a very religious man, and did a great deal to convert the heathens in
Germany, and spread the power of the Church. He saved Rome from some
dangerous enemies, and made the Pope a sort of prince over the city; and
the Pope, in return, crowned him Emperor of Rome, though without any
right to give away that title. He died in 814, and after his time all
the Christian west suffered horribly from the Teuton heathens, who lived
in Norway and Denmark, and who used to come down in their ships and ruin
and ravage all the countries round, especially England and France. They
loved nothing so well as burning a convent; and such a number of learned
monks and their books perished under their hands, that the world was
growing more ignorant than ever, when our good King Alfred rose up in
880, taught himself first, and then his people; and though he died
early, left such good seed behind him, that at last his Saxons converted
their enemies themselves, and Norway and Denmark became Christian too,
through kings who had learnt the faith in England. But all the errors
grew the faster from the ignorance of the people; and at Rome, where
there was plenty of learning, the power the Pope enjoyed had done little
good, for it made ambitious men covet the appointment, and they ruled
their branch of the Church so as to ensure their own gain, more than for
the sake of what was right. The Patriarchs of Constantinople greatly
disapproved of this, and made the most of all the differences of opinion
and practice. When the Council of Constantinople had added to the Nicene
Creed the sentence which asserts the Godhead of the Third Holy Person of
the Ever Blessed Trinity, the third clause had been "Who proceedeth from
the Father." Of late the Western Church had added the words "and the
Son." Now though the Greeks believed with all their hearts that the
blessed Spirit doth come forth from the Father and the Son, yet they
said that the Latins ought not to put words into the Creed that no
Council had yet authorized; and thus a great dispute arose. Besides, the
Popes had begun to think themselves universal Bishops, heads over all
other Patriarchs; and to this the Patriarch of Constantinople would not
submit, and rightly said that from the old times all Patriarchs had been
equal, and had no right to take authority over one another. At last
matters ran so high, that the Pope sent three legates or messengers, who
laid on the altar of St. Sophia an act breaking the communion between
the two Churches, and then shook off the dust from their feet. This was
in the year 1056, a very sad one, for here was the first great rent in
the Church, the first breach, and one that has never been repaired, for
the Greeks will not, to this day, hold communion with anyone belonging
to the Western Church, nor will the Roman Church with them; and after
the first happy thousand years when the Church was one outwardly as well
as inwardly, thus began the time when her unity has become a matter of
faith, and not of sight. But it is our duty to believe that all good
Christians are joined together, because they are joined to our blessed
Lord, as the boughs of a tree belong to one another by their union with
the root, though they may grow apart on different branches.
There were many other differences. The Greeks and Latins reckoned the
time of keeping Easter in different ways, and had not the same way of
shaving the heads of their clergy. Besides, the Greeks thought that when
St. Paul said an elder might be the husband of one wife, he meant that a
parish priest _must_ be married; so if a clergyman's wife died, they put
him into a convent, and took away his parish. The Roman Catholics said,
on the contrary, that the clergy were better unmarried; and by-and-by
they forbade even those who were not monks to have wives; and in process
of time a far more serious evil gradually arose in the Western Church.
The clergy said that there was no need for the people to partake of the
Cup at the Holy Eucharist, so they were cut off from that privilege,
though our Lord had said, "Drink ye ALL." The clergy said it was all the
same whether the people drank of it or not, since Flesh and Blood were
one; but this was thinking for themselves, and over explaining, and so
by-and-by they lost the real spiritual devout way in which they ought to
have reverently spoken of that great and holy mystery, and thought of it
in a manner that answered better to their mere human understanding.
LESSON XXXI.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
"Surely the isles shall wait for Me."--_Isaiah_, ix. 9.
It is not easy to make out exactly the ten kingdoms to which the Roman
dominion was said in Daniel to give place, because sometimes one
flourished, sometimes another; sometimes one was swallowed up, sometimes
a fresh one sprang forth; but there can be no doubt that the ten horns
mean the powers of Europe, which have always been somewhere about that
number ever since the conquest by the Teuton nations.
