354 
duced among them the principles of social order, had bridled 
their passions, had led them at least to show some sort of reve- 
rence for duty and for God ? What, if it were not Christianity ? 
Corrupt as the Christian religion had become in the Middle 
Ages — and this corruption was no more than might be expected 
from the state of society in which it existed — it was still, even 
in its wqrst days, a power for good. We may take exception to 
the principle of monasticism, but the virtues of monasticism 
were precisely those which were best calculated to strike the 
imaginations of the rude people in those uncultivated times. 
Lingard has told us how, to the rude barbarians, “ in whom 
the opportunity of gratification had strengthened the impulse of 
the passions, a life of chastity appeared the most arduous effort 
of human virtue,” and how “ they revered its professors as 
beings of a nature superior to their own” ; * * * § and Ilume f and 
Gibbon, J though in the contemptuous mode of speaking of 
mediaeval piety which was in their days the fashion, admit the 
truth of the statement. We may object to the doctrine of 
Papal supremacy, but few will venture to deny that in times of 
ignorance it was the only possible counterpoise to brute force, 
that it supplied the place of that enlightened sense of truth and 
justice before which ambition and violence are wont in our 
times to bow their heads. § We may complain, and justly com- 
plain, of the evils attendant upon superstition, yet we may 
admit that in those times even superstition had its uses; that 
an abject terror of the powers unseen was at least better than 
no belief whatever — than the absence of all which might keep 
violence and wrong in check by the fear of a future retribution. 
One bright featui’e marks a vast distinction between the worst 
of mediaeval times and those which had preceded them. The 
Christian religion in mediaeval times was at least able to produce 
the grace of penitence. Remorse, that which in ancient times 
supplied its place, had almost ceased to be heard of during the 
later ages of the Roman Empire, and the greatest monsters of 
iniquity descended to their graves without the least sign of the 
* Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 181. 
t Hume, c. 2, Edred, and c. 3, Edward the Confessor. 
+ Gibbon, Decline and Fall, c. 37. “ They soon acquired the respect of 
the world which they despised, and the loudest applause was bestowed upon 
this Divine philosophy, which surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, 
the laborious virtue of the Grecian schools.” 
§ Southey, a very anti-Papal writer, has an eloquent passage in his Book of 
the Church to this effect, vol. i. c. LO. The fact is now generally admitted 
by Protestant historians of the highest reputation. 
