spiritual ambition, for the subjugation of Britain, fulfilled by his missionary the Benedictine monk Augustine. When the Roman missioner and his forty monks landed in England, they sought not out the oppressed Romish Christians, but their pagan conqueror. They entered not into Ethelbert's presence as suppliants, but with imposing grandeur, in full procession and gorgeous array, bearing silver crosses and silken banners, emblazoned with images of the SAVIOUR and the saints, and the wild woods re-echoed their stentorian Gregorian Chant. The Saxon king, with a vague awe of the name of Rome, and afraid of the boasted magical efficacy of the reliques which they bore, met them with his nobles on the greensward in the open air-imagining that he would thus be safe from their spells and incantations. Augustine so skilfully conducted the interview, that Ethelbert permitted him to officiate in Queen Bertha's church, became his convert, and multitudes pressed forth for baptism when he publicly gave notice that all who entered the Church of Rome might expect his special favour. Gregory's directions to the monk for securing his advantage displays his subtle policy. The pagan temples were all to be preserved, and reliques placed upon the altars in place of the idols, because so long as these ancient places of devotion exist, the people, through the force of habit, will repair to them.' The old idol feasts were to be changed into feasts of those saints whose reliques were deposited in them. Care was taken that the uproarious jollity which formerly prevailed on those festal days, should suffer no abatement in the huts of boughs, which as of old were still erected round the temples; for by reserving something for men's outwards joys, you will more easily induce them to relish internal joys.' Stranger still, as Gieseler shows, Gregory permitted the continuance of the heathen rite of sacrificing oxen to their demons,' but under 590-604.] TEST OF A TRUE SERVANT OF GOD. 463 another form. On the martyrs' days they also were to slaughter animals, but to the honour of God, and they were to eat and be merry,' for, it is impossible by severity to succeed, and he who seeks to climb a mountain must rise not by leaps but by steps!' A very touching story is told of the first interview between the native Christians and the Roman monk-now created Archbishop by Gregory. It took place under an old. oak-tree on the banks of the Severn, and the Britons in perplexity heard of the new ceremonies and usages which they were expected to adopt. They asked time to consider; and sought advice from one of their ancients. He recommended them to obey the Roman if he were a true servant of God. 'How shall we know that?'-'If he be meek and humble of heart, by that know that he is the servant of God.' 'And how shall we know him to be meek and humble of heart ?''Seeing that you are the greater number, if he, at your coming into the synod, rise up and courteously receive you, then you shall perceive him to be an humble and meek man; but if he shall despise you-despise you him again.' At the second conference, his lordship,' says Fuller, was so high, or rather so heavy, or rather so proud, that he could not find in his heart, a little moving of his body to declare a brotherly and humble heart.' So the Britons rejected the proud Roman's yoke, but as they were retiring he hurled at them the dark menace That if they disdained to preach with him the way of life to the English nation they should suffer by their hands the revenge of death.' The speedy massacre of twelve hundred of the British clergy, was an awful foretaste of Rome's vengeance in later days against our noble Reformers. The liberty-loving Saxons soon wearied of the stern monastic rule of the Roman bishops, whom they determined to expel and to return to their old idolatry. Laurentius, the successor of Augustine, saved the Roman Church from this disgrace and 6 loss by a strange device. He gave out that he would follow the exiles to France on the morrow, and ordered his bed to be laid that night in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. In the morning he went into the presence of the king and, instead of taking leave, threw off his habit, and exposed his back and shoulders bloody and waled with stripes, which he affirmed St. Peter had inflicted upon him, on the previous night, for his wish to abandon his flock! The awe-stricken prince instantly reinstated