His Ordirnitioji, Legation, and Pastoral Charge. 3 believed, I came out Daked iVom the shipwreck of human Leand, life. For as the vessel that is negligently moored, is very often (when the storm waxes violent) tossed by the water out of its shelter on the safest shore, so under the cloak of the Ecclesiastical office, I found myself*^ plunged on a sudden in a sea of secular matters, and because I had not held fast the tranquillity of the monastery when in possession, 1 learnt by losing it, how closely it should have been held. For whereas the virtue of obedience was set against my own inclination tomakeme takethe charge ofministering at theholy Altar, I was led to undertake that upon the grounds of the Church requiring it', which, if it might be done with impunity, 'subEc- I should get quit of by^ a second time withdrawing myself; ^^^j^'* and subsequently notwithstanding my unwillingness and reluctance, at the very time when the ministry of the Altar was a heavy weight, the further burden of the Pastoral charge was fastened on me, which T now find so much the more difficulty in bearing, as I feel myself to be unequal to it, and as I cannot take breath in any comfortable assurance in myself For because, now that the end of the world is at hand \ the times are disturbed by reason of the multiplied «* He was sent to Constantinople as him by His conversation, to give an Apocrisiarius immediately upon his or- example to those that follow Him, dination, Bar. an. 683. The Benedictive He refused to be made King, but volun- Biographer places the event earlier, in tarilyconsented to the stock ofthe Cross. 678.or 579. life, l.i.c. 5.op.t.iv. p.211. He eschewed the proffered trloryof ex- • There is an allusion to this in the altation, He sought the woe of an igno- 'Pastoral Kule'whichbeginsthus," You minious death, &c." uh. iii. blame me, most dear brother, with kind ^ ' Amidst the arms of the Lombards and lowly purpose, that 1 would have and under the despotism of the Greeks, escaped the burthens of the Pastoral we again enquire into the fate ofRome, charge by keeping myself concealed, which had reached about the close ofthe which lest any should take to be light, I sixth century the lowest period of her set forth in the writing of this present depression.' Gibbon, Decline and Fall, work all that reflection has impressed on Lond. 1813. t.viii. p. 158, seealso p.159, me concerning their weightiness." In 169. and >. Greg. Orat. ad Pleb. Rom. speaking again of the responsibility of t. i. p 1660. Ben. Bar. Ann. A.D. 690, the office he says, " It is hence that the xvii.xxii. xxiv. On the end ofthe world very Mediator between God and man being at hand, St. Greg, thus delivers shunned to take a kingdom upon earth, himself in Homily on St. Luke xxi. 26. "Who, surpassing the knowledge anJ &r. " Of all which (viz. the signs de- faculties even of spirits above, rules in scribed liy our Lord,)somewe8eealready the heavens before the world hegan. accomplished, otherswedread to be upon For who could have exercised authority us nigh at hand. Forwe see already that over man so entirely without blame ai5 nation rises up against nation and that HeWho would only be governing those, the pushand press ofthem has settled up- whom He had Himself formed ? But on thelands worse in our own times than because He had for this reason come in we read in records. That earthquakes the flesh that He might not only redeem overwhelm countless cities, yeknowhow man by His Passion, but also instruct often we have heard from other parts of b2