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PRINCETON,  N.  J.                        ^* 

1 

Shelf.    

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BR    148     .A4 

Allen,    Alexander    V.    G.     1841- 

1908. 
Chrls-blan    Ins -bl-bu-b Ions 

i 

XCbe  IFntemational 


XTbcoIooical  Xibtar^. 


EDITORS'   PREFACE. 

Theology  has  made  great  and  rapid  advances  in  recent 
years.  New  lines  of  investigation  have  been  opened  up, 
fresh  light  has  been  cast  upon  many  subjects  of  the  deepest 
interest,  and  the  historical  method  has  been  applied  with 
important  results.  This  has  prepared  the  way  for  a  Library 
of  Theological  Science,  and  has  created  the  demand  for  it 
It  has  also  made  it  at  once  opportune  and  practicable  now 
to  secure  the  services  of  specialists  in  the  different  depart- 
ments of  Theology,  and  to  associate  them  in  an  enterprise 
which  will  furnish  a  record  of  Theological  inquiry  up  to 
date. 

This  Library  is  designed  to  cover  the  whole  field  of  Chris- 
tian Theology.  Each  volume  is  to  be  complete  in  itself, 
while,  at  the  same  time,  it  will  form  part  of  a  carefully 
planned  whole.  One  of  the  Editors  is  to  prepare  a  volume 
of  Theological  Encyclopaedia  which  will  give  the  history 
and  literature  of  each  department,  as  well  as  of  Theology 
as  a  whole. 

The  Library  is  intended  to  form  a  series  of  Text-Books 
for  Students  of  Theology. 

The  Authors,  therefore,  aim  at  conciseness  and  compact- 
ness of  statement.     At  the  same  time,  they  have  in  view 


ii  EDITORS'   PREFACE. 

that  large  and  increasing  class  of  students,  in  other  depart- 
ments of  inquiry,  who  desire  to  have  a  systematic  and  thor- 
ough exposition  of  Theological  Science.  Technical  matters 
will  therefore  be  thrown  into  the  form  of  notes,  and  the 
text  will  be  made  as  readable  and  attractive  as  possible. 

The  Library  is  international  and  interconfessional.  It 
will  be  conducted  in  a  catholic  spirit,  and  in  the  interests 
of  Theology  as  a  science. 

Its  aim  will  be  to  give  full  and  impartial  statements  both 
of  the  results  of  Theological  Science  and  of  the  questions 
which  are  still  at  issue  in  the  different  departments. 

The  Authors  will  be  scholars  of  recognized  reputation  in 
the  several  branches  of  study  assigned  to  them.  They  will 
be  associated  with  each  other  and  with  the  Editors  in  the 
effort  to  provide  a  series  of  volumes  which  may  adequately 
represent  the  present  condition  of  investigation,  and  indi- 
cate the  way  for  further  progress. 

CHARLES  A.  BRIGGS. 
STEWART  D.   F.  SALMOND. 


VOLUMES  ALREADY  PUBLISHED. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Litera-      By  S.  R.  Driver,  D.D.,  Regius  Pro- 
ture  of  the  Old  Testament.  lessor    of    Hebrew    and   Canon  of 

Christ  Church,  Oxford. 

Christian  Ethics.  By  Newman  Smyth,  D.D.,  Pastor  of 

the    First    Congregational     Church, 
New  Haven,  Conn. 

Apologetics.  By  A.  B.  Bruce,  D.D.,  Professor  of 

New     Testament      Exegesis,     Free 
Church  College,  Glasgow. 

History  of  Christian  Doctrine.  By  G.  P.  Fisher,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Pro- 

fessor of  Ecclesiastical  History,  Yale 
College,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

A    History   of   Christianity    in       By   Arthur  C.  M'Giffert,  D.D., 

the   Apostolic  Age.  Professor    of    Church     History, 

'^  Union    Theological    Seminaxv, 

Nev7  York. 


C§e  Jnternationaf  C^eofo^tcaf  EiBrarjp. 

VOLUMES  IN  PREPARATION. 


Christian  Institutions. 


The  Study  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. 

Old  Testament  History. 


Contemporary  History  of  the 
Old  Testament. 

Theology  of   the   Old  Testa- 
ment. 

An  Introduction  to  the  Litera- 
ture of  the  New  Testament. 


Canon  and   Text  of  the  Nev/ 
Testament. 


Contemporary   History  of  the 
New  Testament, 

Theology  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, 


The  Ancient  Catholic  Church. 

The  Latin  Church. 

Philosophy  of  Religion. 

Comparative  Religion. 
The  Christian  Pastor. 

Rabbinical  Literature. 
Theological  Encyclopedia. 

Life  of  Christ. 


By  A.  V.  G.  Allen,  D.D.,  Profes- 
sor of  Ecclesiastical  History, 
P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.    (A'ow  Ready.) 

By  Herbkrt  Edward  Ryle,  B.D., 
President  of  Queen's  College, 
Cambridge,   England. 

B}"-  Henry  Preserved  Smith,  D.  D., 
late  Professor  of  Hebrew,  Lane 
Theological  Seminary,  Cincin- 
nati, Ohio. 

By  Francis  Brown,  D.D.,  Profes- 
sor of  Hebrew,  Union  Theologi- 
cal Seminary,  New  York. 

By  A.  B.  Davidson,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Professor  of  Hebrew,  New  Col- 
lege, Edinburgh. 

By  S.  D.  F.  S almond,  D.D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Systematic  Theology 
and  New  Testament  Exegesis, 
Free  Church  College,  Aberdeen. 

By  Caspar  Rene  Gre/jory,  D.D., 
Professor  of  New  Testament 
Exegesis  in  the  University  o£ 
Leipzig. 

By  Frank  C.  Por  er,  Ph.D  ,  Pro- 
fessor of  Biblical  Theology,  Yale 
Universit5%  New  Haven,  Conn. 

Bj'  George  B.  Stevens.D  D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Systematic  Theology, 
Yale  University,  New  Haven, 
Conn. 

By  Robert  Rainy,  D.D.,  LL.D., 
Principal  of  the  New  College, 
Edinburgh. 

By  Archibald  Robertson,  D.D. 
Principal  of  King's  College. 

By  Robert  Flint,  D.D.,  LL.D.. 
Professor  of  Divinity  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh. 

By  A.  M.  Fairbairn,  D.D.,  Princi- 
pal of  Mansfield  College,  Oxford. 

By  Washington  Gladden,  D.D., 
Pastor  of  Congregational  Church, 
Columbus,  Ohio.       {In  Press.) 

By  S,  Schechter,  M.A,  Christ's 
College,    Cambridge,    England. 

By  Charles  A.  Briggs,  D.D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Biblical  Theology, 
Union  Theological  Seminary, 
New  York. 

By  William  Sanday,  D.D.,  Lady 
Margaret  Professor  of  Divinity 
and  Canon  of  Christ  Church, 
Oxford. 


^be  llntcrnational  ^bcolooical  Xibrarv\ 


EDITED    BY 

CHARLES   A.    BRIGGS,    D.D., 

Edward  Robinson  Professor  of  Biblical  Theology,   Union   Theological 
Soiiinary,  Neiv   York; 

AND 

STEWART   D.   F.    SALMOND,   D.D., 

Professor  of  Systematic   Theology  and  New  Testament  Exegesis, 
Free  Church   College,   Aberdeen. 


CHRISTIAN    INSTITUTIONS. 
By   ALEXANDER    V.   G.   ALLEN,   D.D. 


International   Theological    Library 


CHRISTIAN   INSTITUTIONS 


ALEXANDER  V.   G.   ALLEN,   D.D. 

PROFESSOR   OF  ECCLESIASTICAL   HISTORY   IN   THE   EPISCOPAL 

THEOLOGICAL   SCHOOL   IN    CAiMBRIDGE 

AUTHOR   OF    "the    CONTINUITY    OF   CHRISTIAN    THOUGHT,"     "LIFE   OF 

JONATHAN   EDWARDS,"    "RELIGIOUS   PROGRESS,"    ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1897 


COPYRIGHT,    1897,   BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


This  treatise  is  a  summary  of  the  church's  history 
from  the  point  of  view  of  its  institutions.  The  effort  has 
been  made  to  show  how  organization,  creeds,  and  cultus 
are  related  to  the  spiritual  life  and  to  the  growth  of 
Christian  civilization.  The  field  covered  by  the  title, 
Christian  Institutions,  is  so  large  that  the  selection  of  the 
subjects  to  be  treated,  and  the  proportion  of  space  assigned 
to  each,  must  reflect  to  some  extent  the  personality  of  the 
author,  obliging  him  to  tell  what  connected  impressions 
he  has  gained  from  the  wide  survey.  Otherwise  the 
work  would  become  a  small  dictionary  of  Christian  an- 
tiquities, or  a  series  of  brief  imperfect  monographs. 
Hitherto  no  attempt  has  been  made  in  a  formal  manner 
to  study  the  institutions  of  Christianity  with  reference 
to  their  mutual  relationships.  Even  the  term  '  Institu- 
tions '  requires  to  be  defined.  Its  expansion  to  cover 
creeds  and  doctrines,  as  well  as  organization  and  ritual, 
must  be  justified  by  that  growing  usfe  of  the  word  which 
makes  it  include  the  prominent  features  of  the  church,  its 
rules  of  procedure,  habits  of  action,  or  those  related  facts 
regulating  its  conduct  in  the  attainment  of  its  end. 

The  work  was  begun  some  five  years  ago,  when,  through 
the  kindness  of  Augustus  Lowell,  Esq.,  it  took  shape  as  a 
course  of  Lowell  Lectures.  Its  preparation  for  the  press 
was  soon  after  interrupted,  and  three  years  elapsed  before 
it  was  again  resumed,  under  a  sense  of  pressure  in  conse- 

V 


Vi  PREFACE 

quence  of  the  long  delay.  To  make  such  a  work  as  this 
complete  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case  impossible.  But  it 
may  serve  to  call  attention  to  a  method  of  dealing  with 
the  subject  wherein  the  dispassionate  attempt  is  made  to 
penetrate  the  meaning  of  usages  that  seem  irrational  be- 
cause familiarity  has  dimmed  our  vision,  or  an  inward 
repugnance  prevented  our  doing  the  justice  for  which 
they  plead  and  wait. 

To  the  Rev.  Henry  J.  W.  Allen  of  Glen  Loch,  Penn- 
sylvania, to  Professor  P.  H.  Steenstra,  D.D.,  of  Cam- 
bridge, and  to  the  Rev.  Arthur  N.  Peaslee  of  Cambridge, 
my  thanks  are  given  for  valuable  aid  in  revising  proof- 
sheets  and  for  many  important  suggestions. 

Cambridge,  May  6,  1897. 


CONTENTS 

BOOK   I 
THE   ORGANIZATION  OF  THE   CHURCH 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE8 

Historical  Survey  ..........  5-20 

The  organization  of  the  church,  not  the  result  of  accident,  but 
reflects  deep  motives  in  the  Christian  life  or  in  Christian  civiliza- 
tion. The  origin  of  the  Christian  ministry  a  matter  of  controversy 
in  the  sixteenth  century.  The  attitude  of  Jerome,  who  denied  the 
'  divine  riglit'  of  episcopacy,  and  maintained  that  the  elevation  of 
the  bishop  above  the  presbyter  was  an  ecclesiastical  arrangement. 
The  statement  of  Jerome  incorporated  in  the  Canon  Law  of  the 
Roman  church.  To  this  statement  the  appeal  was  made  in  the  age 
of  the  Reformation.  The  English  Reformers  influenced  by  it,  as 
well  as  the  Puritans.  Hence  the  caution  and  moderation  of  the 
tone  of  the  English  Reformers.  A  change  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land toward  the  close  of  the  century,  and  episcopacy  by  '  divine 
right '  asserted  by  Bancroft,  and  by  Hall,  who  sought  to  overcome 
the  force  of  Jerome's  influence.  The  Puritans  in  reply  maintained 
the  statement  of  Jerome,  and  identified  bishops  and  presbyters 
in  the  Apostolic  age.  Jeremy  Taylor  the  first  to  maintain  that 
Apostles  were  originally  bishops,  but  not  known  by  that  title.  In  the 
sixteenth  century  Anglicans  had  held  that  the  form  of  church  gov- 
ernment was  not  prescribed  by  Scripture,  while  Puritans  held  that 
Presbyterianism  was  of  divine  appointment.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  these  attitudes  reversed,  Anglicans  maintaining  episcopacy 
by  'divine  right,'  while  Puritans  took  Hooker's  ground,  that  the 
form  was  a  matter  of  indifference.  The  discovery  of  the  Shorter 
Greek  Recension  of  the  Ignatian  Epistles  as  giving  a  new  direction 
to  the  controversy,  but  leading  to  no  results.  A  new  impulse 
given  to  the  discussion  in  the  nineteenth  century  by  the  application 
of  the  principle  of  historical  development.  Theories  of  the  origin 
of  the  episcopate  maintained  by  Rothe  and  by  Baur.  Contribu- 
tion to  the  inquiry  by  Ritschl.  Renan's  contention  that  ecclesias- 
tical organization  was  influenced  by  secular  models.  The  important 
service  rendered  by  Bishop  Lightfoot  in  vindicating  the  genuine- 

vii 


Vlll  CONTENTS 


ness  of  the  Ignatian  Epistles  and  in  other  ways.  Dr.  Hatch  ques- 
tioned Jerome's  statement,  which  Lightfoot  had  approved,  that 
'bishop'  and  'presbyter'  were  at  first  synonymous  terms.  Dr. 
Harnack  demonstrates  that  the  office  of  '  bishop '  was  from  the  first 
distinct  from  that  of  '  presbyter.'  The  discovery  of  the  Didache 
furnishes  the  missing  link  between  the  Apostolic  age  and  the  time 
of  Ignatius. 

CHAPTER   II 

Apostles,  Prophets,  Teachers       ......  21-36 

Ignorance  of  the  date  of  the  New  Testament  writings  makes  ex- 
act statement  impossible  in  regard  to  changes  of  organization,  but 
the  difficulty  in  a  measure  overcome  by  classifying  these  writings 
according  to  generations.  In  the  first  Christian  generation,  the  ^ 
writings  of  St.  Paul  furnish  the  authoritative  account  of  the  min- 
istry. It  was  divided  into  two  ranks  :  the  higher,  including  Apos- 
tles, prophets,  and  teachers  ;  and  the  lower,  or  local  administrative 
offices.  The  first  and  only  mention  of  bishops  is  in  the  Epistle  to 
the  Philippians,  where  there  is  more  than  one  bishop  in  the  com- 
munity. The  account  of  St.  Paul  in  harmony  with  that  given  in 
the  early  part  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  The  Twelve  and  the 
appointment  of  the  Seven  illustrate  the  higher  and  the  lower  grades 
of  the  ministry, — the  ministry  of  the  Word,  and  the  ministry  of 
the  tables.  Tlie  connection  of  the  Seven  with  the  later  diaconate. 
The  prophets  occupy  the  second  place  in  the  higher  grade.  Dis- 
tinction between  Apostles  and  prophets.  The  office  of  the  teacher. 
These  three  classes  of  officers  constituted  a  ministry  at  large,  and 
were  not  localized.  Their  separate  functions  might  be  united  in 
one  man,  as  in  the  case  of  St.  Paul.  The  Apostolate  as  limited  to 
the  Twelve.  The  larger  Apostolate,  which  included  St.  Paul  and 
many  others.  How  far  the  larger  Apostolate  had  been  eye-wit- 
nesses of  the  Resurrection.  The  labors  of  St.  Paul  as  an  Apostle. 
Slight  information  regarding  the  Apostolic  activity  of  the  Twelve. 
Appointment  to  the  larger  Apostolate  ;  in  the  case  of  St.  Paul, 
through  the  agency  of  prophets  'and  teachers.  On  this  larger 
Apostolate,  and  not  exclusively  on  the  Twelve,  the  church  was 
built  as  a  foundation,  together  with  the  prophets,  and  Christ  as  the 
Corner  Stone. 

CHAPTER   III 

Presbyters,  Bishops,  Deacons        ......  37-45 

The  first  generation  of  the  Apostolic  age  followed  by  the  age  of 
the  elders  or  presbyters.  'J'he  prominence  of  the  presbyters  dis- 
closed in  the  New  Te.stament  writings  of  the  second  generation. 
The  list  of  officers  given  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians.  Use  of 
the  terms  'evangelist,'  'pastor,'  Tiyov/j-evoL.     Light  thrown  by  the 


CONTENTS  ix 

PAGES 

Pastoral  Epistles.  The  qualifications  of  the  bishops,  and  their  re- 
lation to  the  presbyters.  Whether  there  was  a  plural  episcopate 
or  a  single  bishop  in  the  church  at  Ephesus.  The  presbyterate,  as 
it  appears  in  the  Second  and  Third  General  Epistles  of  St.  John. 

CHAPTER   IV 

The  Age  of  Transition  ........  46-60 

To  the  third  generation  belong  the  Epistle  of  Clement  of  Rome, 
the  Didache,  the  Shepherd  of  Ilermas,  and  the  Ignatian  Epistles. 
General  characteristics  of  Clement's  epistle.  The  list  of  church 
officers  enumerated.  The  burden  of  his  message,  that  all  things 
should  be  done  in  order.  His  comparison  of  the  Christian  minis- 
try to  the  Jewish  priesthood.  The  doctrine  of  the  transmission  of 
authority  through  verbal  commission.  How  far  his  teaching  is 
sanctioned  by  the  New  Testament.  Contention  in  regard  to  the 
episcopal  office  and  how  it  is  to  be  overcome.  The  exact  nature 
of  the  disturbance  at  Corinth  is  not  made  apparent.  The  episco- 
pate as  a  life  office.  Four  grades  of  officers  in  the  Roman 
church,  when  Clement  wrote,  and  the  episcopate  a  plural  one.  In 
the  Shepherd  of  Hernias,  the  officers  of  the  church  are  prophets, 
teachers,  presbyters,  bishops,  and  deacons.  The  interest  of  Hermas 
centres  in  the  prophets.  The  Didache  alludes  to  Apostles,  prophets, 
and  teachers  as  still  the  officers  of  the  church,  but  they  are  on  the 
eve  of  vanishing.  The  prophet  may  be  settled  in  a  community,  or 
bishops  (the  plural  episcopate)  and  deacons  may  be  appointed  as 
a  substitute  by  the  congregation.  There  is  no  mention  of  the 
presbyter,  but  bishops  and  deacons  are  coupled  together,  as  in  the 
Pastoral  Epistles,  in  the  Epistle  of  Clement,  and  in  the  Shepherd 
of  Hermas. 

CHAPTER   V 

The  Ignatian  Episcopate        .......  61-71 

Date  of  the  Ignatian  writings.  Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers 
have  disappeared.  The  object  of  Ignatius  is  to  exalt  the  episco- 
pate, but  not  to  depreciate  the  presbyterate.  Obedience  is  enjoined 
to  the  threefold  order,  —  bishops,  presbyters,  and  deacons.  The 
chief  stress  laid  upon  submission  to  the  bishop  as  standing  in  the 
place  of  God.  The  presbyters  are  always  represented  as  successors 
of  the  Apostles,  and  in  this  respect  Ignatius  is  in  harmony  with 
New  Testament  precedents.  The  coimection  of  the  bishop  with 
the  Eucharist  a  vital  one  in  Ignatius'  mind.  No  importance  at- 
tached to  tradition,  or  to  Apostolic  authority  in  urging  obedience 
to  the  bishop  ;  but  the  authority  of  Ignatius  is  a  direct  message 
from  the  Spirit.  His  silence  regarding  the  order  of  prophets  diffi- 
cult to  explain.  His  scheme  a  transcendental  one.  The  character 
of  Ignatius  and  of  the  time  as  throwing  light  upon  his  teaching. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   VI 

PAGES 

Theories  regarding  the  Origin  of  the  Episcopate  .         .  72-86 

(1)  The  government  of  the  church  varied  in  different  places  and 
at  different  times  in  the  same  place.  But  beneath  the  variations 
there  was  principle  and  unity.  (2)  The  position  of  James,  the 
Lord's  brother,  in  the  church  at  Jerusalem  as  a  witness  to  the  Apos- ' 
tolic  origin  of  the  episcopate.  But  this  position  was  exceptional, 
resting  on  a  peculiar  basis,  and  constituting  a  peculiar  type,  neither 
of  which  were  followed  in  the  Ignatian  episcopate.  (3)  The  episco- 
pate arose  by  the  localization  of  the  Apostolate.  The  evidence  for 
this  is  lacking  ;  the  calling  of  an  Apostle  incongruous  with  his  set- 
tlement. The  cases  of  Peter  and  John.  The  silence  of  the  Ignatian 
Epistles.  The  Apostle  not  the  prototype  of  the  bishop.  (4)  That 
presbyter  and  bishop  are  names  used  as  synonyms  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  that  the  episcopate  was  formed  out  of  the  presbyt- 
erate  by  elevation.  Grounds  on  which  this  theory  has  been  ques- 
tioned and  rejected.  Presbyters  always  mentioned  by  themselves,  " 
and  where  thus  mentioned  no  allusion  is  made  to  bishops  and 
deacons.  Significance  of  the  association  of  bishops  with  deacons ; 
both  were  connected  with  the  administration  of  the  Eucharist. 
The  bishop  was  the  financial  officer  of  the  local  community,  to 
which,  in  connection  with  his  relation  to  the  Eucharist,  he  owed 
his  prominence  in  the  local  community.  Growing  importance  of 
the  Eucharist  in  the  second  century  furnishes  a  clew  to  the  eleva- 
tion of  the  bishop  above  the  presbyter.  The  function  of  the  pres- 
byter was  changing.  He  was  originally  the  bearer  of  the  tradition, 
but  the  appearance  of  the  Rules  of  Faith  and  of  the  Canon  of  the 
New  Testament  rendered  this  function  superfluous.  No  complete 
picture  of  the  situation  can  yet  be  formed,  but  the  outline  is  clear. 
The  significance  of  the  elevation  of  the  bishop  lies  in  giving  the 
foremost  place  to  the  administration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs. 


CHAPTER   VII 

The  Christian  Ministry  in  the  Second  Century       .         .        87-106 

At  the  beginning  of  the  century  the  bishop  was  presented  as  the  . 
successor  of  Christ ;  at  the  end  of  the  century  he  had  become  the 
successor  of  the  Apostles.  Explanation  of  the  change.  The  pres- 
byter at  first  presented  as  the  successor  of  the  Apostles.  Why  the 
presbyter  lost  this  position.  The  change  was  owing  to  the  neces- 
sity of  overcoming  the  heretics,  who  appealed  to  the  tradition.  To 
meet  the  Gnostics  was  one  object  in  the  formation  of  the  Canon, 
and  of  the  Rules  of  Faith,  of  which  the  bishop  became  the  official 
curator.  The  presbyter  was  no  longer  needed  as  a  witness  to  the 
tradition.  Illustrations  of  the  situation  in  the  utterances  of  Papias, 
of  Hegesippus,  and  in  the  writings  of  Irenseus.  AVhy  Irenasus 
seems  to  use  the  names  'presbyter'  and  'bishop'  as  synonymous. 


CONTENTS  Xi 

PAGES 

Theory  of  Irenseus  regarding  the  Apostolical  succession.  Tertul- 
lian's  presentation  of  the  subject  in  his  Prescription  of  Heretics ; 
his  theory  of  Apostolical  succession.  The  change  in  the  presbyter's 
office  completed  by  the  end  of  the  second  century.  The  bishop 
had  absorbed  the  presbyter's  function,  which  had  then  become 
a  purely  administrative  one,  and  to  the  presbyter  was  assigned  a 
share  in  the  bishop's  original  function  of  administering  the  Eucha- 
rist. In  the  time  of  Tertullian,  the  larger  Apostolate  had  been 
forgotten,  and  the  name  of  Apostle  was  limited  to  the  Twelve,  with 
the  exception  of  St.  Paul.  The  passing  of  the  prophets.  Mon- 
tanism,  an  effort  to  restore  the  office  ;  conflict  between  the  bishops 
and  the  prophets.  The  ideal  of  the  episcopate  as  compared  with 
the  mission  of  the  prophets.  The  rise  of  the  Catholic  church,  and 
its  struggle  with  Montanism.  Weakness  in  the  Montanist  concep- 
tion of  prophecy.  The  transition  of  Tertullian  from  the  Catholic 
church  to  the  Montanists,  an  illustration  of  the  movements  of  the 
age.  Prophecy  was  condemned  and  banished,  but  the  settlement 
of  the  second  century  not  a  final  one.  Effect  of  the  suppression 
of  prophecy.  The  office  of  the  Reader,  the  last  relic  of  the  ancient 
prophetic  order. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

The  Age  of  Cyprian 107-136 

The  bishop,  hitherto  the  pastor  of  the  local  church,  begins  to  pass 
over  into  the  diocesan  bishop.  Explanation  of  the  change.  Rivalry 
and  conflict  between  bishops  and  presbyters.  Cyprian  held  the 
Roman  theory  of  the  transmission  of  power.  The  question  of 
ordination  became,  in  consequence,  of  the  highest  importance. 
Belief  that  the  Holy  Spirit  was  imparted  by  ordination  in  contrast 
with  the  earlier  conviction  that  the  antecedent  action  of  the  Spirit 
justified  ordination.  Instances  of  ordination  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. Significance  of  the  laying  on  of  hands.  Prophets  and 
teachers  received  no  ordination.  No  mention  of  the  ordination 
of  bishops  in  the  New  Testament.  Absence  of  allusion  to  the 
method  of  ordination  in  writings  of  the  second  century;  Clement 
of  Rome,  the  Didache,  the  Epistles  of  Ignatius,  are  silent  as  to  the 
mode  of  making  presbyters  and  bishops.  The  ordination  of  a 
bishop  in  the  Apostolic  Ordinances  ;  in  the  Clementine  writings  ; 
according  to  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus  ;  in  the  church  at  Alex- 
andria. Cyprian's  rule  for  making  a  bishop.  The  power  invested 
in  the  bishops  of  the  province,  and  no  longer  in  the  congregation. 
The  bishops,  according  to  Cyprian,  constitute  the  church.  His 
theory  of  Apostolical  succession.  Ordinations  by  presbyters  for- 
bidden. The  principle  adopted  that  no  ordination  was  valid  with- 
out the  co-operation  or  sanction  of  the  bishop.  Traces  of  an  earlier 
usage.  Distinctions  among  the  bishops.  The  later  type  of  bishop 
first  developed  in  the  great  cities.     Cyprian  vindicates  the  equality 


XU  CONTENTS 

PAGES 

of  the  bishops,  but  his  conception  of  the  ministry  deepens  the  sepa- 
ration between  clergy  and  laity.  The  Christian  ministry  is  trans- 
formed into  a  priesthood  after  Jewish  analogies.  Hence  followed 
the  necessity  of  altar  and  sacrifice.  Cyprian's  theory  of  Apostolical 
succession  compared  with  earlier  theories.  Growth  of  the  metro- 
politan bishops.  Efforts  to  increase  the  dignity  of  the  episcopate. 
Relation  of  church  and  state.  Cyprian's  attitude  provoked  the 
resistance  of  the  state.  Significance  of  the  rise  of  priesthoods. 
The  Decian  and  Diocletian  persecutions.  The  coming  of  Con- 
stantine  and  the  changed  relations  of  the  church  to  the  state. 
Peculiarities  of  Cyprian's  conception  of  the  episcopate  in  contrast 
with  the  original  motive  of  the  olfice.  Cyprian  a  Montanist  at 
heart ;  he  endeavored  to  combine  Montanism  and  Catholicity,  with 
a  result  that  was  impracticable  and  intolerable.  Difference  in 
attitude  and  circumstances  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 
episcopates. 

CHAPTER   IX 

monasticism   in   its   relation   to   the    episcopate   and   to   the 

Catholic  Church 137-178 

The  episcopate  had  found  its  opportunity  in  the  city.  Monasti- 
cism  was  a  return  to  the  country.  The  praise  of  solitude  by 
Jerome.  In  its  origin,  monasticism  was  indifferent,  if  not  averse,' 
to  the  Catholic  church,  its  priesthood  and  sacraments.  Its  key- 
note on  its  ecclesiastical  side  was  the  dictum  of  Jerome  that  in  the 
beginning  of  Christ's  religion  the  bishoi^  and  presbyter  were  of 
equal  authority.  Relation  of  Jerome  to  the  bishops.  That  mo- 
nasticism may  be  regarded  as  the  continuation  of  the  Montanist 
purpose  is  shown  by  their  common  features.  Montanism,  Nova- 
tianism,  Donatism,  Monasticism,  constitute  the  line  of  succession. 
The  Catholic  church  stood  for  solidarity,  monasticism  for  the  prin- 
ciple of  individualism.  The  Catholic  church  was  too  sti'ong  to  be 
overcome  by  the  monastic  movement,  nor  could  the  latter  be  sup- 
pressed as  Montanism  had  been.  In  the  compromise  which  was 
effected,  the  Eastern  church  succeeded  in  placing  the  monasteries 
under  episcopal  control,  but  its  bishops  were  henceforth  taken 
from  the  monasteries.  Results  of  this  compromise.  In  the  West, 
the  Eastern  system  of  patriarchates  and  metropolitans  had  not 
been  developed,  and  under  this  looser  organization  a  greater  oppor- 
tunity was  afforded  to  monasticism.  The  papacy  was  a  compro- 
mise between  the  episcopate  and  the  monastery,  leaning  more  to 
the  monastic  interpretation  of  life  than  to  the  secular  as  repre- 
sented by  the  bishop.  The  alliance  between  the  papacy  and 
mona,sticism,  first  seen  in  Gregory  the  Great,  was  more  fully  real- 
ized under  Hildebrand.  In  mediating  between  the  episcopate  and 
monasticism,  the  papacy  fulfilled  its  highest  function.  To  the 
monastery  and  not  to  the  bishop  is  chiefly  owing  the  conversion 
of  Western  Europe.     In  the  intellectual  development,  the  monks 


CONTENTS  Xiii 

PAGES 

took  the  lead.  Among  them  are  also  to  be  found  the  greatest 
saints.  Equally  important  is  their  relation  to  the  development  of 
civilization.  The  contrast  between  early  monasticism  and  its  later 
forms.  The  secret  of  its  history  and  of  its  success  is  what  we 
know  as  individualism,  for  which  the  Catholic  church  had  made  no 
provision  under  the  episcopate.  The  struggle  between  the  bishops 
and  the  monasteries,  or  between  the  '  secular '  and  '  religious ' 
sides  of  the  Mediteval  church.  In  its  first  phase,  the  secular  won, 
and  the  monks  were  enrolled  in  the  clerical  order.  In  the  next 
stage,  the  monasteries  were  emancipated  from  episcopal  control. 
The  monastery  won  another  victory  when  celibacy  was  enforced 
on  the  clergy.  The  bishops  gave  no  support  to  Hildebrand  when 
he  began  his  attack  on  the  married  clergy.  The  attempt  of  monas- 
ticism to  enforce  poverty  on  the  secular  clergy  ended  in  failure, 
and  with  this  failure  Monasticism  reached  its  limit  and  entered 
on  its  decline.  Other  causes  for  its  decline.  In  what  ways  it  had 
ministered  to  its  higher  purpose.  The  survival  of  its  spirit.  How 
the  monastic  oi'ganization  was  affected  by  the  decline  and  fall  of 
the  papacy.  The  monastic  presbyter  was  then  left  free  with  no 
episcopal  authority  which  could  command  his  obedience.  The 
secular  clergy  took  the  vow  of  obedience  to  the  bishop,  the  monas- 
tic clergy  to  the  presbyter-abbot.  This  circumstance  exerted  its 
influence  on  the  organization  of  the  Protestant  churches.  The 
worsliip,  also,  of  the  monasteries  was  of  a  different  type  from  that 
which  was  cultivated  by  the  episcopate  in  the  parish  churches. 


CHAPTER   X 

The  Greek  Church  —  Nationality  and  the  Episcopate   .      179-201 

It  was  one  function  of  the  episcopate  in  the  Middle  Ages  to 
minister  to  the  growth  of  the  national  consciousness.  The  bishop 
became  an  officer  of  the  state,  and  for  this  task  was  fitted  by  the 
peculiar  characteristics  of  his  office.  The  monkish  clergy  indiffer- 
ent to  the  welfare  of  the  state.  The  secular  tendency  inherent  in  the 
episcopate.  National  rivalries  in  the  East.  Their  influence  in  ecclesi- 
astical controversies.  Rivalry  between  Rome  and  Constantinople. 
Effect  of  these  national  jealousies  and  antipathies  on  Catholic 
unity.  Schism  between  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches.  Con- 
demnation of  Roman  usages  at  the  Second  TruUan  Council.  The 
charges  against  Rome  preferred  by  Photius,  the  Patriarch  of  Con- 
stantinople. The  Azymite  heresy.  Further  alienation  of  the  two 
churches  in  the  Image-worship  Controversy.  Connection  between 
East  and  West  a  nominal  one  since  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire 
in  476.  What  significance  is  to  be  attached  to  that  date.  Charle- 
magne's coronation  further  separates  the  churches.  The  principle 
of  Catholic  unity  as  illustrated  in  the  Eastern  church. 


XIV  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   XI 

PAGES 

The  Episcopate  and  the  Papacy 202-230 

The  process  in  Gaul  by  which  tlie  bishop  made  the  transition  from 
being  the  pastor  of  the  local  church  to  the  ruler  of  a  large  diocese. 
The  bishops  became  important  personages.  Their  relations  to  the 
Merovingian  monarchs.  Question  raised  as  to  their  appointment. 
Decline  of  the  episcopate  in  the  seventh  century.  The  reform  came 
from  the  monastery.  The  process  began  of  subjecting  the  episco- 
pate to  the  papacy.  Revival  of  the  metropolitan  oflBce  under 
Charlemagne.  The  Capitulary  of  Frankfort.  The  effort  of  the 
bishops  to  escape  from  the  control  of  metropolitans.  The  Forged 
Decretals ;  their  motive  and  their  result.  Tendency  of  the  episco- 
pate toward  alliance  with  the  sovereigns.  A  secular  tendency 
fexisted  in  the  office  from  its  first  appearance.  The  work  of  the 
bishops  in  the  Middle  Ages,  of  a  twofold  character,  to  represent 
the  church  to  the  state,  and  to  adapt  religion  to  the  masses  of  the 
peoples.  Their  work  a  successful  one.  The  papacy  indifferent  to 
nationality.  Lack  of  the  national  patriarchate.  Hildebrand's  aim 
to  subordinate  nationality  to  imperialism.  The  Investiture  Con- 
troversy. The  bishops  incline  to  support  the  secular  authority. 
Illustrations  in  Germany,  France,  and  England.  Results  of  the 
Investiture  Controversy.  The  growth  of  nationality  facilitated  by 
the  union  of  the  episcopate  with  the  crown.  Theory  of  relation- 
ship of  the  episcopate  to  the  papacy.  The  bishops  fail  the  pope  in 
the  effort  to  exterminate  heresy.  The  monasteries  furnish  the  tri- 
bunal of  inquisition.  The  crusade  against  the  Albigenses.  The 
bishops  in  sympathy  with  the  crown  in  the  conflict  with  Boniface 
VIII.  Great  value  of  the  work  done  by  the  episcopate  in  the 
Middle  Ages.  The  Council  of  Constance  and  the  assertion  of 
the  principle  of  nationality.  Decline  of  the  Roman  principle  of 
Catholicity. 

CHAPTER   XII 

The    Organization    of    the    Churches    in    the    Age    of    the 

Reformation 231-278 

The  Reformers  did  not  break  up  the  unity  of  Christendom.  The 
revolution  had  been  accomplished  before  they  appeared.  The 
changes  of  the  sixteenth  century  governed  by  the  law  of  develop-, 
ment.  The  Reformers  did  not  aim  at  external  unity,  but  assumed 
the  unity  of  the  Spirit  as  actual,  although  invisible.  They  rejected 
the  Latin  theory  of  Catholicity.  The  claims  of  papacy,  episcopacy, 
and  presbytery  as  presented  at  the  Council  of  Constance.  The 
Franciscans  a  type  of  ecclesiastical  organizations  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation.  The  Brothers  of  the  Common  Life.  Influence  of 
the  monastery  on  the  Reformation  in  Germany.  The  New  Testa- 
ment was  substituted  for  tradition  as  the  supreme  authority.     In- 


CONTENTS  XV 

PAGES 

fluence  of  this  conviction  upon  human  arrangements.  Change  in 
the  conception  of  tlie  presbyter's  functions.  Return  of  prophecy. 
Its  relation  to  reform.  It  possesses  a  corrective  laclcing  in  the 
second  century.  Tlie  return  of  the  teaclier.  Alliance  between 
prophecy  and  learning  in  Germany.  Cranmer  and  Calvin.  Change 
in  the  idea  of  the  church.  The  changed  conception  of  ordination. 
Influence  of  the  monastery  in  the  elevation  of  the  presbyterate. 
The  episcopal  and  presbyterial  vows.  Qualifications  for  the  pres- 
byterate. The  bishops  as  the  defenders  of  the  faith.  Value  of 
their  tradition  in  the  eyes  of  the  Reformers.  Influence  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Justificatiou  by  Faith,  in  overcoming  the  corruptions  of  the 
Mediaeval  church.  Why  the  episcopate  was  retained  in  England 
and  Sweden,  and  rejected  in  Germany,  Scotland,  Denmark,  and 
the  Netherlands.  The  situation  in  Geneva.  The  influence  of 
Jerome's  statement.  Eveiy  country  was  free  to  choose  its  form 
of  ecclesiastical  organization.  Presbyters  led  the  Reformation  in 
Germany,  in  Switzerland,  in  Scotland  ;  but  in  England  and  Sweden 
it  was  led  by  the  crown  with  the  acquiescence  of  the  episcopate. 
Influence  of  nationality  upon  the  retention  of  the  episcopate. 
Countries  converted  by  monastic  agency  abandoned  the  episco- 
pate. The  situation  in  England.  The  principles  of  Wycliffe. 
The  English  Reformation  developed  bishops  as  leaders.  How  the 
English  church  treated  the  monasteries,  and  the  consequence  of 
this  treatment  in  its  later  history.  Nonconformity  in  England. 
The  larger  bearing  of  the  issue  between  episcopacy  and  presbytery. 
Analogy  in  Jewish  history.  The  title  '  Protestant'  not  the  antithesis 
of  '  Catholic'  How  the  Protestant  Reformers  deflned  Catholicity. 
The  use  of  '  Catholic '  in  the  creeds.  Resemblances  between  the 
Protestant  churches  and  the  greater  monastic  orders  of  the  Latin 
church.  The  evils  of  Protestantism  as  compared  with  its  advan- 
tages and  its  blessings. 


