Mr. Lecky's criticisms on the opinion that the penal fire is literal and material, and on the supposed general materialism of religious conception in the middle ages, have led us into somewhat of a digression. We have yet, however, one more remark to make. While he concedes that after the time of Averrhoes "a few writers" endeavored to rise to a more spiritual manner of conceiving the truths of faith, he asserts that in the preceding period, before his influence and that of such sects as the Beguins had begun to be felt, the state of things was infinitely worse. From the sixth to the twelfth century materialism in religion was absolutely dominant. That the period preceding the advent of the scholastic epoch was one of great depression of theological science, cannot be doubted; and the amount of what may in a general way be called anthropomorphism current at any period is to a great extent conditioned by the want of general cultivation. But it is very easy to overrate this depression. The episcopal and synodical letters, for instance, which were exchanged concerning the subject of adoptionism do not present to us theological science at, by any means, a low ebb. The same may be said respecting the controversy in the ninth century on the Eucharist; and the controversy on Predestination, if it do not reveal any large amount of historical learning, at least exhibits considerable activity of mind. Such of the writings of authors of that period as the present writer has looked into, show an amount of learning and acuteness which was certainly unexpected by him. That period was necessarily uncritical; but we regard the taste for allegorizing, then as formerly prevalent, to be an indication of something very different from a degraded and material habit of thought. The great teacher of the pre-scholastic age was St. Augustine, one of the most spiritual of the fathers; and the writer who was chosen to supplement him was St. Gregory the Great, who went farther than, and improved on, St. Augustine himself. And, as to the religious art of that period, Mr. Lecky has himself alluded to a peculiarity which, strangely enough, seems to have given him no disquietude as to his general conclusion. In that period, he says: