he had a villa near, where I was taken prisoner at the age of about sixteen years. I was ignorant of the true God, and was carried into captivity in Ireland (Hiberione) with so many thousand men, as we well deserved, for we departed from God, and did not keep his commandments, and were not obedient to our priests, who cried for our salvation, and the Lord sent upon us the wrath of his Spirit (aninationis suæ), and dispersed us to many nations, even to the end of the world, where my poverty appears among foreigners. And there the Lord discovered to me a sense of my unbelief and ignorance, and guarded me till I was able to know good and evil, and comforted me as a father comforts a son."

2. The next paragraph contains St. Patrick's gratitude to God for his mercies, and his Confession of faith, and praise of God: "For there is no other God, nor ever was, nor ever will be, after him, except the God the Father unbegotten, without beginning and from whom every beginning comes, who governs all things, (as we have said,) and his son Jesus Christ, whom we testify to have been always with the Father, before the beginning of the world, spiritually and ineffably begotten of the Father before all beginnings, and through him things visible have been created, and he was made man, having overcome death in the Heavens. And he gave to him all power over every name of things in heaven, on earth, and below; and every tongue confesses to him, that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, whom we believe and expect as about to come hereafter as the judge of the quick and the dead, who shall render to every man according to his deeds, and he sheds abroad in us the Holy Spirit, as a gift and pledge of immortality, who makes the faithful and obedient to be sons of God and coheirs with Christ, whom we confess, and we adore one God in the Trinity of the sacred name." St. Patrick then refers to prophecies of God's consoling his servants, &c.

3. He then excuses the rudeness of his style, and states how long he hesitated to commit anything to writing on that very account. He consoles himself with the promise that "the stammering tongues shall learn to speak peace," and speaks of himself as an "Epistle of Christ," written in the hearts of the Irish, "not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God."

4. He speaks of himself as a wretched runaway, as a stone in the mud, but as raised up by God, for which he praises and thanks God.

5. "I must, therefore, in the faith of the Trinity, make known the name of God every where, for having enabled me to leave to my Gallic brethren and children, whom I baptized in the Lord, so many thousand men. I was unworthy of this honour, which I never hoped for in the days of my youth. In Ireland I tended sheep, (or cattle, pecora), and prayed often every day, and the love of God came upon me more and more; and in the night, or before day break, on the mountains and in the woods, in frost and rain, I took no harm nor felt any disinclination to prayer."

above is the passage where Mr. T. Moore so ingeniously explains away the marriage of the deacon, but swallows that of the priest without a word.

6. "And there one night I heard a voice, saying to me, 'You do well in fasting, and you must soon return fasting to your country.' And again, I heard a voice shortly after, saying, Behold! your ship is ready!' but it was not nearer than 200 miles, and in a place where I knew no one. I then left the man, with whom I had been six years. I came in the power of the Lord, who directed my way to good, and feared nothing till I came to that ship. The ship-master refused to take me, but when I had set forth towards a cottage where I had been entertained, and begun to pray on the road, one of them called out to me, 'Come quickly, for those men call thee!"

7. When they land, they are in danger of starvation, and the shipmaster begs him to pray for them, on which St. Patrick conjures them to be converted to Christianity, and perhaps God may send them food. A herd of swine now opportunely makes its appearance, and relieves them from distress. By this, and by their finding some wild honey, St. Patrick is in great favour with them," &c.

"And I was sleeping, and Satan tempted me so sorely, that I shall remember it as long as I live. He fell upon me like a huge rock, and took away the use of my limbs. So it came into my mind, (but how, I know not,) to call Helias, and in the meantime I saw the sun rise ; and while I called Helias with all my strength, the splendour of the sun arose upon me and took away my heaviness."

