But a worse foe was growing up among the wild sons of Ishmael in Arabia.
n.o.body can tell what kind of religion these wandering tribes had in the old times, except that they honoured their father, Abraham, still circ.u.mcised their sons, and believed in one G.o.d, though they paid some sort of worship to a black stone, which was kept at Mecca. Some bad learnt a little Christianity, some had picked up some notions from the Jews; but they cared for hardly anything, except their camels, horses, and tents, and had small thought beyond this life. Among these men there arose, about the year 600, a person named Mahomet. He had at first been servant to a rich widow, whom he afterwards married. Either he fancied, or persuaded others that he believed, that the angel Gabriel spoke to him in a trance, and told him that he was chosen as a great prophet, to announce the will of G.o.d, and restore the faith to what it had been in Abraham"s days. He caused all that he pretended to have been told by the angel, to be set down in writings, which were called the Koran, meaning the Book, the first sentence of which was, "There is no G.o.d but one G.o.d, and Mahomet is His prophet." Mahomet blasphemously pretended to be as much greater a prophet than our Lord, as our Lord was than Moses. He ordered prayers and fastings and washings at set times, forbade the least drop of wine to be touched, and commanded that not only no image should be adored, but that no likeness of any created thing should exist, promising that all who strictly obeyed all these rules, should be led safely over a bridge, consisting of a single hair, and enter into a delicious garden, full of fruits, flowers, and fountains, there to be waited on by beautiful women. He gave men leave to have four wives, and did nothing to teach them real love, purity, or devotion; and thus his religion suited the bad side of their nature, and he persuaded great numbers to join him. Indeed no unbeliever is so hard to convert as a Mahometan.
Some of the Arabs being offended at the new teaching, wanted to put him to death; and he fled from his home at Mecca. On his way he was so closely pursued as to be forced to hide in a cave. His enemies were just going to search the cave, when they saw a spider"s web over the mouth, and fancied this was a sign that no one could have lately entered it, so they pa.s.sed by and left him safely concealed. In his anger at this persecution, be declared that the duty of a true Mahometan was to spread his religion with the sword; and calling his friends round him, they fought so bravely that he won back Mecca, and conquered the whole of Arabia. They did not persecute Christians, but they kept them down and despised them; and any Mahometan who changed his religion, was always put to death. Mahomet called himself Khalif, and ruled for ten years at Mecca, where he died and was buried. Mahometans go on pilgrimage to Mecca, and always turn their faces thither when they pray at sunrise or sunset, throwing water over themselves, or sand if they cannot get water.
The Khalifs who came after Mahomet, went on conquering. The chief tribe of the Arabs was called Saracens; and this was the name given to the whole race whom G.o.d had sent to punish the Christian world. The Holy City itself, and all the sacred spots, were permitted to fall into their hands; and though they did not profane the churches, the Khalif Omar built a great mosque, or Mahometan place of worship, where the Temple had once been, so as quite to overshadow the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
They conquered Persia, and spread their religion through that country, putting down the fire worshippers; they seized almost all Asia Minor, where the heretical Christians too easily became Mahometans, and they obtained possession of Egypt, and the great library at Alexandria, where they burnt all the collection of books, because they said, "If they taught the same as the Koran, they were useless, if otherwise, they were mischievous." Then from Egypt they spread all along the north coast of Africa, where the Roman dominion had once been, and were only grieved that the waves of the Atlantic Ocean kept them from going further to the west.
In Spain the Gothic king, Rodrigo, mortally offended one of his n.o.bles, who, in revenge, called in the Saracens to punish him; and the whole kingdom fell a prey to these Mahometan conquerors, except one little mountainous strip in the north, where the brave Christians drew together, and fought gallantly for their Church and their freedom through many centuries. It almost seemed as if these terrible Saracens, who bore everything down before them, were intended to conquer all Europe, and crush down the Church there as they had done in the east; but G.o.d was with His people, and He raised up a great warrior among the Christian Franks. Charles Martel, or Charles of the Hammer, so called, because he always went into battle with a heavy iron hammer, led the Franks against the Saracens, when they came up into the South of France; and in the year 732 gave them at Tours the first real defeat they had yet met with. It turned them back completely, and they never came north of the Pyrenees again; but all over the west of Asia and north of Africa, the first places where Christianity had spread, the heavy dark cloud of Mahometanism settled down, and has never been removed.
