indeed totally incompatible with Christianity; principally because the Christian religion tolerates and recognizes all legal institutions, such as they are, without enquiring into their origin; (as the gospel not only left inviolate, but even respected the legality of the Roman dominion in the conquered and incorporated countries;) and also because the Christian notion of right, like the Christian system of government, is by no means absolute, but is ever qualified by circumstances. A Republican government, which is founded not so much on the

abstract or rationalist principle of absolute freedom and equality, but on ancient customs and hereditary rights, on freedom of sentiment and generosity of character, consequently on personality, is by no means essentially opposed to the true spirit of monarchy; still less is it inconsistent with the Christian theory of government. But a despotism, illegitimate not perhaps in its origin, but in its abuse of power, strikes at the first principles of the Christian state, whose mild, temperate, and historical character is as abhorrent from absolutism, as from the opposite principle of unqualified freedom and universal equality—the revolutionary principle, which involves the overthrow of all existing rights.

As in the Christian’s estimation, the worth and excellence of an individual is not to be judged by his outward appearance or by the observance of certain forms, but by the sincerity of his inward sentiments; so the same observation will apply to states. It is the spirit and purpose of an action, the nature of a deed, the personal conduct displayed in a public measure; and not any outward form, which proves or determines the good or evil tendency of any important act, which may be the subject of history. That Christian tone and spirit which belongs to the government of the illustrious, but not immaculate Charlemagne, does not proceed from the circumstance, that he, like Alfred after him, solicited the counsels and co-operation of his Bishops in framing laws for the various provinces

of his empire, (for many of these laws contained moral injunctions,) or that at Rome the Pope placed the Imperial crown upon his head. But the Christian spirit of his government is evinced by that lofty idea which filled up the whole of his active life—by his conception of the relations of church and state, and of the utility of science for the civilization of nations—by his project of an universal empire destined to embrace and protect all civilized nations—the noble fabric of modern Christendom, of which he laid the first foundation-stone, and which reveals his enlarged views, comprehending alike his own age and succeeding times.

But whenever we meet in history with a government which independently of outward forms, is founded on the love of divine justice—on a principle of self-devotion whereby rulers are ready to sacrifice their own interest and even their own existence in the cause of justice and of social order—these, we may be sure are the certain and indubitable marks of the realization of the Christian theory of law and government. On the other hand, wherever we perceive despotism or violence, or what we feel to be absolute wrong, though they be veiled under the sanction of spiritual or temporal power, then we may be sure the whole enterprise is unchristian, as the principle is unchristian. Of all the different forms of this political disease, of the manifold kinds of tyranny, whether ecclesiastical or secular, military or commercial,

domestic or municipal, academic or aristocratic, the despotism of popular licentiousness is the most reprehensible in principle, and the most destructive in its effects.

With the usages and institutions of the Germanic nations, this peculiar temper of the Christian religion perfectly harmonized; incomparably better at least, than with the arbitrary government of the Roman state, which even after the conversion of Constantine, still retained in all essential points a Pagan character. In the old German states, the system of hereditary monarchy mostly prevailed;—but it was quite alien from absolutism, and was intermixed with many Republican institutions, laws, and customs. The whole system of those governments was founded on the historical basis of ancient usages—on the pure, free and generous sentiment of honour—on personal glory and personal character and talents. As soon as this natural moral energy of the Germanic nations had received a religious consecration from Christianity, and those energetic, heroic souls had imbibed with fervour, simplicity, and humility, the maxims of the religion of love; all the elements of a truly Christian government, and Christian system of policy were then offered to mankind. The political history of those ancient times has been mostly represented in a too systematic point of view, for the purpose of favouring some particular object, or interest, or some favourite opinion of modern times; since

historians employ all their ingenuity in tracing step by step, and disclosing to our view the first rise and gradual growth of any particular form of government, or principle of right—such as the establishment of royalty on the one hand, and that of the constitution of the three orders on the other. But they remain quite unconcerned about every more exalted principle in society. To judge and appreciate not according to the standard of our own or any other age, but according to the dictates of eternal truth, the manners, the modes of thinking, the tone of society, the spirit and views which animated men, whatever was good or evil, christian or anti-christian in their sentiments, is with these writers a matter of the utmost indifference. If there is any exception from the truth of this remark, it is when they meet with some singular trait of manners or character—some historical paradox calculated to stimulate interest, and which they then never fail to sever from its general connexion with the age, to tear up from its natural roots, and exhibit to the curiosity of the beholder. And yet in such individual traits of character in the middle age, though they be at first remarked only from their singularity, and be not even fully understood, more traces of historical life and truth are to be found, than in those systematic representations of history, drawn up with some specific political view, and which aim at an elaborate dissection and violent disrupture of institutions, which in those

early times, were inseparably united in the life of Christian nations. If the best and most praiseworthy measures adopted in that first period of Christian polity, for the settlement and further improvement of the Christian state, and for the establishment and application of christian maxims and principles of government, were nothing more but a generous effort, a good intention, a rude design—a feeble, imperfect approximation towards a divine term—yet we must consider them as peculiar historical phenomena, leave them in their individual bearings, and not prematurely force them into any systematic connexion, or attach them to any fixed or formal principle of right; for in the Christian government, feeling and personality are the most essential things.

