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EDITOR'S NOTE

IN February 1856, when Arthur Penrhyn Stanley had been
Canon of Canterbury for nearly five years, he had published his
Memorials of Canterbury (1854), a Commentary on the Epistles to
the Corinthians (1855), and had just completed his Sinai and
Palestine^ the fruit of his travels in those regions in 1852-53. And
accordingly we find him writing to his friend Hugh Pearson to say
that the remaining work of his life would be either a history of the
chosen people, or a history of early Christianity, beginning from
the earliest times and continuing as late as possible. He was
enabled to carry out both these projects in a way which he could
not have foreseen at the time of writing ; for in December of the
same year he was appointed Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at Oxford. His biographer tells us that on the morning
after he had accepted the appointment he burst into his mother's
room exclaiming, " I have settled my first course. I shall begin
with Abraham ; he is the true beginning of ecclesiastical history."
A few days later he is writing again to Pearson outlining the plan
that was afterwards matured in the Lectures on the Eastern
Church. In February 1857, he delivered, with striking success,
as his inaugural course, the lectures comprised under the title
"Introduction" in this volume. They deal respectively with the
" province," the " methods," and the " advantages " of the study of
Church History, and there can be no better introduction to the
subject for any student than these three discourses taken together
with Bishop Collins's little hand-book, and an article by Dr. Harnack
in The Contemporary Review for August 1886. We shall see also
that these lectures are no less significant of Stanley himself than
helpful to his readers.

In the long vacation of 1857 just fifty years ago Stanley set
out from- Canterbury (where he continued to reside until a death in
February 1858 placed at his disposal a canonry in Christ Church,
Oxford), together with two young comrades and a courier named
Djarlieb, whose performance did not equal his promise. After a
short stay in Sweden, where Stanley was much struck by the
gorgeous vestments worn by Lutheran ministers, the little party
went on to Helsingfors and St. Petersburg, the professor being

268^52

viii Editor's Note

anxious to study at first hand the history of the Greek Church.
His task was difficult, for he was ignorant of the language, and
unable, even through the medium of one interpreter after another,
to grip the significance of the abundant symbolism and ceremony
that everywhere met him. At length, however, he found " 1'homme
pre'cieux," Michael Sukatin, one of the imperial judges ; to whose
kindness and invaluable help he bears generous testimony in his
letters. Through Sukatin he gained personal interviews with such
high authorities as Philaret, the Metropolitan of Moscow, and
what had threatened to be a somewhat barren pilgrimage became
a joyous and fruitful quest. The lateness of the season unfortun-
ately prevented the party from going beyond Moscow to Kieff,
and the "higher critic" may possibly on that account discern a
something lacking in the story of the conversion of the Slavonic
races (Lecture IX.) as compared with the narrative of the later
history of the Russian Church, which gathers round Moscow and
the Troitza monastery with the names of Sergius, Ivan the
Terrible and Nicon, and then round St. Petersburg and Peter the
Great. Stanley reached home in the second week of October,
and the lectures were delivered no long time afterwards. They
had, however, to wait for publication till March 1861, when they
saw the light through the " Sturm und Drang " of the Essays and
Reviews controversy, into which Stanley had flung himself with all
the ardour of his chivalrous, catholic and sensible spirit.

The whole work as we have it is in many ways our best memorial
of the great Dean. On the one hand the lectures on the Eastern
Church are significant of his method. Though not so finished and
elaborate as Sinai and Palestine^ or so personal and intimate as
the Memorials of Canterbury, he has made the dry bones live, and
the ikons and relics of the Greek Church become in his hands as
eloquent as the mummies and the papyri of Memphis under the spell
of our modern Egyptologists. And this vital, humanizing attainment
was, as his biographer points out, achieved " by methods which
were essentially part of himself. So far as was possible the history
was studied on the exact spot, and the appropriate atmosphere,
the local colour, the life-like details, are reproduced with picturesque
power. The relics of the past are treated as living human spirits,
or as the instruments of living human spirits, whose influence is at
work on all sides around us for our own and for all future ages.
Every similarity, contrast, or analogy, with whatever is most
familiar in our own institutions or life, is noted, so that new ideas
may be brought home to the most ordinary understanding. No

Editor's Note ix

effort is made to drag the reader over the whole field of Church
History ; the lesser events are only touched upon so as to preserve
the thread of continuity; the leading persons, the important
scenes, the critical stages, are studied in all the detail which is
possible, and stand out in overwhelming prominence by the
effacement of subordinate occurrences." Of this method of treat-
ment the lectures on the Council of Nicasa especially furnish
several striking examples.

On the other hand, the lectures, and especially the introductory
ones, are indicative of the temper of the man.

His successor, Dean Bradley, whose delightful Recollections of
Dean Stanley are themselves a tribute of perfection, points out
how, read in the light of his later works and letters, the intro-
ductory lectures " embody his whole views, his whole life, his whole
self." Mark his characteristic determination (p. 6) to begin his
story not with the Reformation or the Papacy or the Fathers,
but with the first dawn of the history of the Church in Ur of
the Chaldees ; and his equally characteristic protest against the
narrowing and depreciatory process by which a great theological
term like " church " has come to connote " not the whole congrega-
tion of faithful men dispersed throughout the world, but a priestly
caste, a monastic order, a little sect, or a handful of opinions."
"We cannot," said Stanley in a famous sermon preached in America,
" safely dispense even with the churches which we most dislike and
which in other respects have wrought most evil," and the man who
had an eye for resemblances rather than for differences, who could
thank Quakers, Baptists, and Presbyterians alike for their con-
tributions to the great treasury and stream of Christian life, who
passionately admired the great Switzer Zwingli, and upheld the
great laymen, Louis of France, Dante of Italy, and Milton of
England, as " the true interpreters, the true guides of the thoughts
and feelings of their respective ages," was courageous enough both
to begin and to conclude his first course of Regius Lectures with
a citation from the Baptist tinker of Bedford. He half humorously
said that when he had finished with the Greek Church and the
Jewish^Church he would " withdraw into the Church of England,"
and the breadth of his conceptions finds apt illustration in his
choice of the Orthodox Eastern Community as a subject. On the
night before he left Russia he had a long talk with his friend
Sukatin, and asked him of his hopes for the future of his Church.
The Russian replied, " What I chiefly expect and hope for is the
pacifying effect which will be produced on the controversies of the

x Bibliography

West when they come to a knowledge of a Church which has never
entered into those controversies, which has stood firm on the basis
of the early centuries before they rose, which has the deeply rooted
idea of the fixed and stable character of the ancient traditions,
without the slightest desire to proselytize." It cannot be said that
the Western Churches, quick and avid of progress, have been
particularly impressed or pacified by the spectacle of what with
all its good is but a petrified Church, but we can understand how
the hope of the Slav found an echo in the heart of the Teuton, for
the key to Stanley's whole position as a theologian was his abiding
and tenacious conviction " that in that virgin mine, the insufficiently
explored records, original records, of Christianity" (and he would
not have limited these to Holy Scripture), " there are still materials
for a new epoch : that . . . the existing materials, principles,
doctrines of the Christian religion are far greater than have ever
yet been employed, and that the Christian Church, if it ever be
permitted or enabled to use them, has a long lease of new life
and new hope before it."

Stanley left Oxford for Westminster in 1864. He carried with
him, and preserved inviolate to the end this faith and this hope, of
a new and greater future for the Church of Christ.

A. J. G.

The following are the works of A. P. Stanley :

The Gypsies, Prize Poem, Oxford, 1837 ; Life and Correspondence of
Dr. Arnold, 1844; Sermons on the Apostolic Age, 1847; Memorials of
Canterbury, 1854 ; Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians, 1855 ;
Sinai and Palestine, 1856 ; Three Introductory Lectures on the Study of
Ecclesiastical History, 1857 ; Canterbury Sermons, 1859 ; Freedom and
Labour (two sermons), 1860 ; Lectures on the History of the Eastern
Church, 1861 ; Sermons in the East, 1863 ; Lectures on the History of the
Jewish Church, three series, 1863, 1865, 1876 ; Memorials of Westminster
Abbey, 1868 ; Essays, chiefly on questions of Church and State, 1870 ;
Lectures on the Church of Scotland, 1872 ; Addresses and Sermons
delivered at St. Andrews, 1877 ; Addresses and Sermons delivered in the
United States and Canada, 1879 ; Christian Institutions, 1881. Many
sermons and addresses published separately.

For more recent work on the subject of these lectures, see

(a) H. M. Gwatkin, Studies in Arianism.

(b) P. J. Pargoire, L' Eglise Byzantine, 527-847.

(c) A. Harnack, What is Christianity? Lects. XII and XIII.

CONTENTS

EDITOR'S NOTE
PREFACE

PAGE

vii

INTRODUCTION
I

THE PROVINCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Description of Ecclesiastical History .....

I. Its first beginning ......

The History of Israel, the first period of the History of the
Church ..... .

Its peculiar interest .....

Its religious importance . . . . .

II. The History of Christendom, the second period of the History
of the Church .......

Relations of Civil and Ecclesiastical History . . .

Points of contact between them . . .

Points of divergence . . . . .

Stages of the History of the Christian Church . .

1. The Transition from the Church of the Apostles to the

Church of the Fathers . . . .

2. The Conversion of the Empire. The Eastern Church .

3. The Invasion of the Barbarians. The Latin Church .

4. The Reformation . . . . .
The French, German, and English Churches .

Conclusion. The late Professor Hussey . . .

General Chronological Table of the Periods of Church History

6
7
8

9

11
13
14
15

15
16

. 17
.18

19, 20

20, 21
21

II

x THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

Dryness of Ecclesiastical History

Remedy to be found in a Historical View of the Church
I. History of Doctrines
II. History of Creeds and Articles .
III. History of Events and Persons
General Study

Detailed Study of great Events
The Councils

22
22
23
23
24

25
25
26

Xll

Contents

fAGE

Detailed Study of great Men . . . .26

Neander and his History . . . .26

Distinction of Characters . . . 27
Uses of this Method :

I. Gradation of Importance in Ecclesiastical

Matters . . . . .28
II. Combination of Civil and Ecclesiastical History 29

III. Caution against partiality . . .29

IV. Reference to Original Authorities . 31

Graves of the Covenanters . . 32

The Catacombs . . .32

Special Opportunities for this Study

I. In the Church of England . . -33

II. In the University of Oxford . . 34

III. In active Clerical life

Conclusion ....

Ill

THE ADVANTAGES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

I. Importance of Historical Facts in Theological Study .

II. Importance of a General View of Ecclesiastical History

III. Use of the Biography of Good Men

IV. Use of the general Authority of the Church

V. Better understanding of Differences and of Unity
VI. Evidence rendered to the Truth of Christianity
VII. Lessons from the Failings of the Church
VIII. Comparison of Ecclesiastical History with the Scriptures
IX. Future Prospect of the History of the Church .
Indications in History
Indications in Scripture
Conclusion ......

37
39
40

4i
43
44
45

49
50
51

LECTURE I

THE EASTERN CHURCH

Authorities for its History
I. Its General Divisions

i. The National Churches of the remote East
(a) Chaldsean or Nestorian Churches

Christians of S. Thomas
(ft) The Armenians

(c) The Syrians .

Jacobites Maronites .

(d) The Copts .

The Abyssinian Church
(i) The Georgians

59

60
61
62
64

Contents xiii

2. The Greek Church ....

Representative of Ancient Greece

Of early Greek Christianity

Of the Byzantine Empire

Constantinople .....
Church of Greece ....

3. Northern Tribes .....

(a) Danubian Provinces. Bulgaria. Servia. Wai

lachia and Moldavia. The Raitzen
() The Church of Russia
II. Historical Epochs .....

1. Period of the Councils ....

2. Rise of Mahometanism ....

3. Rise of the Russian Empire

III. General Characteristics .....

1. Speculative tendency of Eastern Theology
Rhetorical as opposed to logical .
Philosophical as opposed to legal .

2. Speculative tendency of Eastern Monachism

3. The Eastern Church stationary

In the Doctrine of the Sacraments

Baptism .....
Confirmation ....

Extreme Unction ....
Infant Communion ....

4. Absence of Religious Art in the East

5. The Eastern Church not Missionary

But not persecuting ....

6. Eastern Theology not systematised
7- Eastern Hierarchy not organised .

Independence of Laity

Study of Scripture . . .

Absence of a Papacy

Married Clergy ....

IV. Advantages of a Study of the Eastern Church .

1. Its Isolation from Western Controversy .

2. Its competition with the Latin Church

3. Its Illustrations of the Unity of Western Christendom

4. Its advantages over the Western Church .

5. Its use to the Church of England .

Note on the Doctrine of the Single and Double Procession

LECTURE II

THE COUNCIL OF NIC^EA, A.D. 325

Authorities for t/ie History

I. The Oriental Character of the Council .
II. Its general Interest

1. Historical Importance of Arianism

2. Importance of the Period .

XIV

Contents

The Nicene Council the first example of a General Council
(a) In its deliberative Character
(6) In its Imperial Character
(c) In its mixed Character
III. Peculiarities of the History

1. Contemporary Sources

2. Sources on both Sides

3. The Legends

4. The Characters

LECTURE III

THE MEETING OF THE COUNCIL

The present appearance of Nicoea
I. The Occasion of the Council .

