main principle: "We do not believe," they boldly said, "that God has predestined any men to be evil."
S. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, was at one time a pupil at Lerins. The "Confessions of Augustine" are indeed a beautiful picture of the workings of a human soul; but not more tender and beautiful than that revelation of a noble heart given to us in the "Confession of Patrick."
Lerins—that is, especially Saint Honorat—was the refuge of the intellect, the science, the literature, of a civilised world going to pieces' into utter wreckage.
As Guizot well said:—
"For culture of mind, one thing is requisite, and that is quiet. When the social condition of the world is in convulsion, and all about is barbarity and misery, then study suffers, is neglected and declines. Taste for truth, the sentiment for what is beautiful, are plants as delicate as they are
noble. For their cultivation a sweet atmosphere is necessary; they bow their heads and are blighted by storm. Study, literature, intellectual activity, could not battle against general discouragement, universal disaster; they must have a holdfast somewhere, attach themselves to popular convictions, or perish. The Christian religion furnished them with the
means of living. By allying themselves to that, philosophy and literature were saved from the ruin that menaced them. One may say, without exaggeration, that the human mind, proscribed, storm-tossed, found its only possible refuge in churches and monasteries. It clung as a suppliant to the
altars, and pleaded to be allowed to live under their shelter, and at their service, till better times should arrive, when they would expand in the open air."
Lerins suffered repeatedly and frightfully from the Saracens. Again and again was it ravaged. In 725,
