own feet; so our virgin is afraid to hear her own tongue run in the presence of graver persons. She conceives, the bold maintaining of any argument concludes against her own civil behaviour; and yet she will give a good account of any thing whereof she is questioned, sufficient to show her silence is her choice, not her refuge. In speaking, she studiously avoids all suspicious expressions, which wanton apprehensions may colourably comment into obscenity.

V.

She blusheth at the wanton discourse of others in her company. -As fearing, that, being in the presence where treason against modesty is spoken, all in the place will be arraigned for principal. Yea, if silent, she is afraid to be taken to consent; if offering to confute it, she fears lest, by stirring a dunghill, the savour may be more noisome. Wherefore, that she may not suffer in her title to modesty, to preserve her right, she enters a silent caveat by a blush in her cheeks, and embraceth the next opportunity to get a gaol-delivery out of that company where she was detained in durance. Now, because we have mentioned blushing, which is so frequent with virgins that it is called "a maiden's blush," (as if they alone had a patent to die this colour!) give us leave a little to enlarge ourselves on this subject.

1. Blushing oftentimes proceeds from guiltiness.-When the offender, being pursued after, seeks as it were to hide himself under the vizard of a new face.

2. Blushing is other-times rather a compurgator than an accuser.-Not arising from guiltiness in our virgin, but from one of these reasons: First, because she is surprised with a sudden accusation; and though armed with innocency that she cannot be pierced, yet may she be amazed with so unexpected a charge. Secondly, from sensibleness of disgrace, ashamed, though innocent, to be within the suspicion of such faults, and that she had carried herself so that any tongue durst be so impudent as to lay it to her charge. Thirdly, from a disability to acquit herself at the instant; her integrity wanting rather clearing than clearness; and, perchance, she wants boldness to traverse the action; and so, non-suiting herself, she fears her cause will suffer in the judgments of all that be present: and although accused but in jest, she is jealous the accusation will be believed in earnest; and edged tools, thrown in merriment, may wound reputations. Fourthly, out of mere anger: for as in fear the blood makes not an orderly retreat, but a confused flight, to the

D

heart; so, in blushing, the blood sallies out into our virgin's cheeks, and seems as a champion to challenge the accuser for wronging her.

3. Where small faults are committed, blushing obtains a pardon of course with ingenuous beholders.-As if she be guilty of casual incivilities, or solecisms in manners occasioned by invincible ignorance, and unavoidable mistakes, in such a case, blushing is a sufficient penance to restore her to her state of innocency.

VI.

She imprisons not herself with a solemn vow never to marry.For, first, none know their own strength herein. Who hath sailed about the world of his own heart, sounded each creek, surveyed each corner, but that still there remains therein much terra incognita to himself? Junius, at the first little better than a misogynist, was afterwards so altered from himself, that he successively married four wives.* Secondly, fleshly corruption, being pent, will swell the more; and Shimei, being confined to Jerusalem, will have the greater mind to gad to Gath. Thirdly, the devil will have a fairer set mark to shoot at, and will be most busy to make people break their vow. Fourthly, God may justly desert people for snatching that to themselves which is most proper for him to give; I mean, continency. Object not, that thou wilt pray to him to take from thee all desire of marriage; it being madness to vow that one will not eat, and then pray to God that he may not be hungry. Neither say, that now thou mayest presume on thyself, because thou art well stricken in years; for there may happen an autumn-spring in thy soul and lust is an unmannerly guest; we know not how late in the evening of our lives it may intrude into us for a lodging.

:

VII.

She counts it virginity to be unspotted, not unmarried.-Or else, even in old age, when nature hath given an inhibition, they may be strong in desiring who are weak in acting of wickedness; yea, they may keep stews in their hearts, and be so pregnant and ingravidated with lustful thoughts, that they may, as it were, die in travail because they cannot be delivered. And though there be no fire seen outwardly, as in the English chimneys, it may be hotter within, as in the Dutch stoves; and as well the devils, as the angels in heaven, "neither marry nor are given in marriage."

• JUNIUS, in his "Life" writ by himself,

VIII.

As she lives with less care, so she dies with more cheerfulness. -Indeed, she was rather a sojourner, than an inhabitant, in this world; and therefore forsakes it with the less grief. In a word, the way to heaven is alike narrow to all estates; but far smoother to the virgin than to the married. Now, the great advantage virgins have to serve God above others, and the high favours He hath bestowed on some of them, shall appear in this virgin prophetess, whose Life we come to present.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LIFE OF HILDEGARDIS.

HILDEGARDIS was born in Germany, in the county of Spanheim, in the year 1098. So that she lived in an age which we may call the first cock-crowing after the midnight of ignorance and superstition.

Her parents, Hidebert and Mechtilda, dedicated her to God from her infancy: and, surely, those whose childhood, with Hildegardis, hath had the advantage of pious education, may be said to have been good "time out of mind," as not able to remember the beginning of their own goodness. At eight years of age she became a nun, under St. Jutta, sister to Megenhard, earl of Spanheim, and afterwards she was made abbess of St. Rupert's nunnery, in Bingen-on-Rhine in the Palatinate.

