mankind, he is to be crucified in the next to save the devils" (p. 151, note). Among the various notabilities of this age none are specially worthy attention, save Brethius, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory of Tours, and Isidore of Seville. The heresies of former centuries continued during this, and several unimportant additional sects sprang up. The Monophysites gained in strength under Jacob, Bishop of Edessa, and became known as Jacobites, and exist to this day in Abyssinia and America. Six small sects grew up among the Monophysites and died away again, which held varying opinions about the nature of the body of Christ We find also the Corrupticolæ, Agnoetæ, Tritheists, Philoponists, Cononites, and Damianists, the four last of which differed as to the nature of the Trinity. Thus was rent into innumerable factions the supposed-to-be-indivisible Christianity, and the most bloody persecutions disgraced the uppermost party of the moment. CENTURY VII. Many are the missionary enterprises of this century, and we find the missionaries grasping at temporal power, and exercising a "princely authority over the countries where their ministry had been successful" (p. 157). Learning had almost vanished; "they, who distinguished themselves most by their taste and genius, carried their studies little farther than the works of Augustine and Gregory the Great; and it is of scraps collected out of these two writers, and patched together without much uniformity, that the best productions of this century are entirely composed.... The schools which had been committed to the care and inspection of the bishops, whose ignorance and indolence were now become enormous, began to decline apace, and were in many places, fallen into ruin. The bishops in general were so illiterate, that few of that body were capable of composing the discourses which they delivered to the people. Such of them as were not totally destitute of genius, composed out of the writings of Augustine and Gregory a certain number of insipid homilies, which they divided between themselves, and their stupid colleagues, that they might not be obliged through incapacity to discontinue preaching the doctrines of Christianity to their people" (p. 159). "The progress of vice among the subordinate rulers and ministers of the Church was, at this time, truly deplorable.... In those very places, that were consecrated to the advancement of piety and the service of God, there was little else to be seen than ghostly ambition, insatiable avarice, pious frauds, intolerable pride, and a supercilious contempt of the natural rights of the people, with many other vices still more enormous" (p. 161). The wealth of the Church increased rapidly; it grew fat on the wages of sin. "Abandoned profligates, who had passed their days in the most enormous pursuits, and whose guilty consciences filled them with terror and remorse, were comforted with the