BOOK   II 

THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  AND   THE   DEVELOP- 
MENT OF  DOCTRINE 

CHAPTER    I 

The  Catholic  Creeds 279-294 

The  Apostles'  Creed  ;  time  and  place  of  its  origin.  Whether  it 
was  a  protest  against  Docetism.  The  Rule  of  Faith  given  by  Ignatius. 
The  Apostles'  Creed  as  the  expansion  of  the  baptismal  formula. 
Its  historical  character.  Not  known  in  the  Eastern  church  till  the 
time  of  Origen.  His  commentary  upon  it.  The  Eastern  Creeds  : 
Creed  of  Gregory  Thaumaturgus  ;  of  the  church  in  Ctesarea  ;  the 
Nicene  Creed  ;  Creed  of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  ;   its  later  en- 


XVI  CONTENTS 

PAGES 

largement  as  presented  to  the  Council  of  Constantinople  in  381  ; 
its  approval  by  the  Council  at  Chalcedon  in  451,  and  its  substitu- 
tion for  the  Nicene  Creed.  The  enlargement  of  the  Roman  or 
Apostles'  Creed  in  the  eighth  century.  Comparison  of  the  Apos- 
tles' and  Nicene  creeds.  The  controversial  character  of  the  Nicene 
Creed. 

CHAPTER   II 

The  Doctrine  of   the  Trinity  —  Its  Place  in  History  and  its 

Relation  to  Human  Progress 295-332 

The  formula  of  the  Trinity  grew  out  of  the  divine  name  given  in 
the  baptismal  formula.  The  triune  name  as  corresponding  to  the 
large  divisions  of  religious  experience.  The  religion  of  nature,  the  . 
religion  of  humanity,  the  religion  of  the  inner  life.  The  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity  alone  among  Christian  doctrines  created  no  incu- 
rable schism.  The  v^^hole  church  contributed  to  its  development : 
Ebionitism,  Gnosticism,  and  Montanism.  Patripassianism.  The 
theory  of  emanation.  Relation  of  the  doctrine  to  Greek  philoso- 
phy. The  formula  of  the  Homoousion.  Arianism  as  an  interpre- 
tation of  the  relation  of  church  and  state.  Opposition  of  the 
Roman  emperors  to  the  Nicene  Creed.  Its  final  proclamation  by 
Theodosius,  as  the  Catholic  faith.  The  relation  of  the  Homoousion 
to  the  elevation  and  dignity  of  man.  The  teaching  of  Athanasius. 
His  conflicts  with  the  Empire.  Relation  of  the  Homoousion  to  the 
rise  of  monasticism.  Its  influence  in  Gaul.  Hilary  of  Poitiers. 
Arianism  among  the  barbarians,  and  the  reason  for  its  espousal  by 
them.  The  Homoousion  becomes  the  supreme  issue  of  the  rising 
civilization.  Gregory  of  Tours  and  his  conversations  with  Arians. 
The  addition  of  the  filioque  to  the  Nicene  Creed.  The  so-called 
Athanasian  Creed.  Time  and  place  of  its  origin.  Its  identification 
of  the  Catholic  faith  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  Its  damna- 
tory clauses.  As  a  war-cry  against  Mohammedanism.  The  growth 
of  freedom  in  Gaul.  The  Protestant  Reformers  retain  the  three 
creeds.  In  holding  to  the  Trinity,  they  remained  within  the  pale 
of  the  Catholic  church.  The  Homoousion,  the  social  compact  on 
which  church  and  state  reposed.  The  Reformers  were  aware  of 
its  significance  and  gave  it  the  foremost  place  in  their  Confessions 
of  Faith.     The  case  of  Servetus. 


CHAPTER   III 

The  Historical  Significance  of  the  Miracle   .         .         .       333-345 

What   is   meant   by    Historical  Christianity.      The    importance 
assigned  to  the  miracle  in  the  Apostles'  Creed.     Comparison  in  this 
respect  with  the  early  Eastern  creeds.      Definition  of  the  miracle    . 
varies  in  the  two   churches.     Faith   as  related  to  the   miracle. 


CONTENTS  xvii 


PAGKB 

Results  of  the  miracle  upon  the  idea  of  God  and  the  freedom  of 
man.  It  stands  in  opposition  to  the  nature-worships.  Its  promi- 
nence in  Christianity,  and  its  rejection  by  Buddhism  and  Islam  has 
a  deep  significance.  The  miracle  in  the  Middle  Ages.  Its  relation 
to  the  development  of  the  natural  sciences. 


CHAPTER   IV 

The  Life  of  the  Spirit  —  The   Doctrine  of  the   Atonement  — 

The  Relation  of  the  Divine  to  the  Human    .         .       346-381 

The  silence  of  the  Catholic  creeds,  and  its  explanation.  They 
represent  the  popular  form  of  Christianity  as  represented  by  the 
episcopate  or  the  '  secular '  clei'gy  in  contrast  with  the  monastery, 
where  scientific  theology  had  its  development.  The  coming  of 
Augustine,  and  its  significance  for  the  inner  life  of  thought  and 
experience.  Individualism  and  its  relation  to  theological  inquiry. 
The  doctrine  of  atonement  not  contained  in  the  creeds,  but  is 
prominent  in  Protestant  Confessions  of  Faith.  How  far  the  doc- 
trine was  recognized  in  the  ancient  church,  and  the  shape  which  it 
took.  Ignorance  the  source  of  the  evil  from  which  man  is  delivered. 
Identification  of  humanity  with  Christ.  The  theory  of  a  ransom 
paid  to  iSatan  found  in  Origen  and  the  later  Greek  Fathers,  but  not 
as  their  higher  thought.  Divergence  between  the  Greek  and  Latin 
churches  regarding  the  idea  of  God  and  the  nature  of  man.  Augus- 
tine the  first  to  identify  the  Catholic  church  with  the  kingdom  of 
God.  Change  from  Platonism  to  Ari.stotelianism.  In  the  West, 
God  was  conceived  in  His  essence  as  will  ;  herein  lies  the  explana- 
tion of  the  Latin  conception  of  the  church  and  of  the  papacy,  and  of 
the  later  Augustinian  theology.  Augu.stine  held  the  doctrine  that 
a  ransom  was  paid  to  Satan,  but  it  was  not  his  complete  thought. 
A  great  advance  when  Anselm  taught  that  the  ransom  was  paid  to 
God.  By  his  doctrine  of  atonement  Anselm  overcomes  in  principle 
the  idea  of  God  as  absolute  will  on  which  the  papacy  rested. 
Later  theories  of  atonement  in  the  Latin  church.  Comparison 
between  Calvinism  and  Augustinianism.  The  doctrine  of  atone- 
ment in  recent  Protestant  writers.  The  principle  of  the  Fatherhood 
of  God.  Dr.  Bushnell's  speculations  on  the  subject.  The  value  of 
the  altar  language.  Controversy  regarding  the  Two  Natures.  Nes- 
torianism.  Cyril's  conception  of  the  relation  of  the  divine  and 
human.  The  decision  of  Council  of  Chalcedon.  Deficiencies  of 
the  controversy.  The  principle  at  issue  reappears  in  modern  con- 
troversies regarding  the  divine  and  tlie  human  element  in  Scripture. 
Dangers  of  fusing  the  human  with  the  divine. 


xvm  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER   V 

PAGES 

The  Person  of  Christ   in  Modern  Thought  —  Difficulty  with 

THE  Miracle  —  Anglican  and  German  Theology     .       382-398 

The  stress  of  modern  inquiry  has  been  placed  on  tlie  moral 
character  of  Christ.  Christ  is  conceived  after  the  analogy  of  the 
teacher  who  permeates  humanity  by  his  spiritual  influence.  The 
word  '  teacher '  as  applied  to  Christ  in  the  New  Testament.  Diffi- 
culty of  reconciling  this  conception  of  Christ  with  the  miracle. 
Causes  of  the  modern  repugnance  to  the  miracle.  Kesi-stance  to  the 
miracle  does  not  imply  its  rejection.  Rothe's  view  of  the  miracle. 
The  Protestant  churches,  while  accepting  the  creeds,  vary  in  their 
interpretation  of  them.  There  is  no  necessary  opposition  between 
the  creeds  and  the  theologies.  The  doctrine-histories,  as  supplant- 
ing the  older  method  of  producing  systems  of  theology.  The  , 
distinction  between  creed  and  doctrine.  The  Church  of  England 
gives  theology  expression  in  commentaries  on  the  creeds.  The 
Nicene  Creed  as  the  formula  of  Christian  unity. 


BOOK   III 

CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

CHAPTER   I 

Baptism 399-437 

Value  of  the  two  sacraments,  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper, 
as  expressing  the  essence  of  the  Christian  faith.  Exalted  and  posi- 
tive tone  in  speaking  of  baptism  in  the  early  church.  The  religious 
experience  of  Cyprian.  Changes  which  the  rite  of  baptism  has 
undergone.  The  repetition  of,  forbidden.  The  formula  of  baptism. 
Baptism  in  the  name  of  Jesus  only.  Anonymous  treatise  on  Re- 
baptism  in  the  age  of  Cyprian,  and  combating  his  policy.  The 
meaning  of  Confirmation.  Baptism  preceded  by  an  ethical  training 
in  the  Catechumenate.  Transition  from  adult  to  infant  baptism  ; 
an  expression  of  the  sanctity  of  life.  The  overcoming  of  infanti- 
cide. The  doctrine  of  infant  damnation.  The  Catechumenate  pre- 
ceding baptism  in  the  early  church  gives  way  in  the  Middle  Ages 
to  discipline  after  baptism.  The  'penitential  books'  ;  their  method 
and  value.  "Whosesoever  sins  ye  remit."  The  inward  motive 
and  the  outward  act.  Substitution  in  punishment.  The  doctrine 
of  endless  punishment.  Purgatory.  The  common  treasury  of 
merit.  Indulgences.  Defect  in  the  Mediseval  system  of  disci- 
pline. The  unconscious  aims  of  life.  Martin  Luther.  The  prin- 
ciple of  the  opus  operatum.  The  system  of  discipline  not  retained 
in  the  Lutheran  and  Anglican  churches.  Its  decline  in  the  Re- 
formed  church.      Ethical   modes   and   standards.      The   Book   of 


CONTENTS  XIX 

PACTS 

Common  Prayer.  The  doctrine  of  Election  and  the  Reformed 
church.  Tlie  doctrine  of  Justification  by  Faitli  and  tlie  church 
in  Germany.  Private  judgment.  The  duty  toward  man  and  the 
duty  toward  God.  Tlie  freedom  of  tlie  Christian  man.  Dangers 
which  threaten  freedom.  The  progress  of  the  race  and  of  the  indi- 
vidual.   The  confession  of  St.  Paul,  "  1  have  kept  the  faith." 


CHAPTEE   II 

The  Development  of  Principles  avhich  \ffected  the  Cultus  438-465 

The  line  of  cleavage  in  worship.  The  worship  of  the  monastery 
and  the  ritual  of  the  altar.  Fuller  development  of  the  sacrament 
of  the  altar  in  the  Eastern  church.  The  Latin  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation  met  with  resistance  in  the  West.  Christian  worship 
not  an  imitation  of  the  heathen  mysteries.  The  principles  which 
undei'lay  the  nature-worships.  The  influence  of  Plato  undermined 
the  mythologies.  Its  influence  on  the  church.  Gnosticism  and 
Manichseanism.  The  reaction  of  heathen  religion,  and  the  revival 
of  the  nature-worships.  Its  influence  traced  in  the  ante-Nicene 
age.  Tertullian.  The  Apologists  on  the  lack  of  temples,  altars, 
priesthood,  and  images  in  the  early  church.  The  contempt  for 
Egyptian  worship.  The  expiring  heathenism.  The  place  of 
Egypt  in  religious  history.  Greek  religion.  Neoplatonism.  Its 
relation  to  Gnosticism.  Its  deterioration  and  failure  to  become 
a  religion.  The  principle  of  Monophysitism.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Incarnation.  Athanasius  and  Cyril  of  Alexandria.  The  Anthro- 
pomorphic Controversy.  The  condemnation  of  Origen.  The 
sacramental  theology.  The  final  victory  over  heathenism.  Con- 
trast with  the  development  of  the  Jewish  church. 

CHAPTER   III 

The  Christian  Cultus 466-514 

The  weekly  cycle.  The  Christian  year.  Coincidence  of  Easter 
with  the  season  of  spring  in  the  natural  year.  Epiphany.  Its 
parallelism  with  nature.  Difference  in  the  interpretation  of,  in  the 
Eastern  and  Western  churches.  Christmas  Day.  Why  it  came  so 
late.  Its  relation  to  Epiphany  ;  to  the  Incarnation ;  to  heathen 
contemporaneous  festivals.  The  Christian  drama  of  life.  The 
consecration  of  matter.  Tertullian  on  the  water  of  baptism.  The 
symbol  and  the  thing  signified.  The  physical  sign  as  possessing  a 
spiritual  potency.  The  elements  of  bread  and  wine.  The  teaching 
of  Gregory  of  Nyssa.  The  worship  of  saints,  images,  and  relics. 
The  two  conceptions  of  the  Incarnation.  Meaning  of  the  expres- 
sion, "  The  Word  was  made  flesh."  The  resurrection  of  the  body. 
The  Holy  Spirit  as  the  bond  uniting  the  spiritual  and  the  material. 
The  deification  of  the  flesh.     The  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mother. 


XX  CONTENTS 

PAGES 

The  reverence  for  relics.  The  power  of  the  sign  of  the  cross.  The 
nature-philosophy.  Love  of  nature  in  the  Oriental  church.  Bear- 
ing upon  the  detiuition  of  the  miracle.  The  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  the  Western  church.  Uionysius  the  Areopagite. 
His  personality.  Influenced  by  the  Neoplatonic  philosophy. 
Wherein  he  ditfers  from  it.  The  Heavenly  Hierarchy.  The  prin- 
ciple of  mediation.  The  ministry  of  angels.  The  Earthly  Hie- 
rarchy. The  number  of  the  Christian  mysteries.  Significance  of 
ritual  acts.  Use  of  the  name  '  Jesus  '  by  Dionysius.  His  conception 
of  the  symbol  and  its  necessity.  But  the  enlightened  soul  gazes 
upon  the  reality.  Treatise  on  the  Divine  Names.  The  nature  of 
evil  in  the  thought  of  Dionysius.  The  Greek  and  Latin  anthropol- 
ogies.    Influence  of  Dionysius  in  Western  Christendom. 

CHAPTER   IV 

The  Lord's  Supper  ........      515-565 

Its  relation  to  the  Agape.  References  to  the  Agape  in  the 
Didache  and  in  the  Epistles  of  Ignatius.  Justin  Martyr's  account 
of  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  Transference  of  the 
Eucharist  from  the  evening  to  the  morning,  and  the  reasons  forv 
the  change.  The  Lord's  Supper  in  the  writings  of  Clement  of 
Alexandria.  The  final  prohibition  of  the  Agape.  The  Lord's 
Supper  a  protest  against  Docetism  and  an  ultra-spiritualism  which 
underrated  the  body  and  the  material  world.  In  what  sense  the 
word  '  sacrifice '  was  connected  with  the  Eucharist  in  the  early 
church.  The  essence  of  sacrifice  in  the  transfiguration  of  life  in 
the  presence  of  God.  The  Clementine  liturgy.  Tertullian  on  the 
power  of  simplicity  in  worship.  Transition  to  an  imposing  ritual. 
The  dramatization  of  the  last  supper  of  Christ  with  His  disciples. 
The  rubrical  injunctions  of  the  Clementine  liturgy.  The  eucha- 
ristic  prayer.  The  Great  Entrance.  The  oblation  of  the  conse- 
crated elements.  The  worship  of  the  elements  before  consecration. 
The  principle  of  ceremonial  worship  as  given  by  Gregory  of  Nyssa. 
The  commemoration  of  nature  in  the  Greek  liturgies  is  absent 
from  the  Roman  Mass.  The  invocation  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which 
in  the  Greek  conception  is  essential  to  the  transmutation  of  the 
elements,  also  wanting  in  the  Roman  Mass.  Description  of  the 
ritual  of  the  altar  by  Dionysius.  Indebtedness  of  the  Oriental 
type  of  worship  to  the  influence  of  Dionysius.  Analogy  between 
the  worship  of  heaven  and  earth.  The  comment  of  Symeon,  Arch- 
bishop of  Thessalonica,  upon  the  meaning  of  the  Greek  rite.  Dis- 
tinctive features  of  the  Roman  Mass.  Its  penitential  character. 
It  reflects  the  influences  of  the  age  when  it  was  taking  form.  The 
Greek  liturgies  contain  a  deeper  eucharistic  element.  God  is 
represented  as  the  actor  and  agency  in  the  Greek  ritual,  while  in 
the  Latin  the  agency  of  the  priest  is  more  prominent.  The  ten- 
dency of  the  Greek  liturgy  toward  rhetorical  fulness  as  compared 


CONTENTS  xxi 


with  the  terseness  and  brevity  of  the  Latin.  Comparison  of  the 
coronation  rites  in  the  two  churches.  The  Latin  Sacramentum  and 
the  Greek  Musterion  convey  differing  ideas  which  are  still  perpetu- 
ated. The  doctrine  of  intention.  Explanation  of  its  origin.  The 
decision  of  the  Roman  church  in  regard  to  intention  at  the  Council 
of  Trent.  The  value  of  the  ancient  liturgies  as  bearing  witness  to 
the  common  Christian  experience.  Decline  of  creative  ritual  activ- 
ity after  the  fifteenth  century.  Deficiency  of  Greek  ritual.  Its 
hints  of  higher  possibilities  have  since  been  realized.  Wordsworth 
and  Dionysius.  The  revelations  of  science  and  of  modern  art. 
The  rejection  of  transubstantiation  by  the  Protestant  churches  as 
final.  The  true  sacrifice  must  include  the  worship  of  God  with 
the  mind  as  well  as  with  the  heart. 

Index 567-577 


The  institutions  of  Christianity  may  be  classed  under 
three  heads :  the  Organization  of  the  Church,  its  Creeds, 
and  its  Cultus  or  Worship.  By  the  word  'institution'  is 
to  be  understood  the  outward  form  or  embodiment,  which 
the  spirit  of  Christianity  assumes,  corresponding  to  some 
inward  mode  of  apprehending  the  Christian  faith.  Hence 
there  is  a  deep  significance  in  the  phases  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical organization,  as  well  as  in  the  articles  of  the  creed, 
or  the  divers  aspects  of  the  cultus.  To  detect  fluctuations 
in  the  inward  apprehension  of  the  divine  reality,  beneath 
the  changes  of  external  form,  should  be  the  object  of  any 
inquiry  into  Christian  institutions. 

There  have  been  two  epochs  in  the  history  of  the  Chris- 
tian church  which  have  stamped  themselves  upon  its  exter- 
nal features.  In  the  second  century,  the  process  began 
of  translating  Christianity  into  terms  which  should  be 
intelligible  in  the  Roman  Empire.  The  result  of  this 
process  is  known  as  Catholicism,  whether  Greek  or  Roman. 
It  included  the  remoulding  of  the  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion, under  the  influence  of  the  Roman  genius  for  admin- 
istration and  government  and  law.  The  Roman  spirit 
dictated  the  form  of  the  church,  and  handed  it  over  to 
the  East  as  its  contribution  to  the  triumph  of  Christianity 
within  the  bounds  of  the  Empire.  But  Rome  did  noth- 
ing for  theology.  It  was  Greece  which  contributed  the 
language  and  the  forms  of  thought  into  which  should  be 
rendered  the  spirit  and  the  meaning  of  the  new  religion. 
The  Greek  interpretation  of  Christianity  as  a  principle  of 


2  CHRISTIAN   INSTITUTIONS 

life  or  a  formula  of  thought  took  shape  in  the  Nicene 
Creed,  which  was  received  by  Rome,  and  became  the 
watchword  of  the  Catholic  faith.  And  again,  the  cul- 
tus  of  the  church  was  influenced  in  its  external  form  by 
the  spirit  of  old  religion,  especially  the  ancient  Mysteries, 
in  which  the  deep  moral  earnestness  of  a  dying  world  was 
seeking  expression  when  Christianity  appeared.  These 
were  alike  a  preparation  for  the  fulness  of  time  :  the 
Roman  genius  for  government  and  administration,  Greek 
philosophy,  and  the  ancient  Mysteries  of  Oriental  origin. 
They  constituted  as  it  were  the  language  which  Christian- 
ity must  adopt,  if  it  was  to  make  the  conquest  of  the 
Empire  for  Christ. 

The  Roman  Empire  constituted  the  world  into  which 
Christianity  was  born,  wherein  also  it  sought  and  found 
its  opportunity.  There  were  Christian  missions  in  coun- 
tries outside  the  Empire,  in  Arabia,  in  Persia,  and  it  is 
said  in  India,  but  they  left  no  permanent  impression.  The 
Christian  faith  did  not  overcome  Arabian  idolatry,  or  Per- 
sian dualism,  and  as  to  India  it  left  no  traces  there  of  its 
presence.  This  is  remarkable,  because  at  a  later  time  Islam 
entered  these  countries  and  either  made  them  its  own  or, 
as  in  India,  established  itself  by  the  side  of  the  dominant 
faith.  But  of  all  these  countries  it  may  be  said  that  they 
had  no  immediate  future  ;  they  were  not,  then  at  least, 
called  to  any  high  function  in  the  service  of  humanity. 
The  open  door  which  admitted  to  world-wide  opportuni- 
ties was  the  Roman  Empire.  Through  that  door  the 
Christian  church  entered  in  and  took  possession. 

Although  Christianity  took  form  as  Catholicism  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  be  intelligible  and  impressive  to 
the  ancient  world  within  the  bounds  of  the  Empire,  yet 
beneath  the  outward  garb  of  Catholicity  or  its  partial  form, 
there  was  always  working  the  original  spirit  ot"  Christ's 
religion.  The  organization  of  the  Catholic  church  was 
forced  to  adapt  itself  to  Monasticism,  in  which  was  per- 
petuated, in  obscure  and  even  obnoxious  ways,  the  purer 
purpose  of  the  earlier  church  as  it  may  be  read  in  the 
teachings  of    Christ  and  the    writings  of   Apostles   and 


CHRISTIAN   INSTITUTIONS  3 

Apostolic  men,  —  the  direct  relation  of  the  individual 
soul  with  God.  Beneath  the  terminology  of  theological 
discussions  may  always  be  detected  the  simple  issue  of 
the  relation  of  the  Son  of  God  to  the  Eternal  Father. 
Beneath  the  ritual  and  the  rich  complexity  of  the  cultus 
there  is  preserved  a  trace  of  the  original  institution  of  the 
Lord's  supper,  when  Christ  broke  the  bread  and  admin- 
istered the  cup,  as  effectual  symbols  of  the  food  by  which 
God  nourishes  His  children. 

In  the  rise  of  Protestantism,  which  constitutes  the  second 
great  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  church,  the  effort  was 
made  to  separate  the  purely  Christian  motives  from  those 
forms  of  Catliolicism,  which  had  become  unintelligible 
and  unprofitable  to  the  new  age.  The  decline  of  the 
mediaeval  Catholic  church  was  contemporaneous  with  the 
decline  and  final  disappearance  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
as  a  factor  in  human  history.  Wherever  the  influence  of 
the  Reformation  was  felt,  there  was  a  change  in  the  organi- 
zation of  the  church  in  order  to  the  better  reflection  and 
expression  of  the  human  spirit,  set  free  from  an  arbitrary 
external  authority.  There  was  as  deep  an  instinct  at 
work  in  the  reorganization  of  the  Protestant  churches  as 
there  had  been  in  the  second  and  third  centuries,  when 
Catholicism  arose.  In  the  place  of  administration  as  the 
means  of  highest  grace  was  substituted  the  preaching  of 
the  word.  The  Catholic  creeds  were  retained,  but  their 
interpretation  was  changed  to  bring  them  into  closer 
harmony  with  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  with  the  higher 
and  more  spiritual  consciousness  of  the  new  era.  The 
Catholic  ritual  and  cultus  was  either  abandoned  or  sim- 
plified in  varying  degrees,  but  so  as  to  bring  into  greater 
clearness  its  original  germ,  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's 
supper.  In  place  of  the  worship  of  the  human,  was  restored 
the  worship  of  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

But  beneath  all  these  changes  there  was  still  retained 
by  the  Protestant  churches  whatever  was  true  or  vital 
in  Catholicism,  so  that  there  was  no  break  in  the  higher 
reality  of  a  continuous  life  in  the  Christian  ages.  The 
Protestants  claimed,  or  were  entitled  to  claim,  had  they 


4  CHRISTIAN   INSTITUTIONS 

eared  to  do  so,  the  designation  of  Catholic,  since  they 
clung  to  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  and  in  re- 
taining the  Catholic  canon  of  Scripture  preserved  their 
unbroken  succession  from  the  Apostles.  If  this  conscious- 
ness of  the  continuous  life  of  the  church  was  for  a  while 
weakened  or  obscured,  it  was  in  order  to  a  deeper  hold 
upon  the  truth  which  Catholicism  had  neglected.  It 
is  a  characteristic  of  the  present  age  that  it  finds  its 
surest  apology  for  the  Christian  faith,  not  only  in  the 
appeal  which  that  faith  still  makes  to  the  soul,  but  also 
in  the  fact  that  God  has  never  left  Himself  without  a  wit- 
ness in  the  past,  that  there  has  been  an  unbroken  succes- 
sion of  the  sons  of  God  in  every  generation,  who  have 
borne  witness  to  the  power  of  His  Word,  handing  on  to 
those  who  follow  the  torch  of  light  and  truth  amid  the 
surrounding  darkness,  until  humanity  should  step  forth 
into  the  fuller  day. 


CHRISTIAN    INSTITUTIONS 

Book  I 

THE   ORaANIZATION  OF   THE   CHURCH 
CHAPTER    I 

HISTORICAL   SURVEY 

The  form  which  the  government  of  the  church  assumes 
in  any  given  age  is  not  an  accident,  but  must  be  regarded 
as  an  outward  expression  of  a  spirit  working  from  within 
—  the  embodiment  of  some  intelligible  purpose.  Just  as 
a  deep  significance  attaches  to  the  variations  of  Christian 
doctrine,  so  also  there  is  a  meaning  in  the  changes  which 
have  taken  place  in  ecclesiastical  organization.  They  do 
not  come  by  chance  or  as  a  result  of  negligence  or  indif- 
ference, nor  are  they  imposed  by  usurpation  upon  an 
unwilling  people.  Differing  forms  of  church  government 
become  as  it  were  a  language,  in  which  may  be  read  the 
peculiar  genius  of  a  nation,  or  the  motives  which  are 
supreme  at  any  moment  in  history,  or  the  diverse  inter- 
pretations of  the  Christian  spirit,  or  the  varied  results 
which  the  churches  desire  to  accomplish.  In  the  history 
of  ecclesiastical  organizations  ma}^  be  discerned  the  succes- 
sive phases  of  civilization,  no  less  than  the  epochs  of 
growth  through  which  the  church  as  a  whole  has  passed, 
in  accordance  with  a  law  of  progress  which  it  is  impossible 
to  evade. 

The  distinctive  form  of  the  ministry  in  the  Apostolic 
age  slowly  gave  way  in  the  second  century  to  a  type  of 
organization  generated  by  the  necessities  of  the  age  which 
called  for  a  centralized  administration,  as  the  best  method 
in  any  community  for  the  attainment  of  inward  harmony. 


6  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

A  bishop  or  pastor  was  made  supreme  in  the  local  church, 
without  whose  sanction  no  ecclesiastical  functions  should 
be  performed.  But  this  type  of  government  was  in  pro- 
cess of  change  from  the  moment  of  its  birth.  Beneath  the 
bishop  or  pastor  grew  up  the  order  of  the  presbyters,  who 
gradually  assumed  the  more  important  functions  of  the 
bishop,  while  the  bishop  became  more  closely  identified 
with  the  administration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs.  But 
above  the  bishoj)s  there  rose  the  metropolitans,  who  in 
their  turn  were  subjected  in  the  Eastern  churches  to  the 
authority  of  the  patriarch,  the  impersonation  of  the  cause 
of  national  unity.  But  the  spirit  of  nationality  was  not 
operative  in  the  Western  church  at  the  time  when  it  was 
the  most  potent  factor  in  Oriental  Christendom.  In  the 
West,  therefore,  in  place  of  national  unity  as  the  control- 
ling motive,  there  was  substituted  the  unity  of  ecclesias- 
tical empire,  where  the  Bishop  of  Rome  developed  slowly 
into  the  Roman  papacy.  When  the  Reformation  came,  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  the  new-born  spirit  of  nationality 
was  the  expanding  force  which  broke  down  the  papal 
supremacy,  leaving  the  nations  free  to  readjust  the  organ- 
ization of  the  churches  in  the  different  states  of  Europe  in 
accordance  with  a  truer  apprehension  of  the  nature  of 
Christ's  religion,  or  the  best  method  of  promoting  its 
growth. 


The  conflicts  between  the  churches  from  the  time  of  the 
Reformation  raised  the  question  of  the  origin  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry.  When  Papacy,  Presbytery,  and  Episcopacy 
were  struggling  against  each  other,  as  if  in  mortal  combat, 
the  adherents  of  each  of  these  divergent  ecclesiastical  poli- 
ties sought  for  its  sanction  the  prestige  of  Apostolic  usage 
or  authority.  The  heritage  of  that  age  of  rivalry  and  an- 
tagonism has  descended  to  our  own  day,  creating  presump- 
tions and  prejudices  from  which  it  is  difficult  to  escape, 
which  may  still,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  condition  the 
methods  and  the  results  of  any  inquiry  into  the  origin  of 
the  ministry.     It  was  in  England  that  the  controversy  was 


HISTORICAL    SURVEY  7 

waged  most  bitterly  between  Puritans  and  Anglicans,  as 
to  wliether  presbytery  or  episcopacy  could  claim  the  sanc- 
tion of  divine  right.  Into  the  merits  of  this  controversy 
it  is  not  possible  to  enter  here,  but  a  brief  summary  may 
be  given  of  the  argument  on  either  side.  In  order,  how- 
ever, to  appreciate  the  relative  situation  of  the  combat- 
ants, it  will  be  necessary  to  go  back  for  a  moment  to  the 
early  church,  where  the  first  hints  are  to  be  detected  of  a 
process  which  eventually  ripened  into  the  open  revolt  of 
the  later  age. 

It  was  St.  Jerome  (f  420)  who  first  questioned  the  divine 
right  of  that  form  of  church  government  known  as  episco- 
pacy. TertuUian,  indeed,  some  two  centuries  earlier,  had 
asserted  that  the  distinction  between  presbyters  and 
bishops  was  a  matter  of  human  arrangement;  but  Ter- 
tuUian's  defection  from  the  Catholic  church  weakened 
the  force  of  his  later  opinions.  When  Jerome  lived, 
episcopacy  in  some  form  had  been  long  established,  in 
accordance  with  which  those  ministers  who  preached  and 
ministered  the  sacraments,  and  were  known  as  presbyters, 
were  under  the  authority  of  another  class  of  ministers 
known  as  bishops.  It  was  Jerome's  contention  that 
bishops  and  jji'esbyters  were  of  equal  authority  in  the 
beginning  of  Christ's  religion,  that  the  terms  '  presbyter  ' 
and  'bishop'  were  synonymous  expressions  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  that  the  placing  of  the  bishop  above  the 
presbyter  was  an  ecclesiastical  arrangement  which  was 
made  in  consequence  of  schisms  and  other  disorders  in 
the  churches. 

While  the  statement  of  Jerome,  or  his  challenge,  as  it 
has  been  sometimes  regarded,  awoke  no  controversy  in 
the  church,  yet  it  is  significant  to  note  that  his  criticism 
attracted  attention  and  was  not  forgotten.  In  the  Middle 
Ages,  the  memory  of  it  was  perpetuated  in  the  Corpus 
Juris  Canonici,  in  which  was  inserted  his  remark  about 
the  original  equality  of  bishops  and  presbyters.^     It  could 

1  Cf.  Decrrti,  Pars  I.,  Distinct.  95,  c.  5.  The  Canon  is  headed 
"Presbyter  idem  est  qui  et  episcopus  ac  sola  consuetudine  presbyteris 
episcopi  presunt";   and  the  evidence  in  support  of  this  proposition  is 


8  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE   CHURCH 

not,  then,  have  wholly  surprised  the  learned  world  in  the 
age  before  the  Reformation  when  Marsilius  of  Padua,  in 
his  Defensor  Pads,  reaffirmed  the  statement  of  Jerome 
that  in  the  New  Testament  bishop  and  presbyter  are  con- 
vertible designations  of  the  same  office.  Marsilius,  in 
advocating  the  reduction  of  ecclesiastical  power,  felt  that 
he  stood  on  unimpeachable  ground,  when  he  affirmed 
that  existing  ecclesiastical  arrangements  have  no  sanction 
in  Scripture.^  To  the  testimony  of  Jerome,  Wycliffe  also 
appealed  in  his  Trialogus,  where  he  maintained  that  the 
office  of  presbyter  carried  the  highest  functions  of  the 
Christian  ministry,  as  the  preaching  of  the  Word  and 
the  cure  of  souls. ^ 

In  the  revolutions  of  the  sixteenth  century,  ecclesiasti- 
cal episcopacy  was  abolished  by  the  Lutheran  church  in 
Germany  and  Denmark,  as  also  by  the  Reformed  church 
of  Calvin,  on  the  ground  that  it  had  no  warrant  in  Script- 
ure, seeing  that  bishop  and  presbyter  were  different  terms 
standing  for  the  same  office.  Even  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, where  the  episcopate  was  retained,  the  same  view 
found  expression  in  the  utterances  of  the  bishops  and  others 
when  the  question  was  propounded,  "whether  bishops  or 
priests  were  first,  and  if  the   priests  were  first,  then  the 

drawn  from  Jerome:  "Item  Jeronimus  supra  epistolam  ad  Titum,  olim 
idem  presbyter,  qui  et  episcopus,  et  antequam  diaboli  instinctu  studia  in 
religione  fierant,  et  diceretur  in  populis :  Ego  sum  Pauli,  ego  sum  Apollo, 
ego  sum  Caphae,  communi  presbyterorum  consilio  ecclesiae  guberna- 
bantur.  Postquam  autem  unusquisque  eos,  quos  baptizauerat  suos  esse 
putabit,  non  Christi,  in  toto  orbe  decretum  est,  ut  uuus  de  presbyteris 
superponesetur  et  scismatum  semina  tollerentur.  Et  paulo  post:  §  1. 
Sicut  ergo  presbyteri  sciunt,  se  ex  ecclesiae  consuetudine  ei,  qui  sibi 
propositus  fuerit,  esse  subjectos,  ita  episcopi  nouerint  se  magis  consuetu- 
dine quam  dispensationis  dominicae  veritate  presbyteris  esse  maiores,  et 
in  communi  debere  ecclesiam  regere." 

1  "  Ecce  quod  in  ecclesia  unius  municipii  plures  allocutus  est  apostolus 
tanquam  episcopus,  quod  non  fuit  nisi  propter  sacerdotum  pluralitatem, 
qui  omnes  episcopi  dicebantur,  propter  hoc,  quod  superintendentes  esse 
debebant  populo."  Fol.  239.  Marsilius  is  commenting  on  Paul's  farewell 
address  at  Miletus.     Cf.  Neander, C/o'/s.  His.,  Vol.  IX.,  p.  44.    Bohn  ed. 

2  "  Unum  audacter  assero,  quod  in  primitiva  ecclesia  ut  tempore  Pauli 
puffecerunt  duo  ordines  clericorum,  scilicet  sacerdos  atque  diaconus. 
Secundo  dico,  quod  in  tempore  ai^ostoli  fuit  idem  presbyter  atque  episco- 
pus ;  patet  1  Tim.  iii.  et  ad  Titum  i."  (  Trialogns,  IV.  15,  p.  296). 


HISTORICAL    SURVEY  9 

priests  made  the  bishop?"  The  answers  to  this  question 
reveal  a  wide  difference  of  opinion  among  the  bishops  and 
leading  divines  who  were  consulted;  some  maintaining 
that  the  Apostles,  who  were  depositaries  of  power  be- 
queathed to  them  by  Christ,  had  in  turn  delegated  their 
powers  to  their  successors,  who  were  bishops,  and  that 
priests  had  never  been  made  except  by  bishops.  Others, 
among  wliom  were  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the 
Bishop  of  London,  thought  that  bishops  may  have  origi- 
nally been  made  by  presbyters  or  priests,  or  that  it  was 
a  matter  of  slight  consequence,  if  it  had  been  so.  It  is 
interesting  to  note  in  these  replies  the  appeal  to  Jerome's 
statement,  as  if  it  carried  in  it  the  weight  of  axiom,  "as 
Jerome  saith  in  an  epistle  to  Evagrius."^  When  the 
Puritans,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  questioned  the 
authority  of  the  bishops,  it  was  on  the  ground  that  this 
ancient  office  found  no  support  in  Scripture.  Instead  of 
the  threefold  order  of  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  retained 
in  the  Church  of  England,  the  Puritans  held  that  the 
New  Testament  recognized  four  classes  or  kinds  of  min- 
isters, —  doctors  or  teachers,  pastors,  elders,  and  deacons.^ 
Neither  Whitgift,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  nor 
Hooker,  who  both  replied  to  the  Puritans,  defended 
Episcopacy  on  the  ground  that  it  was  expressly  set 
forth  in  the  New  Testament  as  the  only  and  divine  order 
of  church  government.  Whitgift  thought  the  church 
had  been  left  free  in  this  respect,  to  adapt  its  government 
to  the  circumstances  of  the  age  or  people  in  which  its  lot 
was  cast.     Hooker  held  that  order  was  divine,  but  that 

1  Cf.  Burnet,  History  of  the  Reformation  of  the  Church  of  England, 
Vol.  IV.,  where  the  original  documents  are  given.  See  also  The  Catechism, 
in  Becon's  Work,  Parker  Soc.  ed.,  p.  319:  ^^  Father.  What  difference 
is  there  between  a  bishop  and  a  spiritual  minister  ?  Son.  None  at  all : 
their  office  is  one,  their  authority  and  power  is  one.  And  therefore 
St.  Paul  calleth  the  spiritual  ministers  sometime  bishops,  sometime 
elders,  sometime  pastors,  sometime  teachers,  etc."  Becon  was  chaplain 
to  Archbishop  Cranmer  and  Prebendary  of  Canterbury,  and  wrote  in 
the  reign  of  King  Edward  VI.  There  is  ground  for  thinking  that 
Cranmer  may  have  changed  his  opinion  on  this  question. 

