Of his Sunday occupations he has left an interesting account in his commentary on Ezekiel's Vision of the Temple. "When I was a youth at Rome, and engaged in study, I used to go with those of the same age and similar pursuits on Sundays, to visit the sepulchres of the apostles and the martyrs, and frequently to the crypts, which, being excavated to a considerable depth in the ground, had dead bodies interred on each side as you entered. All is so dark as almost to fulfil the words of the prophet (Ps. lv. 15), ‘They shall go down alive into hell.' Only here and there is the darkness relieved by a light from above, seeming more as if it came through a chink than a window; and as we advanced with slow steps and involved in gloom, Virgil's description occurred to the mind, 'Horror ubique animos simul ipsa silentia terrent." There can be no doubt that these crypts were the repositories of Christian remains, which at a later period obtained the name of catacombs. This is, we believe, the first mention of them. The reader may wonder how they were connected in Jerome's mind with Ezekiel's temple. His own explanation is a curious specimen of the loose, rambling, uncritical way in which he, and the Fathers in general, bring together passages of Scripture unconnected with each other or with the author's subject.

"This I say that the reader may understand with what sentiment I view the explanation of Ezekiel's temple of God, of whom it is written, 'Clouds and darkness are under his feet;' and again, 'Thick darkness is his hiding-place.' As Moses entered the dark cloud, that he might contemplate the mysteries of the Lord, which the people, standing at a distance, could not discern, and again after forty days their dim eyes could not bear the light of his glorified countenance, so it happens to me. When the eye of my mind is opened, and I think that I see something, and have laid hold of the bridegroom (Cant. iii. 4), and have said, 'I have found him whom my soul loveth, I will hold him fast and not let him go,' forthwith the word of God escapes from me, the bridegroom slips from my hands, and I am compelled to exclaim, 'O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!'" The task which he had undertaken in expounding these

He uses the same allusion in the Preface to Daniel: "quasi per cryptam ambulans, rarum desuper lumen aspicerem."

chapters was to shew, against the Jews, that Ezekiel's temple was the church of Christ, and we may well believe that in such an exposition. he had to find his way by a very scanty and dubious light, like that by which he groped through the catacombs.

Of the zeal and success with which Jerome pursued his studies at Rome, the numerous classical quotations and allusions in his writings are a sufficient proof. When his education was finished, he travelled into Gaul. His passion for books had already begun to shew itself. Finding at Treves a copy of a voluminous work of Hilary of Poictiers on Synods, he transcribed it with his own hand;* and wherever he went, the public libraries, with which the chief towns were furnished, were a leading object of his attention. Treves, though a Romanized city, as its splendid remains prove, retained the Gallic idiom; and when Jerome visited Galatia, and wrote his Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle, he could inform his readers that the Galatians, who descended from the Gauls of Brennus, spoke the same language as the people of Treves. In the course of his travels in Gaul, he seems to have frequented the schools of rhetoric for which it was renowned, and to have imbibed that taste for tumid oratory (the Gallicus cothurnus, as he calls it) by which they were characterized, and which is so conspicuous in his own writings. In Gaul, too, he heard strange tales of a barbarous people named Scoti, inhabiting Britain, who had realized Plato's idea of a community of wives, and who lived on human flesh. In various parts of his writings he shews such an intimate acquaintance with the geography of Gaul, that it is evident he must have visited all its principal places.

When he first formed the purpose of devoting himself to the monastic life we do not know; he hesitated whether to return to Stridon or to settle in Rome for this purpose. But he foresaw that in his native place he should be exposed to interruption from the neighbourhood of his family; the character of the people was sensual, and their manners "Deus venter est et indiem et vivitur et sanctior

coarse

* Ad Florentium, i. 53.

+"Viderim Scotos (al. Attacottos) gentem Britannicum humanis vesci carnibus;" but it may be suspected that his syntax is a little confused, and that he means to say that he saw the Scoti in Gaul, and was told or read that they were cannibals.-Adv. Jovin, lib. ii. 93.

est qui ditior;" and, worse than all, Lupicinus the priest was "the feeble pilot of a leaky ship, a blind man leading the blind into the pit."* Rome had at first sight more attraction; there was a church founded by an apostle, and the trophies of apostles and martyrs. But Rome was the Babylon of the Apocalypse, the "mulier purpurata," on whose forehead blasphemy was inscribed, and God had said, "Come out of her, my people."+ Besides, how could the monastic life be carried on amidst the din and bustle of a great city? "You must either admit visitors, or be thought proud if you decline; if you return the visit, you must wait at the gilded doors for admission, exposed to the impertinence of servants." Long after, in his old age, he gave the same advice to Paulinus, the celebrated Bishop of Nola, the inventor of church bells. "If," he said, "you wish to exercise the office of a presbyter, if the work or honour of the bishopric should perchance delight you, live in cities, and sacrifice your own soul for the salvation of others; but if you wish to be, what your name of monachus implies, a solitary, what have you to do amidst the crowds of cities?"‡ He chose, therefore, the Holy Land as the place in which he could exercise the monastic virtues in the highest perfection. It had, no doubt, another attraction for him,-the opportunity which it would afford him of visiting the places which had been the scene of sacred history. From the glowing description which he afterwards gave to Marcella of the delight which he anticipated for her in visiting them, we may judge how powerfully the prospect of dwelling among them would influence him in the choice of his future abode. §

