in the pastures of the Barbarians; their
huntsmen penetrated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses
of the Hercynian wood. The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those
of the Tyber, with elegant houses, and well-cultivated farms; and if a
poet descended the river, he might express his doubt, on which side was
situated the territory of the Romans. This scene of peace and plenty was
suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins
could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolation of
man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and
many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the church. Worms
perished after a long and obstinate siege; Strasburgh, Spires, Rheims,
Tournay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel oppression of the German
yoke; and the consuming flames of war spread from the banks of the Rhine
over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and
extensive country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was
delivered to the Barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous
crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of
their houses and altars. The ecclesiastics, to whom we are indebted
for this vague description of the public calamities, embraced the
opportunity of exhorting the Christians to repent of the sins which had
provoked the Divine Justice, and to renounce the perishable goods of
a wretched and deceitful world. But as the Pelagian controversy, which
attempts to sound the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became
the serious employment of the Latin clergy, the Providence which had
decreed, or foreseen, or permitted, such a train of moral and natural
evils, was rashly weighed in the imperfect and fallacious balance of
reason. The crimes, and the misfortunes, of the suffering people,
were presumptuously compared with those of their ancestors; and they
arraigned the Divine Justice, which did not exempt from the common
destruction the feeble, the guiltless, the infant portion of the human
species. These idle disputants overlooked the invariable laws of nature,
which have connected peace with innocence, plenty with industry, and
safety with valor. The timid and selfish policy of the court of Ravenna
might recall the Palatine legions for the protection of Italy; the
remains of the stationary troops might be unequal to the arduous task;
and the Barbarian auxiliaries might