ascendancy over a barbarous people, they are not more to be condemned, if we look to policy alone, than Columbus for imposing upon the Indians by predicting an eclipse. Some excuse may even be found for their successors, who had neither the same motives nor the same virtues to redeem them. When the good things of this world were divided between violence* and cunning, we must not too rigorously con

"Some men's bodies overgrow their souls, and these are easily impelled to act any boisterous mischief. Others, being impotent of body, strive so much the more to furnish their minds with subtle inventions or commodious experience; and by making too much use of the common proverb, he that is weak had need to be wily, are easily tempted to practise unlawful policy with delight, as the only preservative against contempt, or as an instrument of revenge upon such as they hate or fear. And it would go much against the course of common experience, if that wiliness which hath weakness for its foundation, should not be often enforced to cover or shelter itself with craft and fraud.”—Thomas Jackson, vol. ii. p. 63.

Among all our old Divines, ... those who were giants in the earth,...there is not one whose works will more richly repay an attentive perusal than this excellent author.

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may continue the quotation... "To love our own wills is an impotency natural unto all. And we love them the better, - at least more strongly, when we perceive them set on that which in itself is good. Whence it is that our desires of doing many things which are good and commendable, often draw us to use means not so commendable for their accomplishment."

demn those who of two bad courses chose the best, or at least that which produced the least immediate evil.

The evidence that they acted upon this system is so authentic, and the instances of it so numerous, that when you call upon me for facts and authorities, I must have supposed you were unacquainted with any earlier history of the Anglo-Saxon Church than Dr. Lingard's, if you had not referred to Father Alford's Annals, in which facts enough of this kind are collected: and as you have examined that work, I can only conclude that either you must have forgotten what you read there, or that you past over whatever might have raised inconvenient and uncomfortable suspicions in the perusal. You, however, well know that Bede is the chief authority: indeed you have observed, in connection with some words wherein I had expressed my unfeigned. veneration for his character, that *" on the relations of the Venerable Bede does the truth of a great portion of the Anglo-Saxon miracles. depend." Upon the nature and value of Bede's testimony I have some observations to offer. There is a point of view in which I am not aware that it has hitherto been considered; and

* Page 70.

as that point appears to me of no trifling importance, (were it only as it respects the character of that most venerable person,) I thank you, Sir, for having directed my attention to the subject.

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Bede's name is in our Kalendar, and I hope may remain there when St. Dunstan's, and one or two others which disgrace it, shall be expunged. He has the title of Saint in your's; and it is laid down as a maxim by one of the most learned men* that ever prostrated his intellect to the Romish superstition, (and in other respects also one of the most judicious and

The Spanish Antiquary and Historian Ambrosio de Morales. These are his words: De qualquier Santo de quien otro Santo sabemos que escribió su historia, luego nos damos por satisfecho, y con reverencia tenemos por muy verdadero y de grande autoridad todo lo que alli se cuenta. t. iv. p. 291. ed. 1791. In like manner Smet, joint editor with Ghesquiere of the Acta Sanctorum Belgi, when he apprehends that the reader may entertain some doubts concerning certain miracles which he relates of St. Eligius's hammer, exhorts him to remember that others concerning his bed were recorded by St. Audoen, who worked miracles himself, and was therefore a competent witness. Si quis miretur, etiam malleolis honorem aliquem impendi, meminerit eorum quæ Audoënus de lecto aliisque ad Eligium spectantibus posteritati tradidit, et quibus prodigis illustrata fuerint, recolat : ac ne Audoëni apud eum vacillet auctoritas, observet, hunc biographum, qui ipse miraculorum dono clareret, de miraculis testem maxime idoneum babendum. t. iii. p.

330.

acute,) that whatever one Saint relates of another, when he writes his life, is reverently to be believed. Unwilling as you might be to subscribe to this as a general rule, I am persuaded that in the case of Bede you will hesitate as little as I do to admit it. It is well known that he relates no miracles of his own performing; and this you may account for satisfactorily by his modesty, and because he has not written any detailed account of his own life. But how will you explain the singular fact, that though his Ecclesiastical History, and the biographies which he drew up from materials which were supplied to him, are full of miraculous stories, the Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth under whom and with whom he had lived, and which he composed therefore upon his own knowledge and responsibility, have no such garnish? How happens it, Sir, that when he gives you in so many instances, with a fidelity like that of Dampier, the authorities for his relations of this kind, he never presents one as having occurred directly within his own knowledge? He was a Saint himself, and conversant with Saints; and miracles were performed by every Saint of whom he speaks, except those whom he knew and lived with. They took place everywhere, except where he was present.

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He heard of them from all sides far and near. He saw persons who had seen others who had seen them performed, or who knew the Saint by whom they were worked, or the patients upon whom they worked them; but he never witnessed one himself. It could not be for want of faith, for he believed the cases which were communicated to him, and faithfully recorded them. It could not be for want of opportunity; the United Monasteries contained a constellation of living Saints, and a choice assortment of relics, the authenticity of which could not be called in question: they had not been purchased as stolen goods, (common as it was so to deal in such articles,) but brought from Rome by Benedict Biscop himself, and were therefore undoubted originals; ...moreover they were of the first water, of the finest touch,...relics of the Apostles as well as of the Martyrs. He tells us that they were there, and does not relate a single instance of their wonder-working virtue. And yet, believing feelingly and fervently in these things as he did, can it be doubted that he would have recorded such instances with eager delight, if there had been any which, as a wise and religious man, he could conscientiously have attested?