By the time the first thousand years had past, the "little leaven" had
thoroughly "leavened the whole lump;" and the ways of thinking, the
habits, laws, and fashions, of the western people, were all moulded by
Christian notions. The notions were not always really Christian, nor did
the people always act up to them; but they meant so to do; and though
there was some error, yet there was also the sincere saving Truth, which
made those who followed it holy, and led them to salvation. Perhaps the
greatest mistake was the craving to see, instead of only to believe;
and this led to peoples' putting their trust in many things besides
the Merits of our blessed Lord--in relics, in images of saints, in
the intercessions of the blessed Virgin, and above all, in the Pope's
promises.
The Popes were Patriarchs of Rome, and had thus some right over the
Churches founded from thence. They used to send the Primate, or chief
Archbishop, of each country, a pall or scarf, woven of the wool of lambs
which they had blessed on St. Agnes's Day. Many questions were sent to
them to be decided. At first the right way of choosing a bishop was,
that the clergy and people of the place should elect him, and the king
give his consent; but when the Pope's power increased, ambitious men
used to bribe the people to elect them; and affairs grew so bad, that
at last the Emperor Otho, of Germany, came to Rome, put down the wicked
Popes, and took the choice quite into his own hands. This was wrong the
other way; and after two or three reigns, the great Pope, Gregory VII.,
after a fierce struggle with the emperor, Henry IV., set matters in
order again, and obtained that, as the Roman people were not to be
trusted with the choice, it should be put into the hands of the clergy
of the parish churches at Rome, who were called Cardinals, and have ever
since had the election of the Pope in their hands. They wear purple
and crimson robes and hats, in memory of the old Roman purple of the
emperors.
It had been thought by almost the whole of the Western Church, ever
since they had lost their communion with the eastern branch, which might
have kept them right, that the Pope stood visibly in our Lord's place as
Head of the Church, and that he was infallible, namely, so inspired by
the Holy Spirit, that he could no more fall into error than a General
Council could. So he stood at the head of all the Archbishops and
Bishops, Abbots and clergy, of the west; and whenever a difficulty
arose, it was sent to him to be settled. He ruled likewise over the
consciences of all men and women. If they sinned, the being cut off from
the Church, excommunicated, as it was called, was the most terrible
punishment that could befall them; and if a king or country were very
wicked indeed, the Pope could lay them under an interdict, namely,
deprive them of every office of religion, shut up the church doors, and
forbid all service.
Sometimes these threats were of great benefit. It was good for the kings
to be forced to think of what was right, to be stopped from making cruel
wars, from misusing their people, or living in sinful pleasure; but the
Popes did not always use their power rightly; they would become angry,
and excommunicate people for opposing them, and not for doing what was
wrong, and they did not bethink them of our Lord's saying, that His
Kingdom is not of this world. Still the Church was working great good.
Holy people were bred up, some in convents, some in the world: St.
Margaret, Queen of Scotland, who taught her people to say grace at their
meals; St. Richard, the good humble Bishop of Chichester; and that
glorious French monk, St. Bernard, whose holy life and beautiful
preaching made him everywhere honoured.
Great alms were given to the poor, and almost all our most beautiful
churches and cathedrals were built by devout kings, nobles, or bishops,
who gave their wealth for God's glory. These were built so as to be
almost as symbolical as the Temple had been. They were usually in the
shape of a cross, in honour of the token of our Salvation; the body was
called the nave, or ship, because of the Ark of Christ's Church; the
doors stood for repentance, as the entrance; the Font, just within,
showed that none could enter save by the Laver of Regeneration; the
holiest part was to the east, as looking for the Sun of Righteousness.
This portion is called the chancel, and belongs to the clergy, as the
Sanctuary did to the priests of old; but the people are not as of
old cut off, but draw near in faith, to taste of the great Sacrifice
commemorated upon the Altar. The eagle desk for the Holy Scripture,
shows forth one Gospel emblem; the Litany desk is for times of
repentance, when the Priest may mourn between porch and altar. The dead
rested within and around, in the shadow of their church, and constant
services were celebrated, that so the gates might ever be open.
Even warriors sought to have their alms blessed by the Church; they
bound themselves not to fight on holy-days, such as Fridays and Sundays;
and before they could be made knights, they were obliged to vow before
God that they would always help the weak, never fight in a bad cause,
and always speak the truth. So that all would have been like perfect
fulfilment of Isaiah's promises of the glory of the Church, save that
man will still follow the devices of his own heart; and there were
shrines and altars where undue honour was paid to the Saints, and too
many superstitious observances were carried on before their images.
