of taking
comprehensive views of the necessities of society, that man was the
Bishop of Hippo; so that if we do not agree with his views of church
government, let us bear in mind the age in which he lived, and its
peculiar dangers and necessities. And let us also remember that his idea
of the unity of the Church has a spiritual as well as a temporal
meaning, and in that sublime and lofty sense can never be controverted
so long as _One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism_ remain the common creed of
Christians in all parts of the world. It was to preserve this unity that
he entered so zealously into all the great controversies of the age, and
fought heretics as well as schismatics.

The great work which pre-eminently called out his genius, and for which
he would seem to have been raised up, was to combat the Pelagian heresy,
and establish the doctrine of the necessity of Divine Grace,--even as it
was the mission of Athanasius to defend the doctrine of the Trinity, and
that of Luther to establish Justification by Faith. In all ages there
are certain heresies, or errors, which have spread so dangerously, and
been embraced so generally by the leading and fashionable classes, that
they seem to require some extraordinary genius to arise in order to
combat them successfully, and rescue the Church from the snares of a
false philosophy. Thus Bernard was raised up to refute the rationalism
and nominalism of Abelard, whose brilliant and subtile inquiries had a
tendency to extinguish faith in the world, and bring all mysteries to
the test of reason. The enthusiastic and inquiring young men who flocked
to his lectures from all parts of Europe carried back to their homes and
convents and schools insidious errors, all the more dangerous because
they were mixed with truths which were universally recognized. It
required such a man as Bernard to expose these sophistries and destroy
their power, not so much by dialectical weapons as by appealing to those
lofty truths, those profound convictions, those essential and immutable
principles which consciousness reveals and divine authority confirms. It
took a greater than Abelard to show the tendency of his speculations,
from the logical sequence of which even he himself would have fled, and
which he did reject when misfortunes had broken his heart, and disease
had brought him to face the realities of the future life. So God raised
up Pascal to expose the sophistries of the Jesuits and unravel that
sub