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    canons notices of the religion and literature of the Gentiles . Indeed the manner in which some of the Fathers have been edited , sufficiently proves that they were considered by their commentators as merel y a sort of

    inferior classics , upon which to hang notes about heathen gods and philosophers . Ludovicus Vives , upon the City of God * of St . Augustine , is an example of this class of theological annotators , whom a hint about the three Graces , or the god of Lampsacus , awakens into more activity than whole pages about the Trinity and the resurrection .

    The best specimen of eloquence we have met among the Fathers , at least that which we remember to have read with most pleasure , is the Charisteria , or Oration of Thanks ,

    delivered by Gregory Thaumaturgus , to his instructor Origen . Though rhetorical like the rest , it is of a more manly and simple character , and does credit alike to the master and the

    disciple . But upon the whole , perhaps St . Augustine is the author whom---if ever we should be doomed , in penance for our sins , to select " a Father for our private reading—we should choose , as , in our opinion , the least tiresome of the brotherhood . It is

    impossible not to feel interested in those struggles between passion and principle , out of which his maturer age rose so triumphant ; and there is a conscious frailty mingling with his precepts , and at times throwing its

    shade over the light of his piety , which gives his writings an air peculiarly refreshing , after the pompous rigidity of Chrysostom , the Stoic affectation of Clemens Alexandrinus , and the antithetical trifling of Gregory Najzianzen . If it were not too for the

    indelible stain which his conduct to the Donatists has left upon his memory , the philosophic mildness of his Tract against the Manichseans , and the candour with which he praises his heretical antagonist Pelagius , as' sanctum , bonum et praedieandum virum , * would have Jed us to select him as nil

    example of that tolerating spirit , which— we grieve to say—is so very rare a virtue antioug the saints . — Though Augustine , after the season of his follies was over , very sedulously avoided the society of females , yet he corresponded viith most of the holy womeu of his time ; and there is a ttnmx of tenderness through many of

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    his letters to them , in -which hig weakness for the sex rather interestingly betrays itself . It is in the consolatory epistles , particularly , that we discover these embers of his youthful temperament;—as in the 93 rd to

    Italica , on the death of her husband , and the 263 rd , to Sapida , in return for a garment she bad sent him , iu the thoughts of which there is a considerable degree of fancy as well as tenderness .

    We cannot allude to these fair correspondents of Augustine , without remarking , that the warmest and best allies of the Fathers , in adopting their fancies and spreading their miracles ,

    appear to have been those enthusiastic female pupils by groups of whom they were all constantly encircled ;—whose imaginations required but little fuel of fact , and whose tongues would not suffer a wonder to cool iu

    circulating . The same peculiarities of temperament , which recommended females in the Pagan world , as the fittest sex to receive the inspirations of the tripod , made them valuable agents also in the imposing machinery of miracles . At the same time it must

    be confessed that they performed services of a much higher nature ; and that to no cause whatever is Christianity more signally indebted for the impression it produced in those primitive ages , than to the pure piety , the fervid zeal , and heroic devotedness of the female converts . In the

    lives of these holv virsrins and matrons , in the humility of their belief and the courage of their sufferings , the gospel found a far better illustration than in all -the voluminous

    writings of the Fathers : —there are some of them , indeed , whose adventures are sufficiently romantic , to suggest materials to the poet and the novelist j and Ariosto himself has condescended to borrow from the

    legends his curious story of Isabella and the Moor , —to the no small horror of the pious Cardinal Baronius , who remsrks with much asperity on the sacrilege of which * thr * t vulgar poet * has been guilty , in daring to introduce this sacred story among his fi <^ - tions . To the little acquaintance these , women could have formed with the

    various dogmas of ancient piiilosophy , and to the unincumbered state of their minds in consequence , may be attributed much ' of that warmth and clearness , with which the light of Chris-

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    ty The Father * .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1815, page 20, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1756/page/20/