This list would become immense if we were to enter into every detail. We will carry it no no further, but conclude with the

his sister. He one day saw her bathing { mandments without these maidens, who n the Tiber: he stretched forth his hand, it is plain typify the virtues. drew her out of the river, and said in his heart, "How happy should I be, if I had wife like her in beauty and in manhers." Immediately the heavens opened; and he all at once beheld this same wife, who made him a curtsey from above, and said, "Good morning, Hermas." This wife was the Christian Church; she gave him much good advice.

A year after, the spirit transported him to the same place where he had seen this beauty, who nevertheless was old; but she was fresh in her age, and was old only because she had been created from the beginning of the world, and the world had been made for her.

The Book of Precepts contains fewer allegories; but that of Similitudes contains many.

Sibyls.

XXX.

The Sibyls.-What is most apocryphal in the primitive church is, the prodigious number of verses in favour of the Christian religion attributed to the ancient sibyls. Diodorus Siculus knew of only one, who was taken at Thebes by the Epigoni, and placed at Delphos before the Trojan war. Ten sibyls-that is, ten prophetesses, were soon made from this one.

She of Cuma had most credit among the Romans, and the sibyl Erythrea among the Greeks.

As all oracles were delivered in verse, none of the sibyls could fail to make "One day," says Hermas, "when I verses; and to give them greater authowas fasting and was seated on a hill, giv-rity, they sometimes made them acrosing thanks to God for all that he had donetics also. Several Christians, who had for me, a shepherd came, sat down be- not a zeal according to knowledge, not side me, and said, 'Why have you come only misinterpreted the ancient verses here so early? Because I am going supposed to have been written by the sithrough the stations,' answered I. What byls, but also made some themselves,is a station?' asked the shepherd. It is and which is worse, in acrostics, not a fast.' And what is this fast?' 'It is dreaming that this difficult artifice of my custom.' 'Ah!' replied the shepherd, acrosticising had no resemblance what'you know not what it is to fast; all this ever to the inspiration and enthusiasm of is of no avail before God. I will teach a prophetess. They resolved to support you that which is true fasting and pleasing the best of causes by the most awkward to the Divinity. Your fasting has nothing fraud. They accordingly made bad to do with justice and virtue. Serve God Greek verses, the initials of which signiwith a pure heart; keep his command-fied in Greek-JESUS, CHRIST, SON, ments: admit into your heart no guilty designs. If you have always the fear of God before your eyes-if you abstain from all evil, that will be true fasting, that will be the great fast which is acceptable to God.""

This philosophical and sublime piety is one of the most singular monuments of the first century. But it is somewhat strange that, at the end of the Similitudes, the shepherd gives him very good natured maidens-valdè affabiles,—to take care of his house, and declares to him that he cannot fulfil God's command

SAVIOUR; and these verses said, that with five loaves, and two fishes, he should feed five thousand men in the desert, and that with the fragments that remained he should fill twelve baskets.

The millenium, and the New Jerusalem, which Justin had seen in the air for forty nights, were, of course, foretold by the sibyls.

In the fourth century, Lactantius collected almost all the verses attributed to the sibyls, and considered them as convincing proofs. The opinion was so well authorised and so long held, that we still

sing hymns, in which the testimony of the sibyls is joined with the predictions of David:

Solvet saeclum in favillà,
Teste David cum Sibyllà.

philosophers, who were of the ancient religion of Rome. It is very probable that he professed that of his uncle Constantius only to avoid assassination. Julian was obliged to conceal his mental powers,

This catalogue of errors and frauds has been carried quite far enough. A hun-as Brutus had done under Tarquin. He was the less likely to be a Christian, dred might be repeated-so constantly as his uncle had forced him to be a monk, has the world been composed of deceivers, and of people fond of being deceived. and to perform the office of reader in the church. A man is rarely of the religion But let us pursue no further so dange-of his persecutor, especially when the rous a research. The elucidation of one great truth is worth more than the disco-latter wishes to be ruler of his conscience. very of a thousand falsehoods.

