hurches
of all the earth. But so far as we have evidence, there was no such
will or hope to exalt the quiet instincts of his natural industry; and
partly as a scholar's exercise, partly as an old man's recreation, the
severity of the Latin language was softened, like Venetian crystal, by
the variable fire of Hebrew thought, and the "Book of Books" took the
abiding form of which all the future art of the Western nations was to
be an hourly expanding interpretation.

39. And in this matter you have to note that the gist of it lies, not in
the translation of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into an easier and a
common language, but in their presentation to the Church as of common
authority. The earlier Gentile Christians had naturally a tendency to
carry out in various oral exaggeration or corruption, the teaching of
the Apostle of the Gentiles, until their freedom from the bondage of the
Jewish law passed into doubt of its inspiration; and, after the fall of
Jerusalem, even into horror-stricken interdiction of its observance. So
that, only a few years after the remnant of exiled Jews in Pella had
elected the Gentile Marcus for their Bishop, and obtained leave to
return to the AElia Capitolina built by Hadrian on Mount Zion, "it became
a matter of doubt and controversy whether a man who sincerely
acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe
the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation!"[35] While, on the
other hand, the most learned and the most wealthy of the Christian name,
under the generally recognised title of "knowing" (Gnostic), had more
insidiously effaced the authority of the Evangelists by dividing
themselves, during the course of the third century, "into more than
fifty numerably distinct sects, and producing a multitude of histories,
in which the actions and discourses of Christ and His Apostles were
adapted to their several tenets."[36]

[Footnote 35: Gibbon, chap. xv. (II. 277).]

[Footnote 36: Ibid., II. 283. His expression "the most learned and most
wealthy" should be remembered in confirmation of the evermore
recurring fact of Christianity, that minds modest in attainment, and
lives careless of gain, are fittest for the reception of every
constant,--_i.e._ not local or accidental,--Christian principle.]

40. It would be a task of great, and in nowise profitable difficulty
to determine in what measure the consent of the general Church, and in
what measure the act and autho