Prayers and alms were offered for departed souls, in the notion that
they were gone to Purgatory, a place where it was said their sins would
be purged away by suffering before the Day of Judgment, and whence their
friends might, as they imagined, assist them by their offerings.
People used to go on pilgrimage, and especially such as had fallen into
any great sin, would go through everything to pray at the Holy Sepulchre
for forgiveness. The Saracens, who had not been unkind to the pilgrims,
were subdued by a much fiercer set of Mahometans, the Turcomans, who
did everything to profane the holy places, and robbed and misused the
Christians who came to worship there. The news of this profanation
stirred up all Europe to deliver the Sanctuary from the unbeliever.
Monks went about preaching the holy war, and multitudes took the cross,
that is, fastened on their shoulder one cut out in cloth, and vowed to
win back Jerusalem. The Pope took upon himself to say that whoever was
killed in such a cause, would have all his sins forgiven, and be in no
danger of purgatory; and this be called an indulgence. These wars were
called Crusades. In the first, in 1098, Jerusalem was conquered, and a
very good and pious man, named Godfrey, set up to be king, though he
would not be crowned, saying he would never wear a crown of gold where
his Master had worn a crown of thorns. But as the Greek Christians who
already lived there, would not own the Pope, but held to their own
Patriarch, a Latin Patriarch was thrust in and was in subjection to the
Pope; and thus the unhappy schism grew wider. After Godfrey's death, the
Christians in Palestine did not behave well, nor show themselves worthy
to have the keeping of Jerusalem; and though St. Bernard preached a
second Crusade, and the Emperor of Germany and King of France came to
help them, their affairs only grew worse and worse.
In 1186, after they had possessed the Holy City only eighty-eight years,
they were deprived of it; it was taken again by the Saracens, and they
retained only a few towns on the coast. All devout people mourned that
the unbeliever should again be defiling the sanctuary; but the Pope had
a great quarrel with the Emperor of Germany, and told the poor credulous
people that fighting his battles was as good as a Crusade; and they
began to forsake the Holy Land, and leave it to its fate. Our own
Richard the Lion Heart did his best, and so did the excellent French
king, St. Louis, who died in Africa on his way to the Crusade, but all
in vain; and finally the Christians were driven out of Acre, their last
town, and Palestine became Mahometan again with only a few oppressed
Christians here and there. Then came a much more rude, dull, and violent
race of Mahometans, the Turks, who burst out of the East, conquered the
Saracens, gained all Asia Minor, and at last, in the year 1453, they
took the city of Constantinople, killed the last emperor, Constantine,
in the assault, and won all the country we now call Turkey, where they
sadly oppressed the Greeks, though they could not make them turn from
their true Catholic faith. It was then that the light of truth faded
entirely away from Ephesus and the Churches of Asia; a blight fell
wherever the Turks went, and cities, once prosperous, were deserted and
ruined. Tyre was one of these; and she has now become a mere rock, where
fishermen spread their nets to dry upon the sea-shore, as Ezekiel had
foretold. However, it was only forty years afterwards, that the last
remains of the Mahometan conquerors were chased out of Spain, so that it
became again an entirely Christian country.
LESSON XXXII.
THE REFORMATION.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field."--_Matt_.
xiii. 44.
When the Services of the Church were first drawn up, almost everyone in
the East spoke Greek, and most people in the West understood Latin;
and when the Teutons learnt Christianity, they also, with it, learnt
a little Latin. Thus the Prayers and the Scriptures remained in that
tongue, but the people themselves spoke each their own language. German,
English, French, Spanish, and Italian are mixtures in different degrees
of Latin and Teuton, and only learned persons who understood the old
language, could follow the Prayers, or read the Bible. So the people
missed more and more of the real truth and meaning of sacred things;
and some of the clergy who had grown corrupt, took advantage of their
ignorance and deceived them. Whereas the Pope had once declared that
those who went on a Crusade were sure of dying in a state of salvation,
he now declared, that to give alms for building the great Church of St.
