markable that he contended that death, as well as every other dispensation of providence, was designed for the benefit both of the just, and of the unjust*; and that he maintained against the Manicheans, that, even in this as world, mankind are happy or miserable, according to it their virtue or vice. With the doctrine of original sin, er he seems to have been utterly unacquainted; and he co supposed that human agency was fully adequate, without any supernatural control, to do good as well as s evil1. e Of the events of his life, we know little more thann that, like most of the distinguished orthodox bishops of s this time, he was honored with the notice and the perse ap cution of the emperor Julian. In the year 362, this e zealous apostate endeavored to excite the people of en Bostra to expel their bishop; but the influence of the c prelate seems to have prevailed over the exhortation of e the sovereign, and the malicious attempt to have proved ers ineffectual. On the accession of Jovian to the empire in A. D. 363, Titus attended the council of Antioch under Meletius; and though his name appears, with those of some other orthodox bishops, among the subscriptions to a Semi-Arian explanation of the Nicene Creedm, he nevertheless seems to have been considered one of the Athanasian party. He died, it is thought, about A. D. 370. ። error ascribed to Origen, that the pains of the damned, and even "those of the demons themselves, will not be eternal." But Ceilleir has the hardihood to plead that the passage is not clear, &c. p. 51. k Contra Manich. Lib. ii. p. 107, 112. See the quotations in Ceilleir, for 10 D. 370. XII. More learned and classical than Athanasius, and next to him in weight of authority among the orthodox of the East, as Basil the Great, bishop of Cesarea in Cappadocia. Vith a constitution naturally feeble and broken moreoer by monkish austerities, he possessed a strong mind, courageous resolution, a temper active, but too ambiious, and an eloquence of a manly and noble kind. Of is views respecting the doctrine under consideration, we cannot pronounce with confidence, as his language s not uniform, nor always reconcileable. He repeatedly states, at considerable length, that those who, after baptism, indulge in sins, however heinous, and die under the guilt of them, are to be purified in the fire of the general judgment" : distinguishing them, however, from such as have never professed christianity. Yet, at another time, while admonishing one of those very charaoters, he conceals that notion, and for the sake, perhaps," of striking the greater terror, asserts that their future torments "will have no end," and that "there is no re"lease, no way to flee from them, after death. Now is "the time in which we are allowed to escape them "." On the contrary, again, he sometimes represents the purifying and salutary operation of future fire or punishment as extending, without distinction, to guilty souls in general: Commenting on these words of Isaiah, (ix. 19, Septuagint version) because of the wrath of the Lord, the whole earth is kindled into flame, and the people shall Basilii Comment, in Cap. iv. 4, Esaia, and cap. xi. 16, &c. Edit Paris. 1637. • Basilii Epist. ad Virginem lapsam, Tom. iik p: 18. be as though they were burnt up with fire, Basil says, "the prophet declares that, for the benefit of the soul, the "earthly things are to be consumed by penal fire; even "as Christ himself intimates, saying, I have come to send “fire upon the earth; what would I, except that it be “kindled? (Luke xii. 49.) And the prophet adds, “the people shall be as though they were burnt up with "fire: he does not threaten an absolute extermination, “but intimates a purification, according to the sentiment "of the apostle, that if any one's work be burned, he “ shall suffer loss, but he himself shall be saved, yet so as "by fire. (1 Cor. iii. 15.)" From this solitary passage we can only suspect that our author was, at times, inclined to Universalism. His own brother, the bishop of Nyssa, was a Universalist; and his most intimate friend, Gregory Nazianzen, may in some sense merit that appellation. Like them, Basil was a professed admirer of Origen's writings; and with the assistance of the latter, he selected from them and published a volume of choice extracts, consisting of such passages as the two friends most highly valued. It is a gratification to light upon circumstances that seem to connect the writers of this age with earlier fathers, to whose acquaintance we have been introduced at a former period. Basil was brought up in the metropolis of Cappadocia, and perhaps in the very Þ Basilii Comment. in Cap, ix, 19, Esaiæ, If the Regulæ Brevio res be Basil's, he there (Interrog. 267,) labored to reconcile the absolute eternity of punishment with the fact that some shall be beaten with many stripes, and others with few. But this piece has been ascribed to Eustathius of Sebastea, (See Du Pin's Bibliotheca Pat. Art. Basil.) a cotemporary with Basil, Whoever the author was, he certainly meant to be considered a believer in strictly endless misery, church where the venerable Firmilian presided a century before. His grandmother, Macrina, under whom he received his juvenile education, and his first impres sions of piety, had been, in her youth, a hearer of Gregory Thaumaturgus, in Pontus; for whom she inspired her young scholar with a profound and lasting veneration. He himself, in middle life, spent some time as a monk in the solitudes adjacent to the ancient residence of the famous Wonderworker; and soon afterwards, on his return to Cappadocia in the year 370, he was or dained over the same bishopric which Firmilian had once governed. In his general system of doctrine, there was nothing that can have struck his cotemporaries as very peculiar. Though addicted to the allegorical mode of interpreting the scriptures, he was quite moderate in this respect, compared with some others of that age. It is worthy of remark, that he approached nearer to the notion of original and total depravity, than had any of the earlier fathers; though at the same time he fell short of the modern standard, and was what we should now call an Arminian. In early life he travelled extensively, studying at Cesarea in Palestine, at Constantinople, at Athens, and finally in the monasteries of Egypt. Here he was initiated into the monastic life; for which, like most of his cotemporaries, he always maintained a zealous attachment. And like them, too, he formed his views of practical religion, by the false standard of that perverse and fanatical discipline. A. D. 370, to 376. XIII. That class of devotees, to which we have once or twice alluded, the monks, had now become numerous in many parts of the East, where their unnatural mode of life began to be held in general veneration, and to be patronised by nearly all the bishops and doctors. Athanasius, Basil, Ephraim the Syrian, the two Gregories, Epiphanius, and others, were its strenuous advocates. It had been very lately introduced, with great success, into the desert parts of Palestine, Syria, Pontus, and Mesopotamia; but to Egypt belonged the glory, or more truly the dishonor, both of its origin, and of its rapid growth to maturity. A century before the present period, one or two individuals fled from the heathen persecutions into the frightful wastes that border the long, narrow tract of vegetation watered by the Nile. Habit and a mistaken devotion gave them a relish, at length, for what necessity had thus forced upon them; and they continued to follow, from choice, a kind of life more suited to the reptiles, their associates, than to human beings. Their example, so congenial with the absurd notions of the times, drew many after them: multitudes succeeded multitudes; till the number of monks in that country alone, had now increased to tens of thousands, all governed by established rules, and forming an institution which was thought the brightest ornament of the church. Among them we discover that, about this time, a considerable body had become distinguished by an appellation which seems to have been but newly introduced |