procured
to them a greater or juster credit than their cultivation of learning
and useful arts: for, if the monks contributed to the fall of science in
the Roman Empire, it is certain that the introduction of learning and
civility into this Northern world is entirely owing to their labors. It
is true that they cultivated letters only in a secondary way, and as
subsidiary to religion. But the scheme of Christianity is such that it
almost necessitates an attention to many kinds of learning. For the
Scripture is by no means an irrelative system of moral and divine
truths; but it stands connected with so many histories, and with the
laws, opinions, and manners of so many various sorts of people, and in
such different times, that it is altogether impossible to arrive to any
tolerable knowledge of it without having recourse to much exterior
inquiry: for which reason the progress of this religion has always been
marked by that of letters. There were two other circumstances at this
time that contributed no less to the revival of learning. The sacred
writings had not been translated into any vernacular language, and even
the ordinary service of the Church was still continued in the Latin
tongue; all, therefore, who formed themselves for the ministry, and
hoped to make any figure in it, were in a manner driven to the study of
the writers of polite antiquity, in order to qualify themselves for
their most ordinary functions. By this means a practice liable in itself
to great objections had a considerable share in preserving the wrecks of
literature, and was one means of conveying down to our times those
inestimable monuments which otherwise, in the tumult of barbarous
confusion on one hand, and untaught piety on the other, must inevitably
have perished. The second circumstance, the pilgrimages of that age, if
considered in itself, was as liable to objection as the former; but it
proved of equal advantage to the cause of literature. A principal object
of these pious journeys was Rome, which contained all the little that
was left in the Western world of ancient learning and taste. The other
great object of those pilgrimages was Jerusalem: this led them into the
Grecian Empire, which still subsisted in the East with great majesty and
power. Here the Greeks had not only not discontinued the ancient
studies, but they added to the stock of arts many inventions of
curiosity and convenience that were unknown to antiquity. When,
afterwards,