If I could overstep the narrow limits of this work, confined as it is to a rapid sketch of the main and essential facts in the historical progress of mankind, I should prefer to draw a portrait of the mode of government and prevalent opinions of that age, out of the many characteristic traits in the lives of its distinguished rulers, its great and virtuous kings and emperors, knights and heroes:—such as that Charlemagne, who would rightly open the series, that pious King Alfred, who in a far more contracted sphere, was equally great, those first Saxon Kings and Emperors of Germany—princes distinguished for their religious and virtuous sentiments, their great and upright character, and

whose reigns exhibiting as they do, the paramount influence of religion on public life, constitute the happiest era, and the truly golden period of our annals. The peculiar nature and constitution, the internal spirit and essence of the Christian state, would be much more clearly and vividly represented by the examples of these great characters, who to the pure will of their energetic, heroic souls, united a practical knowledge of life, and a natural insight into the principles of Christian policy. Such a course I would prefer to entangling myself in the usual disputes about the respective relations of the spiritual and temporal powers, and all the contentious points involved in that matter; or to entering upon any dissertation respecting the decisive era in the developement of royalty and its rights, or in the progress of the constitution of the three estates, and of various municipal corporations; however useful and instructive such enquiries may be in the special history of particular countries. And even in the latter respect, those glorious names form a mighty epoch; and in the history of almost all the great European countries, we meet with some holy and magnanimous monarch, who laid the solid foundations of his country’s constitution, or introduced a higher civility and refinement in life and manners. Such were in Hungary the holy King Stephen, and in France, the great St. Lewis, who in more unquiet times restored a better spirit, and for a while retarded the progress of corruption. There were also

other kings, heroes and emperors, like Rodolph of Hapsburgh, who without being honoured with the title of saints, were truly pious, chivalric and equitable monarchs, and may be esteemed and revered as the Christian regenerators of their age, and the founders of a true and religious system of government and manners. A lively sketch of such men and rulers, who acted and governed well and greatly according to Christian principles and views, would, I think, furnish a far more complete idea of the true nature of the Christian state in this its first period of developement, than any laboured or artificial definition. There are along with these individual characters, individual and transient periods of prosperity, which break out for one generation or more in the history of those early times; periods which can only be considered as historical exceptions from the general order of things. Even those more comprehensive, and so far more general political institutions, evidently peculiar to those Christian ages, and nowhere else to be found—like the truce of God, which repressed within certain limits the hereditary spirit of feud—or the spiritual chivalry in the orders of the Templars and of the Knights of St. John, consecrated to warfare in the cause of God, and opening as they did, in the time of the crusades, to the same spirit of chivalrous feud a higher path and a more noble career—all these political institutions, I say, springing out of the nature and exigencies of their age,

can be understood only by a reference to the circumstances and prevailing spirit of the times, and must therefore be judged as historical peculiarities. As they often sprang up suddenly without a visible or apparent cause, and as if by some high mysterious impulse, so they often sank again as rapidly; and the pure spirit—the true import of such institutions appeared but for a moment, like a silvery gleam; then they degenerated, or were transformed into something totally different. And we must not be astonished at this, since what is best and noblest in man—feeling and its divine quality, is most easily and rapidly impaired, and may sometimes indeed preserve an external vigour, when it has undergone an internal change, and assumed a direction opposed to God and all goodness. There were also particular rulers possessed of an energetic will and a comprehensive understanding, who exercised a wide and commanding, but pernicious influence on their age, and the world; and among these, the most noted were Barbarossa and that secret friend of the Saracens, the emperor Frederick the Second; princes who with some others, must be regarded as the first authors of the great dissension. After this dissension had broken out in the fearful struggle of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, and Christendom was divided into two parties; discord became general, pursued its resistless course, and acting in those distracted times like some new destroying law

of nature, absorbed all personality and its influence in the general abyss of error, or made it at least less conspicuous.

I will now endeavour to give a short sketch of the general progress of European society in this its first period of developement, and to point out the then peculiar nature and constitution of the Christian state;—from that epoch when Charlemagne laid the first solid foundation for a permanent system of christian government and christian manners, down to the moment when an anti-christian spirit of discord broke out with incurable violence, and became universally predominant. I will at the same time endeavour to take an historical survey of the whole Christian West, as it has remained the theatre of the subsequent progress of society, and of the great transactions of the world down to our times.

In the blame so commonly lavished, (and not unreasonably, when we consider the historical consequences,) on the customary divisions in the Frankish or Carlovingian Empire, and the other German states, men forget that according to the old Germanic idea, a kingdom was nothing more than any other great family estate, or princely inheritance, and governed, like these, by the same law of descent. This was so from the earliest times among both the principal races of the Germans. In this manner we find the nation of the Goths divided into two kingdoms; and as the Saxons were with difficulty

united under one head in their own ancestral country on the Northern coast of Germany; so in the England which they had conquered and newly peopled, we find seven principalities or petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxons co-existent with one another; and these were only by accident reduced to a less number, and but for a time blended into one sovereignty. We often ascribe to the men, and to the spirit of those times, pretensions quite inappropriate, inapplicable, and perfectly modern. So possessed are we with the notion of our times as to the natural and eternal boundaries of this or that country, of the predestination of a people to political unity, or of the necessary national unity of every state—notions or prejudices which are held as so many mathematical axioms, in which we make the highest idea of policy to consist, to which we ascribe an inviolable sanctity, and which in our reverence, and in some cases, we might almost say—idolatry, we exalt above every thing else, and would make every thing else subservient to. To the simplicity of those ancient times, the excellence and advantages of a mild, domestic, paternal, national sovereignty for the more convenient administration of smaller states, appeared great, and superior to every other consideration. Thus those who had to decide of themselves, and without the imperious call of duty—without the feeling of a strong necessity for undertaking, even at the sacrifice of a part at least of their own national