Another circumstance which renders

Not all these errors-not all the crowd this probable is, that he does not say, in of apocryphal books, have been sufficient any of his works, that he had been a Christian. He never asks pardon for it to injure the Christian religion, because, of the pontiffs of the ancient religion. as we all know, it is founded upon im- He addresses them in his letters, as if he mutable truths. These truths are sup-had always been attached to the worship ported by a church militant and trium- of the senate. It is not even proved that phant, to which God has given the power he practised the ceremonies of the Tauof teaching and of repressing. In several countries, it unites temporal with spi-robolium, which might be regarded as a ritual authority. Prudence, strength, wealth, are its attributes; and although it is divided, and its divisions have sometimes stained it with blood, it may be compared to the Roman commonwealth -constantly torn by intestine dissensions, but constantly triumphant.

APOSTATE.

It is still a question among the learned, whether the Emperor Julian was really an apostate, and whether he was ever truly a Christian.

wash out with bull's blood that which he sort of expiation, and that he desired to so unfortunately called the stain of his baptism. However, this was a pagan form of devotion, which is no more a proof than the assembling at the mysteries of Ceres. In short, neither his friends nor his enemies relate any fact, any words, which can prove that he ever believed in Christianity, and that he passed from that sincere belief to the worship of the gods of the empire.

Sound criticism being brought to per

that the Emperor Julian was a hero and a wise man-a stoic, equal to Marcus Aurelius. His errors are condemned, but his virtues are admitted. He is now regarded as he was by his contemporary Prudentius, author of the hymn Salvete flores martyrum. He says of Julian

If such be the case, they who do not He was not six years old when the speak of him as an apostate, appear very Emperor Constantius, still more barba-excusable. rous than Constantine, had his father, his brother, and seven of his cousins mur-fection, all the world now acknowledges dered. He and his brother Gallus with difficulty escaped from this carnage; but he was always very harshly treated by Constantius. His life was for a long time threatened; and he soon beheld his only remaining brother assassinated by the tyrant's order. The most barbarous of the Turkish sultans have never, I am sorry to say it, surpassed in cruelty or in villainy the Constantine family. From his tenderest years, study was Julian's only consolation. He communicated in secret with the most illustrious of the

Ductor fortissimus armis,

Conditor et legum celeberrimus; ore manuque
Consultor patriae; sed non consultor habenda
Religionis, amans tercentum millia divům
Perfidus ille Deo, sed non est perfidus orbi.
Though great in arms, in virtues, and in laws,-
Though ably zealous in his country's cause,
He spurned religio in his lofty plan,
Rejecting God while benefitting man.

His detractors are reduced to the mise- with anger! You have been guilty of the rable expedient of striving to make him (same excesses with which you reproach appear ridiculous. One historian, on the {your enemies! George deserved to be so authority of St. Gregory Nazianzen, re-treated, but it was not for you to be his proaches him with having worn too large executioners. You have laws; you should a beard. But, my friend, if nature gave have demanded justice," &c. him a long beard, why should he wear it short? He used to shake his head. Carry thy own better. His step was hurried. Bear in mind that the Abbé D'Aubignac, the king's preacher, having been hissed at the play, laughs at the air and gait of the great Corneille. Couldst thou hope to turn Marshal De Luxembourg into ridicule, because he walked ill and his figure was singular? He could march very well against the enemy. Let us leave it to the ex-jesuit Patouillet, the ex-jesuit Nonotte, &c., to call the Emperor Julian-the Apostate. Poor creatures! His Christian successor, Jovian, called him Divus Julianus.

Some have dared to brand Julian with the epithets intolerant and persecutingthe man who sought to extirpate persecution and intolerance! Peruse his fiftysecond letter, and respect his memory. Is he not sufficiently unfortunate in not having been a Catholic, and consequently in being burned in hell, together with the innumerable multitude of those who have not been Catholics, without our insulting him so far as to accuse him of intolerance? On the Globes of Fire said to have issued from the Earth to prevent the re-building of the Temple of Jerusalem under the Emperor Julian.