2  Cf.  Contemp.  Books  of  Discipline  in  Appendix  to  Briggs,  C.  A., 
American  Presbyterianism. 


10  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

no  fixed  order  was  prescribed  by  Scripture.  He  parried 
the  criticism  on  the  episcopate,  made  in  the  name  of 
Jerome,  by  the  remark  that  "  things  are  always  ancienter 
than  their  names,"  and  so  there  may  have  been  bishops 
in  reality,  while  yet  the  names  of  bishops  and  presbyters 
were  interchangeable.  The  truth  of  this  remark  has 
been  to  a  certain  extent  borne  out  by  later  research. 

It  was  during  this  phase  of  the  controversy  that  the 
preface  to  the  ordinal  had  been  set  forth  by  the  Anglican 
church,  in  which  it  is  declared  that  "  It  is  evident  to  all 
men  diligently  reading  Holy  Scripture  and  ancient  Au- 
thors, that  from  the  Apostles'  time  there  have  been 
these  orders  of  ministers  in  Christ's  Church, — Bishops, 
Priests,  and  Deacons."  The  caution  and  moderation  of 
this  position  is  apparent  when  we  take  into  view  the 
confusion  caused  by  Jerome's  statement.  It  is  not  af- 
firmed that  Holy  Scripture  by  itself  is  sufficient  to  demon- 
strate the  existence  of  the  episcopate,  but  that  Scripture 
does  so  when  supplemented  by  ancient  authors.  Nor  is 
it  declared  that  the  episcopate  existed  in  the  age  of  the 
Apostles,  but  "from  their  time,"  which  may  be  inter- 
preted as  during  their  time  or  immediately  afterwards. 
Had  the  conviction  prevailed  that  the  Apostles  ordered 
the  episcopate,  as  the  permanent  divine  form  of  the 
church's  government,  there  would  not  have  been  this 
moderation  or  even  ambiguity  of  language.  We  may  take 
Lord  Bacon  as  representing  a  widespread  and  intelligent 
sentiment  in  the  Church  of  England,  in  the  view  which 
he  put  forth  that  Episcopacy  is  not  ojjposed  to  Scripture, 
but  that  the  Scripture  does  not  prescribe  any  fixed,  unal- 
terable form  of  ecclesiastical  polity. 

But  a  great  change  of  attitude  on  this  question  was 
coming  over  the  Church  of  England,  Avhich  began  to 
appear  in  the  later  years  of  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth. 
It  was  signalled  by  the  sermon  of  Bishop  Bancroft  at  St. 
Paul's  Cross  in  1588,  in  which  he  amazed  the  Puritans  by 
boldly  defending  Episcopacy  on  the  ground  of  its  divine 
institution.  Jerome's  statement  no  longer  embarrassed 
him,   for  did  not  Jerome  also  add,  that  the  bishop  had 


HISTORICAL    SURVEY  11 

been  placed  above  the  presbyter  for  the  purpose  of  pre- 
venting that  confusion  which  the  Puritans  were  now  again 
creating  by  refusing  to  listen  to  the  bishops  ?  From  this 
time  it  was  sought  to  determine  the  question  of  the  origin 
of  the  ministry  by  the  closer  study  of  the  New  Testament, 
though  among  Anglican  writers  the  testimony  of  the 
Fathers  was  not  neglected.  In  the  work  of  Bishop  Hall, 
Episcopacy  htj  Divine  Right  Asserted^  written  in  1640, 
and  it  is  said  at  the  suggestion  of  Archbishop  Laud,  the 
New  Testament  argument  for  Episcopacy  is  based  on  the 
Pastoral  Letters  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  who  are  regarded 
as  diocesan  bishops  possessing  the  Apostolic  sanction, 
and  therefore  of  divine  origin.  What  St.  Paul  had  done 
for  the  churches  of  Ephesus  and  Crete,  the  other  Apostles 
must  also  have  done  for  the  churches  which  they  planted. 
That  they  must  have  done  so  is  further  inferred  from  the 
fact  of  the  universal  prevalence  of  the  episcopate  in  the 
age  following  the  Apostles.  It  would  be  absurd  to  sup- 
pose that  this  was  a  new  form  of  church  government  set 
up  after  the  death  of  the  Apostles  by  the  ancient  fathers. 
And  further  it  is  claimed  for  this  position,  that  bishops 
were  spoken  of  by  these  fathers,  such  as  Irenoeus  and 
Tertullian,  as  successors  of  the  Apostles,  and  that  this 
seems  to  have  been  the  universal  belief.  By  this  mode  of 
argument  Hall  sought  to  overcome  the  embarrassment 
caused  by  Jerome's  statement,  that  in  the  beginning  of 
Christ's  religion  the  terms  bishop  and  presbyter  were  but 
different  names  for  one  and  the  same  office.  As  Jerome 
had  not  specified  at  what  time  or  by  what  authority  the 
bishop  was  distinguished  from  and  elevated  above  the 
presbyter,  it  was  open  to  affirm  that  the  change  had  been 
made  with  the  authority  or  divine  sanction  of  the  Apos- 
tles themselves.^ 

1  Bishop  Hall  quoted  Clement  of  Rome,  who  lived  at  the  close  of  the 
Apostolic  age,  as  asserting  distinctly  that  the  Apostles  foresaw  that  there 
would  be  strife  about  the  offices  of  the  church,  and  had  therefore  them- 
selves appointed  men  to  govern  the  church,  who  should  take  their  places 
when  they  were  departed.  He  also  alhided  to  Ignatius,  who  had  told  the 
church  to  do  nothing  without  the  bishops  and  to  be  subject  to  their 
authority  as  to  the  voice  of  God. 


12  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 

Bishop  Hall's  book  on  Episcopacy  by  Divine  Right  was 
answered  by  Smectymnuus,  a  joint  work  of  several  Puri- 
tan writers.  Their  position,  like  that  of  Hall,  is  interest- 
ing for  its  historical  value,  as  presenting  the  method 
which  was  to  be  substantially  followed  in  the  controversy 
down  to  the  present  day.  In  the  reply  to  Bishop  Hall, 
the  Puritans  urged  the  statement  of  Jerome,  which  no 
one  who  carefully  read  the  New  Testament  could  deu}^, 
that  originally  bishops  and  presbyters  were  but  one  oifice. 
In  Timothy  and  Titus  they  saw  only  the  temporary  office 
of  an  evangelist,  moving  from  place  to  place,  whose  busi- 
ness it  was  to  plant  or  organize  churches  according  to  the 
presbyterial  scheme,  in  which  presbyters  (or  bishops) 
should  have  the  supreme  authority.  Neither  Timothy  nor 
Titus  were  called  '  bishops, '  nor  were  they  placed  perma- 
nently at  Ephesus  or  Crete,  nor  were  they  ordered  while 
they  remained  there  to  appoint  bishops  who  should  be 
superior  to  presbyters,  but  rather  to  appoint  presbyters,  as 
they  had  also  received  their  own  office,  by  the  laying  on  of 
hands  of  the  presbytery.  From  their  study  of  ancient  his- 
tory they  saw  also  that  those  who  were  called  bishops  in 
the  second  century  were  not  the  diocesan  bishops  of  a 
later  time,  but  held  an  office  corresponding  more  nearly 
with  that  of  the  pastor  in  charge  of  a  local  church. 

Many  of  the  most  prominent  men  of  the  seventeenth 
century  took  part  in  the  controversy,  among  others  John 
Milton,  whose  study  of  Catholic  antiquity  for  the  purpose 
of  solving  the  problem  of  prelacy  gave  him  a  sense  of  its 
worthlessness  as  far  as  an}^  honest  or  valuable  testimony 
was  concerned.  Ussher  and  Stillingfleet,  Pearson,  Ham- 
mond, and  Jeremy  Taylor,  and  Richard  Baxter  continued 
the  discussion,  which  led  to  no  agreement  in  opinion. 
There  was  no  clear  picture  of  the  actual  situation  in  the 
early  church  before  the  minds  of  the  combatants,  nor  was 
there  sufficient  knowledge  of  that  distant  age  to  afford 
material  for  such  a  picture.  The  facts  of  history  were 
mingled  with  assumptions  and  a  priori  interpretations. 
Jeremy  Taylor  suggested  a  departure  from  the  usual  form 
of  the  argument,  when  he  maintained  that   the  Apostles 


HISTORICAL    SURVEY  13 

were  originally  the  bishops  but  did  not  take  that  name, 
and  that  they  appointed  presbyters  (or  bishops)  and  dea- 
cons, thus  making  up  the  threefold  order.  When  the 
Apostles  departed,  those  whom  they  had  appointed  to  suc- 
ceed in  the  office  of  oversight  gradually  came  to  be  known 
as  bishops,  so  that  the  names  'bishop  '  and  'presbyter,' 
which  were  at  first  interchangeable,  came  to  be  distin- 
guished from  each  other.  But  the  difficulty  raised  by 
Jerome's  statement  was  not  overcome  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  It  was  open  to  Anglicans  to  infer  that  bishops 
were  meant  where  presbyters  were  mentioned ;  or  to  Puri- 
tans, to  maintain  that  presbyters  were  to  be  understood 
where  bishops  were  mentioned.  But  what  is  most  note- 
worthy in  the  long  dissension  is  the  reversal  of  attitudes  by 
the  two  parties.  It  was  Puritans,  and  not  Anglicans,  wlio 
in  the  sixteenth  century  maintained  that  the  New  Testa- 
ment gave  divine  sanction  to  a  certain  fixed  ecclesiastical 
order.  But  in  the  following  century  the  Anglicans  moved 
on  to  the  Puritan  ground,  while  the  Puritans  tended 
toward  the  attitude  of  Whitgift  and  Hooker,  that  no  form 
of  church  government  is  authoritatively  prescribed  by 
Scripture,  that  the  form  is  a  matter  of  indifference  pro- 
vided that  a  stable  order  be  maintained.  But  it  was  a 
loss  to  the  Puritans  when  they  yielded  their  contention 
that  the  ministry  of  their  churches  was  by  divine  right, 
or,  in  other  words,  possessed  the  explicit  sanction  of  the 
New  Testament. 

If  the  Anglicans  never  quite  escaped  the  embarrassment 
caused  by  Jerome's  statement,  their  opponents  also  en- 
countered an  equal  difficulty  when  the  appeal  was  taken 
to  antiquity  and  ancient  authors.  In  the  earlier  stages  of 
the  argument  the  writings  of  Ignatius  had  received  but 
little  notice.  So  far  as  his  Epistles  were  known,  it  was 
in  the  Long  Greek  Recension,  concerning  which  Calvin 
had  reflected  the  sober  Protestant  sentiment,  when  he 
remarked  that  "  nothing  can  be  more  nauseating  than  the 
absurdities  which  have  been  published  under  the  name  of 
Ignatius."  But  in  1644,  Archbishop  Ussher  published  his 
edition  of  the  Shorter  Greek  Recension,  then  recently  dis- 


14  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

covered  in  a  Latin  version,  which  consisted  of  seven  letters 
only,  and  these  free  from  the  anachronisms  and  absurd- 
ities of  the  longer  recension.  The  genuineness  of  this 
shorter  recension  was  ably  defended  by  Bishop  Pearson. 
In  these  writings,  which  if  genuine  belonged  to  the  early 
years  of  the  second  century  (a.d.  110-117),  there  was  no 
longer  any  interchangeable  use  of  the  names  '  bishop  '  and 
'  presbyter  ' ;  but  three  orders  were  sharply  distinguished, 
—  bishops,  presbyters,  and  deacons.  Not  only  so,  but  the 
authority  of  the  bishop  was  magnified  to  an  extent  far 
beyond  what  Anglican  prelates  had  essayed  to  go  in  their 
encounters  with  the  Puritans.  It  was  now  easy,  on  the 
one  hand,  to  take  the  leap  from  the  Ignatian  Epistles  to 
the  heart  of  the  Apostolic  age ;  for  it  seemed  impossible 
that  a  revolution  in  church  government  could  have  been 
accom]3lished  so  soon,  between  the  lifetime  of  the  Apos- 
tles and  the  appearance  of  Ignatius.  When  the  appeal 
was  thus  taken  to  the  fathers  of  the  early  church,  the  only 
way  open  on  the  Puritan  side  was  to  deny  the  genuine- 
ness of  the  Ignatian  Epistles,  even  in  their  more  reputable 
form.  Such  was  the  attitude  of  Daille,  a  once  famous  con- 
tinental scholar,  who  was  also  the  author  of  a  treatise 
on  the  Right  Use  of  the  Fathers  in  the  Decision  of  Con- 
troversies. The  appeal  to  the  ancient  church  had  been 
made  necessary  by  the  rise  of  the  Independents,  who  alike 
with  the  Presbyterians  and  the  Anglicans  were  contending 
that  Scripture  furnished  a  clear  and  authoritative  account 
of  the  Christian  ministry.  But  the  later  Independents 
found  but  two  classes  in  the  ministry,  —  pastors  (who  were 
called  indifferently  bishops  or  elders  or  teachers)  and 
deacons.  The  rise  of  the  Society  of  Friends  or  Quakers 
added  still  further  to  the  confusion,  for  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament they  found  no  trace  of  an  official  ministry,  while 
their  attention  was  chiefly  riveted  on  an  order  of  the 
prophets  the  existence  of  which  was  overlooked  by  the 
other  churches. 

But  the  interest  in  the  controversy  was  dying  out  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  not  to  be  revived 
again  until  the  study  of  Church  History  should  be  taken 


HISTORICAL   SURVEY  15 

up  in  more  thorough  and  scientific  fashion  in  our  own 
age.  Two  important  works,  however,  appeared,  as  the 
controversy  waned,  which  represent  the  learning  and 
scholarship  of  the  time:  Lord  King's  Enquiry  into  the 
Constitution^  Discipline,  Unity,  and  Worship  of  the  Primi- 
tive Church,  published  in  1691,  — ■  a  work  which  has  an 
historical  interest,  since  its  authority  was  accepted  by 
John  Wesley  when  he  appointed  bishops  for  the  Metho- 
dist church  in  America;  and  Bingham's  Antiquities  of  the 
Christian  Church, — -a  work  of  great  learning  and  patience, 
of  which  the  first  volume  ap^jeared  in  1708. 


II 

Under  the  impulse  given  to  the  study  of  Church  History 
in  the  opening  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  change 
has  been  wrought  in  the  method  of  historical  inquiry 
which  has  altered  the  mode  of  approach  to  what  are 
known  as  Christian  Antiquities.  The  doctrine  that  a 
law  of  development  underlies  all  institutions,  whether 
divine  or  human,  has  been  an  inspiration  to  scholars  who 
have  been  engaged  in  the  study  of  the  early  Christian 
church.  In  the  first  enthusiasm  created  by  the  applica- 
tion of  this  principle,  theories  were  set  forth  regarding  the 
origin  of  the  church  and  the  ministry,  which  have  since 
been  abandoned.  A  certain  dogmatic  tone  has  character- 
ized the  work  of  the  Tiibingen  School,  for  example,  as 
though  final  conclusions  had  been  reached.  The  convic- 
tion that  the  organization  of  the  church  is  the  result  of 
growth,  conditioned  by  human  instincts,  by  the  needs  of 
the  age,  or  by  the  peculiarities  of  different  countries, 
seemed  at  first  a  method  as  fruitful  as  it  was  easy,  for  the 
solution  of  the  problems  of  early  Christian  history.  But 
the  wisdom  acquired  by  many  failures  has  revealed  a  more 
complex  and  complicated  situation,  which  makes  it  no 
easy  task  to  unravel  the  threads  of  life  in  the  ancient 
world.  It  has  therefore  been  found  necessary  for  the 
moment   to   cease   from   large   generalizations   as   to   how 


16  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

results  are  accomplished,  and  to  confine  inquiry  to  gain- 
ing an  exact  and  thorough  knowledge  of  all  accessible 
materials,  as  the  basis  for  some  larger  conclusion  which 
has  not  yet  been  reached.  In  this  modesty  of  attitude  is 
the  promise  of  greater  things,  even  though  it  may  take  a 
lifetime  to  accomplish  some  slight  contribution  to  the 
picture  which  is  yet  to  be  drawn. 

Among  those  who  led  in  the  departure  from  the  older 
methods  of  inquiry,  were  Rothe  and  Baur,  by  both  of 
whom  the  episcopate  was  regarded  as  holding  a  vital  rela- 
tionship to  the  rise  of  the  Catholic  church.  Rothe  was 
so  impressed  with  its  almost  universal  adoption  from  an 
early  date,  as  well  as  by  its  prominence  and  the  purpose 
it  had  served,  that  it  seemed  to  him  as  if  such  an  institu- 
tion could  only  be  accounted  for  on  the  ground  of  an 
Apostolic  origin,  even  though  it  were  not  the  form  which 
the  government  of  the  church  had  assumed  in  the  Apos- 
tolic age.  He  explained  its  rise  and  predominance  by  a 
theory  which  has  found  no  other  advocate,  that  the  Apos- 
tles met  in  council  about  the  year  70,  and  organized  the 
church  on  an  episcopal  basis. ^  Baur  regarded  the  epis- 
copate as  the  agency  by  which  the  Catholic  church  realized 
its  unity,  when  threatened  by  Gnostic  philosophers  or  by 
the  Montanist  movement,  which  would  have  reduced  the 
church  to  the  dimensions  of  a  narrow  sect.  The  episco- 
pate, in  his  view,  was  not  of  Apostolic  institution,  but 
had  developed  out  of  the  presbyterate  in  the  earlier  part 
of  the  second  century.  Each  congregation  of  believers 
had  been  originally  under  the  charge  of  a  presbyter ;  but 
as  the  congregations  multiplied  in  a  town  or  city,  one  of 
these  presbyters  came  to  represent  the  rest,  and  to  stand 
at  their  head.  This  headship,  which  was  at  first  of  a 
representative  character,  tended  inevitably  to  assume  a 
monarchical  character,  until  the  power  to  administer  sac- 

1  Rothe,  Die  Anfdnge  der  christlichen  Kirche  und  ihrer  Verfassiing, 
1837,  pp.  354-392.  Rothe's  explanation  was  rejected  by  Baur,  Ueber  den 
Ursprung  des  Episcopates  in  der  christl.  Kirche,  1838,  pp.  39  ff.  Ritschl 
has  given  a  careful  examination  of  Rothe's  theory  in  his  Die  Entstehung 
der  altkatholischen  Kirche,  2d  ed.,  1857,  pp.  399  ff.,  and  shown  that  it  is 
untenable. 


HISTORICAL   SURVEY  17 

raments  and  ordination,  which  from  the  first  had  inhered 
in  the  presbyterate,  was  allowed  to  them  only  condition- 
ally on  the  permission  of  the  bishop,  until  at  last  the 
right  to  ordain  was  at  the  council  of  Ancyra  (a.d.  314) 
definitely  and  finally  withdrawn.  It  was  Baur's  misfort- 
une tliat  he  studied  the  subject  of  Christian  origins  under 
the  influence  of  a  preconceived  theory  as  to  the  rise  of 
the  Catholic  church;  and  although  his  keen  insight  and 
learning  have  rendered  great  service  to  later  students,  his 
conclusions  regarding  the  early  organization  of  the  church, 
and  especially  of  the  episcopate,  have  not  been  sustained 
by  the  investigation  which  his  labors  have  stimulated. 

An  impartial  investigation  of  the  origin  of  the  Catholic 
church  was  undertaken  by  Ritschl,  who  recognized  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  episcopate  in  the  church  at  Jerusalem  in  the 
Apostolic  age,  which  was  not,  however,  perpetuated. 
James,  the  Lord's  brother,  who  was  not  one  of  the  Twelve, 
assumed  the  headship  of  the  church  at  Jerusalem,  as 
Ritschl  suggested,  in  consequence  of  his  blood  relation- 
ship to  Christ, —  a  theory  which  found  confirmation  in  the 
circumstance  reported  by  Eusebius,  that  he  was  followed 
in  his  office  by  Simeon,  who  was  a  cousin-german  of  our 
Lord.  This  type  of  ecclesiastical  organization  was  com- 
pared with  that  adopted  by  Islam  after  the  death  of  Mo- 
hammed, An  attempt  at  its  reproduction  in  the  Catholic 
church  may  be  seen  in  the  pseudo-Clementine  writings, 
where  Clement  took  the  headship  of  the  church,  with 
Rome  as  its  centre,  after  Jerusalem  lost  its  importance  as 
a  city.  According  to  Ritschl  the  Catholic  type  of  episco- 
pate had  its  rise  among  the  communities  of  Asia  Minor, 
where  at  first  it  had  a  local  character,  and  from  thence 
spread  into  Greece  and  Rome,  and  finally  into  Egypt. 

Renan,  in  his  treatment  of  the  origin  of  Christianity, 
offered  no  definite  theory  of  his  own  as  to  the  rise  and 
growth  of  the  Christian  ministry;  but  wherever  he  touches 
the  subject  does  so  under  the  influence  of  a  motive  which 
had  not  hitherto  been  operative,  —  that  the  government  of 
the  church  not  only  developed  various  modifications  in 
response  to  the  changing  situations  of  the  hour,  passing 


18  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

from  a  pure  democracy  to  a  presbyterial  form,  and  from 
this  changing  to  episcopacy,  but  that  it  was  also  influ- 
enced by  the  models  of  secular  government,  that  ecclesias- 
tical history  can  no  longer  be  separated  from  secular 
history,  but  that  both  are  in  organic  relationship  and  form 
one  living  whole.  ^  What  Renan  followed  in  a  general 
way  as  the  true  method  for  studying  ecclesiastical  begin- 
nings, Dr.  Hatch  has  pursued  in  a  more  definite  way  and 
with  more  exact  results,  finding  a  close  analogy  between 
the  form  assumed  by  the  various  societies  among  the 
Greeks  within  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  organization  of 
the  early  Christian  communities.  It  was  the  special  con- 
tribution of  Dr.  Hatch  to  this  long  inquiry  that  he  pointed 
out  the  character  of  the  episcopate  as  essentially  an 
administrative  office,  possessing  that  most  important 
function  in  every  organization,  the  proper  disposition  of 
its  funds,  in  which  respect  they  resemble  the  officers  of 
contemporary  Greek  societies.^ 

Among  those  who  have  contributed  to  the  study  of 
ecclesiastical  origins,  the  name  of  the  late  Bishop  Light- 
foot  must  always  be  held  in  deep  respect.  By  his  vindi- 
cation of  the  genuineness  of  the  Ignatian  Epistles  he  has 
established  at  least  one  fixed  point  in  the  development  of 
the  ministry,  putting  an  end  to  the  hopeless  confusion 
caused  by  the  Tiibingen  School,  with  its  arbitrary  assign- 
ments of  early  Christian  literature.^  Not  only  did  Bishop 
Lightfoot  render  this  important  service,  but  in  his  Essay 
on  the  Christian  Ministry,  he  traced  the  gradual  spread  of 
the  Ignatian  type  of  the  episcopate,  until  by  the  middle 
of  the  third  century  Episcopacy  in  some  form  had  become 
the  uniform  mode  of  government  of  the  Catholic  church. 
He  also  called  attention  to  the   twofold  use  of  the  term 

^  Histoire  des  Origines  du  Christianisme,  Vol.  V. ;  Les  l^vangiles,  c. 
XV.,  Vol.  VI. ;  L'Eglise  Chretienne,  c.  6  ;  Progres  de  V Episcopal. 

2  The  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches,  being  the  Bampton 
Lectures  for  1880.  Dr.  Hatch's  work  was  translated  into  German  by 
Dr.  Harnack  and  supplemented  with  valuable  discussions  on  the  origin  of 
the  presbyterate  and  the  episcopate. 

8  For  a  sketch  of  the  Ignatian  Controversy,  cf.  Schaff,  Ch.  His.,  II., 
pp.  260  ff. ;  also  Renan,  in  introduction  to  Les  Evangiles. 


HISTORICAL   SURVEY  19 

'  Apostle  '  in  the  ancient  church :  its  narrower  sense,  in 
which  it  was  finally  restricted  to  the  Twelve,  being  for 
the  most  part  later  than  the  larger  use  in  which  the  title 
was  applied  to  the  great  number  of  those  wlio  went  forth 
everywhere  to  preach  the  Word  and  lay  the  foundations 
of  Christian  communities.  The  Apostolate,  as  he  has 
shown,  was  originally  an  order  in  the  church,  whose  dis- 
tinctive functions  did  not  descend  to  the  later  ministry. 

The  main  thesis  in  Bishop  Lightfoot's  essay  was  the 
original  identity  of  the  names  '  bishop  '  and  '  presbyter, ' 
from  which  he  drew  the  conclusion  that  "the  episcopate 
was  not  formed  out  of  the  Apostolic  order  by  localization, 
but  out  of  the  presbyterial  by  elevation;  and  the  title, 
which  originally  was  common  to  all,  came  at  length  to  be 
appropriated  to  the  chief  among  them."  ^  Bishop  Lightfoot 
also  defined  the  episcopate  as  a  centralization  of  authority 
in  place  of  the  somewhat  looser  presbyterial  government 
which  preceded  it;  and  he  held  that  the  sanction  for 
the  change  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  have  come 
from  St.  John,  who  was  residing  in  Asia  Minor  at  the 
time  when  the  change  must  have  occurred. 

A  generation  has  now  passed  since  the  Essay  on  the 
Christian  Ministry  was  written,  within  the  last  decade  of 
which  there  has  been  a  renewed  discussion  of  the  subject, 
and  two  important  departures  have  been  taken  from  Bishop 
Lightfoot's  attitude.  In  the  first  place,  the  famous  dic- 
tum of  St.  Jerome,  which  has  held  its  own  for  so  many 
centuries,  that  bishop  and  presbyter  were  originally  differ- 
ing titles  for  the  same  office,  has  at  last  been  disputed  on 
critical  grounds.  Dr.  Hatch,  who  first  called  attention  to 
the  grounds  for  questioning  this  position,  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  Dr.  Harnack,  who  has  offered  convincing  reasons 
for  holding  that  the  office  of  bishop  was  from  the  begin- 
ning distinct  from  that  of  the  presbyter,  and  that,  how- 
ever great  may  have  been  the  later  increase  of  the  bishop's 
prerogatives  or  the  modification  of  his  functions,  he  still 

1  Cf.  Essay  on  the  Christian  3Iinistry  in  Comm.  on  Philippians,  p.  196, 
ed.  1891 ;  also  note  on  the  name  and  office  of  an  apostle  in  Comm.  on 
Galatians,  pp.  314  ff. 


20  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

retained  the  same  essential  quality  which  marked  his  first 
appearance,  and  which  also  from  the  first  differentiated 
him  from  the  presbyter.  On  this  assumption,  that  we 
must  take  names  and  titles  as  we  find  them  in  the  New 
Testament  or  in  ancient  writers,  and  that  no  theory  about 
the  origin  of  the  ministry  can  be  sustained  which  requires 
the  explaining  away  of  official  designations  by  making 
them  equivalent  to  other  terms,  or  which  supplements  the 
organization  as  described  by  any  writer  with  other  offices 
in  order  to  harmonize  it  with  some  hypothesis  of  what 
must  have  been,  —  on  this  simple  and  natural  assumption 
the  latest  inquiries  into  the  origin  of  the  Christian  minis- 
try have  been  based. 

And,  in  the  second  place,  the  discovery  of  the  Didache, 
or  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  which  is  generally 
assigned  to  the  close  of  the  first  century,  has  at  last  fur- 
nished the  clew  to  the  true  significance  of  allusions  in  the 
New  Testament  to  the  ministry,  which  have  hitherto  been 
strangely  neglected.  It  reveals  the  ministry  of  the 
Apostolic  age  as  it  was  on  the  point  of  vanishing'  from 
the  church,  and  also  the  connection  between  that 
ministry  and  the  age  of  Ignatius.  Or,  in  the  words  of 
Dr.  Harnack,  "What  the  Didache  has  done  for  us  is  to 
supply  a  missing  link  in  the  history  of  the  sub-Apostolic 
age."i 

1  Cf.  Harnack  in  Expositor,  New  Series,  Vol.  V.,  1887 ;  also  Die  Lehre 
der  Zwolf  Apostel  in  Texte  und  Untersuchungen,  von  Gebhardt  und  Har- 
nack, Bci.  ii.,  Heft  1,  2  ;  1884.  Other  articles  in  the  Expositor,  discuss- 
ing theories  of  the  origin  of  the  ministry  by  Sanday,  Rendel  Harris,  Gore, 
and  others,  are  given  in  Vols.  V.,  VI.,  VII.  See  also  an  elaborate  study 
by  Reville,  Les  Origines  de  V I^piscopat ;  J^tnde  siir  la  formation  du  Gou- 
vernenient  Ecclesiastique  an  Seiii  de  VlSglise  Chretienne  dans  V Empire 
Bomain  (Premiere  Partie),  1894. 


CHAPTER   II 

APOSTLES,   PROPHETS,    TEACHERS 

In  any  attempt  to  reproduce  the  picture  of  the  ministry 
in  the  Apostolic  age,  or  in  the  age  which  immediately 
succeeded,  it  is  important  to  classify  the  literature  which 
bears  upon  the  subject  according  to  the  time  when  it  was 
written.  The  difficult}^  of  ascertaining  the  exact  date  of 
many  of  the  New  Testament  writings  constitutes  an  obstacle 
in  the  way  of  positive  statement  which  makes  impossible 
at  present  a  complete  and  accurate  account  of  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Christian  ministry.  In  the  following  sketch, 
no  effort  has  been  made  to  determine  these  questions  of 
New  Testament  criticism.  But  in  a  general  way  the 
literature  may  be  thus  classified. 

First  in  the  order  of  time  come  the  writings  of  St.  Paul, 
which  are  the  earliest  Christian  documents,  older  than  the 
Gospels  in  their  present  form,  and  prior  also  to  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  which  was  written  after  the  death  of  St. 
Paul.  But  the  earlier  part  of  the  Acts  contains  an  account 
of  the  genesis  of  the  church  which  must  be  associated  with 
the  earlier  Pauline  Epistles.  In  this  class  of  the  litera- 
ture is  included  the  Epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  Gala- 
tians,  Thessalonians,  Romans,  and  Philippians,  all  of 
which  contain  references  to  the  organization  of  the  church. 

In  the  second  class  come  those  documents  which  are 
admitted  to  be  somewhat  later  in  origin  than  those  above 
mentioned,  and  about  which  doubts  have  been  raised,  not 
only  as  to  their  time,  but  as  to  whether  tliey  were  written 
by  the  writers  whose  names  they  carry  or  to  whom  they 
have  been  ascribed  by  tradition.  Without  going  into  the 
question  of  date  or  authorship,  it  may  be  asserted  of  them 
all  that  they  fall  at  least  so  late  as  the  second  generation 

21 


22  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

in  the  Apostolic  age.  These  writings  include  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles,  the  Epistles  of  St.  James,  and  1  Peter, 
Ephesians  and  Hebrews,  the  Second  and  Third  Epistles  of 
St.  John,  the  Book  of  Revelation,  and,  most  important  of 
all  for  the  light  they  shed,  the  Pastoral  Epistles  to  Timothy 
and  Titus.  The  authorship  and  time  of  the  Pastoral 
Epistles  form  one  of  the  most  difficult  subjects  in  Biblical 
criticism,  about  which  opinion  is  still  greatly  divided. 
They  have  been  placed  in  the  latter  part  of  the  second 
century;  by  some  tliey  are  assigned  to  the  close  of  the 
first  century;  others,  still,  have  no  hesitation  in  ascribing 
them  to  St.  Paul.^  If  they  were  written  by  St.  Paul, 
their  time  may  be  as  late  as  the  year  67  a.d.  It  is 
possible,  also,  as  many  are  inclined  to  hold,  that  these 
Pastoral  Epistles  include  genuine  fragments  by  the  great 
Apostle  himself,  sufficient  to  justify  their  connection  with 
his  name. 

The  third  class  of  documents  consists  of  three  important 
treatises,  which  belong  to  the  close  of  the  Apostolic  age, 
or  the  early  years  of  the  second  century,  —  the  Epistle  of 
Clement  of  Rome  to  the  Corinthians,  the  Didache,  or  so- 
called  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  and  the  Epistles 
of  Ignatius,  to  which  may  be  added  the  Shepherd  of  Her- 
mas,  about  whose  date  there  is  uncertainty.  It  may  be 
later  than  the  Ignatian  Epistles. 


The  authoritative  description  of  the  ministry  in  the 
Apostolic  age  has  been  given  to  us  by  St.  Paul:  '"'' And 
God  hath  set  some  in  the  church,  first  apostles,  secondarily/ 
prophets,  thirdly  teachers  ;  after  that  miracles,  then  gifts  of 

1  M.  Reville,  in  his  Origines  de  V Episcopal,  places  them  toward  the 
close  of  the  first  century,  and  regards  the  picture  of  the  ministry  which 
they  present  as  the  transition  to  the  Ignatian  Epistles.  For  the  jsroposed 
reconstruction  of  dates  in  the  life  of  Paul,  cf.  Holtzmann,  Neutestameut- 
liche  Zeitgeschichte,  §  16  (1895).  The  dates  given  in  the  text  follow  the 
hitherto  accepted  chronology  but  for  convenience  only,  and  where  no 
important  issue  is  concerned. 


APOSTLES,    PROPHETS,    TEACHERS  23 

healing,  helps,  f/oveni?nents,  diversities  of  tonr/ues.^''^  The 
value  of  St.  Paul's  testimony  lies  in  this,  that  he  Avas 
contemporaneous  with  that  which  he  described;  he  was 
writing  to  a  church  which  he  himself  had  planted  and 
nourished;  and  we  know  the  time  when  he  wrote;  it  was 
about  the  year  57  A.D.  when  his  Epistle  was  sent  to  the 
church  at  Corinth. 

Upon  this  passage  it  may  be  remarked  that  St.  Paul 
claims  for  this  ministry  of  the  Apostolic  church  a  divine 
right  or  appointment,  —  it  is  God  who  has  set  these  min- 
isters in  the  church.  Again,  there  is  a  distinct  gradation, 
first  apostles,  secondly  prophets,  thirdly  teachers.  These 
three  offices  or  functions  constitute  the  higher  class  of  the 
ministry  and  have  a  certain  spiritual  kinship ;  the  apostle 
preaches,  the  prophets  speak  by  the  gift  of  inspiration, 
the  teacher  explains  the  truth  with  the  aid  of  human 
learning.  In  the  lower  grade  of  offices,  or  what  may  be 
called  the  administrative  functions,  two  are  mentioned  in 
a  general  way,  without  technical  designation,  which  have 
evidently  the  character  of  germs  for  the  later  development 
of  the  ministry,  — they  are  helps  and  governments.  But 
there  is  no  mention  of  the  familiar  titles  of  a  later  day, 
—  bishops,  presbyters,  or  deacons. 

There  is  another  list  of  ecclesiastical  offices  given  by 
St.  Paul  a  few  years  later,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans 
(A.D.  59):  "Having  gifts  differing  according  to  the  grace 
that  was  given  to  us,  whether  prophecy  (^Trpocfirjreiav'),  let 
us  prophesy  according  to  the  proportion  of  our  faith ;  or 
ministry  (^SiaKovtav'),  let  us  give  ourselves  to  our  ministry ; 
or  he  that  teacheth  (hthdaKwv),  to  his  teaching;  or  he  that 
exhorteth  (jrapaKoKoiv),  to  his  exhorting ;  he  that  giveth 
(^fieraSi8ov<i),  let  him  do  it  with  liberality;  he  that  ruleth 
(Trpoiardfjievo'i},  with  diligence  ;  he  that  showeth  mercy 
(eXewf),  with  cheerfulness"  (Rom.  xii,  6).  Here  again 
there  is  no  mention  of  presbyters  or  bishops  or  deacons, 
though   one   may  see   an  allusion  to  presbyters,  in  those 

I.  Cor.  xii.  28  :  Kal  ovs  fx^v  edero  6  debs  iv  tt)  iKK\Tjcrla  TrpwTov  airocTTb- 
Xous,  bevrepov  ■!rpo(pr}Tas^  rplrov  oidacTKaXovs,  eireiTa  dvvd/xeis,  fweiTa  xop/cTyuara 
iafxaTuiv,  dvTi.\7jp.\p€is,    KV^ipvrjareis,    y^VTj   y\u}aaQi>. 


24  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

called  rulers  (jrpoltTTdfxevoL),  the  foremost  men,  and  to  the 
bishops  and  deacons,  in  the  ministry  (hiaKoviav).  Nor  are 
the  officers  classified ;  but  yet  the  first  to  be  mentioned 
are  the  prophets.  The  teacher  is  also  here ;  but  there  is 
silence  about  apostles,  as  if  Rome  had  not  known  hitherto 
the  presence  of  an  apostle.  This  passage  from  Romans 
lacks  the  definiteness  and  impressiveness  of  the  account  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  St.  Paul  had  not  when 
he  wrote  visited  the  church  at  Rome,  and  was  not  as 
familiar  with  its  arrangements  as  with  the  church  at 
Corinth,  which  he  himself  had  planted  and  to  whom  he 
ministered  as  an  apostle.  For  this  reason  his  description  of 
the  organization  of  its  church  may  take  on  this  general  tone. 

In  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians  (v.  12)  we 
have  an  allusion  to  a  local  ministry,  to  which,  however, 
no  technical  designation  is  given :  "  We  beseech  you, 
brethren,  to  know  them  which  labor  among  you  (^Koinoiv- 
ra?)  and  are  over  you  (jrpolarraiievov'^')  in  the  Lord,  and 
admonish  you."  The  allusion  here  may  be  to  those  who 
later  became  known  as  the  presbyters  (irpea^vTepot)  or 
elders.  It  is  important  to  call  attention  to  this  cir- 
cumstance, that  St.  Paul  does  not  mention  '  presbyters ' 
when  writing  to  the  churches  which  he  had  founded, 
in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  writer  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  states  so  positively  that  it  was  the  usage  of  the 
apostle  to  ordain  elders  in  every  church  (Acts  xiv.  23). 
It  harmonizes  the  discrepancy  if  we  suppose  that  the  fore- 
most men  (TrpoicndixevoL)  mentioned  here  and  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  had  become  known  as  presbyters  when  the 
writer  of  the  Acts  was  describing  the  work  of  St.  Paul. 