1. The Arian Controversy

Its abstract dogmatism

Its Polytheistic Tendencies .

Its Vehemence

2. Intervention of the Emperor
II. The Selection of the Place

Its Situation ....
Its Name ....

III. The Time of the Council

IV. Its Assemblage ....

Mode of travelling
Numbers .
Diversity of Characters
V. First Place of Meeting .

1. Alexandrian Deputies

Alexander .
Athanasius .
Arius . .

Coptic Hermits

2. Syrian and Assyrian Deputies

Eustathius of Antioch

Eusebius of Csesarea .

Macarius of Jerusalem

Deputies from Mesopotamia and Armenia

3. Deputies from Asia Minor and Greece

Leontius of Cassarea .
Eusebius of Nicomedia
Alexander of Byzantium
Acesius the Novatian
Marcellus of Ancyra .
Spyridion
Nicolas

4. Deputies from the West

Theophilus the Goth
The Roman Presbyters
Hosius of Cordova .

Contents

xv

VI. Preliminary Discussions .

The Theologians and the Layman
The Philosopher and the Peasant
Principle of Free Discussion .

PAGE

140
141
142

LECTURE IV

THE OPENING OF THE COUNCIL

Arrival of the Emperor

Complaints of the Bishops

Hall of Assembly

Entrance of Constantine

The President ....

His Speech . .

The formal Opening .

The Rebuke to the Bishops .

Theological Divisions .

The Thalia and Creed of Arius

Legend of S. Nicolas .

Creed of Eusebius of Csesarea .

The Homoousion

The Controversy on ousia and hypostasis

Creed of Nicsea

The Subscription of Eusebius of Csesarea

of Eusebius of Nicomedia
Banishment of Arius .
Finality of Nicene Creed
Broken at Chalcedon

LECTURE V

THE CONCLUSION OF THE COUNCIL

I. The Paschal Controversy

1 . Decree of Settlement

2. Paschal Table

3. Festal Letters of Alexandria
II. The Melitian Controversy

III. The Canons

Apocryphal Canons

Reception of the Book of Judith
Twenty Genuine Canons

I. On Clerical Discipline

On Provincial Councils .
On Episcopal Ordination
On Metropolitan Privileges
On Jerusalem and Csesarea
On Translation .
On the Power of Deacons

XVI

Contents

2. On Public Worship

3. On Clerical Manners

Intercourse with religious Women
Protest of Paphnutius

4. On cases of Conscience

Amnesty

Official Letters and final Subscription
Legends

Imperial Banquet
Rebuke to Acesius
Farewell of the Emperor
Honours paid to Nicsea
Departure of the Bishops
Reception of the Decrees
Legends of Rome and Constantinople
General Conclusion :

1. Diversity of incidents

2. Effect of Individual Characters

3. Contrast of Legendary and Historical Accounts

4. Settlement of Theological Controversies

PAGE

. 184

. 184

. 185

. 185

. 187

. 187

. 187

. 1 88

. 188

. 190

. 190

. 191

. 192

. 192
192, 193

193
. 194
. 194

194

LECTURE VI

THE EMPEROR CONSTANTINE. A.D. 312 338

Historical Position of Constantine

His Appearance .....

His Character ......

I. The First Christian Emperor

His Conversion ....

The Battle of the Milvian Bridge

His ambiguous Religion

His Christian Legislation
II. Founder of the Established Church

His Devotion and Preaching .
III. His last Visit to Rome ....

Crimes of the Imperial Family

1. Foundation of the Papal Power at Rome .

Absolution of Hosius .
of Sylvester .
Donation ....

2. Foundation of Constantinople

Its Situation ....
Its Importance in Ecclesiastical History

3. Foundation of the Holy Places in Palestine

Pilgrimage of Helena .

4. Restoration of Arius
Baptism and Death of Constantine

197
199
199
200
200
203
203
205
206
207
208

210
211
212
212
212
2I 4

215
217
2l8

218

219

221

Contents xvii

LECTURE VII

ATHANASIUS. A.D. 312 372

PAGE

I. Athanasius, as representing the Church of Egypt . . 227

His Appearance ....... 228

His Childhood . . . . . . .228

Archdeacon of Alexandria ... . 229

Consecration as Bishop . ..... 230

Importance of the See of Alexandria . . . 230

1. Conversion of Abyssinia ..... 231

2. Egyptian Hermits ...... 232

3. National feeling of Egypt . . 233

Scene of Athanasius's return to Alexandria . . 235

II. Contests of Athanasius with the Emperor . . 236

His Isolation, " contra mundum " .... 236

1. Independence against the Imperial Power . . 238

2. Personal, not Ecclesiastical, Opposition . . . 238

3. Arian Persecution ...... 239

Scene in the Church of S. Theonas . . . 240

His General Character . . . . . . 241

His Versatility . ...... 241

His Humour . ...... 242

Magical Reputation ...... 243

III. Athanasius as a Theologian . ... 244

1. Common to East and West .... 245
Athanasian Creed ...... 245

2. Founder of Orthodoxy ..... 245
Polemical Vehemence ..... 246
Defence of the Doctrine of the Incarnation . . 247

3. Discrimination of essential and unessential . . 249

In the Monastic Disputes .... 249

In Clerical Discipline ..... 249

In the Use and Disuse of the Homoousion . . 250
In the Controversy respecting "Person" and

"Substance" ..... 250

Council of Alexandria. . . . . . .251

Relations with S. Basil . . . . . .252

LECTURE VIII

MAHOMETANISM IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE EASTERN CHURCH

Prefatory Remarks on our Knowledge of Mahometanism . . 255

I. Its Connection with Western Churches .... 256

II. Its Connection with Eastern Churches .... 257

with their Rise . . . . .257

and their Ruin ..... 257

XV111

Contents

III. Point of Contact in History ....

1. Christians at Mecca ....

2. Sergius, monk of Bostra ....

3. Apocryphal Gospels ....

4. Christian Doctrines and Legends .
IV. Comparison with Sacred History

with Ecclesiastical History .
V. The Koran Compared with the Bible

1. Resemblances of Form ....

2. Contrasts between them, as regards

(a) Uniformity Variety

(b) Narrowness Diffusion

(c) Purity of Text Variations .

(d) Monotony Multiplicity

(<?) Exclusiveness Expansiveness

VI. Comparison of the Ecclesiastical System of Monometallism
that of the Christian Church

1. Its Relations to Protestantism

2. Its Relations to Catholicism

3. Its Oriental Character ....

In its worse and better Qualities

with

PAGE
258
259
259
259
260
260
261
262
262

263
264
265
266
267

267
267
269
272
272

LECTURE IX

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH

Authorities .......

I. Importance of the Church of Russia as an Eastern Church
II. Its Parallel with Western Christendom .
III. Its National Character .
Periods of its History ....

Its Foundation, A.D. 988 -1250 .
Missions of Constantinople
Conversion of Russia

1. Legendary Account S. Andrew, S. Antony

2. Historical Account .

Vladimir ....
Missions to convert him .
Mission from him to Constantinople
The Church of S. Sophia
Baptism of Vladimir at Cherson .
of the Russians at Kief .

1. Influence of Constantinople .

2. Veneration of Sacred Pictures

3. Effects of Authority .

4. Translation of the Bible into Sclavonic
Early Christian Princes of Russia

Will of Vladimir Monomachus

2 7 6
276
278
279
281
281
282
283
283
284
285
286
288
289
291
291
291
292
295
296
298
299

Contents xix

LECTURE X

THE RUSSIAN CHURCH IN THE MIDDLE AGES

PAGE

The Middle Ages of Russia, A. D. 1250 1613 . . . 302

Moscow ........ 302

I. THE CZAR .... . 304

Cathedral of the Archangel at Moscow .... 305

Ivan the Terrible ...... 306

His Position in Ecclesiastical History . . . 306
II. THE METROPOLITANS . . . . . .310

Their general Character . . . . . 311

Martyrdom of S. Philip ..... 312

III. THE MONASTIC ORDERS . . . . . 313

1. The Hermits ...... 313

Basil Nicholas of Plescow . . . .315

2. The Monasteries . . . . . .316

IV. The Invasion of the Tartars, A. D. 12051472 . . .31?

The Troitza Monastery . . . . .318

S. Sergius ....... 319

Battle of the Don ...... 320

V. The Invasion of the Poles, A.D. 1606 1613 . . . 320

Siege of the Troitza ...... 322

Election of the Romanoff Dynasty . . . 323

LECTURE XI

THE PATRIARCH NICON

The Eastern Reformation ...... 325

Nicon, his Career, A.D. 1652 1684 . . . . .327

I. His Appearance and Character ..... 327

II. His Reforms ....... 329

Opposition to them ...... 335

III. His Personal History ...... 338

Friendship with the Czar Alexis .... 338

Quarrel ....... 341

Retirement . . . . . . -341

Convent of the New Jerusalem .... 342

Return . . . . . . -345

Resignation ....... 345

Trial ........ 346

Exile . . . . . . . 347

Return ....... 349

Death and Funeral ...... 350

XX

Contents

LECTURE XII

PETER THE GREAT AND THE MODERN CHURCH
OF RUSSIA

His Historical Importance, A.D. 1672 1725 .

His Appearance and Character

His Connection with the Eastern Church

His Religion .....

His Death-bed .

His Reforms .....

Abolition of the Patriarchate

The Rascolniks (Dissenters) . ,

The Starovers (Old Believers)

Their Grievances ....

Representatives of Old Russia

Settlement at Moscow
Modern State of Russian Church, A.D. 17251860

Demetrius of Rostoff

Ambrose of Moscow

Plato of Moscow ....

Innocent of Kamtschatka .

Philaret of Moscow ....

Professor at the Troitza Convent

Conclusion .....

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE ....
MAP OF THE EASTERN CHURCHES .
PLAN OF THE PATRIARCHAL CATHEDRAL OF Moscow
INDEX .....

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION

THE Introduction to this volume consists of three
Lectures delivered in the spring of 1857, when I entered upon
my duties as Professor of Ecclesiastical History. They are
reprinted, partly for the sake of presenting them in a more
correct form than that in which they first appeared, partly for
the sake of exhibiting the general plan under which will be
comprised any special Lectures like those which form the bulk
of the present volume.

It is my hope, if I may look so far forward into the future, to
fill up two of the departments indicated in the sketch of the
first Introductory Lecture. I have already devoted a large
share of each Academical year to Lectures on the History of
the Jewish Church, which 1 trust at no very distant period to
publish ; and it is my intention to appropriate at least a portion
of my remaining time to the History of the Church of England.

Meanwhile, it seemed to me that a course of instruction in
the History of the Eastern Church would not be unfitting.
The general reasons for this selection are given in the Lectures
themselves. The subject is one in which I had long felt an
interest, and which may, perhaps, gain from being approached
through a point of view more general than that usually taken in
the learned 'works that have been devoted to its consideration.

In the choice and the treatment of epochs of Eastern History
which appear in the following pages, I have been guided by
the necessities of the case, as well as by the wish to exemplify
some of the principles laid down in my Introductory Lectures.
The. form of Lectures J lent itself to this mode of handling the
subject; and, if the result should bear the appearance of a
didactic ^rather than of a historical work, I have endeavoured
to rectify this defect by the references to authorities which
begin, and by the chronological tables which end, the volume.

It so happens that one of these epochs (the Council of

1 Most of the Lectures are printed (with necessary corrections and ab-
breviations) as they were delivered. The First and Eighth are condensed
from two courses of Lectures.

B

2 -Preface

Nicsea)i 'tiipa-gh receiving .\much attention from French and
German writers, has never bee'ri thoroughly described by any
English historian. In this instance, therefore, I have gone
into every detail. I take this opportunity of mentioning some
of the subordinate topics to which allusions have been made
throughout the Lectures, and which might well be followed up,
in a supplemental volume on the Church of Constantinople
and Greece, properly so called. The Councils of Ephesus and
Chalcedon have never, as far as I know, been described with
all the details which could be given. The life of Chrysostom
has never been fully told. The Iconoclastic controversy is full
of interest for the history both of art and religion. A full
account has yet to be given of the rupture between the Greek
and Latin Churches, and of the attempted reconciliation in
the council of Florence. The rise of the monastic community
of Athos, and of the dispute on the Light of Tabor, forms
a separate episode. The revival of the national church of
Greece contains many germs of hope for the future. A
continuous history of Greek theology, from its peculiarities in
the Eastern Fathers of the third and fourth centuries, through
the schools of Constantinople, down to its last great effort in
the revival of letters in the West, and its influence on the
Cambridge Platonic divines of the Church of England, and,
through them, on John Wesley, in the eighteenth century, is
still, I believe, a desideratum.