LESSON x.x.x.
THE FIRST SCHISM.
"While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat."
--_St. Matt._ xiii. 25
Is the West there was no heresy as there was in the East. The simple Teutons believed what they were taught, and grew softened by little and little, as their clergy gained more influence over them. The clergy were usually bred up in the convents, and there read the good old books which had come down from learned times, St. Jerome"s Latin Bible, and the writings of the holy Fathers of the Church, from St. Clement, the friend of St. Paul, down to St. Gregory the Great. Each monastery had a few of such books, as well as of the Liturgy, or Communion Service, and Breviary, or Daily Service; and they were worth much more than their weight in gold. The monks used to copy them out, and adorn the borders and first letters of the chapters with beautiful colours and gilding; but such writing took a long time, and when it was done, few but the clergy could read. Except the clergy, only such persons as were partly Roman by birth had any notion of Latin, or cared to read at all; and so changed were things now that the new race were the conquerors, that to be a Roman was thought quite contemptible, and in France there was a less heavy punishment for killing a Roman than for killing a Frank. The fierce Teuton n.o.bles thought nothing but war worth their attention, and yet they were very devout, and would weep bitterly over their sins. They gave richly to churches, founded convents, and paid great honour to clergymen, and to everything belonging to religion.
Sometimes this honour began to run into idolatry. They treated relics, that is, remains, or things that had belonged to holy persons, as having some sacredness of their own, and fancied that they would save him who carried them from harm. And when they glorified G.o.d for His saints in Heaven, and thought of the Communion of saints, they began to entreat their prayers, and the more ignorant would even pray to the saints themselves, as if they could by their own power grant the things that were asked. The blessed Virgin was more sought in this manner than any other saint. The pictures and images of saints, and the crucifix or figure of our blessed Lord on His Cross, which stood in all the churches, often had lights burning before them, and people kneeling round in prayer, till there was danger that, in their ignorance, they might be bowing down to the likeness, and breaking the Second Commandment.
One of the Greek emperors named Leo, was much displeased at this practice, and tried to put a stop to it. There was a great uproar at Constantinople, and many profane things were done and said, which shocked the western branch of the Church. At last the Greeks made a rule that there might be pictures of sacred subjects in their churches, but no images, and to this they have kept ever since. The Latins would not agree to this, and kept both images and pictures; and thus began a feeling of distrust between the two branches.
The great Frank king, Charles le Magne, grandson of Charles Martel, was a very religious man, and did a great deal to convert the heathens in Germany, and spread the power of the Church. He saved Rome from some dangerous enemies, and made the Pope a sort of prince over the city; and the Pope, in return, crowned him Emperor of Rome, though without any right to give away that t.i.tle. He died in 814, and after his time all the Christian west suffered horribly from the Teuton heathens, who lived in Norway and Denmark, and who used to come down in their ships and ruin and ravage all the countries round, especially England and France. They loved nothing so well as burning a convent; and such a number of learned monks and their books perished under their hands, that the world was growing more ignorant than ever, when our good King Alfred rose up in 880, taught himself first, and then his people; and though he died early, left such good seed behind him, that at last his Saxons converted their enemies themselves, and Norway and Denmark became Christian too, through kings who had learnt the faith in England. But all the errors grew the faster from the ignorance of the people; and at Rome, where there was plenty of learning, the power the Pope enjoyed had done little good, for it made ambitious men covet the appointment, and they ruled their branch of the Church so as to ensure their own gain, more than for the sake of what was right. The Patriarchs of Constantinople greatly disapproved of this, and made the most of all the differences of opinion and practice. When the Council of Constantinople had added to the Nicene Creed the sentence which a.s.serts the G.o.dhead of the Third Holy Person of the Ever Blessed Trinity, the third clause had been "Who proceedeth from the Father." Of late the Western Church had added the words "and the Son." Now though the Greeks believed with all their hearts that the blessed Spirit doth come forth from the Father and the Son, yet they said that the Latins ought not to put words into the Creed that no Council had yet authorized; and thus a great dispute arose. Besides, the Popes had begun to think themselves universal Bishops, heads over all other Patriarchs; and to this the Patriarch of Constantinople would not submit, and rightly said that from the old times all Patriarchs had been equal, and had no right to take authority over one another. At last matters ran so high, that the Pope sent three legates or messengers, who laid on the altar of St. Sophia an act breaking the communion between the two Churches, and then shook off the dust from their feet. This was in the year 1056, a very sad one, for here was the first great rent in the Church, the first breach, and one that has never been repaired, for the Greeks will not, to this day, hold communion with anyone belonging to the Western Church, nor will the Roman Church with them; and after the first happy thousand years when the Church was one outwardly as well as inwardly, thus began the time when her unity has become a matter of faith, and not of sight. But it is our duty to believe that all good Christians are joined together, because they are joined to our blessed Lord, as the boughs of a tree belong to one another by their union with the root, though they may grow apart on different branches.