The  Epistle  to  the  Thessalonians  may  have  been  written 
about  the  year  53  a.d.  Some  ten  years  later  St.  Paul 
wrote  to  the  Philippians,  heading  his  Epistle,  "  To  the 
saints  in  Christ  Jesus  which  are  at  Philij)pi  with  the 
bishops  (eTrio-zcoTrot?)  and  deacons  (Sta/coWt?).  These 
names  for  a  local  ministry  destined  to  be  perpetuated  in 
the  church  now  appear  for  the  first  time.  They  may,  how- 
ever, be  here  used  in  a  general  way,  and  not  yet  as  titles 
of  office,  equivalent  to  overseers  or  superintendents  and 


APOSTLES,    PROPHETS,    TEACHERS  25 

helpers.  There  is  more  than  one  bishop  in  this  community, 
as  there  is  also  more  than  one  deacon.  The  coupling 
together  of  these  two  officers  may  have  its  significance. 
They  are  again  mentioned  together  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles, 
as  also  in  the  Didache,  as  if  united  by  some  organic  tie 
which  was  wanting  in  their  relation  to  the  presbyters,  as 
if  they  had  grown  out  of  one  common  root,  while  the  pres- 
byters derived  their  origin  from  another  source.^ 

If  we  now  compare  the  information  gained  from  St. 
Paul  with  the  accounts  relating  to  the  organization  of  the 
church  given  in  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles,  we  find  them  in  substantial  agreement.  The 
Twelve  Apostles  are  represented  (Acts  vi.)  as  conceiving 
their  mission  to  be  a  spiritual  one  and  not  as  consisting  in 
the  administration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs.  When,  as  we 
are  told,  there  arose  a  difficulty  bet^veen  the  Hellenists 
and  the  Hebrews  in  the  community  at  Jerusalem,  because 
the  widows  of  the  former  did  not  receive  their  due  share 
in  the  distributions  of  charity,  the  Apostles  called  the 
disciples  together,  and  said  to  them:  "It  is  not  fit  that 
we  should  forsake  the  word  of  God  and  serve  tables. 
Look  ye  out  therefore,  brethren,  from  among  you  seven 
men  of  good  report,  full  of  the  Spirit  and  of  wisdom, 
whom  we  may  appoint  over  this  business.  But  we  will 
continue  steadfastly  in  prayer  and  in  the  ministry  of  the 
Word."  There  is  here  a  sharp  distinction  drawn  between 
the  higher  ministry  of  the  Word  and  the  lower  ministry 
of  tables  or  ecclesiastical  affairs,  which  corresponds  with 
St.  Paul's  classification  in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians. There  is  also  in  these  words  a  vivid  reminder 
of  the  first  commission  given  by  Jesus  to  the  Twelve  to  go 

1  It  is  possible  that  bishops  may  liere  iiicUide  presbyters,  as  an  untech- 
nical  designation,  in  accordance  with  the  nsage  in  Acts  xx.  28,  where  the 
presbyters  are  charged  to  take  lieed  to  the  floclc  over  whicli  the  Holy 
Ghost  hath  made  them  overseers  or  bishops.  But  the  mention  in  Philip- 
pians  is  connected  with  a  gift  of  money  made  to  the  Apostle, — a  cir- 
cumstance which  may  liave  a  special  significance,  in  view  of  the  later 
development  of  the  bishop  as  an  administrative  officer  who  superintended 
the  finances  of  the  community.  The  presbyter  is  never  mentioned  in  this 
connection,  but  the  impression  conveyed  where  the  presbyters  are  men- 
tioned is  that  of  moral  supervision  and  discipline.     Cf.  R^ville,  pp.  286  ff. 


26  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

forth  to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel :  "  And  as  ye 
go,  preach,  saying,  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand  " 
(Matt.  X.  7);  or  again,  according  to  St.  Mark,  "He  or- 
dained twelve  that  they  should  be  with  Him  and  that  He 
might  send  them  forth  to  preach "  (Mark  iii.  14).  In 
giving  this  commission  to  His  disciples,  Christ  was  also 
ordering  the  continuance  of  His  own  mission:  "And  He 
said  unto  them,  let  us  go  into  the  next  towns  that  I  may 
preach  there  also,  for  therefore  came  I  forth." 

The  appointment  of  the  Seven  to  the  ministry  of  the 
tables,  raises  the  question  whether  we  have  in  this  inci- 
dent the  formal  appointment  of  what  is  known  as  the 
order  of  deacons.  That  it  is  in  some  way  connected  with 
the  later  appearance  of  the  diaconate  must  be  admitted, 
while  also  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  temporary  provisional 
arrangement  to  meet  some  special  emergency.  The 
Seven  are  not  called  deacons,  nor  are  they  referred  to 
again  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles.  Still  further,  two  at 
least  of  the  Seven  soon  left  the  ministry  of  the  tables  for 
the  ministry  of  the  Word,  —  Stephen,  whose  boldness  in 
preaching  waked  the  first  persecution,  in  consequence  of 
which  "they  were  all  scattered  abroad  throughout  the 
regions  of  Judea  and  Samaria,  except  the  Apostles  " ;  and 
Philip,  better  known  as  the  Evangelist,  who  went  down 
into  Samaria  and  preached  Christ  unto  them,  and  to  whom 
the  people  gave  heed  with  one  accord.  The  essential 
point  in  the  narrative  is  not,  therefore,  the  formal  consti- 
tution of  an  ecclesiastical  order,  but  the  recognition  of  the 
Christian  ministry  as  a  service  (BiaKovia^  which  is  divided 
into  a  lower  and  a  higher;  and,  as  Chrysostom  remarks, 
the   lower  service  must  needs  give  way  to  the  higher.  ^ 

1  Cf.  Chrysostom,  Horn,  in  Acta  Apos.  XIV.  Chrysostom  asks  whether 
they  were  deacons  who  were  then  appointed,  and  replies  that  they  were 
neither  deacons  nor  presbyters.  It  was  Cyprian  of  Carthage  who  fixed 
the  traditional  interpretation,  as  in  Ep.  Ixiv.  8,  where  he  is  treating  the 
case  of  a  deacon  who  resisted  his  bishop.  The  deacons  should  be  re- 
minded, he  says,  that  Christ  himself  appointed  the  apostles,  or  bishops 
and  overseers  ;  while  the  deacons,  after  the  ascension  of  Christ,  were 
appointed  by  the  Apostles  as  the  Tuinisters  of  their  episcopacy.  It  is  God 
who  makes  the  bishops  ;  it  is  the  bishops  who  make  the  deacons. 


APOSTLES,    PllOPHETS,    TEACHERS  27 

In  appointing  assistants  for  tlie  administration  of  affairs, 
the  Apostles  were  vindicating  their  higher  function, 
which  was  the  preaching  of  the  Word. 


II 

St.  Paul  gives  the  second  pLace  after  the  Apostles,  in 
this  higher  ministry  of  the  Word,  which  God  had  ap- 
pointed, to  the  prophet;  and  with  this  high  estimate  of 
the  place  of  prophecy  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  agrees. 
The  birth  of  the  Christian  church  on  Pentecost  or  Whit- 
sunday, following  the  Ascension,  is  identified  with  the 
pouring  out  of  the  Spirit.  This  mysterious  event,  whose 
first  effect  was  a  sense  of  confusion  and  bewilderment, 
was  interpreted  by  Peter,  in  the  sermon  which  he  preached, 
to  be  the  fulfilment  of  the  words  of  the  prophet  Joel:  "It 
shall  come  to  pass  in  the  last  days,  saith  God,  I  will  pour 
out  of  my  Spirit  upon  all  flesh ;  and  your  sons  and  your 
daughters  shall  prophesy,  your  young  men  shall  see  vis- 
ions, your  old  men  shall  dream  dreams ;  and  on  my  ser- 
vants and  on  my  handmaidens  I  will  pour  out  in  those 
days  of  my  Spirit;  and  they  shall  prophesy"  (Acts  ii. 
17,  18).  If  we  may  distinguish  between  the  apostle  and 
the  prophet,  between  preaching  and  the  act  of  prophecy, 
the  distinction  is  this,  —  the  apostle  is  one  sent,  as  the 
name  implies,  a  messenger  to  proclaim  the  Gospel  of 
deliverance  to  those  in  darkness.  The  priority  is  given 
to  those  who  thus  lay  the  foundations  of  Christian  com- 
munities. Tliey  carry  a  message  adapted  to  this  end, 
they  repeat  and  reiterate  the  simple  truth  which  they 
have  received  and  have  been  commissioned  to  deliver. 
They  hold  firm  the  tradition  which  is  to  bind  the  world 
together.  As  the  reception  of  it  has  quickened  their  own 
souls,  so  the  proclamation  of  it  brings  life  to  others ;  and 
the  essence  of  the  message  is  faith  in  Jesus  as  the  Son  of 
God. 

But  the  prophet  speaks  to  those  who  have  been  con- 
verted   by   the    preaching   of    Apostles.      If   the    heavens 


28  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

might  seem  to  have  been  closed  again  after  the  departure 
of  Christ,  yet  the  procLamation  of  His  teaching  and  His 
life  would  still  go  on,  the  form  of  sound  words  be  repeated 
and  still  find  an  echo  in  human  souls.  But  primitive 
Christianity  sought  and  found  a  higher  confirmation  of  the 
eternal  Gospel.  To  the  prophet  the  heavens  were  always 
open,  the  Spirit  descended  upon  him,  he  spoke  with 
the  conviction  born  of  fresh  and  living  insight  into 
the  truth.  He  might  not  have  known  Christ  after  the 
flesh  as  St.  Paul  also  had  not  known  Him  ;  and  3^et 
know  the  mind  of  Christ  through  the  Spirit,  even  as 
some  who  had  listened  to  His  voice  had  not  been  able 
to  do.  The  prophet  had  visions  in  which  new  truth 
was  revealed,  not  contradicting  the  old,  but  opening 
and  expanding  its  meaning.  Such  a  vision  came  to 
St.  Peter,  teaching  him  what  he  had  not  learned  before, 
that  he  was  not  to  call  things  common  or  unclean  which 
God  had  cleansed.  The  Apostle  might  speak  with  the 
authority  of  tradition  that  which  he  had  heard  and  re- 
ceived from  others ;  the  prophet  spoke  with  the  authority 
of  immediate  inspiration,  telling  what  he  saw  by  spiritual 
insight  and  knew  to  be  true,  even  if  it  had  hitherto  found 
no  utterance.  What  he  saw  he  aimed  to  make  others  see. 
Thus  in  prophecy  there  came  into  the  church  a  new  j)ower 
collateral  with  tradition,  which  gave  the  tradition  a  new 
meaning. 

And  thirdly,  as  St.  Paul  tells  us,  God  had  appointed 
teachers,  as  part  of  the  higher  ministry  of  the  Word.  This 
also  is  confirmed  in  the  earlier  chapters  of  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles:  "Now  there  were  in  the  church  that  was  at 
Antioch  certain  prophets  and  teachers ;  as  Barnabas  and 
Simeon  that  was  called  Niger,  and  Lucius  of  Cyrene,  and 
Manaen,  which  had  been  brought  up  with  Herod  the 
Tetrarch,  and  Saul "  (Acts  xiii.  1).  The  teacher  is  the 
bond  of  connection  between  the  church  and  human  learn- 
ing. Apollos  was  a  teacher  who  is  sujaposed  to  have  been 
familiar  with  the  wisdom  of  the  schools.  The  Epistle  to 
the  Hebrews  is  an  illustration  of  the  combination  between 
the  new  faith  and  the  knowledge  which  is  placed  at  its 


APOSTLES,    PROPHETS,   TEACHERS  29 

disposal.  The  mission  of  the  teacher  was  to  meet  the 
awakened  intellect,  to  explain  difficulties,  to  solve  the 
problems  with  which  the  reason  was  struggling,  embar- 
rassed by  a  previous  training,  confused  by  rival  and  con- 
flicting systems  of  philosophy  or  religion.  He  gave  the 
information  for  which  the  intellect  was  hungering,  as  the 
prophet  gave  the  food  for  spiritual  nourishment. 

These  three  offices  or  spiritual  functions  —  Apostle, 
prophet,  and  teacher  —  may  be  said  to  have  belonged  to 
the  ministry  at  large,  and  were  not  at  first  the  exclusive 
possession  of  the  local  church.  They  itinerate,  going  from 
place  to  place,  from  one  Christian  community  to  another, 
thus  constituting  the  bond  of  connection  and  unity  which 
welded  the  first  Christian  disciples  together  in  one  com- 
munion and  fellowship.  While  their  gifts  and  functions 
were  distinct  and  were  held  separately,  they  might  also 
be  conjoined  in  one  person.  St.  Paul  combined  them  in 
an  extraordinary  degree.  As  an  Apostle,  he  did  more  than 
they  all  in  planting  and  superintending  churches.  But 
prophecy  was  a  gift  which  he  greatly  prized;  "Desire 
spiritual  gifts,"  he  wrote  to  the  Corinthians,  "but  chiefly 
that  ye  may  prophesy,  for  he  that  prophesieth  speaketh 
unto  men  to  edification  and  exhortation  and  comfort."^ 
And  again,  as  a  teacher,  the  first  Christian  theologian,  his 
name  stands  in  the  hio^hest  rank.  It  was  this  rare  com- 
bination  of  gifts  which  explains  the  influence  and  authority 
of  the  great  Apostle  to  the  Gentiles.  There  was  in  St. 
John  also  a  similar  combination,  but  his  Apostolic  activity 
yielded  in  prominence  to  his  gift  as  a  teacher;  he  alone  in 
the  ancient  church  received  the  title  of  Theologian.  In 
the  second  century  an  attempt  was  made,  as  in  the  spurious 
Clementine  writings,  to  present  St.  Peter  as  the  foremost 
teacher  of  the  church,  eclipsing  St.  Paul  in  his  learning, 
his  knowledge  of  philosophical  systems,  and  his  ability  to 
confute  every  antagonist.      But  though  the  functions  of 

1  1  Cor.  xiv.  1,  3.  The  whole  chapter  is  important  as  giving  St.  Paul's 
estimate  of  prophecy  and  also  as  affording  a  glimpse  of  earlj'^  Christian 
worship.  The  prophets  are  to  speak  two  or  three,  and  the  others  are  to 
judge  ;  ye  may  all  prophesy  one  by  one  ;  the  spirits  of  the  prophets  are 
subject  to  the  prophets,  for  God  is  not  the  author  of  confusion. 


30  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

prophecy  and  teaching  might  be  thus  combined  in  one 
person,  the  offices  were  still  distinct,  and  later  history 
bears  witness  to  this  threefold  division  of  the  higher  min- 
istry of  the  early  church. 

Ill 

There  are  certain  features  of  the  office  of  an  Apostle 
which  demand  special  consideration.  The  name  is  applied 
to  the  twelve  disciples  only  once  in  the  Gospel  according 
to  St.  Matthew  (x.  2)  and  once  in  St.  Mark  (vi.  30).  St. 
Luke  uses  it  more  frequently,  saying  that  the  name  was 
given  to  them  by  Christ  (vi.  13).  The  more  common 
designation  was  the  Twelve.  In  the  first  chapter  of  the 
Acts  of  the  Apostles  there  is  contained  the  intimation 
that  the  number  twelve  was  to  form  the  limit  of  the  num- 
ber of  Apostles,  as  if  the  chosen  disciples  would  fondly 
perpetuate  the  external  form  of  their  relationship  to  the 
Master.  This  may  have  been  one  reason  for  the  election 
of  Matthias  to  fill  the  vacancy  created  by  the  apostasy  of 
Judas.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that  this  method  of  pro- 
cedure was  followed  when  other  vacancies  occurred,  or 
that  the  effort  was  again  made  to  restrict  the  number  of 
the  Apostles  to  twelve.  The  election  of  Matthias  was  also 
further  based  upon  his  possession  of  a  peculiar  qualifica- 
tion for  the  office  of  Apostle:  he  had  been  one  of  those 
who  had  been  closely  associated  with  the  disciples  while 
Jesus  went  in  and  out  among  them,  and  was  therefore 
competent  to  be  a  witness  with  them  of  His  resurrection 
(Acts  i.  8;  Luke  xxiv.  48).  It  was  as  if  the  heroism, 
the  divine  energy  which  the  work  of  an  Apostle  required, 
must  have  its  foundation  laid  deep  in  this  fundamental 
conviction  of  a  risen  Lord.  There  is  also  implied  here 
a  tradition  which  is  to  be  handed  down,  which  requires 
for  its  attestation  the  association  with  Jesus  in  His  earthly 
life,  the  concrete  vision  with  the  eye  of  sense  of  His  resur- 
rection from  the  grave. 

But  there  was  another  conception  of  the  Apostolate,  a 
larger   and   freer  conception,   which  was    struggling   for 


APOSTLES,    PROPHETS,    TEACHERS  31 

recognition  in  the  Apostolic  age,  not  in  opposition  to  but 
as  supplementing  the  deficiency  of  the  purpose  which 
would  restrict  its  limits  to  the  original  Twelve.^  It  was 
St.  Paul  who  first  vindicated  for  himself  and  others  a 
right  to  the  title  of  Apostle,  even  though  he  had  not  been 
an  eyewitness  of  the  resurrection,  nor  was  he  of  those 
who  had  companied  with  the  Lord  Jesus  as  He  went  in 
and  out  among  men.  As  regards  temporal  things  and 
earthly  scenes,  he  who  has  seen  with  his  own  eyes  or 
been  present  in  person  at  some  great  transaction  has  an 
advantage  over  those  who  hear  the  report  and  take  the 
description  at  second  hand.  For  the  historian  who  is 
recording  events,  there  is  gained  vividness  of  conviction 
and  a  deeper  sense  of  reality  by  visiting  the  spots  where 
battles  were  fought  or  great  assemblies  were  held.  But 
in  spiritual  things  another  principle  intervenes,  —  the 
faith  which  is  the  evidence  of  things  not  seen.  Blessed 
are  they  which  have  not  seen  and  yet  have  believed.  The 
issue  raised  by  St.  Paul  was  whether  the  vision  of  sense, 
the  daily  contact  and  verbal  communion  with  the  Master, 
were  the  only  conditions  of  the  most  successful  ministry, 
or  whether  the  spiritual  insight  was  not  the  primary  con- 
dition for  preaching  Christ,  and  the  foundation  for  the 
Christian  church. 

There  is  given  in  St.  Paul's  First  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians (1  Cor.  XV.  5-8)  a  list  of  "the  appearances  of  the 
risen  Christ,  in  which  no  distinction  is  made  between  the 
witness  of  sense  and  the  witness  of  faith:  "He  was  seen 
of  Cephas,  then  of  the  twelve ;  ^  after  that  he  was  seen  of 
five  hundred  brethren  at  once;  .  .  .  after  that  he  was 
seen  of  James ;  then  of  all  the  apostles ;  and  last  of  all  he 

1  For  the  fullest  discussion  of  Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers,  see 
Hamack,  Die  Lehre  der  Zioolf  Apostel,  in  the  second  volume  of  Texte 
u.  Untersnch.,  pp.  111-13G.  Also  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  I.,  pp.  38-51  ; 
Lightfoot,  on  The  Name  and  Office  of  an  Apostle,  in  Comm.  on  Galatians, 
pp.  92-101  ;  R^ville,  Les  Origines  de  VEpiscopat,  pp.  122-140. 

2  This  usage  of  St.  Paul  by  which  he  seems  to  discriminate  "the 
twelve"  from  the  Apostles  is  illustrated  again  in  1  Cor.  ix.  5:  "Have  we 
not  power  to  lead  about  a  sister  or  a  wife  as  well  as  other  apostles,  and 
as  the  brethren  of  the  Lord  and  Cephas  ?  " 


32  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

was  seen  of  me  also."  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Twelve 
are  not  here  designated  as  Apostles,  nor  is  Peter  or  James 
so  described.  But  the  term  'all  the  apostles  '  is  used  in 
some  comprehensive  way  as  if  to  include  those  who  were 
divinely  sent  and  had  given  proof  of  their  divine  commis- 
sion by  the  fruits  of  their  labors.  To  this  evidence  St. 
Paul  appeals  in  vindication  of  his  own  mission,  —  he  had 
labored  more  abundantly  than  they  all.  Among  those 
who  are  mentioned  in  this  larger  Apostolate  are  James, 
the  Lord's  brother,  Barnabas  (Acts  xiv.  14),  Epaphro- 
ditus  (Phil.  ii.  25,  'vixSiv  he  ccTroaroXov ;  cf.  also  1  Thess. 
ii.  1),  Andronicus  and  Junia,  who  were  of  note  among  the 
Apostles  ^  (Rom.  xvi.  7).  In  the  same  list  may  be  in- 
cluded Silas  and  Timotheus.  Of  Titus  and  others,  it  is 
said  by  St.  Paul  that  if  they  be  inquired  of,  they  are 
the  Apostles  of  the  churches  and  the  glory  of  Christ. 
There  is  further  evidence  for  the  existence  of  a  relatively 
large  number  of  Apostles,  in  St.  Paul's  allusion  to  the 
false  Apostles;  since  there  could  not  have  been  such 
fraud  or  counterfeit  in  the  small  communities,  if  the 
Apostolate  had  been  limited  to  the  Twelve  (2  Cor.  xi. 
13 ;  also  Rev.  ii.  2). 

The  claim  might  be  justly  made  for  some  of  these  Apos- 
tles that  they  had  been  eyewitnesses  of  the  resurrection, 
and  on  this  ground  fulfilled  the  requisite  for  the  office 
which  the  Judteo-Christian  conception  of  it  demanded; 
but  it  cannot  be  made  for  all  who  are  thus  named.  This 
claim  cannot  be  made  for  those  Apostles  who,  according 
to  the  Didache,  still  continued  at  the  close  of  the  first 
century  to  visit  the  churches.^  In  the  literature  of  the 
second  century,  traces  may  be  seen  of  this  twofold  use  of 

1  Cf.  Lightfoot,  Comm.  on  Galatians,  p.  96,  who  rejects  the  rendering 
"highly  esteemed  by  the  Apostles"  as  an  effort  to  escape  the  difficulty 
of  the  larger  Apostolate. 

2  Cf.  Didache^  c.  XL,  where  the  reference  seems  to  imply  a  number  of 
Apostles,  of  whose  name  or  character  the  churches  may  be  ignorant : 
"  In  regard  to  the  Apostles  and  prophets,  according  to  the  ordinance  of 
the  Gospel,  so  do  ye.  And  every  Apostle  who  cometh  to  you,  let  him  be 
received  as  the  Lord  ;  but  he  shall  not  be  allowed  to  remain  more  than 
one  day  ;  if,  however,  there  be  need,  then  the  next  day  ;  but  if  he  remain 
three  days,  he  is  a  false  prophet." 


APOSTLES,    PROPHETS,    TEACHERS  33 

the  term  '  Apostle, '  some  writers  limiting  the  office  to  the 
Twelve,  with  the  possible  addition  of  St.  Paul,  while 
others  take  it  in  the  more  comprehensive  sense;  Hermas 
puts  the  number  at  forty  ;i  Eusebius  speaks  of  a  consid- 
erable number  of  Apostles  besides  the  Twelve.^ 

St.  Paul  appealed,  in  confirmation  of  his  call  to  the 
Apostolate,  not  only  to  the  vision  vouchsafed  him  on  the 
way  to  Damascus,  but  also  to  the  more  tangible  evidence, 
that  he  had  given  the  proof  of  an  Apostle  in  his  great  and 
successful  labors.  Nor  is  the  statement  an  empty  one  in 
which  he  declares,  when  putting  himself  in  contrast  with 
the  twelve  Apostles,  that  he  has  done  more  than  they  all. 
The  only  Apostle  of  whose  labors  and  success  in  planting 
churches  we  have  any  record  in  the  New  Testament  is  St. 
Paul.  A  dense  cloud  rests  over  the  lives  of  the  Twelve, 
with  the  exception  of  Peter  and  John,  which  no  research 
can  penetrate.  Beyond  the  circumstances  mentioned  in 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  we  have  no  actual  knowledge  of 
their  labors.  They  filled  up  their  number,  they  presided 
for  a  while  over  the  church  at  Jerusalem.  They  regarded 
their  distinctive  work  to  be  the  preaching  of  the  Word, 
and  in  order  to  this  end  appointed  assistants  who  should 
relieve  them  from  the  necessity  of  administering  affairs. 
They  remained  in  Jerusalem,  after  the  church  had  been 
scattered  in  consequence  of  the  persecution  which  followed 
Stephen's  preaching,  but  they  felt  a  responsibility  for 
Samaria  when  they  heard  that  it  had  received  the  Word  of 
God  through  Philip's  preaching.  They  were  interested 
in  the  community  founded  at  Antioch,  but  they  do  not 
assume  the  control  of  its  affairs.  It  was  not  one  of  their 
own  number,  but  James,  the  brother  of  the  Lord,  who 
became  the  leader  and  president  of  the  church  at  Jerusa- 
lem. They  associated  with  themselves  the  elders  and 
brethren  when  great  decisions  were  to  be  reached. 
Through  the  darkness  they  appear  faintly,  but  always  as 
men  of  an  ideal  sanctity  of  character,  as  if  perpetuating  the 

1  Hennas,  Sim.  IX.  15,  16.     Clement  of  Alex,  calls  Clement  of  Rome 
an  Apostle,  Strom.  IV.     Cf.  Lightfoot,  id.,  p.  100. 

2  H.  E.,  I.  2. 

D 


S4  ORGANIZATIOIT  OF  THE  CHURCH 

divine  influence  of  the  Master.  At  what  time  they  left 
Jerusalem,  or  whether  they  went  out  of  Palestine,  and  if 
80  whither,  these  are  questions  to  which  no  answer  based 
Upon  actual  knowledge  can  be  given.  There  is  abundance 
of  legend  which  sprang  up  in  the  second  century  regarding 
their  later  labors,  but  no  clear  historical  evidence.^  As 
to  Peter  and  John,  there  is  also  no  evidence  that  they 
established  churches  in  the  Pauline  sense  of  being  their 
original  founders.  St.  Peter  travelled  in  Palestine ;  he 
visited  the  church  at  Antioch,  but  he  did  not  found  it. 
He  may  have  been  at  Rome  not  long  before  his  death  in 
64  A.D.,  but  when  he  went  there,  the  Christian  community 
had  already  been  in  existence  for  many  years.  There  is 
no  reason  for  distrusting  the  tradition  that  St.  John,  in 
his  latest  years,  lived  at  Ephesus,  but  the  church  in 
Ephesus  had  already  been  planted  by  the  preaching  of 
St.  Paul. 

The  commission  of  the  Twelve  to  preach  the  Word  had 
been  given  them  by  the  Master  Himself.  But  in  the  case 
of  the  larger  Apostolate,  little  information  is  contained  in 
the  New  Testament  as  to  the  mode  of  their  appointment. 
St.  Paul's  formal  commission  came  from  the  prophets  and 
teachers  of  the  church  in  Antioch;  to  whom,  as  they  min- 
istered and  fasted,  "the  Holy  Ghost  said,  Separate  me 
Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  whereunto  I  have  called 
them.  Then,  when  they  had  fasted  and  prayed  and  laid 
their  hands  on  them,  they  sent  them  away  "^  (Acts  xiii. 
1).  At  a  later  time,  St.  Paul  received,  together  with 
Barnabas,  "the  right  hand  of  fellowship"  from  James, 
Cephas,  and  John,  as  if  the  recognition  by  the  Twelve  of 
his  mission  to  the  Gentiles.     It  is  interesting  to  note  how 

1  Cf.  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.,  Article,  The  Acts  of  the  Apostles  (Apoc- 
ryphal) for  a  valuable  discussion  of  the  legendary  history  of  the  Apostles, 
which,  taking  its  rise  in  the  second  century,  gained  a  wide  circulation,  as 
also  the  fullest  credence. 

■■^  "The  conversion  of  St.  Paul,"  as  Bishop  Liglitfoot  remarks,  "may 
be  said  in  some  sense  to  have  been  his  call  to  the  Apostleship.  But  the 
actual  investiture,  the  completion  of  his  call,  as  may  be  gathered  from 
St.  Luke's  narrative,  took  place  some  years  later  at  Antioch  (Acts  xiii.  1). 
.  .  .  Hitherto  both  alike  (Barnabas  and  Saul)  are  styled  only  prophets. 
From  this  point  onward,  both  alike  are  Apostles." 


APOSTLES,    PKOPHETS,   TEACHERS  35 

prophets  and  teachers  here  combined  with  Apostles  in 
sanctioning  the  origin  of  the  hxrger  Apostolate.  In  the 
case  of  Timothy,  who  was  in  some  sense  an  Apostle,  — ■ 
though  the  name  seems  to  have  been  withdrawn  from  him, 
and  he  became  known  to  a  later  age  as  an  evangelist,  — 
there  was  again  a  commission  given  in  which  the  pro- 
phetic office  shared:  "Neglect  not  the  gift  that  is  in  thee, 
wliich  was  given  thee  by  prophecy  with  the  laying  on  of 
the  hands  of  the  presbytery  "  (1  Tim.  iv.  14).  That  the 
other  Apostles  were  commissioned  in  this  or  similar  ways, 
we  may  assume,  but  these  are  the  only  cases  of  which  the 
record  has  been  preserved. 

In  the  planting  and  training  of  the  Christian  church,  the 
initiative  force  was  the  divine  Spirit  who  bloweth  where 
He  listeth.  We  hear  the  sound  from  heaven  which  shook 
the  place  where  the  disciples  were  gathered  together,  — 
the  sound  as  of  a  rushing  mighty  wind.  As  the  winds 
of  heaven  scatter  the  seeds  of  plants  over  the  surface  of 
the  earth  and  deposit  them  at  their  will  in  unexpected 
places,  so  also  the  seeds  of  truth,  in  which  germinate  the 
life  of  the  Spirit,  were  carried  abroad  by  the  Pentecostal 
effusion,  as  though  the  human  agency  were  a  matter  of 
indifference  provided  the  end  be  accomplished.  The 
origin  of  most  of  the  Christian  churches,  and  especially 
in  its  great  centres  Antioch  and  Alexandria  and  Rome, 
and  afterwards  Constantinople,  is  unknown.  Only  we 
know  that  the  Spirit  took  the  initiative  when  the  Gospel 
was  to  be  carried  into  Europe,  when  Barnabas  and  Paul 
were  commissioned  by  prophets  and  teachers  to  go  forth 
to  their  great  work.  What  St.  Paul  accomplished  we 
know,  who  was  in  labors  more  abundant  than  they  all, 
and  5'et  it  was  not  so  much  the  man  as  the  grace  of 
God  that  was  in  him.  In  this  grace  the  larger  Aposto- 
late also  shared,  and  not  without  the  recognition  of  the 
Twelve.  The  names  of  some  of  these  Apostles  have  been 
preserved,  but  those  of  the  greater  part  of  them  have 
perished  and  been  forgotten.  But  it  is  to  this  larger 
Apostolate,  and  not  exclusively  to  the  Twelve,  as  Bishop 
Lightfoot   has    remarked,    that    the    words    relate   which 


3G  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

declare  that  the  Cliurch  was  built  on  the  foundation  of 
Apostles  and  Prophets,  Jesus  Christ  Himself  being  the  chief 
corner-stone.  And  in  that  ancient  h^rmn,  Te  Deum,  they 
are  commemorated  together  before  God  —  "The  glorious 
company  of  the  apostles"  and  "the  goodly  fellowship  of 
the  prophets." 


CHAPTER   III 

PRESBYTERS,   BISHOPS,   DEACONS 

Those  epistles  of  St.  Paul  to  wliich  reference  has  been 
made  as  containing  the  earliest  accounts  of  the  Christian 
ministry  may  be  considered  as  documents  which  belong 
to  the  first  generation  of  the  Apostolic  age.  In  the 
decade  of  the  sixties  we  are  entering  upon  the  second 
generation  where  changes  are  impending,  —  a  period  of 
transition  in  the  church  which  affects  its  organization  as 
well  as  the  tone  of  its  life  and  thought.  By  the  year 
64  A.D.  St.  Paul  and  St.  Peter,  and  doubtless  others  of  the 
Apostles  and  of  the  Twelve,  had  gone  to  their  rest.  In 
these  years  occur  two  events  which  profoundly  disturbed 
the  peace  of  the  church :  the  persecution  under  Nero,  and 
the  beginning  of  the  war  which  led  to  the  destruction  of 
Jerusalem.  The  breaking  up  of  the  family,  as  we  may 
call  the  Twelve  who  had  been  intimately  associated  with 
Jesus,  was  an  event  of  deep  significance  for  the  church, 
because  it  led  to  the  necessity  of  providing  a  substitute 
for  important  functions  which  they  had  fulfilled.  They 
had  been  to  the  church  in  the  place  of  tradition,  handing 
on  the  words  of  the  Master,  able  to  recall  the  details  of  his 
teaching  and  impart  it  to  others  in  the  absence  of  the 
book,  before  the  Gospels  had  as  yet  assumed  their  form  or 
become  widely  disseminated.  What  was  true  of  the  Twelve 
was  also  true  of  their  contemporaries,  who  had  come  into 
personal  contact  with  Christ,  though  not  so  intimately  as 
his  chosen  disciples.  The  earlier  generation  was  passing 
away,  and  with  it  something  of  the  inspired  elevation  also 
which  marked  the  attitude  of  St.  Paul. 

The  first  generation  of  the  Apostolic  age  as  it  disap- 
peared was  followed  by  the  age  of  the  elders  or  presbyters, 

37 


38  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

who  continue  in  their  degree  to  bear  witness  to  the  things 
which  they  have  heard.  In  the  documents  of  this  second 
generation  there  are  allusions  to  '  presbyters  ' ;  in  the  docu- 
ments of  the  earlier  period  these  allusions  are  wanting 
altogether.  The  '  presbyters '  are  not  mentioned  by  St. 
Paul,  at  least  by  name,  in  his  enumeration  of  church  offi- 
cers when  writing  to  the  Corinthians  or  the  Romans,  the 
Galatians,  the  Thessalonians,  or  the  Philippians.  But  the 
writer  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  when  describing  in  later 
years  the  missionary  journeys  of  St.  Paul  in  the  land  where 
these  churches  were  planted,  states  explicitly  that  Barna- 
bas and  Paul  ordained  them  elders  (yrpea^vTepov^')  in 
every  church  (Acts  xiv.  23).  There  is  a  difficulty  here 
to  be  explained ;  but  the  precedence  must  be  given  to 
St.  Paul's  own  statement,  as  the  one  who  founded  the 
churches,  and  watched  over  them,  and  knew  better  than 
any  other  their  interior  organization. 

The  general  impression,  then,  which  is  given  by  these 
writings  of  the  second  generation  is  that  a  class  of  men 
have  come  into  prominence  in  the  administration  of  the 
local  churches  who  are  called  presbyters  or  elders.  With- 
out attempting  to  fix  the  exact  date  when  these  documents 
were  written,  and  without  insisting  upon  any  special  order 
in  which  they  are  to  be  reviewed,  it  may  be  sufficient  to 
recall  the  allusions  made  in  them  to  the  presbyters  as  indi- 
cating the  prominence  of  their  position. 

(1)  In  the  latter  part  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  there 
are  several  of  these  allusions.  The  presbyters  are  asso- 
ciated with  the  Apostles  in  the  government  of  the  church 
in  Jerusalem  as  if  they  stood  on  an  equal  footing.  When 
the  brethren  at  Antioch  determined  to  send  relief  to  the 
brethren  which  dwelt  in  Judaea,  they  sent  it  to  the  '  elders  ' 
or  presbyters  by  the  hands  of  Barnabas  and  Saul  (Acts  xi. 
30).  These  elders  are  said  to  have  been  appointed  in  every 
church  by  Barnabas  and  Saul  (Acts  xiv.  23).  At  the  time 
of  the  great  dissension,  which  turned  on  the  question  of 
whether  the  ceremonial  law  of  the  Jews  was  binding  on  the 
heathen  converts,  Paul  and  Barnabas  and  certain  others 
went  up  to  Jerusalem  "  unto  the  apostles  and  elders  about 


PRESBYTERS,    BISHOPS,   DEACONS  39 

this  question  "  (Acts  xv.  2),  and  when  they  reached  there 
"  they  were  received  of  the  church  and  of  the  apostles  and 
elders  "  (Acts  xv.  4),  and  "  the  apostles  and  elders  came 
together  for  to  consider  of  this  matter"  (Acts  xv.  6). 
When  the  decision  had  been  reached,  and  James  had  de- 
clared his  sentence,  "  it  pleased  the  apostles  and  elders  " 
to  send  chosen  men  of  their  company  to  Antioch  with  a 
letter  after  this  manner :  "  The  apostles  and  elders  and 
brethren  send  greeting,"  etc.  (Acts  xv.  22,  23).  Again  it 
is  said  that  Paul  and  Timothy  "  as  they  went  through  the 
cities  delivered  them  the  decrees  for  to  keep  that  were 
ordained  of  the  apostles  and  elders  which  were  at  Jerusa- 
lem." When  Paul  was  taking  his  farewell  of  the  church 
at  Ephesus,  he  called  for  "  the  elders  of  the  church,"  charg- 
ing them  to  take  heed  unto  themselves,  and  to  all  the 
flock  over  which  the  Holy  Ghost  had  made  them  overseers 
(eVicr/co'Trou?,  Acts  xx.  17,  28). 

(2)  In  the  First  Epistle  of  St.  Peter,  the  Apostle  ex- 
horts the  elders  to  feed  (TroLndvare)  the  flock  of  God, 
so  that  *•'  when  the  chief  shepherd  {ap'x^i7roi/ji,evo<;')  shall 
appear,  ye  shall  receive  a  crown  of  glory  that  fadeth  not 
away"  (1  Pet.  v.  1,  4). 

(3)  The  Epistle  General  of  St.  James  instructs  those 
who  are  sick  to  call  for  the  elders  of  the  church  who  shall 
pray  over  them,  etc.  (James  v.  14). 

(4)  In  the  Epistle  to  Titus  it  reads :  "  For  this  cause 
left  I  thee  in  Crete  .  .  .  that  thou  shouldest  ordain  elders 
in  every  city,  as  I  had  appointed  thee  "  (Titus  i,  5), 

In  all  these  passages  the  Greek  word  for  elder  is  irpea^v- 
Tepo<;^  and  these  are  the  only  allusions  to  the  Christian  min- 
istry. There  is  silence  regarding  prophets  and  teachers, 
as  also  bishops  and  deacons.  It  is  also  to  be  remarked 
that  Peter  claims  for  himself  the  title  or  dignity  of  a  pres- 
byter, "  I  who  am  also  an  elder  "  (^avv7rpea/3vT€po<i^. 

