honorableness and sacredness of war in the vindication of justice, else trodden under foot; of the constant uses of possible (which must sometimes be actual) war, as the guardian of a noble peace; and we counsel the final abolition of the Peace Society, except in so far as it seeks peace by the promotion of justice.

Let the sword be baptized, not broken. Let charity, faith, intelligence, wield it; not wantonness and outrage. All rightminded men will sympathize with the aspiration for a society and a manhood that shall be the friend and the sanctuary of all; that shall bear in its heart only the impulses, and in its hand only the ministries of love. But all men should remember that love does not alone caress and persuade; it may also be of an edge sharper than any anger, and of a sternness more resolute than any hate. Sweet is not the only good principle in the world; acid is good also, and bitter is good, and much is good that is neither saccharine nor the contrary. And if love is to be master of the world, it must not be a love with no armory save smiles and smoothnesses; it must, on occasion, be pungent, penetrating, sharper than a two-edged sword, overmastered by a divine compassion that will not suffer rivalships of any weak pities, and intent beyond persuasion or perturbation on its celestial surgery. Love shall be lord; but it is no lord, if it be able to deal only in the ordinary shows of love, if it cannot grasp the sword, and still be love. Love that is not master of all instrumentalities, superior to all, and of unabated purity in the use of all, is not wholly of a divine blood, but has been debased by hybrid admixtures. The purest charity is, on the one hand, able to wait, as Providence waits, with an exquisite heavenly patience tempering its own heart; the purest charity, on the other hand, needs not to forswear the sterner instrumentalities, but, pure and perfect still, may, when the rare occasion shall call, be as severe as Nature, as Destiny, as God.

Now, finally, comes the question of limits. These, after such vindication of needful severities, ought indeed to be stated with emphasis.

The first grand limit has already been suggested, — only fire is to be met with fire, - only the sword quelled by the

sword, only the destroyer visited with destruction. Rightful war is always defensive war, defence of ourselves or of others. Falsehood can be met by truth, opinion by argument, each agent of iniquity by its equal agent in the service of good so that it is only the armed hand of injustice which justice with irresistible hand may smite. Secondly, in all preparations against violence and crime, the aim must be the prevention of ill deeds, their punishment or open resistance being simply an inferential result, upon failure of the primary aim. Thirdly, so far as the use of these hindrances can be superseded by positive attractions toward reason, right, and good, superseded they must be; and that society which flagrantly fails in this particular is false to its most sacred obligations, false as no society can be and yet deserve to live. Finally, forbearance is to be held in perpetual honor. Love, having in vain done its utmost to cause continuance of public and private rectitude, that is to say, of noble peace, by mild inducements, is yet to wait, trusting somewhat to the ministries of time, and somewhat accepting as a burden to be borne. With brave wisdom it will wait; yet, while staying its hand from blows, will not withhold it from preparations, while commanding its heart, will cherish and enhance its resolution. Always there are allowances to be made; always there is a call for tolerance, for endurance and forgiveness; always must there be somewhat of that grand indifference of Providence, which makes the sun to rise and

the rain to fall upon just and unjust alike. Eyes are given us wherewith to see; but lids are furnished them not alone to exclude the dust, but also that we may upon occasion deeline to see; and no use of the eyes can be more noble than may be at times this use of the lids. He who must forever peep and peer will be welcome at no doors. For nations, as for individual men, there is this generous overlooking, this fine obtuseness, this dimness of eye and dulness of ear that is due to largeness of heart. In individuals it is one of the indispensable requisites of gentle manners; in nations, one of the especial pledges of long continuance. Yet if this refusal to see come of cowardice, indolence, avarice, or unintelligence, then it is of all things most fatal. And therefore only when

impersuasible wrong has stifled its conscience, gathered its force, taken death in its hands, and now comes to destroy forever your power of reasoning and of bearing with it, only then, when fruitful, noble waiting is no longer possible, may you, must you, arise to pronounce against it the extreme rebuke, and to pierce with that one keen argument, which secures for itself a hearing, those ears that the inward clamor and clank of accursed intents have deafened to every other. Not till then may love in your soul become consuming fire; not till then shall you lift up your voice to utter against destroying evil the tones of that sharp and terrible charity, which, if it be not charity, is butchery, never till then may you, but then, brave and true heart, you MUST. Man may lawfully use no other sword than that which pure Heaven puts into his hand; but the sword that Heaven gives, if he make it not sharp against those that deserve its edge, will become sharp against himself.

ART. II. BERNAYS'S CHRONICLE OF SULPICIUS SEVERUS.

Ueber die Chronik des SULPICIUS SEVERus. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Klassischen und Biblischen Studien. Von JACOB BERNAYS. Berlin. 1861.

