counted for, by the fact that both drew from the same sources, though they wrought their materials out into different forms, and to different results, in many respects. The later speculatist has left proofs of the admiration with which he regarded his predecessor's works, by having translated some of them, as well as by the praises that he bestowed on the man. Of the two, Erigena was unquestionably the more inventive genius, the more independent thinker, and the bolder reformer. Maximus is more fettered by the established doctrine of the Church, though he showed abundant courage to face authority, when occasion required, and skill to bend the creed to his own conclusions.

He belonged to that class of mystical allegorists, who can shape all things at will, and, by a seeming alchemy, transmute base corruptions into the precious ore of truth. There is indeed a legitimate way to find "good in every thing" but a distempered imagination, or a love of paradoxes, is pretty sure to mistake the process, and to force a supposed "good" into the matter contemplated, instead of finding the good that is really there. The whole round of superstitions that characterized the Church in his day, its image-worship, and saint-worship, were too gross to be adopted by our author in their real form; and he therefore received them spiritualized, as symbols, representing sacred mysteries. With him, the Scriptures too were a set of allegories. In the text, he saw not truths expressed, but only images of truths, enigmas to be resolved into ideas and doctrines quite foreign. This allegorizing habit follows him in reading other books, though not to so great a degree as in explaining the Bible. Everywhere he looks askew; looks aside from the substance to a phantom. It is one of the just ordinances of God, that he, who begins by distorting his vision, shall at length have his eyes themselves twisted awry, so that he can see nothing directly. Maximus is by no means a solitary instance of this kind. Even in Nature and Providence, he sought only for cunningly devised symbols of God, where he should have aimed at recognizing immediate monuments of the divine power, wisdom, and goodness. The universe thus becomes but a ponderous collection of riddles. With him, all is changed into factitious imagery and oblique hints,

while the truth and reality of things waver before his eyes only as a shadow. We mention this perverse method of his, with the more particularity, because we perceive it to be of late somewhat ambitiously cultivated by many. They should consider that the distinction of looking cross-eyed, is a deformity instead of an accomplishment, though it may have a run of fashion for awhile.

Maximus was born of noble Christian parents, at Constantinople, about the year 580. After receiving a good education in the learning of the day, he became principal Secretary of the emperor Heraclius, (probably between 610 and 620,) and was selected as a fit person to write the civil history of his times. His life at court, however, seems to have been unpleasant to him; for he retired (probably after 626,) to a monastery at Chrysopolis, opposite to Constantinople, on the site of the present Scutari. Here he was at length chosen Abbot.

But this retreat from the business of the world was not exempt from the troubles and vexations that belong to mortal life. The northern Barbarians, the Avars from Scythia, menaced Constantinople; and, still worse, the heresy of the Monothelites, which he regarded with so much abhorrence, was prevailing there, under the countenance, if not under the patronage, of the emperor, the court, and the bishops. On some of these accounts, he resigned his place in the monastery, about 640, and went to the neighborhood of Carthage in Africa,-a province which had always been the nursery of hot and acrid polemics. Here he found sympathy, his own Duothelitic sentiments being in the ascendant. Here he was also patronized by Gregory, the governor, who was meditating rebellion against the imperial authority of the East, and who was probably glad to make the difference of doctrine subserve his treasonable project. Maximus kept up a correspondence with his former associates, and sent letters. even to Italy, for the purpose of rousing the Church against Monothelitism. By his influence, councils were also called, in Africa, for the same purpose. In the year 641, he was surprised by the arrival of Pyrrhus, late Patriarch of Constantinople, who had fled from the imperial court, under suspicion of factious conduct, or, as

some think, of atrocious crimes, and who sought refuge in this distant province. He had hitherto sided with the Monothelites; but in a long disputation which afterwards took place between him and Maximus, in presence of the governor, he pretended to be converted from his error, hoping to gain favor, and to be commended to the confidence of the Western bishops. From Africa, Maximus took him to Rome, in 645, and presented him to Pope Theodore, together with an Orthodox, or Duothelitic, Confession of faith, which he had signed. Pyrrhus gained his point, by being solemnly restored to the communion of the Church. But learning, soon afterwards, that the influence of Constantinople was likely to prevail over that of the Pope, the unprincipled bishop relapsed to his former doctrine, and was at length reinstated in his Patriarchate. Maximus passed several years in Italy. It is supposed that, here, he was the principal agent in bringing the Pope and his clergy to take an open stand against the officious edicts which the Eastern Emperor had issued in favor of the Monothelites. At length, a Western Council was assembled at Rome, in 6494 under Pope Martin I., in which the heresy was condemned, in direct contravention of the imperial decree, and the anathema signed with a mixture of ink and the consecrated wine of the sacrament. Though we find no mention of Maximus in the records of this Council, there can be little doubt that he was a leading spirit in its proceedings.

