VIGILANTIUS, the bold opponent of ecclesiastical corruptions in the fourth century, and the forerunner of those who have since testified for scriptural truth, and protested against certain errors of the ancient fathers. Others of the same, or of an earlier period, may have offered some occasional opposition to superstitious practices, as they crept into the church; but Vigilantius openly denounced relic and saint worshippers as cinerarios et idololatras. ^[1. Hieron. Opera. Epist. ad Ripar. 37, vol. iv. par. ii. p.278. edit. Paris. 1706. ] ’ He made an uncompromising attack upon the obligation to celibacy, the adoration of saints, prayers for the dead, the use of relics, and pilgrimages, and exposed their mischievous tendency, at the critical time when they were sanctioned by such eminent men as Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerom, and Augustin. He was one of those resolute inquirers, who dare to think for themselves, and who appear at intervals, after the lapse of centuries, to remind Christians that they are to abide by the rule of thought and action, which is laid down in the book of God’s revealed will, and are not to be satisfied with any canon which cannot be examined by that standard. He may therefore have a place given to him in that noble phalanx, in which Claude of Turin, Valdo of Lyons, Luther, and Calvin, took their stand, for the defence of the pure gospel.

Vigilantius was born about the year 360, at the foot of the Pyrenees, under the warm sun which fertilizes Aquitaine, and in the midst of that majestic scenery which calls forth latent genius, and gives a tone of independent character to the native of the mountains. Calagorris,^[2. Hieron. Opera, iv. par. ii. p. 282. ] now called Casères, was his birth-place; not Calagorris in Spain, but a village on the northern side of the Pyrenees, so named by a band of insurgents, who were driven by Pompey from the Spanish borders, and settled on the Gallic frontier.^[3. Pagi Crit. Hist. Chronol. vol. ii. p. 74. ] The father of Vigilantius kept the Mansio, ^[4. Bergier, Hist, des Grands Chemins de l’Empire, liv. iv. c. ix. pp. 638, 646, 651. ] ’ or station at Calagorris, where travellers were supplied with post-horses and guides to conduct them through the passes; and this brought the young mountaineer under the notice of Sulpicius Severus, the historian, who took him into his service, and employed him in the management of his estate, and in the sale of the wines which it produced.^[5. Vaissette, Hist. Gen. du Languedoc, i. 152. Tillemont, Memoires, xii. 193. ] For his good conduct in this situation, he was taken into the confidence of his patron, and lived with him more in the character of a friend than a dependent. There are some beautiful letters still extant, which passed between Sulpicius Severus and Paulinus of Nola, in which Vigilantius is mentioned in the warmest terms of affection;^[6. See especially Epist. Paulini ad Sulp. Sev. No. 1. Paulini Op. edit. Antv. 1622. ] e and no doubt he was indebted to his familiar acquaintance with these two eminent persons Tor his first serious impressions. Had he not been a man of uncommon strength of mind, he would have fallen into the same errors which clouded their religious views. Happily and providentially, however, he was enabled to turn their example to advantage, even on points in which they were misguided, by avoiding the rocks on which they split; and he became a reformer where he might have been a sceptic, or at least a scorner, with such extravagancies before his eyes as they practised under the name of religion. Sulpicius, in a season of great mental distress, went to Martin, bishop of Tours,^[7. Sulp. Sever, de Vita S. Mart. c. 26. ] for instruction and consolation; and it is probable that Vigilantius accompanied him on one or two of his visits to that gloomy ascetic, in 392 or 393, and witnessed some of those acts of austerity^[8. " One of them is thus described by Paulinus: Quin et contexto setis coopertus amictu,— Exesa assiduo compunxit acumine membra, Ut tereret tenuem vestis nimis aspera pellem, Et cutis extentis stimulis adtacta paveret."—Pnulini Vita S. Martini, lib, ii. ] and pretensions to miraculous power,^[9. See Sulp. Sev. Dialogi de Virtutibus Martini. ] which proved Martin to be an impostor or a crazy fanatic, and opened the eyes of the young man to the true character of a system, which turned the head of his master, and made him the victim of a spiritual delusion.

