and when there is fit occasion of alarmı on this subject, it becomes every friend of his country, every faithful servant of of his God, to be up and doing. What the learned judge especially referred to was the late attempt at usurpation over the consciences of their brethren, made by certain reverend counsellors at Groton, and exposed in our last number. We were proud to find the stand we then took, also maintained by one of the highest legal authorities of the nation.

At an adjourned meeting on Wednesday, after the choice of officers, and a vote of thanks to the late treasurer, it was, on the motion of Rev. H. Ware, jun., voted, that two messengers be appointed by the Executive Committee to meet the Christian Conference at West Bloomfield, N. Y., which is to be held in September next.

On motion of Mr. Thayer, it was proposed that the Constitution be so far amended as to add to the Executive Committee a Secretary for Foreign Affairs.

This last measure we regard as par ticularly important. The relations of the Association are every day extending themselves at home as well as abroad, and the duties of the present secretary have become very arduous. We rejoice in the necessity of the appointment proposed, as it is another indication of the blessing of God upon the labours of this most interesting society.-Christian Eraminer XXI.

Indian Mission.

We have great pleasure in announcing that a letter has been received from Mr. Adam, of Calcutta, dated the 17th of May last, in which he states that he has been enabled to resume his labours as an Unitarian Missionary, by the aid of the funds raised in India, England, and America. He relinquished, about the beginning of May, his secular engagement, in order to give up the whole of his time to the duties arising from his new appointment.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE letter of "An Old Student of T. C. D.," arrived too late to be noticed in the last number. The Conductors will at all times readily admit corrections of misstatements that may have appeared in their pages, provided those corrections be properly authenticated. The article relating to Trinity College, Dublin, was communicated by a highly respectable Irish Clergyman of the Established Church, who gave his name to the Conductors, but, for private reasons, wished it not to be appended to the printed letter. If their present Correspondent will authenticate his "Contradiction" in the same way, by transmitting his name to the Conductors, for their justification, his communication shall be immediately inserted, with no other signature than that which he has himself attached to it.

Through the kindness of her surviving relatives, the Conductors are happy to say; that they have received more of the late estimable Mrs. Barbauld's discourses; one, written for the commencement of the year, will be inserted in the number for January.

E. T. will find his poem'in the present number. Communications from anonymous correspondents cannot be answered by post.

The Conductors would not willingly disoblige any "Constant Reader." If their correspondent G. will submit his Hymn to the perusal of the very respectable ministers of the Meeting House in which he states it to have been written, they will, in a few words, explain to him why it could not appear in the pages of the Monthly Repository." The Winter's Evening" must be excluded for like reasons. " Agglomerating thick November's ruins," is only one of many lines which is neither poetry nor intelligible English.

The present Number contains some articles of Home Intelligence which had been unavoidably postponed to make room for other matters.

Several articles intended for insertion in the General Correspondence department will appear as soon as room can be allotted to them, consistently with a due regard to variety in the subjects.-Communications have come to hand from J. J. T.; R. A. M.; and Jarchi,

ERRATA.

P. 757, col. 2, for Vatican Manuscript "Bible," read Vatican Manuscript B. for "Ellogians," read Alogians.

THE MONTHLY REPOSITORY

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REVIEW.

NEW SERIES, No. XII.

DECEMBER, 1827.

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THE CULDEES OF IONA.*

IN or about the year 563, Columba, with twelve faithful followers, left his native country of Ireland, (that land so celebrated for the early establishment and cultivation of Christian communities as to be distinguished by the peculiar title of "the Land of the Saints,") and came, as the Venerable Bede records, " to preach the word of God to the provinces of the Northern Picts." After converting that nation to the faith of Christ by his preaching and example, he is said by the same historian to have received from them the island of Hii, (variously called by that name, and by those of Iona and Icolmkill, &c.,) for the purpose of erecting a monastery, of which he was the first Abbot, his companions forming a college or community of elders. Iona is a small island of considerable comparative fertility; separated from Scotland by a narrow channel, and only about three miles in length_and from half a mile to a mile in breadth. The view of it, according to Pennant, is very picturesque; the east side exhibiting a beautiful variety; an extent of plain, a little elevated above the water, almost covered with the ruins of the sacred buildings, and with the remains of the old town still inhabited. Beyond these the island rises into little rocky hills, with narrow verdant hollows between, numerous enough for every recluse to take his solitary walk undisturbed by society. In this retirement, surrounded only by barbarous tribes, and exposed to the incessant ravages of warlike pirates, religious zeal induced Columba and his followers to devote themselves to the labours of their profession. Tradition says, that they succeeded a settlement of Druids who had previously been established there. The name which has attached to these pious brethren has been the subject of much dispute as to its origin. We are ourselves satisfied that the proper derivation of Culdees is the Gaelic one, from cuil, ceal, cel, or kil, the retreat or cell of a monk.