"Will that day come, when we shall enter the cave of the Saviour; weep with his mother and her sister in his sepulchre ; kiss the wood of the cross and climb to the Mount of Olives, that thence our prayers and thoughts may soar upward with the ascending Lord? Shall we see Lazarus come forth in his graveclothes, and the waters of Jordan made purer by the baptism of the Lord Shall we go then to the huts of the shepherds,

* Ad Chromatium, i. 285.

Ep. ad Paulinum, xiii. i. 121.

+ Ad Marcellam, i. 157.

§ The epistle (xvii.) is written in the name of two of Jerome's female disciples, Paula and Eustochium, but the style proves plainly that it was indited by himself.

pray in the mausoleum of David, and see Amos the prophet still sounding his shepherd's horn from the summit of his rock? Shall we see the tents in which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dwelt with their wives, or at least the places where their memories remain? Shall we go to Samaria, and see the ashes of John the Baptist and Elisha and Obadiah, and enter the caves in which the companies of the prophet were sheltered and fed in the times of persecution? We will go also to Nazareth and see the place which, according to the meaning of the name, is the flower of Galilee, and Cana, not far off, where water was turned into wine. We will go to Tabor and see the tabernacles of the Saviour, not now joined, as Peter once desired, with Moses and Elias, but with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thence we will go to the lake of Genezareth and see 5000 and 4000 men fed in the desert with five and seven loaves. Nain shall be visited, at whose gate the widow's son was raised, and Hermon and the torrent Endor, where Sisera was defeated, and Capharnaum, familiar with the mighty works of the Lord."

Jerome was probably somewhat more than thirty years of age when the great change in his feelings took place which decided the colour of his future life. It was quite natural that, with his vehement temper, which knew no cold medium in love or hate, in self-indulgence or self-denial, and pursued with some remorse for his former life, he should push the monastic discipline of prayer, fasting and penance to its utmost length. He had begun his course of severities at Rome, but he was not yet thoroughly weaned from his love of the classics. During the fast of Lent he had amused himself with reading Plautus, when he fell into a trance from feverish weakness; and while those around him deemed him dead, and were preparing his funeral, he was carried in the spirit before the heavenly tribunal. Being asked what he was, he answered, "A Christian;" but the judge replied, "Thou liest; thou are not a Christian; thou art a Ciceronian: where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also;" and commanded him to be scourged. The spirits who stood round implored mercy upon him on the ground of his youth, and begged that his error might be overlooked, and his full sentence not be inflicted unless he again read heathen books. Upon his confessing that to have had or read worldly books was to deny the Lord, he was dismissed, and came back to his sorrowing friends with the marks of the scourge on

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his shoulder-blades. There was something evasive in his answer, but there can be no doubt that from this time sacred literature occupied the chief place in his thoughts. He was accompanied to Syria by several friends, who gradually dropped off in the devious journey through Thrace and Asia Minor, and finally took up his abode in the desert of Chalcis between Antioch and the Euphrates. Till this time he seems to have been ignorant of Hebrew. In his Preface to his Commentary on Obadiah, he tells us that when a youth he had fancied himself competent to unfold the mystical sense of the prophet, before he understood the literal. He had become ashamed of his juvenile performance and meant to burn it, when a copy was brought to him by a young man from Italy, who praised it highly. Jerome's remark is singularly applicable to those who write commentaries on prophecy: "I confess I was astonished, that let a man write ever so ill, he finds a reader like himself." He was so ashamed of the praises bestowed on his crude performance, that he wrote the learned Commentary which we now have. While he was sojourning in the desert, and undergoing those mental conflicts which we have described before, finding that no fasting availed to give him tranquillity of mind, he determined to try the sedative effect of learning Hebrew, and became the pupil of Barhanina, a converted Jew. He may find sympathy perhaps with some of our readers when he exclaims, "Quid ibi laboris insumpserim, quid sustinuerim difficultatis, quoties desperaverim, quotiesque cessaverim et contentione discendi rursus inceperim, testis est tam mea qui passus sum quam eorum qui mecum duxerunt vitam conscientia; et gratias ago Domino, quod de amaro semine literarum dulces fractus carpo." The theological student has reason to rejoice with Jerome in the good fruits which sprung from this bitter root. With the exception of Origen, none of the Christian writers has rendered such services to biblical criticism; and time has dealt more favourably with him than with Origen, the most precious of whose critical works have come down to us only in fragments.

Jerome was at this time only a layman, and though he

* Ad Eustochium, i. 185. Adv. Ruffin. ii. 309.

+ Ad Rusticum, i. 45.