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inculcated by all Christian ministers in all ages. It has been preached by all sects. However erroneous their doctrine, however discommendable their practice, however gross their misconception of the most important truths, all who have either believed themselves to be Christians, or who have assumed the cloak of Christianity for worldly purposes, have concurred in preaching the fundamental principles and the morality of the Gospel. And God forbid that I should think so unhappily of his dispensations, and of my fellow creatures, as not to believe that these morals and that fundamental faith have, even in the worst ages, greatly counterbalanced the injurious effects of the false opinions and superstitious usages with which they have been connected. When those corruptions became so gross that their effect must have predominated, if they had been permitted to proceed unchecked, the Reformation in the order of Providence was brought about. And whereas you demand whether purer lessons of morality can be cited than were inculcated in the Anglo-Saxon times, I answer that the same morality is purer when preached, as it now is in all reformed countries, without the alloy that in those ages debased it. Your other question,

"whether the institutions in which it was taught, and without which it might not have been taught, were not, with all the imperfections justly or unjustly imputed to them, eminently useful," requires no answer from me, who have on every occasion acknowledged their utility.

But you have mentioned Bede. The very introduction of that venerable name is like proclaiming a truce. Willingly and reverently, Sir, do I affix to it the appellation which he so eminently deserved; and gladly take occasion to supply what would have been a culpable omission in the Book of the Church, if the design and scale of that work had admitted of all that it was desirable to insert. In vindicating the book from the unwarrantable aspersions which are cast upon it, it will not be irrelevant for me to enlarge upon certain points which could only be cursorily noticed there; and what may at first appear digressive, will be found in the end to bear upon the question.

Life is not long enough for any one in these days to be conversant with the writings of Bede. Indeed it would be a waste of time for any person to peruse them all, unless it were his intention to compose a full biographical and

critical account of this most extraordinary man, who was the light and wonder of his age. They fill eight folio volumes, which are usually bound in three, and contain more matter than would be comprised in twenty modern quartos. The historical portion is but a small part, one volume of the eight. This I have perused; of the rest I have read such parts only as attracted notice in a cursory inspection of the whole.

F

THE VENERABLE BEDE. ST. BENEDICT BISCOP.

BEDE was born about the year 670 in the tract of country between the mouths of the Wear and the Tyne, and upon the estate belonging to the united monasteries of St. Peter and St. Paul, the one situated at the mouth of the Wear on the north side, the other on a bay of the Tyne, which then formed the principal port of the Northumbrian Kings, but having been choked with sand is now left dry when the tide recedes, and is at present known by the name of Jarrow Slake. At the age of seven, having lost both his parents, who were probably tenants or vassals of the estate, he was placed by his relations in one of these religious houses.

These monasteries had then recently been founded by Benedict Biscop. Biscop, for that was his name before he engaged in a monastic order, was a person who contributed greatly to the advancement of his countrymen in those arts, which existed at that time only in connection with religious establishments. He was born in the household of the Northumbrian king Oswy, nephew to that Edwin whose con

version to Christianity has been so fully and authentically recorded. Oswy had given him lands suitable to his extraction, for he was of noble family; but in those days there was little in the pursuits of secular ambition which could tempt a generous mind; and Biscop, at the age of five-and-twenty, forsook his patron's court to visit Rome, which in the West was regarded as the capital not of Christendom alone, but of civilization also. Having satisfied his curiosity, but not his sense of devotion, he took the habit at Lerins, a monastery situated in an island at the mouth of the Rhone, and then in the highest celebrity. After a while he returned to Rome by sea, and was residing in that city when an Anglo-Saxon priest arrived there whom Egbert, the Oiscinga of Kent, had sent to be consecrated for the see of Canterbury, desiring to have one of his own subjects for Archbishop who might instruct the people without the medium of an interpreter. The Primate elect died of the plague presently after his arrival, and Pope Vitalian, making choice of Theodore of Tarsus in his stead, ordered Benedict Biscop to accompany him as his linguist. Benedict (as he must henceforth be called) remained at Canterbury with the charge of St. Peter's monastery, as long as his presence was required; he then

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