Let us treat this mistaken emperor as It is very likely that, when Julian rehe himself treated us. He said, "We solved to carry the war into Persia,he wantshould pity and not hate them: they areed money. It is also very likely that the already sufficiently unfortunate in erring on the most important of questions.”

Let us have the same compassion for him, since we are sure that the truth is on our side.

Is there not a palpable contradiction in what the historians relate?

Jews gave him some for permission to rebuild their temple, which Titus had partly destroyed, but of which there still remained the foundations, an entire wall, and the Antonine tower. But is it as likely that He rendered strict justice to his sub-globes of fire burst upon the works and jects; let us then render it to his memory. the workmen, and caused the undertaking Some Alexandrians were incensed against { to be relinquished? a bishop, who, it is true, was a wicked man, chosen by a worthless cabal. His name was George Biordos, and he was the 1. How could it be that the Jews began son of a mason. His manners were lower by destroying (as they are said to have than his birth. He united the basest per- done) the foundations of the temple, which fidy with the most brutal ferocity, and it was their wish and their duty to rebuild superstition with every vice. A calum- on the same spot? The temple was neniator, a persecutor, and an impostor-cessarily to be on Mount Moriah. There avaricious, sanguinary, and seditious, he was detested by every party, and at last the people cudgelled him to death. The following is the letter which the Emperor Julian wrote to the Alexandrians, on the subject of this popular commotion. Mark, how he addresses them, like a father and a judge.

"What!" said he, “instead of reserving for me the knowledge of your wrongs, you have suffered yourselves to be transported

it was that Solomon had built it. There it was that Herod had rebuilt it, with greater solidity and magnificence, having previously erected a fine theatre at Jerusalem, and a temple to Augustus at Cæsarea. The foundations of this temple, enlarged by Herod, were, according to Josephus, as much as twenty-five feet broad. Could the Jews, in Julian's time, possibly be mad enough to wish to disarrange these stones, which were so well

prepared to receive the rest of the edifice, cal probability, then, from the Emperor's and upon which the Mahometans after-own words, is, that unfortunately holding wards built their mosque? What man the Jewish books, as well as our own, in was ever foolish and stupid enough thus abhorrence, he at length resolved to make to deprive himself, at great cost and ex- the Jewish prophets lie. cessive labour, of the greatest advantage that could present itself to his hands and eyes? Nothing is more incredible.

The Abbé de la Blétrie, the historian of the Emperor Julian, does not understand how the temple of Jerusalem was 2. How could eruptions of flame burst destroyed three times. He says that apforth from the interior of these stones?parently Julian reckoned as a third deThere might be an earthquake in the neighbourhood, for they are frequent in Syria but that great blocks of stone should have vomited clouds of fire! Is not this story entitled to just as much credit as all those of antiquity?

struction the catastrophe which happened during his reign. A curious destruction this!-the non-removal of the stones of an old foundation. What could prevent this writer from seeing that the temple. having been built by Solomon, recon3. If this prodigy, or if an earthquake, structed by Zorobabel, entirely destroyed which is not a prodigy, had really hap- by Herod, rebuilt by Herod himself with pened, would not the Emperor Julian so much magnificence, and at last laid in have spoken of it in the letter in which ruins by Titus, manifestly made three dehe says, that he had intended to rebuildstructions of the temple? The reckoning this temple? Would not his testimony have been triumphantly adduced? Is it not infinitely more probable that he changed his mind? Does not this letter

contain these words?—

is correct. Julian should surely have escaped calumny on this point.

The Abbé de la Blétrie calumniates him sufficiently by saying, that all his virtues were only seeming, while all his "Quid de templo suo dicent, quod, vices were real. But Julian was not hyquùm tertiò sit eversum, nondùm hodier-pocritical, nor avaricious, nor fraudulent, nam usque diem instauratur? Hæc ego, non ut illis exprobarem, in medium adduxi, utpotè qui templum illud tanto intervallo à ruinis excitare voluerim; sed ideò commemoravi, ut ostenderem delirasse prophetas istos, quibus cum stolidis aniculis negotium erat."

"What can the Jews say of their temple, which has been destroyed for the third time, and is not yet restored? I speak of this, not for the purpose of reproaching them, for I myself intended to have raised it once more from its ruins, but to show the extravagance of their prophets, who had none but old women to

deal with."

nor lying, nor ungrateful, nor cowardly, nor drunken, nor debauched, nor idle, nor vindictive. What then were his vices?

4. Let us now examine the redoubtable argument made use of to persuade us that globes of fire issued from stones. Ammianus Marcellinus, a pagan writer, free from all suspicion, has said it. Be it so: but this Ammianus has also said, that when the Emperor was about to sacrifice ten oxen to his gods for his first victory over the Persians, nine of them fell to the earth before they were presented to the altar. He relates a hundred predictions-a hundred prodigies. Are we to believe in them? Are we to believe in all the ridiculous miracles re

Is it not evident that the Emperor having paid attention to the Jewish pro-lated by Livy? phecies, that the temple should be rebuilt Besides, who can say that the text of more beautiful than ever, and that all the Ammianus Marcellinus has not been nations of the earth should come and wor-falsified? Would it be the only instance ship in it, thought fit to revoke the per- in which this artifice has been employed? mission to raise the edifice? The histori- I wonder that no mention is made of

the little fiery crosses which all the workmen found on their bodies when they went to bed. They would have made an admirable figure along with the globes.

The fact is, that the temple of the Jews was not rebuilt, and it may be presumed never will be so. Here let us hold, and not seek useless prodigies. Globi flam- { marum-globes of fire, issue neither from stones nor from earth. Ammianus, and those who have quoted him, were not natural philosophers. Let the Abbé de { la Blétrie only look at the fire on St. John's day, and he will see that flame always ascends with a point, or in a cloud, and never in a globe. This alone is sufficient to overturn the nonsense which he comes forward to defend with injudicious criticism and revolting pride.

to be found worthy of God in following their footsteps in his kingdom, after the example of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Isaiah, and the other prophets-of Peter and Paul, and the apostles who were married."

Some of the learned assert, that the name of St. Paul has been interpolated in this famous letter: however, Turrian and all who have seen the letters of Ignatius in the library of the Vatican, acknowledge that St. Paul's name appears there. And Baronius does not deny that this passage is to be found in some Greek manuscripts: Non negamus in quibusdam græcis codicibus. But he asserts that these words have been added by modern Greeks.

In the old Oxford library, there was a manuscript of St. Ignatius's letters in After all, the thing is of very little im- Greek, which contained these words; but portance. There is nothing in it that it was, I believe, burned with many other affects either faith or morals; and histori-books at the taking of Oxford by Cromcal truth is all that is here sought for.

APOSTLES.

well. There is still one in Latin in the same library, in which the words Pauli et apostolorum have been effaced, but in such a manner that the old characters may be easily distinguished.

Their Lives, their Wives, their Children. AFTER the article Apostle in the EncyIt is however certain, that this passage clopedia, which is as learned as it is orthodox, very little remains to be said. exists in several editions of these letters. But we often hear it asked-Were the This dispute about St. Paul's marriage is, What apostles married? Had they any chil-after all, a very frivolous one. dren? if they had, what became of those matters it whether he was married or not, children? Where did the apostles live? if the other apostles were married? His Where did they write? Where did they first Epistle to the Corinthians is quite die? Had they any appropriated dis-sufficient to prove that he might be martricts? Did they exercise any civil min-ried, as well as the rest :— istry? Had they any jurisdiction over the faithful? Were they bishops? Had they an hierarchy, rites, or ceremonies ?

I.

Were the apostles married?
There is extant a letter attributed to St.
Ignatius the Martyr, in which are these
decisive words :-

"I call to mind your sanctity as I do that of Elias, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, and the chosen disciples Timothy, Titus, Evadius, and Clement; yet I do not blame such other of the blessed as were bound in the bonds of marriage, but hope

"Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead abo it a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas? Or I only and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working? Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges?"

It is clear from this passage, that all the apostles were married, as well as St. Peter. And St. Clement of Alexandria positively declares that St. Paul nad a wife.

The Roman discipline has changed, which is no proof that the usage of the primitive ages was not different.