Peter at Rome, would answer the same purpose; and indulgences, namely,
promises of so many years less of purgatory, used to be absolutely sold;
and it was very difficult to set these errors right, for anyone who was
thought to speak against the doctrine of the Church, was liable to be
punished by being burnt to death. This was quite contrary to the ways of
the early Church, which, however bad a heretic might have been, never
attempted to harm his person, but only separated him from her Communion.
As the Holy Spirit within the Church is ever cleansing and sanctifying
it, witnesses against these errors began to be raised up. The way to
print books, instead of writing them out, had been discovered in the
fifteenth century; and as this art made them much more cheap and common,
many more people began to read and to think. In the year 1517, a German
monk, named Martin Luther, began to declare how far the selling of
indulgences was from the doctrine of the Apostles; and he spoke such
plain truth, that he convinced a great number of Germans, and there was
a great longing for the cleansing of the Church, especially after Luther
had translated the Bible into his own tongue, and everyone could see how
unlike the teaching there was to what had been so long believed.
In England, King Henry VIII. separated from the Roman Church because the
Pope would not please him by breaking a marriage, which certainly never
ought to have been sanctioned; but which having been permitted by the
Pope, and having continued twenty years, it was very wrong to dissolve.
He called himself Head of the Church in England; and though he believed
all the later errors, he allowed the Lessons to be read from a new
English translation of the Bible. He pretended to reform the convents,
some of which were in a very bad state, and had forgotten their rules;
but instead of setting them to rights, he seized their wealth, and
turned all the monks and nuns adrift.
The new notions were favoured by his break with the Pope. The whole
Western Church was in a ferment; the reformers were constantly writing
and preaching against the many errors of the Roman Church, and were
rejoicing over the real treasure of true faith they had found hidden
within her. Many other sincere and good men were shocked at such
disobedience to what they had once respected; and unhappily, almost all
the Italian clergy and cardinals were so food of the riches and power in
which they were maintained by misleading the people, that they dreaded
nothing so much as having them set right.
The Emperor, Charles V., strove hard to bring about a General Council of
the Church, as the only hope of making matters right, but he was much
hindered by his wars with the King of France, and by the double dealing
of the Pope; and in the meantime Luther and his friends drew up a
protest against the false doctrines of Rome, and were, for that reason,
called Protestants. In Switzerland and France, another reformer, named
John Calvin, was preaching against the doctrine of the Pope; and though
he neglected what the Church of old pure times had decided, and thus
threw away much that was good, as well as much that was untrue, great
numbers followed him; but unfortunately, none of the higher clergy on
the Continent would listen to these views, and there seemed no choice
but to accept falsehood, or to break into a schism. After many trials,
Charles V. got together some Italian, Spanish, and German clergy at
Trent, in the Tyrol, and called them a council; but this was far from
being a true General Council, as there was nobody from the Eastern
Church, nor from many branches of the Western. The Protestants knew they
should not be fairly treated, and that if these Italians should decide
that they were heretics, they might very probably be burnt; so, instead
of coming to it, they acted as the early Christians never did, they took
up arms and fought, and this attempt at a council broke up in confusion.
Things were happier in England. After the death of Henry VIII.,
Archbishop Cranmer, and the other guardians of his little son, Edward
VI., set to work to clear away the corruptions from the Church in
England, so as to make it as like as they could to what it had been in
the Apostles' time. The Bible had been translated, and they put the
whole Prayer-Book into English, leaving out all that savoured of
idolatry, all the notions about purgatory, and everything of error, and
keeping the real old precious services of the early Church, restoring to
the people the blessed privilege of the Cup, while the Bishops, Priests,
and Deacons, went on in an uninterrupted line, as from the beginning. On
Edward's early death, his sister, Queen Mary, who was married to Philip
II., the son of the Emperor, thought all these changes very wicked, and
endeavoured to put them down. Four Bishops, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley,
and Hooper, were burnt for their share in them, with many other persons,
and England was again reconciled to Rome; but Mary only reigned five
years, and her sister Elizabeth was a sound Churchwoman, and held fast
by the Catholic English Church in her reformed state.
Philip II., the son of Charles V., managed to accomplish another sitting
of the Council of Trent, and the Church of Rome considers it a true
council, though there were only two hundred and fifty-five Bishops, and
they condemned the Protestants without hearing their defence. It did
some good to the Romish Church by putting down the sale of indulgences,
and some bad practices of the clergy; but it bound her to all the errors
renounced by the Reformers, and put her into a state of schism from the
Catholic Church.
