self in sackcloth, he departed, and came unto that Bishop, and having made himself known, was admitted to him, and threw himself at his feet, saying, 'I beseech thee, baptize me!' But the Bishop replied, can I believe that thou hast not yet been baptized? Then he, taking the Bishop apart, told him the whole matter, saying, I have indeed received baptism when I was a child, but having now renounced in writing, behold I am unbaptized! To which the Bishop replied, how camest thou persuaded that thou hast been unbaptized of the baptism which thou hast received? Anthemius answered, In that unhappy hour when I wrote the abjuration of my Lord and Saviour, and of his baptism, incontinently a profuse sweat burst out even from the top of my head to the soles of my feet, so that my inner garments were wet therewith; and from that time I have believed of a truth, that even as I then abjured my baptism, so did it depart from me. Now if thou canst, O venerable Father, help me, in compassion upon one who has thus voluntarily undone himself. He said this prostrate on the ground, and bedewed with tears.

When the man of God, the Bishop, heard this, he threw himself upon the ground, and lay there beside Anthemius, weeping and praying to the Lord. Then, after a long while, rising, he roused Anthemius, and said to him, ' verily, son, I dare not again purify by baptism a man who hath been already baptized, for among Christians there is no second baptism, except of tears. Yet do not thou despair of thy salvation, nor of the divine mercy, but rather commit thyself to God, praying and humbly beseeching him for all the remainder of thy life; and God, who is good and merciful, may render back to thee the writing of thy abjuration, and moreover forgive thee that impiety, as he forgave the ten thousand talents to the debtor in the Gospel. Hope not to find a better way than this, for there is no other to be found.' He then being persuaded thus to do, and having obtained the Bishop's prayers, went his way, weeping and groaning for the sin which he had committed; and having returned home, he sold all his goods, and set at liberty all his people, both men-servants and maid-servants, giving them also of his possessions, and the rest of his goods he distributed to the churches, and to the poor, secretly, by the hand of a faithful servant. Moreover, he gave three pounds of gold to the mother of that Virgin, with the love of whom the Demon, to his own destruction, had inflamed him, having placed them in a certain church, saying, 'I beseech ye pray to God for me a sinner: I shall never again trouble you, nor any other person; for I depart I know not whither to bewail the wickedness of my deeds.' Thus this man did,—and from that time he was seen no more, casting himself wholly upon the mercy of God, to which none who hath betaken himself can perish.

them, had elapsed. Wherefore we may say with the Evangelist, Our Lord hath done all things well. Nor hath he suffered the suppliant, who seeks him in penitence, to perish; for he saith, I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Let us, therefore, continue to intreat him, that we may be protected by bis Almighty hand, and may be delivered from all the devices of the Devil, and that, being aided by the prayers of the Saints, we may be worthy to attain the kingdom of Heaven. To the Lord our God belong all honour and glory and adoration, now and always, for ever and ever. Amen.»>

The Greeks appear to have delighted in fictions of this peculiar kind. The most extravagant of such legends is that of St Justina and St Cyprian, which Martene and Durand present as a veritable history, censuring Bishop Fell for treating it as fabulous! It is much too long for insertion in this place, but it would be injured by abridging it. The reader may find it in the Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, t. iii, pp. 1618-1650. Note 1, page 730, col. 2. There on the everlasting ice His dolorous throne was placed. It was the north of Heaven that Lucifer, according to grave authors, attempted to take by storm. quedo ordenada su celestial Corte de divinas Hierarchias; criado Dios con tanta hermosura el cielo y la tierra, mas reynò tanto la ingratitud en uno de los Cortesanos, viendose tan lindo y bello, y en mas eminente lugar que los demas (segun Theodoreto) que quiso emparejar con el Altissimo, y subir al Aquilon, formando para esto una quadrilla de sus confidentes y parciales.

. En aver

With this sentence Fr. Marco de Guadalajara y
Xavierr begins his account of the Memorable Expulsion,
y justissimo destierro de los Moriscos de Espana.
Note 2, page 734, col. 1.

The marriage.

The description of the marriage service is taken from Dr King's work upon the Rites and Ceremonies of the Greek Church in Russia. In all the offices of the Greek Church,» he says, « there is not perhaps a more curious service than this of matrimony, nor any which carries more genuine marks of antiquity; as from the bare perusal of it may be seen, at one view, most of the ceremonies which antiquarians have taken great pains to ascertain.. It agrees very closely with the ritual given by Martene, De Antiquis Ecclesiæ Ritibus, L. ii, pp. 390-8.