The early progress of this foundation, (as much the seat of learning as of religion and missionary zeal,) till its establishment extended over Scotiand and came in contact with the efforts at proselytism made during the same period by the immediate disciples of Rome through the Saxon kingdoms of Britain, is necessarily involved in great obscurity. The prin

* [A correspondent has furnished the following observations on a subject inquired after in a former Number.]

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cipal establishment at Iona suffered great vicissitudes. It was burnt by the Danes in 797; a second time by the same enemies in 801; and again, by other means, in 1069. In 805, the family of Iona (to the number of sixtyeight) was destroyed by Danish pirates; and in 985, the same parties rifled the monastery and killed the Abbot with fifteen of his disciples. But it survived in its principal and many other great Scotch establishments. Iona was considered the great European school of theology, and its votaries were long the luminaries of this extremity of the globe, and carried their light thence into all parts of Europe; the Scotchmen being for several centuries the most eminent cultivators of the sciences as then pursued. The peculiarities of the Culdee establishments in doctrine and discipline have been the subject of much angry controversy. To a certain extent they, in common with all the British churches, undoubtedly differed from the Church of Rome, and were consequently regarded by it with jealousy and opposed with vigour. Finally, (though probably not wholly till the fourteenth century,) they merged in the overwhelming influence of the Western Church, and are heard of no

more.

But the fame of their piety, zeal and learning has survived, and commanded the respect and gratitude of those at least who reflect on the precious services rendered by those sanctuaries which formed the resting-places and retreats of science, however rude, during the storms of barbarism, warfare, and ignorance. On the remotest corner of the known world, among the storms of the northern seas, learning seemed to have fled for refuge to seats which it might be thought cupidity itself would not envy, and there she flourished till brighter days returned, and she could once again resume her abode in fairer spots and with more extended prospects of usefulness. With strong feelings of grateful respect and veneration, Dr. Johnson commemorates his visit to the ruins of this holy establishment. "We were now treading," says he, "that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona."

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Gibbon has also in his peculiar strain, and with the qualifications to be expected from him, borne a testimony to the merits of this establishment. fona," he says, one of the Hebrides, which was planted by the Irish monks, diffused over the northern regions a doubtful ray of science and superstition. This small though not barren spot, Iona, Hy, or Columbkill, only two miles in length and one mile in breadth, has been distinguished, 1st, by the monastery of St. Columba, founded A. D. 566, whose Abbot exercised an extraordinary jurisdiction over the bishops of Caledonia; 2d, by a classic library, which afforded some hopes of an entire Livy; and 3d, by the tombs of sixty kings, Scots, Irish, and Norwegians, who reposed in holy ground." Touching this library a good deal has been told which inquirers will be apt to consider apocryphal. The story of Boethius is, that Fergus II., assisting Alaric the Goth in the sacking of Rome, brought away

in his share of the plunder a chest of books which he gave to the monastery of Iona; a sad anachronism, as the sacking was long before Iona was founded. Eneas Sylvius (afterwards Pope Pius II.) intended, it is said, when he was in Scotland, to have visited the library in search of the lost books of Livy, but was prevented by the death of the King, James I.; and some other stories are told which the reader may find in Pennant, and which are investigated at great length by Jamieson, in his "Historical Account of the Culdees of Iona." The result, perhaps, is, that no trustworthy evidence on the subject exists; and that the Culdee library rests in the same uncertainty as to its contents as do the libraries of other establishments of the same sort during the middle ages, about which nearly all that we know is, that from some or other of them we have almost all that we possess of the treasures of antiquity.

The Culdee establishments (which were in fact as much literary colleges as ecclesiastical institutions) derived their origin, as we have seen, from the ancient Irish and British Church, which by the Saxon conquest had been nearly cut off from European communications. Their institutions were singular: they could not, perhaps, well be otherwise in adapting themselves to their peculiar circumstances: but the nature of their variances from the Roman Catholic Church of the day, and, in particular, their precise jurisdiction over the Scotch Bishops, (whom it would appear they chose, ordained, and sent forth from the college of elders as their missionaries for the promotion of Christianity,) have been the subject of long and angry discussion. The Catholics have been always eager to disprove even the existence of any practical denial in early ages of the supremacy and unity of their church; and the English Protestant Episcopalians have been equally eager to oppose the Presbyterian zeal in which the Scotch have been sanguine enough to trace among the brethren of Iona, meeting and choosing one whom they should name and ordain as a bishop or overseer for a distant work, the true and primitive pattern of their own church government by Presbyters or Elders.