Sulpicius devoted the whole of his immense property to the exercise of almsgiving and hospitality. His beautiful villas at Primuliac and Elusone, near Tholouse, were made the asylums of the mendicant and the wayfaring man. He built churches; he founded a monastery; he entertained strangers; he treated his domestics as if they were his near relations; and he lived in the practice of every Christian virtue.^[10. Epist. Paulini ad Sulp. Sev. ] He watched, he prayed, he fasted. But this was not enough. Wrought up to the highest pitch of religious fever by Martin, and others of a disordered imagination, he believed that his oblations of faith and piety would be unacceptable to heaven, unless they were accompanied by the most rigid self-denial and self-infliction. But the more he tormented himself, the more did fears, utterly inconsistent with the covenant of reconciliation and the pardon of sins, offered in the gospel, prey upon his heart and understanding. Vigilantius observed the melancholy and maddening effects produced in the noble mind of his protector, and learnt to abominate the lessons which degraded “the Christian Sallust,” as Sulpicius was called, to the level of a credulous and extravagant narrator of false miracles.^[11. “See the miracles of Martin and of the hermits of Egypt, described by Sulpicius, in his Liber de Vita Martini, and Dialogi de Virtutibus Monachorum Orientalium. ]

He likewise had opportunities of seeing how leaven of the same kind worked in Paulinus of Nola, and how it spoilt his Christianity. That illustrious and amiable saint (for saint he was, in spite of his religious mistakes), was persuaded by the advocates^[12. By Jerom, among others, who told him he must make an absolute renunciation of all he had, and voluntarily embrace entire poverty, if he wished to be perfect. It is in vain to defend the Christianity of the fourth century from the charge of fanaticism. See Epist. Hieron. ad Paul. 49. Opera iv. par. ii. p. 563. ] of an ascetic rule of life, which was falsely called Christian perfection, to renounce the comfort and privileges of wedlock, to live with his wife as if with a sister, to desert his post of duty, to deny himself the necessaries of life, to abandon the world, to practise severities on his person, and to have recourse to superstitious observances, which reduced his body to a skeleton, and his mind to a state bordering on imbecility.