welfare, the heavy burden of the imperial office, in that Christian empire evidently established by divine Providence for the protection of the church, and all the nations belonging to it;—without this strong feeling of duty, I say, they never would have deviated from the good old simple usage of dividing the royal patrimony. The more so indeed as the glory they sought was rather of a chivalrous kind, consequently purely personal; and that favourite idol of modern times—national vanity, was perfectly unknown to them. Their institution, certainly, would not be adapted to our times; nor was it even suited to those immediately succeeding; but an age to be judged aright and duly appreciated, must be estimated by its own standard, and the opinions proper to it. That even a division of sovereignty and partition of kingdoms is not incompatible with the external union of the body politic for one general design, so long as the potentates are animated by a Christian and brotherly feeling, and a spirit of union as to this one object—the all-uniting bond of confederacy; is a truth which may be proved by many pleasing and glorious examples from the history of the earlier middle age, and from that of Germany especially. If on the one hand we would lay it down as a general historical law, and axiom of state, that separated or divided kingdoms and countries can never combine for one common object, nor remain permanently united in feeling nor Christian equity—so

on the other hand, we must remember that the division of nations according to certain natural boundaries, which we would fain regard as the only perfect and absolutely right one, is like the quadrature of the circle, a problem eluding all calculation, and remaining for ever insoluble, since each one, according to his peculiar political position, or national prejudices, views those eternal boundaries in a different light, and determines them differently. Thus in order to put an end to all discord and to the injurious system of partition, nothing would remain but the vulgar resource of an universal monarchy and military dominion—a resource which as often as it has been tried, has been as little justified or recommended by its historical results, as that custom of partition which prevailed in the German ancestral kingdoms of the earlier middle age.

The dangers of a bitter family feud, or of the mutual jealousies of the heirs to the several kingdoms as to their respective portions, when these grew to any considerable extent, were early enough perceived. It is to be observed that in the first division of the great Carlovingian empire into three parts, designed by Charlemagne himself, but accomplished only under his feebler successor; the inheritance assigned to the eldest and imperial brother—Lothaire, was together with Rome and Italy, the Rhenish district situate between France on the one side, and the interior of Germany on the other, and

extending from Switzerland to the sea—a district where the Romans had planted many and most flourishing colonies, and which for many ages back had been far superior in civilization and refinement to the countries on either side. With the same prospective care, Charlemagne had already fixed his residence at Aix-la-Chapelle, preferring the Rhenish province as the then true seat of civilization. But in the family quarrel and dissensions which ensued, this measure of Charlemagne as far as it was intended, had no other permanent effect than to cause amid the partitions of countries and changes of dynasty, the continuance down to very modern times, of Lorraine as an independent kingdom or dutchy. The Rhenish district long preserved its pre-eminence in refinement above the rest of Germany; and with some external changes, was long the seat of empire.

In that dark old world of the North, on which Christianity was just beginning to dawn, no monarch after Charlemagne, shone so conspicuously as the virtuous Alfred, King of the West Saxons in England. And the same remark is applicable not only to him, but to England in general, which during this first Christian period of modern history, far outshone all other countries in literature and science, as well as in religion, piety, and virtue. The great Pope, St. Gregory, as I have already mentioned, laid the foundations of Christianity and intellectual refinement in England, whither he

sent forty Missionaries; and so active was their zeal and efficacious their influence, that in the succeeding age, this first school of Christianity in England sent forth to other countries the most eminent men of their time. Such were the German apostle and bishop, St. Boniface, and Alcuin, the learned friend and confidant of Charlemagne. Besides many Latin writers produced by this yet flourishing English school, the great Christian Philosopher Scotus Erigena, lived in England in the time of Alfred; and though this philosopher was perhaps not quite free from speculative error, he was far superior to his own age, and in the depth and originality of his conceptions, was not equalled, and certainly not surpassed for many succeeding centuries. King Alfred, who though a bard and a writer in his own native speech, prized equally the Latin literature, and who defended his country against the Danes with the most perseverant valour, was the first founder of the English constitution; for with the wisdom and pacific spirit of a lawgiver, he restored the old Saxon rights and privileges, and the regulations relating to the cities and the different orders of the state. It was his virtuous courage, which in the most trying adversity, ever remained cool and collected, that alone rescued the isle of freedom from the fierce, impetuous power of the Danes.

The successful naval expeditions of the Normans to all the coasts of Europe, as far as Sicily and even beyond it, and the incursion of

the Magiars into Europe, where they received the name of Hungarians, form in the ninth century the close, and are, as it were, the last reverberation, of the great immigration of the Northern nations, and must on that account not be entirely passed over in silence. This last maritime migration from the North began with a powerful and enterprizing ruler of Norway, the fair-haired Harold; and these naval expeditions which were undertaken, not merely from motives of vulgar piracy, or of martial adventure, but for the foundation and permanent settlement of new states, soon scoured all the coasts and regions of the Northern ocean, as well as of the Mediterranean sea. The province in France which these freebooters conquered, the French acknowledged by the title of duchy of Normandy; and they were glad enough thus to bind it to their king by the homage of fealty, and to attach it to, if not to incorporate it with, their kingdom. Called to Naples and Sicily by the Greeks, who demanded their aid against the Saracens, the Normans there founded for themselves a kingdom of long duration. After Christianity had introduced into Denmark a better system of government and legislation, the powerful Danish monarch, Canute the Great, ruled over England during this period of the Norman sway; till at last, after a short interval of contest, another Norman, William the Conqueror, issuing from France, founded a new dynasty in England, and established on the basis of the old free

Saxon constitution, a high chivalrous aristocracy.

