thority; but he seemed to have no idea that religion is to be established in the minds of men by reason and not by force, and but little experimental acquaintance with that system he was so zealous to establish.

As the secular arm had now, for many years, been turned against different portions of the professed followers of Christ, the Pagans came out of their dens and took courage. They rejoiced in the contentions among Christians; and when they saw the Arians depose those who had deposed them, they said, “The Arians have come over to our party.” One bold and daring effort more, therefore, Satan determined to make, to drive Christianity from the earth, and regain the seat of empire.

Julian had been educated a Christian, was a public reader in the Church of Nicomedia, and zealous for Christianity, though he probably was never acquainted with the true spirit of the Gospel. But, through his enmity to the Constantine family, and the artifices of the philosophers, he apostatized from his professed faith and bent the whole force of his empire to the reinstitution of Pagan idolatry. He was a man of great talents, dissimulation and cunning, and he pursued those measures which must have ended in the extermination of Christianity had it not been the cause of God. For he not only repealed the laws made against idolatry, opened the heathen temples, raised up an immense priesthood, and set the whole machinery of Paganism in motion throughout his vast empire; but he labored, in a thousand ways, to undermine Christianity, by destroying its moral influence. He made the Christians continually the object of ridicule, calling them Galileans; shut up their schools; took from them their civil and religious privileges; broke up the clergy by depriving them of their incomes, and burdening them with taxes and civil duties; befriended the Jews; reformed the morality of Paganism to make it acceptable to the pious, and used every ensnaring artifice to draw over the unwary. He abstained from open persecution, because he saw that the blood of the martyrs had been the seed of the Church. But if he did not take away life, he deprived it of peace and comfort.

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But Julian found that there was a power above him. In defiance of heaven, he undertook to build the Temple of Jerusalem. 'He committed the conduct of the affair," says Amiauus Marcellinus, a writer of that period, and an enemy to Christianity, "to Alypius of Antioch, who set

himself to the vigorous execution of his charge, and was assisted by the governor of the province; but horrible balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations with repeated attacks, rendered the place inaccessible to the scorched workmen from time to time, and the element resolutely driving them to a distance, the enterprise was dropped." Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and Chrysostom, who lived at the same time, and the ecclesiastical historians of the next age, all attest the same facts.

He

To what depression the Church would have been reduced by so formidable an enemy had he lived to old age, none can tell. A merciful providence removed him after a reign of one year and eight months, in the 32d year of his age. had attempted the conquest of the Persians, and was killed by a Persian lance. Conscious of his fate, he filled his hand with his blood, and casting it into the air, said, "O, Galilean, thou hast conquered."

This was the last persecution of Christianity by Pagan Rome. Pagans, however, beyond the bounds of the empire, continued to defend their ancient superstitions by arms, and massacred multitudes who bore the Christian name.— This was particularly the case in Persia, where, from the year 330 to 370, a most destructive persecution raged, and an incredible number of Christians were put to death-the Magi and the Jews persuading Sapor the monarch, that the Christians were friendly to the Roman emperor.

The fourth century produced some men of eminent learning and piety. Among these were, in the east, Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, to whom we are indebted for the best history of the Church; Athanasius, patriarch of Alexandria, the firm and powerful opponent of Arianism; Basil, surnamed the great, bishop of Cæsarea, an eminent controversialist; Ephraim, the Syrian, a man of much sanctity of life and conversation, whose moral writings were an honor to the age; and John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, one of the most able preachers that has adorned the Christian Church. To strong powers of mind and a lively imagination, Chrysostom added fine powers of oratory, and commanded immense audiences. He was an able commentator on Paul's epistles. In opposition to Origen, he adhered to the literal sense of scripture, maintaining it to be the true. He was the firm supporter of the doctrines of grace, and a bold reprover of vice, and fell a victim to the persecution of his foes. He was banished from the See of Constanti

nople and died a Pityus on the Euxine sea, A. D. 407, aged 53.

In the west, was Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a man of eminent piety and learning, and Jerome, a monk of Palestine, whose writings are very voluminous. He translated the Bible into Latin. His translation was called the Latin Vulgate, and was afterwards exclusively adopted by the Roman Church. But it contained many errors. By his own writings he contributed much to the growth of superstition.Still, he was the most able commentator of all the Latin Fathers. Hilary of Poictiers, a man of singular attachment to the Gospel in its simplicity, and a firm defender of the doctrine of the Trinity; and Lactantius, who, in his divine institutions, exposed the absurdity of the pagan rites, lived about the same period. Ulpilas also deserves notice. He was zealous in civilizing and converting the Goths.-He translated the four Gospels into their language.

