goras from my soul. But when I think that I have lighted on a stable theory, Anaximenes taking his turn, vociferates against them. I tell you everything that is, is air; which condensed and concrete becomes water; but if rarified and diffused, ether and fire; returned to its own nature, liquid air; but if condensed, he says, it is changed. Again, I pass over to this theory, and Anaximenes is my beloved. But Empedocles is eager in his opposition, threatening and roaring aloud from Etna; the beginnings of all things are enmities and friendships, of which the latter gathers, the former scatters, and all things are the offspring of their contention. And I define them to be like and unlike, and infinite and limited, and eternal and created. Well done, Empedocles, I will follow you to the craters of fire.” Following up this subject, Hermias passes in review the systems of the creation or origin of things, propounded by Protagoras, Thales, Anaximander, Archelaus, Plato, Pherecides, Democritus, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Clianthus, Carneades, and Clitomachus; and placing them side by side, he exhibits their deformities and mutual repugnances, and having finished his elaborate task, he concludes in the following appropriate words :-"These have I narrated to expose the contrariety of their opinions, and the unlimited. and interminable rovings of their speculations, and their end inexplicable and useless, as unconfirmed by evident fact or clear reason." 22

3. The nature of God and the way to happiness were discussed by the philosophers with even less success than the questions heretofore alluded to. In reply to the question, what is the true happiness of the soul, some philosophers answered: pleasure earthly and sensual. There were others of a more austere disposition, who looked upon pleasure as an evil. "One," says Hermias, "calls pleasure its good; another designates it an evil; another, something mediate between good and evil." In reply

p. 431.

1 Hermiæ Philosophi Gentilium Philosophorum Irrisio, No. 3, "SS. Patrum Opera Polemica," Wirceburg, 1777. 2 Ibid. No. 10, p. 439. 3 lbid. No. 2, p. 427.

to the question, what is the nature of God? the wildest, most blasphemous and reckless views were put forward. "Some of the Portico," says Theophilus, "altogether deny that there is a God; or, if there be, that he has any concern except for himself. And this is what the folly of Epicurus and Chrysippus has pronounced. Others assert that all things happen fortuitously, and that the world is increated, and that nature is eternal; and they have presumed to say that there is no providence of God at all, but God they think is merely the conscience of the individual. Others again think that the spirit which pervades all things is God. But Plato and his followers, allow indeed that God is innate, and the Father and Creator of all; but then they determine that the innate are two, God and matter; and the latter, they say, is coeval with God." 1

It was after this manner that pagan philosophy disposed of the most grave and important questions that have ever agitated the soul of man. There was no consistency in its speculations; every principle that it laid down was liable to contradiction, and was met by opposition on the part of men, who were regarded to be fully as wise as those who had advanced it; and so the profession of wisdom, instead of being a rich garden, where the fruits of truth and justice might be gathered, became an arid and bare arena, where to the ignorant and needy nothing was given to feast upon but the combats of intellectual gladiators. Under these circumstances it is only natural to expect that among the polemical Christian writings of the second century, pages and whole treatises should be devoted to the errors and inconsistencies of the various philosophical schools. Nevertheless, we are not to suppose for a moment that the Christian controversialists of these early ages meant to call in question the prerogatives of reason, or wished to expel her from her throne. When they argued from an enumeration of results and facts,

1 S. Theop. ad Autol. No. 4, p. 293. "SS. Patrum Opera Polemica," Wirceburg, 1777.

that reason, as represented by philosophy, had failed to fulfil her mission, they did not intend to give even the slightest grounds for the conclusion that reason must necessarily err. Reason had erred. Why so? Because reason had speculated recklessly. Passion, whim, and prejudice had mixed themselves up with the investigations of reason, and so it will often be in this world, and thus reason had erred. But was error the result of the operation of reason, or of the co-operation of whim and prejudice? Of the latter undoubtedly, for reason ceases to operate where truth ceases to hold sway.

The force of the Christian argument amounted to this :Philosophers had advanced every variety of theory on religious subjects; wherefore, they were unsafe guides for those who aspired after immortality. If it was objected to Christianity, that notwithstanding the manifest contradictions of philosophers, some of them had advocated doctrines that agreed with the teachings of Christianity, the answer was ready, that the very man who had spoken truth on one point, had erred on fifty others. Philosophers had erred perseveringly, and so long had they been tried now, and so powerful had been the intellects engaged in the struggle, that it appeared idle to expect from them as religious guides, aught but inconsistency and self-sufficiency, and the advocacy of views and theories hostile to common sense and dangerous to immortal souls.

DIVISION II.

THE SECOND VICTORY.

§ 1. Progress of the Church.-The Church, triumphing over her adversaries, continued to widen her domain and extend her dominion. Her first successes had been in the East. The close of the first century saw her reigning over Asia Minor, Palestine, Crete, Greece, and Syria. Advancing to the West, she had seized upon Italy; and she had established her head-quarters, so to speak, in Rome long before the close of the first age of her existence.

Rome, the undying seat of ecclesiastical sovereignty; Rome, attacked, shattered, broken then as in this year 18601861; Rome, strong and weak, conquering and conquered, the object of the respect and scorn of the millions, receiving the faith in the first century, became the centre from which it was thenceforth diffused through the infidel nations of the universe. The Church, therefore, starting from Rome, continued her journey towards the far West, during the second and third centuries of the Christian Era, following up victory after victory.

When reading the history of the great schism of the 16th century, we must have been struck by two facts. therein recited: 1st, The facility with which some Northern European nations gave up the Catholic faith; and, 2nd, The tenacity with which the nations of the South adhered to it. It did not, perhaps, then strike us that the Southerns were the older children of the Church, while the inhabitants of the North were comparatively neophytes. Yet such is the fact, as we learn from studying the history of the first propagation of the Christian faith in Europe.

Leaving Rome, the Church was not far from the "great sea of the Scriptures : "Hoc mare magnum et spatio

sum manibus." Or, if she preferred it, the great road to the Alps was open to her, by which she might enter Gaul from the south-east. Slow ships from Ostia to the ports of France and Spain were numerous in those days, and conveyances to the land confines of Helvetia and Gaul were not wanting. In either mode of travelling, Gaul and Spain were the first countries encountered by the Church in journeying from Italy towards the west of Europe. It is not for us to say whether the facility of reaching these countries influenced the choice of the primitive propagators of the Gospel, but certain it is, that after Italy, they were the first evangelized in the West.

Even as early as the Apostolic period, we find mention of the intended journey of a great missioner from Rome to Spain, on the business of the gospel. The missioner referred to is St. Paul. In his Epistle to the Christians of Rome, written from the East, he thus announces his project: "When I shall begin to take my journey into Spain, I hope that as I pass I shall see you, and be brought on my way thither by you if first in part I shall have enjoyed you.' And a little further on he reverts to it in the following terms: "When, therefore, I shall have accomplished this and consigned to them this fruit, I will come by you into Spain." We are not aware whether circumstances allowed the Apostle of the Gentiles to carry out his design of announcing the faith in person to the Spaniards; but certain it is that long before the close of the second century the Church, issuing from Rome, had travelled along by the Mediterranean, and established large and flourishing Christian colonies in the principal cities of Proconsular Spain, and Gaul.

Nor had the other side of the water been neglected. The province of Africa, lying along the southern shores of the "great sea," had been evangelized at an early period. Its "Coloniæ" and " Municipia" were full of Christians at the opening of the third century. Egypt and Numidia had received the faith, and a line of ancient cities, stretch2 Ibid. verse 28.

1 Romans xv. 24.