In regard to the relation of Christianity to the other religions
of the East, which must be considered as one of the most
important branches of the subject in connection with the
fortunes of Eastern Christendom, I have been restrained, by
my personal ignorance of the languages and customs of most
of those countries, from offering more than a few general
remarks on the one most directly connected with the Christian
Church and the Eastern branch of it, namely, Mahometanism.
But, if I may be permitted to refer to the labours of the
eminent scholar who has already done so much for elucidating
in this country the nature of Oriental religions, it is to be
hoped that Professor Max Miiller may be induced to give
us the benefit of his genius and learning in drawing forth
the mutual relations of the religions of Asia and the Christian
faith to each other, in their past history and in their future
prospects.

The Lectures on the Russian Church are intended as an
introduction to a sphere of history which probably will, in each

Preface 3

succeeding generation, grow in importance. If this volume
should fall into the hands of any of those Russians whose
hospitality I enjoyed during my stay at Moscow in 1857, I
trust that they will pardon, not only the inaccuracies in detail
which a stranger can hardly escape, but the divergence of the
general point of view from which a western European must
regard the Church and State of Russia. There is an expressive
proverb written over the house of Archbishop Plato in the
forests of the Troitza Convent, " Let not him who comes in here
carry out the dirt that he finds within." If this precept is
not altogether practicable for an impartial traveller, I can yet
truly say that my chief impressions are those of gratitude for
the intelligence and courtesy with which I was received, both
among laymen and ecclesiastics. It is a pleasure to me to
hope that those kind friends at Moscow, to whom I would
especially commend this part of my volume, may receive it as
a token of sincere hope and good will for their country in this
great crisis of its social existence, and its entrance on the
thousandth anniversary of the foundation of their Empire.

CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD :
March 6, 1861.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

THIS Edition contains a few corrections or confirmations
supplied by a visit to Constantinople and Mount Athos in the
summer of 1861, and to Alexandria in the spring of 1862.

INTRODUCTION

i

THE PROVINCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

WHEN Christian the Pilgrim, in his progress towards the
Celestial City, halted by the highway side at the Palace of
which the name was Beautiful, he was told, that " he should
not depart till they had shown him the rarities of that place.
And first they had him into the study, where they showed him
records of the greatest antiquity : " in which was "the pedigree
of the Lord of the hill, the Son of the Ancient of Days. . . .
Here also were more fully recorded the acts that he had done,
and the names of many hundreds that he had taken into his
service ; and how he had placed them in such habitations, that
could neither by length of days nor decays of nature be dissolved.
Then they read to him some of the worthy acts that some of
his servants had done ; as how they had subdued kingdoms,
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the
sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in
fight, and turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Then they
read again in another part of the records of the house, how
willing their Lord was to receive in his favour any, even any,
though they in time past had offered great affronts to his person
and proceedings. Here also were several other histories of
other famous things, of all which Christian had a view ; as of
things both ancient and modern, together with prophecies and
predictions of things that have their certain accomplishment,
both to the dread and amazement of enemies, and~ the comfort
and solace of pilgrims."

These, simple sentences from the familiar story of our child-
hood, contain a true description of the subjects, method, and
advantages of the study of Ecclesiastical History, which I now
propose to unfold in preparation for the duties which I have
been called to discharge. And with this object, it will be my
endeavour in this opening Lecture to reduce to order the
treasures which were shown to solace and cheer the Pilgrim

5

6 The Province of

on his way, by defining the limits of the province on which
we are about to enter.

I. First, then, where does Ecclesiastical History commence ?
Shall we begin with the Reformation with the framework of
religion with which we ourselves are specially concerned ? Or
with the new birth of Christendom, properly so called, in the
foundation of modern Europe ? Or with the close of the first
century with the age of those to whom we accord the name
of our " Fathers " in the Christian faith ? In a certain sense,
each of these periods may be taken, and by different classes of
men always will be taken, respectively, as the boundaries of the
history of the Church. But, if we are fixing, not merely the
accidental limits of convenience, but the true limits involved in
the nature of the subject ; if Ecclesiastical History means the
History of the Church of God ; if that history is one united
whole ; if it cannot be understood without embracing within its
range the history of the events, of the persons, of the ideas
which have had the most lasting, the most powerful effect on
every stage of its course; we must ascend far higher in the
stream of time than the sixteenth, or the fifth, or the second
century, beyond the Reformers, beyond the Popes, beyond
the Fathers.

.... Far in the dim distance of primeval ages, is discerned
the first figure in the long succession which has never since
been broken, in Ur of the Chaldees, the Patriarchal chief,
followed by his train of slaves and retainers, surrounded by his
herds of camels and asses, moving westward and southward, he
knew not whither, the first Father of the universal Church,
Abraham, the founder of the Chosen People, the Father of the
Faithful, whose seed was to be as the sand upon the sea-shore,
as the stars for multitude.

Earlier manifestations doubtless there had been of faith and
hope ; in other countries also than Mesopotamia or Palestine
there were yearnings after a higher world. But the call of
Abraham is the first beginning of a continuous growth ; in his
character, in his migration, in his faith was bound up, as the
Christian Apostle well describes, all that has since formed the
substance and fibre of the history of the Church.

From this point, then, we start, and from this shall be pre-
pared to enter on the history of the people of Israel, as the true
beginning and prototype of the Christian Church. So in old
times it was ever held ; to the Apostolic age it could not be
otherwise ; even Eusebius, writing for a special purpose, is

Ecclesiastical History 7

constrained to commence his work by going back (almost in
the words with which I opened this Lecture) to "records of
the greatest antiquity, showing the pedigree of the Son of the
Ancient of Days," both divine and human ; and, in spite of the
ever-increasing materials of later times, the elder dispensation
has been included, actually or by implication, in some of the
greatest works on Ecclesiastical History. So it must be in the
nature of the case, however much, for the sake of convenience
or perspicuity, we may divide and subdivide what is in itself
one whole. Speaking religiously, the history of the Christian
Church can never be separated from the life of its Divine
Founder, and that life cannot be separated from the previous
history, of which it was the culmination, the explanation, the
fulfilment. Speaking philosophically, the history of the reli-
gious thoughts and feelings of Europe cannot be understood
without a full appreciation of the thoughts and feelings of
that Semitic race which found their highest expression in the
history of the Jewish nation.

Nor is it only for the sake of a mere formal completeness
that we must thus combine the old and the new in our histor-
ical studies. Consider well what that history is, what a field
it opens, what light it receives, what light it gives, by the mere
fact of being so regarded. So far from being exempt from the
laws of gradual progress and development to which the history
of other nations is subject, it is the most remarkable exemplifi-
cation of those laws. In no people does the history move
forward in so regular a course, through beginning, middle, and
end, as in the people of Israel. In none are the beginning,
middle, and end so clearly distinguished, each from each. In
none has the beginning so natural and so impressive a pre-
paration as that formed by the age of the Patriarchs. In none
do the various stages of the history so visibly lead the way to
the consummation, which, however truly it may be regarded
as the opening of a new order, is yet no less truly the end of
the old. And nowhere does the final consummation more
touchingly linger in the close, more solemnly break away into
new forms and new life, than in the last traces of the effects of
the Jewish race on the Apostolic age.

The form, too, of the sacred books of the Old Testament
is one of all others most attractive to the historical student.
Out of a great variety of documents, sometimes contempor-
aneous, sometimes posthumous, sometimes regular narratives,
sometimes isolated fragments, is to be constructed the picture

8 The Province of

of events, persons, manners, most diverse. The style and
language, of primitive abruptness, pregnant with meaning, are
eminently suggestive. The historical annals are combined with
rich and constant illustration, from what in secular literature
would be called the poets and orators of the nation. There is
everything to stimulate research, even did these remains con-
tain no more than the merely human interest which attaches to
the records of any great and ancient people.

But the sons of Israel, as we all know, are much more than
this. They are, literally, our spiritual ancestors : their imagery,
their poetry, their very names have descended to us ; their
hopes, their prayers, their psalms are ours. In their religious
life we see the analogy of ours ; in the gradual, painful, yet sure
unfolding of divine truth to them, we see the likeness of the
same light dawning slowly on the Christian Church. They are
truly " our ensamples." Through the reverses, the imperfec-
tions, the sins of His ancient Church, we see how " God at
sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to our
fathers," bringing out of manifold infirmity the highest of all
blessings, as we trust that He may still, through like vicissitudes,
to the Church of the present and to the Church of the
future.

Political principles, we are told, are best studied in the
history of classical antiquity, because they are there discussed
and illustrated with a perfect abstraction from those particular
associations which bias our judgment in modern and domestic
instances. And so, in a still higher degree, in the history of
the Jewish Church, we find the principles of all religious and
ecclesiastical parties developed, not amidst names and events
which are themselves the subjects of vehement controversy,
but in a narrative of acknowledged authority, free from all the
bitterness of modern watchwords, and yet with a completeness
and variety such as within the same compass could be found
in no modern church or nation.

Reproduce this history with all the detail of which it is
capable. Recall Abraham resting under the oak of Mamre ;
Joseph amidst the Egyptian monuments ; Moses under the
cliffs of Horeb; Joshua brandishing his outstretched spear;
Samuel amidst his youthful scholars ; David surrounded by
his court and camp ; Solomon in his Eastern state ; the wild,
romantic, solitary figure of the great Elijah ; " the goodly
fellowship" of gifted seers, lifting up their strains of joy or
sorrow, as they have been well described, like some great

Ecclesiastical History 9

tragic chorus, as kingdom after kingdom falls to ruin, as hope
after hope dies and is revived again. Represent in all their
distinctness the several stages of the history, in its steady
onward advance from Egypt to Sinai, from Sinai to the
Jordan, from the Jordan to Jerusalem, from the Law to* the
Judges, from the Judges to the Monarchy, from the Monarchy
to the Prophets, from the Prophets to the great event to
which, not the Prophets only, but the yearnings of the whole
nation had for ages borne witness.

Let us not fear lest our reverence should be diminished by
finding these sacred names and high aspirations under the
garb of Bedouin chiefs and Egyptian slaves and Oriental
kings and Syrian patriots. The contrast of the ancient inward
spirit with the present degraded condition of the same outward
forms is the best indication of the source whence that spirit
came. Let us not fear lest we should, by the surpassing
interest of the story of the elder church, be tempted to forget
the end to which it leads us. The more we study the Jewish
history, the more shall we feel that it is but the prelude of a
vaster and loftier history, without which it would be itself
unmeaning. The voice of the old dispensation is pitched in
too loud a key for the ears of one small people. 1 The place of
the Jewish nation is too strait for the abode of thoughts which
want a wider room in which to dwell. The drama, as it rolls
on through its successive stages, is too majestic to end in any-
thing short of a divine catastrophe.

This is a brief but necessary sketch of the first part of our
subject. This is the ancient period of Ecclesiastical History.
Its full treasures must be unfolded hereafter. Its accessories
belong to other departments of study. The critical interpretation
of the sacred books in which the history is contained falls under
the province of General Theology and Exegesis ; the explan-
ation of the languages in which they are written I gladly leave
to the Professor of Hebrew and the Professor of Greek. But
the history itself of the chosen people, from Abraham to the
Apostles, belongs to this Chair by right ; 2 and, if health and
strength are spared to me, shall also belong to it in fact.

II. The fortunes, however, of the seed of Abraham after the

1 I am indebted for this expression to a striking sermon of Professor
Archer Butler (vol. i. p. 210).

2 I believe that I am correct in stating that in all other European
universities, where a Chair of Ecclesiastical History exists, the Jewish
history falls within its province.

B 2

io The Province of

flesh form but a small portion of the fortunes of his descendants
after the spirit : they are, as I have said, but the introduction
to the history which rises on their ruin. With the close of the
Apostolic age the direct influence of the chosen people expires ;
neither in religious nor in historical language can the Jewish
race from this time forward be said to be charged with any
divine message for the welfare of mankind. Individual in-
stances of long endurance, of great genius, of lofty character,
have indeed arisen amongst them in later times ; but, since the
days when the Galilean Apostle, S. John, slept his last sleep
under the walls of Ephesus, no son of Israel has ever exercised
any widespread or lasting control over the general condition of
mankind.

We stand, therefore, at the close of the first century, like
travellers on a mountain ridge, when the river which they have
followed through the hills is about to burst forth into the wide
plain. It is the very likeness of that world-famous view from
the range of the Lebanon over the forest and city of Damascus.
The stream has hitherto flowed in its narrow channel, its course
marked by the contrast which its green strip of vegetation pre-
sents to the desert mountains through which it descends. The
further we advance the more remarkable does the contrast
become ; the mountains more bare, the river-bed more rich and
green. At last its channel is contracted to the utmost limits ;
the cliffs on each side almost close it in ; it breaks through and
over a wide extent, far as the eye can reach, it scatters a flood
of vegetation and life, in the midst of which rise the towers and
domes of the great city, the earliest and the latest type of
human grandeur and civilisation.

Such is the view, backwards and forwards, and beneath our
feet, which Ecclesiastical History presents to us, as we rest on
the grave of the last Apostle and look over the coming ages of
our course. The Church of God is no longer confined within
the limits of a single nation. The life and the truth, con-
centrated up to this point within the narrow and unbending
character of the Semitic race, have been enlarged into the
broad, fluctuating, boundless destinies of the sons of Japheth.
The thin stream expands and loses itself more and more in the
vast field of the history of the world. The Christian Church
is merely another name for Christendom; and Christendom
soon becomes merely another name for the most civilised, the
most powerful, the most important nations of the modem
habitable world.