From the remotest part of Eastern Asia, situate between the Uzi and the Patzinacites, an emigration of nations took a Westward course towards the country of the Chazars, and at last led the nation of the Magiars from their original seat to Pannonia, where, according to the testimony of contemporary writers, the Avars, the descendants of the ancient Huns, still lived under their Chagan. Once excited into tumultuous activity, these Hungarians (who were still Pagans) roved as far as the North of Italy, and down to Thessalonica in Greece, and to the very neighbourhood of Constantinople; they then advanced westward in large squadrons far into the interior of Germany, even to Saxony. It was here that the noble King Henry the First, opposed a vigorous resistance to their incursions, and Otho the Great put a final term to the progress of their arms by the victory on the banks of the Lech. Christianity, which was introduced into Hungary under Geisa, the father of King Stephen, established a milder system of manners and of legislation; a system which St. Stephen by a close union with Germany, brought to full maturity. At the same period, Poland under the happy influence of the Christian religion, which introduced here a better system of manners and legislation, was incorporated into the civilized community of the European nations, and with Germany in particular, formed

a very close political connexion. It is particularly pleasing to observe the very beneficial influence of Christianity in the promotion of agriculture, and in the advancement of intellectual refinement in the Northern vallies of Sweden, during the reigns of Olaus and St. Eric; when the old Hall of Odin at Upsal was finally destroyed, and the new religion obtained the victory.

During the period of the Norman glory, the Russians (a populous and widely spread Sclavonian nation, inhabiting the vast and ancient Sarmatia, formerly governed by the Goths) called to their assistance the Varangians, who established a new dynasty at Novogorod. Either from this circumstance, or from the former dominion of the Goths, the country was by the neighbouring Finnish tribes afterwards called Gothland. Russia received Christianity at the hands of the Byzantines—and thus in its remote North, remained a stranger to the Catholic West—the more so, indeed, as the country, invaded and desolated by the Moguls, long groaned under the oppressive yoke of these barbarians—till at length, in very recent times, and in the very struggle of regeneration, it has grown up into a mighty power. Thus the whole circuit of the Christian West, and all the kingdoms it included, was now tolerably well filled up; and it then consisted of ten principal countries or nations; but in forming this estimate we must not attend to minuter subdivisions or mere national

varieties, or to the frequent partitions of kingdoms, and alterations of territory, amid various conflicting or successive dynasties; but we should keep in view only the general and permanent outline of the European states. Germany and Italy, which were respectively the seats of the Christian empire and the Papal dignity, formed the centre of Europe. Along with these two states, France and England were the most active, the most powerful, and the most influential members of the European commonwealth; while Spain was principally occupied with her own domestic contests against the Saracens. The Scandinavian countries were somewhat connected with the Germanic Empire, and Poland and Hungary, after they had embraced Christianity, were united with that empire in the closest bonds. Lastly, in the far Northern and Eastern extremities of Europe, the Byzantine Empire and the kingdom of the Muscovites, (closely connected by the ties of religion,) formed the extreme and remotest members of the Christian Republic. Such was the geographical extent, and such the historical situation of Christendom at that period.

After the downfal of the Carlovingian family, the empire was restored to its pristine vigour by the election of the noble Conrad, Duke of the Franconians. This pious, chivalrous, wise and valiant monarch had to contend with many difficulties, and fortune did not always smile upon his efforts. But he terminated his royal

career with a deed, which alone exalts him far above other celebrated conquerors and rulers, and was attended with more important consequences to after-times, than have resulted from many brilliant reigns; and this single deed, which forms the brightest jewel in the crown of glory that adorns those ages, so clearly reveals the true nature of Christian principles of government, and the Christian idea of political power, that I may be permitted to notice it briefly. When he felt his end approaching, and perceived that of the four principal German nations, the Saxons alone by their superior power, were capable of bringing to a successful issue the mighty struggle in which all Europe was at that critical period involved, he bade his brother carry to Henry Duke of Saxony, hitherto the rival of his house, and who was as magnanimous as fortunate, the holy lance and consecrated sword of the ancient kings, with all the other imperial insignia. He thus pointed him out as the successor of his own choice, and in his regard for the general weal, and in his anxiety to maintain a great pacific power capable of defending the common interests of Christendom, he disregarded the suggestions of national vanity, and sacrificed even the glory of his own house. So wise and judicious, as well as heroic a sacrifice of all selfish glory, for what the interests of society, and the necessities of the times evidently demand, is that principle which forms the very foundation, and constitutes the true

spirit of all Christian government. And by this very deed Conrad became after Charlemagne, the second restorer of the Western Empire, and the real founder of the German nation; for it was this noble resolve of his great soul which alone saved the Germanic body from a complete dismemberment. The event fully justified his choice. The new King Henry, victorious on every side, laboured to build a great number of cities, to restore the reign of peace and justice, and to maintain the purity of Christian manners and Christian institutions; and prepared for his mightier son, the great Otho, the Restoration of the Christian Empire in Italy, whither the latter was loudly and unanimously called. This first age of the Saxon Emperors was the happy period wherein Germany possessed the greatest power and resources, and enjoyed great internal peace and prosperity. It is in this period, too, that we trace the first beginnings of mental refinement, in many excellent and remarkable productions of the Latin school, which were soon succeeded by the successful cultivation of the vernacular tongue. Quite as unhistorical, and even still more absurd than the reproaches urged against the Carlovingians for their impolitic partition of the Empire, are those repeated lamentations and eternal regrets in which modern historians indulge, whenever they have occasion to notice the frequent expeditions of the German Kings and Emperors to Rome and Italy, and the connection