There were many other differences. The Greeks and Latins reckoned the time of keeping Easter in different ways, and had not the same way of shaving the heads of their clergy. Besides, the Greeks thought that when St. Paul said an elder might be the husband of one wife, he meant that a parish priest _must_ be married; so if a clergyman"s wife died, they put him into a convent, and took away his parish. The Roman Catholics said, on the contrary, that the clergy were better unmarried; and by-and-by they forbade even those who were not monks to have wives; and in process of time a far more serious evil gradually arose in the Western Church.
The clergy said that there was no need for the people to partake of the Cup at the Holy Eucharist, so they were cut off from that privilege, though our Lord had said, "Drink ye ALL." The clergy said it was all the same whether the people drank of it or not, since Flesh and Blood were one; but this was thinking for themselves, and over explaining, and so by-and-by they lost the real spiritual devout way in which they ought to have reverently spoken of that great and holy mystery, and thought of it in a manner that answered better to their mere human understanding.
LESSON x.x.xI.
THE MIDDLE AGES.
"Surely the isles shall wait for Me."--_Isaiah_, ix. 9.
It is not easy to make out exactly the ten kingdoms to which the Roman dominion was said in Daniel to give place, because sometimes one flourished, sometimes another; sometimes one was swallowed up, sometimes a fresh one sprang forth; but there can be no doubt that the ten horns mean the powers of Europe, which have always been somewhere about that number ever since the conquest by the Teuton nations.
By the time the first thousand years had past, the "little leaven" had thoroughly "leavened the whole lump;" and the ways of thinking, the habits, laws, and fashions, of the western people, were all moulded by Christian notions. The notions were not always really Christian, nor did the people always act up to them; but they meant so to do; and though there was some error, yet there was also the sincere saving Truth, which made those who followed it holy, and led them to salvation. Perhaps the greatest mistake was the craving to see, instead of only to believe; and this led to peoples" putting their trust in many things besides the Merits of our blessed Lord--in relics, in images of saints, in the intercessions of the blessed Virgin, and above all, in the Pope"s promises.
The Popes were Patriarchs of Rome, and had thus some right over the Churches founded from thence. They used to send the Primate, or chief Archbishop, of each country, a pall or scarf, woven of the wool of lambs which they had blessed on St. Agnes"s Day. Many questions were sent to them to be decided. At first the right way of choosing a bishop was, that the clergy and people of the place should elect him, and the king give his consent; but when the Pope"s power increased, ambitious men used to bribe the people to elect them; and affairs grew so bad, that at last the Emperor Otho, of Germany, came to Rome, put down the wicked Popes, and took the choice quite into his own hands. This was wrong the other way; and after two or three reigns, the great Pope, Gregory VII., after a fierce struggle with the emperor, Henry IV., set matters in order again, and obtained that, as the Roman people were not to be trusted with the choice, it should be put into the hands of the clergy of the parish churches at Rome, who were called Cardinals, and have ever since had the election of the Pope in their hands. They wear purple and crimson robes and hats, in memory of the old Roman purple of the emperors.