The bold offence enraged Constans, who now held the empire of the east. After one or two fruitless attempts, Pope Martin was arrested, in 653, and, with circumstances of peculiar cruelty, transported to Constantinople for trial. Thence he was banished to the Chersonesus, where he died in extreme destitution, in 655. Maximus held too distinguished a place among the Duothelites, and had taken too leading a part in their movements, to be over

4 This is commonly called the First Lateran Council. In the Appendix to the Ancient History of Universalism, it is said that this Council repeated the anathema against Origen and his followers, Didymus and Evagrius; and the inference is left to be drawn, that it was on account of their Universalism. The fact is true; but the inference is a mistake. The anathema was repeated against them, and others, only on account of some errors which they were supposed to have held respecting the Trinity and Incarnation. See Fleury, Hist. Eccl. Liv. xxxviii. cap. 53.

looked; he also was brought to Constantinople, put in solitary confinement, and then arraigned before his judges. This was in 655. At first the attempt was made to convict him of insolence to the emperor, and of treasonable designs: a charge, to which his former connection with Gregory in Africa, and with suspected persons in Rome, might give some color of plausibility. But respect for the venerable character and age of the man, now seventyfive years old, softened the feelings of his prosecutors, and induced them to treat him with more lenity than they had shown to the unfortunate Pope. Dropping the first charge, they tried every means of persuasion, of promises, and of expostulation, to make him consent to the silence which the emperor's edict enjoined as to the disputed point of doctrine. It was only required that he should neither maintain that there was but one will, nor that there were two wills, in Christ,-that he should let the matter rest. They adduced the authoritative example of the new Pope, Eugenius, and of the Roman Church, who had submitted to the required neutrality. But he declared that though the Roman bishop had fallen from his faithfulness, yet he would abide by the truth. He anathematized the imperial edict, and refused to commune with the time-serving church and clergy of Constantinople. On this, he was banished to Bizya in Thrace, not far from the coast of the Euxine, and about ninety miles Northwest of Constantinople. Here he was imprisoned in a solitary cell, with the hope, it would seem, of reducing the inflexible champion to compliance. His most intimate friend and disciple, Anastasius, was condemned to exile, at the same time, but to a different place.

After waiting more than a year, for this rigor to have effect, Theodosius, bishop of Cappadocia, and two imperial commissioners, were sent to Bizya, in August, 656, to renew the attempt at persuasion. Theodosius seemed now to propose that the doctrine of two wills should be publicly recognized, and the offensive edict withdrawn, on condition that the bishop and church of Constantinople should be acknowledged in communion; and to these terms Maximus was favorable. The two parties took leave of each other, apparently with great tenderness, and with mutual professions of regard. On the 8th of the next month, the conVOL. IX. 2

sul Paul came to Bizya, with an order from the court, and conducted Maximus to the monastery of Regium, near Constantinople. Here, he was again visited, five days afterwards, by Theodosius and the two imperial commissioners. The former concessions were now revok. ed; and, to his surprise, he was called upon to comply with the emperor's edict. But the old man declared that the Invisible Powers themselves could not force his assent. "What could I answer," continued he, "I do not say, to God, but to my conscience, should I abjure the faith for so vain a thing as human glory?" His immovable firm. ness roused them to fury: they plucked his beard, they beat him, they spit upon him; and after threatening, left him. The next day, the consul returned, and delivered him to a band of soldiers, who dragged him from town to town, exposing him in the camp and to the army. The sight of the aged monk, the earnest feeling with which he defended his faith in their hearing, and the venerable character he had so long borne, deeply moved some of the beholders, while taunts and reproaches were showered upon him by the multitude. At length, he was brought back to Constantinople, arraigned before a Council there, anathematized, and condemned to be scourged, his tongue cut out, and his right hand struck off. The sentence was immediately executed. The maimed and shattered old man, at the age of eighty-one or two, was then sent into distant exile, among the barbarous Lazians, on the Northeastern shore of the Euxine, near the Caucasian mountains. He reached the place of his confinement, on the 8th of June, 662, and lingered till his death in the following August. Soon afterwards, the doctrine of two wills, in the cause of which he had suffered, gained the ascendency; and from that time, the Church has always held his memory dear.

We cannot withhold our profound admiration of the conscientiousness and heroic fortitude, with which he adhered, through reproach and torture, to what he deemed truth, though we may not have in much respect the tenets themselves, for which he was persecuted. Intolerance was the universal sin of his age. He was its victim; but how far he would have exercised it against his opponents, in a change of fortune, he had no opportunity to show, nor we to judge.

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