which subsisted between the German nation and the Christian Imperial Dignity—a connection which these writers consider a great misfortune. They do not enter into the true idea of this dignity—they do not comprehend the urgent need of those times for an universal Protectorate, which might, like a bulwark, defend Europe against internal anarchy, and the invasions of barbarous nations; and which might prevent the light of Christianity from being perhaps extinguished in a second night of universal barbarism. The modern critics of those ancient times cannot understand that high Christian feeling—that exalted principle of self-devotion, whereby a nation from its internal strength and natural situation, was called by the general voice to take on itself this burden for the common weal, and to be the firm sustaining centre of the European system—a calling which must necessarily occasion a mighty loss and heavy sacrifice of repose and prosperity to the nation so undertaking the momentous charge. Without this firm central power, which held together the European nations, they would, yielding at the first shock, have succumbed under the attacks of the Mahometans or Moguls.

Without this central power, Europe would have been broken up into a multitude of petty states, and have sunk into eternal and irremediable anarchy; whereas now, great as might be at times the confusion, and fearfully wild the spirit of warfare, there was always a resource

and a remedy against such calamities. As the religious vow of the knight dignified his duties into a sort of ecclesiastical warfare; so the high functions of the Emperor were considered as partly ecclesiastical, and he was looked on as the sworn liegeman of Almighty God, intrusted with the high sword of universal justice. It was the exalted idea of this arduous and momentous charge, far more than schemes of selfish ambition and idle glory, that filled up the lives of the most active and powerful of those ancient emperors. Hence this common regard for the general welfare of Christendom, which the obligations of their respective stations imposed upon them, produced a very intimate union between the heads of the spiritual and temporal authority in Europe, and placed them in a state of mutual dependance. When the mighty emperor, Otho the Great, had been called into Italy, and had witnessed with his own eyes the state of general corruption and degeneracy at Rome, where among the baronial factions which surrounded the Papal chair, one of the more powerful families sought by the most culpable intrigues to obtain a lasting, and as it were, hereditary possession of the holy see; he exerted his imperial authority, and deposed the Pope, who by means so unlawful had obtained his dignity, and on whom the general voice of the age had long pronounced a sentence of condemnation, causing a worthier Pontiff to be elected in his room. There still existed among

those of the same mind in Christendom, an unerring feeling, whereby the righteousness or unrighteousness of any action, its real spirit and purpose, were easily and promptly determined without any anxious regard to mere outward forms. But when that uniformity of feeling had disappeared, and with it feeling itself had ceased to be a ruling principle of public and political life, the standard of political estimation rested almost exclusively on outward forms, and the contentious point of law involved in those forms; and as in every historical fact men saw but a precedent fertile of application, or even dangerous in its consequences, they no longer formed a pure historical judgment on the general spirit of any great action, and they almost lost the very notion of such a thing. The whole world at that time was unanimous in justifying the conduct of the great Otho in that affair. When however the clergy of Rome, in their first feelings of gratitude and admiration at their deliverance from intolerable anarchy, and the toils of an unworthy family, conferred on the emperor the future and permanent power of choosing the Pope, it might have been easily foreseen that so extended a prerogative, little compatible as it was with the independence of the church, would in the sequel provoke a strong reaction. This accordingly took place about a hundred years later, when a man of great energy of character, Pope Gregory VII.

arose to reform the church, and achieve its independence against the many unlawful encroachments of the secular power. And when a prince, distinguished indeed for his warlike qualities, but utterly characterless and animated with an unquiet spirit, who, according to the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, had incurred many and most serious charges; when this prince first attacked and deposed the Pope, and the latter laid him under an excommunication, the conduct of the Pontiff was not only in strict accordance with the general opinion of the age as to the mischievous rule of this secular potentate; but was quite conformable to the then prevailing doctrine of public law, which sanctioned the responsibility and accountability of the temporal power. Hence, Henry IV. found it more expedient to loose himself from this excommunication by a feint submission, than to impugn it by open force; although he never afterwards ceased persecuting the Pope, whose constancy was proved in adversity and persecution. In our own times, justice has been at last rendered to the great qualities of this Pontiff, and it has been allowed he was perfectly free from all selfish views, and that the austere and decisive energy of his character sprang from no other motive than a burning zeal for the reform of the church and of mankind. The German historians in particular, and in truth those on the Protestant side, have been the

first to perform this act of justice; and the name of Gregory VII. who lived in times so different from our own, has long ceased to be with the Germans a watch-word for party strife.

