the wholesale accusations brought against him by Cyprian, it may be easily believed that he was a man of resolute and independent spirit; disposed to resist the encroachments of power, perhaps naturally restless and turbulent; a sort of African Horne Tooke. If this was so, he found a state of things at Rome suited to his taste, and in which he was prepared at once, with characteristic resolution, to engage. The origin of this difficulty was the same from which that in Carthage partly sprang; a difference of opinion in regard to the treatment of the Lapsi. Two views prevailed here also, a milder and a more severe; one, holding out encouragement to the offender; taking an indulgent, at least a compassionate view of his sin, and exhorting him to seek, by repentance and confession, restoration to the Church. The other view was, that deliberate apostasy was a sin for which the Church could pronounce no absolution. Looking, probably, at the words of Christ, He that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God, it was thought unfit to receive those back into the Church whom Christ seemed to have declared beforehand He would exclude from heaven.. This view was strongly advocated by Novatian, one of the Pastors at Rome, a man of learning, eloquence, unimpeachable life, and, through the power of his talents and virtues, of great influence. He is said to have been, previous to his conversion, a Stoic philosopher; and was perhaps inclined, in the spirit of that sect, to take a harsh view of human infirmities. Fabian, the Bishop of Rome, had perished in the persecution, and the question arose as to a successor. The favorite candidate was Cornelius, who adopted the mild, or, as by others it was regarded, the lax view of discipline. Novatian opposed his election, but unsuccessfully. Cornelius became Bishop of Rome, and Novatian, under circumstances of which we have no full account, withdrew from him and organized a separate Church. If we may conjecture from the display of temper which the new Bishop makes in a letter to Fabius of Antioch, he may very likely have adopted towards Novatian a course of outrage and abuse which drove him into opposition. The letter displays all the vindictiveness of Cyprian, but only a modicum of his vituperative eloquence. With feeble fury the Bishop sneers and sniffs at the schismatical Presbyter, through several columns,' imputing his withdrawal to disappointed ambition, of course; Cornelius wanted the bishopric, therefore Novatian must have wanted it. But Novatian himself solemnly declares that he had refused to be regarded as a candidate for the vacant chair. How much influence in producing the schism is to be attributed to Novatus, who evidently acted with Novatian, does not appear. They seem to have had little in common except a determined opposition to prelatical assumptions. Their 1 Eusebius, H. E. VI., 43.

views as to discipline were directly opposed. Novatus, at Carthage, was the patron of the Lapsi. Novatian, at Rome, was the author of a system of rigid exclusion. At the same time, it is possible that the common attitude of resistance to the Bishop may have tended to harmonize their views on this subject. With a considerable party in the Church, and a number of confessors, they withdrew from communion with Cornelius and constituted a distinct Church, of which Novatian became Bishop.

Both parties now hastened to secure the approbation and support of other churches, particularly of the great Church of Carthage, with its distinguished Bishop. Novatian might entertain expectations of support from that quarter, for his views of discipline corresponded closely to those of Cyprian. The views of Cornelius, on the contrary, were just those against which Cyprian had been contending at Carthage. Harmony of sentiment would have led the African Bishop to sustain Novatian, but the hated and excommunicated Novatus was associated with him; and Cyprian, true to his prelatical instinct, deserted his opinions and stuck to his brother Bishop. Novatian and his party were excommunicated, and yet such was the purity of their lives and their discipline, such the popularity of the idea that held them together, that their churches multiplied with astonishing rapidity throughout the Roman Empire. In doctrine the Novatian Churches were confessedly orthodox. Their only point of difference was in discipline. They held that persons excommunicated for sins committed after baptism could not be again restored by a sentence of absolution. They did not, however, give them up to despair. They bade them repent and hope; but referred the reversal of their sentence to Christ and the day of Judgment. As resulting from this view of such sins, they regarded all other churches as extending fellowship to the corrupt and unworthy; and would receive no member from them except by re-baptism and a new confession of faith. Stigmatized as schismatics and dissenters, the Novatians flourished for about two centuries, after which little is heard of them. They furnished to the Church liberally in proportion to their numbers, martyrs, scholars, and defenders of the faith. A pleasant story is told of one of their bishops, Acesius, who was summoned to the Council of Nice. Constantine inquired into the grounds of their separation from the Church Catholic, and of their refusal to commune with other Christians. Acesius explained their views of discipline; upon

It is curious to remark, as illustrative of the tendency of things just at that time, how in both these instances polity carried the day against discipline. Both Novatus and Cyprian shifted their position in regard to the latter, in their more earnest zeal for their principles of government. Even the purity of the Church, for which Cyprian had been fighting, was little to the powers of Bishops; and Novatus resigned, without hesitation, his patronage of the Lapsi, to have a fairer field in contending for the liberties of the Church.

which the Emperor pleasantly replied, "Well, Acesius, if you can't walk in the common path with other Christians, take a ladder and get up to heaven your own way." Sisinnius, Novatian Bishop in Constantinople at the same time that Chrysostom was Bishop of the Catholics, was held in great admiration for his scholarship and wit, as well as for his eloquence in the pulpit. It was he who, when some one reproached him with showing so much regard to his worldly comforts, and asked how a man of his principles could bathe twice a day, replied, "because I can't bathe thrice." The same man visited Leontius, Bishop of Ancyra, to ask for the restoration of a church which he had forcibly taken from the Novatians. Leontius took the opportunity of discharging a volume of orthodox abuse against the tenets of the schismatic. "What business have you with churches?" said he. "You cancel the grace of the Holy Spirit, and nullify repentance." "Nay," replied Sisinnius, "but nobody repents as I do." "And what do you repent of?" said the Bishop. "I repent very heartily of having taken the trouble to see you." A passage of arms is mentioned between him and Chrysostom, which shows, even if other proof were wanting, that something else than honey occasionally distilled from the golden lips of the great orator. John accused Sisinnius of intruding within the limits of his diocese. "There ought to be but one bishop," said he, in a city." "Nor is there," replied the Novatian. "What!" cried Chrysostom, in a rage; "you pretend then to be the only Bishop in Constantinople! Heretic that you are! I will stop your preaching." "You will oblige me particularly,' replied Sisinnius, "if you would; for it's very hard work." Chrysostom's fury gave way before the imperturbable good humor of his antagonist. "Oh," said he, "if the office is troublesome you shall keep it still for all me."