(5)  The  Epistle  to  the  Ephesians  is  in  marked  contrast 
with  these  and  other  documents  of  this  class  in  that  it 
contains  an  enumeration  of  the  officers  in  the  church, 
which  reminds  us  of  the  earlier  generation,  and  of  St. 
Paul's  own  description  of  the  ministry  in  his  First  Epistle 


40  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

to  the  Corinthians  :  "  And  he  (Christ )  gave  some  apostles  ; 
and  some  prophets ;  and  some  evangelists  ;  and  some  pas- 
tors and  teachers"  (Trotyuem?  kuI  SiSaaKaXov^;,  Eph.  iv.  2). 
If  the  passage  represents  an  actual  situation,  it  reveals  a 
change  in  the  ecclesiastical  order.  The  Teacher  has  de- 
scended from  the  third  place  in  the  higher  ministry 
described  by  St.  Paul,  and  for  him  is  substituted  the 
Evangelist,  a  word  which  had  only  a  temporary  vogue  in 
the  transition  from  the  Apostolic  to  the  post-Apostolic 
age ;  a  designation  applied  to  Timothy,  as  where  he  was 
told  to  do  the  work  of  an  '  evangelist '  ^  (2  Tim.  iv.  5),  that 
is,  an  assistant  to  the  Apostle,  impljdng  inferioi'ity  to  an 
Apostle,  but  superiority  to  presbyters,  bishops,  and  dea- 
cons. The  use  of  the  word  '  evangelist '  may  be  regarded 
as  the  first  indication  that  the  larger  Apostolate  was  pass- 
ing away,  that  tlie  term  '  Apostle  '  was  now  beginning  to 
be  restricted  to  the  original  Twelve,  with  whom  St.  Paul 
alone  was  henceforth  to  be  associated  on  equal  terms. 

In  this  enumeration  of  church  officers,  neither  presby- 
ters, bishops,  or  deacons  are  mentioned.  But  there  is  a 
class  of  officers  called  pastors  and  teachers,  who  combine 
the  two  functions  of  pastoral  care  and  teaching.  The  word 
'  pastor '  (Troiixrjv)  was  one  of  the  many  tentative  terms 
in  a  period  of  transition  which  did  not  win  final  accept- 
ance.   The  word  suggests  a  double  tendency  or  direction  in 

1  Philip  is  called  an  Evangelist  in  Acts  xxi.  8.  For  a  discussion  of  the 
relation  of  these  terms  'Apostle'  and  'evangelist,'  cf.  Rdville,  Orig.  de 
riSjns.,  pp.  137  ff.  and  pp.  244  ff.  :  "  Une  espfece  de  colporteurs  des  dires 
de  J^sus  et  des  r^cits  concernant  sa  vie  et  sa  mort,  ddpourvus  de  l'autorit6 
que  les  apdtres  tiennent  du  Christ,  terrestre  ou  glorifi6,  et  que  les  proph^tes 
tiennent  de  1' Esprit  divin  dont  ils  sont  inspires.  Ce  n'est  pas  sans  bonne 
raison  que  les  rMacteurs  des  Merits  ou  furent  consign^s  plus  tard  par 
^crit  les  faits  et  gestes  de  J^sus  et  les  paroles  de  lui  que  la  tradition  orale 
avait  conserv^es,  furent  appelfe  ^vang^listes.  lis  firent  en  ^crivant  la 
meme  ceuvre  que  leurs  pr^d^cesseurs  faisaient  en  parlant "  (p.  140).  It  is 
mentioned  as  a  prerogative  of  the  Evangelist  that  he  appoints  presbyters 
(cf.  2  Tim.  i.  5).  But  the  later  bishop  did  not  inherit  this  prerogative. 
According  to  the  usage  of  the  Catholic  church  a  presbyter  is  not  ordained 
by  the  bishop  alone,  as  is  the  deacon,  but  by  the  bishop  in  conjunction 
with  the  presbyters,  who  act  together  in  the  laying  on  of  hands,  —  a  relic 
of  the  earlier  day  when  the  highest  distinction  of  the  bishop  lay  in  his 
belonguig  to  the  class  of  the  presbyters. 


PRESBYTERS,    BISHOPS,    DEACONS  41 

the  ministry  of  the  local  church.  On  the  one  hand,  there 
is  the  function  of  feeding  the  flock,  which  recalls  the  pres- 
byter as  his  duties  are  defined  by  St.  Paul  in  his  farewell 
address  at  Miletus,  "Feed  the  church  of  God"  (Acts  xx. 
28);  or  again  by  St.  Peter  when  exhorting  the  presbyters, 
"Feed  the  flock  of  God"  (1  Pet.  v.  2,  4).  But  super- 
intendence is  also  suggested,  for  which  the  word  is  over- 
sight, or  episcopacy ;  as  again  in  the  same  passage  from 
St.  Paul,  "  Take  heed  unto  the  flock  over  which  the  Holy 
Ghost  hath  made  you  overseers "  (eTrtcr/co'TroL'?) ;  or  St. 
Peter,  "  Ye  are  now  returned  unto  the  bishop  and  shep- 
herd of  your  souls  "  (jTotfieva  koI  eiriaKOTrov).  The  word 
'  pastor '  or  '  shepherd  '  wavers  between  these  two  oflicers, 
presbyter  and  bishop,  and  from  its  use  no  exact  conclu- 
sion can  be  drawn  ^  (cf.  Her.  Sim.  ix.  31). 

1  There  is  another  tentative  word  for  tlie  ministry  in  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews,  which  also  failed  to  become  domesticated  in  common  use  : 
"Remember  them  that  have  the  rule  over  you"  where  the  Greek  is 
■fjyov/jLivcov  (cf.  Heb.  xiii.  7,  17).  It  may  be  used  here  in  a  general  way 
and  not  in  a  technical.  The  natural  affiliation  of  the  word  is  with  the 
presbyterate,  which,  like  the  Apostolate,  had  the  cure  of  souls ;  they  are 
further  described  as  those  that  "  watch  for  your  souls  "  (v.  17).  But  the 
same  word  is  also  employed  by  Clement  of  Rome  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, where  it  refers  to  officers  other  than  the  presbyters,  who  seem  to  be 
above  presbyters  and  yet  are  not  bishops  (cf.  Clem.  Rom.,  cc.  i.  and  xxi.). 
For  this  reason  they  have  been  identified  with  the  prophets  (so  Ritschl, 
Harnack),  an  order  which  .still  continued  to  exist  in  the  earlier  years  of 
the  second  century.  According  to  the  Didache,  if  the  local  church  ap- 
points bishops  and  deacons,  they  will  be  to  them  for  prophets  and  are  to 
be  honored  as  such.  On  the  other  hand,  Weizsacker  sees  in  the  Tjyov/jievot, 
the  superintendents  of  the  local  churches,  corresponding  to  the  bishops  of 
the  Pastoral  Epistles  (V.  2,  §  2).  R6ville  also  takes  a  similar  view  (cf. 
pp.  389,  415).  In  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  the  pi'ophets  are  called 
ijyovfj.evoi ;  as  in  Acts  xv.  22,  where  it  is  said  that  the  Apostles  and  elders 
with  the  whole  church  sent  chosen  men  of  their  own  company  to  Antioch 
^with  Paul  and  Barnabas  ;  namely,  Judas  surnamed  Barsabas  and  Silas, 
chief  men  (d^Spas  ijyovn^vovs)  among  the  brethren ;  and  in  verse  32  it  is 
said  that  Judas  and  Silas  were  prophets.  Cf.  Her.  Vis.  ii.  26  and  iii.  9.  7, 
where  the  prophets  are  also  called  iiyovfievoi. 

No  account  has  been  taken  here  of  the  Book  of  Revelation,  because  its 
figurative  allusions  throw  little  or  no  light  upon  the  actual  organization  of 
tlie  church.  Cf.  Lightfoot,  Essai/,  etc.,  pp.  199,  290,  whose  reasoning  seems 
conclusive:  "The  angels  of  the  seven  churches  are  not  ecclesiastical 
officers."  So  also  Weizsacker:  "The  angels  of  the  seven  churches  are 
not  really  vclr  va7it.  They  were,  from  i.  16.  20,  spirits  and  as  such  always 
personified  the  churches  "  (Das  apost.  Zeit,  V.  2,  §  3). 


42  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 

(6)  As  one  passes  into  the  atmosphere  in  which  the  Pas- 
toral Epistles  were  written,  there  is  the  attendant  con- 
sciousness of  a  change  in  the  situation  of  the  churches,  a 
sense  of  exigency,  as  though  evils  were  pressing  upon 
them  both  from  within  and  without.  These  ejDistles  are 
more  directly  occupied  with  the  question  of  church  organs 
ization,  as  if  therein  lay  a  remedy  for  the  dangers  of  the 
hour.  In  the  constitution  of  the  church  as  it  is  here 
described,  there  is  no  longer  any  allusion  to  the  prophets, 
and  so  far  as  there  is  any  mention  of  the  teacher,  it  is 
by  way  of  warning,  as  if  the  teachers  had  fallen  into  dis- 
repute (1  Tim.  vi.  3-5).  The  Apostle,  also,  is  absent, 
but  in  his  place  is  a  delegate  known  as  an  evangelist, 
Avho  will  carry  on  his  work  after  his  final  departure.  The 
presbyters  appear  now  as  if  officials  (1  Tim.  v.  17,  19), 
and  again  as  if  a  class  in  the  community,  the  older  men  as 
compared  with  the  younger  ^  (1  Tim.  v.  1,  2).  The  high- 
est honor  is  accorded  them  ;  even  the  evangelist  is  not  to 
rebuke  them,  but  entreat  them  as  fathers ;  no  accusation  is 
to  be  received  against  them  except  in  the  presence  of  two 
or  three  witnesses.  Those  presbyters  who  rule  well  are  to 
be  accounted  worthy  of  double  honor,  especially  those  who 
labor  in  the  Word  and  doctrine. ^  But  while  the  presby- 
ters are  thus  honored,  they  seem  to  stand  somewhat  in  the 
background  and  are  vaguely  drawn.  It  may  have  been 
that  their  position  and  duties  were  too  familiar  to  need 

1  Cf.  1  Pet.  V.  5.  "  Likewise,  ye  younger  (vetirepot),  submit  yourselves 
unto  the  elder  (wpea-^vTipoLs).''''  This  same  usage  is  still  followed  in  the 
Epistle  of  the  Roman  Clement  to  the  Corinthians,  cc.  i.,  iii.  But  it  is 
quite  possible  that  these  two  aspects  of  the  presbyter  were  prominent  in 
the  consciousness  of  the  community  at  the  same  time.  He  was  an  official 
with  recognized  duties,  but  had  attained  this  honor  as  one  of  a  class,  the 
older  members  to  whom  the  young  owed  obedience  for  a  double  reason, — 
their  age  as  well  as  their  position. 

2  Whether  these  ruling  and  teaching  presbyters  are  to  be  identified 
with  the  bishops  is  a  question  which  the  Pastoral  Epistles  do  not  in 
themselves  give  sufficient  material  for  determining.  The  bishop's  quali- 
fications include  aptness  to  teach  and  the  ability  to  refute  the  gainsayers, 
but  also  the  gift  of  ruling.  If  we  hold  that  they  are  not  identical  offices, 
then  there  were  in  the  church  at  Ephesus  these  five  orders  or  ranks  of 
othce  :  evangelists,  teaching  elders,  ruling  elders,  bishops,  and  deacons. 
But  if  they  are  to  be  identified,  then  there  are  only  three  ranks,  —  evange- 


PRESBYTERS,    BISHOPS,    DEACONS  43 

definition,  or  that  they  were  too  indefinite  for  exact  descrip- 
tion. But  however  this  may  be,  the  qualifications  of  the 
bishop  are  mentioned  at  length,  as  are  also  those  of  the 
deacons. 

In  this  respect,  the  First  Epistle  to  Timothy  and  the 
Epistle  to  Titus  stand  forth  in  marked  contrast  Avith 
the  other  documents  which  describe  the  organization  of 
the  church  in  the  second  generation,  —  they  assign  to  the 
bishop  and  the  deacon  important  posts  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  local  church,  and  the  words  '  bishop '  and 
'  deacon  '  are  not  used  in  a  general  untechnical  way,  but 
have  become  the  fixed  designations  of  their  respective 
offices.  That  the  qualifications  for  these  offices  should 
be  mentioned  with  such  emphasis  and  fine  discrimination, 
does  not,  indeed,  indicate  that  these  offices  are  new,  but 
does  show  that  they  have  been  growing  in  importance 
since  the  first  and  sole  allusion  to  them  by  name  made  by 
St.  Paul  when  writing  to  the  gentile  Christian  church  in 
Philippi  (Phil.  i.  1).  Whether  there  was  a  plurality  of 
bishops  in  the  church  at  Ephesus  over  which  Timothy 
was  placed  as  an  evangelist,  or  only  one  bishop,  is  per- 
haps still  an  open  question.  It  was  a  plural  episcopate  to 
which  St.  Paul  referred  in  the  church  at  Philippi,  and  it 
was  still  a  plural  episcopate  in  the  churches  of  Rome  and 
Corinth  at  the  close  of  the  first  century,  as  also  in  the 
community  described  in  the  Didache.  What  seems  like 
an  allusion  to  a  single  bishop  in  1  Tim.  iii.  1,  2  (cf.  Titus 
i.  7),  especially  in  comparison  with  the  plural  diaconate 
(1  Tim.  iii.  8),  may  be  the  desire  to  call  special  attention 
to  the  grave  importance  of  the  office.  But  however  this 
may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  office 
to  which  the  bishop  is  called.  The  qualifications  which 
he  must  possess  are  those  of  a  pastor,  who  is  to  teach  and 
rule  the  church;  and  to  this  end  he  must  be  endowed  with 


lists,  bishops,  and  deacons,  —  and  in  this  case  there  is  plainly  a  plurality 
of  bishops.  The  probability  is  that  bishop  and  presbyter  are  not  the 
same  office  nor  are  the  names  interchangeable,  but  the  bishops  are  chosen 
from  the  presbyterate  for  a  special  work,  and  while  retaining  their  high 
position  and  honor  as  presbyters,  are  yet  also  known  by  a  special  title. 


44  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE  CHURCH 

the  higher  Christian  virtues ;  he  must  have  also  a  good 
report  in  the  heathen  world  outside  the  church  (1  Tim. 
iii.  2-7;  Titus  ii.  6-9).  There  is  a  tradition  to  be  main- 
tained, a  form  of  sound  words  to  be  defended  against 
those  who  are  perverting  the  truth.  Heretics  are  to  be 
resisted,  and  the  mouths  of  false  teachers  to  be  stopped. 
According  to  the  Epistle  to  Titus,  the  danger  is  from 
Judaizing  teachers ;  in  the  Epistles  to  Timothy  it  comes 
from  gentile  heathen  sources.  There  is  also  serious  cause 
for  solicitude  from  the  hostility  it  may  be  of  the  State  and 
from  this  present  evil  world.  But  whatever  may  be  the 
depth  or  extent  of  this  external  danger,  it  does  not  intimi- 
date the  church,  but  rather  rouses  in  it  the  spirit  of  defi- 
ance out  of  which  is  born  the  tendency  toward  a  closer, 
more  centralized  organization  in  order  to  meet  more  effec- 
tively the  impending  evil.^ 

(7)  The  Second  Epistle  of  John  reveals  to  us  a  pres- 
byter chiefly  solicitous  concerning  the  invasion  of  the 
church  by  heresy  and  calling  attention  to  the  tradition 
which  was  from  the  beginning  as  the  safeguard  against 
the  danger  (2  John  6-10.).  The  Third  Epistle  of  John 
is  written  by  the  same  presbyter,  who  also  mentions  again 
that  he  is  a  presbyter,  as  if  therein  lay  his  credentials  of 
honor  and  authority.  There  is  here  the  disclosure  of  a 
troubled  condition  within  the  church  itself,  owing  to  a 
struggle  for  the  pre-eminence  among  its  officers :  "  I  wrote 
unto  the  church  :  but  Diotrephes,  who  loveth  to  have  the 
pre-eminence  among  them,  receiveth  us  not.  Wherefore, 
if  I  come,  I  will  remember  his  deeds  which  he  doeth,  prat- 
ing against  us  with  malicious  words:  and  not  content 
therewith,  neither  doth  he  himself  receive  the  brethren, 
and  forbiddeth  them  that  would,  and  casteth  them  out  of 
the  church"  (3  John,  9,  10).  The  allusion  is  obscure, 
but  is  sufficient  to  indicate  that  the  organization  of  the 

1  Of.  Ramsay,  The  Church  in  the  Boman  Empire.,  on  the  influence  of 
the  Flavian  persecution  on  the  organization  of  the  church  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Christian  ministry,  pp.  252-874.  Professor  Ramsay  follows 
the  conservative  tradition  in  placing  the  date  of  the  Pastoral  Epistles  not 
far  from  the  year  67  a.d.,  p.  365. 


PRESBYTERS,    BISHOPS,    DEACONS  45 

church  was  not  fixed  without  a  struggle.  The  time  and 
place  of  both  these  epistles  is  unknown.  If  they  fall 
within  the  Apostolic  age,  it  must  be  in  the  latest  years  of 
the  second  generation,  as  it  verges  into  a  new  period. 
They  may  serve  as  a  connection  with  the  Epistle  of  the 
Roman  Clement  to  the  Corinthians,  which  reveals  a 
greater  disturbance  in  the  church  at  Corinth.^ 

1  If  we  may  sum  up  the  impression  produced  by  this  general  survey  of 
the  literature  of  the  second  generation,  it  may  be  said  to  indicate  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  presbyter  in  the  organization  of  the  local  church.  So 
also  Bishop  Lightfoot :  "  It  is  clear  that  at  the  close  of  the  Apostolic  age 
the  two  lower  orders  of  the  threefold  ministry  were  firmly  and  widely 
established  ;  but  traces  of  the  third  and  highest  order,  the  episcopate, 
properly  so  called,  are  few  and  indistinct"  (Essay  on  the  Christian 
Ministry  in  Comm.  on  Philippians,  p.  195,  ed.  1891). 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   AGE   OF   TRANSITION 

There  are  four  important  documents  belonging  to  the 
earlier  years  of  the  post-Apostolic  age,  or  to  what  may  be 
called  the  third  of  the  Christian  generations.  They  are 
the  Epistle  of  Clement  of  Rome  to  the  Corinthians,  the 
Didache,  or  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles,  the  Shep- 
herd of  Hermas,  and  the  letters  of  Ignatius.  The  dates  of 
the  Didache  and  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas  are  not  definitely 
fixed,  and  therefore  the  order  in  which  these  four  treatises 
are  considered  is  hypothetical  and  subject  to  revision. 
The  time  of  Clement's  Epistle  is  about  the  year  97  a.d.  ; 
the  Ignatian  Epistles  may  be  placed  between  the  years 
112  A.D.  and  117  a.d.  The  Didache  and  the  Shepherd 
of  Hermas  may  have  been  written  earlier  or  later  than  the 
time  of  Ignatius ;  while  this  uncertainty  must  be  borne  in 
mind,  it  does  not  greatly  modify  our  knowledge  of  the 
development  of  the  Christian  ministry  in  its  more  promi- 
nent features. 


Clement  of  Rome,  who  wrote  the  Epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians, can  only  with  difficulty  be  identified  with  the 
Clement  mentioned  by  St.  Paul  as  his  fellow-laborer 
(Phil.  iv.  3).^  His  epistle  has  affiliations  with  the 
Epistle    to  the   Hebrews,  as  shown  by  his    allusions   to 

1  For  a  discussion  of  the  character  of  Clement  and  his  position  in  the 
church  at  Rome,  cf.  Lightfoot,  Apostolic  Fathers,  Part  I.,  Vol.  I.,  who 
holds  that  he  cannot  be  identified  with  the  Clement  mentioned  in  Phil, 
iv.  3.  Lightfoot' s  translation  has  been  followed  in  the  critical  passages 
quoted  from  Clement.  Cf.  also  Wrede,  Untersuchimgen  zum  Ersten 
Klemensbriffe,  1892,  who  adds  much  to  our  insight  into  this  famous 
epistle. 

46 


THE   AGE   OP   TRANSITION  47 

the  Old  Testament  and  to  Jewish  ceremonial  (cc.  xl., 
xli.).  In  view  of  later  developments  in  the  Roman 
church,  it  is  significant  that  he  does  not  write  in  his  own 
name,  but  in  the  name  of  the  whole  church,  an  evidence  of 
the  democratic  ordering  of  the  community.  His  super- 
scription reads,  "The  Church  of  God  which  sojourns  at 
Rome  to  the  Church  of  God  which  sojourns  at  Corinth," 
as  if  his  predominant  mood  were  the  conviction  that  here 
we  have  no  enduring  city.  He  had  been  consulted  by 
members  of  the  church  at  Corinth  about  troubles  which 
had  risen  among  them  and  liad  delayed  his  reply  in  con- 
sequence of  sudden  and  calamitous  events  in  Rome,  —  a 
reference,  it  may  be,  to  the  disturbances  under  the  Emperor 
Domitian.  It  has  sometimes  been  claimed  that  we  have 
here  the  first  instance  of  an  appeal  to  Rome.  But  the 
letter  of  Clement  is  no  more  evidence  for  the  primacy  of 
Rome  than  are  the  letters  of  Ignatius  an  evidence  of  the 
primacy  of  Antioch.  If  a  certain  tone  of  authority  is  ap- 
parent, the  reflex,  it  may  be,  of  the  pride  of  the  Eternal 
City,  there  is  also  in  the  writings  of  Ignatius  a  conviction 
of  a  higher  authority,  as  if  he  spoke  by  immediate  reve- 
lation of  God. 

The  letter  of  Clement  opens  with  expressions  of  admira- 
tion and  praise  for  the  church  at  Corinth,  its  sobriety  and 
moderation,  its  magnificent  hospitality,  its  perfect  and  well- 
grounded  knowledge,  its  kindness  and  charity  and  willing- 
ness to  forgive,  and  the  peace  which  had  marked  its  career. 
But  there  is  no  reference  to  St.  Paul's  Epistles  to  the 
Corinthians,  in  which  a  different  state  of  affairs  was  pict- 
ured. The  obedience  of  the  Corinthians  to  the  command- 
ments of  God  is  specially  commended  (c.  i.)  :  "you  were 
obedient  to  them  that  had  the  rule  over  you  (r^'yovfievoa^, 
and  gave  all  fitting  honor  to  the  presbyters  among  you  " 
(Trpea^vrepoL^^.  The  cause  of  the  disturbance  was  that 
"  the  worthless  rose  up  against  the  renowned,  the  foolish 
against  the  wise,  the  young  against  those  advanced  in 
years"  (c.  iii.,  veoL  eirl  tov^  vpeo-^vrepovi^.  Clement  then 
proceeds  to  enjoin  obedience  at  some  length  and  with 
illustrations    from    the   Old   Testament,    and    along    with 


48  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE  CHURCH 

obedience,  the  virtue  of  humility.  Again  there  is  an  allu- 
sion to  the  disturbance  at  Corinth  (c.  xiv.)  as  a  "  detest- 
able emulation,"  caused  by  "  pride  and  sedition,"  by  men 
who  aim  at  exciting  "  strife  and  tumults."  Against  the 
authors  of  sedition  is  set  over,  in  contrast,  obedience  to 
God,  as  if  the  constituted  authorities  in  the  church  repre- 
sented His  will :  "  Let  us  esteem  those  who  have  the  rule 
over  us  (^7rporj<yovfxevov<i),  let  us  honor  our  presbyters  (or 
our  aged  men,  irpea-^vrepov^),  let  us  train  up  the  young 
in  the  fear  of  God"  ^  (c.  xxi.). 

The  greater  part  of  the  epistle  is  occupied  with  thus 
laying  the  foundation  in  general  reasoning  and  exhorta- 
tion, for  the  special  message  which  Clement  has  for  the 
church  at  Corinth.  This  message  is  finally  introduced 
in  a  manner  which  indicates  that  Clement  lays  claim  to 
the  prophetic  ofhce:  "Since  these  things  therefore  are 
manifest  to  us,  and  since  we  have  searched  into  the  depths 
of  the  divine  knowledge"  (c.  xl.).  What,  then,  is  the 
burden  of  the  prophetic  injunction? 

"  We  ought  to  do  all  things  in  order,  as  many  as  the  Master  hath 
commanded  us  to  perform  at  their  appointed  seasons.  Now  the  offei'- 
ings  and  ministrations  He  commanded  to  be  performed  with  care,  and 
not  to  be  done  rashly  or  in  disorder,  but  at  fixed  times  and  seasons. 
And  where  and  by  whom  He  would  have  them  performed,  He  Him- 
self fixed  by  His  supreme  will ;  that  all  things  being  done  with  piety 
according  to  His  good  pleasure  might  be  acceptable  to  His  will. 
They  therefore  that  make  their  offerings  at  the  appointed  season  are 
acceptable  and  blessed ;  for  while  they  follow  the  institutions  of  the 
Master  they  cannot  go  wrong.  For  unto  the  high  priest  his  proper 
services  have  been  assigned,  and  to  the  priests  their  proper  office  is 
appointed,  and  upon  the  Levites  their  proper  ministrations  are  laid. 
The  layman  is  bound  by  the  laymen's  ordinances"  (c.  xl.). 

"  Let  each  of  you,  brethren,  in  his  own  order  give  thanks  unto 
God,  maintaining  a  good  conscience  and  not  transgressing  the  ap- 
pointed rule  of  his  service,  but  acting  with  all  seemliness.  Not  in 
every  place,  brethren,  are  the  continual  daily  sacrifices  offered  or  the 

1  This  allusion  to  the  rulers  and  presbyters  is  followed  in  the  next 
sentence  by  a  reference  to  the  young  men  {viois)^  who  were  enjoined  to 
be  modest.  Hence  Lightfoot  translates,  "  submitting  yourselves  to  your 
rulers  and  rendering  the  older  men  among  you  the  honor  which  is  their 
due,"  i.e.  the  presbyters  here  are  a  class  in  the  community  and  not 
officials. 


THE   AGE   OF   TRANSITION  49 

free  will  offerings  or  the  sin  offerings  and  the  trespass  offerings,  but  in 
Jerusalem  alone.  And  even  there  the  offering  is  not  made  in  every- 
place, but  before  the  sanctuary  in  the  court  of  the  altar ;  and  this  too 
through  the  high  priest  and  aforesaid  ministers"  (c.  xli).i 

We  have  in  this  passage  the  analogy  of  the  Christian 
ministry  with  the  Jewish  priesthood,  which  was  to  be  ap- 
plied with  greater  force  and  exactness  by  Cyprian  in  the 
third  century,  and  was  to  become  the  ruling  idea  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  That  which  Christ  had  done  away,  when 
he  declared  to  the  woman  in  Samaria  the  nature  of  Chris- 
tian Avorship,  is  now  to  be  restored;  "Neither  in  this 
mountain  (Gerizim)  nor  yet  at  Jerusalem  shall  men  wor- 
ship the  Father.  But  the  hour  cometh  and  now  is  when 
the  true  worshippers  shall  worship  the  Father  in  spirit 
and  in  truth."  We  have  here,  also,  the  first  intimation  of 
the  sharp  line  of  division  which  was  at  a  later  time  to 
sej^arate  the  clergy  from  the  laity. 

Clement  proceeds,  in  the  next  place,  to  enforce  the 
Roman  doctrine  of  the  transmission  of  authority  through 
the  unbroken  chain  of  verbal  commission : 

"  The  Apostles  received  the  Gospel  for  us  from  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ ;  Jesus  Christ  was  sent  forth  from  God.  So  then  Christ  is 
from  God,  and  the  Apostles  are  from  Christ.     Both  therefore  came 

i"Ce  curieux  chapitre,  ou  la  th^se  sacerdotale  s'affirme  pour  la 
premiere  fois  dans  toute  sa  erudite,  denote  que  les  rebelles  de  Corinthe  ne 
voulaient  pas  se  confornier  aux  instructions  de  leurs  dignitaires  pour  la 
calibration  de  I'eucharistie  et  la  tenue  des  agapes,  —  ce  qui  explique  I'in- 
tervention  de  la  police  corinthienne.  Non  seulement  lis  ne  veulent  pas 
observer  les  jours  et  heures  fix^s  par  leurs  pasteurs,  mais  ils  ne  tiennent 
pas  compte  des  regies  determinant  quelles  personnes  out  le  droit  de  faire 
des  offrandes,  en  d'auti-es  termes,  ils  m^connaissent  les  prerogatives  de 
leurs  dpiscopes.  Ils  n'ont  pas  encore  accept^  la  distinction  du  Xal'/cis 
dvdpwiros  oppose  aux  pretres  et  aux  Invites.  Ils  out  le  grand  tort  d'avoir 
conserve  le  vieil  esprit  democratique  de  la  communaute  paulinienne,  de 
ne  pas  se  plier  aux  pretentions  de  leurs  gouvernants  et  de  les  destituer, 
suivant  la  vieille  tradition  helienique,  lorsque  ceux-ci  ne  veulent  pas  6x6- 
cuter  les  decisions  de  I'assembieesouveraine.  .  .  .  C'est  tout  simpleraent 
un  incident,  — d'autant  plus  reniarquable  pour  nous  qu'il  est  le  seul  dont 
le  souvenir  est  conserve,  —  d'une  lutte  qui  dut  se  repeter  dans  plusieurs 
autres  eglises  grecques  et  les  tendances  autoritaires  qui  se  devellopent 
chez  les  presbytres  et  les  episcopes  par  le  fait  meme  des  conditions  dans 
lesquelles  ils  exercent  leurs  fonctions."  Reville,  His.  de  VlSpis.,  pp. 
404,  405. 


60  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

of  the  will  of  God  in  the  appointed  order.  Having  therefore  received 
a  charge,  and  having  been  fully  assured  through  the  resurrection  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  confirmed  in  the  Word  of  (iod  with  full 
assurance  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  they  went  forth  with  the  glad  tidings 
that  the  kingdom  of  God  should  come.  So  preaching  everywhere  in 
country  and  town,  they  appointed  their  firstfruits,  when  they  had 
proved  them  by  the  Spirit,  to  be  bishops  and  deacons  unto  them  that 
should  believe.  And  this  they  did  in  no  new  fashion  ;  for  indeed  it 
had  been  written  concerning  bishops  and  deacons  from  very  ancient 
times ;  for  thus  saith  the  Scripture  in  a  certain  place,  '  I  will  appoint 
their  bishops  in  righteousness  and  their  deacons  in  faith  ' "  ^  (c.  xlii.). 

It  is  important  to  note  here  that  bishops  and  deacons  are 
mentioned  together  as  having  some  close  and  peculiar  tie, 
and  that  they  are  specially  related  to  the  worship  of  the 
church  at  stated  times  and  places ;  it  is  their  function  to 
receive  and  present  the  offerings.  A  similar  reminder  is 
found  in  the  allusion  to  'bishops  and  deacons  '  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Philippians,  where  they  are  mentioned  in  connec- 
tion with  the  acknowledgment  of  a  gift  of  money  to  the 
apostle;  that  is,  an  offering.  Bishops  and  deacons  were 
again  connected  in  the  First  Epistle  to  Timothy  and  the 
Epistle  to  Titus,  where  the  qualifications  for  both  offices 
include  a  warning  against  covetousness  and  the  love  of 
money.  The  next  statement,  that  the  Apostles  appointed 
the  firstfruits  of  their  labors  to  be  bishops  and  deacons, 
is  hard  to  reconcile  with  the  statement  in  Acts  (xiv.  23; 
cf.  Titus  i.  5)  that  "they  appointed  presbyters  in  every 
city,"  as  also  with  the  prominence  of  the  presbyters  in  the 
second  generation.  If  there  is  any  authority  for  Clement's 
statement  in  the  documents  already  reviewed,  it  must  be 
in  the  account  mentioned  in  the  sixth  chapter  of  the  Acts, 
where  a  trouble  arose  about  the  distribution  of  the  funds 
or  offerings,  and  the  Apostles  set  apart  the  Seven,  who 
should  be  men  of  honest  report,  to  the  ministry  of  the 
tables.  And  as  the  ministry  of  the  tables  was  clearly 
connected  with  the  agape,  or  earlier  form  of  keeping  the 

^  The  quotation  is  inexact.  Cf.  LXX.,  Is.  Ix.  17,  Suxrw  toi>s  SipxovTa^ 
ffov  €v  elprivrj  Kal  toi)s  e7rtcr/c67rous  ffov  iv  dLKaiocrvvTi,  "  I  will  make  thy  officers 
peace  and  tliy  exactors  righteousness."  Cf.  Lightfoot,  Apos.  Fathers, 
Part  I.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  129, 


THE   AGE   OF   TRANSITION  51 

Lord's  supper,  the  Seven  also  must  have  been  closely  con- 
nected with  the  worship  of  the  church  and  the  ordering  of 
its  details.  The  original  diaconate  of  the  tables,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  ministry  of  the  Word,  which  the  Apostles 
reserved  to  tliemselves,  may  then  have  expanded  into  this 
twofold  order, — the  bishops,  who  preside  and  have  the 
function  of  oversight,  and  the  deacons,  who  help  them  in 
the  fulfilment  of  their  office.  The  authority  of  an  apostle 
for  this  arrangement  may  be  further  indicated  in  the  func- 
tion of  the  ministry,  which  is  designated  by  St.  Paul 
'helps'  (^avTiX't]fjLyjrei<;^,  in  his  enumeration  of  the  grades 
of  the  ministry  as  God  hath  appointed  them  (1  Cor.  xii. 
28).  The  expansion  of  the  "helps"  into  bishops  and 
deacons  was  then  a  simple  and  natural  process.  The 
authority  of  St.  Paul  may  be  seen  also  in  his  mention  of 
the  diaconia,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  where  they 
that  minister  are  exhorted  to  wait  on  their  ministring. 
That  those  who  were  thus  appointed  were  the  firstfruits 
of  the  Apostolic  teaching  is  a  statement  warranted  by  the 
account  of  the  appointment  of  the  Seven,  as  well  as  by  the 
nature  of  the  case.  But  Clement  does  not  assign  to  bish- 
ops and  deacons  the  functions  of  teaching  or  of  ruling: 
they  serve  the  cliurch  in  the  ministry  of  the  tables,  — they 
present  the  offerings  and  perform  the  service ;  for  God  has 
appointed  the  performance  with  care  of  the  offerings  and 
ministrations  QTrpoa<^opa<i  koL  XetrovpyLa^;,  c.  xl.). 

The  office  of  the  bishops  must  have  been  growing  in  im- 
portance from  its  first  appearance,  especially  as,  with  the 
increase  of  the  congregations,  the  offerings  also  increased, 
and  the  necessity  for  the  orderly  performance  of  the  ser- 
vice. The  questions,  therefore,  of  the  mode  of  appoint- 
ment to  the  office  and  the  duration  of  its  tenure,  or  whether 
it  should  be  for  life,  became  issues  of  immediate  exigency. 
On  this  subject  Clement  writes: 

"  And  our  Apostles  knew  through  our  Lord  Jesns  Christ  that  there 
would  be  strife  over  tlie  name  of  the  bishop's  office.  For  this  cause 
therefore,  having  received  complete  foreknowledge,  they  appointed 
the  aforesaid  persons,  and  afterwards  they  provided  a  continuance, 
that  if  these  should  fall  asleep,  other  approved  men  should  succeed 


52  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

to  their  ministration.  Those  tlierefore  who  were  appointed  by  them, 
or  afterward  by  other  men  of  repnte  with  the  consent  of  the  whole 
Chnrch,  and  have  ministered  unblamably  to  the  flock  of  Christ  in 
lowliness  of  mind,  peacefully  and  with  all  modesty  and  for  a  long- 
time have  borne  a  good  report  with  all, ; —  these  men  we  consider  to 
be  unjustly  thrust  out  from  their  ministration.  For  it  will  be  no 
light  sin  for  ns,  if  we  thrust  out  those  who  have  offered  the  gifts  of 
the  bishop's  office  unblamably  and  holily.  Blessed  are  those  pres- 
byters who  have  gone  before,  seeing  that  their  departure  was  fruitful 
and  ripe :  for  they  have  no  fear  lest  any  one  should  remove  them  from 
their  appointed  place  "  (c.  xliv.). 

Upon  this  passage  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  first 
statement  in  regard  to  the  Apostles'  foreknowledge  of  a 
struggle  over  the  episcopate,  concerning  which  Christ  had 
taught  them,  is  Clement's  own  inference  or  theory,  and 
not  borne  out  by  any  special  source  of  information  to 
which  he  had  access.  He  reasoned  from  his  knowledge  of 
the  working  of  human  nature.  He  also  lays  an  emphasis 
upon  the  consciousness  of  this  foreknowledge  among  the 
Apostles  which  may  be  the  result  of  his  own  meditation. 
But  in  a  general  way  there  are  many  warnings  in  the 
teachings  of  Christ  and  of  His  Apostles  regarding  an 
unhallowed  ambition  for  high  places  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,  or  the  desire  to  be  lords  over  God's  heritage  or  the 
necessity  of  humility  and  of  taking  the  lowest  place ;  "  He 
that  will  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your  minister." ^ 
From  these  allusions  Clement  may  have  drawn  his  infer- 
ence. But  in  regard  to  one  point,  which  was  to  become 
of  supreme  interest  to  the  later  church,  Clement  is  silent. 
Beyond  the  statement  that  when  the  bishops  and  deacons 
whom  Apostles  had  appointed  should  fall  asleep,  others 
should  take  their  place  whom  men  of  repute  should  ap- 
point, with  the  approval  of  the  whole  church,  —  beyond 
this  general  statement  no  light  is  thrown  upon  the  method 
of  continuing  the  office  of  the  bishops.  These  men  of 
repute  may  have  been  the  prophets  or  the  presbyters, 
whom  Clement  has  already  mentioned.  It  may  also  be 
inferred  from  Clement's  statement  about  the  injustice  of 

1  Of.  Matt.  XX.  25  ;  Luke  xiv.  7  ;  1  Cor.  xii.  ;  1  Pet.  v.  3  ;  1  Tim.  iii.  1  ; 
3  John  9. 


THE   AGE   OF   TRANSITION"  53 

dismissing  those  from  the  ministry  who  had  performed  its 
duties  in  a  holy  and  blameless  way,  that  hitherto  the 
office  of  the  bishop  or  of  the  deacon  had  not  been  regarded 
as  a  life  office,  and  was  not  so  regarded  in  the  church  at 
Corinth  by  all  its  members.  And  one  other  inference  may 
be  drawn,  that  the  bishops  were  taken  from  the  ranks  of 
the  presbyters  and  had,  therefore,  a  double  claim  to  honor 
and  influence.  But  it  looks  as  if  their  highest  distinction 
still  lay  in  belonging  to  the  presbyterate. 

