century (A.D. 529) that the great Benedictine rule was composed by Benedict of Nursia.  The Council of Constantinople, A.D. 553, is reckoned as the fifth general Council.  It is said to have condemned the doctrines of Origen, thus summarised by Mosheim:—­“1.  That in the Trinity the Father is greater than the Son, and the Son than the Holy Ghost. 2.  The pre-existence of souls, which Origen considered as sent into mortal bodies for the punishment of sins committed in a former state of being. 3.  That the soul of Christ was united to the word before the incarnation. 4.  That the sun, moon, and stars, etc., were animated and endowed with rational souls. 5.  That after the resurrection all bodies will be of a round figure. 6.  That the torments of the damned will have an end; and that as Christ had been crucified in this world to save mankind, he is to be crucified in the next to save the devils” (p. 151, note).  Among the various notabilities of this age none are specially worthy attention, save Brethius, Cassiodorus, Gregory the Great, Benedict of Nursia, Gregory of Tours, and Isidore of Seville.  The heresies of former centuries continued during this, and several unimportant additional sects sprang up.  The Monophysites gained in strength under Jacob, Bishop of Edessa, and became known as Jacobites, and exist to this day in Abyssinia and America.  Six small sects grew up among the Monophysites and died away again, which held varying opinions about the nature of the body of Christ We find also the Corrupticolae, Agnoetae, Tritheists, Philoponists, Cononites, and Damianists, the four last of which differed as to the nature of the Trinity.  Thus was rent into innumerable factions the supposed-to-be-indivisible Christianity, and the most bloody persecutions disgraced the uppermost party of the moment.

CENTURY VII.

Many are the missionary enterprises of this century, and we find the missionaries grasping at temporal power, and exercising a “princely authority over the countries where their ministry had been successful” (p. 157).  Learning had almost vanished; “they, who distinguished themselves most by their taste and genius, carried their studies little farther than the works of Augustine and Gregory the Great; and it is of scraps collected out of these two writers, and patched together without much uniformity, that the best productions of this century are entirely composed....  The schools which had been committed to the care and inspection of the bishops, whose ignorance and indolence were now become enormous, began to decline apace, and were in many places, fallen into ruin.  The bishops in general were so illiterate, that few of that body were capable of composing the discourses which they delivered to the people.  Such of them as were not totally destitute of genius, composed out of the writings of Augustine and Gregory a certain