Ecclesiastical History n

What, then, it may be asked, is the difference henceforward
between Civil and Ecclesiastical History? How far are the
duties of this professorship separable from those of the Chair
of Modern History ?

To a great extent the two are inseparable ; they cannot be
torn asunder without infinite loss to both. It is indeed true
that, in common parlance, Ecclesiastical History is often con-
fined within limits so restricted as to render such a distinction
only too easy. Of the numerous theological terms, of which
the original sense has been defaced, marred, and clipped by
the base currency of the world, few have suffered so much, in
few has "the gold become so dim, the most fine gold so
changed," as in the word "ecclesiastical." The substantive
from which it is derived has fallen far below its ancient
Apostolical meaning, but the adjective " ecclesiastical " has
fallen lower still. It has come to signify, not the religious, not
the moral, not even the social or political interests of the
Christian community, but often the very opposite of these
its merely accidental, outward, ceremonial machinery. We call
a contest for the retention or the abolition of vestments
" ecclesiastical," not a contest for the retention or the abolition
of the slave trade. We include in " ecclesiastical history " the
life of the most insignificant bishop or the most wicked of
Popes, not the life of the wisest of philosophers or the most
Christian of kings. But such a limitation is as untenable in
fact as it is untrue in theory. The very stones of the spiritual
temple cry out against such a profanation of the rock from
which they were hewn. If the Christian religion be a matter,
not of mint, anise, and cummin, but of justice, mercy, and
truth ; if the Christian Church be not a priestly caste, or a
monastic order, or a little sect, or a handful of opinions, but
" the whole congregation of faithful men, dispersed through-
out the world ; " if the very word which of old represented the*
chosen "people" (Xaos) is now to be found in the "laity; " if
the Biblical usage of the phrase " Ecclesia " literally justifies
Tertullian's definition, Ubi tres sunt laid, ibi est ecclesia ; then
the range of the history of the Church is as wide as the
range of the world which it was designed to penetrate, as the
whole body which its name includes.

By a violent effort, no doubt, the two spheres can be kept
apart ; by a compromise, tacit or understood, the student of
each may avoid looking the other in the face ; under special
circumstances, the intimate relation between the course of

12 The Province of

Christian society and the course of human affairs may be
forgotten or set aside. Josephus the priest may pass over
in absolute silence the new sect which arises in Galilee to
disturb the Jewish hierarchy. Tacitus the philosopher may
give nothing more than a momentary glance at the miserable
superstition of the fanatics who called themselves Christians.
Napoleon the conqueror, when asked on the coast of Syria to
visit the holy city, may make his haughty reply, " Jerusalem
does not enter into the line of my operations." But this is
not the natural nor the usual course of the greatest examples
both in ancient and modern times. Observe the description
of the Jewish Church by the sacred historians. Consider the
immense difference for all future ages, if the lives of Joshua,
David, Solomon, and Elijah had been omitted, as unworthy of
insertion, because they did not belong to the priestly tribe ; if
the Pentateuch had been confined to the Book of Leviticus ; if
the Books of Kings and Chronicles had limited themselves to
the sayings and doings of Zadok and Abiathar, or even of
Nathan and Gad. Remember also the early chroniclers of
Europe ; almost all of them at once the sole historians of their
age, yet, even by purpose and profession, historians only of the
Church. Take but one instance, the Venerable Bede. His
' ' Ecclesiastical History of England " begins, not with the
arrival of Augustine, but with the first dawn of British civilis-
ation at the landing of Caesar ; and, for the period over which
it extends, it is the sufficient and almost the only authority for
the fortunes of the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth.

In later times, since history has become a distinct science,
the same testimony is still borne by the highest works of
genius and research in this wide field. Gibbon's " Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire" is, in great part, however reluct-
antly or unconsciously, the history of " the rise and progress
of the Christian Church." His true conception of the grandeur
of his subject extorted from him that just concession which his
own natural prejudice would have refused ; and it was remarked
not many years ago, by Dr. Newman, that up to that time
England had produced no other Ecclesiastical History worthy
of the name. This reproach has since been removed by the
great work of Dean Milman; but it is the distinguishing
excellence of that very history that it embraces within its vast
circumference the whole story of mediaeval Europe. Even in
that earlier period when the world and the Church were of
necessity distinct and antagonistic, Arnold rightly perceived,

Ecclesiastical History 13

and all subsequent labours in this field tend to the same result,
that each will be best understood when blended in the common
history of the Empire which exercised so powerful an influence
over the development of the Christian society within its bosom,
whilst by that society it was itself undermined and superseded.
And the two chief historians of France and England in recent
times Guizot in his Lectures on French Civilisation, Macaulay
in his English History have both strongly brought out,
as necessary parts of their dissertations or narratives, the
religious influences which by inferior writers of one class have
been neglected, or by those of another class been rent from
their natural context.

Never let us think that we can understand the history of the
Church apart from the history of the world, any more than
that we can separate the interests of the clergy from the
interests of the laity, which are the interests of the Church
at large.

How to adjust the relations of the two spheres to each
other is almost as indefinite a task in history as it is in practice
and in philosophy. In no age are they precisely the same.
Sometimes, as in the period of the Roman Empire, the influ-
ence of one on the other is more by contagion, by atmosphere,
even by contrast, than by direct intercourse. Sometimes the
main interest of religious history hangs on an institution, like
Episcopacy ; on a war, like the Crusades ; on a person, like
Luther. In some periods, as in the middle ages, the combin-
ation of the secular and religious elements will be effected by
the political or the intellectual influence of the clergy. The
lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the lives of the
Prime Ministers of England are for five hundred years almost
indivisible. The course of European revolution for nearly a
thousand years moves round the throne of the Papacy. Or
again, the rise of a new power or character will, even in these
very ages, suddenly transfer the spiritual guidance of men to
some high-minded ruler or gifted writer, who is for the time
the true arbiter or interpreter of the interests and the feelings
of Christendom. In the close of the thirteenth century, it is
not a priest or a Pope, but a king and an opponent of Popes,
who stands forward as the acknowledged representative of the
Christian Church in Europe ; S. Louis in France, not Gregory
IX. at Rome. In the fourteenth century it is not a schoolman
or a bishop that we summon before us as the best exponent of
mediaeval Christianity; it is not the " seraphic " or the "angelic

14 The Province of

doctor," but the divine poet Dante, who reveals to us the feel-
ings and thoughts of the whole age respecting this world and
the next. And if we pass to our own country, he must be a
blind guide who would take us through the English Reform-
ation without seeing on every stage of it the impress of the iron
will and broad aims of Henry VIII. ; or who would portray the
English Church without recognising the comprehensive policy
of Elizabeth. Or yet again, of all our brilliant English divines
of the seventeenth century, there is not one who can be fairly
said to have exercised as much influence over the popular the-
ology of this nation, as has been undoubtedly exercised by
a half-heretic half-Puritan layman, the author of " Paradise
Lost."

These instances indicate with sufficient precision the devious
yet obvious path which, without losing sight of the wide horizon
on the one hand, or without undue contraction of his view
on the other, the student of Ecclesiastical History may safely
follow. If we may for a moment return to our former position
and imagine ourselves overlooking the broad expanse into
which the stream bursts forth from the mountains of its early
stages, our purpose henceforth will be, not so much to describe
the products of the forest or the buildings of the city which have
grown up on the banks of the river, but to track the river itself
through its various channels, under its overhanging thickets,
through the populous streets and gardens to which it gives life ;
to see what are its main, what its tributary streams ; what the
nature of its waters ; how far impregnated with new qualities,
how far coloured, by the various soils, vegetations, uses, through
which they pass ; to trace their secret flow, as they go softly
through the regions which they fertilise ; not finding them
where they do not exist, not denying their power where they do
exist ; to welcome their sound in courses however tortuous ; to
acknowledge their value however stained in their downward
and onward passage. Difficult as it may often be to find the
stream, yet when it is found it will guide us to the green pastures
of this world's wilderness, and lead us beside the still waters.

Three landmarks, at least, may be mentioned, by which this
course of Ecclesiastical History may be distinguished from that
of history generally.

First, there are institutions, characters, ideas, words, which
can be traced to the. religious, especially to the Christian, prin-
ciple in man, and to nothing besides. There are virtues and
truths now in the world, which can only be ascribed to the

Ecclesiastical History 15

influence of Christian society : and there are corruptions of those
virtues and of those truths, which have produced crimes and
errors to be ascribed also, though remotely and indirectly, to
the same source. There are events in the common course of
history revolutions, wars, divisions of races and nations
which in themselves can hardly be called religious, but which
have at least one aspect distinctly religious. There are also
institutions, customs, ceremonies, even vestures and forms of
ritual, in which, though originally pagan or secular, Christian
ideas have now become fixed so as to be inseparable from
them. All these it is the task of Ecclesiastical History to
adjust and discriminate.

Secondly, in every age, even the worst, there have been
beneath the surface latent elements of religious life and of active
goodness, which it will be our duty to bring to light, as the true
signs of a better world beyond, and of the Divine Presence
abiding with us even here, a Church, as it were, within a
Church; a "remnant," to use the language of the older
covenant.

Thirdly, the whole history of the Church, though usually
flowing in the tracks marked out for it by the great national and
geographical boundaries of the world, yet has a course, not
always, and therefore not of necessity, identical with the channel
of human civilisation. In the history of the Church as in that of
the world, in the history of the Christian Church as in that
of the Jewish, there is a distinct unity of parts, an onward
progress from scene to scene, from act to act, towards an end yet
distant and invisible ; a unity and a progress such as give con-
sistency and point to what would else be a mere collection of
isolated and disjointed facts.

Let us then, before we conclude, briefly notice the succes-
sive stages through which, eventually, our course of study must
lead us, and the interest especially attaching to each.

The first period is that which contains the great question,
almost the greatest which Ecclesiastical History has to answer,
How was the transition effected from the age of the Apostles to
the age of the Fathers, from Christianity as we see it in the New
Testament, to Christianity as we see it in the next century, and
as, to a certain extent, we have seen it ever since ?

No other change equally momentous has ever since affected
its fortunes, yet none has ever been so silent and secret. The
stream, in that most critical moment of its passage from the
everlasting hills to the plain below, is lost to our view at the

1 6 The Province of

very point where we are most anxious to watch it ; we may
hear its struggles under the overarching rocks ; we may catch
its spray on the boughs that overlap its course ; but the torrent
itself we see not, or see only by imperfect glimpses. It is not
so much a period for Ecclesiastical History as for ecclesiastical
controversy and conjecture. A fragment here, an allegory
there ; romances of unknown authorship ; a handful of letters
of which the genuineness of every portion is contested inch by
inch ; the summary examination of a Roman magistrate ; the
pleadings of two or three Christian apologists \ customs and
opinions in the very act of change ; last but not least, the
faded paintings, the broken sculptures, the rude epitaphs in the
darkness of the catacombs, these are the scanty, though
attractive, materials out of which the likeness of the early
Church must be reproduced, as it was working its way, in the
literal sense of the word, " under ground," under camp and
palace, under senate and forum, "as unknown, yet well
known ; as dying, and behold it lives."

This chasm once cleared, we find ourselves approaching the
point where the story of the Church once more becomes history
becomes once more the history, not of an isolated community,
or of isolated individuals, but of an organised society incor-
porated with the political systems of the world. Already, in
the close of the second and beginning of the third century, the
Churches of Africa, now seen for a few generations before their
final disappearance, exhibit distinct characters on the scene.
They are the stepping-stones by which we cross from the
obscure to the clear, from chaos to order. Of these the Church
of Carthage illustrates the rise of Christianity in the West, the
Church of Egypt that of Christianity in the East.

But the first great outward event of the actual history of the
Church is its conversion of the Empire ; and, in close connec-
tion with this, its first wide sphere in the face of mankind, is
the Oriental world out of which it sprang, and in which the
external forms of its early organisation can still be most clearly
studied. In the usages of the ancient systems which have
grown up on that soil Coptic, Greek, Asiatic we may still
trace the relics, the fossilised relics, of the Old Imperial
Church. 1 In the period of the first Councils, and in some
passages of the Byzantine Empire, the fortunes of the Eastern
Church are identified with the fortunes of Christendom. 2 Its

1 Lecture I. a Lect. II VII.

Ecclesiastical History 17

connection with the general course of Ecclesiastical History in
subsequent times depends chiefly on two developments of
religious life of a very different kind from each other, the rise
of Mahometanism, 1 and the rise of the Church and Empire of
Russia. 2

With the exception of these three periods or stages, and
viewed as part of the continuous history of the Church, Eastern
Christianity must be considered but as the temporary halting-
place of the great spiritual migration which, from the day that
Abraham turned his face away from the rising of the sun, has
been stepping steadily westward.