The  remaining  allusions  in  Clement's  Epistle  add  noth- 
ing to  our  information  regarding  the  exact  nature  of  the 
disturbance  in  the  church  at  Corinth.  We  may  assume 
on  his  authority  that  it  was  a  sedition  disgraceful  and  un- 
worthy of  the  Christian  profession  (c.  xlvii.),  and  that  its 
leaders,  who  belonged  to  the  younger  part  of  the  congre- 
gation, were  rightly  called  upon  to  repent  and  submit  to 
the  presbyters  set  over  them  (cc.  liv,,  Ivii.).  Clement 
does  not  apparently  speak  as  one  who  has  made  diligent 
inquiry  an^J  listened  to  both  the  parties  in  dispute.  He 
sides  with  the  constituted  authorities,  whoever  they  were, 
and  condemns  resistance  as  sin.  There  may  have  been 
some  movement  in  the  church  at  Corinth  which  had  a  deep 
significance  for  the  later  development  of  the  ministry,  but, 
if  so,  it  can  only  be  a  remote  inference  from  the  informa- 
tion which  Clement  has  given.  But  incidentally  we  learn 
something  regarding  the  organization  of  the  church  in 
both  these  places  at  the  close  of  the  first  century.  There 
were  in  Rome  the  leaders  or  rulers  of  the  church  (rj'yovixevoL)^ 
who  may  have  been  the  prophets ;  there  were  a  class 
known  as  the  presbyters,  from  whom  the  ranks  of  the 
bishops  and  deacons  were  recruited;  there  was  still  a 
plural  episcopate  at  Rome  and  at  Corinth,  and  the  single 
bishop  had  not  yet  appeared.  It  may  have  been  that  the 
sedition  of  the  church  at  Corinth  was  an  effort  to  place 
the  single  bishop  above  the  presbyters,  and  to  this  end 
deprive  the  presbyters,  who  had  hitherto  officiated  as  bish- 
ops, of  their  office.  Clement  himself  must  have  belonged 
to  the  leaders  or  rulers,  and  have  been  the  foremost  man 
in  the  Roman  church,  as  his  epistle  would  indicate  that  he 


54  ORGANIZATION   OP   THE   CHURCH 

deserved  to  be,  and  as  tradition  has  represented  him. 
After  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  when  the  monarch- 
ical episcopate  had  been  established,  he  was  called  the 
Bishop  of  Rome,  whicli  corresponded  rightly  enough  with 
the  later  organization,  but  is  an  anachronism  if  we  speak 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  own  age. 


II 

The  Shepherd  of  Hermas  may  have  been  written  soon 
after  the  Epistle  of  Clement.^  It  was  a  popular  book  in 
the  second  century,  read  in  the  churches  for  edification, 
referred  to  as  Scripture  by  Irenseus,  and  regarded  by 
Origen  as  divinely  inspired.  The  author  was  a  prophet 
who  had  a  message  for  his  age,  whose  aim  was  to  protest 
against  the  moral  laxity  of  the  time  rather  than  against 
false  teaching.  There  is  no  direct  description  of  the  min- 
istry, nor  has  the  author  any  special  interest  in  ecclesias- 
tical organization,  as  a  cure  for  the  existing  evils.  There 
are  incidental  references  to  the  ministry,  but  we  encounter 
the  same  difficulty  as  in  earlier  documents,  when  we  ask 
whether  designations  are  used  in  a  technical  or  non-tech- 
nical way. 

(1)  Apostles  are  mentioned  in  a  list  of  officers,  as 
among  the  stones  fitted  into  the  temple  which  is  in  pro- 
cess of  erection :  "  Apostles,  bishops,  teachers,  and  dea- 
cons "  (Vis.  iii.  5).  But  no  further  allusion  is  made  to 
them;  there  is  a  possible  intimation  that  they  have  passed 
away. 

(2)  The  prophets  still  exist  as  an  order,  with  whom 
Hermas  has  the  deeper  sympathy.  The  prophet  is  spoken 
of  as  occupying  the  chair  while  others  occupy  the  seats. 
But  there  are  false  prophets,  and  it  becomes  necessary  to 
instruct  the  congregation  how  they  are  to  tell  the  false 
prophet  from  the  true.     The  test  is  a  simple  one:  "He 

1  The  date  of  the  composition  of  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas  is  undeter- 
mined. It  is  placed  by  Zahn  about  97  a.d.,  by  Lipsius  about  142  a.d. 
Cf.  Zahn,  Der  Hist,  den  Hennas,  18G8  ;  Gebhardt  and  Harnack,  Patres 
Apostolici. 


THE    AGE    OF   TRANSITION  55 

who  has  the  Divine  Spirit  proceeding  from  above  is  meek, 
peaceable,  and  humble,  and  refrains  from  all  iniquity  and 
the  vain  desire  of  this  world  and  contents  himself  with 
fewer  wants  than  those  of  other  men,  and  when  asked  he 
makes  no  reply;  nor  does  he  speak  privately;  nor  when 
man  wishes  the  spirit  to  speak  does  the  Holy  Spirit  speak, 
but  it  speaks  only  when  God  wishes  it  to  speak  "  (Mand. 

xi.). 

(3)  Teachers  are  mentioned  among  the  officers  of  the 
church,  intervening  between  bishops  and  deacons.  That 
they  are  not  to  be  identified  with  presbyters  may  be 
inferred  from  the  manner  in  which  the  presbyters  are 
described.  If  the  Shepherd  were  written  at  Rome,  and 
describes  the  life  of  the  church  there,  it  is  not  strange  that 
Hernias  should  not  magnify  the  office.  Rome  was  never 
at  any  time  strong  in  her  local  teachers.  But  Hermas 
also  has  no  great  interest  in  theology  or  in  the  intellect- 
ual aspects  of  the  faith.  He  divorces  piety  from  the 
intellect,  and  is  concerned  with  moral  reform  and  the  cul- 
tivation of  an  inward  faith.  There  is  one  allusion  to 
teachers  "as  praising  themselves  in  having  wisdom,  and 
desiring  to  become  teachers,  although  destitute  of  sense." 
But  the  reference  here  may  be  to  Gnostics.     (Sim.  ix.  22.) 

(4)  Presbyters  are  mentioned  as  having  the  government 
of  the  church,  or  as  a  privileged  class,  but  whether  always 
as  a  class  in  the  community  or  as  individual  office-holders 
may  be  doubtful.  But  Hermas  has  no  liking  for  presby- 
ter or  for  bishop,  speaking  of  them  to  their  disparagement, 
accusing  them  of  self-seeking  and  ambition :  "  They  are 
emulous  of  each  other  about  the  foremost  places  "  (Sim. 
viii.  c.  7;  Vis.  ii.  c.  4;  Vis.  iii.  c.  1). 

(5)  Bishops  are  given  in  the  list  of  officials  (Vis.  iii. 
c.  5)  and  also  deacons.  The  bishops  are  spoken  of  as 
having  obtained  a  special  reward  according  to  the  revela- 
tion which  Hermas  Avas  receiving,  while  their  duties  are 
also  incidentally  described: 

"  Bishops  given  to  hospitality,  who  always  gladly  received  into  their 
houses  the  servants  of  God  without  dissimulation.  And  the  bishops 
never  failed,  by  their  service,  the  widows  and  those  who  were  in  want 


56  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

and  always  maintained  a  holy  conversation.  All  these  accordingly 
shall  be  protected  by  the  Lord  forever.  They  who  do  these  things 
are  honorable  before  God,  and  their  place  is  already  with  the  angels, 
if  they  remain  to  the  end  serving  God  "  (Sim.  ix.  27). 

But  ill  this  ideal  picture  of  the  church  in  the  prophet's 
mind  there  appear  "  deacons  who  have  stains  upon  them, 
who  discharged  their  duty  ill,  and  who  plundered  widows 
and  orphans  of  their  livelihood  and  gained  possessions  for 
themselves  from  the  ministry  which  they  had  received " 
(Sim.  ix.  26). 

There  is  another  passage  where  Hennas  manifests  his 
dislike  of  certain  officials,  who  are  spoken  of  as  "  those 
who  preside  over  the  church  and  love  the  first  seats " 
(^Tol<;  TTpOTj'yov/jLevoL^  tt}?  i/CK\r](Tia<i  Kol  rol^  TrpcoroKadeBpt- 
Tat<;,  Vis.  iii.  9).  If  we  interpret  the  passage  in  accord- 
ance with  the  usage  of  the  next  generation  (Justin,  Apol. 
Ixvii.),  those  who  are  here  designated  "  leaders  "  or  "  presi- 
dents "  may  be  the  bishops,  and  those  who  seek  the  first 
seats  are  those  ambitious  of  the  place  of  presbyters ;  as  in 
the  ancient  familiar  picture  of  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's 
supper,  where  the  bishop  sits  in  the  centre  of  the  apse 
with  presbyters  on  either  side.  There  is  also  an  intima- 
tion here  that  these  officials  are  charged  with  the  dut}*  of 
instructing  the  people,  which  was  soon  to  become  one  of 
their  I'ecognized  functions  and  may  have  begun  to  be  so 
already :  "  Take  heed,  therefore,  children,  that  these  dis- 
sensions of  yours  do  not  deprive  you  of  your  life.  How 
will  you  instruct  the  elect  of  the  Lord,  if  you  yourselves 
have  not  instruction  ?  "  ^ 

1  Hermas  makes  one  other  alhision  to  the  ministry,  in  Sim.  ix.  31 :  "If 
He  find  any  one  of  these  sheep  strayed,  woe  to  the  shepherds  !  And  if 
the  shepherds  themselves  have  strayed,  what  answer  will  they  give  Him 
for  their  flocks  ?  "  Whether  the  allusion  is  to  bishops  as  distinct  from 
presbyters,  or  to  presbyters  as  a  class,  is  uncertain.  For  the  earlier  use 
of  the  word  "  shepherd  "  in  connection  with  the  ministry,  cf.  Acts  xx.  28  ; 
Eph.  iv.  11 ;  1  Pet.  v.  2,  4,  and  ii.  25. 


THE   AGE   OF   TRANSITION  57 


III 

The  Didache,  or  Teaching  of  the  Twelve  Apostles, ^  has 
a  kindred  tone  with  the  Shepherd  of  Hernias,  — a  certain 
archaic  quality  which  bespeaks  its  great  antiquity.  If 
we  are  not  certain  of  its  place  in  the  chronological  order, 
yet  in  the  logical  order  it  precedes  the  writings  of  Igna- 
tius. Its  value  consists  in  revealing  the  process  of  the 
transition  from  the  ministry  of  the  Apostolic  age  to  the 
Catholic  churcli  of  the  second  century.  The  information 
which  it  gives  on  the  organization  of  the  church  has 
greatly  modified  the  whole  method  of  treating  the  origin 
of  the  Christian  ministry.  Imperfect  as  the  picture  may 
still  be,  it  is  owing  to  the  Didache  that  its  recovery  in 
outline  has  been  possible.  The  passages  bearing  on  the 
subject  read  as  follows : 

"  Now  whoever  cometh  and  teacheth  you  all  these  things,  before 
spoken,  receive  him ;  but  if  the  teacher  himself  turn  aside  and  teach 
another  teaching,  so  as  to  overthrow  this,  do  not  hear  him ;  but  if  he 
teach  so  as  to  promote  righteousness  and  knowledge  of  the  Lord, 
receive  him  as  the  Lord.  But  in  regard  to  the  apostles  and  prophets, 
according  to  the  ordinance  of  the  gospel,  so  do  ye.  And  every  apostle 
who  cometh  to  you,  let  him  be  received  as  the  Lord ;  but  he  shall  not 

1  Aidaxv  tQv  Aw8eKa  'ATrocrTdXwv,  or  the  complete  title,  Teaching  of  the 
Lord  through  the  Twelve  Apostles  to  the  Nations.  For  the  fuller  discus- 
sion of  its  contents  cf.  Harnack,  Die  Lehre  des  Zwolf  Apostel,  1884,  who 
also  gives  a  condensed  synopsis  and  criticism  of  its  contents  in  Schaff- 
Herzog,  Encyc.  Art.  Didache,  at  end  of  the  first  volume  ;  English 
translations  of  the  Didache,  with  notes,  etc.,  by  Hitchcock  and  Brown, 
1885  ;  Schaff,  The  Oldest  Church  Manual,  1885,  and  others.  Cf.  also 
Andov.  Rev.  1886,  for  a  study  by  McGiffert,  and  Bib.  Sac.  1886,  by  War- 
field.  The  literature  on  the  Didache  is  already  voluminous.  Cf.  Schaff 
for  list,  with  criticism.  The  earliest  date  for  the  Didache  assigned  by 
Harnack  is  a.d.  70,  and  the  latest  165.  The  place  of  its  composition  is 
not  determined.  Use  of  it  was  made  by  Clem.  Alex,  and  Origen.  It  is 
referred  to  by  Eusebius  (H.  E.  iii.  25)  as  not  to  be  ranked  with  books 
entitled  to  a  place  in  the  Canon.  Athanasius,  in  his  Festal  Letters  (Ep. 
39),  mentions  it  with  the  Shepherd  of  Hernias,  as  suitable  to  be  read  for 
edification  in  the  churches.  It  is  also  connected  with  the  Epistle  of 
Barnabas,  and  was  worked  up  into  the  writings  known  as  The  Apostolic 
Constitutions.  The  manuscript  containing  the  Didache  was  discovered 
by  Bryennios  in  1873  in  the  Jerusalem  Convent  in  Constantinople.  It 
was  first  published  in  1883. 


58  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

remain  more  than  one  day;  if,  however,  there  need  be,  then  the  next 
day ;  but  if  he  remain  three  days,  he  is  a  false  prophet.  But  when 
the  apostle  departeth,  let  him  take  nothing  except  bread  enough  till 
he  lodge  again;  but  if  he  ask  money,  he  is  a  false  prophet.  And 
every  prophet  who  speaketh  in  the  spirit,  ye  shall  not  try  nor  judge ; 
for  every  sin  shall  be  forgiven,  but  this  sin  shall  not  be  forgiven. 
But  not  every  one  that  speaketh  in  the  spirit  is  a  prophet,  but  only  if 
he  have  the  ways  of  the  Lord.  So  from  their  ways  shall  the  false 
prophet  and  the  prophet  be  known.  And  no  prophet  who  orders  a 
meal,  in  the  spirit,  eateth  of  it,  unless  indeed  he  is  a  false  prophet ; 
and  every  prophet  who  teacheth  the  truth,  if  he  do  not  that  which  he 
teacheth,  is  a  false  prophet.  But  every  prophet,  proved,  true,  acting 
with  a  view  to  the  mystery  of  the  church  on  earth,  but  not  teaching 
others  to  do  all  that  he  himself  doeth,  shall  not  be  judged  among  you ; 
for  with  God  he  hath  his  judgment ;  for  so  did  the  ancient  prophets 
also.  But  whoever,  in  the  spirit,  says  :  Give  me  money,  or  something 
else,  ye  shall  not  hear  him ;  but  if  for  others  in  need,  he  bids  you 
give,  let  no  one  judge  him.  .  .  . 

"  But  every  true  prophet  who  will  settle  among  you  is  worthy  of  his 
support.  Likewise  a  true  teacher,  he  also  is  worthy,  like  the  workman, 
of  his  support.  Every  firstfruit,  then,  of  the  products  of  wine-press 
and  threshing-floor,  of  oxen  and  of  sheep,  thou  shalt  take  and  give  to 
the  prophets ;  for  they  are  your  high-priests.  But  if  ye  have  no 
prophet,  give  it  to  the  poor.  If  thou  makest  a  baking  of  bread,  take 
the  first  of  it  and  give  according  to  the  commandment.  In  like 
manner  when  thou  openest  a  jar  of  wine  or  oil,  take  the  first  of  it  and 
give  to  the  prophets  ;  and  of  money,  and  clothing,  and  every  posses- 
sion take  the  first,  as  seems  right  to  thee,  and  give  according  to  the 
commandment.  .  .  . 

"Now  appoint  for  yourselves  bishops  and  deacons  worthy  of  the 
Lord,  men  meek  and  not  avaricious,  and  upright,  and  proved ;  for 
they,  too,  render  you  the  service  of  the  prophets  and  teachers.  Despise 
them  not,  therefore;  for  they  are  the  ones  who  are  honored  of  you, 
together  with  the  prophets  and  teachers"  (cc.  xi.,  xiii.,  xv.).^ 

From  this  account  it  is  evident,  (1)  that  the  order  of 
the  ministry  as  described  by  St.  Paul  (1  Cor.  xii.  28)  was 
still  maintained  in  some  of  the  churches,  so  late  as  the 
close  of  the  first  or  the  earlier  years  of  the  second  century, 
but  it  is  seen  at  the  moment  when  it  is  passing  away. 
(2)  Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers  are  mentioned,  but 
it  would  seem  as  if  Apostles  were  becoming  rare,  and  also 
as  if  the  office  were  growing  larger  and  diviner  in  the 

1  Cf.  ed.  by  Hitchcock  and  Brown,  New  York,  1886. 


THE    AGE    OF    TRANSITION  59 

popular  imagination  as  the  years  receded.  This  may  be 
inferred  from  the  statement  that  if  any  one  visited  the 
communities  as  an  Apostle  who  proved  to  be  false  by  the 
ring  of  his  teaching  or  life,  he  was  not  a  false  Apostle  but 
a  false  prophet.  (3)  The  proj^het  occupies  the  highest 
place  of  honor  in  the  congregation.  He  not  only  has  a 
message  to  give,  but  he  officiates  in  the  Eucharist  as  a 
high  priest;  and  while  others  use  a  formula  of  prayer  in 
its  administrations,  the  prophet  is  to  be  allowed  to  give 
thanks  as  much  as  he  will.  (4)  But  the  prophetic  order 
lias  begun  to  be  discredited  through  the  number  of  false 
prophets,  and  every  community  must  be  on  its  guard  lest 
it  suffer  imposition.  The  test  is  a  simple  one,  whether 
for  teachers  or  prophets,  —  the  utterance  must  be  evi- 
denced as  true  by  the  life;  and  any  Apostle,  prophet,  or 
teacher  who  exploits  his  office  at  the  expense  of  the  com- 
munity, ordering  meals  or  tarrying  too  long  in  one  place, 
reveals  his  insincerity.  (5)  Apostles,  prophets,  and 
teachers  constitute  at  first  an  itinerating  ministry,  the 
larger  bond  which  unites  the  scattered  communities 
into  an  organic  whole.  (6)  The  functions  of  Apostles, 
prophets,  and  teachers  are  exclusively  spiritual,  or  relate 
to  the  higher  ministry  of  the  Word.  But  there  is  a  local 
ministry,  also,  whose  functions  hitherto  have  been  of  an 
administrative  character;  these  are  the  bishops  and  dea- 
cons,—the  ministry  of  the  tables  (Acts  vi.)  or  the 
"helps"  referred  to  by  St.  Paul  (1  Cor.  xii.  28;  Rom. 
xii.  7).  (7)  There  are  two  ways  by  which  the  transition 
was  effected  from  the  earlier  to  the  later  form  of  the  min- 
istry. Prophets  and  teachers  might  remain  permanently 
with  any  community,  in  which  case  they  were  to  be  sup- 
ported as  worthy  of  their  hire.  The  firstfruits  were  to  be 
theirs,  as  in  the  Jewish  economy:  "for  they  are  your  high 
priests."  (8)  But  there  was  another  way  which  might  be 
followed  when  it  was  no  longer  convenient  to  receive 
prophets  and  teachers;  the  congregation  might  appoint 
{X^'-P'^'^^^^W^^'^^^  for  themselves  bishops  and  deacons,  who 
would  take  upon  them  the  functions  of  prophets  and 
teachers  and  would  be  the  recipients  of  equal  honor.     The 


60  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

qualifications  of  those  called  to  these  offices  are  meekness, 
the  absence  of  avarice,  men  upright  and  proved  (cf.  1  Tim. 
iii.  2-13).  (9)  It  is  to  be  noted  that  '  bishops  '  are 
mentioned,  and  not  a  single  bishop;  it  was  a  plural  epis- 
copate, as  well  as  a  plural  diaconate.  Bishops  and  dea- 
cons are  also  mentioned  together  as  having  some  close 
interior  relationship  (cf .  Phil.  i.  1 ;  1  Tim.  iii. ;  Clem. 
Rom.  c.  42;  Pastor,  Sim.  ix.  26,  27).  (10)  Bishops 
and  deacons  are  manifestly  connected  with  the  worship  of 
the  church,  the  account  of  which  in  the  Didache  immedi- 
ately precedes  the  mention  of  the  organizations.  (H)  As 
in  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to  the  Romans,  there  is  silence 
as  to  the  exact  method  by  which  bishops  and  deacons  are 
appointed  to  their  office.  The  congregation  is  told  to 
appoint  them  for  themselves.  But  the  word  'appoint' 
(^)(eLpoTovr)(TaTe)  signifies  a  vote  by  the  show  of  hands. 
(12)  The  absence  of  any  allusion  to  presbyters  is  difficult 
to  explain.  It  may  be  that  the  place  they  would  have 
occupied  was  filled  by  Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers, 
who  preserved  the  tradition  and  were  guarantees  for  the 
order  and  discipline  of  the  community.  It  may  have 
been  that  in  other  churches  the  transition  from  the  larger, 
higher  ministry  was  mediated  by  presbyters,  while  in  the 
churches  addressed  by  the  Didache  it  passed  at  once  to 
the  local  administrative  othcers. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE   IGNATIAN   EPISCOPATE 

The  date  of  the  Ignatian  Epistles  may  be  placed  in  the 
reign  of  Trajan,  between  the  years  112  and  117  a.d. 
Ignatius  himself  is  known  as  the  Bishop  of  Antioch,  from 
whence  he  went  on  his  journey  to  Rome,  condemned  to 
the  beasts,  and  writing  his  epistles  on  the  way.^  The 
atmosphere  of  these  epistles  is  free  from  vague  allusions 
to  officials  whom  it  is  difficult  to  describe  or  identify. 
Teachers  may  be  discovered  in  the  background;  they  are 
mentioned  only  to  be  condemned.  What  the  church 
needs  is  no  longer  teaching,  but  unity,  which  will  be 
attained  not  by  intellectual  insight  or  spiritual  sympathy, 
but  by  a  closer  organization.  Prophets  also  flit  dimly 
about  in  the  surrounding  darkness ;  they,  too,  are  needed 
no  longer;  with  teachers  they  have  ministered  only  to 
freedom,  to  variety,  or  confusion,  from  which  the  church 
would  escape.  Antioch  was  the  ancient  home  of  the 
prophets,  and  Ignatius  himself  may  have  belonged  to 
their  company.  If  so,  he  uses  his  gift  to  dethrone  proph- 
ecy and  exalt  the  ministrations  of  ej)iscopacy.  There 
are  but  few  references  to  Apostles,  and  no  appeal  is  made 
to  their  authority  as  determining  the  order  of  the  ministry. 
There  is  a  seeming  abruptness  in  the  proclamation  of  a 
threefold  ministry  in  the  church, —  bishops,  and  presbyters, 
and  deacons,  —  as  if  it  came  not  by  regular  historical  de- 
scent, but  by  a  voice  from  the  open  heavens  announcing 

1  Cf.  Liglitfoot,  Apos.  Fathers,  Pt.  II. ,  Vols.  I.,  II. ;  Zahn,  Ignatius 
von  Antiochien,  1873  ;  also  Patr.  Ap.  Oper.,  1870,  where  the  whole  body 
of  Ignatian  literature  is  collected  ;  Harnack,  Die  Zeit  des  Ignatius,  1878  ; 
Aub6,  His.  des  Persecutions  de  VlSglise  jusqu^a  la  fin  des  Antonins,  pp. 
186-238  ;  Schaff,  Ch.  His.,  II.,  cc.  iv.  xiii.  ;  Smith  and  Wace  ;  and  Herzog, 
B.  E.  Art.  Ignatius. 

61 


62  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

that  a  new  order  had  arisen  and  that  the  older  order  was 
withdrawn  as  no  longer  suited  to  the  exigencies  of  the  time. 

The  object  of  Ignatius  in  these  epistles  is  to  exalt  the 
bishop  as  the  head  of  the  local  church,  in  the  place  of 
Christ  and  of  God,  The  presbyters,  whose  position  and 
power  in  the  community  has  hitherto  seemed  supreme,  are 
now  relegated  to  the  second  rank,  but  Ignatius  is  not  dis- 
paraging their  importance.  They  are  mentioned  with 
bishops  and  deacons  as  entitled  to  honor  and  obedience, 
an  integral  part  of  a  divine  order  (Ad  Eph.  cii.  and  cxx.). 
"  As  the  Lord  did  nothing  without  the  Father,  ...  so 
neither  do  ye  anything  without  the  bishop  and  presbyters  " 
(Ad  Mag.  cc.  vi.,  vii.).  In  the  church  at  Magnesia 
there  is  "the  admirable  bishop,  and  the  well-compacted 
spiritual  crown  of  your  presbytery  and  the  deacons  who 
are  according  to  God  "  (c.  xiii.).  To  the  church  at  Tralles 
he  writes:  "It  is  therefore  necessary  that,  as  ye  indeed 
do,  so  without  the  bishop  3^e  should  do  nothing,  but 
should  also  be  subject  to  the  presbytery  as  to  the  apostles 
of  Jesus  Christ  "  (Ad  Trail,  c.  ii.).  And  again:  "  He  who 
does  anything  apart  from  the  bishop  and  presbytery  and 
deacon,  such  a  man  is  not  pure  in  his  conscience  "  (Ad 
Trail,  vii.,  xiii.).  To  the  church  at  Philadelphia  he 
writes :  "  When  I  was  among  you  I  cried,  I  spoke  Avith  a 
loud  voice,  Give  heed  to  the  bishop  and  to  the  j^resbytery 
and  deacons  "  (Ad  Phil.  c.  vii.,  cf.  c.  iv.).  The  church  at 
Smyrna  is  exhorted :  "  See  that  ye  all  follow  the  bishop, 
even  as  Jesus  Christ  does  the  Father,  and  the  presbytery 
as  ye  would  the  apostles,  and  reverence  the  deacons  as 
being  the  institution  of  God "  (Ad  Sm3a-.  c.  viii.  and 
xii.).  In  the  epistle  to  Polycarp:  "My  soul  be  for  theirs 
that  are  submissive  to  the  bishop,  to  the  presbytery,  and 
to  the  deacons  (c.  vi.). 

But  these  passages  in  which  Ignatius  enjoins  obedience 
to  bishops,  presbyters,  and  deacons  in  their  collective 
capacity  as  the  local  ministry,  are  few  in  number  and  lack 
in  impressiveness  when  compared  with  those  in  which  the 
bishop  alone  is  mentioned  as  entitled  to  the  absolute  obe- 
dience which  belongs  to  God. 


THE   IGNATIAN   EPISCOPATE  63 

"  Wherefore  it  is  fitting  that  ye  should  run  together  in  accordance 
with  the  will  of  your  bishop,  which  thing  also  ye  do.  For  your  justly 
renowned  presbytery,  worthy  of  God,  is  fitted  as  exactly  to  the  bishop 
as  the  strings  are  to  the  harp"  (Ad  Eph.  c.  iv.).  "Let  us  be  care- 
ful, then,  not  to  set  ourselves  in  opposition  to  the  bishop  in  order  that 
we  may  be  subject  to  God"  (c.  v.).  "It  is  manifest,  therefore,  that 
we  should  look  upon  the  bishop  even  as  we  would  upon  the  Lord 
Himself"  (c.  vi.).  "Now  it  becomes  you  also  not  to  treat  your 
bishop  too  familiarly  on  account  of  his  youth,i  but  to  yield  him  all 
reverence,  having  respect  to  the  power  of  God  the  Father,  as  I  have 
known  even  holy  presbyters  do,  not  judging  rashly  from  the  manifest 
youthful  appearance  (of  their  bishop),  but  as  being  themselves  prudent 
in  God,  submitting  to  him,  or  rather  not  to  him,  but  to  the  Father  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  bishop  of  us  all.  .  .  .  Obey  your  bishop  in  honor 
of  Him  who  has  willed  us  to  do  so  "  (Ad  Mag.  cc.  iii.,  xiii.).  "  Some 
indeed  give  one  the  title  of  bishop,  but  do  all  things  without  him  " 
(c.  iv.).  "Since  ye  are  subject  to  the  bishop  as  Jesus  Christ,  ye  ap- 
pear to  me  to  live  not  after  the  manner  of  men,  but  according  to 
Jesus  Christ  who  died  for  us"  (Ad  Trail.,  c.  ii.).  "It  becometh 
every  one  of  you,  and  especially  the  presbyters,  to  refresh  the  bishop 
to  the  honor  of  the  Father"  (c.  xii.).  "As  many  as  are  of  God  and 
of  Jesus  Christ  are  also  with  the  bishop"  (Ad  Phil.  c.  iii.).  "The 
Spirit  proclaimed  these  words,  Do  nothing  without  the  bishop " 
(c.  vii.).  "  To  all  them  that  repent,  the  Lord  grants  forgiveness  if 
they  turn  in  penitence  to  the  unity  of  God  and  to  communion  with 
the  bishop  "  (c.  viii.).  "  Let  no  man  do  anything  connected  with  the 
church  without  the  bishop.  Let  that  be  deemed  a  proper  Eucharist 
which  is  administered  either  by  the  bishop  or  by  one  to  whom  he  has 
entrusted  it.  Wherever  the  bishop  shall  appear,  there  let  the  multi- 
tude also  be,  even  as  wherever  Jesus  Christ  is  tiiere  is  the  Catholic 
church.  It  is  not  lawful  without  the  bishop  either  to  baptize  or  to 
celebrate  a  love-feast;  but  whatsoever  he  shall  approve  of,  that  is  also 
pleasing  to  God,  so  that  everything  that  is  done  may  be  secure  and 
valid  "  (Ad  Smyr.  c.  viii.).      "  It  is  well  to  reverence  both  God  and 

1  In  connection  with  this  allusion  to  the  youthful  bishop,  whom  the 
aged  presbyters  honor,  one  may  recall  the  account  of  the  disturbance  in 
Corinth,  which  was  said  by  Clement  to  have  been  an  uprising  of  the 
young  against  the  elders  or  presbyters.  But  now  the  elders  or  presbyters 
are  approved  for  submitting  to  the  younger.  If  Ignatius  were  replying 
directly  to  Clement's  epistle,  it  could  not  have  been  done  more  effectively 
(cf.  Clem.  Ad  Cor.  cc.  iii.,  xliv.).  It  is  also  a  striking  characteristic  of 
Ignatius'  epistle  to  the  Romans  that  nothing  whatever  is  said  about  obe- 
dience to  the  bishop,  nor  is  the  bishop  mentioned.  In  this  respect  it 
differs  from  all  the  other  epistles.  It  may  be  that  Ignatius  was  aware 
that  the  Roman  church  had  not  as  yet  the  single  episcopate.  Renan, 
who  rejected  the  other  epistles  as  not  genuine,  admitted  that  this  epistle 
might  be  attributed  to  larnatius. 


64  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  bishop.  He  who  honors  the  bishop  has  been  honored  by  God; 
he  who  does  anything  without  the  knowledge  of  the  bishop,  serves 
the  devil"  (c.  ix.).  Writing  to  Polycarp,  the  Bishop  of  Smyrna, 
Ignatius  enjoins  him  also  in  the  familiar  words,  "  Let  nothing  be  done 
without  thy  consent"  (c.  vi.).  "If  any  one  reckons  himself  greater 
than  the  bishop,  he  is  ruined.  But  it  becomes  both  men  and  women 
who  marry  to  form  their  union  with  the  approval  of  the  bishop, 
that  their  marriage  may  be  according  to  God"  (c.  v.). 

These  exalted  impossible  claims  for  the  bishop,  in  lan- 
guage which  seems,  as  Bishop  Lightfoot  has  remarked, 
blasphemous  and  profane,  are  better  understood  by  con- 
sidering another  class  of  passages  in  the  Ignatian  Epistles, 
which  have  been  too  often  overlooked  as  unimportant, 
while  they  actually  contain  the  secret  purport  of  this 
transcendental  scheme.  According  to  Ignatius,  the 
bishop  stands  in  the  place  of  Christ  and  perpetuates  his 
presence  in  the  church.  The  presbyters  stand  in  the 
place  of  the  Apostles ;  they,  and  not  the  bishops,  are  the 
successors  of  the  Apostles.  In  regard  to  the  deacons, 
Ignatius  is  apparently  ignorant  that  their  appointment 
was  by  Apostolic  authority;  they  are  spoken  of  vaguely  as 
by  the  constitution  of  God. 

"  Your  bishop  presides  in  the  place  of  God,  and  your  presbytery  in 
the  place  of  the  assembly  of  the  Apostles,  along  with  your  deacons, 
who  are  most  dear  to  me  "  (Mag.  c.  vi.) .  "  Ye  are  subject  to  the  bishop 
as  to  Jesus  Christ  ...  ye  should  also  be  subject  to  the  presbytery  as 
to  the  Apostle  of  Jesus  Christ"  (Trail,  c.  ii.).  "Reverence  the  dea- 
cons as  an  appointment  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  bishop  as  Jesus 
Christ,  who  is  the  Son  of  the  Father,  and  the  presbyters  as  the  San- 
hedrim of  God  and  assembly  of  the  Apostles  "  (Trail,  c.  iii.).  "  I  flee 
to  the  Gospel  as  to  the  flesh  of  Jesus  and  to  the  Apostles  as  to  the  pres- 
bytery of  the  church  "  (Phil.  c.  v.).  "  See  that  ye  all  follow  the  bishop, 
even  as  Jesus  Christ  does  the  Father ;  and  the  presbytery  as  ye  would 
the  Apostles ;  and  reverence  the  deacons  as  being  the  institution  of 
God"  (Smyr.  c.  viii.). 

Although  Ignatius  was  indifferent  to  the  authority  of 
tradition  where  the  ministry  was  concerned  (Ad  Phil, 
cc.  vii.,  viii.),  and  like  St.  Paul  attaches  the  importance 
to  the  spirit  rather  than  the  letter,  yet  in  some  respects  he 
throws  light  on  the  historical  development  of  the  ministry 


THE    IGNATIAN    EPISCOPATE  65 

not  found  in  any  other  writer.  In  making  the  presbyters 
the  successors  of  the  Apostles,  he  is  in  harmony  with  the 
earlier  documents,  which  represent  the  presbyters  as 
standing  on  equal  terms  with  the  Apostles  (Acts  xv.  4, 
6,  22,  23)  in  the  Apostolic  age,  or  which  speak  of  them 
exclusively,  as  if  there  were  no  other  officers  in  the  church 
(James  v.  14),  or  in  which  Apostles  themselves  claim  the 
dignity  of  the  presbyterate  (1  Pet.  v.  1).  Under  the 
presidency  of  James  over  the  church  in  Jerusalem,  those 
of  the  Apostles  still  living  must  have  taken  their  place 
beneath  him  as  presbyters,  if  we  interpret  the  situation 
according  to  the  later  usage.  As  bearers  of  the  words  and 
traditions  of  Christ  the  presbyters  rose  naturally  to  the 
highest  position.  We  need  not  to  look  to  Jev/ish  insti- 
tutions to  explain  their  origin;  they  came  by  a  simple, 
natural,  inevitable  law.  In  virtue  of  their  age  they  could 
render  a  service  in  the  second  generation  of  the  Christian 
church  which  Apostles  had  rendered  also  to  their  own  age. 
But  when  the  bishop  rose  to  supremacy  over  the  presby- 
ters, a  new  principle  was  needed  to  explain  and  justify 
his  authority.  Ignatius  found  this  principle  in  his  doc- 
trine that  the  bishop  stood  for  Christ  Himself;  and  as 
Apostles  were  subject  to  Christ,  so  presbyters  were  subject 
to  the  bishop.  This  doctrine  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the 
Ignatian  teaching;  it  thrilled  his  imagination  as  he  saw 
its  deeper  spiritual  import;  he  mentions  it  as  often  as  he 
refers  to  the  authority  of  the  bishop,  —  the  bishop  stands 
in  the  place  of  Christ  and  even  of  God. 

It  is  further  characteristic  of  the  writings  of  Ignatius 
that  the  Eucharist  is  there  presented,  not  only  as  having 
a  deep  spiritual  value  for  the  worshipper,  but  as  having 
also  a  certain  doctrinal  significance  in  view  of  an  heretical 
teaching  which,  in  the  mind  of  Ignatius,  imperils  the 
existence  of  the  Christian  faith.  Against  those  who  seem 
to  him  to  deny  the  importance  of  the  body  of  Christ  by 
dwelling  upon  His  spiritual  influence  or  teaching,  or 
against  those  who,  in  docetic  fashion,  deny  that  Christ 
has  come  in  the  flesh  or  has  ever  possessed  a  human  body, 
Ignatius  adduces  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  supper,  as 


66  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

representing  to  the  church  the  presence  of  His  body  and 
blood.  The  Eucharist  is  also  the  pledge  and  the  condition 
of  the  unity  of  the  Christian  community  in  Christ  and 
in  one  another.  The  connection,  therefore,  of  the  bishop 
with  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's  supper  is  in  the  con- 
ception of  Ignatius  a  vital  relationship  upon  which  its 
validity  to  the  worshipper  depends.  In  thus  connecting 
the  bishop  with  the  Eucharist,  Ignatius  is  in  harmony 
with  what  Clement  of  Rome  had  asserted  or  with  the 
picture  in  the  Didache  or  the  hints  in  the  Shepherd  of 
Hennas. 

"  Let  no  man  deceive  himself :  if  any  one  be  not  within  the  altar, 
he  is  deprived  of  the  bread  of  God  "  (Eph.  v.).  "  Obey  the  bishop 
and  the  presbytery  with  an  undivided  mind,  breaking  one  and  the 
same  bread,  which  is  the  medicine  of  immortality  and  the  antidote  to 
prevent  us  from  dying  that  we  should  live  forever  in  Jesus  Christ " 
(Eph.  XX.).  "Take  ye  heed  then  to  have  but  one  Eucharist.  For 
there  is  one  flesh,  your  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  one  cup  into  the  unity 
of  His  blood ;  one  altar ;  as  there  is  one  bishop,  along  with  the  pres- 
bytery and  deacons"  (Phil.  iv.).  "They  (the  heretics)  abstain  from 
the  Eucharist  and  from  prayer  because  they  confess  not  the  Eucharist 
to  be  the  flesh  of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ"  (Smyr.  vii.).  "Let  that 
be  deemed  a  proper  Eucharist  which  is  ministered  either  by  the 
bishop  or  by  one  to  whom  he  has  entrusted  it.  .  .  .  It  is  not  lawful 
without  the  bishop  either  to  baptize  or  to  celebrate  a  love-feast " 
(Smyr.  viii.). 

