CHAP. III. The Opposition made to the Corruptions of CHAP. I. A general View of the Life of Bernard, p. 330 CHAP. II. Bernard's Defence of Evangelical Truth CHAP. III. Controversies of Bernard with several other CENTURY VI. CHAP. I. THE LIFE OF FULGENTIUS, AND THE STATE OF THE AFRICAN CHURCHES IN HIS TIME. of the VI. begins his A. D. 495. IN the year 495, a storm began again to lower CENT. over the African Churches. Thrasamond, whose reign then commenced, as obstinate in Arianism Thrasaas Huneric, but more sagacious and less bloody, mond, king mingled the arts of gentleness and severity against Vandals in them. On the one hand he strove to gain over the Africa, orthodox by lucrative motives, on the other he reign, forbad the ordination of bishops in the vacant Churches*. Eugenius, whose faithfulness was so severely tried in the former persecution, had been called to sleep in Jesus before the commencement of this. The African bishops showed however that divine grace had not forsaken them. They determined unanimously not to obey an order, which threatened the extinction of orthodoxy. They ordained bishops, and filled the vacant Sees, though they foresaw the probability of Thrasamond's resentment. But they thought it their duty to take care of their flocks at this hazard, rather than to seem to consent to the king's unrighteous prohibitions. Thrasamond, enraged, determined to Thrasabanish them all. Fulgentius about that time was mond per chosen bishop of Ruspa. In him we behold an- severity. other instance of the effects of the religion revived secutes with CHAP. under Augustine. Fulgentius's life is written by I. one of his disciples, and dedicated to Felician, a bishop, who was the successor of Fulgentius. The review of it, and of his own works, will give us a specimen of the power of divine grace victoriously struggling under all the disadvantages of monastic superstition, and the childish ignorance of a barbarous age. Fulgentius was descended from a noble family in Carthage, where his father was a senator. His grandfather Gordian, flying from the arms of Huneric, retired into Italy. After his decease, two of his sons, returning into Africa, now settled under the Vandal government, found their family-mansion possessed by the Arian clergy. By royal authority however they received part of their patrimony, and retired to Constantinople. In that part of the world, at Tellepte, Fulgentius was born, being the son of Claudius one of the brothers, and of Marriana, a Christian lady, who being soon left. a widow gave her son a very liberal education, for which Constantinople afforded at that time peculiar advantages; and thus his mind became stored with Greek and Roman learning. As he increased in religious seriousness, he inclined more and more to. a monastic life, for which he gradually prepared himself by successive austerities in Africa, the country of his father, to which he returned with, his mother. He was received into the monastery. of Faustus, a bishop whom the Arian persecution had banished from his diocese to a place contiguous to it, where he erected his monastery. The spirit and fashion of the times so transported him, that, at first, he refused even to see his own mother who came to visit him, though he afterwards behaved to her with the greatest filial duty. He underwent severe bodily sufferings from the renewal of the Arian persecution. He was beaten with clubs so cruelly, that he confessed afterwards he scarce found himself capable of enduring the pain any VI. longer, and was glad to induce his tormentors by CENT. some conversation to allow an interval to his afflic tions. For he seems to have been of a weak and delicate constitution, and the softness of his early education rendered him unfit to bear much hardship. His mind, however, appears to have been serene and faithful to his Saviour, whom, in real humility and sincerity, though tarnished with the superstition of the times, he served according to the fundamentals of the Gospel. The Arian bishop of Carthage, who had known Fulgentius, and esteemed his character, highly disapproved of this treatment, which he had received from a presbyter of his own religion and diocese, and told the injured youth, that, if he would make a formal complaint before him, he would avenge his cause. Many advising him to do so, "It is not lawful, says Fulgentius, for a Christian to seek revenge. The Lord knows how to defend his servants. Should the presbyter through me be punished, I shall lose the reward of my patience with God, and the more so, as it would give an occasion of stumbling to the weak, to see an Arian punished by a Monk." By and by he retired into the more interior parts of Africa. Some time after he sailed to Syracuse, and then visited Rome, and saw there king Theodoric in the midst of a magnificent assembly. If men in this life, seeking vanity, attain such dignity, what will be the glory of saints who seek true honour in the new Jerusalem? Fulgentius, -this was the reflection of Fulgentius. Ruspæ in hop of Africa was the place to which, much against his banished will, he was at length elected bishop: but this ex- Sardinia. altation lessened not the severity of his way of life: and by the Arian persecution he was banished into Sardinia, in company with other faithful witnesses of orthodoxy. Upwards of sixty bishops were with him in exile. Thrasamond sent more still into Sardinia, in all 220, exerted himself mightily in overcoming the constancy of the orthodox, and Ruspæ, into |