At the time when Augustine, by the command of Gregory, brought Christianity from the West among the heathen tribes of Saxons who had overrun Christian Britain, the remains of the primitive churches of the British isles were still flourishing in Wales and Ireland, and striving for the conversion of their Saxon invaders through such missions as that headed by Columba to the northern tribes of Picts. A short account which Bede gives of the mission sent from Iona into Northumbria to fix Christianity in that kingdom under Aidan, the bishop ordained for the purpose, will shew the progress making from that quarter; and will at the same time explain the peculiarities as to Episcopalian ordination which have given rise to so much discussion. Bede, in the first place, had said that Iona " is always wont to have for its governor a Presbyter Abbot, to whose authority both the whole province and even the bishops themselves, by an universal constitution, ought to be subject, after the example of their first teacher, who was not a bishop, but a presbyter or monk. From this island," he adds, "from this college of monks (collegio monachorum) was Aidan sent, having received the degree of bishop. At which time Sergenius presided over the monastery as Abbot and Presbyter." King Oswald, he further tells, "sent to the elders of the Scots, among whora during his banishment he had been baptized, that they might send him a bishop, by whose doctrine and ministry the nation of the Angles which he governed might be instructed in the Christian faith." He then relates that the elders held a council, and that "the faces of all who

sat there were turned to Aidan" (one of their number): that "they determined that he was worthy of the episcopal office, (esse dignum episcopatu,) and thus ordaining him, they sent him to preach" (sicque illum ordinantes, ad prædicandum miserunt) :—the old English Version says, "thus making him Bishop, they sent him forthe to preach." To this mission the great and venerable establishment of Lindisfarne or Holy Island owes its foundation. At his death Bede further reports, that "Finan in his stead received the degree of Bishopric, being ordained and sent by the Scots ;" and the same account is given of Colman, the successor of Finan, under whom the Roman institutions got the better of the Scotch.

To what precise extent the Culdees or any other branches of the old Irish and British churches differed from the Roman Church, it must now be a matter of difficulty to discover. It would be surprising if they did not differ to a considerable degree, considering their local separation and the very small extent to which up to that period the papal court could have exercised any supremacy, if the parties had been supposed to submit to it. The ancient British churches, left to themselves, followed the traditions of their immediate ancestors, and perhaps adopted (as in the case of the bishops) from time to time those institutions which the exigencies of particular cases pointed out. In truth, it is rather amusing to see such eagerness subsequently shewn by the papal court, to prove submission where obedience does not appear to have been thought of, either as being worth requiring on the one hand, or as ever likely to be asked on the other-where, in short, any submission which Nothing appears to could have existed must have been merely theoretical. be more probable in itself nor more consistent with historical testimony, than that the papal supremacy was gradual; that it arose out of many concurring circumstances, and was long doubtful even among its immediate neighbours. One cannot be surprised that the British Christians should think the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome strange doctrine to be preached and practically enforced upon them, when even several centuries later we find the bishop of an Italian see plainly saying, he would have his nose slit rather than recognize any supremacy in his brother bishop of Rome. (See Dr. M'Crie's History of the Reformation in Italy.)

There can be no doubt, however, that whencesoever the British and Irish derived their earliest Christian institutions, and however they maintained them after Saxon heathens had intervened between their establishments and the rest of Europe, considerable peculiarities were found to exist when the Romish and British missionaries came in contact with each other.

In doctrinal essentials there was probably then little difference. Pelagianism, it is true, had found its most favoured reception among the countrymen of its author, but the arguments of St. Germanus and St. Lupus, or the miracles which conveniently assisted in their enforcement, had, if we are to believe Catholic writers, eradicated altogether a heresy before most widely diffused.

Whatever we may think of the probability of this perfect restoration to doctrinal orthodoxy, the whole course of events, in the early progress of the efforts of the court of Rome, through Augustine and his successors, to convert the Saxons, shews that the Catholic missionaries met on their progress with missionaries employed on the same work from the ancient British or Irish church, who, in some points, differed very considerably from the Roman usages; that difficulties arose in consequence; that concession to a considerable extent was, for a time at least, found necessary and was accordingly made; and that, after all, the Catholic Saxon Church was one