In these ceremonies,

The which do endless matrimony make,

the parties are betrothed to each other for their salva- › tion, now and for ever, even unto ages of ages.. Note 3, page 734, col. 1.

The Ante-nave.

The Προναος.

Note 4, page 734, col. 2.

The coronals

Composed of all sweet flowers.

But we, who have heard the relation of this dreadful thing, praise the Almighty Lord our God, and adore the greatness of his works, that he hath protected the virgin Maria in her holy intention of leading a single life, and hath taken her mother out of poverty, affording liberally to them both for their support and maintenance, and hath delivered her also from the fear of sin, avoiding the Formerly these crowns were garlands made of transgression of the oath, which had passed between flowers or shrubs; but now there are generally in all Maria the virgin and her enemy Anthemius, by annull-churches crowns of silver, or other metals, kept for that ing it. For the Lord brought these things to pass before purpose. »—Dr KING's Rites, etc. p. 232. the fifteen days, which were the appointed time between

A certain crown of flowers used in marriages, says

Note 5, page 738, col 1.

Basil, of living men

the excellent Bishop Heber (writing from the Carnatic), children. This, the church said, was a serious bar to « has been denounced to me as a device of Satan! And the new alliance, which nothing could surmount but a gentleman has just written to complain that the Danish protracted penances and extensive charity. Don N. was Government of Tranquebar will not allow him to ex- urgent; and a council was assembled to deliberate on communicate some young persons for wearing masks, the matter. The learned body declared, after some disand acting, as it appears, in a Christmas mummery, or cussion, the case to be a very knotty one; and that, as at least in some private rustic theatricals. If this be the lady had been four times godmother to Don N.'s beathenish, Heaven help the wicked! But I hope you children, it was impossible she could marry him. will not suspect that I shall lend any countenance to this Nevertheless, the Fathers (compassionate persons)! kind of ecclesiastical tyranny, or consent to men's con- wished to give the unhappy couple another chance; and sciences being burdened with restrictions so foreign to agreed to refer the question to a learned doctor in the the cheerful spirit of the Gospel.»-vol. iii. pp. 446. neighbourhood, skilled in all difficult questions of casuistry. This sage person decided that, according to the canons of the church, the marriage might take place, on payment of a fine of four hundred dollars: two for the poor in pocket, and two for the poor in spirit; namely, the priests. But, to expiate the crime of marrying a quadruple godmother, a slight penance must also be submitted to in the following manner. Don N. was to place himself on his knees before the altar, with a long wax candle burning in his hand, while his intended lady stood by his side, holding another: this was to be repeated in the face of the congregation, for one hour, during every Sunday and fast-day throughout a whole year; after which purifying exposure, the parties were to be held eligible to proceed with the marriage. Don N., who chose rather to put his conscience than his knees to such discipline, took his own measures on the occasion. What these were, the idle public took the liberty of guessing broadly enough, but no one could say positively. At the end of a week, however, it was announced, that the case had undergone a careful re-examination, and that it had been deemed proper to commute the penance into one week's retirement from the world; that is to say, Don N. was to shut himself up in the Convent of La Cruz, there to fast and pray in solitude and silence for seven days. The manner in which this penance was performed is an appropriate commentary on the whole transaction. The penitent, aided and assisted by two or three of the jovial friars of the convent, passed the evening in discussing some capital wine, sent out for the occasion by Don N. himself, after eating a dinner, prepared by the cook of the convent, the best in New Galicia. As for silence and solitude, his romping boys and girls were with him during all the morning; besides a score of visitors, who strolled daily out of town as far as the convent, to keep up the poor man's spirits, by relating all the gossip which was afloat about his marriage, his penitence, and the wonderful kindness of the church.»-Capt. HALL's Journal, vol. ii, pp. 210-214.

The powerfullest in prayer. The most remarkable instance of St Basil's power in prayer is to be found, not in either of his lives, the veracious or the apocryphal one, but in a very curious account of the opinions held by the Armenian Christians, as drawn up for the information of Pope Benedict XII, and inserted by Dominico Bernino in his Historia di tutte l'Heresie (Secolo xiv, cap. iv, t. iii, pp. 508-536). | It is there related that on the sixth day of the Creation, when the rebellious angels fell from heaven through that opening in the firmament which the Armenians call Arocea, and we the Galaxy, one unlucky angel, who bad no participation in their sin, but seems to have been eaught in the crowd, fell with them; and many others would in like manner have fallen by no fault of their own, if the Lord had not said unto them Pax vobis. But this unfortunate angel was not restored till he obtained, it is not said how, the prayers of St Basil; his condition meantime, from the sixth day of the Creation to the fourth century of the Christian era, must have been even more uncomfortable than that of Klopstock's repentant Devil.-p. 512, sec. 16.