8. He was captured again, and released after two months.

9. “And again I was in Britain with my parents, who received me as a son, and besought me never to depart. And there, in the deep of the night, I saw a man, by name Victoricus, coming from Ireland with numberless epistles, and he gave me one, and I read the beginning of it, which was 'the voice of the Irish.' And while I was reading its beginning, I thought I heard those who dwelt at the wood of Foclut, near the western main, crying out, We beseech thee to come to us, Oh! holy Child!' and I was pricked in my heart and could not read any more, and thus I awoke. I thank God, that after many years he satisfied their cry," &c.

Then follows another vision of the night, and an account of the possession of his mind by the Spirit of God. And again, also, another dark vision, and comfort after it, for which he thanks God.

"I am a

10. He gives thanks to God for his missionary success. debtor to God for having regenerated much people through me, and that clergy were ordained for them," &c.; and he quotes the promises of grace to the Gentiles, &c. He again speaks of his success, and quotes the last words of St. Matthew's gospel; and then occurs the suspected passage, Filii Scottorum et filiæ Regulorum Monachi et Virgines Christi esse videntur.

11. He speaks of God's exaltation of him, and of his own unworthiness, and he commends this letter, and prays; "written in Ireland by Patrick the unlearned and the sinner" to all believers; and prays them not to charge his ignorance, if there be anything in it of a lowly kind, but to believe that it is the gift of God. And "this is my confession before I die."

VOL. VIII.-Oct. 1835.

3 F

402

WYCLIFFE ON THE LAST AGE OF THE CHURCH.

(Continued from page 272.)

LET us now return to the Abbot Joachim, whose authority is so much relied upon by Wycliffe in the tract before us. He is said to have been born in the year 1145, and was founder of a monastery at a place called Flore or Flora in Calabria; his festival is celebrated by the Florensian order, of which he was the founder, on the 29th of May, and his life, miracles, prophecies, &c., together with a defence of him from the charge of heresy, will be found in the Acta Sanctorum under that date. The opinion respecting antichrist, attributed to him in a story told by Hoveden, to which Mr. Vaughan alludes, is there shewn to be inconsistent with that expressed in his published Commentary on the Apocalypse; and is, in itself, improbable, considering that " contemporary pontiffs," so far from feeling alarm at his predictions, if we can credit his biographers, appear to have at all times held him in high estimation. I know that the council of Lateran, under Pope Innocent III., in the year 1215, did condemn his book against Peter Lombard as heretical; but, to use the words of Helyot-"Cette censure, qui ne tombe pas que sur ses écrits, qu'il avoit soumis au jugement de l'Eglise, n'a pas empêché qu'on ne lui ait rendu un culte publique après sa mort;"+ and there are some who deny that the book condemned in the council alluded to was the production of this Joachim. At least, it will appear by the following extracts from the office used on his festival by his followers, that they did not give much weight to the charge:

Antiph. ad Vesp. B. Joachim, spiritu donatus prophetico, decoratus intelligentiâ errore procul hæretico, dixit futura ut præsentia.

Ad Laudes. B. Joachim, primus Abbas Florensis, humilis et amabilis claruit miris, per quæ fuit mirabilis.

V. Implevit eum Dominus spiritu sapientiæ et intellectus.

R. Stolam gloriæ induit eum.

Oratio. Deus, qui gloriam tuam tribus apostolis in monte Thabor manifestasti, et in eodem loco Beato Joachim veritatem Scripturarum revelasti, tribue quæsumus, ut ejus meritis et intercessione, ad eum, qui via, veritas, et vita est, ascendamus.‡

But whether the book De unitate seu essentia SS. Trinitatis, condemned in the fourth Lateran council, was written by this Abbot Joachim or not, it is certain that he has retracted its errors in the Psalterium decem Chordarum, which is undoubtedly his, and in which the orthodox faith is asserted. His principal heresy appears to have consisted in his ignorance of the dialectics of the day, in consequence of which he was led to express himself in a manner which was interpreted as bordering on Arianism; but no charge of attacking the reigning superstitions or growing usurpations of the church of Rome appears to have been ever brought against him by his contemporaries.

