nspicuous specimens.

I. Of all the books burnt for offence under the first head, the
most to be regretted, from an historical point of view, I take to
be Porphyry's _Treatise against the Christians_, which was burnt
A.D. 388 by order of Theodosius the Great. Porphyry believed that
Daniel's prophecies had been written after the events foretold in
them by some one who took the name of Daniel. It would have been
interesting to have known Porphyry's grounds for this not
improbable opinion, as well as his general charges against the
Christians; and if there is anything in the tradition of the
survival of a copy of Porphyry in one of the libraries of
Florence, the testimony of the distinguished Platonist may yet
enlighten us on the causes of the growing darkness of the age in
which he lived.

All the books of the famous Abelard were burnt by order of Pope
Innocent II.; but it was his _Treatise on the Trinity_, condemned
by the Council of Soissons about 1121, and by the Council of Sens
in 1140, which chiefly led St. Bernard to his cruel persecution
of this famous man. That great saint, using the habitual language
of ecclesiastical charity, called Abelard an infernal dragon and
the precursor of Antichrist. Among his heresies Abelard seems to
have held the opinion that the devil has no power over man; but
at all events the Church had in those days, as Abelard learnt to
his cost, though, considering that his disciple Arnauld of
Brescia was destined to be burnt alive at Rome in 1155, Abelard
might have deemed himself fortunate in only incurring
imprisonment, and not sharing the fate of his works as well as
that of his illustrious follower.

The latter calamity befell John Huss, who, having been led before
the bishop's palace to see his own condemned works burnt, was
then led on to be burnt himself, in 1415. Many of his works,
however, were republished in the following century; but the
twenty-nine errors which the Council of Constance detected in his
work on the Church would probably nowadays seem venial enough. It
was his misfortune to live in those days when the inhumanity of
the world was at its climax.

It continued at that climax for some time, though heretical
authors were not always burnt with their books. Enjedim, for
instance, the Hungarian Socinian, who died in 1596, survived the
burning in many places of his "Explanations of Difficult Passages
of the Old and New Testament, from which the Dogma of the
Trinity is