Another and a wider sphere was in store for the progress
of the Church than its own native regions ; another and a
nobler conquest than that of its old worn-out enemy on the
tottering throne of the Caesars. The Gothic tribes descended
on the ancient world ; the fabric of civilised society was
dissolved in the mighty crisis; the Fathers of modern Europe
were to be moulded, subdued, educated. By whom was this
great work effected ? Not by the Empire it had fled to the
Bosphorus; not by the Eastern Church its permanent con-
quests were in another direction. In the Western, Latin,
Roman clergy, in the missionaries who went forth to Gaul, to
Britain, and to Germany, the barbarians found their first
masters ; in the work of controlling and resisting the fierce
soldiers of the Teutonic tribes lay the main work, the real
foundation, the chief temptation of the Papacy. From the
day when Leo III. placed the crown of the new Holy Roman
German Empire on the head of Charlemagne, the stream of
human progress and the stream of Christian life, with whatever
interruptions, eddies, counter-currents, flowed during the next
seven centuries in the same channel. As the history of the
earlier stages revolved round the characters of the Fathers or
of the Emperors, so the history of the middle ages, with all
their crimes and virtues, revolved (it is at once the confession
of their weakness and their strength) round the character and
policy of the Popes. What good they did, and what good they
failed to do, by what means they rose, and by what they fell,
during that long period of their power, form the main questions
by which their claims must be tested.

And now a new revolution was at hand, almost as terrible in
its appearance and as trying in its results as any that had gone

1 Lect. VIII. 2 Lect. IX XII.

1 8 The Province of

before. The fountains of the great deep were again broken
up. New wants and old evils had met together. The failure
of the Crusades had shaken men's belief in holy places.
Long abuses had shaken their belief in Popes, bishops,
monasteries, sacraments, and saints. The revival of ancient
learning had revealed truth under new forms. The invention
of printing had raised up a new order of scribes, expounders,
readers, writers, clergy. Institutions which had guided the
world for a thousand years, now decayed and out of joint, gave
way at the moment when they were most needed. Was it
possible that the Christian Church should meet these trials as
it had met those which had gone before ? It had lived through
the fall of Jerusalem; it had lived through the ten persecutions ;
it had lived through its amalgamation with the Empire ; it had
lived through the invasion of the barbarians : but could it live
through the struggles of internal dissolution? could it live
through the shipwreck of the whole outward fabric of its
existence ? could the planks of the vessel, scattered on the
face of the raging flood, be so put together again as to form
any shelter from the storm, any home on the waters ? Did the
history of the Church come to an end, as many thought it
would, when its ancient organisation came to an ^ end, in the
great change of the Reformation ?

We know that it still lived on. That it survived at all is the
best proof which it has yet presented of its inherent vitality ;
that it survived, in a purified form, is the best pledge of its
future success. To ancient Christianity, to Byzantine Chris-
tianity, to Roman Christianity, was now added the fourth and
equally unmistakeable form of Protestant Christianity : like the
others, clothed in an outward shape of its own, and confining
itself specially to distinct branches of the European family, yet
also penetrating with its spirit institutions and nations outwardly
most repugnant to it. Amidst many conflicts, therefore, Eccle-
siastical History still continues in the general tracks that were
opened for it in the sixteenth century. Whatever political
troubles have agitated the world since that time, and whatever
changes may be fermenting in the inner heart and mind of the
Church, none have since altered its outward aspect and
divisions. In one repect a wide difference exists between the
history of Christendom, as it was before, and as it has been
since, the Reformation. Henceforward we cannot follow its
course as a whole : each country must have its own ecclesi-
astical as well as its own civil history. Italy, Spain, Sweden,

Ecclesiastical History 19

Holland, Geneva, Scotland, the very names have each, in
theological language, a peculiar pathos and significance
imparted by the Reformation. In each that great event
awakened a different note as it traversed their several chords.
Still there are three countries in which, beyond all others, the
religious history of Europe has been specially carried on.

It is in France that the fortunes of Christianity during the
last three centuries have been most visibly represented in the
brightest and in the darkest colours. The Galilean Church,
in the seventeenth century the most brilliant in Europe,
brilliant alike in its works of active mercy and in its almost
Augustan age of great divines, Vincent of Paul, Bossuet,
Fenelon, Pascal, became in the eighteenth century the
miserable parent, and then the victim, of the great convulsion
which, whilst it shook the belief of the whole of Europe, in
France for eleven years suppressed it altogether. The French
Revolution must always be considered as an epoch in the
religious history of man. Not only was its hostility to the
Christian faith the most direct that the world has seen since
the days of Julian ; not only did it spring, in great measure,
out of the corrupt state of the French clergy, the Church of
Dubois and of Talleyrand ; but it possessed in itself that
frightful energy which, as has been truly observed by its latest
exponent, 1 can only be likened to the propagation of a new
religion the wild fanaticism, the proselytism, the self-devotion,
the crimes, as though of a Western Mahometanism of what its
own disciples have often called it, an imitation, a parody, a
new, distorted edition of the Gospel. Not only is its history
instructive as a moral warning to all existing Churches, and as
an interpreter of the great religious storms of former ages, but
it changed the whole external constitution of the Church on
the Continent generally ; and, in the inward sifting and trial of
the religious thoughts of men, its effects can still now be felt,
even in countries the furthest removed from its immediate
influence.

Germany, the seat of the original movement of the Reform-
ation, has never lost the hold which it then first acquired on
the reason and imagination of mankind. Its collective power
as a Church has been too impalpable to attach itself to any
definite course of outward events. But its individual divines
have, more than any others, taken the place occupied by the

1 Tocqueville: L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution, c. iii. Compare
Burke's "Thoughts on French Affairs," vol. iv. p. 10. (Bohn's Ed.)

2O The Province of

schoolmen of the middle ages. No others, within the last
hundred years, have exercised so powerful an influence over
the rest of Europe as the philosophical and critical theologians
of the German universities.

And this leads us finally to the third great ecclesiastical
system which stands alone and apart, yet with its own peculiar
mission, in the general fortunes of the Western Church. At
least for Englishmen, no Ecclesiastical History since the
Reformation can be so instructive as that of our own Church
of England. To see how, out of that wide shipwreck the
fragments of our vessel were again pieced together ; how far it
has realised the essential condition of the ark on the stormy
waters ; how far it has contained within itself the necessary,
though heterogeneous, elements of our national faith and
character ; how far it may still hope to do so ; what is its
connection with the past, what its hold upon the future ; this
is the last and most important task of the English ecclesiastical
historian. The peculiar constitution of our State has borne
the brunt and survived the shock of the French Revolution : it
is the hope of the peculiar constitution of our Church that it
should in like manner meet, overcome, and absorb the shock
of the new thoughts and feelings to which, directly or indirectly,
that last of European movements has given birth.

I have been induced thus, at the outset, to dwell on this broad
extent of prospect, first, because it is only by a just appreciation
of the whole that any part can be properly understood ; and,
secondly, because I wish to impress on my hearers the many
points of contact which Ecclesiastical History presents to the
various studies of this place. If at times it is impossible not
to be oppressed with the load which has to be taken from the
stores of the Pilgrim's Palace, it is a satisfaction to remember
that there are many travellers passing along the same road who
will, almost of necessity, lighten the burden and cheer the
journey by their common interest in the treasures borne away.

One such has been before me in this path, my lamented
predecessor. Personally, he was almost unknown to me. In
our mode of dealing with the subject before us we might have
widely differed. But I cannot enter on this office without
bearing my humble testimony to the conscientious industry
with which, as I have heard from those who attended his
Lectures, he guided them over the rugged way which he had
chosen for them ; without expressing my grateful sense of the
characteristic forethought and munificence with which he

Ecclesiastical History 21

bequeathed to this Chair the valuable endowment of his library.
Still more, I should be doing wrong both to him and to the
University, were I not to dwell for a moment on what I have
always understood was the chief ground of the respect which
he commanded in this place. He was emphatically a "just man;"
he possessed in an eminent degree that rare gift of public
integrity and fairness too rare in the world, too rare in the
Church, too rare in Ecclesiastical History, too rare even in great
seats of learning, not to be noticed when it comes before us,
especially when, as in the present case, it passes away with the
marked approbation and regret of all who witnessed it. In
times of much angry controversy he never turned aside from
his straightforward course to excite needless alarms. He never
stooped 1 to win theological favour by attacking unpopular
names. He never allowed any religious sentiment or fancy to
interfere with his manly and severe sense of truth and duty.
He showed that it was possible to be impartial without weak-
ness, and orthodox without bitterness. May the University
long remember that such was the character which she delighted
to honour ! May his successors in this Chair be encouraged
and enabled to act and to speak, in this most important
respect, according to his example !

For the sake of convenience I subjoin the leading chrono-
logical divisions, which to some extent cross the historical and
geographical divisions laid down in the foregoing Lecture.

I. The rise of the Christian Church. A.D. 30 312.

1. The Apostolic Age. 3070.

2. The transition from the Apostolic age. 70 160.

3. The Age of Persecution. 160312.

II. The Church of the Empire.

The Western Church. The Eastern Church.

I. The beginning of the I. The age of the Eastern Coun-
Roman Church and of cils. 312 781.

Latin Theology. 312 2. The rise of the Greek Empire
476. and Church. 3301453.

3. The rise of Mahometanism.

622 732.

4. The rise of the Russian

Church. 988 1700.

1 As one instance, it may suffice to record the remarkable Ordination
sermon on "The Atonement," preached by Professor Hussey in December,
1855, in which he defended the doctrine of an eminent theologian, at that
time the object of much vehement obloquy, and showed in guarded but
decisive terms its substantial identity with that of the ancient Fathers.

22 The Study of

III. The Church of the Middle Ages. 4761517.

1. Conversion of the Barbarians. 450 800.

2. The Papacy and the Crusades. 8001300.

3. The Western Councils and Preludes of the Reformation.

13001517.

IV. The Church of the Reformation. 1517 1789.

1. The crisis of the Reformation. 15171550.

2. The wars of the Reformation. 1550 1660.

3. The rise of Latitudinarianism, of Methodism, of Gallicanism,

and of German theology. 1660 1789.

V. The French Revolution. 17891815.

II

THE STUDY OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

IT is sometimes said, that of all historical studies that of
Ecclesiastical History is the most repulsive. We seem to be
set down in the valley of the Prophet's vision, strewn with
bones, and behold they are " very many " and " very dry ; "
skeletons of creeds, of churches, of institutions ; trodden
and traversed by the feet of travellers again and again ; the
scapegoat of one age lying lifeless by the scapegoat of
the next; craters of extinct volcanoes, which once filled the
world with their noise, and are now dead and cold ; the sait
shores of a barren sea, which throws up again dead and
withered the branches which the river of life had cast into
it full of beauty and verdure, the very reverse of that green
prospect which I set before you in my opening lecture ; the
more dreary, it may be said, from the wide extent into which
it spreads. " How are we to give interest to such a task ;
how shall the healing streams penetrate into those dead
waters ; how shall those dry bones live ? "

There may be many answers to this question, but I shall
content myself with the most obvious. Remember that of all
these things there is a history. These relics, these institutions,
these characters (take them at their worst), had each a part
to play amongst mankind ; they were men of flesh and blood
like ourselves, or they dwelt with men of flesh and blood like
ourselves ; they were living human spirits, or they were the
instruments of living human spirits ; however decayed, how-
ever antiquated they may be, yet in their very age they have

Ecclesiastical History 23

an interest which no novelty can give. We cannot, it is true,
enter on Ecclesiastical History, whether in its wider or its
narrower sense, with the feeling of fresh enthusiasm which
inspires the discoverers of unexplored regions, whether of
science or history, "the first who ever burst into the silent
sea," or secluded ruins, which no eye of man has seen before.
But we can enter upon it with the yet deeper delight which
fills our minds, as we feel rising beneath our feet the ground
of the Seven Hills; or as we gaze, knowing that hundreds
of thousands have gazed before us, on the everlasting outline
of the Pyramids. So view the history of the Church, even in
its most lifeless and withered forms ; so view it as part of a
whole, as once having lived, as living still in ourselves, as
destined to live on in future generations ; so prophesy over
its dry bones as they lie scattered and disjointed over the
surface of the world, and we shall soon hear " a noise and a
shaking," and "the bones will come together," each to each,
and " the breath will come into them, and they will live and
stand upon their feet, an exceeding great army."

Let me point out how this remedy is involved in the very
nature of the case. Take, for example, the history of doc-
trines and opinions. Many ecclesiastical histories contain
little else ; half of theology is taken up in stating them.
How immensely do they gain in liveliness, in power, in the
capacity of being understood and appreciated, if we view
them through the medium of the lives, characters, and cir-
cumstances of those who received and taught them ! Trace
the actual course of any opinion or dogma ; see the influences
by which it was coloured; compare the relative importance
attached to it at one period and another; ask how far the
words in which it has been expressed convey the same or a
different meaning to us or to our fathers; discover, if pos-
sible, its fountain-head in the time, the country, or the person
in which it first originated. Look at Augustinianism as it
arose in the mind of Augustine ; at Lutheranism as it was
conceived by Luther ; at Wesleyanism as it was set forth by
Wesley. It will cease to be a phantom, it will speak to us as
a man r if it is an enemy, we shall slay it more easily ; if a
a friend, we shall embrace it more warmly.

