sion of the Universal Jubilee, celebrated at Rome the preceding year, by the order of Benedict XIV.

Dr. Southey remarks on this subject, that "One drop of the Redeemer's blood being sufficient to redeem the whole human race, the rest which had been shed during the passion was given as a legacy, to be applied in mitigation of purgatory, as the Popes might think fit. So they declared, and so the people believed! If the Popes wished to promote a new practice of devotion, or encourage a particular shrine, they granted to those who should perform the one, or visit the other, an indulgence, that is, a dispensation for so many years of purgatory; sometimes for shorter terms, but often by centuries, or thousands of years; and in many cases the Indulgences were plenary."

Southey's Book of the Church.

Towards the conclusion of the thirteenth century, Boniface VIII. added to the public rites of the church the famous Jubilee, which is still celebrated at Rome at a stated period.

This Pontiff issued an epistolary mandate, addressed to all Christians, in which he enacted it as a solemn law of the church, that those who every hundredth or Jubilee year confessed their sins, and visited, with sentiments of contrition and repentance, the Churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, at Rome, should obtain the entire remission of their various offences. The successors of Boniface were not satisfied with adding a multitude of new rites

and inventions by way of ornaments to this institution, but rendered its return more frequent, and fixed its celebration to every five and twentieth year.

The various writers who have treated of the Institution of the Roman Jubilee, are enumerated by J. Albert. Fabricius, in his Bibliograph. Antiquar. p. 316.

The Excommunication, from the time of Constantine the Great, was, in every part of the Christian world, attended with many disagreeable effects; yet its highest terrors were confined to Europe, where its aspect was truly formidable and hideous. It acquired also, in the eighth century, new accessions of terror; so that from that period, the excommunication practised in Europe, differed entirely from that which was in use in other parts of Christendom. Excommunicated persons were, indeed, considered in all places as objects of aversion both to God and men; but they were not, on this account, robbed of the privileges of citizens, nor of the rights of humanity; much less were those kings and princes, whom a bishop had thought proper to exclude from the communion of the church, supposed to forfeit, on that account, their crown or their territories. But from the eighth century, it was quite otherwise in Europe; excommunication received that infernal power which dissolved all connections; so that those whom the bishops or their chief excluded from church communion, were degraded to a level with the beasts. Under this horrid sentence, the king, the ruler, the husband,

the father, nay, even the man, forfeited all their rights, all their advantages, the claims of nature, and the privileges of society. What then was the origin of this unnatural power which excommunication acquired? It was briefly as follows: Upon the conversion of the barbarous nations to Christianity, these new and ignorant proselytes confounded the excommunication in use among Christians, with that which had been practised in the times of Paganism by the priests of the gods, and considered them as of the same nature and effect. The Roman Pontiffs, on the other hand, were too artful not to countenance and encourage this error; and, therefore, employed all sorts of means to gain credit to an opinion so proper to gratify their ambition, and to aggrandize, in general, the episcopal order. That this is the true origin of the extensive and horrid influence of the European and Papal excommunication, will appear evident to such as cast an eye upon the following passage of Cæsar: De Bello Gallico, lib. vi. cap 13. "Si qui aut privatus aut publicus Druidum decreto non stetit, sacrificiis interdicunt. Hæc pœna est apud eos gravissima. Quibus ita est interdictum, ii numero impiorum et sceleratorum habentur, iis omnes decedunt, aditum eorum sermonemque defugiunt, ne quid ex contagione incommodi accipiant: neque iis petentibus jus redditur, neque honos ullus communicatur."

Mosheim.

Between the seventh and tenth centuries, great solemnities were added to the sentence of excommunication. The most important was the extinction of lamps or candles, by throwing them to the ground, with a solemn imprecation, that the per

son against whom the excommunication was pronounced, might be extinguished or destroyed by the vengeance of God. The people were summoned to attend this ceremony by the sound of a bell; and the curses accompanying the ceremony were pronounced out of a book by the minister, standing in a balcony. Hence originated the phrase of cursing, by bell, book, and candle-light.

Priestley's Corruptions of Christianity, vol. ii. p. 179.

The fear of excommunication has a most powerful effect upon the Modern Greeks. Even the most hardened tremble at a sentence which separates them from the unity of the church, and obliges the faithful to deny even the most common duties of charity to their fellow-creatures.

According to an account given to us, the common people believe, that a person once excommunicated, is incapable of returning to his original principles, and that the sentence of excommunication can never be withdrawn.

They believe, it is said, that a demon enters the body of persons who have died under excommunication, and that he preserves the body from corruption by giving it a new life. These resuscitated persons are farther supposed to eat and walk during the night. If their superstition be not exaggerated, the state of an excommunicated person after death, corresponds with the vulgar and fictitious idea of a Vampire.

See Ricaut's State of the Greek Church.

MATTHEW xvii. 1, 2.

"Into an high mountain—and his face did shine as the sun." (QUIETISTS OR NAVELERS.)

Barlaam, a noted monk, of the order of Basil, and afterwards Bishop of Gieraci in Calabria, made a tour through Greece towards the middle of the fourteenth century, for the sake of inspecting the Monks; the Greeks having had no little trouble given them by the Hesychasts or Quietists.

On Mount Athos, in Thessaly, he found these Quietists, whom he called Messalians, Euchites, and Navelers. Imagining that a long course of intense contemplation would produce perfect tranquillity of mind, they used every day to sit a considerable time in a solitary corner, with their eyes intently fixed on their navel; and boasted, that while they did so, they found the divine light beaming forth from the soul, and diffusing through the heart inexpressible sensations of pleasure and delight. This light*, they asserted, was the glory of God that surrounded our Saviour upon the Mount of Transfiguration.

"to be

"We have no reason," says Dr. Mosheim, surprised at, and much less to disbelieve, this account; for it is a fundamental rule with all those people in the Eastern world, whether Christians, Mahometans, or Pagans, (who maintain the necessity of abstracting the mind from the body, in order to hold communion with God, which is exactly the

In consequence of Barlaam having attacked the opinion of the Hesychasts, respecting the nature of this light, a council was assembled to decide the question, and Barlaam was condemned.

E