Vigilantius continued to pass his time in the society of Sulpicius, in Aquitaine, or of Paulinus, in Campania, until the year 394 or 395, and with them he had the best οpportunities of cultivating sacred learning, and of discussing theological questions. But succeeding to considerable property on the death of his father, about that time, he resolved to take [7:21:649]a journey to the East for his mental improvement, and carried a letter of introduction from Paulinus to Jerom,^[13. I Hier. Op. iv. pars 2, p. 568. ] who was then dwelling as a recluse in Palestine. This introduction, which took place after he was in priest’s orders, was a turning point in his life. The errors for which he might have had some respect, in connection with such gentle and humble servants of God as Sulpicius and Paulinus, (and never is error so dangerous as when recommended by good and holy men), became disgusting in the sour and choleric monk of Bethlehem, whose learning gave a sting to his accrbity. It was unendurable to be a spectator of Jerom’s spiritual pride, and to hear him revile every body whose opinions were opposed to his own, while he professed to make the birth-place of the meek and lowly Jesus his abode, in order that he might be the better able to keep his body in subjection. Their disputes ran high, and Jerom, who began by speaking of Vigilantius as “the holy presbyter,”^[14. Hier. Op. iv. pars ii. p. 568. ] and “Christian brother,”^[15. lbid. p. 277. ] soon changed his opinion, and heaped every epithet upon him that was most expressive of contempt and resentment. He punned upon his name, and called him Dormitantius, and inveighed against him as an ignorant pretender to learning.^[16. ' Ibid. pp. 281, 282. ] “Tapster,” “madman,” “monster,” “possessed of a devil,” “heretic,”^[17. Vigilantius was not named among the heretics enumerated by Epiphanius, Augustin, Theodoret, or Isidorus. ] “Samaritan,” “worse than a Jew;” these were some of Jerom’s terms of reproach applied to Vigilantius; but we search in vain for any fair grounds of accusation in justification of such language, which has been condemned by some of the best writers of the Romish church. No charges of heterodoxy on the great doctrines of atonement and justification, no imputation of doubtful faith on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, are advanced against him. The sum and substance of Jerom’s indictment amounts to this, that Vigilantius denied the sanctity of relics; that he refused to worship and to burn lights at the tombs of the martyrs, and to invocate saints; that he disapproved of vows of celibacy, of pilgrimages, and of nocturnal watchings in cemeteries;^[18. See the confession of Jerom, that these nightly assemblies were productive of intemperance and profligacy. ] that he doubted the presence of departed spirits at the places where their bodies were buried; that he questioned the tales of miracles said to have been wrought at the sepulchres of the martyrs; and that he protested against the imputed efficacy of prayers, either for or to the dead.^[19. See Epist. 37, and Adversus Vigilantium. Hier. Op. iv. pars ii. pp. 281—288. ] Unfortunately we have nothing left but Jerom’s account of the controversy; and Vigilantius only speaks for himself in the pages of his adversary, in some of which he is represented precisely in the same light, and almost in the same words, as the early Christians were by their pagan calumniators. Jerom hated Vigilantius personally, because he had accused him of inclining to some of the opinions of Origen. Fleury admits that Jerom was too vehement in his controversy with Vigilantius; and Erasmus makes use of a stronger expression, “debacchatur convitiis.”^[20. Erasmus. Argumenta Invectivae Hieron. vol. iii. p. 55. ] After making some stay in Palestine and Egypt, Vigilantius returned to Gaul in 396;^[21. Hieran. Op. iv. pars ii. p. 279. Epist. ad Rip. 37. ] and on his way he visited a Christian community in the Cottian Alps, the ancestors, as we have reason to believe, of the Valdenses, among whom he found persons entertaining the same opinions as his own. This visit may have been occasioned by a statement of Ambrose relating to the opinions and practice of his mountain clergy. Claude, bishop of Turin, four hundred years afterwards, was said to revive the sect of Vigilantius^[22. Praef. Ionae Aur. advers. Haer. Claudii. Bib. Patr. iv. 535. edit. Par. 1624. ] in those parts; in other words, to attempt to put down the same abuses which Vigilantius had exposed.

During the eight years that followed, he officiated as priest in the diocese of Tholouse, not far from the Pyrenees; but he does not seem to have been confined to the duties of his parish;^[23. II Hier. adv. Vigil, iv. 2. 282; and Epist. ad Vigil. 36. ] for we read of his making excursions into different parts of Gaul to collect books, to copy MSS., and to put himself into communication with bishops and clergy whose sentiments were similar to his own. Jerom’s invectives against those Gallic prelates^[24. Ibid. ] who advocated the same cause as Vigilantius, and his reproof of Exupe-rius, bishop of Tholouse, for not silencing him “with a rod of iron,”^[25. Hier. Ep. 87. ad Ripar. Ibid. ] prove that there was a strong attempt, at this time, to correct those superstitious practices of the church of the fourth century, which Vigilantius denounced as having an idolatrous tendency. It is quite clear, that the Aquitainian clergy leant, for the most part, towards the opinions of Vigilantius, because nobody was found in southern Gaul to contradict him; and for that reason Jerom undertook to rebuke and refute him, at the request of Riparius and Desiderius. The influence of the Pyrenean presbyter was exercised in another way; he employed much of his time and his fortune in the transcription and circulation of copies of Scripture.^[26. Hier. Epist. ad Vigil. 36. ]

The zeal of Vigilantius in his endeavour to check the progress of corrupt innovation, was unremitting till the time of his death, which took place. It is supposed, during that terrible invasion of the barbarians, the Alans and Vandals, which desolated the south of Europe at the beginning of the fifth century. In 401 and 403, and again in 406, we find Jerome writing against him,^[27. Vide Hier. Opera, vol. iv. pars ii. ] and describing his persevering efforts in the dissemination of his principles; but after that no more mention is made of him. The full benefit of his protests against antichristian novelties was not felt, either in his lifetime or in the ages that immediately followed. But he was one of those champions of the faith raised up in fulfilment of the promise, that the gospel of truth shall never be without a witness; and it was reserved for a happier era to establish the doctrines which he so faithfully maintained. (d.f. )