adjoining. The king walked through the streets under painted canvas, adorned with white curtains, and the baptismal building was lighted by wax tapers, and filled with what he claims to have been a celestial perfume, an odor of Paradise. As the monarch entered this splendor, and the sweetest music floated to his ear, he asked the bishop if this was the kingdom of heaven of which he had heard, and was answered, 'No! but it is the beginning of the way thither.' The baptistery in which Clovis was immersed was a large tank, or pool, which tradition has removed to Paris, where it is now found in the Bibliothèque Nationale. It is seven feet long, two and a half feet deep, about the same in width, and is of polished porphyry. Alcuin gives substantially the same account, representing the eagerness of the king to be 'Washed in the living fountain of Catholic baptism, for the remission of sins and for the hope of eternal life. He led the eager king to the fountain of life, and when he came he washed him in the fountain of eternal salvation. So, the king was baptized with his nobles and people, who rejoiced to receive the sacrament of the healing bath, divine grace having been previously given them.' Before the bishop immersed him he said: 'Meekly bow thy neck, Sicambrian; worship that which thou hast burnt, burn that which thou hast worshiped.' Three thousand of his warriors and large numbers of his subjects were baptized with him, amongst them his two sisters. Hincmar says that the throng which pressed to baptism was so great, that the priest could not press through with the consecrated oil, hence, in a wonderful manner another oil appeared.' Avitus, Bishop of Vienne, wrote him a letter, saluting him as one born out of the water;' immersed in what Gregory calls a fresh fountain.' Thus, the founder of the French nation made confession of the orthodox faith, and was thrice immersed. At that time he was the only orthodox monarch in Europe, the others being Arians, for which reason he was called the 'Eldest Son of the Church.' His subsequent moral inconsistencies show more martial enthusiasm in his conversion than sacrificial cross-bearing; an epitome of his whole life being condensed into his exclamation when he first heard of Christ's crucifixion: 'Had I been there with my brave Franks, I would have avenged his wrongs.'

This century is marked by many translations of the Scriptures. Theodoret, a Syrian bishop, says: The Hebrew Scriptures are not only translated into the language of the Grecians, but also of the Romans, the Indians, Persians, Armenians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Egyptians; and, in a word, into all the languages that are used by any nation.' Mesrobe, a devout Christian Minister of State to the King of Armenia, translated them into the Armenian at this time. He formed an alphabet of thirty-six letters in order to do his work; and made his version first from the Syriac, and then from a Greek manuscript which was sent to him from the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431. On account of its exact and elegant simplicity, it is called the 'Queen of Versions.' He uses the word 'mogredil' to express baptism, a word which signifies inmerse.

This age created those wonderful, illuminated biblical manuscripts, written, in many cases, on red, violet or dark purple parchment, often in letters of gold or silver, with illustrated borders and capitals. Many of them were brilliant beyond description, bound in ivory and studded with gems. The Emperor Theodosius It devoted himself to the study of the Bible, and with his own hand produced a copy of the Gospels in letters of gold, formed by a chemical solution of that metal. was also in this century that Patrick instructed the Irish in the use of the Roman letters.

Clement, of Alexandria, had warned Christians against the authority of antiquity and tradition, and saw no cure, therefore, but the written word.' He said

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that

he alone was right: Who pursuing this course from year to year, in converse with and conformity to the Scriptures, keeps to the rule of the Apostolic and ecclesiastical purity, according to the Gospel and those established truths which, as given by the Lord, by the law and the prophets, whoever seeks shall find.' Instead of following this counsel, however, tradition came in like a flood. Even Chrysostom taught: It is clear that they (the Apostles) did not deliver all things by their epistles, but communicated many things without writing; and these, too, demand our assent of faith; it is tradition, make no further inquiry.' 16 Epiphanius, of Salamis, declares as roundly: Tradition is necessary; all things cannot be learned from the Scriptures. The Apostles left some things in writing, others by tradition.'17 On this ground, every absurd practice was justified. Basil puts such questions as these: We sign with the sign of the cross. Who has taught this in Scripture? We consecrate the water of baptism and the oil of unction, as well as him who receives baptism. From what Scripture? Is it not from private and secret tradition? Moreover, the anointing with oil, what passage of Scripture teaches this? Now a man is thrice immersed. From whence is it derived or delivered? Also the rest of what is done in baptism: as to renounce Satan and his angels. From what Scripture have we it? Is not this from private and secret tradition?' 18

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Chrysostom talks similar inane nonsense of the Supper. He tells us of The dreadful and mystic Table.' 'The Lamb for thee is slaughtered, the priest for thee contends, the spiritual fire from the sacred table ascends, the cherubim holding their stations round about, while the seraphim hovering around, and the six-winged veiling their faces, while for thee the incorporeal orders along with the priest intercede.' 'Not as bread shouldst thou look at that, neither esteem that as wine, for not like other aliment do these descend into the draught.'. . . Think not that ye receive the divine body, as from the hand of man; but rather as was the fire from the tongs of the very seraphim given to Isaiah.' 19

Think of cherubim veiling their faces, lest they catch a glimpse of bread and We wine! No wonder that Tully, when ridiculing the heathen notion of the times, asks, 'Was any man ever so mad as to take that which he feeds upon, for a god?' 20 can suppose that the angels shudder when men say that they eat the body, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, and when they say that bread and wine, if dropped into

MIRACLES OF THE SUPPER.