Note 6, page 738, col. 1.

Eleemon's penance.

In the legend the penitent is left forty days and nights to contend with the Powers of Darkness in the Relic Chamber.

Captain Hall relates an amusing example of the manner in which penance may be managed at this time in Mexico.

I went, he says, « to the Convent of la Cruz to visit a friend who was doing penance, not for a sin he had committed, but for one he was preparing to commit. The case was this:-Don N. had recently lost his wife, and, not chusing to live in solitude, looked about for another helpmate; and being of a disposition to take little trouble in such a research, or, probably thinking that no labour could procure for him any one so suitable as what his own house afforded, he proposed the matter to his lately lamented wife's sister, who had lived in his house several years; and who, as he told me himself, was not only a very good sort of person, but one well acquainted with all the details of his household, known and esteemed by his children, and accustomed to his society.

«I have read of a gentleman, says Bishop Taylor, « who, being on his death-bed, and his confessor searching and dressing of his wounded soul, was found to be obliged to make restitution of a considerable sum of money, with the diminution of his estate. His confessor found him desirous to be saved, a lover of his religion, and yet to have a kindness for his estate, which he desired might be entirely transmitted to his beloved heir: he would serve God with all his heart, and repented him of his sin, of his rapine and injustice; he begged for pardon passionately, he humbly hoped for mercy, he resolved, in case he did recover, to live strictly, to love God, to reverence his priests, to be charitable to the poor; but to make restitution he found impossible to him, and he hoped the commandment

:

Sometimes the law is frustrated by its own severity. It is a dogma of general notoriety, that if a Jungum has the mischance to lose his Lingum, he ought not to survive the misfortune. Poornia, the present minister of Mysoor, relates an incident of a Ling-ayet friend of his, who had unhappily lost his portable god, and came to take a last farewell. The Indians, like more enlightened nations, readily laugh at the absurdities of every sect but their own, and Poornia gave him better counsel. It is a part of the ceremonial, preceding the sacrifice of the individual, that the principal persons of the sect should assemble on the banks of some holy stream, and, placing in a basket the lingum images of the whole assembly, purify them in the sacred waters. The destined victim, in conformity to the advice of his friend, suddenly seized the basket, and overturned its contents into the rapid Cavery. Now, my friends,' said he, ‘we are on equal terms: let us prepare to die together." The discussion terminated according to expectation. The whole party took an oath of inviolable secresy, and each privately provided himself with a new image of the lingum.-WILKS, vol. i, P. 506.

would not require it of him, and desired to be relieved | life, and is mentioned as such in the Hindoo writings. by an easy and a favourable interpretation; for it is ten-WARD, vol. i, p. 427. thousand pities so many good actions and good purposes should be in vain, but it is worse, infinitely worse, if the man should perish. What should the confessor do in this case?-shall not the man be relieved, and his piety be accepted; or shall the rigour and severity of his confessor, and his scrupulous fears and impertinent niceness, cast away a soul either into future misery, or present discomfort? neither one nor other was to be done; and the good man was only to consider what God had made necessary, not what the vices of his penitent and his present follies should make so. Well the priest insists upon his first resolution, 'Non dimittitur peccatum, nisi restituatur ablatum:' the sick man could have no case by the loss of a duty. The poor clinic desires the confessor to deal with his son, and try if he could be made willing that his father might go to heaven at the charge of his son, which when he had attempted, he was answered with extreme rudeness and injurious language; which caused great trouble to the priest and to the dying father. At last the religious man found out this device, telling his penitent, that unless by corporal penances there could be made satisfaction in exchange of restitution, he knew no hopes; but because the profit of the estate, which was obliged to restitution, was to descend upon the son, he thought something might be hoped, if, by way of commutation, the son would hold his finger in a burning candle for a quarter of an hour. The glad father being overjoyed at this loop-hole of eternity, this glimpse of heaven, and the certain retaining of the whole estate, called to his son, told him the condition and the advantages to them both, making no question but he would gladly undertake the penance. But the son with indignation replied, he would not endure so much torture to save the whole estate.' To which the priest, espying his advantage, made this quick return to the old man: 'Sir, if your son will not, for a quarter of an hour, endure the pains of a burning finger to save your soul, will you, to save a portion of the estate for him, endure the flames of hell to eternal ages? The unreasonableness of the odds, and the ungratefulness of the son, and the importunity of the priest, and the fear of hell, and the indispensable necessity of restitution, awakened the old man from his lethargy, and he bowed himself to the rule, made restitution, and had hopes of pardon and present comfort.» — Works of JEREMY TAYLOR, vol. xiii, p. 38.