the Roman Church, and loaded its prelate with gifts. Such was the 'knavish trick' to which the wily Roman resorted and which Romanizers and lovers of legendary lore dignify with the name of miracle. That the Saxons believed it is no proof of its genuineness, for Neander shows the marvellous credulity of those times by the following droll and easy miracle.' Bishop Recho had a fox presented to him one day by an often rejected suitor, who on being asked how he could bring it thus uninjured, replied-' When the fox was in full chase, I cried out to it, in the name of my Lord Recho, to stop and be still! So the fox stood immoveable till I seized him.' The bishop was well pleased to find that his sanctity had so plainly revealed itself in this miracle, and the knavish suitor won his favour for ever! The Irish Clergy alone maintained their free spirit by holding fast to the Holy Scriptures. Certainly,' wrote Columbanus to Gregory, Error can lay claim to antiquity, but the Truth which condemns it is always of higher antiquity still.' Irish missionaries, according to the grateful record of the great German historians whom I have so often quoted, traversed all Europe, keeping alive everywhere such an interest in Scriptural study, and diffusing even in the Dark Ages such bright rays of science and of Gospel light as greatly promoted the Reformation. Their motto was that so nobly expressed by Columbanus to Boniface IV.:-'Thorough Irish 590-604.] GREGORY'S MISERABLE DEATH. 465 men are we, inhabitants of the very ends of the earth, but, however, men that receive nothing beyond the teaching of Evangelists and Apostles." Stormy and sad were the last days of this last Roman bishop. A terrible famine desolated Rome, and the people ascribed it to his mismanagement of the revenue. His last hours were most miserable. 'My pain,' he complained, 'is at one time excessive, and less at another; but never so great as to kill me. Thus I am every day dying, and yet never die. But I am a great criminal, and as such, deservedly shut up in so painful a prison.' His death was sudden and his body was hurried without honour to the tomb. The fury of the multitude drove them to wreak their vengeance by destroying the library which he loved. so well. Peter, his Archdeacon, attempted to appease them by affirming that he had often seen the HOLY SPIRIT, in the visible shape of a dove, hovering over the bishop's head, as he sat writing in that library! When he was required to confirm his assertion by an oath, he ascended the pulpit, but before he concluded his solemn adjuration, he fell down dead, and that awful catastrophe was instantly turned by the monks into a divine testimony to his truth! Hence Christian travellers are shocked by seeing every picture of Gregory I. in Rome, blasphemously surmounted with the HOLY SPIRIT as a dove, floating above his head. (See Gibbon, v. 353-362. Milman, L. C. i. 264-287, 429-476. Neander, iii. 449; iv. 110; v. 12, 150, 177-180, 193 265. Mosheim, ii. 7, 17, 31, 47, 49. Gieseler, ii. 134-168. Greg. Mag. Dial. i. 2, 10; ii. 23, 33; iv. 39, 40, 55. Magna Moral. i. 6; ii. 14. Bower's Lives of the Popes, ii. 463-543. Catholic Layman, iii. 72. Southey, B. Ch. i. 39. Fuller, Ch. Hist. i. 10. Epist. Mabillon, ann. i. 305.) King, I. C. H. i. 293–300. Erasmi, CHAPTER XII. 'Rome fell-but falling kept the highest seat, Where now she dwells, withdrawn into the wild, -ROGERS. THE POPEDOM ESTABLISHED. PHOCAS rose to the Imperial throne from the condition of a centurion. His stunted, deformed figure, shaggy overhanging eye-brows, fiery red hair, shorn chin, and the scar across his cheek which grew perfectly black in his fits of fury, gave him a horribly repulsive aspect, which but too truly indicated his mean and cruel character, for he was drunken and profligate, bloodthirsty and brutal, stern and savage in speech, a heretic and a coward. When the falling Emperor Maurice heard that the Usurper was devoid of personal courage, he despondingly exclaimed, 'If he is a coward, he will be a murderer!' Prophetic words, for the first act of Phocas was to order Maurice and his five sons to be massacred, and their gory heads to be cast before his throne, there to lie till they became too noisome to be borne. John the Patriarch of Constantinople had gratefully sheltered the helpless widow and three daughters of the murdered Emperor from the tyrant's rage, and it was as much to punish him for this act of |