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the mouth of the dying and the dead works a miracle, as the Christians did at this time. Gregory Nazianzen, declares that when his sister Gorgonia was suffering from a severe malady she flew to the 'altar,' and holding it fast obtained an instant cure, by rubbing her body with a few crumbs and drops of the elements. Evagrius reports that it was the custom at Constantinople, for the school-boys to eat what remained of the consecrated bread after the Supper. The son of a Jewish glassblower, in wrath threw another boy into a glowing furnace, but a woman in a purple robe was with him in the flames, pouring water on the coals, and his mother pulled him out unhurt. The fourth canon of the Church of Hippo decreed that: The encharist should not be put into the mouth of the dead. For it was said by our Lord, "Take ye and eat." But corpses cannot receive or eat.' Ferrandus, a deacon of Carthage, was sorely tried because a black slave was taken with a violent fever and baptized before death, while unconscious. The deacon wrote to Fulgentius, Bishop of Ruspe, to know whether he was saved without the Supper. He thought that possibly he might be. In this he differed from Gelasius I., Bishop of Rome, who said: 'Jesus Christ, with his heavenly voice, pronounces, "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you." We see no exception made, nor has any one dared to say, that an infant without this sacrament of salvation can be brought into eternal life. But without this life he will no doubt be in everlasting death.' In a word, the Supper had long been the subject of sad abuses. The third Council of Carthage, A. D. 397, was obliged to check these, and forbid the custom of giving the bread and wine to the dead, or of burying them with the dead, as was often practiced. By the close of the sixth century, there was no end to the ridiculous virtues claimed for these elements, many fanatics declaring that they had raised the dead." John Moschus, of Jerusalem, has the effrontery to tell this 'lying wonder' of a certain pillar-saint, namely: That he threw these elements into a boiling hot caldron, when lo! immediately it was cold, while the bread and wine remained dry and safe!'

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CHAPTER VI.

THE SIXTH, SEVENTH, EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.

HE period stretching from the fifth to the fifteenth century is often spoken

TH

of as the Middle Ages, and the first half of that time as the Dark Ages; because of feudal and papal violence, the universal reign of injustice and the torpor of the intellect. Innocent and Leo had long struggled to bring Christendom under the supremacy of the Roman See. This, Gregory the Great succeeded in doing. At

the close of the seventh age, Alexandria and Antioch were captured by the Saracens, with great suffering to the Churches, while the Eastern Empire was fast declining and the Roman pontiffs were left without rivals.

As yet, we have said nothing of the introduction of the Gospel into the British Isles, and as the sixth century marks their Christian history very strongly, it will be proper to advert to the subject here. These islands were scarcely known to Rome, when her heavy hand was laid upon them under Julius Cæsar. The classic nations and all the seats of ancient government lay to the far East; but these were at the extreme of the wild and barbarous West. When Plautius landed his four legions on the coast of Kent and took firm possession of them, Claudius, his

master, followed, as if to enlarge the empire, but really to promote the spread of the Gospel, which was to redeem those dark lands from cruel superstition. By A. D. 180, Christianity appears to have reached every province of this colossal realm, from the Danube to Ethiopia and the Libyan Desert, and from the Tigris to Britain. It is not certain when the Gospel reached Britain however; although Bishops Bull, Burgess and Newton contend that it was introduced by one of the Apostles. Gildas thinks that it was before the defeat of the British forces under Boadicea, in 61; Bull and Newton, that a Church existed there before one was formed in Rome. Pagitt unites in this opinion, calling the Church at Rome not only a sister of the British, but 'a younger sister, too.' Matthew Paris fixes the date at about 167; Mosheim, in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, 161-180, being disposed to think that its missionaries took refuge there from France when persecution raged at Lyons and Vienna, 177; and Neander, at the close of the second century, and not from Rome but from the East.

Several of these writers place too much dependence on the statements of Clement Romanus, Irenæus and Eusebius, who speak with a flourish of the Gospel going to the end of the West' at that early date. Gibbon contributes to this idea by saying, that the highways opened an easy passage to the missionaries as well as the legions from Italy to the extremity of Spain and Britain.' But Tertullian boasts of Christ's reign in his day: 'Among people whom the Roman arms have never yet subdued. . . . In the farthest extremities in Spain and Gaul and Britain;' and he names one or more of the British converts. Several writers of the second century make the same statement to persons high in the State; which, if they were exaggerated, would have defeated their purpose, by provoking official contradiction. But whatever the date of its introduction may have been, we have many evidences that it has never been entirely rooted out since, although the Anglo-Saxons by the middle of the fifth century invaded Britain, destroyed the Christian places of assembly, slew their pastors, burned the Scriptures, and drove the few ancient British Christians who were left into Cornwall, Wales and Cumberland, where in part they still retained a footing. About fifty years ago Mr. Mitchell, the antiquarian, disentombed a church building at St. Pieran, on the sand near Truro, Cornwall, which is supposed to have been built before Austin visited Britain, and to have disappeared in the twelfth century, when several parishes on the north-west coast were buried in the sand. The preceding cuts represent this building and the stone font found there. Of course, idolatry was re-established wherever Christianity was driven out. Two salient points rise out of this early history,