e school perhaps in Europe.

The great and justest boast of this monastery is the Venerable Beda, who
was educated and spent his whole life there. An account of his writings
is an account of the English learning in that age, taken in its most
advantageous view. Many of his works remain, and he wrote both in prose
and verse, and upon all sorts of subjects. His theology forms the most
considerable part of his writings. He wrote comments upon almost the
whole Scripture, and several homilies on the principal festivals of the
Church. Both the comments and sermons are generally allegorical in the
construction of the text, and simply moral in the application. In these
discourses several things seem strained and fanciful; but herein he
followed entirely the manner of the earlier fathers, from whom the
greatest part of his divinity is not so much imitated as extracted. The
systematic and logical method, which seems to have been first introduced
into theology by John of Damascus, and which after wards was known by
the name of School Divinity, was not then in use, at least in the
Western Church, though soon after it made an amazing progress. In this
scheme the allegorical gave way to the literal explication, the
imagination had less scope, and the affections were less touched. But it
prevailed by an appearance more solid and philosophical, by an order
more scientific, and by a readiness of application either for the
solution or the exciting of doubts and difficulties.

They also cultivated in this monastery the study of natural philosophy
and astronomy. There remain of Beda one entire book and some scattered
essays on these subjects. This book, _De Rerum Natura_, is concise and
methodical, and contains no very contemptible abstract of the physics
which were taught in the decline of the Roman Empire. It was somewhat
unfortunate that the infancy of English learning was supported by the
dotage of the Roman, and that even the spring-head from whence they drew
their instructions was itself corrupted. However, the works of the great
masters of the ancient science still remained; but in natural philosophy
the worst was the most fashionable. The Epicurean physics, the most
approaching to rational, had long lost all credit by being made the
support of an impious theology and a loose morality. The fine visions of
Plato fell into some discredit by the abuse which heretics had made of
them; and the writings of Aristotle seem to have been then