It had been thought by almost the whole of the Western Church, ever since they had lost their communion with the eastern branch, which might have kept them right, that the Pope stood visibly in our Lord"s place as Head of the Church, and that he was infallible, namely, so inspired by the Holy Spirit, that he could no more fall into error than a General Council could. So he stood at the head of all the Archbishops and Bishops, Abbots and clergy, of the west; and whenever a difficulty arose, it was sent to him to be settled. He ruled likewise over the consciences of all men and women. If they sinned, the being cut off from the Church, excommunicated, as it was called, was the most terrible punishment that could befall them; and if a king or country were very wicked indeed, the Pope could lay them under an interdict, namely, deprive them of every office of religion, shut up the church doors, and forbid all service.
Sometimes these threats were of great benefit. It was good for the kings to be forced to think of what was right, to be stopped from making cruel wars, from misusing their people, or living in sinful pleasure; but the Popes did not always use their power rightly; they would become angry, and excommunicate people for opposing them, and not for doing what was wrong, and they did not bethink them of our Lord"s saying, that His Kingdom is not of this world. Still the Church was working great good.
Holy people were bred up, some in convents, some in the world: St.
Margaret, Queen of Scotland, who taught her people to say grace at their meals; St. Richard, the good humble Bishop of Chichester; and that glorious French monk, St. Bernard, whose holy life and beautiful preaching made him everywhere honoured.
Great alms were given to the poor, and almost all our most beautiful churches and cathedrals were built by devout kings, n.o.bles, or bishops, who gave their wealth for G.o.d"s glory. These were built so as to be almost as symbolical as the Temple had been. They were usually in the shape of a cross, in honour of the token of our Salvation; the body was called the nave, or ship, because of the Ark of Christ"s Church; the doors stood for repentance, as the entrance; the Font, just within, showed that none could enter save by the Laver of Regeneration; the holiest part was to the east, as looking for the Sun of Righteousness.
This portion is called the chancel, and belongs to the clergy, as the Sanctuary did to the priests of old; but the people are not as of old cut off, but draw near in faith, to taste of the great Sacrifice commemorated upon the Altar. The eagle desk for the Holy Scripture, shows forth one Gospel emblem; the Litany desk is for times of repentance, when the Priest may mourn between porch and altar. The dead rested within and around, in the shadow of their church, and constant services were celebrated, that so the gates might ever be open.
Even warriors sought to have their alms blessed by the Church; they bound themselves not to fight on holy-days, such as Fridays and Sundays; and before they could be made knights, they were obliged to vow before G.o.d that they would always help the weak, never fight in a bad cause, and always speak the truth. So that all would have been like perfect fulfilment of Isaiah"s promises of the glory of the Church, save that man will still follow the devices of his own heart; and there were shrines and altars where undue honour was paid to the Saints, and too many superst.i.tious observances were carried on before their images.
Prayers and alms were offered for departed souls, in the notion that they were gone to Purgatory, a place where it was said their sins would be purged away by suffering before the Day of Judgment, and whence their friends might, as they imagined, a.s.sist them by their offerings.
People used to go on pilgrimage, and especially such as had fallen into any great sin, would go through everything to pray at the Holy Sepulchre for forgiveness. The Saracens, who had not been unkind to the pilgrims, were subdued by a much fiercer set of Mahometans, the Turcomans, who did everything to profane the holy places, and robbed and misused the Christians who came to worship there. The news of this profanation stirred up all Europe to deliver the Sanctuary from the unbeliever.
Monks went about preaching the holy war, and mult.i.tudes took the cross, that is, fastened on their shoulder one cut out in cloth, and vowed to win back Jerusalem. The Pope took upon himself to say that whoever was killed in such a cause, would have all his sins forgiven, and be in no danger of purgatory; and this be called an indulgence. These wars were called Crusades. In the first, in 1098, Jerusalem was conquered, and a very good and pious man, named G.o.dfrey, set up to be king, though he would not be crowned, saying he would never wear a crown of gold where his Master had worn a crown of thorns. But as the Greek Christians who already lived there, would not own the Pope, but held to their own Patriarch, a Latin Patriarch was thrust in and was in subjection to the Pope; and thus the unhappy schism grew wider. After G.o.dfrey"s death, the Christians in Palestine did not behave well, nor show themselves worthy to have the keeping of Jerusalem; and though St. Bernard preached a second Crusade, and the Emperor of Germany and King of France came to help them, their affairs only grew worse and worse.
