recommending the practice of virtue,) whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise; these things Eusebius thinks most suitable to a History of Martyrs;" of wonderful Martyrs, is the splendid epithet which Dr. Chelsum had not thought proper to translate. I should betray a very mean opinion of the judgment and candour of my readers, if I added a single reflection on the clear and obvious tendency of the two passages of the Ecclesiastical Historian. I shall only observe, that the Bishop of Cæsarea seems to have claimed a privilege of a still more dangerous and extensive nature. In one of the most learned and elaborate works that antiquity has left us, the Thirty-second Chapter of the Twelfth Book of his Evangelical Preparation bears for its title this scandalous Proposition, "How it may be lawful and fitting to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who want to be deceived." OrI JENGEL WOTE TH ψεύδει αντι φαρμακα χρησθαι επί ωφέλεια των δεομένων τα TOINTE TROTTE. (P. 356, Edit. Græc. Rob. Stephani, Paris, 1544.) In this chapter he alleges a passage of Plato, which approves the occasional practice of pious and salutary frauds; nor is Eusebius ashamed to justify the sentiments of the Athenian philosopher by the example of the sacred writers of the Old Testament.

2. I had contented myself with observing, that Eusebius had violated one of the fundamental laws of history, Ne quid veri dicere non audeat ; nor could I imagine, if the fact was allowed, that any question

question could possibly arise upon the matter of right. I was indeed mistaken; and I now begin to understand why I have given so little satisfaction to Dr. Chelsum, and to other critics of the same complexion, as our ideas of the duties and the privileges of an historian appear to be so widely different. It is alleged, that “ every writer has a right to choose his subject, for the particular benefit of his reader; that he has explained his own plan consistently; that he considers himself, according to it, not as a complete historian of the times, but rather as a didactic writer, whose main object is to make his work, like the Scriptures themselves, PROFITABLE FOR DOCTRINE; that, as he treats only of the affairs of the Church, the plan is at least excusable, perhaps peculiarly proper; and that he has conformed himself to the principal duty of an historian, while, according to his immediate design, he has not particularly related any of the transactions which could tend to the disgrace of religion."* The historian must indeed be generous, who will conceal, by his own disgrace, that of his country, or of his religion. Whatever subject he has chosen, whatever persons he introduces, he owes to himself, to the present age, and to posterity, a just and perfect delineation of all that may be praised, of all that may be excused, and of all that must be censured. If he fails in the discharge of his important office, he partially violates the sacred obligations of truth,

and disappoints his readers of the instruction which they might have derived from a fair parallel of the vices and virtues of the most illustrious characters. Herodotus might range without controul in the spacious walks of the Greek and Barbaric domain, and Thucydides might confine his steps to the narrow path of the Peloponnesian war; but those historians would never have deserved the esteem of posterity, if they had designedly suppressed or transiently mentioned those facts which could tend to the disgrace of Greece or of Athens. These unalterable dictates of conscience and reason have been seldom questioned, though they have been seldom observed; and we must sincerely join in the honest complaint of Melchior Canus, "that the lives of the philosophers have been composed by Laertius. and those of the Cæsars by Suetonius, with a much stricter and more severe regard for historic truth, than can be found in the lives of saints and martyrs, as they are described by Catholic writers." (See Loci Communes, L. xi. p. 650, apud Clericum. Epistol. Critic. v. p. 156.) And yet the partial representation of truth is of far more pernicious consequence in ecclesiastical, than in civil history. If Laertius had concealed the defects of Plato, or if Suetonius had disguised the vices of Augustus, we should have been deprived of the knowledge of some curious, and perhaps instructive, facts, and our idea of those celebrated men might have been more favourable than they de served; but I cannot discover any practical inconveniencies which could have been the result of

our

our ignorance. But if Eusebius had fairly and circumstantially related the scandalous dissensions of the Confessors; if he had shewn that their virtues were tinctured with pride and obstinacy, and that their lively faith was not exempt from some mixture of enthusiasm; he would have armed his readers against the excessive veneration for those holy men, which imperceptibly degenerated into religious worship. The success of these didactic histories, by concealing or palliating every circumstance of human infirmity, was one of the most efficacious means of consecrating the memory, the bones, and the writings of the saints of the prevailing party; and a great part of the errors and corruptions of the Church of Rome may fairly be ascribed to this criminal dissimulation of the ecclesiastical historians. As a Protestant Divine, Dr. Chelsum must abhor these corruptions; but as a Christian, he should be careful lest his apology for the prudent choice of Eusebius should fix an indirect censure on the unreserved sincerity of the four Evangelists. Instead of confining their narrative to those things which are virtuous and of good report, instead of following the plan which is here recommended as peculiarly proper for the affairs of the Church, the inspired writers have thought it their duty to relate the most minute circumstances of the fall of St. Peter, without considering whether the behaviour of an Apostle, who thrice denied his Divine Master, might redound to the honour, or to the disgrace of Christianity. If Dr. Chelsum should be frightened by this unex

pected

pected consequence, if he should be desirous of saving his faith from utter shipwreck, by throwing overboard the useless lumber of memory and reflection, I am not enough his enemy to impede the success of his honest endeavours.

The didactic method of writing history was still more profitably exercised by Eusebius in another work, which he has intitled, The Life of Constantine, his gracious patron and benefactor. Priests and poets have enjoyed in every age a privilege of flattery; but if the actions of Constantine are compared with the perfect idea of a royal saint, which, under his name, has been delineated by the zeal and gratitude of Eusebius, the most indulgent reader will confess, that when I styled him a courtly Bishop,* I could only be restrained by my respect for the episcopal character from the use of a much harsher epithet. The other appellation of a passionate declaimer, which seems to have sounded still more offensive in the tender ears of Dr. Chelsum,† was not applied by me to Eusebius, but to Lactantius, or rather to the author of the historical declamation, De Mortibus Persecutorum; and indeed it is much more properly adapted to the rhetorician, than to the bishop. Each of those authors was alike studious of the glory of Constantine; but each of them directed the torrent of his invectives against the tyrant, whether Maxentius or Licinius, whose recent defeat was the actual theme of popular and Christian applause. . This