These remarks may serve to convince my readers that Wycliffe, in adopting the opinions of Joachim, was not taking the side of an acknowledged heretic; and, as I do not belong to the order of St. Francis, or to that of St. Dominic, I do not feel called upon to engage more deeply either in the attack or defence

Acta SS. Maii, tom. vii. p. 89, et seq. See also Cellier, Hist. des Auteurs Sacrés, tome xxiii. p. 338. The abbot is also defended warmly by Wadding, Annal. Minorum, sub an. 1256, No. 5. Additional references will be found in Mosheim. + Histoire des Ordres Monastiques, &c. tom. v. p. 393.

The whole of this office is given by Gregory Laurus in his Magni divinique prophetæ B. Joannis Joachim Abbatis Hergasiarum Aletheia Apologetica, sive Mirabilium veritas defensa, Neapol. 1660; but as I have not access to this book, I quote the above from the Acta Sanctor. ubi supra, p. 90.

of the prophetical abbot's orthodoxy. But I cannot help remarking that the historian who speaks of Wycliffe's adoption of the sentiments of Joachim, ought, at least, to have acquainted his readers with the fact that Joachim is to this day warmly defended from the charge of heresy by a powerful party in the church of Rome; of this fact, however, Mr. Vaughan writes as if he was perfectly unconscious, and the only account he gives us of Joachim is to repeat the very apocryphal story of his interview with Richard Cœur de Lion, and to identify him with the author of a rhapsody which, as we shall see, is, on sufficiently plausible grounds, supposed to come from a very different quarter.* Again, it may well be asked, what becomes of the theory about the gradual development of the reformer's opinions, if we must believe that in his first publication he boldly and professedly followed as his guide a writer who, if Mr. Vaughan's account of him be correct, had denounced the pope as antichrist, and the church of Rome as "the fleshly synagogue of Satan"? This was pretty well to begin with; but the fact is, that nothing of the sort appears in "The Last Age of the Church." Joachim is there quoted along with Bede, Eusebius, Ammonius, [for so I translate "Haymoūd"] Gregory, and other writers, as an authority which would have weight with those for whom the tract was written, and there is not the slightest hint which would imply that his orthodoxy had then been in any degree called in question.

The specimen which Mr. Vaughan gives us of the prophecies of Joachim will now require some notice, not only because, as I have already hinted, there are good reasons for denying it to be his, but also because, as a specimen of fraudulent quotation, it is in itself a curiosity. For this fraud, however, Mr. Vaughan is not responsible, further than that he has adopted the extract

• The same remark is applicable to Mr. Milner's account of Joachim (Hist. of the Church of Christ, vol. iii. p. 425. Lond. 1819.)—" Nevertheless, (he says) even in Italy itself, some suspicions that he [the pope] was antichrist appeared. Joachim, Abbot of Calabria, [Qu.? Did Mr. Milner suppose Calabria to be the name of a monastery?] was a man renowned for learning and piety, and perhaps very deservedly;" and then he goes on to quote the story from Hoveden, which, (it may be remarked by the way,) even if true, was nothing to the purpose, for Joachim is not represented by Hoveden as having imagined the pope to be antichrist, but as asserting that antichrist was even then born, "jam natus in civitate Romana, et in sede apostolica sublimabitur;" our author evidently intended it as a proof of his anti. christianity, that Antichrist should exalt himself even in the apostolic see, according to the prediction of the apostle, "extollitur et adversatur super omne quod dicitur Deus;" (Hoved. fol. 388;) but this does not in the least imply that this antichrist should be pope, still less that the pope should be antichrist. Suppose that Joachim had told King Richard that antichrist was then in England, and would soon exalt himself in the kingdom of England above the regal authority, would it have been fair to say 66 some suspicions that the King of England was antichrist had then begun to shew themselves?" The truth is, that in those days there was no form in which the wickedness of antichrist could be more strongly expressed than by saying, "in sede Apostolicâ exaltabitur." But the story of Joachim's interview with Richard is in itself highly improbable; it is refuted by Papebroch, in his Disquisitio De Florensi Ordine, &c. sect. vi. Acta Sanctorum, ad diem 29 Maii. p. 138. Fleury, however, does not altogether disbelieve this story, notwithstanding its inconsistency with Joachim's extant writings—“Il est vrai (he says) qu'on ne trouve rien de semblable dans l'explication de l'Apocalypse donnée par l'abbé Joachim, ni dans ses autres écrits; mais il peut les avoir composez depuis, et s'être corrigé voyant que les évènemens ne répondoient pas à ses prédictions;" (Hist. Eccl., tom. xv. p.595;) but whatever be its foundation, the opinion about antichrist which this story attributes to the prophetical abbot cannot fairly be considered as in any degree reflecting on the pope or the see of Rome; for the most that it seems to have meant was, that antichrist should seize on the papal chair, which, of course, if the pope be the head of everything Christian, was an object which antichrist might very naturally be expected to aim it.