In 1186, after they had possessed the Holy City only eighty-eight years, they were deprived of it; it was taken again by the Saracens, and they retained only a few towns on the coast. All devout people mourned that the unbeliever should again be defiling the sanctuary; but the Pope had a great quarrel with the Emperor of Germany, and told the poor credulous people that fighting his battles was as good as a Crusade; and they began to forsake the Holy Land, and leave it to its fate. Our own Richard the Lion Heart did his best, and so did the excellent French king, St. Louis, who died in Africa on his way to the Crusade, but all in vain; and finally the Christians were driven out of Acre, their last town, and Palestine became Mahometan again with only a few oppressed Christians here and there. Then came a much more rude, dull, and violent race of Mahometans, the Turks, who burst out of the East, conquered the Saracens, gained all Asia Minor, and at last, in the year 1453, they took the city of Constantinople, killed the last emperor, Constantine, in the a.s.sault, and won all the country we now call Turkey, where they sadly oppressed the Greeks, though they could not make them turn from their true Catholic faith. It was then that the light of truth faded entirely away from Ephesus and the Churches of Asia; a blight fell wherever the Turks went, and cities, once prosperous, were deserted and ruined. Tyre was one of these; and she has now become a mere rock, where fishermen spread their nets to dry upon the sea-sh.o.r.e, as Ezekiel had foretold. However, it was only forty years afterwards, that the last remains of the Mahometan conquerors were chased out of Spain, so that it became again an entirely Christian country.
LESSON x.x.xII.
THE REFORMATION.
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field."--_Matt_.
xiii. 44.
When the Services of the Church were first drawn up, almost everyone in the East spoke Greek, and most people in the West understood Latin; and when the Teutons learnt Christianity, they also, with it, learnt a little Latin. Thus the Prayers and the Scriptures remained in that tongue, but the people themselves spoke each their own language. German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian are mixtures in different degrees of Latin and Teuton, and only learned persons who understood the old language, could follow the Prayers, or read the Bible. So the people missed more and more of the real truth and meaning of sacred things; and some of the clergy who had grown corrupt, took advantage of their ignorance and deceived them. Whereas the Pope had once declared that those who went on a Crusade were sure of dying in a state of salvation, he now declared, that to give alms for building the great Church of St.
Peter at Rome, would answer the same purpose; and indulgences, namely, promises of so many years less of purgatory, used to be absolutely sold; and it was very difficult to set these errors right, for anyone who was thought to speak against the doctrine of the Church, was liable to be punished by being burnt to death. This was quite contrary to the ways of the early Church, which, however bad a heretic might have been, never attempted to harm his person, but only separated him from her Communion.
As the Holy Spirit within the Church is ever cleansing and sanctifying it, witnesses against these errors began to be raised up. The way to print books, instead of writing them out, had been discovered in the fifteenth century; and as this art made them much more cheap and common, many more people began to read and to think. In the year 1517, a German monk, named Martin Luther, began to declare how far the selling of indulgences was from the doctrine of the Apostles; and he spoke such plain truth, that he convinced a great number of Germans, and there was a great longing for the cleansing of the Church, especially after Luther had translated the Bible into his own tongue, and everyone could see how unlike the teaching there was to what had been so long believed.
In England, King Henry VIII. separated from the Roman Church because the Pope would not please him by breaking a marriage, which certainly never ought to have been sanctioned; but which having been permitted by the Pope, and having continued twenty years, it was very wrong to dissolve.
He called himself Head of the Church in England; and though he believed all the later errors, he allowed the Lessons to be read from a new English translation of the Bible. He pretended to reform the convents, some of which were in a very bad state, and had forgotten their rules; but instead of setting them to rights, he seized their wealth, and turned all the monks and nuns adrift.
