LETTER III.

THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

WE come now to the Anglo-Saxons.

"The

Apostles' Creed," you say, " was taught among them as it is now taught to us. How large a proportion of the articles of their and our faith are contained in this venerable document !"* Yes, Sir; and if the Popes had added nothing to those articles, there would have been no division in the Western Church.

You proceed to say that "the doctrines of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors respecting the supremacy of the Pope; the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist; the seven sacraments; the invocation of the Virgin Mary and the other Saints, and prayers for the dead, were the same as ours,"... that is of the English Romanists at this time. A distinction must be made here: the Anglo-Saxons received from Rome all the corruptions which had then been introduced into the Romish system; but the most monstrous of the Papal doctrines had not yet been

* Page 28.

broached. The temporal supremacy of the Pope had not been dreamt of; and the opinion which was held concerning the real presence in the Eucharist, was that which the Church of England professes at this day. For transubstantiation had not then been invented.

You ask those who are conversant with the writings of Bede, "*whether the Gospel inculcates a single duty, or recommends a single practice, which does not appear to have been taught and recommended by the Apostles of the Anglo-Saxons and their successors?" I answer that the missionaries, by whom our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were converted, and the successors of those missionaries, most assuredly did inculcate the practices and duties which the Gospel enjoins: they did this as Christians; but it is not less certain that, as Romish Christians, they introduced as practices, and inculcated as duties, observances concerning which the Gospel is altogether silent; all of them unauthorized by its letter or its spirit, and some in plain contradiction to both.

Of this more fully hereafter. I am called upon to notice here the misrepresentation concerning St. Eligius, which Dr. Lingard has detected, and which you have brought forward in the strongest light. The fact is as you have stated * Page 30. + Page 33.

it; there has been a gross misrepresentation, and I should express myself concerning it not less indignantly than you have done, if upon due examination I had not perceived that it was evidently unintentional, and in what manner it had arisen. It originated with Mosheim, an author whose erudition it would be superfluous to commend, and to whose fidelity, as far as my researches have lain in the same track, I can bear full testimony. Contrasting in his text the primitive Christians with those of the seventh century, he says, *"the former taught that Christ by his sufferings and death had made atonement for the sins of mortals; the latter seemed by their superstitious doctrine to exclude from the kingdom of heaven such as had not contributed by their offerings to augment the riches of the clergy or the church." And in support of this statement he adduces, in a note, the passages from St. Eligius, wherein that prelate exhorts his hearers to redeem their own souls by offering gifts and tithes to the churches, presenting lights to the sacred places in their neighbourhood, and making oblations to the altar, that at the last day they might appear securely before the tribunal of the Eter

* English Translation, vol. ii. p. 21. 2d edition.

nal Judge, and say, "Give unto us, O Lord, for we have given unto thee!" You, Sir, who know so well the history of the mortmain laws need not be told to what an extent the clergy at one time abused their influence over the minds of men, for the purpose of increasing their own possessions. The passage from Eligius is strictly in point to the assertion in the text; and Mosheim cannot justly be accused of garbling the original, because he has not shown that these exhortations were accompanied with others to the practice of Christian virtues. To have done this would have been altogether irrelevant; but by not doing it he has misled his translator, who, supposing that St. Eligius had required nothing more than liberality to the church from a good Christian, observes that he makes no mention of any other virtues. The misrepresentation on his part was plainly unintentional, and it was equally so in Robertson, who followed him; and however censurable both may be for commenting thus hastily upon an extract without examining the context, Mosheim is clearly acquitted* of all blame.

* So he would be even if his quotations had been made from a connected discourse of St. Eligius, left by that Saint in writing, and his own undoubted work; as I supposed it to have been when the text was written, not having then perused the

...

When the German historian afterwards asserts that the Christians of that century placed the whole of religion in external rites and bodily exercises, he speaks not of the priesthood exclusively, but of the whole body of the people; and he is not chargeable with error even, still less with calumny, because particular instances might be adduced as exceptions to what is generally true.

Beyond all doubt Christian morality has been

discourse in question. But the fact is that they are fragments taken from a collection of fragments,...from what Eligius's biographer, St. Audoenus, gives as the substance of his sermons,...hujuscemodi ad eos proferebat monita, (Vita S. Eligii. Acta SS. Belgii Selecta. t. iii. p. 243.)—the sum of that biographer's notes or recollections-quem Audoenus e variis Eligii monitis contexuit. (Ghesquiere. Ibid. 262.) And Eligius himself made up his sermons of shreds and patches from elder writers, especially from St. Cæsarius,.. ea tamen quæ ibi profert Eligius traxit penè omnia ex Cæsarianis sermonibus, quæ per Galliam universam, et per Hispanias procurante Cæsario (scilicet Arelatensi episcopo) in ecclesiis lectitabantur. (Ibid. 262.) Smet also, in his Analecta Eligiana (Ibid. 315) says, neque ægrè feramus quod Rhapsodia vocentur, et farrago consarcinata er Augustino, Prospero, &c.; cum id Apostolo nostro æternæ laudi vertatur, quod non tantum in Diœcesibus Noviomensi et Tornacensi idololatriam et paganorum superstitiones insectatus fuerit, verum etiam quod in docendis populis constanter antiquiorum Patrum doctrinæ inhæserit, datoque exemplo caverit ne quis è posteris Scripturam sacram spiritu privato interpratetur.