Still more is this the case with the kindred subject of
Confessions and Articles of Faith. If we regard them
merely in their cut and dried results, they may indeed serve
many useful ends ; they supply stakes to make hedges against

24 The Study of

intruders, planks to cross our enemy's trenches, faggots to
burn heretics. But go to the soil from which they sprang.
Watch them in their wild, native, luxuriant growth. Observe
the moss which has grown over their stems, the bough rent
away there and grafted in here, the branches inextricably
intertwined with adjacent thickets. So regarded, they will
not be less, but more of a shelter ; we shall not value them
the less for understanding them better. Figure to yourselves,
as you read any creeds or confessions, the lips by which they
were first uttered, the hands by which they were first written.
Hear the Apostles' Creed, as it summed up in its few simple
sentences the belief of Roman martyrs. Watch the Nicene
Bishops meeting each other, and their opponents, and the
Emperor Constantine, for the first time, on the shores of the
Bithynian lake. Listen to the triumphs of Clovis and Recared
over the Arians of France and Spain, the rising storms between
East and West, and you will more clearly catch the true
meaning of their echo in the old Latin hymn, Quicunque vult,
then first welcomed into the worship of Western Europe. Read
the Articles of the English Church in their successive mutila-
tions, excrescences, variations. Go to that most precious of
collegiate libraries in the sister University, where the venerable
autograph which contains them may still be seen ; look at the
signatures of those whose names are affixed : conceive the
persons whom those names represent : imagine them as any
one who has ever taken part in any council, or commission, or
committee, or conclave of any kind whatever, can and must
imagine them ; one sacrificing, another insisting on, a favourite
expression; a new turn given to one sentence, a charitable
colour thrown over another ; the edge of a sharp exclusion
blunted by one party, the sting of a bitter sarcasm drawn by
another. Start from this view, as certain as it can be made by
the facts of human nature and by the facts of history, both uni-
versal and particular. Regard confessions of faith in this their
only true historical light, and in that light many a new glimpse
will be obtained of their practical justice and moderation;
many a harsh expression will be explained, many a superfluous
scruple of honest minds will vanish away, many a foolish
controversy will be extinguished for ever.

But the proper material for Ecclesiastical History is, after
all, not institutions or opinions, but events and persons.
Leviticus and the Proverbs have their own special value, but
they are not reckoned amongst the " historical books " of

Ecclesiastical History 25

the Jewish Church. Bingham's learned work, however useful
as an auxiliary, contains "the antiquities," not the history of
the Christian Church. It is on its special incidents and char-
acters that the vitality of any history depends. How can we
best make ourselves acquainted with these ?

In this, as in so many other branches of knowledge, the
question can only be fully answered in each particular case.
Whatever way will best enable each man, in his own peculiar
situation, character, and opportunities, to remember and
understand, and profit, that is to him the best, and can be
taught only by consulting his own experience.

For general readers, the best general counsel which can
be given, is that which I have already indicated. Study the
history of the Church in connection with the collateral sub-
jects with which it is bound up : let us keep our eyes and ears
open to the religious aspects of history, and they will break in
upon us, we know not whence, or how.

Let us read also, whatever we do read, as elsewhere, so
here, in the works of eminent historians rather than in those
of writers without a name and without a character ; and yet
more, read, if possible, works which describe what they
describe at length and in detail, and which therefore leave
a lasting impression on the memory and imagination rather
than in the crowded pages of meagre abstracts, which are
forgotten as soon as read. Great works and full works, not
small works and short works, are in the end the best economy
of time, as well as of everything else.

But this leads me to what is on the whole, the most
instructive, though (it may be) not the only practicable, course
to be followed by those who wish, in the true sense of .the
word, to be " students " of Ecclesiastical History. We can-
not attempt to describe or to study every event in detail, for
time and labour would fail; we need not do it compendi-
ously, for this has been done to our hands again and again,
and of late years with such candour and research as to render
any further work of the kind superfluous. One method
remains to us, at once the most obvious and the most inter-
esting. ' Lay aside the lesser events, or read them only so
far as to preserve a continuous knowledge of the general
thread of the history : it is for this purpose that the briefer
narratives, when clearly and ably written, are of substantial
use. But study the greater events, scenes, places, and revo-
lutions in all the detail in which they can be represented to us.

26 The Study of

Take, for example, the General Councils of the Church.
They are the pitched battles of Ecclesiastical History. Ask
yourselves the same questions as you would about the battles
of military history. Ask when, and where, and why they
were fought. Put before "your minds all the influences of the
age, which there were confronted and concentrated from
different quarters as in one common focus. See why they
were summoned to Nicaea, to Constance, to Trent ; the locality
often contains here, as in actual battles, the key of their
position, and easily connects the Ecclesiastical History of the
age with its general history and geography. Look at the
long procession as it enters the scene of assembly; see who
was present, and who was absent. 1 Let us make ourselves
acquainted with the several characters there brought together,
so that we may recognise them as old friends if we meet them
again elsewhere. Study their decrees, 2 as expositions of the
prevailing sentiments of the time ; study them, as Mr. Froude
has advised us to study the statutes of our own ancient Par-
liaments ; see what evils are most condemned, and what
evils are left uncondemned ; observe how far their injunctions
are still obeyed, or how far set at nought, and ask in each
case the reason why. Read them, as I have just now noticed,
with the knowledge given to us by our own experience of all
synods of all kinds ; read them with the knowledge which each
gives of every other. Do this for any one Council, and you
will have made a deep hole into Ecclesiastical History.

And still more let this same rule be followed with regard
to persons. Take any one character. It may be we shall
be attracted towards him by some accidental connection ; it
may, and should rather, be on account of his pre-eminent
greatness. Do not let him leave you till you have, at any
rate, retained some one distinctive feature by which you will
know him again in the multitudes amongst which he will
else be lost; some feature of mind or person which he has,
and which others have not. 3

Many of us must have read, in part at least, Neander's
" History of the Christian Church," and will have admired, as
every one must admire, the depth, the tenderness, the delicacy
of Christian sentiment which pervades the whole of his vast
work, and fulfils his own beautiful motto, " It is the heart
which makes the theologian," Pectus theologum facit. Yet,

1 See Lecture III. 2 See Lecture V.

3 See Lectures VI. VII. XL XII.

Ecclesiastical History 27

without disparaging the value of such a mirror of Christian
history in such a character, we cannot help feeling that it is
often rather the theologian than the historian whose works
we read ; that it is often rather the thoughts, than the actual
persons and deeds, of men, that he is describing to us. They
are the ghosts of Ossian, rather than the heroes of Homer ;
they are refined, they are spiritualised, to that degree, that
their personality almost vanishes; the stars of heaven shine
through them : but we have no hold on their earthly frames ;
we can trace no human lineaments in their features, as they
pass before us. Let us endeavour to fill up this outline ;
however much of deeper interest it may have for the more
philosophical mind, it will hardly lay hold on the memory or
the affections of the more ordinary student, unless it is
brought closer to our grasp. How differently we learn to
estimate even Neander himself, according as we merely
regard him as a thinker of holy thoughts, the writer of a good
book, or as we see the venerable historian in his own proper
person, his black, shaggy, overhanging eyebrows, and his
strong Jewish physiognomy revealing the nation and religion
to which he first belonged, working at his history night and
day with insatiable ardour, to show to his unconverted country-
men what Christianity really was ; abstracted from all thought
of worldly cares, of food, and dress, and money, and time;
living, dying, buried in the affections, in the arms, of his
devoted pupils ! What by proximity of time we are enabled
to do for the historian, true research usually enables us to do
for those whom he describes. Watch their first appearance,
their education, their conflicts, their death-beds. Observe
their relative position to each other ; see what one did which
another would not have done, what one thought or said which
to another would have been heretical or superstitious ; or,
lastly, what all did, and said, and thought in common.

If I were to name one especial excellence amongst the
many which render Mr. Grote's great achievement so im-
portant an addition, not merely to Grecian History, but to
all historical study, of whatever kind, it would be the keen
discrimination with which he presents, not merely distinct
characters, but distinct types of character in the lineage of
the Grecian mind, whom before we had been accustomed
to regard much as we usually regard the fixed stars their
distance from each other being lost in comparison with the
distance from ourselves. In these contrasts and combinations

28 The Study of

of character we find exactly what is most needed in the history
of the Church. Here, even more than in common history,
we are apt to blend together the different persons of the story
under one common class. Yet here, even more than in
common history, we ought to keep each separate from each, if
we would learn the lessons they have to teach to the world.
Of ordinary readers, how few there are to whom the Fathers,
the Schoolmen, nay, even the Reformers, although divided as
classes, are not confounded as individuals ! How few there
are who can trace the descent, step by step, as the genealogy
(so to speak) of the Church is unrolled before us ! From
Ignatius to Cyprian, from Origen to Athanasius, from
Athanasius to Augustine, from Augustine to Bernard, from
Bernard to Aquinas, to Tauler, to Luther, how wide are the
gaps, how necessary the connection, how startling the differ-
ence ! Or, again, in the more outward history, how various
are the trains of association awakened by the successive re-
presentatives of the Empire and of the Papacy, in Constantine,
in Clovis, in Charlemagne, in Barbarossa, in Charles V. ; or,
on the other hand, in Gregory I., in Gregory VII., in Innocent
III., in Leo X., in Sixtus V. ! Each has his own message to
deliver ; each has his own work to perform ; each is a link in
that manifold chain which conveys the electric spark from
the first to the nineteenth century. It was a happy thought of
Eusebius, that he would trace the history of the various
ancient churches through the succession of Bishops, who in
those early times were literally the personifications of their
flocks. It is a yet happier arrangement, whenever the interest
of the history of the whole Church can be concentrated in the
still grander succession of those who have stood forth as the
overseers and guides of Christendom, whether by good or bad
eminence, not only from generation to generation, but from
century to century, and from age to age.

It is not without reason that I have thus recommended for
your study the selection of the detailed representation of some
one event, person, or institution, of commanding interest.
Not only will it furnish us with the best mode of giving life to
what is often a barren labour, but it will also be the best safe-
guard against many of the evils with which the student of
Ecclesiastical History is beset.

First, it is always useful to be reminded of the various
degrees of importance in the different events and institutions
of the Church. There is no more common error of theological

Ecclesiastical History 29

students than to regard everything connected with religion as
of equal significance. They will allow of no light or shade, no
difference between things essential and things unessential, no
proportion between means and ends, between things moral
and things ceremonial, between things doubtful and things
certain. Against this levelling tendency of ecclesiastical study,
History lifts up a warning which may be heeded when all else
fails. Believe that Athanasius and Augustine are worthier
objects of interest than Flavian or Optatus, and you will have
made one step towards believing that there is a gradation of
importance in the several controversies in which the Church
has been engaged. Believe that the invasion and conversion of
the barbarians was the great crisis and work of mediaeval re-
ligion, and you will have made a step towards believing that the
Church of Christ has higher aims than the disputes respecting
the observance of Easter, or the shape of the clerical tonsure.

Secondly, this combination of study round one main object
solves, in part, the difficulty which I noticed in my first
Lecture, respecting the relations of Civil and Ecclesiastical
History. The subordinate persons and events of each may be
easily divided from one another. But the greater characters
of necessity combine both elements; they are the meeting
points of the two spheres of human life ; they rise above the
point of divergence ; they show that in the most important
moments of social and individual action all the influences of
life, physical, intellectual, political, moral, come together; in
these cases, whatever we may do elsewhere, we cannot dis-
entangle the web without breaking it. Those divisions of
history which we sometimes see under the heads of " civil and
military," " political " and " religious," though convenient for
common wars or common controversies, yet utterly fail when
they touch an age like the Reformation, though possible in the
cases of Melanchthon or Jeremy Taylor, break down entirely
when applied to Luther or Oliver Cromwell. The unity of
purpose which is the main characteristic of any great mind,
the close connection of leading ideas which is the main
interest of any great age, is grievously marred when we have
to seek the disjointed fragments from different quarters, and
take up over and over again the thread of the same interrupted
story.

Thirdly, this same method will be a protection against the
prevailing sin of ecclesiastical historians exclusiveness and
partiality.