But  we  come  still  nearer  the  solution  of  the  problem, 
the  monarchical  supremacy  of  the  bishop  as  Ignatius 
enforced  it,  if  we  take  into  consideration  the  personality 
of  Ignatius  himself.  The  character  of  the  man  shines 
through  his  writings,  an  intense  spirit  consumed  with 
zeal,  a  visionary,  an  enthusiast,  a  transcendentalist,  to 
whom  the  fact  is  as  nothing  in  the  light  of  the  idea;  and 
yet,  withal,  a  man  aiming  at  practical  ends,  letting  him- 
self down  from  the  clouds  in  order  to  walk  more  firmly 
upon  the  earth.  He  sa3^s  nothing  of  tradition  or  of  Apos- 
tolic authority;  he  is  indifferent  to  the  testimony  of  the 
ancients.  But  he  is  aware  that  he  is  innovating,  that 
what  he  proposes  is  open  to  criticism,  that  it  may  be 
thought  he   is   adjusting  some   compromise,   in   order  to 


THE    IGNATIAN    EPISCOPATE  67 

harmonize  differences  in  the  church. ^  He  seems  to  be 
conscious  that  the  tradition  of  the  church  is  against  him, 
but  he  substitutes  Christ  in  place  of  the  tradition  of  the 
elders:  "  When  I  heard  some  saying,  If  I  do  not  find  it  in 
the  archives  I  will  not  believe  the  Gospel;  on  my  saying 
to  them,  It  is  written,  they  answered  me,  That  remains  to 
be  proved.  But  to  me  Jesus  Christ  is  in  the  place  of  the 
archives  or  charters.  His  cross  and  death  and  resurrec- 
tion and  the  faith  which  is  by  Him  are  undefiled  monu- 
ments of  antiquity;  by  which  I  desire  through  your 
jjrayers  to  be  justified"  (Phil,  viii.).^ 

In  urging  upon  the  churches  the  monarchical  episco- 
pate, Ignatius  disclaims  for  himself  any  Apostolic  au- 
thority. He  deprecates  the  possibility  that  he  may  be 
regarded  as  some  great  person  issuing  his  orders  to  the 
churches  (Eph.  iii.).  He  has  not  reached  such  a  height 
of  self-esteem  that  he  issues  commands  as  if  he  were  an 
Apostle  (Trail,  iii.).  When  writing  to  the  Romans,  he 
exclaims,  "I  do  not  as  Peter  and  Paul  issue  command- 
ments unto  you."  Whence  then  comes  the  authority 
with  which  he  speaks  ?  The  only  answer  is  that  he  speaks 
through  the  Spirit  as  possessing  the  gift  of  prophecy. 
There  are  two  passages  in  which  he  claims  for  himself  the 
direct  insight  into  spiritual  things  which  were  character- 
istic of  the  prophet:  ^''  I  have  great  knowledge  in  God,  but 
I  restrain  myself  lest  I  should  perish  through  boasting. 
For  now  it  is  needful  for  me  to  be  the  more  fearful  and 
not  give  heed  to  those  that  puff  me  up.  For  they  that 
speak  to  me  in  the  way  of  commendation  scourge  me  " 
(Trail,  iv.).  And  again,  "Am  I  not  able  to  write  to 
you  of  heavenly  things?  But  I  fear  to  do  so  lest  I  should 
inflict  injury  on  you  who  are  but  children"  (Trail,  v.). 

It  was  then  as  a  prophet  that  Ignatius  was  speaking  to 

1  The  contrast  here  between  Clement  of  Rome  and  Ignatius  is  very 
striking.  Clement  supposed  that  the  Apostles,  knowing  that  there  would 
be  strife  over  the  office  of  the  episcopate,  took  steps  in  advance  for  its 
prevention  (c.  xlii.) .  But  according  to  Ignatius,  the  elevation  of  the  bishop 
was  announced  as  a  principle  or  abstract  truth,  without  any  foreknowl- 
edge of  dissensions. 

^^  Cf.  Lightfoot,  Apos.  Fathers,  Part  II.,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  271,  272. 


68  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 

the  churches,  and  the  burden  of  his  message,  "  Do  nothing 
without  the  bishop,"  was  derived  not  from  tradition,  nor 
was  it  suggested  by  the  exigencies  of  the  hour,  but  it  was 
imparted  to  him  by  the  Holy  Spirit.  Such  is  tlie  claim 
made  in  the  following  remarkable  passage: 

"  For  though  some  would  have  deceived  me  according  to  the  flesh, 
yet  the  Spirit,  as  being  from  God,  is  not  deceived.  For  it  knows  both 
whence  it  comes  and  whither  it  goes,  and  detects  the  secrets.  For 
when  I  was  among  you  I  cried,  I  spoke  with  a  loud  voice :  Give  heed 
to  the  bishop  and  to  the  presbytery  and  deacons.  Now  some  sus- 
pected me  of  having  spoken  thus,  as  knowing  beforehand  the  division 
caused  by  some  among  you.  But  He  is  my  witness  for  whose  sake 
I  am  in  bonds,  that  I  got  no  intelligence  from  any  man.  But  the 
Spirit  proclaimed  these  words :  Do  nothincj  without  the  bishop " 
(Phil.  vii.).i 

The  above  passages  indicate  that  Ignatius  claimed  for 
himself  a  direct  revelation  from  God  such  as  Christian 
prophets  claimed  as  the  warrant  of  their  teaching.  It  was 
the  Holy  Ghost  who  was  speaking ;  Ignatius  was  but  the 
mouthpiece  of  the  Spirit's  utterance,  "  Do  nothing  with- 
out the  bishop."  But  in  strange  and  inexplicable  contrast 
with  these  claims  which  Ignatius  makes  for  himself,  — 
intimations  at  least  that  he  knew  the  deep  things  of  God 
and  could  discourse  concerning  them  if  he  chose,  —  is  the 
silence  which  he  maintains  in  regard  to  the  order  of 
Christian  prophets.  He  does  not  mention  them,  or  appear 
to  be  aware  of  their  existence.  His  home  was  in  Antioch, 
where  there  were  in  Apostolic  days  prophets  and  teachers. 
From  thence  Paul  and  Barnabas  had  been  sent  forth  with 
Apostolic  authority  by  the  commission  of  the  prophets. 
St.  Paul  had  declared  that  prophets  were  an  order  in  the 
church  by  the  divine  will  and  appointment.     In  Ignatius' 

1  It  is  a  mark  of  the  difference  between  the  age  of  Ignatius  and  the 
fourth  century,  when  the  longer  Greek  recension  of  his  epistles  was 
written,  that  the  later  writer  tones  down  these  assertions  of  Ignatius  in 
which  he  claims  the  gift  of  prophecy.  The  expression,  "  I  have  great 
knowledge  in  God,"  is  omitted  altogether;  and  the  other  expression, 
"  Am  I  not  able  to  write  to  you  of  heavenly  thnigs  ?  "  becomes  "  Might  I 
not  write  to  you  things  more  full  of  mystery?  "  In  the  later  period  the 
qualifications  of  a  prophet  were  no  longer  understood,  as  the  office  itself 
had  long  been  forgotten. 


THE    IGNATIAN    EPISCOPATE  69 

own  time  there  were  prophets  in  the  church  at  Rome,  as 
is  witnessed  by  Hermas,  or  in  the  communities  addressed 
by  the  Didache.  But  not  only  is  he  silent  as  to  the  very 
existence  of  the  prophets,  but  whenever  he  uses  the  word 
'prophet,'  he  applies  it  to  Old  Testament  seers  who  had 
foreseen  the  advent  of  Christ  or  lived  in  expectation  of 
His  coming.  He  was  one  of  the  first,  if  not  actually  the 
first,  to  reverse  the  Christian  order  which  places  prophets 
after  Apostles,  and  to  substitute  another  formula,  —  proph- 
ets and  Apostles,  — as  if  the  Christian  prophet  were  no 
longer  to  be  associated  with  Apostles  as  the  foundation 
on  which  the  church  had  been  built,  or  were  no  longer 
entitled  to  honorable  mention.  In  the  silence  of  Ignatius 
there  is  tacit  condemnation.  The  order  of  the  prophets  is 
growing  weak.  Ignatius  represents  prophec}^  as  signing 
the  warrant  for  its  own  dissolution.  He  used  his  pro- 
phetic gift  to  announce  the  coming  of  another  regime,  the 
Catholic  order,  in  which  formal  prophecy  would  be  done 
away.  ^ 

But  there  are  intimations  in  the  writings  of  Ignatius 
that,  despite  his  silence  regarding  the  prophets  as  an  order 
in  the  Christian  ministry,  he  is  aware  of  its  existence,  and 
has  his  own  estimate  of  its  work.  When  St.  Paul  a\  as 
writing  to  the  Corinthians  he  complains  of  their  spiritual 
incapacity:  "Audi,  brethren,  could  not  speak  unto  you 
as  unto  spiritual  but  as  unto  carnal,  even  as  unto  babes 
in  Christ.  I  have  fed  you  with  milk  and  not  with  meat, 
for  hitherto  ye  were  not  able  to  bear  it,  neither  yet  now 
are  ye  able "  (1  Cor.  iii.  1,  2).  Ignatius  employs  the 
same  metaphor  in  writing  to  the  Trallians.  He  is  able 
to  write  to  them  of  heavenly  things,  but  he  fears  to  do  so, 
lest  he  should  be  o'ivins;'  them  the  strono-  meat  of  the  Word, 
which  might  hurt  them  as  babes  in  Christ  (Trail,  v.).  But 
he  does  not  complain  of  their  childish  state,  or  condemn 
it  with  St.  Paul  as   carnal  ;  he   approves  of  it,  as   if  it 

1  Cf.  Epis.  ad  Ma,2;.  ix.  ;  ad  Phil,  v.,  ix.,  with  St.  Paul's  Epistle  to 
the  Ephesians,  ii.  20 ;  Die  Instanz,  "  I'ropheten  und  Apostel,"  loste  nun 
die  alte  Instanz,  "  Apostel,  Propheteu  und  Lehrer  ab."  Harnack,  Dog- 
mengeschichte,  I.  330. 


70  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

were  the  normal  order.  What  St.  Paul  regarded  as  ex- 
ceptional, and  deprecated  as  such,  Ignatius  makes  the 
rule  and  the  basis  of  Christian  society.  The  strong  meat 
is  withdrawn  for  other  reasons :  Ignatius  fears  for  himself 
lest  he  should  be  puffed  up  with  pride,  if  he  spoke  too 
freely  from  his  great  knowledge  in  God  (Trail,  iv.);  but 
he  has  also  a  deeper  source  of  distrust  and  dread,  lest  he 
should  appear  to  sanction  the  teaching  of  some  who  are 
mingling  poison  with  the  food  of  the  Gospel  (Trail,  vi.). 
And  yet,  so  far  as  he  is  able,  he  clothes  the  incoming  order 
with  what  is  left  of  the  prophet's  authority.  His  concep- 
tion of  the  episcopate  was  a  transcendental  vision  such  as 
only  a  prophet  could  conceive.  He  takes  it  for  granted 
that  bishop,  presbyters,  and  deacons  are  so  filled  with  the 
life  of  the  Spirit,  that  when  the  bishop  acts  or  speaks,  he 
does  so  in  the  name  of  Christ,  and  all  alike  recognize  his 
deed  or  utterance  as  divine. 

The  difficulties  in  the  writings  of  Ignatius  are  greatly 
simplified,  when  it  is  borne  in  mind  that  the  episcopate  to 
which  he  urges  obedience  is  a  local  office,  the  pastorate  of 
a  parish  and  not  an  ecclesiastical  administration  for  the 
church  upon  a  larger  scale,  as  the  later  episcopate  became. 
The  Ignatian  bishop  is  in  every  essential  respect  the  minis- 
ter of  the  local  congregation,  and  the  presbyters  are  his 
assistant  ministers  or  curates. ^  This  view,  which  is  too 
often  obscured  in  the  discussion,  gives  a  certain  rational- 
ity to  the  purpose  of  Ignatius,  explaining  his  devotion  and 
zeal  in  its  advocacy.  In  the  interest  of  unity,  the  time,  it 
seemed  to  him,  had  come  when  the  supremacy  in  the  con- 
gregation should  be  vested  in  one  individual  man.  His 
scheme  may  have  defects  in  its  details,  it  may  be  one- 

1  "The  bishop  of  primitive  times  was  not  by  any  means  the  potentate 
we  are  apt  to  think  him.  There  were  at  first  very  few  Christians  in  the 
country,  and  these  few  would  come  into  the  towns  to  worship.  Every 
town  of  any  size  had  its  bishop  ;  and  if  there  were  several  churches  they 
were  served  by  the  clergy  whom  the  bishop  kept  about  him  ;  they  were, 
in  fact,  like  our  present  'chapels  of  ease,'  and  the  whole  position  of  the 
bi.shop  was  very  similar  to  that  of  the  incumbent  of  the  parish  church  in 
one  of  our  smaller  towns"  (Professor  W.  Sanday,  in  Expositor,  V., 
1887,  p.  113  ;  cf.  also,  Cheetham,  Ch.  His.,  p.  128). 


THE   IGNATIAN   EPISCOPATE  71 

sided  and  not  take  sufficient  account  of  actual  difficulties ; 
it  may  be  too  much  in  the  air,  as  Ignatius  conceived  it. 
But  if  it  could  have  been  realized,  it  was  not  without 
adaptation  to  the  new  age  that  was  coming  in,  and  to  the 
emergency  which  was  confronting  the  churches.  A  time 
of  intellectual  activity,  and  consequent  confusion,  was  at 
hand  in  which  the  simplicity  of  the  Gospel  was  threatened. 
It  may  well  be  that  Ignatius  exaggerated  the  evils,  as  a 
method  of  enforcing  his  argument  for  the  necessity  of 
what  seems  too  often,  in  his  writings,  a  blind  submis- 
sion and  obedience.  But  after  all  these  qualifications, 
the  total  picture  in  the  mind  of  Ignatius  has  its  beauty, 
its  power,  its  pathos.  It  is  a  plea  for  unity  by  a  great 
soul,  a  rare  personality,  a  man  also  on  his  way  to  death, 
which  changes  the  perspective  of  human  things.  In  this 
spirit  we  may  listen  to  him  as  he  calls  himself  a  man 
devoted  to  unity.  "  Nothing  is  more  precious  than  peace, 
by  which  all  war  both  in  heaven  and  earth  is  brought  to 
an  end."  "Let  us  do  all  things  as  those  who  have  Christ 
dwelling  in  us,  that  we  may  be  His  temples  and  that  He 
may  be  in  us  as  our  God,  which  indeed  He  is,  and  will 
manifest  Himself  before  our  faces."  "Have  a  regard  to 
preserve  unity,"  he  writes  to  Polycarp,  "than  which 
nothing  is  better.  .  .  .  The  times  call  for  thee  as  pilots 
do  for  the  winds,  and  as  one  tossed  with  the  tempest 
seeks  for  the  haven." 


CHAPTER   VI 

THEORIES   REGARDING   THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE 

In  the  preceding  chapter  the  evidence  of  ancient  docu- 
ments bearing  upon  the  early  organization  of  the  church 
has  been  brought  together  with  no  attemjjt  to  urge  any 
one  theory  by  which  the  many  allusions  they  contain  may 
be  harmonized  as  features  of  one  consistent  and  uniform 
system  of  ecclesiastical  government.  Thei'e  are  several 
theories  deduced  from  this  mass  of  evidence,  of  which 
some  brief  account  may  now  be  given. 


In  the  first  place,  there  is  the  inference  that  the  govern- 
ment of  the  churches  varied  in  different  places,  and  at  dif- 
ferent times  in  the  same  place,  and  that  there  was  no  one 
uniform  type  which  is  common  to  all.  In  the  church  at 
Jerusalem  the  Twelve  seem  to  be  supreme  in  the  earliest 
years,  with  a  superintendence  over  the  other  Christian  com- 
munities in  Palestine  and  Syria.  Then  they  are  associated 
with  presbyters  or  elders  under  the  presidency  of  James, 
the  Lord's  brother.  In  the  church  at  Ephesus  there  were 
at  one  time  Apostles,  prophets,  and  evangelists,  with  pas- 
tors and  teachers,  and  at  another  moment  this  church  is 
represented,  as  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  as  under  the  super- 
intendence of  the  Evangelist,  Timothy,  with  presbyters, 
bishops,  and  deacons.  The  church  at  Philippi  had  bishops 
and  deacons,  while  the  churches  addressed  by  Peter  and 
James  and  John  appear  to  have  had  presbyters  only.  At 
Antioch,  in  the  earliest  years,  there  were  prophets  and 
teachers  who  took  the  lead,  while  in  the  Antioch  of  Igna- 

72 


THEORIES    ON   TFTE   ORIGIN   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE        73 

tius  there  is  no  mention  of  them,  but  the  bishop,  the  pres- 
byters, and  deacons  have  taken  their  place.  In  the  church 
at  Rome,  when  Clement  wrote,  there  were  rulers  and 
presbyters,  bishops  and  deacons,  but  in  the  same  church, 
when  Hernias  wrote,  the  prophets  still  maintained  a  posi- 
tion of  influence  and  authority.  In  the  church  at  Corinth, 
as  at  Rome,  there  were  presbyters,  and,  as  also  at  Rome, 
there  was  a  plural  episcopate.  But  not  far  from  this  time, 
in  the  churches  of  Asia  Minor  to  which  Ignatius  wrote, 
there  was  but  one  bishop.  In  Rome  and  at  Corinth  the 
presbyters  do  not  appear  as  subordinate  to  the  bishops, 
while  according  to  Ignatius  the  bishop  is  supreme.  In  the 
churches  to  which  the  Didache  was  addressed,  there  were 
Apostles,  prophets,  and  deacons,  and  there  were  also  bishops 
and  deacons,  but  presbyters  are  not  mentioned,  and  there 
was  no  single  bishop  who  was  chief  over  the  communities. 
The  inference  that  officers  do  not  exist  in  any  particular 
church  because  they  are  not  mentioned  must,  however,  be 
drawn  with  great  caution.  It  is  quite  possible,  for  ex- 
ample, that  there  may  have  been  those  answering  to  pres- 
byters, in  the  church  at  Philippi,  where  only  bishops  and 
deacons  are  mentioned ;  as  also  that  there  may  have  been 
bishops  and  deacons  in  communities  where  only  presbyters 
are  mentioned.  Again,  the  view  which  sees  only  variety 
and  difference  in  the  organization  of  the  local  churches, 
neglects  certain  common  tendencies  and  resemblances, 
which  are  vitally  related  to  the  development  of  the  min- 
istry. Important  theological  issues,  on  which  depended 
the  well-being  if  not  the  existence  of  a  common  Christen- 
dom, are  involved  in  the  external  ecclesiastical  form  which 
the  spirit  of  the  church  was  assuming.  It  may  be  true 
that  it  is  not  yet  possible  to  give  a  complete  symmetrical 
picture  of  the  whole  situation,  as  it  existed  at  any  moment; 
but  this  should  not  be  so  construed  as  to  warrant  the 
inference  that  no  common  principle  was  at  stake,  no  com- 
mon motive  which  gave  homogeneousness  amid  great 
divergencies. 


74  ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHURCH 


II 

The  position  of  James,  the  Lord's  brother,  in  the  church 
of  Jerusalem  has  been  regarded  as  the  origin  and  sanction 
of  what  is  known  as  episcopacy  in  the  later  and  technical 
use  of  the  word.  That  James  occupied  some  such  position 
must  be  admitted.  In  his  office  of  presidency  he  was 
surrounded  by  Apostles  and  presbyters  as  if  an  advisory 
council,  but  the  narrative  gives  the  impression  that  the 
responsibility  of  a  higher  authority  rested  upon  him.  Wlien 
Peter  was  set  free  from  imprisonment  he  requested  that 
his  liberation  should  be  made  known  to  James  (Acts  xii. 
17).  It  was  James  who  presided  in  the  conference  at 
Jerusalem,  who  summed  up  in  his  speech  the  points  made 
by  previous  speakers,  and  then  gave  the  sentence  which  the 
Apostles  and  brethren  adopted  (Acts  xv.  13,  19).  When 
Paul  made  his  last  visit  to  Jerusalem,  he  went  in  unto 
James,  and  all  the  elders  were  present  (Acts  xxi.  18 ;  cf. 
Gal.  i.  19,  ii.  12).  The  tradition  also  of  the  second  cen- 
tury assigns  to  James  at  least  the  headship  of  the  church 
in  Jerusalem,  if  not  a  more  extensive  authority. 

But  there  are  circumstances  connected  with  the  position 
of  James  which  give  to  it  a  peculiar  and  somewhat  excep- 
tional character,  so  that  it  can  hardly  be  claimed  as  a  pre- 
cedent for  later  ages,  without  great  qualifications.  Passing 
over  the  fact  that  he  is  not  called  bishop  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, it  must  be  noticed  as  an  unusual  circumstance  that 
no  account  should  be  given  of  the  time  and  circumstances 
of  his  elevation  to  his  high  place. ^  It  would  be  naturally 
supposed  that  one  of  the  Twelve  would  have  been  called 
to  this  position.  It  seems  strange  that  James  should  not 
have  been  elected  in  the  place  of  Matthias,  when  the 
Twelve  were  filling  up  their  number.  There  are  gaps  in 
the  narrative  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  but  this  is  a  point 

1  Cf.  Euseb.,  H.  E.,  ii.  1  for  the  tradition  in  the  sixth  book  of  Clement's 
Hypotyposeis,  where  it  is  said  that  "Peter,  James,  and  John,  after  the 
ascension  of  our  Saviour,  though  they  had  been  preferred  by  our  Lord, 
did  not  contend  for  the  honor,  but  chose  James  the  Just  as  Bishop  of 
Jerusalem." 


THEORIES    ON    THE   ORIGIN    OF   THE    EPISCOPATE        75 

in  regard  to  which  silence  is  very  difficult  to  explain.  The 
only  explanation  which  seems  to  suit  all  the  requirements 
of  the  case  is  that  James  took  the  precedence  in  virtue  of 
his  blood  relationship  to  Christ.  He  was  the  Lord's 
brother.  As  such  he  was  known  in  the  ancient  church. 
There  have  been  efforts  to  show  that  he  may  have  been 
one  of  the  Twelve ;  but  in  the  early  church  it  Avas  his 
blood  relationship  which  seems  to  have  been  regarded  as 
his  highest  claim  to  distinction.  In  the  Greek  Euchology 
he  is  distinguished  from  James  the  brother  of  John  and 
from  James  the  son  of  Alphseus,  and  is  designated  as 
James,  the  Apostle,  the  brother  of  God.i  He  was  suc- 
ceeded in  his  position  as  governor  of  the  church  in  Jerusa- 
lem by  Simeon,  who  was  also  a  blood  relation  of  Christ.^ 
It  is  possible  that  among  the  tentative  visions  of  the  early 
church  this  was  one,  that  there  should  be  a  visible  head- 
ship over  all  the  Christian  communities,  which  should  be 
continued  in  the  line  of  relatives  of  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
and  whose  centre  should  be  the  sacred  city  of  Jerusalem. 
But  if  so,  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in  the  year  70,  and  its 
further  humiliation  and  abandonment  under  Hadrian,  made 
the  dream  impossible.  The  subject,  however,  is  obscure, 
and  is  further  complicated  by  romance  mixed  with  uncer- 
tain tradition,  to  which  one  does  not  know  how  much  his- 
torical significance  to  ascribe.^ 

1  Among  many  discussions  of  this  intricate  point,  cf.  Lightfoot,  Epistle 
to  the  Galatians,  on  the  Brethren  of  the  Lord,  pp.  89-127. 

2  Cf.  Euseb.,  H.  E.,  iii.  11.  "After  the  martyrdom  of  James  and  the 
capture  of  Jerusalem  which  immediately  followed,  the  report  is,  that  those 
of  the  Apostles  and  the  disciples  of  our  Lord  that  were  yet  surviving,  came 
together  from  all  parts,  with  those  that  were  related  to  our  Lord  accord- 
ing to  the  flesh.  For  the  greater  part  of  them  were  yet  living.  These 
consulted  together,  to  determine  whom  it  was  proper  to  pronounce 
worthy  of  being  the  successor  of  James.  They  all  unanimously  declared 
Simeon,  the  son  of  Cleophas,  of  whom  mention  is  made  in  the  sacred 
volume,  as  worthy  of  the  episcopal  seat  there.  They  say  he  was  the 
cousin-german  of  our  Saviour,  for  Hegesippus  asserts  that  Cleophas  was 
the  brother  of  Joseph."  Cf.  also  iii.  20,  where  it  is  said  that  Domitian 
was  alarmed  about  the  relatives  of  our  Lord,  as  if  they  aspired  to  found  a 
temporal  kingdom.  This  report  also  came  from  Hegesippus.  In  this  con- 
nection see  Matt.  xii.  47,  Mark  iii.  '.V2,  Luke  viii.  20  ;  also  Matt.  xx.  20-28. 

^  Cf.  the  pseudo-Clementine  writings,  which  contain  several  allusions 
to  James  as  the  head  of  the  whole  church  ;  Ejns.  Fet ,  whose  superscrip- 


76  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

The  Ignatian  episcopate  differs  from  the  rule  or  as- 
cendency ascribed  to  James,  in  being  a  local  office  whose 
authority  is  confined  within  the  community.  But  not  only 
does  the  tradition  of  the  second  century  give  to  James  an 
universal  authority ;  there  are  also  hints  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment that  his  superintendence  included  Antioch  and  the 
Gentile  as  well  as  the  Jewish  Christians ;  that  even  the 
Twelve,  including  also  Peter  and  Paul,  treated  him  with 
a  certain  deference  as  the  head  of  the  church.  It  is  quite 
remarkable  that  Ignatius  is  silent  regarding  any  Apostolic 
precedent  for  the  local  bishop  whose  authority  he  is  advo- 
cating. He  must  have  known,  living  as  he  did  at  Antioch, 
something  of  the  history  of  the  church  in  Jerusalem,  but 
he  urges  the  independence  of  the  local  bishop,  as  if  he  had 
never  heard  of  any  higher  authority  resident  in  the  sacred 
city.  It  may  even  be  that  he  is  combating  in  his  own 
way  the  possibility  of  an  interference  from  without  with 
the  supremacy  of  the  local  episcopate.  It  was  also  the 
Ignatian  type  of  episcopate  and  not  that  of  Jerusalem, 
which  spread  in  Asia  Minor,  in  Italy,  and  in  North  Africa. 
But  notwithstanding  this  wide  divergence  in  type,  there  is 
a  certain  affinity  between  them  in  that  the  claim  is  made 
for  both  that  they  represent  Christ:  James  by  virtue  of 
his  blood  relationship  to  Christ  after  the  flesh,  the  Ignatian 
bishop  through  his  relationship  to  the  Eucharist  which  is 
a  sacrament  of  His  body  and  blood.  And  as  the  former 
stood  above  Apostles,  even  the  Twelve,  so  the  latter  is 
elevated  above  presbyters,  who  stand  in  the  place  of  Apos- 
tles. Both  types  of  episcopate  differ  from  that  which 
finally  prevailed,  which  made  the  bishops  the  successors 
of  the  Apostles.^ 

tion  runs,  "James,  the  lord  and  bishop  of  the  Holy  Church"  ;  also  Epis. 
Clem,  ad  Jacob.  :  ''  James,  the  Lord  and  the  Bishop  of  bishops,  who  rules 
Jerusalem,  the  holy  church  of  the  Hebrews,  and  the  churches  everywhere 
excellently  founded  by  the  providence  of  God."  See  also  Rec.  i.  68,  73  ; 
iv.  35.     It  is  all  romance,  but  may  have  had  its  influence  upon  Rome. 

1  There  was  in  the  church  at  Alexandria  a  peculiar  kind  of  episcopate, 
having  affinities  with  that  of  James,  to  which  allusion  will  be  made  here- 
after. For  a  discussion  of  the  position  of  James  and  of  the  Ignatian 
bishop,  cf.  Ritschl,  Die  Entstehung  der  altkatholischen  Kirche,  pp.  415  ff. 


THEORIES    ON   THE   ORIGIN    OF   THE   EPISCOPATE        77 


III 

The  view  that  the  episcopate  arose  by  the  localization 
of  the  Apostles  finds  its  strongest  advocacy  in  the  Roman 
church.  There  is  a  tradition  that  Peter  lived  at  Rome  as 
its  bishop  and  appointed  his  successor.  This  tradition 
may  have  been  combated  by  Protestant  scholars  since  the 
Reformation,  on  dogmatic  grounds.  But  as  a  result  of  the 
long  controversy,  it  must  now  be  admitted  that  the  Roman 
claim  is  inadmissible,  founded  on  a  tradition  mentioned 
by  Eusebius  and  Jerome,  that  Peter  went  to  Rome  about 
the  year  42  and  remained  there  till  his  death  by  martyrdom 
in  64.  According  to  the  chronology  which  is  generally 
adopted,  he  could  not  have  gone  there  before  the  year  61, 
which  was  the  date  of  Paul's  arrival. ^  That  Peter  visited 
Rome  is  a  residuum  out  of  a  large  tradition,  which  may 
be  retained,  as  also  that  he  died  there  as  a  martyr.  But 
the  visit  of  an  Apostle  does  not  constitute  his  localization 
or  settlement  as  a  bishop.  It  is  rather  in  harmony  with 
the  view  that  the  calling  of  an  Apostle  forbade  his  perma- 
nent residence  in  any  city.  There  is  another  tradition 
that  St.  John  in  his  later  years  was  established  at  Ephe- 
sus,  but  in  this  case  also  he  did  not  reside  there  as  its 
bishop ;  for,  according  to  a  tradition,  which  is  valid,  Timo- 
thy went  there  as  an  evangelist  or  delegate  of  St.  Paul, 
to  whom  was  intrusted  the  superintendency  of  its  church. 
In  the  case  of  the  others  of  the  Twelve  nothing  is  known ; 
the  traditions  which  assign  to  them  various  localities  are 
late  and  have  no  historical  value. 

The  theory  of  the  localization  of  the  Apostles  introduces 
confusion  rather  than  clearness.     It  is  opposed  to  the  con- 

1  Cf.  Farrar,  F.  W.,  Early  Days  of  Christianity,  Appendix,  1,  2,  3  ; 
Renan,  U Antichrist,  Appendix;  Schaff,  Ch.  His.,  I.,  c.  4;  Schmid,  J., 
Petrus  in  Bom ;  Herzog,  7?.  E.  Art.  Petrus.  In  the  proposed  redati'  i; 
of  the  incidents  in  the  later  life  of  Paul,  the  time  of  his  going  to  Rome  ■ ; 
placed  by  Dr.  McGiffert  so  early  as  56  a.d.,  and  his  martyrdom  in  the 
year  58,  which  may  also  be  the  year  of  Peter's  visit  to  Rome,  thus  allow- 
ing a  residence  at  Rome  by  Peter  of  some  five  or  six  yeai's.  Cf.  Article, 
Peter'' s  Sojourn  in  Pome,  in  American  Journal  of  Theology,  Jan.,  1897  ; 
also,  by  same  author,  The  Apostolic  Church  in  Inter.  Theol.  Lib. 


78  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

ception  of  the  Apostolate  given  in  the  New  Testament, 
that  the  Apostle  was  a  missionary  moving  from  place  to 
place.  In  the  Didache,  while  provision  is  made  for 
settling  prophets  and  teachers  in  some  local  church,  no 
such  contingency  is  contemplated  for  an  Apostle.  And 
again,  if  we  admit  the  theory  for  the  sake  of  discussion, 
it  is  discredited  by  well-known  facts  regarding  the  episco- 
pate, such  as  the  different  types  of  bishops  presented  in 
the  second  century,  the  local  or  parish  episcopate  in  Asia 
Minor,  or  the  one  bishop  at  Alexandria  with  his  twelve 
presbyters  and  his  superintendency  over  all  Egypt.  Rome 
also,  from  a  very  early  period,  may  have  had  a  conception 
of  the  episcopate  different  from  either  of  these,  which  is 
suggested  in  the  pseudo-Clementine  writings  and  illus- 
trated in  a  certain  consciousness  of  authority  even  in  the 
time  of  Irenseus. 

The  silence  of  the  Ignatian  Epistles  regarding  the 
residence  of  St.  John  in  Asia  Minor  or  his  activity  in 
superintending  the  churches,  is  a  difficulty  hard  to  over- 
come. If  Ignatius  had  appealed  to  the  authority  of  the 
beloved  disciple,  by  whom  the  bishops  were  appointed 
there,  it  seems  as  if  it  must  liave  carried  greater  weight 
with  those  to  whom  he  wrote  than  his  appeal  to  a  pro- 
phetic revelation.  But  be  this  as  it  may,  the  tradition 
existed  at  the  close  of  the  second  centur}^  that  St.  John 
had  been  the  agent  for  the  introduction  of  the  local  or 
parish  episcopate  into  the  churches  of  Asia  Minor.  Ter- 
tullian  wrote,  "The  order  of  the  bishops,  when  traced 
back  to  its  origin,  will  be  found  to  rest  upon  John  as  its 
author.  "1  And  Clement  of  Alexandria,  writing  about 
the  same  time,  says  that  the  Apostle  John,  "when  he 
returned  to  Ephesus  from  the  isle  of  Patmos,  went  away, 
being  invited  to  the  adjacent  territories  of  the  nations, 
here  to  appoint  bishops,  there  to  set  in  order  whole 
churches,  there  to  ordain  such  as  were  marked  out  by  the 
Spirit. "2  But  the  office  of  a  bishop  differs  so  fundamen- 
tally from  that  of  an  Apostle,  that,  as  Bishop  Lightfoot  has 

1  Adv.  Marc.  iv.  5.  ^  Quis.  Div.  Salv.  c.  xlii. 


THEORIES   ON   THE   ORIGIN    OF   THE   EPISCOPATE        79 

remarked,  "It  is  not  to  the  Apostle  tliat  we  must  look  for 
the  prototype  of  the  bishop."^ 


IV 

The  theory,  which  is  identifiecl  with  the  name  of  St. 
Jerome,  that  '  presbyter  '  and  '  bishop '  are  used  in  the  New 
Testament  as  synonymous,  and  that  the  name  '  bishop  ' 
was  afterwards  used  to  designate  the  higher  officer  to  whom 
the  presbyters  were  subordinate,  has  been  maintained  with 
great  force  by  Bishop  Lightfoot.  In  the  words  of  the 
latter,  "  The  episcopate  was  formed  not  out  of  the  Apos- 
tolic order  by  localization,  but  out  of  the  presbyteral  by 
elevation;  and  the  title,  which  originally  was  common 
to  all,  came  at  length  to  be  appropriated  to  the  chief 
among  them."^  The  objection  to  this  theory  is  that  it 
throws  no  light  on  the  dilhculties  which  are  encountered 
in  the  effort  to  trace  the  origin  of  the  Christian  ministry; 
while  it  raises  even  greater  difficulties  by  making  the  tran- 
sition inexplicable  in  the  writings  of  Ignatius,  where 
bishops   and   presbyters   are    sharply   distinguished.      It 

^  Essay  on  Christian  Ministry,  p.  196. 

2  According  to  Bishop  Lightfoot,  tlie  terms  '  presbyter '  and  '  bishop ' 
are  used  interchangeably  in  Acts  xx.  17,  28,  and  again  in  1  Peter  v.  1,2. 
In  the  First  Epistle  to  Timothy  (iii.  1-7)  the  qualifications  of  a  bishop  are 
meant  to  apply  also  to  presbyters  (v.  17).  When  St.  Paul  salutes  the 
bishops  and  deacons  (Phil.  i.  1),  by  bisliops  must  be  understood  presby- 
ters, since  it  is  incredible  that  they  should  be  passed  over.  Further  evi- 
dence of  the  identification  of  name  and  office  is  found  in  Clement  (Cor. 
cc.  xliii.,  xliv.)  and  in  the  Epistle  of  Poly  carp.  The  phraseology  which  dis- 
tinguished between  bishops  and  presbyters  began  to  come  into  vogue  in  the 
early  years  of  the  second  century,  but  so  late  as  the  time  of  Iren?eus  the 
older  usage  had  not  entirely  disappeared.  Cf.  Iren.  Adv.  Haer.  iii.  2.  2, 
and  iii.  3.  1,  2,  and  14.  1,  2,  where  successions  of  presbyters  are  mentioned 
as  preserving  the  traditions,  and  again  successions  of  bishops.  Bishop 
Lightfoot  also  appealed  to  Jerome's  testimony  (Epis.  Ixix. ,  cxlvi.)  that 
"among  the  ancients  bi.shops  and  presbyters  are  the  same."  Cf.  Light- 
foot, Com.  on  Phil.,  pp.  97,  98.  Cf.  also  Essay,  etc.,  p.  19G.  Jerome's 
theory,  it  should  be  said,  was  drawn  from  his  study  of  the  New  Testament 
rather  than  from  any  .special  knowledge  of  an  age  following  the  Apostles, 
when  the  change  was  made  by  which  the  bishops  rose  above  the  presby- 
ter. But  there  was  also  in  Jerome's  mind  a  dogmatic  pui'pose  which  was 
supported  by  his  theory  and  to  which  allusion  will  be  made  hereafter. 


80  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE  CHURCH 

overlooks  the  possibility  of  distinctions  which  would 
explain  the  apparent  identity  of  name  and  office ;  for  it 
may  have  been  that  presbyters  exercised  one  kind  of  super- 
intendence or  episcopacy,  and  bishops  another  and  differ- 
ent kind.  It  is  possible  that  the  bishops  may  have  been 
presbyters,  while  all  presbyters  were  not  bishops. 

The  grounds  on  which  this  ancient  theory  has  been 
questioned  and  finally  rejected  by  later  scholars  are  as 
follows.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  been  noticed  that  bish- 
ops and  deacons  are  mentioned  together  in  the  same  con- 
nection, and  that  when  they  are  thus  mentioned  presbyters 
are  not  mentioned.  And  conversely,  where  presbyters 
are  mentioned,  they  stand  by  themselves,  and  there  is  no 
connected  allusion  to  bishops  and  deacons.  Thus  in  the 
Epistles  to  the  Philippians,  St.  Paul  salutes  the  bishops 
and  deacons,  but  is  silent  regarding  presbyters.  In  the 
First  Epistle  to  Timothy  and  in  the  Epistle  to  Titus,  the 
qualifications  of  bishops  and  deacons  are  given  together, 
as  if  these  offices  were  related,  but  when  presbyters  are 
mentioned  in  these  epistles,  it  is  by  themselves  and  in 
another  connection.  Clement  of  Rome  says  that  the 
Apostles  "appointed  the  firstfruits  of  their  labors  to  be 
bishops  and  deacons"  (Cor.  c.  xlii.),  but  when  he  speaks 
of  presbyters,  he  is  speaking  upon  a  different  subject  and 
associates  them  with  the  rulers  (cc.  ii.,  iii.).  According  to 
the  Didache,  the  local  community  is  told  to  appoint  bish- 
ops and  deacons,  but  no  allusion  is  made  to  presbyters. 
A  similar  connection  is  seen  in  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas, 
where  in  one  paragraph  the  deacons  are  mentioned  and  in 
the  next  the  bishops,  as  though  they  were  bound  together 
by  some  special  tie  (Sim.  ix.  26,  27).  There  are  some 
apparent  exceptions  to  this  rule,  but  it  remains  to  be 
proved  that  they  are  exceptions.^ 

In  the  second  place,  the  reason  for  associating  bishops 
and  deacons  is  that  in  some  special  way  they  were  con- 

1  Of.  Weizsacker,  V.  3,  §  i.  In  the  Epistle  of  Polycarp  presbyters  and 
deacons  are  mentioned,  bnt  not  bishops.  Bnt  it  is  possible  that,  as 
Dr.  Harnack  has  suggested,  in  small  commnnities  those  who  were  recog- 
nized as  the  presbyters  would  be  one  and  the  same  with  the  bishops.  Of- 
Expositor,  v.,  1887,  p.  338. 