The Lutheran Protestants in Germany, and the Calvinists in France,
Holland, and Scotland, as they could have no bishops, made up their
minds that none were needed, though this was quite contrary to
Scripture, and to the ways of the Apostles. There was a sad time of
warfare through all the centre of Europe; and the Spaniards and French
horribly persecuted the Protestants and Calvinists, thinking in their
blindness that they were thus doing God service; but Queen Elizabeth
stood up as the firm friend of all the distressed Reformers; and at last
matters settled down again, though not till all Christianity had been
grievously shattered and rent, and there was no more outward unity.
There were four branches of the Church Catholic keeping their Bishops,
the Greek, the Roman, the English, the Swedish; but none of these were
in outward communion the one with the other, though still owning one
Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, and waging the same fight with the Devil
and his works. The Roman Church was spread over all Italy, Spain,
France, and great part of Germany, and tried to force down all
differences of opinion by cruel and bloody means, caring more for unity
than for truth, and boasting of being the only Catholic Church, instead
of only one branch of it. The Lutheran doctrine was taught in Norway,
Denmark, and many parts of Germany, and the Calvinist teaching gained a
great hold in Holland, Scotland, and on such French as were not Roman
Catholic. The Greek Church meanwhile stood fast through much tribulation
in the Turkish dominions, and had gradually won the whole great Russian
Empire, where, as the people ceased to be barbarous, they became most
devout members of the ancient unchanging Greek Catholic Church.
LESSON XXXIII.
COLONIZATION.
"Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains
of thy habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy
stakes."--_Isaiah_, liv. 2.
Just as the Reformation was beginning, fresh lands were being found
beyond the Atlantic Ocean, where the knowledge of the Gospel might
reach. Christopher Columbus, a gallant Genoese mariner, and deeply
religious man, was full of the notion that by sailing westwards he might
come round to India, and thence make a way for winning back the Holy
Land. After much weary waiting, and many entreaties, he obtained three
little ships from Queen Isabel of Spain; and with them, in the year
1492, came to the islands which he named the West Indies, lovely places,
full of gentle natives with skins of a dark ruddy colour, wearing, for
their misfortune, golden ornaments. To get gold was the great longing of
the Spaniards, and they did not care what cruelties they used so that
they could obtain it. The Pope, finding in the prophecies that the isles
of the sea should belong to the Church, considered that this gave him a
right to give them away to whomsoever he pleased; so he made a grant of
all to the west to the Spaniards, all to the east to the Portuguese.
Thereupon great numbers of the Spaniards went over to America; they
conquered the two great empires of Mexico and Peru, and settled in the
West-Indian Islands, robbing the poor natives of their gold and silver,
making slaves of them, and hunting them with blood-hounds when they
tried to run away. Many good priests who went out as missionaries did
all they could to hinder these horrors, but in vain; and when at last
the poor delicate Indians began to dwindle away and die off, the plan
was resorted to of bringing negroes from Africa to work in their stead.
Though it was a good man who thought of it, in the hope of saving the
Indians and making the negroes Christians, it came to most horrible
cruelty, and was a disgrace to Christian Europe.
However, these faithful priests worked hard in teaching and converting
the Indians all over South America. One brotherhood, called the Jesuits,
had great establishments, where they trained up large villages of
Indiana in Christian habits, and taught them to be very faithful and
industrious. But at home, in Europe, these Jesuits did harm by stepping
out of their work as ministers, interfering with governments more than
was right, and trying to keep up the authority of the Pope more than
real Catholic truth. They taught so many false stories as articles of
faith, that at last clever people, wise in their own conceit, began to
believe nothing, and became like the fool who said in his heart, "There
is no God." So there came to be a bad feeling against all the clergy,
and the Jesuits, who had made themselves very meddling and troublesome,
were put down at the entreaty of several kings. When they were taken
away from their converts in South America, it turned out that the poor
Indians had not steadfastness enough to take care of themselves; so all
their well-ordered establishments were broken up, and the people ran
wild again. All the Spanish settlers, of whom there were many, still
held fast to their Church, and all the coast of the Continent of South
America is Roman Catholic.