corporations are no longer advantageous, after societies have become enlightened. No truth is more clear, than that religious liberty, without limit, disarms every sort of animosity among sects; and that the diffusion of knowledge restrains the extravagancies of fanaticism. This is, I allow, the real argumentum ad verecundiam ; and no position is, therefore, more clear, than that monastic institutions may often survive the spirit which gave them birth. The soul, the general advantage, which actuated monachism, may be in truth often annihilated, while the skeleton alone remains, unseemly, and precluded from regeneration.

Friend, however, as I am to primitive monastic institutions, it is not incumbent upon me here to dilate in eulogium on the fathers of the church. I leave them then, in course, to the filial protection of their learned and respectable successors. The truth of the scheme of Christianity, and the indisputable benefits which have resulted from it, are the points alone with which I am, in any manner, concerned; and they are such, and of such extreme simplicity, that they require no ponderous erudition, nor any great depth of meditation, to develope. In their genuine form, in which they can scarcely

be mistaken, they may at once be displayed even to the most ignorant, by referring to the gospel. The immense volumes of fathers and councils, | consequently of schoolmen, casuists, and controversialists, may, as they now no longer perplex the world, sink, for me, into the oblivion, which must for ever enshroud them and their laborious fabricators.

It is perfectly useless, in fact, to appeal, at any time, on abstract questions, to the primitive fathers. I would not be disrespectful; but why are the primitive fathers to be looked upon as necessarily infallible in their opinions? Were they, cæteris paribus, more enlightened than the enlightened men of the present day? Or, had they less interested motives, to urge them to tenacity in the support of their interpretations? All religious controversies, which can only be defended, therefore, by a reference to the first writers of the Christian church, carry with them, I am apprehensive, a suspicion, prima facie, that they are not altogether tenable on the grounds of reason and fair argument. For what, in fact, had the fathers to guide them? Nothing, surely, but tradition and common sense. And have not we the aid of the same lights, strengthened still further by the advantages of improved science,

an

and better demonstrated principles? The Old, and the New Testament, are not different now from what they were fifteen hundred years ago.

We are not always, therefore, to rest on the crutch of authority; which would be as much as to say, we are always to be children, and never to walk alone. Hereditary weakness is not necessary to render religion lovely. At the same time, however, that we are not to raise the fathers to the high rank of apostles, or assert that they were assisted by inspiration, or that they were endowed, above the common lot of mankind, with infallibility; we yet are not to refuse them our regard, as witnesses of the opinions of their respective ages; as historians of the facts, which were accessible to their inquiries; and as teachers, whose piety and learning eminently distinguished them from all their contemporaries. Sharing the imperfections of other writers, they may, indeed, fairly claim the same indulgence: and, if the plea of credulity is to be admitted against them as a ground of objection, remember, I beseech you, with what equal, if not superior force, it operates against some of the most celebrated writers of Greece and Rome.

Divines

Divines (they will pardon me for saying it) are not in general, I am afraid, guided by the soundest wisdom, when they urge the authority of the church, as sufficient to supply every want of proof. It is, in reality, very like arguing in a circle, proving the authority of the church by that of the Scriptures, and the authority of the Scriptures by that of the church. The utility of many of the writings of the fathers is somewhat more than disputable; nor, if placed in competition with more modern theologians, even with the very divines themselves of whom I am speaking, can they in any manner be found equal, either in extension of learning, real philosophy, or chaste elucidation of the tenets of Christianity.

I have proved, that Christianity humanized, in many respects, the Romans, and that it even greatly enlightened their conquerors. The ancient Germans, for instance, had no cities. Even in their hamlets or villages, they did not build their houses contiguous.* The Romans built several cities on the banks of the Rhine. But in all the vast extent from that country to the coasts of the Baltic, there was hardly one city previous to the ninth century of the Christian æra. There were, indeed, a few places which

VOL. VI.

* Tacitus.

P

might

+ Conringius.

might be called towns. Under Charlemagne, and the emperors of his family, as the political state of Germany began to improve, several cities were founded. Charlemagne himself endowed two archbishoprics and nine bishoprics, in certain of the most considerable towns.* The bishops then fixing their residence, cathedrals were built; and, for the facility of religious communication, the people gathered in from the country, and by degrees settled themselves as denizens under the immediate eye of their pastors. The Germans, in this manner, undoubtedly borrowed the institution of civil and municipal associations from the Romans.

Not that we are here, in a single point, to recede from our former opinions relative to the Germans and Scandinavians. On the strong Scythian ground, we are still to stand. We might even go farther, and, if necessary, expose the futility of what is not unfrequently believed, that these our northern heroes had been at first impelled by want, from the sterility of their own countries, and subsequently allured by the reputed fruitfulness of the Italian shores. On the contrary, almost every part of Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, and Gaul, are finer countries than

Anb. Mirai Opera Diplom.