But by far the most distinguished and valuable man of this second age of the Church, was Augustine, bishop of Hippo, in Africa, who flourished in the latter part of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. He was born in Numidia and converted about the year 354, when near thirty years of age, in an evident outpouring of the Spirit upon the Churches, by which vital godliness was much revived from its low state, especially in the east. His confessions, in which he gives an account of his conversion, may be read with profit by Christians in every age. He was early raised to the bishopric of Hippo, and by his humble piety and powerful defence of the fundamental truths of the Gospel, soon became the admiration of the Christian world. best commentary was on the Psalms. He died in the year 430, at the age of seventy-six. He was a star of the first magnitude, and was a guide for centuries after to Christians, who, amid the darkness of Popery, desired to walk in the truth.

His

But the theological writers of that age are not to be compared with modern divines. Their folios will not repay the trouble of a perusal.

Augustine was raised up to defend the doctrines of grace. These doctrines had remained fundamental from the apostolic age, though they had been much corrupted by Justin, Origen, and others, who were led astray by a deceitful philosophy. But when, in the days of Constantine, the world came into the Church, they were a dead letter. All were

viewed as Christians, who professed Christianity, though they knew not in their own experience that there was a Holy Ghost. A great part of the Christian world, therefore, were ready to subscribe to a system which rejected the necessity of the grace of God; should a man arise with the talent and boldness to promulge one.

Such a man was Pelagius. He was born in Britain; but made Rome his residence. There in company with Cælestius an Irish monk, he avowed, about the year 410, a denial of the total corruption of human nature, and of the necessity of the enlightening, renewing, and sanctifying operations of the Holy Spirit. Cælestius was at first the most open. At Carthage he labored much to propagate his sentiments. He was pressed with the custom of the Church in baptizing infants, as a proof of her belief in all ages, that infants were depraved; but he persisted in his sentiments, and was condemned as a heretic, in the year 412.

Pelagius went to Jerusalem, where he found patronage and formed disciples. His opinions were warmly opposed by Augustine; who firmly maintained entire depravity; the necessity of divine grace; that there is an eternal purpose of God or predestination with regard to those who shall be saved, and that they, and only they, will finally obtain it. The Christian world was distracted. Council after council was held, and decree after decree was passed, condemning or approving the opposite parties; but in 420, the secular arm was raised, and Pelagianism was suppressed throughout the empire. A new sect, however, soon arose, favored by Cassian, a monk at Marseilles, called the Semi-Pelagians, who allowed the necessity of divine grace to preserve in holiness, though not to commence it, and who were long engaged, especially in France, in controversy with the followers of Augustine.

In the remainder of the fifth, and whole of the sixth century, the reader of ecclesiastical history finds but little that engages his attention. The Church, washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God is scarcely visible. Immense changes took place in the civil world which could not fail to affect the visible kingdom of the Redeemer.

In the year 476, the western part of the Roman empire was dissolved by the incursions of a fierce and warlike people from the northern part of Europe, who had for more than half a century been overspreading Italy, Gaul and

Spain, and erecting new kingdoms in these beautiful countries. This great event was depicted in the vision of Daniel, ages before, in which he beheld a beast, dreadful and terrible, which had ten horns. This beast was the Roman empire, and these horns were ten kingdoms, into which it is now divided by the barbarous nations. How wonderful the providence of God! "He seeth the end from the beginning."

These barbarians, the Goths, Huns, Franks, Herulians and Vandals, were idolaters and strangers to Christianity, but they concerned themselves but little about religion of any description, being chiefly intent upon wealth and power, and were for the most part, induced to renounce their idolatry and become nominal, but wretched Christians. Some, however, of the old Pagans, who remained in the empire, hoped to revive their ancient worship, and, in a few instances, instigated the heathen to acts of cruelty and oppression towards those who would not bow to their idols.

Had these idolaters been of the character of the old opposers of Christianity, they might, in this degenerate age of the Church, have easily exterminated it from the earth. But they came down from the cold regions of the north for comfort and improvement; and finding Christianity in all respects, a better religion than their own, they embraced it; and it had in time, the happiest effects in softening their manners and refining their morals. They adopted the Arian system, and the Nicene believers received from them the bitterest persecutions.

One of the ten kingdoms, was that of the Franks. Clovis, their king, had married Clotilda, niece of Gondebaud, king of the Burgundians. Her own nation had already embraced Christianity, because they thought the God of the Romans most able to protect them against their enemies. Such low ideas had these barbarians of the gospel of Christ. But they, as well as the Vandals, Suevi and Goths, had sided with the Arian party. Clotilda, however, was attached to the Nicene faith. She labored much for the conversion of her husband to the Christian faith; but he was obstinate, and when her child, which had been baptised, died, he attributed its death to its baptism. At length, fearing destruction in a battle with the Alenmans, he prayed to Jesus Christ for victory; promising that if he would grant it, he would become a Christian. Victory ensued, and he was baptized at Rheims, and received into the general Church,