in above all other influence. For can any strain have
more of influence than the confession of the Holy Trinity, which is
proclaimed day by day by the voice of the whole people? Each is
eager to rival his fellows in confessing, as he well knows how, in
sacred verses, his faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus all
are made teachers, who else were scarce equal to being scholars.

"No one can deny that in what we say we pay to our sovereign due
honour. What indeed can do him higher honour than to style him a
son of the Church? In saying this, we are loyal to him without
sinning against God. For the Emperor is within the Church, but not
over the Church; and a religious sovereign seeks, not rejects, the
Church's aid. This is our doctrine, modestly avowed, but insisted
on without wavering. Though they threaten fire, or the sword, or
transportation, we, Christ's poor servants, have learned not to
fear. And to the fearless nothing is frightful; as Scripture says,
'Their blows are like the arrows of a child.'"--_Serm. contr.
Auxent._

3.

Mention is made in this extract of the Psalmody which Ambrose adopted
about this time. The history of its introduction is curiously connected
with the subject before us, and interesting, inasmuch as this was the
beginning of a change in the style of Church music, which spread over
the West, and continues even among ourselves to this day; it is as
follows;--

Soldiers had been sent, as in the former year, to surround his church,
in order to prevent the Catholic service there; but being themselves
Christians, and afraid of excommunication, they went so far as to allow
the people to enter, but would not let them leave the building. This was
not so great an inconvenience to them as might appear at first sight:
for the early Basilicas were not unlike the heathen temples, or our own
collegiate chapels, that is, part of a range of buildings, which
contained the lodgings of the ecclesiastics, and formed a fortress in
themselves, which could easily be fortified from within or blockaded
from without. Accordingly, the people remained shut up within the sacred
precincts for some days, and the bishop with them. There seems to have
been a notion, too, that he was to be seized for exile, or put to death;
and they naturally kept about him to "see the end," to suffer with him
or for him, according as their tempers and pri