The penances which Indian fanatics voluntarily undertake and perform would be deemed impossible in Europe, if they had not been witnessed by so many persons of unquestionable authority. The penances which the Bramins enjoin are probably more severe than they would otherwise be, on this account, lest they should seem trifling in the eyes of a people accustomed to such exhibitions.

. If a Shoodru go to a Bramhunee of bad character, he must renounce life by casting himself into a large fire. If a Shoodru go to a Bramhunce of unsullied character, he must tie straw round the different parts of his body, and cast himself into the fire. The woman must be placed on an ass and led round the city, and then go the Great Way: the meaning of this is, she must wander to those sacred places of the Hindoos where the climate is exceedingly cold, and proceed till she actually perish with cold. This is a meritorious way of terminating

In 1790, when the Mahrattas were to have co-operated with Lord Cornwallis at Seringapatam, their general, Parasu Ram Bhao, became unclean from eating with a Bramin who had-kissed a cobler's wife. There was no stream near holy enough to wash away the impurity, so he marched his whole immense army to the junction of the Tungha and the Badra. Major Moor, who was with him, says, « during this march, uncalled for in a military point of view, the army laid waste scores of towns and thousands of acres,-indeed, ! whole districts; we fought battles, stormed forts, destroyed a large army, and ran every military risk. Having reached the sacred place of junction, he washed, and having been made clean, was weighed against gold and silver; his weight was 16,000 pagodas, about 7000l, which was given to the Bramins. They who had eaten with the Bramin at the same time, in like manner washed away the defilement; but the weighing is a ceremony peculiar to the great.—Moor's Hindu Infanticide, p. 234.

arms.

«The present king of Travancore has conquered, or carried war into all the countries which lay round his dominions, and lives in the continual exercise of his To atone for the blood which he has spilt, the Brachmans persuaded him that it was necessary he should be born anew: this ceremony consisted in putting the prince into the body of a golden cow of immense value, where, after he had lain the time prescribed, he came out regenerated, and freed from all the crimes of his former life. The cow was afterwards cut up, and divided amongst the seers who had invented this extraordinary method for the remission of his sins.—ORME'S Fragments.

A far less expensive form was observed among the ancient Greeks, in cases wherein a second birth was deemed indispensable, for in Greece they thought not those pure and clean who had been carried forth for dead to be interred, or whose sepulchre and funerals had been solemnized or prepared; neither were such allowed to frequent the company of others, nor suffered to come near unto their sacrifices. And there goeth a report of a certain man named Aristinus, one of those who had

been possessed with this superstition; how he sent unto the oracle of Apollo at Delphos, for to make supplication and prayer unto the god, for to be delivered out of this perplexed anxiety that troubled him by occasion of the said custom, or law, then in force, and that the prophetess Pythia returned this answer :

Look whatsoever women do,
in childbed newly laid,

Unto their babes which they brought forth,
the very same, I say,

See that be done to thee again;

and after that, be sure,

Unto the blessed Gods with bands

to sacrifice, most pure.

often told them so, and they have believed and acted accordingly.

Note 9, page 742, col. 2.

The impious scroll was dropt, a blank,
At Eleemon's feet.

This is not the only miracle of this kind recorded of
St Basil.

<< There was a certain woman of noble family, and born of rich parents, who was wholly made up of the vanities of this world, and beyond measure arrogant in all things; she, becoming a widow, wasted her substance shamelessly, living a loose and profligate life, doing none of those things which are enjoined by the Lord, but wallowing like a swine in the mire and filth of her inequities. But being at length by the will of God brought to a consideration of her own estate, and her mind filled with

Which oracle thus delivered, Aristinus, having well pondered and considered, committed himself as an infant new born unto women, for to be washed, to be wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and to be suckled with the breast-consciousness of the immeasurable offences which she head; after which all such others, whom we call Hysteropotmous, that is to say, those whose graves were made as if they were dead, did the semblable. Howbeit some do say that, before Aristinus was born, these ceremonies were observed about those Hysteropotmoi, and that this was a right ancient custom kept in the semblable case.» -PLUTARCH'S Morals, tr. by PHILEMON HOLLAND, p. 852.