without examination from Bale, an authority well known to be suspicious* in matters of this kind, and who should never be followed without being looked after.

The extract, as given by Mr. Vaughan,t was originally printed at the end of Bale's Chronicle of the Examination of Sir John Oldcastle; and Bale professes to have taken it from the "Summa de heresibus et earum confutationibus" of Guido de Perpiniano;‡ by placing in juxtaposition the extract printed by Mr. Vaughan and the original from Guido, § it will be seen that this precious prophecy is a mere cento of passages, which when strung together make up a fine sounding attack upon the church of Rome, but which in the original is a wretched piece of blasphemy, subversive of Christianity itself. The errors of Abbot Joachim are treated of by Guido, in conjunction with those of Peter John, in the following order :-" primo agam (says Guido) de erroribus eorum communibus; secundo addam quosdam alios; et tertio ponam seorsum errores Joannis Petri;" accordingly this part of the Summa is divided into three chapters, from the first and second of which the extract before us has been gathered. It is to be observed also, that neither Bale nor Mr. Vaughan give the smallest intimation of any omissions or alterations in the quotation :

Guido di Perpiniano.-Ex Cap. I.

"Sexto dicunt quod in tertio statu erit lex libertatis; quia evangelium Christi non fuit libertatis, et quod Spiritus sanetus plenius dabitur in tertio statu, quia in secundo statu non fuit plene datus. Et quod ecclesia in tertio statu purgabitur quasi frumentum a paleis et zizaniis; quia tunc fiet separatio malorum a bonis et tunc prædicabitur evangelium regni.-Fol. xcviii. lin. 25-29.

"Septimo dicunt quod ordo tertii status præfertur in dominio et dignitate ordini clericorum; sicut Joseph præfuit pincernæ, et hujus figuræ veritas incepit tempore Constantini et Silvestri papæ. ¶ Doctores vero tertii status erunt plenius docti; et docebunt plurimi, et tunc deficiet penitus regnum carnis et complebitur illud Apostoli. Nunc ex parte cognoscimus, ex parte prophetamus, cum autem venerit quod perfectum est, evacuabitur quod ex parte est. Et dicunt hæc omnia completum iri ante finem mundi.-Fol. xcviii. lin. 54-59.

"Octavo dicunt, quod ante adventum Christi ad Judicium erunt omnes homines in fide Christi et Christiani. Et quod per apostolos non fuit prædicatum evangelium nisi secundum literam et non se

If any one is startled at my calling Bp. Bale suspicious authority, let him read the character given of him by the learned Henry Wharton-" I know Bale to be so great a liar that I am not willing to take anything of that kind upon his credit; however, his testimony may serve well enough against such another foul-mouthed writer as this C. P. seems to have been."— Observations on Strype's Cranmer. Oxford edit. of Strype, 1812. Vol. ii. p. 1052.

† Vol. i. p. 256, note.

For an account of Guido, see H. Wharton's Appendix ad Cavei Hist. Litter. p. 30. Oxon. 1743.

The edition of the Summa here quoted is that of Paris, 1528, fol.