passed, perhaps never equalled? For myself I must confess that, to speak of one of these great men, I can never look into a volume of his works, and observe how he exhausts every question under his hand, surveying it at once with a large grasp and a resistless penetration, without feeling the utmost reverence for the name and the memory of Thomas Aquinas.

I have thus endeavoured to show some of the uses which we may gather from the study of Church history. And the reflections which they suggest are almost enough by themselves to fulfil the other part of my task, and show in what spirit it should be written, and in what spirit it should be read. If it is a history of God's truth, it must be written in a spirit of fervent love to him and to his truth. Nothing but that spirit will enable a writer to exercise the patience by which alone the truth can be presented in its real colours. The religion which came not to bring peace but a sword, has accomplished in every age this prophecy of its effects, and they who hate it and its authors, have always anxiously endeavoured to attribute to its inherent character the misery which has arisen from its misapplication and perversion by the frail

It is
It is easy

beings for whose benefit it was sent. to tell the bare outlines of Christian history, the persecutions which Christianity has undergone in early times, the wars which it has occasioned, the fierce struggles between Churches, "till victory sickens, ignorant where to rest," so that the father was against the son, and the son against the father; but it were a grievous error to think that this is the history of Christianity.

It wants a heart deeply devoted to God and his cause, to examine all these things, so that it may first see itself, and then show to others, where contests have needlessly arisen, because both were wrong, and where they were inevitable, because the evil will resist the good, and the good may not be stayed in its course; where, in a word, and how, the cause of the Everlasting Gospel was promoted by the struggles and sufferings of those who loved it, when their partial errors delayed and obstructed its course, and when they at once had the privilege and the blessing of trying their own faith by the enduring of hardship and of handing down the blessing to others. For not only of individuals, but of the struggle carried on by man, under God, for the Gospel, may we say,—

That since 'tis true we only here possess,

These treasures but in vessels made of slime;
Religion, we by consequence confess,

Here to be mixt of base things and sublime,

Of native evil, supernatural good,

Truth born of God, and error in our blood.

Yet gold we have, though much alloyed with dross,
Refining, never perfect in this life,

Still in our journey meeting gain and loss;

Rest in our deaths, and until then a strife:
And as our days are want, temptation, error;
So is our zeal, war, prayers, remorse and terror.
LORD BROOK.

Let any one take up Mosheim, and I mention his name without any disrespect, for he has done whatever could be done in his way, by actually wedging and driving in one fact after another into his pages till they bristle with facts, and the heart and the imagination are alike beaten down and crushed to pieces,—and see, when one has read his careful and laborious conglomeration of facts, what more we know of Christianity, as a rule of life intended to influence both individuals and nations, gradually to operate upon laws and customs, and institutions and manners, and

gradually to cheer and bless all the sons of

men.

We toil through his pages with a reluctant and weary spirit, without ever going beneath the surface, or beyond dry details, without one movement of the heart for the cause which he is recording, and with lively pleasure only when we can lay the book out of our hands. In a word, in Mosheim, there is no love of the cause, or if the man had a heart, the writer thought it his duty to overlay his feelings with dry details of barren facts, without the record of a single moral lesson to which they can lead, or a feeling which they can inspire.

It would be unjust, in answer, to say, that a work like Milner's is still worse and more useless than Mosheim, though the observation would be perfectly true. But it is true, not because Milner loved Christianity too much, or was too blind to the imperfections of those whom he thought false Christians, but simply, that he was a man of feeble powers and limited views, conscientiously, I am sure, but bigotedly attached to certain opinions, and quite resolved to find or make them every where, and to give the history-not of Christianity, but—of certain opinions which he deemed to be the whole of it.

His history, as well as Mosheim's, keeps its ground, only because there is no better to drive them from it. Mosheim's, indeed, will always be valuable as a book of reference, because he is accurate in his facts. But when a book of purer and wider Christian views than Milner's is written, his, which has no intrinsic value, and could never be appealed to by any person capable of judging for himself as an authority, will sink totally into merited neglect, with the exception of the admirable Life of Luther, written not by him, but by his vigorous and powerfulminded brother.

If again, the history of the Christian Church is the history of the one great blessing given to man, how can it rightly be written by one who has not a fervent love for mankind, an unspeakable interest in their fortunes? How can he rightly describe the infinite benefits which man has derived from the Gospel, who is totally reckless whether mankind is improving or not? How can he worthily deplore the yet greater blessings which man might have reaped from Revelation, but which by his own perverseness he has cast from him; in whom the misery and the sin of his brethren have never awakened a fear; from whom they have never drawn a sigh?