30 The Study of

It is well known that Eusebius openly avows his intention of
relating only those incidents in the lives of the martyrs of
Palestine which would reflect credit on the Church, and that
Milner constructs his whole history on the principle that he
will omit all mention of ecclesiastical wickedness, and record
only the specimens of ecclesiastical virtue. Such a process,
however edifying and useful for certain purposes, yet is never
wholly safe, and happily is rendered almost impossible as soon
as we wish to consider the full character and bearings of any
person or institution on which we are engaged. If once we are
inspired with a genuine desire of seeing the man as he really
was, if he was worth being seen at all, we shall not be satisfied
unless we see him altogether. Here, as in so many other
respects, the sacred history of the Jewish Church is our best
example. We there see, not the half, but the whole of David.
We are told not only of his goodness, but of his sins ; and we
can there judge how wonderfully the history of the Church has
gained by such a frank disclosure : how thin,- how pale in
comparison, would that biography have been, had the darker
side been suppressed, and the bright side only exhibited.
Such a completeness of view we are almost driven to take,
when we explore, not one, but all the sources whence our
knowledge can be drawn. 1 We may still lament that the story
of the lion is so often told only by the man, that the lives and
opinions of heretics can be traced only in the writings of the
orthodox, that the clergy have been so often the sole historians
of the crimes of the laity. But we shall have learned at least to
know that there is another side, even when that side has been
torn away or lost. We shall often find some ancient fragment
or forgotten parchment, like that which vindicates Edwy and
Elgiva from the almost unanimous calumny of their monastic
enemies. We shall see that in the original biographies of
Becket, partial though they be, enough escapes to reveal that
he is not the faultless hero represented to us in modem
martyrology.

The mere perusal of the indiscriminate praise and abuse
lavished on the same person by two opposite historians is
instructive, even for our guidance in the present. The mere
collection of the cross-fire of vituperation from modern parti-
sans is useful as teaching us distrust in any one-sided view of
the past. Selden, who knew well the danger and falsehood of

1 See Lecture II.

Ecclesiastical History 31

extremes, confines his advice on "ecclesiastical story" to this
single point to study the exaggerated statements of Baronius
on the one side, and of the Magdeburg Centuriators on the
other, and "be our own judges." Nor let any one suppose
that this conflict of evidence renders the attainment of
certainty impossible. Doubtless there are many points both
in sacred and in common history, both in civil and ecclesi-

} astical records, where we must be content to remain in sus-
pense. History will have left half its work undone, if it does
not teach us humility and caution. But essential truth can
almost always be found, truth of all kinds can with due
research be usually found : she lies, no doubt, in a well ; but
we may be sure that she is there if we dig deep enough. In
this labour teachers and students must all work together.
What one cannot discover, many at work on the same point
can often prove beyond doubt. Like Napoleon and his
comrades, when lost in the quicksands of the Red Sea, let each
ride out a different way, and the first that comes to firm ground
bid the others halt and follow him.

Fourthly, this method of study will enable us all from time to
time to set our foot on that firmest of all ground, which every
student of history ought to touch once in his life, original
authorities. We cannot do it always, but by the mere necessity

'' of exploring any one subject to the bottom we must do it at times.
It will be a constant charm of the history of the Chosen People
that there we shall rarely be absent from, at any rate, the nearest
approaches which can now be made to the events described.
But it will be a charm also in the minute investigation of any
point in the later history, that, however well told by modern
compilers, there is almost sure to be something in the original
records which we should else have overlooked. How inestimable
are the fragments of Hegesippus and the Epistle of the Church
of Lyons embedded in the rhetoric of Eusebius ! How lifelike,
in the dead partisanship of Strype, are the letters, injunctions,
and narratives of the actors whose words and deeds he so
feebly undertakes to represent !

And original records are not confined merely to contem-

| poraneous histories, nor even to contemporaneous literature,
sermons, poems, laws, decrees. Study the actual statues and
portraits of the men, the sculptures and pictures of the events :
if they do not give us the precise image of the persons and
things themselves, they give us at least the image left on those
who came nearest to them. Study their monuments, their

32 The Study of

gravestones, their epitaphs, on the spots where they lie. Study,
if possible, the scenes of the events, their aspect, their archi-
tecture, their geography ; the tradition which has survived the
history, the legend which has survived the tradition ; the
mountain, the stream, the shapeless stone, which has survived
even history and tradition, and legend.

Take two examples instead of a hundred. There are few
more interesting episodes in modern Ecclesiastical History
than that of the Scottish Covenanters. But the school in which
that episode must be studied is Scotland itself. The caves,
and moors, and moss-hags of the Western Lowlands ; the tales,
which linger still, of the black charger of Claverhouse, of the
strange encounters with the Evil one, of the cry of the plover
and peewit round the encampments on the hill-side, are more
instructive than many books. The rude gravestones which
mark the spots where those were laid who bore testimony
to "the covenanted work of reformation, and Christ's kingly
government of His house," bring before us in the most lively,
because in the most condensed, authentic, original form, the
excited feeling of the time, and the most peculiar traits of the
religion of the Scottish people. Their independence, their
fervour, their fierceness, may have belonged to the age. But
hardly out of Scotland could be found their stubborn endur-
ance, their thirst for vengeance, their investment of the
narrowest questions of discipline and ceremony with the
sacredness of universal principles. We almost fancy that we
see the survivors of the dead spelling and scooping out their
savage rhymes on the simple monuments, each catching from
each the epithets, the texts, the names, almost Homeric in the
simplicity and the sameness with which they are repeated on
those lonely tombstones from shore to shore of the Scottish
kingdom.

Or turn to a similar instance of kindred but wider interest.
What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the
primitive ages of the Church can be compared to that afforded
by the Roman catacombs ! Hardly noticed by Gibbon or
Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of the life of those early
times beyond that derived from any of the written authorities
on which Gibbon and Mosheim repose. Their very structure
is significant; their vast extent, their labyrinthine darkness,
their stifling atmosphere, are a standing proof both of the
rapid spread of the Christian conversions, and of the active
fury of the heathen persecutions. The subjects of the sculptures

Ecclesiastical History 33

and paintings place before us the exact ideas with which the
first Christians were familiar ; they remind us, by what they do
not contain, of the ideas with which the first Christians were
not familiar. We see with our own eyes the very stories from
the Old and the New Testament which sustained the courage
of the early martyrs, and the innocent festivities of the early
feasts of Christian love. The barbarous style of the sculptures,
the bad spelling, the coarse engraving of the epitaphs, impresses
upon us more clearly than any sermon the truth that God
chose the weak, and base, and despised things of the world,
to bring to nought the things which are mighty. He who is
thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the catacombs will be
nearer to the thoughts of the early Church than he who has
learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian
or of Origen.

And now, having set before you the method of the study
which, for all who enter upon it seriously, and in its general
features even for all who enter upon it superficially, is the most
desirable, let me briefly notice some of the special opportunities
which we ourselves possess for following up the study of all.

First, if there ever was a Church in which Ecclesiastical
History might be expected to flourish, it is the English.
Unlike almost all the other Churches of Europe, alone in its
constitution, in its origin, in its formularies, it touches all the
religious elements which have divided or united Christendom.
He may be a true son of the Church of England, who is able
to throw himself into the study of the first Four Councils to
which the statutes of our constitution refer, or of the mediaeval
times in which our cathedrals and parishes were born and
nurtured. He also may be a true son of the same who is able
to hail as fellow-workers the great reformers of Wittenburg, of
Geneva, and of Zurich, whence flowed so strong an influence
over at least half of our present formularies. But he is the
truest son of all who, in the spirit of this union, feels himself
free to sympathise with the several elements and principles of
good which the Church of England has thus combined, who
knows that the strength of a national Church, especially of the
Church of a nation like ours, lies in the fact that it has never
been surrendered exclusively to any one theological influence,
and that the Christian faith which it has inherited from all is
greater than the differences which it has inherited from each.

The Prayer-book as it stands is a long gallery of Ecclesias-
tical History, which, to be understood and enjoyed thoroughly,

34 The Study of

absolutely compels a knowledge of the greatest events and
names of all periods of the Christian Church. To Ambrose
we owe the present form of our Te Deum; Charlemagne breaks
the silence of our Ordination prayers by the Veni Creator
Spiritus. The Persecutions have given us one creed, and the
Empire another. The name of the first great Patriarch of
the Byzantine Church closes our daily service ; the Litany is the
bequest of the first great Patriarch of the Latin Church, amidst
the terrors of the Roman pestilence. Our collects are the joint
productions of the Fathers, the Popes, and the Reformers.
Our Communion Service bears the traces of every fluctuation
of the Reformation, through the two extremes of the reign of
Edward to the conciliating policy of Elizabeth, and the reac-
tionary zeal of the Restoration. The more comprehensive, the
more free, the more impartial is our study of any or every
branch of Ecclesiastical History, the more will it be in accord-
ance with the spirit and with the letter of the Church of
England.

Secondly, I cannot forbear to notice the special advantages
vouchsafed to all of us in this place as members of this great
University. Its libraries enable us to pursue our cross-ex-
amination of ancient witnesses, our reproduction of ancient
scenes and events through all the appliances of antiquarian and
artistic knowledge. Its peculiar mixture of various characters
and callings, students and studies, invites us to that fusion of
lay and clerical, of modern and ancient, of common and sacred,
which is so vital to a full understanding of our subject, yet
which would be so easily lost in institutions more purely theo-
logical, more strictly professional. But, besides all this, the
very place itself is teeming with history, if not of the more
universal Church, yet of the Church of our own country, to
which, sooner or later, our studies must be turned.

In those studies I trust that we shall find that " Alfred the
Great, our first Founder," did well to plant his seat of learning
beside the venerable shrine of St. Frideswide. We shall be
the better able to comprehend Duns Scotus and the schoolmen
as we stand in the ancient quadrangle of Merton, or listen
to the dim traditions of Brasenose. Mediaeval theology and
practice will stand out clearly in the quaint customs of Queen's,
and the romantic origin of All Souls. The founders of Exeter
and of New College will give us a true likeness of mediaeval
prelates, architects, warriors, statesmen, and bishops, all in
one, Wycliffe will assume a more distinct shape and form to

Ecclesiastical History 35

those who trace his local habitation as Master of Balliol.
Erasmus will not soon die out of our recollection when we
remember the little college of Corpus, which he hoped would
be to Great Britain what the Mausoleum was to Caria, and
what the Pyramids were to Egypt. The unfinished splendour
of Christ Church is the enduring monument of the magnificence
and of the fall of Wolsey. The Reformation will not be unaptly
represented to us in the day when the quadrangles were knee-
deep in the torn leaves of the scholastic divines, or when
Ridley and Latimer suffered for their faith beside the gateway
of Bocardo. Its successive retirements and advances have left
their traces in the foundation of Wadham, Trinity, and Jesus.
From St. John's began the counter reformation of Laud.
Magdalen and University are the two memorials of resistance
and subservience to James II. From Lincoln and Pembroke
sprang the great religious movement of Wesley and Whitfield,
and Oriel will not allow us to forget that we too have witnessed
a like movement in our own day, of various forms and various
results, already become historical, which will at least help us to
appreciate such events in former times, and to remember that
we too are parts of the Ecclesiastical History of our country.

Finally, this leads us to the reflection that there will be
probably many amongst my hearers who are looking forward
to an active life in the various ministrations, near and distant,
of the English Church. They too will have in their different
localities, in those from which they came hither, in those to
which they will go hence, the same atmosphere of ancient
times surrounding them, wherever their lot be cast. Our
Ecclesiastical History is not confined to Oxford or to any one
sacred city. Everywhere we shall find something to keep alive
in our recollections the growth and spread of the Christianity
of this great country. Almost every church and churchyard
has its own antiquities. Almost every parish and every sect
has its own strange spiritual experiences, past or present. In
almost every country and province we may study those august
trophies of Ecclesiastical History, instructive beyond those of
almost any other country, our cathedrals. I need name but
one, the'most striking and the most obvious instance, the cradle
of English Christianity, the seat of the English Primacy, my
own proud cathedral, the Metropolitan Church of Canterbury.

But, beyond any mere antiquarian interest, there must also
be many occasions, in the work of every English clergyman,
when the history of the Church may yield lessons of a practical

36 The Study of

and substantial value in his manifold duties and labours. What
those lessons are I shall trust in some measure to represent in
my next Lecture. Meanwhile, let me express the hope and the
stimulus which ought to be given by the thought that I shall
be addressing myself not merely to students but to those who
will have to turn their study into practice ; not merely to the
confined atmosphere of a lecture-room, but to a spirit blowing
out from us and in upon us, to and from the four winds of
heaven. There has been doubtless a tendency in past times
(perhaps there will be in all times) which recent measures have
wisely endeavoured to counteract, a tendency to absorb the
general functions of the University into the special departments
of ecclesiastical thought and education. But we must not for-
get that there is also an academical narrowness, and dryness,
and stiffness ; and that there is, on the other hand, an ecclesi-
astical breadth, and freedom, and warmth, which is for that
evil, if not the highest, at least to many of us the nearest,
remedy. To think that any words here spoken, any books here
studied, may enliven discourses and ministrations far away in
the dark corners of London alleys, in the free air of heaths and
downs in north or south, on western mountains or in eastern
fens ; that records of noble deeds achieved, and of wise sayings
uttered, long ago, may lend a point to practical precepts, or
soften needless differences, or raise dull souls heavenward, or
give a firmer grasp on truth ; this will of itself cheer many an
hour of labour here. In that labour and with that hope it is
for all of us to join. By constant communication of mutual
knowledge, by contribution of the results of the several re-
searches and gifts of all, students and learners will really be
to their Professor not only (according to the well-known and
now almost worn-out saying of Niebuhr) his wings, but also his
feet, and his hands, and his eyes. By bearing in mind the
large practical field in which our work may be afterwards used,
we shall all bring to the very driest bones of our study sinews,
and flesh, and blood, and breath, and spirit, and life.

