A.D. 708. Tiberius reigned seven years. A synod convened at Aquileia had not confidence, by reason of its ignorance of the true faith, to act upon the resolutions of the fifth general council; but at length, instructed by the salutary admonitions of the blessed pope Sergius, it, in conjunction with the rest of the churches of Christ, assented to its decrees. Gisulphus, the leader of the Lombards at Beneventum, devastated Campania with fire and sword, and took many captives; but the apostolic pope John, the successor of Sergius, finding no possibility of resisting his violence, sent a body of priests to him with large donations, redeemed the whole of the captives, and caused the enemy to return home. To him succeeded another John, who, amongst many other illustrious works, built within the church of the blessed Peter the apostle an oratory, of admirable workmanship, to the holy mother of God. Hereberct, king of the Lombards, restored to the jurisdiction of the apostolic see the lands and patrimonies of the Cottian Alps, which had formerly belonged to that see, but which had been seized, and for a long time in the possession of the Lombards, and sent the deed containing this gift, written in letters of gold, to Rome.

A.D. 714. Justinian, a second time, in association with his son Tiberius, reigned six years. This emperor, by the aid of Terbellius, king of the Vulgari, recovered his throne, and put to death the patricians who had expelled him, Leo, who had usurped his seat, and his successor, Tiberius, who had kept the deposed monarch in prison, in the same city, during the whole of his reign. Callinicus, the patriarch, however, he deprived of sight, sent him to Rome, and conferred the bishopric upon Cyrus, the supporter of his exile, and who was an abbot in Pontus. This emperor invited pope Constantine to his court, received him with great honour, and having ordered him to perform mass on Sunday, and having received the communion at his hands, he sent him home. During this ceremony he prostrated himself upon the ground, and, requesting the pope's intercession for his sins, renewed all the privileges of the church. Afterwards having, contrary to the urgent expostulations of the apostolic pope, sent an army to Pontus to apprehend Philippicus, whom he had sent into banishment there, the soldiers went over to Philippicus, declared him emperor on the spot, and returning with him to Constantinople, gave battle to Justinian at the twelfth milestone from the city, defeated and put him to death, and conferred the throne upon Philippicus.

A.D. 716. Philippus, in a reign of one year and six months, ejected Cyrus from the pontificate, and commanded him to retire to Pontus, to govern his monastery in the capacity of abbot. This emperor, also, sent to pope Constantine letters replete with unsound doctrine, which the pope, acting on the advice of a council of the apostolic see, rejected, and, in consequence, caused to be put up in the portico of St. Peter tablets containing a representation of the acts of the six holy general councils; (for Philippicus had commanded the representations similar to these in the royal city to be removed;) and the Roman people made a resolution that the name of the heretical emperor should not be used in charters, nor

any statue erected to him; whence it happens that his image was not introduced into the church, nor his name pronounced in the solemnities of the masses.

A.D. 719. Anastasius reigned three years. This emperor took Philippicus captive, and deprived him of sight; but abstained from putting him to death. He also sent a letter to pope Constantine at Rome, by the hands of Scholasticus the patrician, and exarch of Italy, in which he declared himself favourable to the catholic faith, and the decrees of the holy sixth council. Liuthbrand, at the admonition of the venerable pope Gregory, confirmed the gift of the patrimony of the Cottian Alps, which Hereberct had made, and which he had ratified. Egberct,' a holy man of the nation of the Angles, adorned the priesthood by a monastic life; and wandering a stranger in foreign lands, that he might gain a home in heaven, by his pious preaching converted many provinces of the Scottish nation to the canonical observance of the time of Easter, from which they had long deviated, in the 716th year of the incarnation of our Lord.

A.D. 720. Theodosius reigned one year. He, on being elected to the empire, inflicted a signal defeat upon Anastasius at Nicæa, compelled him to take the oath of allegiance, to attach himself to the clerical order, and be ordained a presbyter. This emperor, too, having ascended the throne, and being a catholic, immediately proceeded to restore to its former place in the royal city that venerable representation which contained the decrees of the six holy councils, and which had been torn down by Philippicus. In this reign the river Tiber overflowed its banks, and caused serious damage to the city of Rome. In the Via Lata, the waters rose to the depth of one foot and a half, and flowing from the gate of St. Peter to the Milvian Bridge, united themselves in their own channel. The flood lasted seven days, until heaven answered the repeated litanies of the citizens, and it retired on the eighth day. At this time, many of the Angles, noble and simple, men and women, soldiers and private persons, moved by the instinct of divine love, were wont to repair from Britain to Rome. Among these, the very reverend abbot Ceolfrid, at the age of seventy-four years, after having been a presbyter forty-seven years, and an abbot thirty-five years, on his arrival at Langres, died, and was buried in the church of the two blessed martyrs. This holy man, among the other donations which he had provided to take to Rome, sent to the church of St. Peter the Pandect,' translated into Latin from the Hebrew and Greek by St. Jerome.

A.D. 729. Leo reigned nine years. In this reign the Saracens, with an immense army, penetrated to Constantinople, and for three years besieged the city. At length heaven answered the earnest

1 Eccl. Hist. III. iv. § 161; V. xxii. § 445.

2 The Pandect was the name for a volume containing the Old and New Testaments. See the verses written by Alcuin, and printed in his works, ii. 203, ed. 1777; and also in the Annals of Baronius, A.D. 778, § 27. Alcuin, in his treatise upon Orthography, when treating of this word says, "Therefore the Old and New Testament, if they be written together in one volume, it is called a Pandect." Opp. ii. 308.

prayers of the inhabitants; vast numbers of the enemy perished by famine, cold, and pestilence, and the rest, wearied by their ineffectual efforts, raised the siege. In their retreat they assailed the Vulgari, in their territory upon the Danube, and being defeated by them, they took refuge in their ships. Nor were their perils then over, for when they had put out to sea, a sudden tempest overtook them, many of them were drowned, or shipwrecked on the shore, and there put to death. On the report being brought to Liuthbrand that the Saracens, after invading Sardinia, had not shrunk from defiling the place to which the bones of the holy bishop Augustine, to avoid the devastations of the barbarians, had formerly been translated, and where they had been honourably buried, he purchased them for a large sum of money, brought them over to Ticinæ, and there reburied them with the honour due to so great a prelate.