But on the matter at issue, or rather on the opinion the world then entertained respecting it, it will be necessary to say a few words. That the Sovereign is in no way responsible seems in modern times to be considered an immutable axiom, or rather the first of all axioms in the science of government; and whenever a monarch in the history of the middle ages, however vicious he may be and however forgetful of his dignity, meets with the treatment of the Emperor Henry IV., political indignation is raised to the highest pitch. No one can have the slightest intention of questioning the perfect justness of the above state-axiom, under certain given circumstances. But, if the question be a parallel between the middle ages and modern times, we may oppose to the scandal of the ecclesiastical excommunication pronounced against this prince during the former period, the still more fatal example which has occurred within the last three centuries, of the public execution of several monarchs, and of the assassination of many others. Thus, in this respect, the history of the middle age stands purer; and this warns us to decide with less precipitancy on the superiority of our own standard of political morality, and on the greater perfection of

modern principles of state-policy.[6] According to the feeling of right, and the prevailing maxims of public law in that age, a mutual controul and responsibility subsisted between church and state, and between the heads of either. In the most esteemed constitutions of modern states, there is also a mutual dependence and possible controul. Thus the prince may dissolve the parliament, or resist its enactments by his veto;

and, on the other hand, the parliament, by withholding its sanction to the imposition of taxes, or refusing the grant of subsidies, may weaken the sinews of government, and summon, not indeed the king, who seems to be regarded as a mere cipher, but the ministry to a most severe reckoning. The government loses all stay and support, when the Opposition obtains a permanent

and decided majority. Whether this mutual dependence and controul in the modern theory of government be less dangerous than in the ancient system, is a question which it is not so easy to decide. As all the institutions of the middle age had a religious spirit and character, it cannot excite our surprise that this opposition between the spiritual and temporal power, and

this mutual dependence of the heads of church and state should have been founded in religion, and in the religious character and purpose of the Imperial, as well as of the Papal, dignity. It was only by the excesses of passion and violence, by the exaggerated proceedings of both the spiritual and temporal powers, as well as by unfortunate accidents and a human imperfection, by no means inherent in the nature of the thing itself, that the dispute between church and state grew to such a fearful magnitude, was so prolonged, and often became almost incurable. But how easily, even then, peace might be restored between the spiritual and temporal powers by the wisdom, the prudence, the good-will, and conciliatory temper of both, is proved by the peaceable termination of the quarrel respecting investiture under the successor of Henry IV. In the sequel, indeed, the harsh, stern, inflexible character of the Ghibelline Emperors, especially Barbarossa, again perplexed this question; when from the contest growing more and more violent betwixt the Guelfs and Ghibellines, the political schism became wider and wider, and discord seemed to be again the mistress of the world.

[6] In confirmation of what Schlegel asserts in the text, I shall cite a few passages from some distinguished Protestant Historians of Germany. To shew my readers the enlarged, liberal and enlightened views taken by the Protestant writers of that country on the political influence of the Papacy in the middle age, and on the services which at that momentous period the hierarchy rendered to the cause of social order, liberty and civilization, it were easy to transcribe matter more than sufficient to fill a volume. Let a few examples suffice.—“The Northern nations,” says the celebrated historian of Switzerland, John Muller, “rushing in upon the most beautiful countries of Europe, trampling under foot, or disturbing and convulsing all social institutions, menaced the whole Western world with a barbarism similar to that which, under the Ottoman sceptre, has obliterated every thing good, great and beautiful that ancient Greece and Asia had produced. Yet the Bishops and other Dignitaries (Versteher) of the church, strong in their authority, contrived to impose a restraint on those giants of the North who, as regards intelligence, were but children. They would not have been more successful than the Greek prelates, had they been subject to four different Patriarchs. The Popes of Rome, (whose primitive history is as obscure and defective as that of the ancient Roman Republic, since we know little of the first Popes, except that they devoted their lives for the faith, as Decius had done for his country,) the Popes, we say, employed their authority with the same address which we admire in the ancient Senate, to render their see independent, subject to its immediate action the whole Western hierarchy, and establish its sway, far beyond the boundaries of the ancient empire, on the ruins of the Northern religions. Thus whoever refused to honour the Christ, trembled before the Pope; and one faith and one church were preserved in Europe, amid the breaking up and subdivision of the newly-founded kingdoms into a thousand petty principalities. We know what Pope made Charlemagne the first Emperor; but who made the first Pope? The Pope, they say, was only a Bishop; yes, but at the same time, the Holy Father, the Sovereign Pontiff, the great Caliph, (as he was called by Ho-Albufreda, Prince of Hamath) of all the kingdoms and principalities, of all the lordships and cities of the West. It is he who controuled by the fear of God the stormy youth of our modern states. At present even, when his authority is no longer formidable, he is still very puissant by the benedictions which he showers; he is still an object of veneration to innumerable hearts, honoured by the kings who honour the nations, invested with a power, before which in the long succession of ages, from the Cæsars to the House of Hapsburg, a host of nations and all their great names have vanished.

“We declaim against the Pope! as if it were such a misfortune that there should exist an authority to superintend the practice of Christian morality, and to say to ambition and to despotism, Halt!—so far, and no further! Bisher, und nicht weiter!” So speaks the illustrious John Muller. The celebrated Herder allows “that without the hierarchy, Europe in all probability had become the prey of tyrants, the theatre of eternal wars, or even a desert.”

“The hierarchy,” says Beck, “opposed the progress of despotism in Europe, preserved the elements of civilization, and upheld in the recollection of men what is so easily effaced—the ties which bind earth to Heaven. Those ignorant men, as we affect to call them, have settled almost all the countries of Europe. The fruits of that time are the formation of the third estate, whence dates the true existence of nations—and the establishment of cities, wherein social life and true liberty were developed.”—Beck on the Middle Age, page 13. Leipzick, 1824.

“The weak,” says Ruhs, in his Manual of the History of the Middle Age, “then found in spiritual authority a better protection against the encroachments of the powerful than afterwards in the balance of power—a system which, as it was a thing purely abstract, devoid of all external guarantee, must soon have lost all influence. The Pope was always present to terminate the wars which had broken out among Christian princes, and to protect the people against the injustice and tyranny of their rulers. The Clergy therefore every where showed themselves opposed to the power of kings, when the latter wished to become perfectly absolute—they wished not to domineer over them, but confine them within the legitimate bounds of their authority. The Priesthood was consequently always for princes, when powerful vassals attacked the rights of the Sovereign—they were the natural and constant guardians of the rights and liberty of all classes.”—Manual of the History of the Middle Age. 1816.—Trans.

