270 THE DECLINE AND FALL trated, without fear or danger, into the darkest recesses of the Hercynian wood.^^ The banks of the Rhine were crowned, like those of the Tiber, with elegant houses, and well-cultivated farms; and, if a poet descended the river, he might express his doubt on which side was situated the territory of the Romans. ^- This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly changed into a desert ; and the prospect of the smoking ruins could alone distinguish the solitude of nature from the desolation of man. cwnf°°"* i^he flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed ; and many thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred in the [Borbetoma- church. Worms perished after a long and obstinate siege ; fAjgentora- Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tournaj', AiTas, Amiens, experienced turn, Nemetes, , i • r j.1 /^ l l j.1, Eemi, Torna- the crucl opprcssion oi the (jerman yoke ; and the consummg t^.Ambtani] flamcs of War spread from the banks of the Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive countiy, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, was delivered to the Barbarians, who drove before them, in a promiscuous crowd, the bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with the spoils of their houses and altars. ^^ The ecclesiastics, to whom we are indebted for this vague description of the public calamities, embraced the opportunity of exhoi'ting the Christians to repent of the sins which had provoked the Divine Justice, and to renounce the perishable goods of a wretched and deceitful world. But, as the Pelagian controversy,"^ which attempts to sound the abyss of grace and predestination, soon became the serious employment of the Latin clergy ; the Providence which had decreed, or foreseen, or permitted such a train of moral and natural evils was rashly weighed in the im- perfect and fallacious balance of reason. The crimes and the mis- 91 Claudian (i. Cons. Stil. 1. i. 221, &c., 1. ii. 186) describes the peace and pros- perity of the Gallic frontier. The Abb6 Dubos (Hist. Critique, &c. , torn. i. p. 174) would read ^4/da (a nameless rivulet of the Ardennes) instead oi Albis, and expatiates on the danger of the Gallic cattle grazing beyond the Elbe. Foolish enough ! In poetical geography, the Elbe, and the Hercynian, signify any river, or any wood in Germany. Claudian is not prepiired for the strict examination of our antiquaries. ^ Geminasque viator Cum videat ripas, quas sit Romana requirat. 93 Jerom, tom. i. p. 93. See in the ist vol. of the Historians of France, p. 777, 782, the proper extracts from the Carmen de Providentia Divina, and Salvian. The anonymous poet was himself a captive, «th his bishop and fellow-citizens.
- The Pelagian doctrine, which was first agitated x.n. 405, was condemned, in
the space of ten years, at Rome and Carthage. St. Auguitin fought and con- quered, but the Greek Church was favourable to his adversaries ; and (what is singular enough) the people did not take any part in a dispute which they could not understand.
