[6] The history of Latin Christianity supplies abundant examples, more or less pertinent. Columban and his disciples are characterized as having had little of the gentle and winning perseverance of missionaries: they had been accustomed to dictate to trembling sovereigns; and their haughty and violent demeanour provoked the pagans, instead of weaning them from their idolatries (iii. 106). So of Boniface (v. 167): it was in the tone of a master that he commanded the world to peace, a tone which provoked resistance. “It was not by persuasive influence, which might lull the conflicting passions of men, and enlighten them as to their real interests.” Contrast with these the temper and policy of Pope Eugenius III. (iii. 407), whose “skilful and well-timed use of means more becoming the head of Christendom than arms and excommunications, wrought wonders in his favour;” and who, by his gentleness and charity, gradually supplanted the senate in the attachment of the Roman people: “the fierce and intractable people were yielding to this gentler influence.” On a later page we come across the able portraiture of our Henry II., as drawn by a churchman who was warning Becket as to the formidable adversary he had undertaken to oppose: “He will sometimes be softened by humility and patience, but will never submit to compulsion,” etc. Ariste _a raison_ when he counsels Geronte, in Gresset’s “Le Méchant,” as the _bien plus sage_ course of dealing with a difficult subject, “Que vous le rameniez par raison, par douceur, Que d’aller opposer la colère à l’humeur.” [7] “Such access as Protestantism has gained to the minds of the Catholics in Ireland, it owes, not to the thunders of any missionary Boanerges, but to men like the [late] Archbishop of Dublin [Whately], and the Dean of Elphin, who have taken a very different course, and presented Protestant Christianity to their neighbours in a very different form.”—_Saturday Review_, xi. 71. [8] Gently soothing. [9] Another type of mind, deficient in the higher attributes of independence, is often feverishly eager to sink its sense of individual responsibility by seeking what is called “rest in the Church.” Dr. Bungener represents his Julian, when committed to the Bastile, as rather rejoicing at than terrified by the despotism of the hand laid upon him; and in the same way, on taking holy orders, he, being “subdued in heart, enslaved in mind, tired of being his own master, only to create his own torments,” flatters himself that he gives the Church complete power over his faculties at the same time that he gives her plenary power over his actions. To the baser sort, remarks Sir James Stephen, no yoke is so galling as that of self control, no deliverance so welcome as that of being handsomely rid of free agency. “With such men mental slavery readily becomes a habit, a fashion, and a pride. To the abject many the abdication of self-government is a willing sacrifice.”