WIL LIAM II. 264. living up to the design of their institution. The first is: To keep constantly within their cloister, never to stir out without K. of Eng. leave, nor then neither without a justifiable occasion. The second thing is: To live under silence, and never open their lips, unless some good may be done by it, and it would be a fault to say nothing. Thirdly, Not to have any property, nor to desire anything more than necessity requires. Fourthly, To submit to the orders of their superiors in everything, unless they should enjoin something repugnant to the will of God, for in such a case their commands are by no means to be satisfied; for, as St. Gregory affirms, we must not do an ill thing upon the score of obedience, though sometimes we may omit doing a good one. Fifthly, The religious must never repine, nor speak ill of any person, though it appears they have been ill used; to take this liberty is the way to run backward in virtue, and lose the reward of all the good they have done already. Sixthly, That, next to God Almighty, they are obliged to love each other, and cheerfully do all the good turns to their neighbours which they desire to receive from them. Seventhly, To perform the service and duty enjoined them by their house, to the utmost of their power; and in doing this they ought to be serious and collected, and not suffer their minds to run out upon foreign unserviceable thoughts. The eighth direction, is to be clear and full in their confessions, which are to be made only to their prelates, or such as are authorised by them for that purpose." The rest of the archbishop's advice is not confined to the cloister, but relates to Christians in general: "To seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness,' is to desire the happiness of the saints in heaven, and to be always upon the search for the most likely means to attain it. "We ought to instruct the ignorant, without upbraiding them with their defects; for it is not the custom to reproach blind people, but to take them by the hand and lead them. The harder we are pressed with ill thoughts, the more earnestly we ought to pray to be delivered from them. To make our religious service acceptable to God Almighty, we must take care to keep our practice consistent with our devotions. LAN FRANC, "When you sing a psalm, be sure to attend to the sense, Abp. Cant. and be more affected with the devotion of your mind, than with the music of your voice; for God is better pleased to see a man weep, than to hear him make an airy noise, though never so much in tune. "Be careful to check the first impressions of evil; for if you suffer unwarrantable ideas to dwell upon your imagination they will conquer your virtue, and bring you to the extremities of practice. "Be always upon your guard, and do not lose ground in the least instances; for though the matter of the fault may be small, the neglect is not so. When a man is idle, the devil is commonly busy with him: and to do nothing is the ready way to be pleased with doing amiss. All those things which caress the senses strongly, which awaken aad refresh the passions, should be avoided. Leave off eating before your appetite dies, and drink on this side intemperance; by these restraints you will neither stick too fast in the present satisfactions of the palate, nor hanker after them when you are without them. Be not nice in your diet, nor eat so much for pleasure as for the support of your constitution. Satisfy your appetites as cheaply as you can, for it is more your business to lay nature asleep than to pamper her. We have no reason to question but that a person baptized will be a partaker of the body and blood of our Saviour, though he should happen to die before he receives the consecrated Dacherius bread and wine1." Spiceleg. tom. 4. p. 227. 1 The subtle and intricate question respecting the true nature of the eucharist, which had exercised several of the early fathers of the Church about this time, began to assume a more definite and vehement form of controversy. The most ancient theory we find on the subject (a theory very learnedly discussed in Delarue's edition of Origen) is this:-That the spirit of Christ being universal and omnipresent, animates not merely his human form, but such elemental forms as he may please to appoint as his sacramental emblems. According to this theory, therefore, the spirit of Christ inspiring and informing the bread and wine, these elements thus invested and interpenetrated by divinity become the body and blood of the Saviour, not in the human but the elemental sphere of being. In this sense they are really and absolutely his elemental body and blood, as he himself declares, and not merely dead and soulless symbols of his natural body and blood. They are really so in one sense, though they are symbolically so in another sense. This theory, however plainly men may attempt to define it in words, involves a divine mystery which man in his present condition will never fathom. But just because it is a mystery, transcendental and inexplicable, did the eager dialectics of the schoolmen investigate it with incredible ardour and perseverance. Its glory and its gloom equally excited their amazement and challenged their genius. LIAM II. vacant for After the death of Lanfranc the see of Canterbury con- WILtinued vacant three years, during which time the profits K. of Eng. were returned into the exchequer. The king, it seems, at The see of this time, was very much directed by one Ranulph, a clergy- Canterbury man. This man, though a Norman, but of moderate ex- three years. traction, had a great share in the king's favour, and rose at last to the post of prime minister. Ordericus Vitalis gives him an ill character, charges him with ambition, prodigality, and ill-nature, that he was given to luxury and epicurism, and too much of a libertine in other respects. This man, having gained the king's ear by flattering his vices, misled him in the administration, and put him upon several arbitrary and oppressive expedients. It was at this minister's suggestion that the king surveyed all the land of England And imagining that they had discovered in the writings of Aristotle an universal solvent for the hardest metaphysical problems, the doctrine of the eucharist became their favourite subject of dispute. How well does this controversy illustrate the words of judge Blackstone when he says, "The science of that age, derived from Arabic translations of Aristotle, was mainly employed in elaborating casuistical subtleties with a skill the most amazingly artificial, but which serves no other purpose than to show the vast powers of the human intellect however vainly or preposterously employed." It is no wonder then, that a huge amount of polemical logic was expended on the eucharist. The dispute very early gave rise to three great parties of advocates, who still exist in activity and power. First came those who asserted that the spirit of Christ, by passing into the sacred