and of ignorance, whose full streams we find now so pestilent. We thus arrive at the pretended conversion of the barbarians; an event of immense importance, as explaining the more confirmed separation of the clergy and laity in modern times, and the incomplete influence which Christianity has exercised upon the institutions even of Christian countries. But the barbarians found the Roman world in no healthy state; and Christianity had shared in the general corruption. Social helplessness, and intellectual frivolousness, had long characterized the state of society; the first derivable in the eastern provinces from a period earlier than the Roman conquest, but encouraged and heightened alike under the proconsular and imperial governments; the other to be traced to a still older date, and connected with more complicated causes; the showiness of ancient literature, calculated, owing to the dearness of books, for recitation to a number rather than for solitary reading: the unavoidable difficulties which obstructed the path of physical inquiry; the artificial difficulties opposed under a despotic system to the prosecution of political science; and the undue concentration of men's attention from those causes upon rhetoric and metaphysics - studies indispensable in an active state of society, when physical and social inquiries are pursued with vigour-studies which we are unwisely neglecting, whilst all our danger lies the other way, but which are wholly unfit to be the sole or principal intellectual food of our nature, unfit to be followed for their own sake, but most useful as a guide and strengthener of our minds for more practical and particular inquiries; ennobling when they withdraw us from the exclusive dominion of Utilitarianism, but enfeebling and paralysing when they injure practical wisdom, and turn us from Christians and citizens into disputants about words and abstractions. These two evils then of the Roman world, social helplessness and intellectual frivolousness, infected the Christian church from its earliest period, and have been the principal causes of the abandonment by the church of its own government, and leaving it in the hands of the clergy; and of those fatal strifes of words, which, whatever was the proportion of error on the side of the respective disputants, were in themselves, and in the very fact of their agitation, a corruption of the simplicity of Christian faith. But while the student is thus engaged, there is great need that he should keep his spirit and his intellect continually refreshed, by constant recourse to the great springs of truth, divine and human. It is a perilous employment for any man to be perpetually contemplating narrow-mindedness and weakness in conjunction with much of piety and goodness. It is perilous either to his understanding or his faith, according as the moral or intellectual part of his own nature may happen to be predominant. And therefore let all who study ecclesiastical history, or the mass of ecclesiastical writers, preserve a lively knowledge of the Scriptures on the one hand, and of the master works of human wisdom on the other. Both these are alike necessary: for if the Scriptures had been sufficient, we should not have had Milner and other writers of that party; if the greatest works of human wisdom had been sufficient without the Scriptures, we should not have had Gibbon. Both are necessary, -I am not now speaking of moral improvement, but of the understanding's perception of truth; -the Scriptures, to remind us without ceasing that Christianity in itself is wholly free from the foolishness thrown around it by some of its professors; the great works of human genius, to save us from viewing the Scriptures themselves through the medium of ignorance and prejudice, and lowering them by our perverse interpretations, in order to make them countenance our errors. Some perhaps even now may object to the notion that human wisdom can enable us to interpret God's Word. I need not quote here the various texts of Scripture which are commonly brought forward to support this objection; and which, forced as they are from their real meaning, confirm the statement which they are supposed to confute. Undoubtedly no bad man, no careless liver, is likely, by the mere aids of criticism or intellectual ability, to enter into the full meaning of the Scriptures. But I have been all along supposing the case not of a bad or careless man, but of a Christian student, desirous to use every means which God has given him in order to arrive at the truth as it is in Christ. Is such an one the better or the holier for letting his understanding grow feeble for want of exercise, or is a good man's folly more likely to discover truth than his wisdom? The great fault in the writings of that party who are supposed to attach the least value to what they call profane learning, appears to me to consist in their frequent misquotations and misinterpretations of Scripture; they can quote detached texts, but are by no means remarkable for a comprehensive view of large portions of the Sacred Volume taken together: and with the very best intentions they interpret St. Paul no better than they would interpret Aristotle, and for the same reason: because they do not sufficiently exercise and cultivate their minds to become masters of the meaning of a profound and difficult writer. The course of theological study which I have here suggested, and which seems to follow naturally from the two divisions of a Christian minister's business, the interpretation and application of the Scriptures, would, I am sure, amply repay any individual who would resolve to make trial of it. It seems to me exactly to answer to the office of the Christian minister. For as a minister should be a more perfect specimen of the Christian character, so the course of study here recommended is only a more perfect Christian education; carrying on to a greater proficiency that knowledge which in a lower degree is essential to every Christian, the knowledge of the Scriptures, and of the common duties and relations of life. It is an education indeed which no man will ever exhaust; but as the very lowest elements of it are valuable, so in proportion as we advance in it, shall we find ourselves wiser both theoretically and practically; the play of our minds will be freer and more active, their grasp stronger and more comprehensive, their thoughts more lively and beautiful, their knowledge fuller, their judgment more accurate. Nor let it be said that it is out of the reach of an ordinary student; as requiring too much time and labour. Let those who say so look at the lists of books that are actually recommended from authority to young men preparing themselves for orders. And these lists being mostly confined to what is called Divinity, suppose that a man will provide himself over and above with that common knowledge which the state of the times and the ordinary demand of society renders necessary. But I would |