and it becomes such to be
companions with the angels in heaven. What is the name (proceeded
he) of the province from which they are brought?" It was replied,
that the natives of that were called Deiri. "Truly Deiri, because
withdrawn from wrath, and called to the mercy of Christ," said he,
alluding to the Latin, De ira Dei eruti. He asked further, "How is
the king of that province called?" They him that his name was All{}
and he making an allusion to the word, said: "Alleluiah, the praise
of God the Creator, must be sung in those parts." Some censure this
conversation of St. Gregory as a piece of low punning. But the taste
of that age must be considered. St. Austin found it necessary to
play sometimes with words to please auditors whose ears had, by
custom, caught an itch to be sometimes tickled by quibbles to their
fancy. The ingenious author of the late life of the lord chancellor
Bacon, thought custom an apology for the most vicious style of that
great man, of whom he writes: "His style has been objected to as
full of affectation, full of false eloquence. But that was the vice,
not of the man, but of the times he lived in; and particularly of a
court that delighted in the tinsel of wit and learning, in the poor
ingenuity of punning and quibbling." St. Gregory was a man of a fine
genius and of true learning: yet in familiar converse might confirm
to the taste of the age. Far from censuring his wit, or the judgment
of his historian, we ought to admire his piety, which, from every
circumstance, even from words, drew allusions to nourish devotion,
and turn the heart to God. This we observe in other saints, and if
it be a fault, we might more justly censure on this account the
elegant epistles of St. Paulinus, or Sulpitius Severus, than this
dialogue of St. Gregory.
5. Eutychius had formerly defended the Catholic faith with at zeal
against the Eutychians and the errors of the emperor Justinian, who,
though he condemned those heretics, yet adopted one part of their
blasphemies, asserting that Christ assumed a body which was by its
own nature incorruptible, not formed of the Blessed Virgin, and
subject to pain, hunger, or alteration only by a miracle. This was
called the heresy of the Incorrupticolae, of which Justinian declared
himself the abetter; and, after many great exploits to retrieve