elements, and being interfused with them as a soul is with its physical vehicles, changed the essence or internal substance of the elements, and their external substance likewise, though it remained the same to sensible observation; that opinion was expressed by the word transubstantiation. Secondly came the divines who stated that this interfusion and interpenetration of Christ's spirit in the sacramental elements, did not necessarily imply that either their internal or external substance was changed, but that they all co-existed in a holy combination. This theory was called consubstantiation. The third class stated that there was no real definite interfusion of the spirit of Christ at all in the eucharistic elements, but that they were merely symbols, having no divine virtue in themselves by such interfusion, but being efficacious merely as memorials exciting the devotion of the partaker. In this statement we know that we have somewhat anticipated certain terms which did not come into vogue till after ages. Still the nature of the dispute was the same in its several divisions. In looking back, the clear and thoughtful eye of the philosopher may be able to detect the secret processes by which the one grand and inclusive doctrine, which embraced those several distinctions and harmonized them all, became gradually subdivided, and how, by being subdivided, that which was true in the universal sense, became error in the partial. Such a man will, perhaps, agree with Coleridge, that by elevating the entire controversy to a prothetic sphere of investigation, the apparently conflicting arguments of these three classes may yet be reconciled. This will not, however, take place till they severally learn to acknowledge "that which was true in each," and confess that they might all have been right in some respects, and all have been wrong in others. Those who would examine the question farther may read Collier's tracts on the subject. The treatises of Cudworth and Patrick are likewise worthy of attention. VOL. II. F Orderic. cles. Hist. 1. 8. p. 678. The king's over again; and where the number of acres exceeded the proportion of the former entry, he took the overplus to himself; and, which was a farther grievance, raised the tax upon the subject for the remainder. It was likewise by this Ranulph's advice that the king seizing the seized the revenues of the Church upon the death of a revenues of vacant bishop or abbot, allowing the dean and chapter, or convent, bishopricks but a slender pension for maintenance. Thus covetousness, unprece dented. 265. as the historian goes on, carried the king to invasion upon the Church; which sacrilegious custom continued, in some measure, to the reign of king Stephen, and proved the deId. p. 679. struction of a great many souls. For the king, being desirous of furnishing the exchequer, delayed nominating a successor for the vacancies. And thus the diocese was deprived of a spiritual governor. Thus the canons were neglected, discipline grew languid, and the sheep, for want of a shepherd, became a prey to the wolves. Ordericus Vitalis goes on, and is very tragical upon this occasion, and laments the degeneracy of king William Rufus from the piety of his predecessors. Amongst other things he observes, that before the Norman Conquest, it was the custom in England, upon the death of an abbot, for the bishop of the diocese to make an inventory of the goods and chattels belonging to the monastery, and to sequester the profits for the use of the house till the election of a new abbot. Thus likewise the archbishop, when any of his suffragans died, took the revenue of the bishoprick into his hands, and, with the consent of the dean and prebendaries, disposed of it to pious and charitable uses. Ibid. This laudable custom was set aside by William Rufus in the beginning of his reign. Ordericus declaims with great vehemence against this practice. He is so frank as to say that there is no manner of defence for such seizures; that it is a contradiction to all the principles of equity and conscience, that those estates, which were given to God Almighty by the devotion and liberality of good princes, should revert into lay hands, and be squandered away upon luxury and riot. "But," says he, "let people be as avaricious and hardy as they please, sacrilege will be as certainly punished, as munificence to religion will be rewarded, in the other world: but the mischief is, people are strangely governed LIAM II. by present interest, though they seem to believe they can WILneither be concealed from omniscience, nor escape the K. of Eng. judgment to come." Thus far he. England for several Hoveden, removes his to Lincoln, that cathe In the year 1091, another schism broke out in the Church A. d. 1091. No pope of Rome: two popes setting up against each other, and owned in both of them abetted by a considerable party. Odo, bishop al of Ostia, called Urban II., was one; and Guibert, arch- years. bishop of Ravenna, called Clement III., was the other. This controversy about elections to the papacy ran so high in England, that from the death of Gregory VII. the matter, as it were, hung in suspense, and no pope at all was owned at this time by the English Church, but Italy and France submitted to Urban II. About this time Remigius, bishop of Lincoln, departed 265. this life. He was a Norman by birth, and a monk of Fes- Remigius camp in that duchy. He was preferred by the Conqueror see from to the bishoprick of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire. This Dorchester bishop, considering the largeness of his diocese, extending and builds from the Thames to the Humber, was not pleased with the dral. see's standing in the extremity of his jurisdiction; the smallness of the place was likewise another disagreeable circumstance he therefore resolved to remove the see to Lincoln, A. D. 1092. which was then a large city; and to make this project the more commodious, he bought an estate in the eminence of the town near the castle, and built a noble cathedral there. Hunting. Neither was he at all discouraged in his undertaking by the fol. 212,213. archbishop of York's setting up a claim to the county of Lincoln. This cathedral was regulated by the model of the church of Rouën. The bishop founded a chapter of eightand-twenty prebendaries, and furnished them with a competent revenue. He designed a pompous consecration of his church, and made great preparations for that purpose; but died four days before the intended solemnity. Cam- Cambrensis brensis gives him a great character for his humility, devo- de Vitis Episc. Lintion, and charitable disposition, and that he was remarkably coln. Angl. serviceable in assisting the indigent and orphans, and all 2. p. 413. et those under any incapacity or distress. Histor. 1. 7. Sacr.pars deinc. The next year Malcolm, king of Scotland, making an A. D. 1093. inroad upon the English borders, was intercepted and cut Thus Hunting off, together with Edward, his eldest son. |