Beck.

*

THE above publication is a striking specimen of German thorough scholarship, as well as critical ingenuity. The work with regard to which Bernays endeavors to set the modern reader right, was some two or three centuries ago a common and popular school-book; but it has for some time past fallen into such forgetfulness that many are scarcely aware of its existence. The nature and object of the Chronicle are well stated by S. Severus himself in the opening paragraph of the work: "Res a mundi exordio sacris literis editas breviter constringere et cum distinctione temporum usque ad nostram memoriam carptim dicere aggressus sum, multis id a me et studiose efflagitantibus, qui divina compendiosa lectione cognoscere propera

bant. Quorum ego voluntatem secutus non peperci labori meo, quin ea, quæ permultis voluminibus perscripta continebantur, duobus libellis concluderem, ita brevitati studens, ut pæne nihil gestis subduxerim. Visum autem mihi est non absurdum, cum usque ad Christi crucem Apostolorumque actus cucurrissem, etiam post gesta connectere: excidium Hierosolymæ vexationesque populi Christiani et mox pacis tempora ac rursum ecclesiarum intestinis periculis turbata omnia locuturus. Ceterum illud non pigebit fateri me, sicubi ratio exegit, ad distinguenda tempora continuandamque seriem usum esse historicis ethnicis atque ex his, quæ ad supplementum cognitionis deerant, usurpasse, ut et imperitos docerem et literatos convincerem. Verumtamen ea, quæ de sacris voluminibus breviata digessimus, non ita legentibus auctor accesserim, ut prætermissis his, unde derivata sunt, appetantur; nisi cum illa quis familiariter noverit, hic recognoscat, quæ ibi legerit. Etenim universa divinarum rerum mysteria non nisi ex ipsis fontibus hauriri queunt."

Sulpicius Severus, the author of the Chronicle, who lived in the latter part of the fourth and the commencement of the fifth century, was a native of Aquitania (the southern part of Gaul), of respectable parentage and liberal education. His literary culture and his professional eminence as an advocate being generally recognized, and his social position being strengthened by his marriage with a wealthy and noble lady, who, however, soon died, Severus was about to enter upon a most brilliant career when suddenly he resolved to retire from the allurements and burden of this world. He not only adopted a monastic mode of life, but also entered the clerical state, although he rose to no higher rank than that of presbyter. Disowned by his father, he found compensation in the increased affection of his mother-in-law, Bassula, and in the intimate and enduring friendship of the celebrated Martinus, Bishop of Tours. Severus lived at a time when the monastic and ascetic tendency, which had long before spread over the East, began to make its appearance in the West also. The important change of life on the part of Severus was undoubtedly one of the effects of this tendency, although he, as well as his teacher

* Joseph Scaliger calls him, "Ecclesiasticorum purissimus scriptor."

and friend Martinus, kept aloof from, and even opposed, one of the most striking illustrations of the same spirit, the sect of Priscillianus, with whom he shared, besides the predilection for an ascetic life, another characteristic, a literary and intellectual culture of a high order.

It is one of the objects of Bernays to facilitate a more thorough and complete understanding of the Chronicle of S. Severus by pointing out how the events and circumstances in the midst of which Severus lived and wrote affected his work. The account which Bernays gives of the origin, character, and fate of the sect of Priscillianus, which, although brief, is on the whole correct and satisfactory, is intended to place the reader of the Chronicle in a position to comprehend, not only the general spirit of the work, but all the insinuations and allusions in which it abounds. It is difficult, if not impossible, to say with precision what the distinguishing doctrines of the sect were. While they were suspected and persecuted by synods as heretics, and proceeded against by the state as criminals, the accounts of their doctrines are extremely indefinite and obscure. It should be borne in mind, in order to understand more fully the relation of Severus to the Priscillians, that this respect and love of intellectual and literary culture was not so much a characteristic of Severus and the Priscillians as of their common country, the southern part of Gaul (Aquitania) being at this time, with regard to culture and refinement, at the head of all the Roman provinces, and excelling not only Spain and Africa, but Rome itself.

The existence of the sect of the Priscillians was not a long one. It may be said to owe its origin to an Egyptian Gnostic, Marcus, whose disciples, Elpidius, a rhetorician of classical culture, and Agape, a noble lady, were in their turn the teachers of Priscillianus, who, like them, combined the advantages of noble birth and high culture. The sect spread rapidly, especially among the educated and refined in Spain, where Priscillianus chiefly lived as Bishop of Abila, and Aquitania. The condemnation and execution of Priscillianus with four of his principal followers imparted new life and energy, the usual result of persecution, to the sect, and it may be traced to the commencement of the second half of the sixth century (563).