Victorinus was an African by birth, but became a distinguished pagan rhetorician at Rome, where he was so much admired, that a statue was erected to him in one of the public places of the city. After he had taught, there, many years, and had grown old, he was converted to Christianity, about A. D. 350. He wrote several works, chiefly in defence of trinitarianism, and against the Manicheans; and died about the year 370,37

A. D. 360, to 370.

XII. There were, at this time, some decided Universalists among the orthodox bishops and writers, especially of the East. About forty miles east of the river Jordan, beyond the hilly tract of the ancient Perea, the traveller descends upon a spacious, barren plain, where vestiges of forgotten towns appear, here and there, and a few sunken reservoirs still supply the wandering hordes, and the regular caravans, with water preserved from the winter torrents. Traversing this neglected waste to the distance of a dozen or fifteen miles still eastward, he arrives at the ruins of an ancient city, near the borders of the Desert Arabia. Fragments of the old walls, remains of a splendid temple, of triumphal arches, of a church and monastery, and of a great mosque, together with numberless pillars broken and lying among rose-trees in bloom, indicate the site of the ancient Bostra.38 In the fourth century it was a populous city, the capital of a small province to which the vanity of the Roman conquer

37. For the account of his life, see Du Pin's Bib. Pat. Art. Victorinus of Africk. Murdock's Mosheim, vol. i. p. 309. 38. D'Anville's Ancient Geography, vol. i. p. 425; and Burckhardt's Travels in Syria and the Holy Land, pp 226–236. London 1822.

ors had arrogantly appropriated the name of Arabia. At the period of which we write, Titus, a bishop of considerable eminence, presided here, over the churches in this district, and numbered, among his own Christian flock, half of the inhabitants of the city. Though he appears to have published several works, none remains, except part of his books Against the Manicheans, written, it is thought, about A. D. 364. He says that the "abyss of hell is, indeed, the place "of torment; but it is not eternal, nor did it exist in "the original constitution of nature. It was made "afterwards, as a remedy for sinners, that it might cure them. And the punishments are holy, as they are remedial and salutary in their effect on trans"gressors; for they are inflicted, not to preserve them "in their wickedness, but to make them cease from "their wickedness. The anguish of their suffering compels them to break off their vices. "39 treatment of this point, after passing unreproached through all the contests of antiquity, has, in modern ages, attracted the notice of our ecclesiastical critics, and engaged them in the contrary attempts of exposing, and of exculpating, the author.40 It is remarkable that he contended that death, as well as every

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His

39. Titi Bostriensis Contra Manichæos Lib. i. p. 85. N. B. This work is published only in 'Canisii Lector, and in the great Biblio- iones, theca Patrum, to neither of which I have access. I therefore quote from Ceilleir's Histoire des Auteurs Sacres et Ecclesiastiques, Tom. vi. chap. 6, p. 54.

46. Tillemont, though a most strenuous defender of the fathers, is candid enough to acknowledge (Memoires Eccl. Tom. vi. p. 671,) that "Titus seems to have followed the dangerous error as"cribed to Origen, that the pains of the damned, and even those "of the demons themselves, will not be eternal. " But Ceilleir has the hardihood to plead that the passage is not clear, &c,

other dispensation of providence, was designed for the benefit both of the just, and of the unjust ;41 and that he maintained, against the Manicheans, that, even in this world, mankind are happy or miserable, according to their virtue or vice. With the doctrine of original sin, he seems to have been utterly unacquainted; and he supposed that human agency was fully adequate, without any supernatural control, to do good as well as evil.4

42

Of the events of his life, we know little more than that, like most of the distinguished orthodox bishops of this time, he was honored with the notice and the persecution of the emperor Julian. In the year 362, this zealous apostate endeavored to excite the people of Bostra to expel their bishop; but the influence of the prelate seems to have prevailed over the exhortation of the sovereign, and the malicious attempt proved ineffectual. On the accession of Jovian to the empire, A. D. 363, Titus attended the council of Antioch under Meletius; and, though his name appears, with those of some other orthodox bishops, among the subscriptions to a Semi-Arian explanation of the Nicene Creed,43 he nevertheless seems to have been considered one of the Athanasian party. He died, it is thought, about A. D. 370.

XIII. More learned and classical than A. D. 370. Athanasius, and next to him in weight of authority among the orthodox of the East, was Basil the Great, bishop of Cesarea in Cappadocia.

41. Contra Manich. Lib. ii. p. 107, 112. See the quotations in Ceilleir, p. 51. 42. Du Pin's Bibliotheca Pat. Art, Titus of Bostra. 43. Socratis Hist. Eccl. Lib. iii. cap. 21.

With a constitution naturally feeble, and broken moreover by monkish austerities, he possessed a strong mind, a courageous resolution, a temper active, but too ambitious, and an eloquence of a manly and noble kind. Of his views respecting the doctrine under consideration, we cannot pronounce with confidence, as his language is not uniform, nor always reconcileable. He repeatedly states, at considerable length, that those who, after baptism, indulge in sins, however heinous, and die under the guilt of them, are to be purified in the fire of the general judgement ;44 distinguishing them, however, from such as have never professed Christianity. Yet, at another time, while admonishing one of those very characters, he conceals that notion, and for the sake, perhaps, of striking the greater terror, asserts that their future torments "will have no end, and that "there is no release, no way to flee from 66 them, after death. Now is the time in which we 66 are allowed to escape them. 9945 On the contrary, again, he sometimes represents the purifying and salutary operation of future fire or punishment as extending, without distinction, to guilty souls in general: Commenting on these words of Isaiah, (ix. 19, Septuagint version) because of the wrath of the Lord, the whole earth is kindled into flame, and the people shall be as though they were burnt up with fire, Basil says, "the prophet declares that, for the benefit of the soul, "the earthly things are to be consumed by penal fire; " even as Christ himself intimates, saying, I have come

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44. Basilii Comment. in Cap. iv. 4, Esaiæ, and cap. xi. 16, &c. Edit. Paris. 1637. 45. Basilii Epist. ad Virginem lapsam, Tom. iii,

p. 18.

X

"to send fire upon the earth; what would I, except "that it be kindled?" (Luke xii. 49.) And the prophet adds, "the people shall be as though they 66 were burnt up with fire he does not threaten an "absolute extermination, but intimates a purification, "according to the sentiment of the apostle, that if "any one's work be burned, he shall suffer loss, but "he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire." (1 Cor. iii. 15.)46 From this solitary passage we can only suspect that our author was, at times, inclined to Universalism.

His own brother, the bishop of Nyssa, was a Universalist; and his most intimate friend, Gregory Nazianzen, may in some degree merit that appellation. Like them, Basil was also a professed admirer of Origen's writings; and with the assistance of the latter, he selected from them and published a volume of choice extracts, consisting of such passages as the two friends most highly valued. It is a gratification to light on circumstances that seem to connect the writers of this age with earlier fathers, to whose acquaintance we have been introduced at a former period. Basil was brought up in the metropolis of Cappadocia, and perhaps in the very church where Firmilian presided, a century before. His grandmother, Macrina, under whom he received his juve

45. Basilii Comment. in Cap. ix. 19, Esaiæ. If the Regulæ Breviores be Basil's, he there (Interrog. 267,) labored to reconcile the absolute eternity of punishment with the fact that some shall be beaten with many stripes, and others with few. But this piece has been ascribed to Eustathius of Sebastea, (See Du Pin's Bibliotheca Pat. Art. Basil,) a cotemporary with Basil. Whoever the author was, he certainly meant to be considered a believer in strictly endless misery.