END OF LECTURE XIII.

LECTURE XIV.

On the struggles of the Guelfs and Ghibellines.—Spirit of the Ghibelline age.—Origin of romantic poetry and art.—Character of the scholastic science and the old jurisprudence.—Anarchical state of Western Europe.

The most rapid sketch of the history of the middle age, if it contained but a few lively, characteristic and faithful traits on a subject inexhaustible in itself, would suffice to convince any reasonable man that great characters, (abounding almost more than in any other period of history,) important interests, mighty motives, and lofty feelings and ideas were there in mutual collision; and that in what is called the anarchy of the middle age we find an active and stirring life, the most splendid feats of heroism, and many luminous traces of a higher power. The most careful consideration and profound investigation of the history of those ages, invariably discovers that all that was then great and good in the state, as well as in the

church, proceeded from Christianity, and from the wonderful efficacy of religious principles. Whatever was imperfect, defective, and hurtful, belonged not to that moral principle which animated society, and which was itself the best, the noblest, and the soundest; but was in the character of men, we might almost say, in the character of the age itself, which, though perhaps not originally and purposely selfish, had yet become so in the violence of the conflict. And by selfishness, I do not precisely understand a vulgar self-interest, or an ordinary ambition, but that absolute will or conduct which springs from some unalterable resolution, which, hurrying from one extreme to another, is sure to produce a perpetual alternation of extreme measures. In some cases this conduct proceeded from a want of penetration, prudence, and steadiness, which did not always accompany the deeds of heroic enthusiasm, the astonishing energy of will and strength of character which distinguished the men of those ages. The principle then really bad, the principle hostile to good, must be ascribed to that inclination to discord, innate in man, or which at least has become his second nature—an inclination which, when united with those other mighty qualities of the age, assumed indeed the most formidable shape.

The whole middle age, however, must not by any means be depicted as a period of universal anarchy; as, from the great difference of times, and the fact that much in the manners and political

institutions of those ages is now scarcely intelligible, modern writers are but too apt to indulge in this strain of censure. Above all, we must be careful to distinguish in the history of the middle ages the variety of epochs. As long as those religious principles on which church and state depended, were maintained in their unity and intregrity, the social stability of that first and happier period is indeed remarkable, and forms a striking contrast with the succeeding age. For private feuds, restrained within certain bounds by the manners of chivalry and the laws of honour, or the more protracted, and frequently renewed struggles of a warlike nation to repel the inroads of barbarians, or the aggressions of turbulent neighbours, are no adequate proofs of general anarchy. But a full knowledge and just appreciation of the power of principle, which during that better period was the Christian foundation of the state, is of so much more importance to our age, as in these times when principle has given way to the mutable opinion of the moment, and the latter exerts so mighty an influence on public life; though men have the power to throw off this ursurped dominion, they will not return to that unity and stabilty of principle, however strongly they may feel the necessity of restoring its saving influence. No parallel could be more profitable and instructive than the comparison between an age and a state, where principle was predominant, and another where opinion was paramount.

All that was great and good in the history of the middle age, as I observed at the commencement of this lecture, existed only in fragments, and this has very much contributed to heighten the appearance of anarchy throughout the whole of this great period of human history. Of this the blame must be sought for in a combination of many injurious causes, and in the resistance of many opposing elements. That wonderful power of regeneration, by which the whole of Western Christendom, after every mighty destruction, and reign of confusion in church and state, has, in a form somewhat modified, sprung up anew, renovated and exalted, can be ascribed only to that religion which was in Christian countries the first, and for so many centuries the apparently almost indestructible support of the social edifice. In many and memorable periods of regeneration, down to our own times, this truth has been repeatedly manifested; unless perhaps this self-renovating power conspicuous in the progress of Christian Europe, as well as of the particular nations composing it, languishing and decaying by degrees, become at last utterly extinct.

Among the characteristic, remarkable, and peculiarly Christian institutions of the middle age, we ought especially to mention that ecclesiastical truce, or peace of God, which towards the commencement of the eleventh century, opposed a powerful barrier to the growing and restless spirit of private warfare. Without

its being possible to specify exactly, how or where this institution first arose, it was at once proclaimed in several places, and generally received with pious faith, as a voice of reconciliation from above, an immediate revelation and benign dispensation of divine Providence; and every week the tolling of the bell announced the sacred truce from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, during which time all feuds were to subside, and all hostilities to cease. It may indeed here be asked in the spirit of modern times, why were only four, and not the whole seven days of the week fixed upon, for the cessation of disorder? and it may be further said that a severe criminal code, and a prompt, vigorous and enlightened administration of the law, would have rendered such expedients unnecessary. And it is thus that men speak and reason without any knowledge of that age; for many feuds, troubles, and contests then existed, as in all ages have existed and still exist, which no criminal legislation can reach: and who will not deem it the part of prudence and a real gain, when peace is not attainable, to obtain at least a safe and honourable armistice, or to subtract from the principle of war four sevenths of its baneful influence and actual duration? And how happy would men have accounted themselves, if, in other and later times of disorder, when nought was reverenced or respected, and every thing sacred was an object of hatred and persecution, they could, amid the general confusion,

have found shelter under such a wall of safety, or been blessed with such a holiday of peace, though only at particular times of the week! We should rather admire the power of religion, whereby such a prohibition without the aid of external force, or secular authority, and running directly counter to the ruling passion of the age, was received with such pious faith, and followed with such humble docility.

