former centuries continued during this, and several
unimportant additional sects sprang up. The Monophysites gained in
strength under Jacob, Bishop of Edessa, and became known as Jacobites,
and exist to this day in Abyssinia and America. Six small sects grew up
among the Monophysites and died away again, which held varying opinions
about the nature of the body of Christ We find also the Corrupticolae,
Agnoetae, Tritheists, Philoponists, Cononites, and Damianists, the four
last of which differed as to the nature of the Trinity. Thus was rent
into innumerable factions the supposed-to-be-indivisible Christianity,
and the most bloody persecutions disgraced the uppermost party of the
moment.

CENTURY VII.

Many are the missionary enterprises of this century, and we find the
missionaries grasping at temporal power, and exercising a "princely
authority over the countries where their ministry had been successful"
(p. 157). Learning had almost vanished; "they, who distinguished
themselves most by their taste and genius, carried their studies little
farther than the works of Augustine and Gregory the Great; and it is of
scraps collected out of these two writers, and patched together without
much uniformity, that the best productions of this century are entirely
composed.... The schools which had been committed to the care and
inspection of the bishops, whose ignorance and indolence were now become
enormous, began to decline apace, and were in many places, fallen into
ruin. The bishops in general were so illiterate, that few of that body
were capable of composing the discourses which they delivered to the
people. Such of them as were not totally destitute of genius, composed
out of the writings of Augustine and Gregory a certain number of insipid
homilies, which they divided between themselves, and their stupid
colleagues, that they might not be obliged through incapacity to
discontinue preaching the doctrines of Christianity to their people" (p.
159). "The progress of vice among the subordinate rulers and ministers
of the Church was, at this time, truly deplorable.... In those very
places, that were consecrated to the advancement of piety and the
service of God, there was little else to be seen than ghostly ambition,
insatiable avarice, pious frauds, intolerable pride, and a supercilious
contempt of the natural rights of the people, with many other vices
still more enormous" (p. 161). The wealth of the Church increased
rapi