THE REMAINDER OF THE SIXTH AGE.

These particulars concerning the course of events in time past, I have taken the trouble to digest, as far as possible, in accordance with the Hebrew Scriptures; deeming it proper, that, as the Greeks drew up for themselves and their fellow-countrymen chronological works in accordance with the version of the LXX, which they habitually used, so also we, who, by the labours of the blessed translator Jerome, drink at the pure source of the Hebrew Scriptures, should, in accordance with those Scriptures, determine the scheme of our calculation of time. But if any condemn this our labour as superfluous, let them, whosoever they be, receive without offence the fair reply which Jerome gives to those who affect to discredit the ancient cosmography: "If it is distaseful, let them not read it." Further, whether, in marking the course of events and their dates, the basis which is adopted be the Hebrew Scriptures, which even the Jews, our opponents, confess to have been transmitted to us in their purity, by the above-mentioned translator; or whether it be the version of the LXX, which many affirm to have been originally published without sufficient care, or think, with St. Augustine, that it was subsequently corrupted by the Gentiles; or whether it be a combination of the two, according to the respective opinion of each person, and whether to time past he assigns, or finds assigned, a longer or a shorter period; still we urge upon all, without distinction, not to be thereby influenced in forming an estimate of the length or shortness of the remaining periods of time, but to be ever mindful of our Lord's saying, “Of the last day and hour no one knoweth, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father alone." [Matt. xxiv. 36.] And, on this head, I would add a particular caution against those who suggest, that the limits of the duration of the world have been, from the first, limited to the space of 6000 years, and who, to save themselves from the imputation of contradicting the saying of our Lord, add, that it is uncertain in what year of the sixth millenary the day of judgment is to come, but that it may be confidently expected about the end of that period. For if one does but ask them what are

the grounds of this belief, they reply in a tone of indignant surprise, Surely you have read in Genesis, that in six days God made the world; and, on these grounds, there is a reasonable belief that it will endure 6000 years, more or less!" And, worse than this, an opinion, derived from the seventh day on which God rested from his work, has arisen, that after 6000 years of the labours of the saints, they, in this very life, will rise again immortal, and reign in joy and felicity with Christ.

But, once for all, rejecting these conclusions as heretical and frivolous, be it ours to hold with sincerity the catholic belief, that those six days in which God made the world, and the seventh day on which He rested from his work, and which on that account He sanctified and blessed as a day of rest for ever, do not signify 6000 years of a world of labour, and a seventh millenary of the reign of the blessed on earth with Christ, but rather six ages of the world in its progress to its close, in which the saints labour in this life for Christ's sake, and a seventh of everlasting rest in another life, which their spirits, separated from the body, enjoy with them. With regard to which the true belief is, that this sabbath of spirits had its commencement at the time when the first martyr of Christ, suffering death at the hands of his brother, was translated in the spirit into eternal rest, and that it will find its completion on the day of the resurrection, when the spirits also shall have received incorruptible bodies. And, in like manner, as no one of the five past ages appears to have contained exactly 1000 years, but some more, and some less, and no two to have corresponded in length, so, also, the duration of the present age must be unknown to mortals, and known only to Him who has enjoined his servants to watch with their loins girded about and their lights burning, like unto men that wait for their Lord when He shall return from the wedding.

THE END.

THE EPISTLE

OF THE

VENERABLE BEDA TO BISHOP ECGBERCT.

To the most beloved and most reverend bishop Ecgberct, Beda, the servant of Christ, greeting:-I have not forgotten the wish that you expressed last year, during the sojourn of a few days, which the purposes of study induced me to make in your monastery, that you should take advantage of our meeting again this year in the same place for the same common purpose, to invite me to a conversation with you; and, if the will of heaven had permitted the consummation of this wish, this letter would have been rendered unnecessary by the greater fulness with which the freedom of a personal interview would have enabled us to discuss the subjects upon which I might desire or deem it requisite to offer my suggestions. But although, as you are aware, the weak state of my health has prevented this, yet the fraternal regard with which your affection inspires me, has prompted me to do all that lies in my power by sending, in a letter, the communication which I am unable to make in a personal visit; and I most earnestly beg of you to banish from your mind any idea that this epistle is dictated by any arrogant affectation of superiority, and to think that it flows from a real and unassuming spirit of humility and affection.

§ 2. I exhort your holiness, therefore, most well beloved in Christ, to be mindful by the sanctity both of your works and doctrine, to confirm that sacred dignity which the Author of dignities and Giver of spiritual gifts has vouchsafed to bestow upon you. For neither of these virtues can be fully complete without the other, when either a good-living bishop is neglectful of his office as a teacher, or, when one who is correct as a teacher lightly regards the exercise of good works. But such a servant as truly performs both of these duties verily awaits the arrival of his Lord with joy, hoping to hear the words, Well done, good and faithful servant; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' [Matt. xxv. 23.] On the other hand, if any one (which God forbid) after accepting the office of bishop neglects to correct his own evil deeds by a holy life, or those of the people placed under his charge by punishment or admonition, there shall happen to him, at the coming of the Lord in an hour when he thinketh not, that which is plainly declared by the sentence passed on the unprofitable servant― Cast him into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' [Matt. xxv. 30.]