his peculiar opinions respecting the Son of God; and affirmed him not to partake of the Divine nature, and to be no more than a mere creature, although the first, indeed, and the noblest, of those which the Almighty had formed. Notwithstanding the expulsion of Arius from the communion of the church, by a council held at Alexandria, his tenets, which he strenuously laboured to establish, attracted so much attention, and gained so great a number of partisans; that Constantine, to quiet the troubles and commotions spreading throughout the empire, assembled a council of the deputies of the church, A.D. 325, at Nice, in Bithynia, by which the Arian doctrine was almost unanimously condemned. In some few years the emperor, persuaded by his sister Constantia and other friends of Arius that their leader had been unjustly treated; and receiving such an explanation of his opinions as rendered them in appearance not essentially different from the genuine faith of the church; recalled him from the banishment into which he had been sent, and distinguished him by marks of favour. Among the successors of Constantine, several were favourers of Arianism. And the opinions of the Christian world too often fluctuated in compliance with the changing sentiments of its master. Each party, in turn, more especially the Arians under the cruel and bigotted Valens, laboured to establish its victory by unjustifiable proceedings against the other. In process of time the Arian doctrine, whose chief progress was in the East, branched out into various forms and subdivisions. Apollinaris, in opposing it, fell into the contrary error of denying the humanity of Christ.

In other respects the internal state of the church had now undergone a fatal change. Superstition advanced with rapid strides, and made successful inroads

into every quarter. The reverence shewn to the memory and example of those holy men, who had sustained martyrdom for the religion of Christ, had been carried in the preceding century to excess. Their tombs had been selected as places of prayer; and the sanctity ascribed to the spot where their remains were deposited was gradually extended to the remains themselves. The evil, once established, augmented daily. A pilgrimage to the sepulchre of a martyr was now esteemed most meritorious. Festivals in commemoration of the suffererers were multiplied. The places of their burial were explored with unwearied ardour. Pious frauds relative to such discoveries became frequent. Earth brought from Palestine, and from other scenes held in veneration, was esteemed a potent remedy against the violence of evil spirits, and sold at a very high price. The worship of reliques and of images commenced. Prayers for the dead became common; as likewise the belief in the existence of a purgatorial fire destined to purify the souls of the departed. The Lord's Supper was occasionally celebrated at the tombs of martyrs, and at funerals a practice which led to the subsequent usage of masses performed in honour of the saints and for the benefit of the dead. And the groundwork for the future adoration of the bread and wine was prepared by the custom of holding them up, previously to their distribution, for the religious contemplation of the people. The invocation of angels, a species of

For this practice is solemnly forbidden by one of the Canons of the Council held about A. D. 367 at Laodicea: a proof of its extensiveness in the face of St. Paul's denunciation of its

unlawfulness, and of its perilous consequences. "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not

idolatrous worship commencing in the very days of the apostles, had crept widely into the church. The gaudy ceremonies of heathen idolatry were transferred or accommodated to the rites of Christian worship. Celibacy was imposed more and more rigorously on the clergy. Baptism, regarded as a complete purification, even in the case of those who had long been Christians, from all antecedent guilt, was frequently deferred to a death-bed. Christianity was tortured that it might seem to agree with the doctrines of the Platonic school; and was defended by subtleties, sophistry, and invective. Two most abominable maxims prevailed: the one, that deceit and falsehood for the advantage of the church were virtues; the other, that obstinate error in religion was justly punishable by civil penalties and corporal inflictions. Monkish institutions were formed into a system. The solitary ascetics, dispersed in the caves and deserts of Upper Egypt, were persuaded to incorporate themselves into a society by Antony, who prescribed a code of rules for their observance. The practice immediately passed into Palestine and Syria; and, advancing into Mesopotamia, speedily overspread the East. Italy, and the neighbouring islands, and Gaul, and other provinces of Europe in succession, became filled with monasteries. In different monasteries different rules were pursued and the austerities of the Orientals exceeded those of the Europeans. Such, however, was the general prepossession in favour of an institution, which exchanged the innocent pleasures and the natural connections and charities of life for a morose and gloomy superstition; that when Jovinian, an Italian monk, taught that all persons who fulfilled their

seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind; and not holding the Head." Col. ii. 18, 19.

baptismal vows and lived conformably to the Gospel were equally acceptable to God, and equally entitled through Christ to the rewards of futurity with those who lived in solitude, celibacy, and mortification, he was condemned by the church at Rome and by a council at Milan, and banished by the emperor Honorius.

In the beginning of the fifth century the Roman empire was divided into two portions. The Western empire comprehended, under Rome its capital, Italy, Gaul, Britain, Spain, the neighbouring part of Africa, and other provinces of the West. The Eastern, called also the Greek Empire because it included the dominions of ancient Greece, comprised Asia and the neighbouring parts of Europe, together with Egypt; and had Constantinople for its metropolis. The Western empire was now assailed with redoubled violence by the northern barbarians, who had for a considerable time harassed and endangered its frontiers. The banks of the Rhine and the Danube no longer opposed a successful barrier. Fortresses and legions were swept away before the military deluge. Goths, and Huns, and Quadi, and Heruli, with many other savage swarms, each pushing the other forward in succession even from the distant regions of Tartary, poured in their myriads through the breach. Province after province was rent from the declining state. At length, A.D. 476, Odoacer, king of the Heruli, having vanquished Augustulus, the last emperor of Rome, extinguished the Western empire, and established his own dominion over Italy. Seventeen years afterwards Odoacer was killed, and his dominions were seized by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. The new monarchs, faintly professing a nominal subordination to the emperor of the East, ruled in perfect independence.

In these convulsions the Christians underwent peculiar sufferings; as they not only shared in the common miseries of the times, but had also to encounter the cruel usage which their religion drew upon them from the invaders, who were principally Pagans. By degrees, however, their new masters embraced the religion of Christ. But that circumstance did not in every instance prevent persecution. Genseric, king of the Vandals established in Africa, was a bigotted adherent to Arianism; and eagerly persecuted unto bonds, exile, and death, the Christians of a different persuasion. His son Huneric proceeded in his footsteps, and surpassed him in cruelty. Among the

troubles of this age the calamities of the British church must not be disregarded. When the Roman legions had retired from Britain to the defence of the more important parts of the empire, the natives of the southern portion of the island, unable to repel the sanguinary inroads of the Scots and Picts, applied for assistance, A.D. 449, to the Saxons. Vortigern, the British king, soon found his German allies more formidable than the enemies whom they had vanquished. New armies of Saxons arrived: and their purpose to seize the country for their own use became apparent. A bloody war took place; and having continued with various success during one hundred and thirty years, ended decisively in favour of the Saxons. Multitudes of the ancient inhabitants fled into Cornwall and Wales, or to the Continent. In the course of these conflicts vast numbers of the British Christians were put to death with the severest tortures by their idolatrous assailants : and the religion was almost extinguished. Ireland, in the mean time, received the light of the Gospel. Palladius, who was sent thither by the Roman pontiff Celestine for the conversion of the people, dying after