Note 7, page 739, col. 1.

The lamps went out.

There is the authority of a Holy Man in the Romance of Merlin,-which is as good authority for such a fact as anything in the Acta Sanctorum,-that the Devil, like other wild beasts who prowl about seeking what they may devour, is afraid of a light. The Holy Man's advice to a pious damsel is never to lie down in the dark; «garde que la où tu coucheras il y ait tousjours clarté, car le Diable haït toutes cleres choses; ni ne vient pas voulentiers où il y a clarté.—vol. i, ff. 4.

Note 8, page 742, col. 1.

And white is black, and black is white.

Satan might have been reconciled to St Basil's profession if he had understood, by his faculty of secondsight, that this, which it is sometimes the business of a lawyer to prove, would one day be the duty of the Roman Catholics to believe, if their church were to tell them so. No less a personage than St Ignatius Loyola has asserted this. In his Exercitia Spiritualia, the 13th of the Rules which are laid down ad sentiendum cum Ecclesia, is in these words:

Denique, ut ipsi Ecclesiæ Catholicæ omnino unanimes, conformesque simus, si quid, quod oculis nostris apparet album, nigrum illa esse definierit, debemus itidem, quod nigrum sit, pronuntiare. Indubitate namque credendum est, eumdem esse Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et Ecclesiæ orthodoxæ, sponsæ ejus, spiritum, per quem gubernamur ac dirigimur ad salutem; neque alium esse Deum, qui olim tradidit Decalogi præcepta, et qui nunc temporis Ecclesiam hierarchicam instruit atque regit. p. 141, Antwerpiæ, 1635.

Such is the implicit obedience enjoined in those Spiritual Exercises, of which Pope Paul III said in his brief, sub annulo Piscatoris, « omnia et singula in eis contenta, ex certà scientiâ nostrâ, approbamus, collaudamus, ac præsentis scripti patrocinio communimus. The Roman Catholics are to believe that black is white if the Roman Church tells them so morally and politically it has

had committed, she called to remembrance the multitude of her sins, and bewailed them penitently, saying, 'Woe to me a sinner, how shall I render an account of the multitude of my sins! I have profaned a spiritual temple; I have defiled the soul which inhabiteth this body! Woe is me, woe is me! what have I done! what hath befallen me! Shall I say, like the Harlot or the Publican, that I have sinned? But no one has sinned like me! How, then, shall I be assured that God will receive my repentance? While she meditated in herself upon these things, He, who would that all should be saved and brought back into the way of truth, and would have no one perish, was pleased to bring unto her remembrance all the sins which she had committed from her youth up. And she set down in writing all these offences, even all that she had committed from her youth to this her elder age; and, last of all, she set down one great and heinous sin, the worst of all; and having done this, she folded up the writing, and fastened it with lead. After this, having waited till a convenient season, when holy Basil was accustomed to go to the church that he might pray there, she ran before to meet him, and threw the writing at his feet, and prostrated herself before him, saying, 'O, holy man of God, have compassion upon me a sinner, yea, the vilest of sinners! The most blessed man stopt thereat, and asked of her 'wherefore she thus groaned and lamented :' and she said unto him. Saint of God, see I have set down all my sins and iniquities in this writing, and I have folded it, and fastened it with lead; do not thou, I charge thee, open it, but by thy powerful prayers blot out all that is written therein.' Then the great and holy Basil held up the writing, and, looking toward Heaven, said, 'O Lord, to Thee alone all the deeds of this woman are manifest! Thou hast taken away the sins of the world, and more easily mayest thou blot out those of this single soul. Before thee, indeed, all our offences are numbered; but thy mercy infinite. Saying thus, he went into the church, holding the aforesaid writing in his hand; and prostrating himself before the altar, there he remained through the night, and on the morrow, during the performance of all the masses which were celebrated there, intreating God for this woman's sake. And when she came to bim, he gave her the writing, and said to her, 'Woman, hast thou heard that the remission of sins can come from God alone?' She answered, 'Yea, father; and therefore have I supplicated thee that thou shouldst intercede with that most merciful God in my behalf.'

is

And then