Note on page 34.

For the statement respecting the Hymns of Te Deum Laudamus, and
Veni Creator Spiritus, see Daniel's Thesaurus Hymnologicus, i. 213, 290.

Ecclesiastical History 37

in

THE ADVANTAGES OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY

IN my First Lecture, when defining the province of Ecclesi-
astical History, I was led to describe it in its widest extent ; in
my second, when stating the method by which life could be
given to the study, I was led to dwell upon its narrower limits.
And we must endeavour, in our future course, never, whilst
studying the parts, to forget the whole; nor ever so to lose
ourselves in the whole as to neglect the study of one or more
of the parts. Breadth without accuracy, accuracy without
breadth, are almost equal evils.

In the present Lecture I propose to consider some of the
chief practical advantages of the study.

Whatever may be the uncertainties of History, whatever its
antiquarian prejudices, whatever its imaginative temptations,
there is at least one sobering and enlarging effect always to be
expected from it that it brings us down from speculations and
fancies to what at least profess to be facts, and that those facts
transport us some little distance from the interests and the
illusions of the present. This is especially true of. History in
connection with Theology. As it is one of the main character-
istics of Christianity itself, that alone of all religions it claims to
be founded on historical fact ; that its doctrines and precepts
in great measure have been conveyed to us in the form of
history ; and that this form has given them a substance, a
vitality, a variety, which could, humanly speaking, have been
attained in no other way ; so we need not fear to confess that
the same connection has existed through all the subsequent
stages of the propagation of the religion. " The disciple is not
above his Master ; " Theology is not above Christianity : the
Christian Church is in many respects the best practical
exposition of the Christian Religion. Facts are still the most
powerful, the most solid, the most stubborn guides in the mazes
of speculation and casuistry ; they cut through difficulties
which arguments cannot overturn; they overturn theories
which will surrender to nothing else. Ecclesiastical History
is thus, as it were, the backbone of Theology. It keeps the
mind of the theological student in an upright state. Often as
facts are perverted, and twisted, and bent to meet a purpose,

38 The Advantages of

yet they offer a sterner resistance than anything else short of
the primary instincts of humanity.

They offer, too, not only the most convincing, but the
least irritating modes of persuasion, an advantage in theological
matters of no mean importance. The wrath which is kindled
by an anathema, by an opinion, by an argument, is often
turned away by a homely fact. It is like suddenly meeting an
enemy face to face, of whom we have known only by report ;
he is different from what we expected ; we cannot resist the
pressure of his hand and the glance of his eye ; he has ceased
to be an abstraction, he has become a person. How many
elaborate arguments respecting terms of salvation and terms of
communion are shivered to pieces, yet without offence, almost
without resistance, as they are " walked through " (if I may use
the expression) by such heathens as Socrates, such Noncon-
formists as Howard, such Quakers as Elizabeth Fry.

This applies more and more strongly as our range of facts is
enlarged. The more numerous and the more varied are the
objects which we embrace within our range of vision, the less
likely are we to place our trust in what Bacon well calls " the
idols of the cave," in which our own individual lot is cast.

It will be vain to argue, on abstract grounds, for the absolute
and indefeasible necessity of some practice or ceremony, of
which we have learnt from history that there is no instance for
one, two, three, or four hundred years, in the most honoured
ages of the Church. It will be vain to denounce as subversive
of Christianity, doctrines which we have known from biography
to have been held by the very saints, martyrs, and reformers
whom else we are constantly applauding. Opinions and views,
which, in a familiar and modified form, waken in us no shock of
surprise, or even command our warm admiration, will often for
the first time be truly apprehended when we see them in the
ritual or the creed of some rival, or remote, or barbarous
Church, which is but the caricature and exaggeration of that
which we ourselves hold. Practices which we insist on retaining
or repudiating, as if they involved the very essence of the
Catholic faith or of the Reformation, will appear less precious
or less dangerous, as the case may be, in the eyes of the
respective disputants, if history shows us clearly that we thereby
make ourselves, on the one hand, more papal than the Pope,
more Roman than Rome ; on the other hand, more Lutheran
than Luther, more Genevan than Calvin.

If this be the effect of the study of even isolated facts of

Ecclesiastical History 39

Christian history, much more will it result from the study of
the general phenomena which mark its course. There may be
a tendency in special subjects of ecclesiastical study to cramp
and narrow the mind, but there is none such in the more
general view, which embraces its relations to the world at large,
and which compels us to view the lay as well as the clerical
element of the Church, the broad secular framework in which
the whole Church itself is set.

It is always useful to see, as must be seen in any extensive
survey, how large a portion of our ecclesiastical diversities is
to be traced, not to religious causes, but to the more innocent,
and in one sense irresistible, influences of nation, of climate, of
race, of the general course of human affairs. The bitterness of
English partisanship will be greatly diminished in proportion
as we recognise the fact, that the divergence between the Church
of England and Nonconformists springs from differences not so
much of theological principle or opinion, as of social and
hereditary position. The greater divisions of Christendom
can be regarded "calmly and kindly," in proportion as we
are able to take in, as from a summit, the whole view of which
they form the intersecting lines. What seemed, near at hand,
to be mere deformities, from a more distant point are lost in
the sense of the vast prospect to which each feature con-
tributes its peculiar part. The most cursory view of the various
sects and Churches of the world will make us suspect that we
are not all truth and goodness, nor they all error and vice.
The very names of the chiefest among them, Greek and Latin,
Gallican, Anglican, will show us how much of the distinction
between them must be traced simply to national and
geographical influences.

Nor let it be supposed that a philosophical or a general
view of Ecclesiastical History is of necessity a cold or con-
temptuous view. There is, it is true, a melancholy feeling
suggested by any wide contemplation of Christendom. We
think of the contrast between the story as it might have been
and the story as it is. We ask what ought to have been
" more noble or more beautiful than the gradual progress of
the Spirit of light and love, dispelling the darkness of folly,
and subduing into one divine harmony all the jarring elements
of evil;" and we have in its place (if I may use words the
more touching from the keenness of regret with which they
were uttered) "no steady, unwavering advance of heavenly
spirits, but one continually interrupted, checked, diverted from

40 The Advantages of

its course, driven backward ; as of men possessed by some
bewildering spell, wasting their strength upon imaginary
obstacles, hindering each other's progress and their own, by
stopping to analyse and dispute about the nature of the sun's
light till all were blinded by it, instead of thankfully using its
aid to show them the right path onward." *

Most true, yet even in its very sadness containing grounds
of hope and consolation.

For, first though the course of Ecclesiastical History be
thus dark, there is always a bright side to be found in Eccle-
siastical Biography.

Study the lives, study the thoughts, and hymns, and prayers,
study the death-beds of good men. They are the salt, not
only of the world, but of the Church. In them we see, close
at hand, what on the public stage of history we see through
every kind of distorted medium and deceptive refraction. In
them we can trace the history if not of "the Catholic Church,"
at least of the " Communion of Saints." The Ac fa Sane forum
were literally, as a great French historian has observed, the
only light, moral and intellectual, of the centuries, from the
seventh to the ninth, which may without exaggeration be
called, "the dark ages." 2 "Their glories," it has been well
said, " shine far beyond the limits of their daily walk in life ;
their odours are wafted across the boundaries of unfriendly
societies ; their spiritual seed is borne away, and takes root and
bears manifold in fields far distant from the gardens of the
Lord where they were planted." 3 We have to be on our
guard against the proverbial exaggerations of biographers ;
we have to disentangle fable and legend from truth and fact.
But the profit is worth the risk; the work will be its own
reward. It is well known that, amidst the trials which beset
Henry Martyn the missionary, on his voyage to India, the
study in which he found his chief pleasure and profit was in
the kindly notices of ancient saints which form the redeeming
points of Milner's " History of the Church." "I love" (so he
writes in his diary) "to converse, as it were, with those holy
bishops and martyrs, with whom I hope, through grace, to
spend a happy eternity. . . . The example of the Christian
saints in the early ages has been a source of sweet reflection
to me. . . . The holy love and devout meditations of Augus-

1 Arnold's Miscellaneous Works, p. 286.

2 Guizot's Lectures on the Civilisation of France, c. xvii.

3 Wilson's Bampton Lect., p. 275.

Ecclesiastical History 41

tine and Ambrose I delight to think of. ... No uninspired
sentence ever affected me so much as that of the historian,
that to believe, to suffer, and to love, was the primitive
taste." 1 What he so felt and expressed may be, and has
been, felt by many others. Such biographies are the common,
perhaps the only common, literature alike of rich and poor.
Hearts, to whom even the Bible speaks in vain, have by such
works been roused to a sense of duty and holiness. However
cold the response of mankind has been to other portions of
ecclesiastical story, this has always commanded a reverential,
even an excessive attention.

Let us also remember, that what there is of instruction here
is exactly of the kind which we ought to expect. Christianity
affects the springs of action, rather than the actions them-
selves ; from its very beginning it has been seen in the lowly
rather than the lofty places of the world; in the manger of
Bethlehem, in the peasants of Galilee, in the caves and dens
of the earth : we may therefore fairly look for its chief in-
fluences out of the beaten track of history ; when we cannot
trace it on the great highway of the world, we may fairly
conclude that its effects will be found in the corners and
pathways of life :

" Sprinkled along the waste of years,
Full many a soft green isle appears :
Pause where we may along the desert road,
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred, safe abode."

On the other hand, if we turn from the case of individual
Christians to the case of the great masses of individuals which
form the main bulk of the Church, they too have a lesson to
teach, less palpable, but by no means to be despised, though
it has been sometimes pushed to exaggeration.

We know the old saying of Vincentius, "Quod semper,
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," " Believe what has been
believed always, everywhere, and by everybody." It is need-
less to repeat the arguments by which it can be shown that,
in a literal sense, this axiom is always either untrue or
inappliGable. The solitary protest 2 is always to be honoured
the lonely martyr is avenged at last. Churches and nations,
and whole generations, often seem to lose their reason.
Baronius himself confesses that in the Church of the tenth

1 Memoir of Henry Martyn, pp. 127, 130, 136.

2 See Lecture VII.

C 2

42 The Advantages of

century there was no pilot to guide the helm, no captain to
command the crew, at the moment of its greatest need.

But still the maxim of Vincentius contains a certain element
of truth, which the facts of history entirely confirm. There is
a common sense in the Church as there is a common sense
in the world, which cannot be neglected with impunity ; and
there is an eccentricity in individuals and in sects which
always tends to lead us, if not into dangerous, at least into
crooked paths. The error which is held by great, ancient,
and national communities, often loses its mischief, and entirely
changes its meaning when it becomes part of the general
established belief. The truth which is held by a narrow sect
often becomes error from the mere fact of the isolation and
want of proportion in which it is held. 1 The strange folly of
Christians persecuting Christians was first introduced on a
large scale, not by the Orthodox, but by the heretics of the
fourth and fifth centuries. The fancies of Millenarians, however
innocent and natural, and however widely diffused among
small circles, have always been resisted by the robust sense
of the Universal Church. It is not, as a general rule, the
larger, but the lesser congregations of Christendom, that have
imposed the most minute and petty restrictions on opinion
and practice. Whilst the Imperial, venerable, Orthodox
Church of the whole East is content to repose on the short
Creed of the first Councils, the little Church and state of
Brunswick, under the auspices of Duke Julius, requires, or
did require till recently, from its ministers a stringent
subscription, not only to the three Creeds, the Augsburg Con-
fession, the Apology for the Confession, and the Smalcaldic
Articles, but to all that is contained in all th'e works of Luther,
in all the works of Melancthon, in all the works of Chemnitz.
The "Nine Articles" of "the Evangelical Alliance" impose
a joke on the freedom of thought and conscience far heavier
than that of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of
England.

In fact, the higher and wider is the sweep of vision the

i In the able essay by M. Renan, " On the Future of Religion " (Revue
des Deux Mondes, Oct. 15, 1860), where he considers the prospects of
the Catholic, the National, and the sectarian principle, I venture to think
that the gifted writer, in the preference which he awards to the third
of these principles, has overlooked the historical proofs of its inferiority
to either of the two former, in all that regards true toleration and compre-
hensiveness, whatever may have been its services in other respects.

Ecclesiastical History 43

more difficult it is to stumble at trifles, and make mountains
out of mole-hills. Power, no doubt, is often frightfully abused,
whether in the hands of ecclesiastics or of laymen ; but to both,
if there be any nobleness of character on which to work, it
brings far more moderation and largeness of heart than is
attainable by even better men in inferior stations. It was the
charity and the wisdom of the Popes which protected the Jews
in the middle ages against the fanatical attacks of individual
zealots. The royal heart of the young King Edward was
softer than the mercies even of a gentle prelate. Oliver
Cromwell, when he came to wield the power of Church and
State, of universities and of armies alike, was tolerant to a
degree which his humbler followers were incapable of imitating
or understanding.

It is difficult to express the deference due to these consider-
ations, without placing them above or below their just estimate.
But they form too obvi