Men commonly do beat and bruise their links before they light them, to make them burn the brighter: God first humbles and afflicts whom he intends to illuminate with more than ordinary grace. Poor Hildegardis was constantly and continually sick, and so weak that she very seldom was strong enough to go.* But God, who denied her legs, gave her wings, and raised. her high-mounted soul in visions and revelations.

I know, a general scandal is cast on revelations in this ignorant age: first, because many therein entitled the meteors of their own brain to be stars at least, and afterwards their revela

• Fuerunt ei ab ipsâ penè infantiâ crebri ac ferè continui languorum dolores, ità ut pedum incessu perrarò uteretur.-THEOD. ABBAS in Vitâ Hildegardis, lib. i. cap. 2.

tions have been revealed to be forgeries: secondly, because that night-raven did change his black feathers into the silver wings of a dove, and, transforming himself into an angel of light, deluded many with strange raptures and visions, though in their nature far different from those in the Bible. For St. Paul, in his revelations, was "caught up into the third heaven;" whereas most monks, with a contrary motion, were carried into hell and purgatory, and there saw apparitions of strange torments. Also St. John's "Revelation" forbids all additions to the Bible, under heavy penalties; their visions are commonly on purpose to piece out the Scripture, and to establish such superstitions as have no footing in God's word.

However, all held Hildegardis for a prophet, being induced thereunto by the piety of her life, (no breck * was ever found in her veil, so spotless was her conversation!) by the sanctity of her writings, and by the general approbation the church gave unto her. For, Pope Eugenius III., after exact examination of the matter, did in the Council of Treves (wherein St. Bernard was present) allow and privilege her revelations for authentical. She was of the Pope's conclave, and emperor's council, to whom they had recourse in difficulties: yea, the greatest torches of the church lighted themselves at her candle. The patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishops of Mentz, Cologne, Bremen, Treves, sent such knots, as posed their own fingers, to our Hildegardis to untie.

She never learned word of Latin, and yet therein would she fluently express her revelations to those notaries that took them from her mouth; † so that, throwing words at random, she never brake Priscian's head: as if the Latin had learned to make itself true without the speaker's care. And, no doubt, He that brought the single parties to her, married them also in her mouth; so that the same Spirit which furnished her with Latin words, made also the true syntaxis. Let none object, that her very writing of fifty-eight Homilies on the Gospel is false construction, where the feminine gender assumes an employment proper to men; for, though St. Paul silenceth women for speaking in the church, I know no Scripture [which] forbids them for writing on Scripture.

Such infused skill she had also of music, whereof she was naturally ignorant, and wrote a whole book of verses, very good according to those times. Indeed, in that age the trumpet of

"Breck or Brack, a gap in a hedge." PHILLIPS AND KERSEY'S "New World of Words."-EDIT. +TRITHEMIUS De Scriptor. Eccles., fol. 92.

the warlike heroic, and the sweet harp of the lyric verse, were all turned into the jingling of cymbals, tinkling with rhymes and like-sounding cadences.

But let us hear a few lines of her prophecies, and thence guess the rest :-"In those days there shall rise up a people without understanding, proud, covetous, and deceitful; the which shall eat the sins of the people; holding a certain order of foolish devotion under the feigned cloak of beggary. Also they shall instantly preach without devotion or example of the holy martyrs, and shall detract from the secular princes, taking away the sacraments of the church from the true pastors, receiving alms of the poor, having familiarity with women, instructing them how they shall deceive their husbands, and rob their husbands to give it unto them."* &c. What could be said more plain to draw out to the life those Mendicant Friars, (rogues by God's statutes,) who afterwards swarmed in the world?

Hear also how she foretold the low water of Tiber, whilst as yet it was full tide there :-"The kings and other rulers of the world, being stirred up by the just judgment of God, shall set themselves against them, and run upon them, saying, We will not have these men to reign over us with their rich houses, and great possessions, and other worldly riches, over the which we are ordained to be lords and rulers; and how is it meet or comely, that those shavelings, with their stoles and chesils, † should have more soldiers or richer armour and artillery than we? Wherefore let us take away from them what they do not justly but wrongfully possess."

It is well the Index Expurgatorius was not up in those days, nor the Inquisition on foot; otherwise, dame Hildegardis must have been called to an after-account. I will only ask a Romanist this question: This prophecy of Hildegardis,—was it from heaven or from men? If from heaven, why did ye not believe it? If from men, why did the Pope allow it, and canonize her?

As for miracles, which she wrought in her life-time, their number is as admirable as their nature. I must confess, at my first reading of them,‡ my belief digested some, but surfeited on

See much more to this purpose in Catalog. Testium Veritatis in Hildegarde: also in Fox's "Acts and Monuments," p. 461. + Chesil is an abbreviation

of Chesible, the form in which the word is found in our old writers. Holyoake quotes the following passage from Baldus, in explanation of the term:-Vestis religiosorum, vulgò planeta presbyteri, quia, instar parvæ case, totum hominem tegit: "One of the vestments of the religious, commonly called the planet of a priest; because, being in size almost equal to a small cottage, it completely covers the whole of his person."-Edit.

In LIPPOMAN, in Vitis Sanct., tom. v. fol. 91. et seq.