In accordance with the spirit of his work, the aim of which is to seek out Christ's chosen ones in all ages, and in harmony with the truth of history, Haweis regards the Novatians as a class of the more strict and conscientious Christians; more watchful against sin, maintaining a more Scriptural discipline, and exhibiting more of the life of true religion. But neither their virtues nor the purity of their discipline could save them as a party. They lay under the Episcopal ban. Persuasions and threats were fully employed, and with considerable success, to draw their members back into the Catholic Church. The tide of encroachment kept rising in spite of their stop. They stood for two centuries like a Pharos amid the gathering darkness; but the progress of corruption and autocracy in the Church at length swept them away. The fabric of Church government still rose like an exhalation, towering towards the Papal supremacy; and 1 Socrates, vi., 23. Sozomen, viii., 1.

the day came when the bishops had plundered the presbyters of their rights, the great metropolitans trod them down in turn, until, before the full orbed splendors of the Cathedra Petri, they also paled their ineffectual fires, and subsided into the mere vassals of the Vatican.

ARTICLE VI.

INFLUENCE OF THE LITERATURE OF THE SARACENS.

By REV. EDWARD BEECHER, D.D., Boston.

To analyse the causes of the present intellectual development of the civilized world, is a work of deep interest. Eight preceding periods of development have combined their influence to produce what we now see. Of these, the first is the Hebrew period, beginning with Moses, and extending to about the fifth century before Christ. The second is the Greek, extending to about the second century before Christ. The third is the Latin, extending to about a century after Christ. The fourth is the period of the New Testament writers. The fifth is that of the Christian Fathers, extending to the end of the sixth century after Christ. The sixth is that of the Saracens, extending from the sixth to the twelfth century. The seventh is that of the Scholastic Divines and other writers of the Middle Ages, extending from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The eighth is that of the Reformers and their successors. These periods, through chronologically distinct at the point of highest development, yet interlock with each other. They are in fact, intimately connected, and have each exerted a vast influence on the destiny of the world, the power of which is still felt.

There is, however, in many minds, a tendency to overlook the influence of the Saracenic development on the history of the world. Guizot in his History of European Civilization, occasionally alludes to the Saracens. He characterizes their ideas and moral passions, as brilliant, splendid, energetic and enthusiastic, to a degree altogether wanting in the German nations, and as exerting a corresponding influence upon the mind and passions of men. Yet he gives no adequate idea of the nature, extent, and THIRD SERIES, VOL. IV. No. 1.

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duration of the Saracenic development in Spain, and unfolds the causes of the gradual evolution of the European mind, just as if the Saracenic element had never mingled with them, or given an impulse to the intellect of the Christian kingdoms of the West. He depicts the impulses of the Barbarians towards civilization from the fifth to the tenth century, derived from the wrecks and fragments of Roman civilization, and from the remembrance of that great and glorious society; but he says nothing of the living civilization of the Saracens in Spain, which was for centuries actually before their eyes, and which Roman Catholic Spain has never exceeded, nor even equalled, even to this day.

Frederick Schlegel, in his Philosophy of History, is still more one-sided; he is even bitterly prejudiced and unfair. To his severe censures of the Mahometan religion, we have nothing to object. But he entirely suppresses notorious facts, which are creditable to the Saracens, and characterizes their Caliphs, without discrimination or exception, as "ever burning with a rage for conquest and destruction," and contrasts with them the Frank and Saxon kings and emperors as "seeking and establishing peace, honoring justice, and founding or restoring laws." One would almost suppose that he had never heard of Almamon, and the other Abassides, or of the illustrious Ommiades of Spain. He also basely detracts from the reputation of the great Frederick II., as a secret friend of the Saracens, because he had the magnanimity to see their merits and avail himself of their literature and sciences, and speaks of him as exerting a pernicious influence on the age and the world. The Saracenic invasion he calls that mighty Arabian conflagration, whose flames were scattered over the terrified globe by the sons of the desert; and he speaks of it as menacing the nations of Europe with destruction, and withal ascribes to it no good results. He also says that it was a general principle with the Mahometan conquerors, to extirpate all recollection of antiquity in the countries which they subdued, and to destroy and obliterate every vestige of the higher and better civilization that had adorned those once flourishing regions. How he dared to utter so notorious a contradiction of historical facts, with the dynasty of the Ommiades in Spain full before his eyes, to say nothing of the Abassides, is to us, inexplicable. The best solution that we can give, is, that he wrote as the eulogist and apologist of the Romish hierarchy, and would not see that under their false forms of Christianity, the Christian communities had become so degraded, that for a time the intervention of the Saracens was needed to aid in arousing and saving the nations. Hallam, in a note to the ninth chapter of his View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, states a few of the facts which evince the influence of the Arabs on the literary development of Europe. But his account of them in the fourth chapter, containing the history