In the first crusade, religious feeling and enthusiasm was the great spring of action; and in the outset, at least, it was far more the glowing eloquence of Peter the hermit, his affecting description of the Holy Land, and of the holy places groaning under the Saracen yoke, which contributed to bring about this memorable expedition, than the pretended policy of the Popes for causing the depression of regal power, and the promotion of popular freedom. These mighty consequences, though in fact historically true, became apparent only at a much later period, and so far from being pre-concerted, were then not even foreseen. As the first Crusade occurred in the most brilliant period of Norman glory, the Norman heroes, especially those from France, took a very active and prominent part in it. The warfare which the Saracens waged against Christendom was considered (and then perhaps not without reason,) as a state of permanent and universal hostility. The chivalrous and defensive wars of Christian nations against the unbelievers were looked upon in the same light;

and if we may judge from posterior events, Jerusalem and Egypt, in that long and memorable contest between Europe and Asia, could very well be regarded, both in a military and political point of view, as the bulwarks of Christendom. Feats of prodigious, and almost incredible, heroism were achieved in the Holy Land; and, at the close of the eleventh century, the victorious cross was planted in the holy city, and the pious Christian hero, Godfrey, proclaimed King of Jerusalem, though this title, as suited only to the divine Son of David, he with all humility renounced.

In this holy city the first two spiritual orders of chivalry sprang up; the knights of St. John, who took up arms for the defence of pilgrimage, and in their vows combined the care of the sick pilgrims with the management of the sword; and the Templars, so called after the temple of Solomon, and from a recollection of the remarkable secrets connected with that edifice. Chivalrous institutions of this kind, wherein Christianity contrived to blend the most opposite qualities and inclinations of human nature, could not have sprung up under a mathematical government of reason, or in a state where every thing is reduced to the level of a dead uniformity, and general equality, and where all feeling and personality are effaced. But the voice of ages has decided completely in favour of these marvellous institutes, and even in our own times, amid all the changes and fluctuations

of opinion, they have preserved the respect, and obtained the forbearance, of mankind.

Even in the second Crusade which took place about fifty years later, when the new progress of the Saracen arms appeared to threaten the safety of the holy city, it was far more the pious eloquence of St. Bernard than any scheme or calculation of policy, which set the whole European world in motion. The number of warriors and armed pilgrims who, under the guidance of the Emperor Conrad, and the King of France, poured in upon the Holy Land, is computed at more than half a million. The religious enthusiasm and chivalric heroism which formed the sole and animating principle of the whole enterprise, were not always accompanied with sufficient prudence, wisdom and circumspection. The want of these qualities at least, as regarded the influences of climate, the physical wants of so vast an army, and a geographical knowledge of localities, is too often apparent; and in default of this necessary foresight and preparatory information, many thousands perished in the second as well as in the first Crusade; a fate which indeed is not unfrequent in wars, where great bodies of people are exposed to toil and hardship in a foreign climate. These expeditions were indeed like new migrations of nations, which took an opposite direction from the first, and rolled backward from Europe towards ancient Asia. The great multitude of men engaged, would sufficiently account for these memorable

expeditions, as it proves the redundance of population in Europe, which sought on this occasion, and by means of this kind, to disburden itself of its surplus numbers. And if this numerous population may have given rise to, or afforded materials for, turbulence and anarchy, still on the other hand, it furnishes a proof that that anarchy was not of so destructive and depopulating a nature, as the descriptions of modern historians would sometimes lead us to suppose.

The real point of transition in German history from good to evil,—from those Christian principles which were ever predominant in the earlier period, to the unappeasable contests of the Guelfs and Ghibellines in the later middle age, must be fixed in the reign of the Emperor Frederick the First. The hostile treatment of the old Saxon race, the destruction of that first and greatest of the old national dutchies of the Germans, was occasioned by the jealousy of the East Franconians under the dynasty of that race; and this measure, begun during the reign, (in every respect so mischievous) of Henry the Fourth, who thus became chargeable with this mighty injustice towards the whole German nation, was now brought to a head by the Emperor Barbarossa. And thus, with the most signal ingratitude, was cut off by the root that noble stem whence German glory and German power had sprung; for the reigns of the great Saxon Emperors form precisely the most prosperous and most brilliant period of German

history, such indeed as has never been again witnessed. With the same unrelenting severity and atrocious cruelty, this Ghibelline Emperor destroyed the confederate cities of Lombardy, and with them crushed the fair plant of Italian civilization just then beginning to blossom.

These two great historical parties—the Guelfs and Ghibellines, are the same which we meet with in other periods of history, and even in our own times, though under other names, often in a form very different from that of the present day, and not always in the same relative position towards each other; but in the middle age they appeared in the larger and more gigantic proportions of the vigorous, heroic character belonging to that epoch. There is ever the one party aspiring after greater freedom, and the other immovably attached to the ancient faith, and to the principles it inculcates. That the liberal principles of innovation should, according to the peculiar complexion which these opinions take in every age, have emanated even from imperial power, and should have sought to establish their dominion in the world by force of arms, is not improbable in itself; and examples of a like kind are not wanting in history. And in this shape we find these principles in the middle age, where for a long while they exerted the greatest influence, and at last became almost predominant. On the other hand the legitimate attachment to the old permanent principle of faith appeared here in the form of an ecclesiastical