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Sacred Latin Poetry, Chiefly Lyrical

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Sacred Latin Poetry, Chiefly Lyrical ^^:fmr/:-A^mm-i>^mm u \-«^"'- ^^v'r',. ,7,;: m^ir^ I i ^- -' P9. SACKED LATIN POETRY. : SACRED LATIN POETRY, CHIEFLY LYRICAL, SELECTED AND ARRANGED FOR USE; titlj |lofcs unb Introiradioii: RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. ARCHBISHOP OP DXJELTN AXD CHANCELLOR OP THE ORDER OF ST. PATRICK. SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED AND IMPROVED. I^oubon aub Ciunlnibgc MACMILLAN AND CO. 18G4. LOXDOS PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODT: AXD CO. SEW-STEEET SQUARE — PREFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION. rrilE AIM of the present volume Is to offer to members of our English Church a collection of the best sacred Latin poetry, such as they shall be able entirely and heartily to accept and approve a collection, that is, in which they shall not be ever- more liable to be offended, and to have the current of their sympathies checked, by coming upon that, Avhich, however beautiful as poetry, out of higher respects they must reject and condemn—in which, too, they shall not fear that snares are being laid for them, to entangle them unawares in admiration for ought which is inconsistent with their faith and fealty to their own spii'itual mother. Such being the idea of the volume, it is needless to say that all hymns which in any way imply the Eomish doctrine of transubstantiation are excluded. In like manner all are excluded, which involve any creature-worship, or which speak of the Mother of our Lord in any other language than that which Scripture has sanctioned, and our Church adopted. vi PEEFACE. So too all asking of the suffrages of the saints, all addresses to the Cross calculated to encourage super- stition, that is, in which any value is attributed to the material wood, in which it is used otherwise than in the Epistles of St Paul, namely, as a figure of speech by Avhich we ever and only u.nderstand Him that hung upon it ; all these have been equally refused a place. Nor is it only poems containing positive error which I have counted inadmissible ; but I have not v/illingly given room to any which breathe a spirit foreign to that tone of piety which the English Church desires to cherish in her children ; for I have always felt that compositions of this character may be far more hiu'tful, may do far more to rob her of the affections, and iilti- mately of the allegiance, of her children, than those in which error and opposition to her teaching take a more definite and tangible shape. Nor surely can there be a more serious mistake, than to suppose that we have really "adapted" such works to the use of her members, when we have lopped off here and there a few offensive excrescences, while that far more potent, because far subtler and more impalpable, element of a life which is not her Hfe remains interfused through the whole. Having thus in a manner become responsible for all which appears in this volume, I may be permitted to PREFACE. vii observe, that I do not thereby imply that there may not be in it, here and there, though very rarely indeed, a phrase which will claim the interpretation of charity. The reader will in such a case remember how unfair it is to try the theological language of the middle ages by the greater strictness and accuracy which the struggles of the Reformation rendered necessary. Thus, for us at this day to talk of any " merits " save those of Christ, after all that the Eeformation has Avon for us, would involve a conscious and a deliberate falling away from a sole and exclusive reliance upon his work. But it was a diiferent thing once, and such language might quite be used by one who had implicithj an entire affiance on the Av^ork of Christ for him as the ultimate ground of his hope ; and who only waited to have the truth, Avhich with some confusion he held and lived by, put before him in accurate form, to embrace it hence- forth and for ever, not only with heart, as he had done already, but with the understanding as Avell. Nor yet do I mean to affirm that there may not have found admission here one or two poems which some, Avhom I should greatly have desired altogether to have carried with me in my selection, may not wish had been away. It is indeed one of the mischiefs which Rome has entailed upon the Avhole Western Church, even upon those portions of it now delivered — viii PBEFACE. from her tyranny, that she has rendered suspicious so much, which, but for her, none could have thought other than profitable and edifying. She has compelled those, Avho before everything else would be true to God's word, oftentimes to act in the spirit of Heze- kiah, when he said " Nehushtan " to the very " sign * of salvation" —to the brazen serpent itself. Yet grant- ing that the superstitious, and therefore profane, hands which she has laid on so much, must oftentimes make it our wisdom, and indeed our duty, that we abridge ourselves of our rightful liberty in many things which otherwise and but for her Ave might have freely and profitably used, there is still a limit to these self-denials : and unless Ave are determined to set such a limit, there is no point of bareness and nakedness in all of imagina- tive and symbolic in Avorship and service, Avhich Ave might not reach ; even as some Reformed Churches, Avhich have not shewn the mingled moderation and firmness, that have in these matters so wonderftiUy characterized our OAvn, have undoubtedly made them- selves much poorer than Avas need. Of course, those Avho consider that the Avhole medi- eval theology is to be ignored and placed under ban that nothing is to be learned from it, or nothing but harm—those I must expect to disapprove, not merely * 2vixfiu\ov (TWTTjpias, AVisd. xy'i. PBEFACE. ix of a small matter or two in the volimie, but of it altogether ; for the very idea of the book rests on the assumption that it is worth our while to know what the feelings of these ages were—what the Church was doing during a thousand years of her existence ; —on the assumption also that the voices in which men uttered then the deepest things of their hearts, will be voices in which we may also utter and embody the deepest things of our own. For myself, I cannot but feel that we are untrue to our position as a Church, that is, as an historic body, and above all to our position as members of a Protestant Church, when we thus wish to dissever, as far as v/e may, the links of oiu- historic connexion with the past. "We should better realize that position; if we looked at those Middle Ages with the expectation (which the facts would abundantly justify), of finding the two Churches, which at the Eeformation disengaged themselves from one another, in the bosom of the Chixrch which was then— if we looked at those ages, not seeking (as sometimes is done, I cannot but feel most unfairly, in regard to earlier times) to claim them as Protestant, but as little conceding that they were Eomanist. It were truer to say that in Romanism we have the residuum of the middle age Chiurch and theologj', the lees, after all, or well nigh all, the wine was drained away. But in the medieval Chiu-ch we X PBEFACE. have tlie wine and the lees together—the truth and the error—the false observance, and yet at the same time the divine truth which should one day be fatal to it, side by side. Good Avere it for us to look at those ages, tracing gladly, as Luther so loved to do, the footsteps of the Eeformers before the Eeformation ; and feeling that it is our duty, that it is the duty of each successive age of the Church, as not to accept the past in the gross, so neither in the gross to reject it ; since rather by our position as the present representatives of that eternal body, we are bound to recognize ourselves as the rightful inheritors of all Avhich is good and true that ever has been done or said Avithin it. Nor is this all : but if oiir position mean anything, Ave are bound also to believe that to us, having the "Word and the Spirit, the poAver has been given to distinguish things which differ,—that the sharp SAVord of judgment has been placed in our hands, AAdiereby to simder betAveen the holy and profane, —that such a breath of the Almighty is now and evermore breathing over his Church, as shall enable it, boldly and Avith entire trust that He Avill AvinnoAV for it, to exclaim, " What is the chaff to the Avheat ? " Surely it is our duty to beheve that to us, that to each generation which humbly and earnestly seeks, Avill be given that enlightening Spirit, by A\diose aid it shall be enabled to read aright the past PREFACE. xi realizations of God's divine idea in the visible and his- toric Church of successive ages, and to distinguish the human .imperfections, blemishes, and errors, from the divine truth which they obscured and overlaid, but which they could not destroy, being one day rather to be destroyed by it ; and, distinguishing these, as in part to take warning from and to shun, so also in part to live upon and to love, that which in word and deed the Cliurch of the past has bequeathed us.
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