The new notions were favoured by his break with the Pope. The whole Western Church was in a ferment; the reformers were constantly writing and preaching against the many errors of the Roman Church, and were rejoicing over the real treasure of true faith they had found hidden within her. Many other sincere and good men were shocked at such disobedience to what they had once respected; and unhappily, almost all the Italian clergy and cardinals were so food of the riches and power in which they were maintained by misleading the people, that they dreaded nothing so much as having them set right.
The Emperor, Charles V., strove hard to bring about a General Council of the Church, as the only hope of making matters right, but he was much hindered by his wars with the King of France, and by the double dealing of the Pope; and in the meantime Luther and his friends drew up a protest against the false doctrines of Rome, and were, for that reason, called Protestants. In Switzerland and France, another reformer, named John Calvin, was preaching against the doctrine of the Pope; and though he neglected what the Church of old pure times had decided, and thus threw away much that was good, as well as much that was untrue, great numbers followed him; but unfortunately, none of the higher clergy on the Continent would listen to these views, and there seemed no choice but to accept falsehood, or to break into a schism. After many trials, Charles V. got together some Italian, Spanish, and German clergy at Trent, in the Tyrol, and called them a council; but this was far from being a true General Council, as there was n.o.body from the Eastern Church, nor from many branches of the Western. The Protestants knew they should not be fairly treated, and that if these Italians should decide that they were heretics, they might very probably be burnt; so, instead of coming to it, they acted as the early Christians never did, they took up arms and fought, and this attempt at a council broke up in confusion.
Things were happier in England. After the death of Henry VIII., Archbishop Cranmer, and the other guardians of his little son, Edward VI., set to work to clear away the corruptions from the Church in England, so as to make it as like as they could to what it had been in the Apostles" time. The Bible had been translated, and they put the whole Prayer-Book into English, leaving out all that savoured of idolatry, all the notions about purgatory, and everything of error, and keeping the real old precious services of the early Church, restoring to the people the blessed privilege of the Cup, while the Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, went on in an uninterrupted line, as from the beginning. On Edward"s early death, his sister, Queen Mary, who was married to Philip II., the son of the Emperor, thought all these changes very wicked, and endeavoured to put them down. Four Bishops, Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and Hooper, were burnt for their share in them, with many other persons, and England was again reconciled to Rome; but Mary only reigned five years, and her sister Elizabeth was a sound Churchwoman, and held fast by the Catholic English Church in her reformed state.
Philip II., the son of Charles V., managed to accomplish another sitting of the Council of Trent, and the Church of Rome considers it a true council, though there were only two hundred and fifty-five Bishops, and they condemned the Protestants without hearing their defence. It did some good to the Romish Church by putting down the sale of indulgences, and some bad practices of the clergy; but it bound her to all the errors renounced by the Reformers, and put her into a state of schism from the Catholic Church.
The Lutheran Protestants in Germany, and the Calvinists in France, Holland, and Scotland, as they could have no bishops, made up their minds that none were needed, though this was quite contrary to Scripture, and to the ways of the Apostles. There was a sad time of warfare through all the centre of Europe; and the Spaniards and French horribly persecuted the Protestants and Calvinists, thinking in their blindness that they were thus doing G.o.d service; but Queen Elizabeth stood up as the firm friend of all the distressed Reformers; and at last matters settled down again, though not till all Christianity had been grievously shattered and rent, and there was no more outward unity.
There were four branches of the Church Catholic keeping their Bishops, the Greek, the Roman, the English, the Swedish; but none of these were in outward communion the one with the other, though still owning one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, and waging the same fight with the Devil and his works. The Roman Church was spread over all Italy, Spain, France, and great part of Germany, and tried to force down all differences of opinion by cruel and b.l.o.o.d.y means, caring more for unity than for truth, and boasting of being the only Catholic Church, instead of only one branch of it. The Lutheran doctrine was taught in Norway, Denmark, and many parts of Germany, and the Calvinist teaching gained a great hold in Holland, Scotland, and on such French as were not Roman Catholic. The Greek Church meanwhile stood fast through much tribulation in the Turkish dominions, and had gradually won the whole great Russian Empire, where, as the people ceased to be barbarous, they became most devout members of the ancient unchanging Greek Catholic Church.
LESSON x.x.xIII.