THEORIES   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   THE   EPISCOPATE        81 

nected  with  the  Lord's  supper,  which  at  first  took  the 
shape  of  the  agape,  or  the  common  meal,  where  an  offer- 
ing was  made  which  was  intrusted  to  the  bishop,  and  in 
the  distribution  of  which  to  the  poor  the  deacons  were  his 
assistants.  In  the  celebration  of  the  Eucharist,  as  de- 
scribed by  Justin  Martyr,  the  bishop  presides  and  the 
deacons  distribute  the  elements  or  carry  them  to  the  absent 
(Apol.  c.  Ixv.).  This  usage,  which  prevailed  at  Rome  in 
the  middle  of  the  second  century,  is  in  harmony  with  the 
allusion  of  Clement  of  Rome,  where  he  connects  the  ap- 
pointment of  bishops  and  deacons  with  an  offering  to  be 
presented  and  a  service  to  be  performed  (Trpo(T(^opa<i  kuI 
XetToi//37ia?).  The  Didache  plainly  intimates  that  bishops 
and  deacons  are  to  be  ordained  in  order  to  take  the  place 
of  the  prophet  as  ministrants  in  the  Eucharist.  St.  Paul, 
then,  it  may  be  inferred,  salutes  the  bishops  and  deacons, 
because  he  is  writing  to  acknowledge  a  gift  of  money,  or 
an  offering  which  had  been  made  to  him  by  the  church  at 
Philippi  (Phil.  iv.  15-19).  That  the  bishop  was  tlie 
responsible  financial  officer  of  the  community  has  received 
abundant  proof.  ^  Not  only  does  he  thus  appear  in  these 
early  documents,  but  he  retained  this  character  at  a  later 
time  and  through  the  Middle  Ages.  He  had  the  care  of 
ministering  to  the  poor,  the  widows  and  orphans,  and  in 
fulfilling  his  charge  was  aided  by  the  deacons.  Ecclesi- 
astical tradition  has  retained  this  feature  of  the  diaconate 
to  our  own  day.  Hence  the  qualifications  for  a  bishop, 
as  well  as  for  deacons,  are  those  of  a  good  administrative 
officer,  possessing  an  honest  report,  free  from  covetousness 
and  from  the  love  of  money. 

But  the  bishop  was  not  only  the  responsible  financial 
head  of  the  community,  at  a  time  when  this  department 
of  Christian  activity  was  foremost  in  importance,  as  Dr. 

1  The  language  of  Justin  Martyr  on  this  point  is  conclusive.  After 
describing  the  method  of  keeping  the  Eucharist,  he  remarks :  "  They  who 
are  well  to  do  and  willing  give  what  each  thinks  fit ;  and  what  is  collected 
is  deposited  with  the  president  (the  bishop),  who  succors  the  orphans  and 
widows  and  those  who  through  sickness  or  any  other  cause  are  in  want, 
.  .  .  and  in  a  word  takes  care  of  all  who  are  in  need"  (Apol.  Ixvii.). 
Cf.  Her.  Sim.  ix.  26,  27. 


82  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

Hatch  has  shown,  ^  but  he  also  had  cliarge  of  the  worship 
of  the  church,  and  especially  did  he  preside  at  the  cele- 
bration of  the  Lord's  supper.  These  two  functions  of 
oversight  combining  in  the  bishop  gave  him  from  an  early 
moment  great  prominence.  They  were  functions  closely 
affiliated ;  for  the  offering  of  money  or  alms  was  made  at 
the  moment  when  the  service  or  worship  of  the  Eucharist 
was  to  be  rendered.  Of  the  two  functions,  the  presidency 
at  the  memorial  feast  had  most  to  do  with  the  elevation  of 
the  bishop  above  the  presbyter.  In  the  earliest  adminis- 
tration of  the  Eucharist,  while  it  was  still  an  agape  or 
evening  meal,^  the  congregation  sat  down  at  the  table  and 
one  presided.  Thus  was  furnished  a  living  picture  and 
a  perpetual  memory  of  Christ's  last  supper  with  his  dis- 
ciples. But  when  the  congregation  became  too  large  to 
sit  down  at  the  common  table,  the  picture  was  changed, 
yet  so  as  to  remain  a  picture  still ;  but  a  dramatization 
also  in  place  of  the  reality.  A  few  were  chosen  to  sit 
with  the  bishop  at  the  table,  upon  whom  also  the  deacons 
waited,    and  these   chosen    guests   were   the   presbyters.^ 

1  The.  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches,  Bampton  Lect- 
ures, 1880  ;  Lecture  ii.,  on  Bishops  and  Deacons.  Cf.  Uhlhorn,  Christian 
Charity  in  the  Ancient  Church  (Eng.  Trans.),  N.  Y.,  1883. 

2  The  love-feast  or  agape  was  still  the  form  of  the  Eucharist  in  the  time 
of  Ignatius  (Smyr.  viii.). 

"The  Christian  festival,  both  in  the  hour  of  the  day  and  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  meal,  was  substantially  a  reproduction  of  Christ's 
last  night  with  His  disciples.  Hence,  it  was  called  'the  Lord's  supper,' 
—  a  name  originally  applied  to  the  combined  Eucharist  and  agape,  but 
afterward  applied  to  the  former  when  the  latter  had  been  separated  or 
abolished"  (Lightfoot,  Apos.  Fathers,  Part  II.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  400). 

^  Cf.  Gebhardt  u.  Harnack,  Texte  u.  Untersiichungen,  Vol.  II.  5,  p.  11, 
for  the  second  of  the  so-called  Apostolic  Ordinances,  in  which  tlie  pres- 
byters are  represented  as  surrounding  the  bishop  in  the  ministration 
of  the  Eucharist.  For  an  exposition  of  the  influence  of  the  Eucharist 
upon  ecclesiastical  organization,  cf.  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  Bd.  I.  (1892), 
§§  9,  11:  "Die  wesentliche  Aufgabe  dieses  Bischofsamtes  war  die  Ver- 
waltung  der  Eucharistie  und,  in  Zusammenhang  damit,  die  Verwaltung  der 
Opfergaben"  (des  Kirchenguts)  (p.  84).  "  Die  Diakonen  stehen  im  eucha- 
ristischen  Gottesdienst  als  die  bereiten  Gehtilfen  des  Bischofs,  der  Bischof 
sitzt.  Aber  der  Bischof  kann  nicht  allein  am  Abendmahlstische  sitzen. 
Wie  mit  dem  Herrn  Christus  die  Apostel,  seine  Jiinger,  so  muss  mit  dem 
Bischof  seine  Gemeinde  zu  Tische  (am  Altar)  sitzen,  aber  die  Gemeinde 
ist  gros  geworden.     Die  gauze  Versammlung  findet  am  Abendmahlstische 


THEORIES   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OP   THE   EPISCOPATE        83 

In  this  way  was  presented  to  the  imagination  the  last 
supper,  when  Christ  presided  and  the  Apostles  sat  on 
either  side.  This  was  the  second  stage  in  the  modifica- 
tion of  the  Lord's  supper.  The  table  became  a  symbol, 
and  bishop  and  presbyters  fulfilled  a  symbolic  function, 
the  bishop  representing  Christ,  and  the  presbyters  His 
Apostles.  For  a  long  time  this  symbolism  endured, 
until  the  sacrificial  principle  became  dominant,  when 
the  table  was  withdrawn  into  the  sanctuary  as  in  the 
Greek  church,  and  shut  out  from  the  public  gaze;  or,  as 
in  the  Latin  church,  the  table  was  transformed  into  an 
altar,  and  bishop  and  presbyters  became  a  sacrificing 
priesthood.  But  the  ancient  usage  still  survives  in  ritual 
practices,  which  go  back  to  the  days  when  the  bishop  sat 
at  table  and  was  aided  in  the  ministrations  of  the  table  by 
the  deacons.  In  the  Roman  church,  the  Pope  alone  still 
retains  the  sitting  posture  behind  the  altar,  when  he 
receives  the  bread  and  wine.^  If  the  presbyter  ofificiates, 
he  does  so  in  the  place  of  the  bishop,  and  those  who  aid 
him  are  designated  deacons  for  the  time  being,  whatever 
may  be  their  ecclesiastical  rank. 

We  have  here  the  possible  clew  to  what  has  remained 
so  long  obscure  and  enigmatical.  It  may  have  been  for 
this  reason  that  James  was  chosen  to  preside  over  the 
Apostles  in  Jerusalem,  and  thus  fulfil,  as  the  Lord's 
brother,  the  injunction  to  keep  the  feast  in  memory  of 
Christ.  It  may  have  been  for  this  reason  that  in  Alex- 
andria there  was  one  bishop  with  twelve  presbyters,  down 

keinen  Platz  mehr.  Daher  die  Erage  :  wer  sitzt  mit  dem  Biscliof  ain 
Altar  ?  .  .  .  Die  Antwort  auf  die  gestellte  Frage  lautet :  .  .  .  die  geist- 
liclien  Ehrenpersonen  der  Gemeinde,  also,  Asketen,  Martyrer,  Lelir- 
begabte,  vor  allem  und  fiir  die  Kegel,  (denn  jene  Erstgenannten  sind 
nicht  in  jeder  Versammlung  zu  linden),  die  Altesten"  (p.  138).  See  also 
Apos.  Cons.  viii.  12. 

1  Cf .  a  very  interesting  note  in  Stanley,  Christian  Institutions,  on  the 
Pope's  posture  at  the  Communion,  pp.  206  ff.  Luther  was  greatly  dis- 
gusted when  he  learned  that  the  Pope  did  not  kneel  with  his  fellow-sin- 
ners, misinterpreting  it  as  an  evidence  of  papal  arrogance.  As  a  precious 
relic  of  early  usage  it  illustrates  the  dignity  and  conservatism  of  the  papal 
oflBce,  and  bears  witness  to  the  consciousness  within  the  church  of  the 
time  when  the  change  was  made  from  sitting  to  kneeling. 


84  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

to  the  middle  of  the  third  century.  This  may  have  been 
the  image  in  the  mind  of  Ignatius,  as  he  presents  the 
bishop  in  the  place  of  Christ,  and  the  presbyters  in  the 
place  of  the  Apostles.  It  was  because  the  Lord's  supper 
was  not  only  growing  in  the  reverence  of  the  people,  but 
was  gaining  a  dogmatic  significance  also  throughout  the 
second  century,  that  the  bishop's  position  as  president  at 
the  supper  gave  him  the  ascendency,  in  the  Christian  im- 
agination and  in  the  heathen  estimate,  over  the  presbyter. 
For  in  the  meantime,  also,  the  function  of  the  presbyter 
was  changing.  The  time  was  already  coming  when  his 
testimony  to  the  traditions  of  the  fathers  would  no  longer 
be  necessary,  when,  indeed,  it  would  be  impossible  for 
him  to  render  it.  Testimony  of  this  kind  at  second  hand 
may  be  valuable,  but  in  the  third  or  fourth  degree  it  begins 
to  diminish  in  value.  The  presbyter  as  a  link  with  the 
past,  as  vouching  for  the  ij^sissivia  verba  of  Christ  and  His 
Apostles,  was  giving  way  to  the  Rule  of  Faith  and  the 
Canon  of  the  New  Testament.  Tlie  other  functions  of 
the  presbyters  had  been  teaching  or  exhortation,  combined 
with  moral  discipline  and  the  watch  over  the  young. 
If  the  bishop  was  selected  from  the  ranks  of  the  presby- 
ters, as  it  is  necessary  to  suppose  must  have  been  the 
case,  then  the  seeming  identity  of  the  names  of  bishop 
and  presbyter  is  shown  to  have  been  in  appearance  only. 
At  the  time  when  presbyters  held  the  highest  place,  it 
would  be  the  highest  title  of  honor  belonging  to  the  bishop 
that  he  belonged  to  the  presbyterate,  and  as  such  he  would 
be  mentioned.  When  we  consider  that  the  bishop  was 
the  financial  administrative  head  of  the  community,  that 
he  also  had  the  superintendence  of  worship,  that  he  had 
the  supervision  of  the  deacons  also,  and  that  the  poor,  the 
widows,  and  the  orphans  looked  to  him  for  protection, 
that  in  addition  to  these  functions  he  also  possessed  the 
dignity  of  a  presbyter,  it  is  not  difficult  to  explain  the 
transition  to  which  Ignatius  bears  witness.  The  step 
was  inevitable  by  which  he  rose  to  supremacy.  The  won- 
der is  not  that  the  change  came  so  soon,  but  that  it  had 
not  come  earlier.      The  appearance  of  the  Ignatian  bishop 


THEORIES    ON    THE   ORIGIN    OF   THE   EPISCOPATE        85 

was  only  retarded  by  the  intensely  democratic  character  of 
early  Christianity. 

In  concluding  this  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  Christian 
ministry  according  to  the  documents  produced  in  the  first 
three  Christian  generations,  it  must  be  said  again  that  the 
picture  is  not  complete,  nor  is  the  material  sufficient  to 
make  it  complete.  The  government  of  the  churches  may 
have  varied  in  different  places  and  at  different  times  in  the 
same  place.  In  some  communities  Apostles  and  prophets 
lingered  longer  than  in  others,  and  the  local  ministry 
followed  a  slower  development.  In  a  general  way  it 
may  be  said  that  the  presbyters  were  more  prominent  in 
Jewish  Christian  churches,  and  the  bishops  in  Gentile 
Christian  churches,  just  as  the  term  '  presbyter '  had  its 
analogy  in  the  Jewish  synagogue,  while  the  term  '  bishop  ' 
is  of  heathen  origin,  and  had  its  counterpart  in  heathen 
organizations.  But  not  much  is  gained  by  dwelling  on 
this  distinction.  The  Christian  presbyter  differed  from 
the  Jewish  presbyter,  and  it  is  just  that  difference  which 
it  is  important  to  seize.  The  Christian  bishop  bears  but 
a  faint  resemblance  to  the  presiding  officer  of  Greek  fra- 
ternities. But  though  the  picture  may  not  be  complete 
in  its  details,  yet  the  general  outline  is  clear.  The  min- 
istry of  the  Apostolic  age  came  by  divine  appointment, 
and  was  divided  into  two  ranks.  In  the  highest  rank 
was  the  ministry  which  was  devoted  to  the  preaching  of 
the  Word,  and  in  whose  ministrations  the  whole  body  of 
the  Christian  communities  shared;  God  hath  appointed- 
first.  Apostles ;  secondly,  prophets  ;  thirdly,  teachers.  In 
the  second  rank  came  the  local  ministry,  occupied  prima- 
rily with  administrative  duties.  The  names  of  the  officers 
of  the  local  ministry  were  for  a  time  unfixed  or  general  in 
their  character,  but  even  from  an  early  moment  three 
titles  appear  which  were  destined  to  be  permanent,  — 
presbyters  and  bishops  and  deacons.  These  titles,  bishop 
and  presbyter,  stood  from  the  first  for  distinct  functions, 
and  while  they  may  seem  to  be  used  interchangeably,  the 
distinction  always  existed  beneath  the  apparent  identity. 
The  presbyter  might  perform  the  functions  of  the  bishop, 


86  OEGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

when  appointed  thereto ;  or  the  bishop,  while  still  a  bishop, 
might  have  duties  as  a  presbyter,  since,  as  a  rule,  he  must 
have  been  chosen  from  the  board  of  the  presbyters.  Moral 
instruction  and  guidance  of  the  young  were  the  function  of 
the  presbyter;  superintendence  of  the  worship,  the  care 
of  the  funds,  and  the  responsibility  for  the  poor  were  the 
sphere  of  the  bishop,  in  which  he  was  assisted  by  the 
deacons. 

But  divine  order  and  appointment  is  subject  to  change 
and  to  modification  by  the  exigencies  of  time  and  of  all 
human  affairs.  The  more  divine  the  order,  the  deeper  is 
the  spirit  of  life  which  it  enshrines ;  and  life  is  revealed 
in  change  and  progress,  while  immobility  is  death.  The 
develo23ment  of  the  ministry  after  the  Apostolic  age  lay 
in  the  appropriation,  as  far  as  it  was  possible,  of  the  func- 
tions of  the  higher  ministry  of  Apostles,  prophets,  and 
teachers  by  the  officers  of  the  local  church.  In  what  way, 
and  to  what  extent,  presbyters  and  bishops  fulfilled  these 
duties,  must  be  traced  in  the  later  history.  Even  though 
the  Apostolic  office,  the  prophetic  function,  and  the  gift  of 
teaching  could  not  be  transferred  in  mechanical  fashion, 
and  suffered  by  diminution  and  loss  in  the  transition  to 
the  ministry  of  the  Catholic  church,  yet  the  change  or 
development  was  no  less  divinely  ordered.  The  church 
was  to  find  a  great  and  effectual  opening  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  and  its  highest  duty  was  to  adapt  itself  to  the 
new  conditions  of  its  existence.  The  first  step  was  taken 
to  this  end,  when  the  bishop  was  placed  above  the  presby- 
ter, when  administration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs  became 
the  highest  function  and  was  honored  with  the  highest 
rank  in  the  ministry.  Ignatius  recognized  from  afar  the 
coming  change,  and  became  the  forerunner  in  its  accom- 
plishment. How  the  Ignatian  episcopate  developed  into 
the  Catholic  episcopate  becomes  the  next  subject  of 
inquiry. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   CHMSTIAISr   MINISTRY    IN   THE   SECOND   CENTURY 


At  the  beginning  of  the  second  century  the  bishop  had 
been  presented  in  the  Epistles  of  Ignatius  as  the  successor 
of  Christ.  When  the  century  closed,  the  bishop  had 
become  known  as  the  successor  of  the  Apostles.  In  this 
change  is  summed  up  as  in  an  epitome  the  modification 
which  the  intervening  years  had  wrought  in  the  ecclesias- 
tical structure  of  the  early  church.  As  there  is  here  dis- 
closed an  important  difference  in  the  way  of  regarding  the 
bishop,  so  also  no  less  significant  a  transformation  has  been 
wrought  in  the  status  of  tlie  presbj^ter.  When  the  pres- 
byter lost  his  place  and  dignity  as  the  successor  and  repre- 
sentative of  Apostles,  the  original  function  of  his  office 
or  rank  had  also  disappeared,  and  the  way  was  open  for 
his  development  in  some  other  direction.  In  his  original 
capacity  the  presbyter  had  been  one  of  a  board  or  council, 
of  which  also  the  bishop  must  be  supposed  to  have  been  a 
member,  whose  function  was  a  moral  oversight  and  disci- 
pline coupled  with  the  responsibility  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Christian  tradition.  Traces  of  this  early  arrange- 
ment continued  to  survive  in  obscure  ways,  but  no  longer 
understood,  some  of  which  have  come  down  to  our  own  day. 
But  the  office  was  changing  its  character  in  the  second 
century,  although  the  name  and  title  were  still  retained. 
The  presbyterate  is  henceforth  a  new  office,  to  be  studied 
in  its  new  role  as  it  entered  upon  its  development.  The 
responsibility  of  vouching  for  the  tradition  was  transferred 
to  the  episcopate,  a  prerogative  for  which  the  qualification 
of  age  was  no  longer  required.  Or,  in  other  words,  the 
presbyter,  in  the  Ignatian  scheme,  was  to  be  subject  to  the 

87 


88  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

bishop,  because  the  bishop  stood  in  the  place  of  Christ.  In 
the  later  adjustment,  the  presbyter  is  subject  to  the  bishop, 
because  the  bishop  stands  in  the  place  of  an  Apostle. 

The  explanation  of  the  change  is  to  be  sought  in  the 
peculiar  circumstances  of  the  second  century,  which  left 
their  deep  impression  on  the  church.  The  confusion  and 
distraction  of  the  age  gave  birth  to  one  supreme  control- 
ling issue  —  the  necessity  of  finding  some  basis  for  the 
authority  of  Christian  teaching,  some  ground  of  Christian 
certitude.  To  the  average  mind,  the  foundation  of  the 
faith  seemed  to  be  shaken  by  the  importation  of  new  and 
strange  teaching,  as  by  the  Gnostic  thinkers,  who  sought 
the  intellectual  solution  of  problems  which  were  raised 
by  the  contemplation  of  Christ  as  a  world  teacher  and 
redeemer.  The  foundations  of  ecclesiastical  order  also 
seemed  to  be  weakened  by  the  efforts  of  Montanist  proph- 
ets, who  were  aiming  at  a  moral  reformation  of  the  church. 
In  the  resistance  to  these  two  disintegrating  tendencies, 
as  they  appeared,  the  episcopate  changed  its  form. 

Ignatius  had  not  been  greatly  concerned  for  the  preser- 
vation of  Christian  faith  in  its  purity  and  vitality,  so  long 
as  the  bishop  could  be  regarded  as  the  representative  of 
Christ  in  every  local  community;  for  then  Christ  Himself 
would,  as  it  were,  be  speaking  in  every  Christian  assem- 
bly, and  His  word  would  carry  still  its  ancient  power  and 
conviction  as  when  He  was  actually  in  visible  presence  on 
the  earth.  Hence,  when  Ignatius  had  encountered  persons 
who  refused  to  believe  his  teaching,  unless  it  could  be 
found  in  the  archives  or  charters,  he  had  summarily  dis- 
missed their  objections  by  appealing  to  Christ  as  the  only 
archive  or  charter  of  the  faith:  "To  me  Jesus  Christ  is  in 
the  place  of  the  archives ;  His  cross  and  death  and  resur- 
rection, and  the  faith  which  is  by  Him,  are  undefiled 
monuments  of  antiquity." 

But  to  the  mind  of  the  church  leaders  in  the  second 
century,  confronted  with  this  same  objection  on  a  vastly 
larger  scale,  the  answer  of  Ignatius  must  have  seemed 
insufficient,  as  if  a  transcendental  evasion.  Instead  of 
waiving  the  appeal  to  the  charters,  the  conviction  grew 


THE   MINISTRY   IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  89 

that  it  must  be  carried  to  the  charters,  and  that  by  the  wit- 
ness of  the  archives  the  faith  of  the  cliurch  must  stand  or 
falL  This  conviction  became  the  ruling  idea  by  the 
middle  of  the  second  centurj'-,  the  time  when  Gnosticism 
had  reached  the  greatest  extent  of  its  influence.  The 
Gnostics  themselves  were  also  embarrassed  by  this  refer- 
ence to  the  archives.  When  they  were  challenged  to  pro- 
duce the  authority  by  which  they  were  teaching  doctrines 
that  contradicted  the  first  principles  of  the  Christian 
faith,  they  fell  back  upon  some  secret  tradition,  which 
they  averred  had  been  handed  down  from  Christ  and  His 
Apostles;  or  they  appealed  to  writings  which  passed 
under  the  name  of  Apostles ;  or  they  contended  that  the 
true  writings  of  the  Apostles  had  been  falsified,  and  that 
they  alone  preserved  the  genuine  tradition.  It  was  the 
Gnostics  who  first  carried  the  appeal  to  the  writings  of 
Apostles,  i.e.  of  the  original  Twelve,  as  being  the  necessary 
media  by  which  the  teaching  of  Christ  had  been  preserved. 
Christian  teachers  boldly  took  up  the  challenge,  and  from 
this  time  the  Apostles  grew  stronger  in  the  church  and  in 
the  popular  imagination,  as  if  the  divine,  infallible  au- 
thorities on  whom  the  churches  built  as  their  foundation. 
With  the  exception  of  St.  Paul,  the  memory  of  the  larger 
Apostolate,  of  those  other  seventy,  also,  whom  Christ  sent 
forth,  grew  weak  and  faded  away.  To  this  restricted 
Apostolate,  was  now  attributed  the  planting  of  all  the 
churches  and  their  primary  instruction  in  its  faith  and 
order.  The  short  summaries  of  Christian  belief  which  the 
churches  possessed  and  cherished,  and  in  Avhich  they  made 
their  protest  against  Gnostic  errors,  were  credited  with 
Apostolic  origin.  Collections  of  the  writings  of  the  Apos- 
tles began  to  be  made,  lists  of  the  books  which  were  to 
form  the  New  Testament  Canon,  from  which  were  excluded 
any  treatises  which  could  not  justly  claim  an  Apostle  for 
their  author.  Under  the  name  of  Apostles  a  large  ficti- 
tious literature  had  been  produced,  chiefly  by  the  Gnos- 
tics, Gospels  attributed  to  Apostles,  Acts  of  each  separate 
Apostle.  These  were  eventually  condemned  as  spurious 
and  found  no  place  in  the  Canon. 


90  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

It  was  in  this  exigency  that  the  significance  of  the 
bishop's  office  took  further  increase.  The  bishop  in  each 
community  became  the  voucher  for  the  tradition,  or  for 
the  genuineness  of  the  sacred  writings.  If  the  Apostles 
had  provided  for  the  preservation  of  the  faith,  by  writing, 
or  causing  to  be  written,  records  of  the  sajdngs  of  Christ, 
they  must  also  have  provided  the  guarantees  for  the  integ- 
rity of  these  writings,  and  these  guarantees  must  be  the 
bishops.  The  bishops,  as  it  was  also  reasoned,  must  have 
been,  in  the  first  instance,  appointed  b}^  the  Apostles  in 
every  church  which  they  planted,  and  thus  a  succession 
of  bishops  in  every  parish  or  community  could  vouch  for 
the  documents.  Scriptures,  or  Rules  of  Faith,  since  each 
bishop  had  in  turn  received  them  from  his  predecessors. 
Historical  knowledge  and  research  were  superseded  as 
unnecessary  in  the  presence  of  this  great  and  growing 
conviction.  So  completely  did  the  bishop  or  pastor  of  the 
local  church  answer  to  the  needs  of  the  imagination  and 
the  requirements  of  the  emergency,  that  it  became  at  last 
difficult  to  understand  that  any  other  arrangement  had 
ever  existed.  What  was  needed  was  one  trustworthy 
man  in  each  community  of  Christians,  who  could  certify 
that  the  faith,  as  incorporated  in  some  form  of  sound 
words,  had  been  received  by  him  from  his  predecessor  in 
office.  Age  or  length  of  days  was  no  longer  necessary  as 
a  qualification  to  this  end.  A  process  so  simple  super- 
seded the  more  complex  process  by  which  presbyters  held 
anxious  communion  with  their  elders,  burdening  their 
memories  with  the  facts,  the  words,  the  discourses,  which 
had  come  down  through  the  generations.  Such  presbyters 
were  getting  rare  by  tlie  middle  of  the  second  century; 
and  there  is  a  natural  limit,  too,  beyond  which  tradition 
thus  preserved  begins  to  lose  its  value.  The  time  comes 
when  it  must  be  incorporated  in  letters,  in  book,  or  docu- 
ment, for  whose  genuineness  the  voucher  of  an  institution 
is  all  that  is  required.  When  that  moment  came,  some- 
where after  the  middle  of  the  second  century,  the  ancient 
presbyter  disappeared  and  the  bishop  took  his  place.  For 
the  personal   qualification   of  the   individual  officer  was 


THE    MINISTRY    IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  91 

substituted  the  administrator,  whose  qualification  lay  in 
his  relation  to  the  institution. 


II 

There  are  several  living  pictures  in  which  this  transi- 
tion from  the  age  of  Ignatius  to  the  age  of  Irenaeus  and 
TertuUian  may  be  clearly  traced.  When  Papias,  who  is 
known  as  the  Bishop  of  Hierapolis  in  Phrygia  (f  160  c), 
felt  called  to  the  mission  of  collecting  the  actual  words 
of  Christ,  he  resorted  to  the  presbyters  for  information. ^ 
He  is  said  by  Irengeus  to  have  been  an  ancient  man  who 
was  a  hearer  of  John  and  a  friend  of  Polycarp.  He  him- 
self tells  us : 

"  Whatsoever  instructions  I  received  with  care  at  any  time  from 
the  elders  (TrpeafSvTepoiv)  and  stored  up  with  care  in  my  memory,  1 
shall  not  be  unwilling  to  put  down,  along  with  my  interpretations, 
assuring  you  at  the  same  time  of  their  truth.  For  I  did  not,  like  the 
multitude,  take  pleasure  in  those  who  spoke  much,  but  in  those  who 
taught  the  truth ;  nor  in  those  who  related  strange  commandments, 
but  in  those  who  rehearsed  the  commandments  given  by  the  Lord  to 
faith  and  proceeding  from  truth  itself.  If,  then,  any  one  who  had 
attended  on  the  elders  (TrpecrySvTepots)  came,  I  asked  minutely  after 
their  sayings,  —  what  Andrew  or  Peter  said,  or  what  was  said  by 
Philip  or  by  Thomas  or  by  John  or  by  Matthew,  or  by  any  other  of 
the  Loi'd's  disciples :  which  things  Aristion  and  the  presbyter  John, 
the  disciples  of  the  Lord,  say."  ^ 

There  was  another  ancient  man,  Hegesippus  by  name 
(f  180  c),  who  felt  a  similar  call,  but  who  in  seeking  to 
ascertain  whether  the  churches  were  keeping  the  tradition, 
resorted  not  to  the  presbyters  as  such  for  information,  but 
to  the  bishops.  The  verification  of  the  tradition,  in  his 
view,  lay  in  the  succession  of  the  bishops,  of  whom,  in 
the  case  of  Rome  at  least,  he  attempted  a  list.     The  pas- 

1  The  fragments  of  Papias  are  given  in  Routh,  Beliq.  Sac,  Vol.  I. 
Also  trans,  in  Apos.  Fathers,  Vol.  I.,  Ante-Nicene  Library. 

2  For  other  allusions  to  the  presbyters,  cf.  Papias,  Frag,  iv.,  v.,  vi. 
Some  things  that  Papias  gained  from  the  presbyters  were  trifling  in 
importance  and  even  puerile.     It  was  his  method  which  is  significant. 


92  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

sage  in  which  he  speaks  of  the  result  of  his  investigationsi 
is  an  interesting  one : 

"And  the  church  of  Corinth  continued  in  the  true  faith  until 
Primus  was  bishop  there,  with  whom  I  held  familiar  conversation 
(as  I  passed  many  days  at  Corinth)  when  I  was  on  the  point  of  sail- 
ing to  Rome,  during  which  time  also  we  were  mutually  refreshed  in 
the  true  doctrine.  After  coming  to  Rome  I  made  my  stay  with  Ani- 
cetus,  whose  deacon  was  Eleutherus.  After  Anicetus  Soter  succeeded, 
and  after  him  Eleutherus.  In  every  succession,  however,  and  in  every 
city  the  doctrine  prevails  according  to  what  is  declared  by  the  law 
and  the  prophets  and  the  Lord  "  (Eus.  H.  E.  iv.  22). 

Not  far  from  the  time  when  Hegesippus  wrote,  Irenseus, 
in  his  remote  home  in  Gaul,  was  also  alive  to  the  impor- 
tance of  verifying  the  tradition.  In  his  letter  to  Florinus 
he  has  left  us  a  picture  of  the  highest  value  and  beauty, 
where,  by  the  chain  of  personal  contact,  he  himself  can 
almost  make  an  appeal  to  the  Christ  in  the  flesh  for  evi- 
dence of  the  truth  which  he  holds.  These  doctrines  which 
the  Gnostics  were  teaching,  he  tells  Florinus : 

"  These  doctrines  ■were  never  delivered  to  thee  by  the  presbyters 
before  us,  those  who  were  the  immediate  disciples  of  the  Apostles. 
For  I  saw  thee  when  I  was  yet  a  boy  in  Lower  Asia  with  Polycarp, 
moving  in  great  splendor  at  court,  and  endeavoring  by  all  means  to 
gain  his  esteem.  I  remember  the  events  of  those  times  much  better 
than  those  of  more  recent  occurrence.  As  the  studies  of  our  youth, 
growing  with  our  minds,  unite  with  them  so  firmly,  I  can  tell  also 
the  very  place  where  the  blessed  Polycarp  was  accustomed  to  sit  and 
discourse ;  and  also  his  entrances,  his  walks,  the  complexion  of  his  life, 
and  the  form  of  his  body,  and  his  conversations  with  the  people,  and 
his  familiar  intercourse  with  John,  as  he  was  accustomed  to  tell,  as 
also  his  familiarity  with  those  that  had  seen  the  Lord.  How  he  also 
used  to  relate  their  discourses  and  what  things  he  had  heard  from 
them  concerning  the  Lord.  Also  concerning  his  miracles,  his  doctrine, 
—  all  these  were  told  by  Polycarp  in  consistency  with  the  Holy  Script- 
ures, as  he  had  received  them  from  the  eye-witnesses  of  the  doctrine 
of  salvation.  These  things,  by  the  mercy  of  God  and  the  opportunity 
then  afforded  me,  I  attentively  heard,  noting  them  down,  not  on  paper, 
but  in  my  heart ;  and  these  same  facts  I  am  always  in  the  habit  by 
the  grace  of  God  to  recall  faithfully  to  mind.  And  I  can  bear  witness 
in  the  sight  of  God  that  if  that  blessed  and  apostolic  presbyter  (Poly- 
carp) had  heard  any  such  thing  as  this,  he  would  have  cried  out,  and 
have  stopped  his  ears"  (Eus.  H.  E.  v.  20). 


THE   MINISTRY    IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  93 

Valuable  and  beautiful  as  is  this  unique  testimony  to 
tradition,  it  meant  more  to  Irenseus  than  to  the  church  at 
large.  The  conviction  which  it  embodied  could  not  be 
imparted  in  its  full  strength  to  all  or  any  who,  unlike 
Irenseus,  were  not  links  in  the  living  chain.  But  under 
its  influence,  Irenseus  at  least  was  incited  to  urge  the 
value  of  the  presbyter  as  the  connecting  link  with  the 
past,  and  the  bishop  is  presented  as  the  guarantee  of 
the  faith,  because  he  holds  the  rank  of  the  j^resbyter.  In 
his  Treatise  against  Heretics  he  speaks  of  the  "  tradition 
which  is  preserved  by  means  of  the  successions  of  presby- 
ters "  (iii.  2) ;  of  the  "  truth  which  has  come  down  by 
means  of  the  successions  of  tlie  bishoj)S  "  (iii.  3):  "where- 
fore it  is  incumbent  to  obey  the  presbyters  who  are  in  the 
church,  those  who  possess  the  succession  from  the  Apostles, 
together  with  the  succession  of  the  episcopate  "  (iv.  26,  2). 
"  Such  presbyters  does  the  church  nourish  .  .  .  for  these 
also  preserve  this  faith  of  ours  in  God "  (iv.  26,  5). 
There  are  other  passages  in  Irenteus  in  which  he  seems  to 
assert  without  qualification  that  there  is  no  other  means 
of  ascertaining  truth,  or  verifying  its  possession,  except 
through  the  traditions  of  the  presbyters:  "When  we  refer 
them  (the  Gnostics)  to  that  tradition  which  originates 
from  the  Apostles  and  is  preserved  by  means  of  the  suc- 
cessions of  presbyters  in  the  churches,  they  object  to  tra- 
dition, saying  that  they  themselves  are  wiser  not  merely 
than  the  presbyters,  but  even  than  the  Apostles,  because 
they  have  discovered  the  unadulterated  truth  "  (iii.  2,  2). 

These  passages,  and  others  of  a  similar  kind,  indicate 
that  the  mind  of  Irenseus  vacillated  between  two  methods 
of  certifying  the  genuineness  of  the  revelation, — the 
aged  presbyter  Avho  vouches  for  the  tradition  and  the 
bishop  who,  in  his  official  capacity,  guarantees  the  Canon 
of  New  Testament  writings  or  the  Rules  of  Faith.  When 
the  aged  presbyter,  as  in  the  case  of  Polycarp,  or  even  in 
his  own  case,  was  also  a  bishop,  the  two  methods  coa- 
lesced, with  the  result  that  there  is  a  seeming  identifi- 
cation between  the  offices  of  bishop  and  presbyter.  It  was 
the  appearance,  after  the  middle  of  the  second  century, 


94  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

of  the  Rules  of  Faith  expanded  from  simpler  Apostolic 
germs  to  meet  the  false  teaching  of  the  Gnostics,  together 
with  the  attempts  to  fix  the  Canon  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, —  these  were  among  the  causes  which  were  destroy- 
ing the  prestige  of  the  presbyter  and  transforming  the 
original  conception  of  his  office.  A  youthful  bishop  was 
entirely  competent  to  certify  to  the  records,  which  he  had 
received  from  his  predecessors,  while  presbyters,  like  Ire- 
nseus  and  Polycarp,  who  maintained,  as  it  were,  a  tactual 
descent  of  tradition  from  the  Apostles  by  the  living  voice, 
were  growing  rare.  The  argument  of  Irenseus,  therefore, 
culminates  in  the  episcopate,  as  the  bulwark  of  faith 
against  the  encroachments  of  Gnosticism.  In  his  writings 
is  found  the  first  statement  of  the  theory  known  as  the 
Apostolical  Succession  r^ 

"  It  is  within  the  power,  therefore,  of  all  in  every  church  who  may 
wish  to  see  the  truth,  to  contemplate  clearly  the  tradition  of  the 
Apostles,  manifested  throughout  the  whole  world ;  and  we  are  in  a 
position  to  reckon  up  those  who  were  by  the  Apostles  instituted 
bishops  in  the  churches,  and  the  successions  of  these  men  to  our  own 
times.  .  .  .  For  they  were  very  desirous  that  these  men  should  be 
very  perfect  and  blameless  in  all  things,  whom  they  were  also  leaving 
behind  as  their  successors,  delivering  up  their  own  place  of  govern- 
ment to  these  men.  .  .  .  Since,  however,  it  would  be  very  tedious  in 
such  a  volume  as  this  to  reckon  up  the  successions  of  all  the  churches, 
we  do  put  to  confusion  all  those  who,  in  whatever  manner,  whether 
by  an  evil  self-pleasing,  by  vain  glory,  or  by  blindness  and  perverse 
opinion,  assemble  in  unauthorized  meetings,  by  indicating  that  tradi- 
tion derived  from  the  Apostles,  of  the  very  great,  the  very  ancient,  and 
universally  known  church  founded  and  organized  at  Rome  by  the 
two  most  glorious  Apostles,  Peter  and  Paul ;  as  also  the  faith  preached 
to  men,  which  comes  down  to  our  time  by  means  of  the  successions  of 
the  bishops.  For  it  is  a  matter  of  necessity  that  every  church  should 
agree  (convenire)  with  this  church  on  account  of  its  pre-eminent  author- 

1  That  the  bishops  were  oris^inally  instituted  as  successors  of  the  Apos- 
tles, has  been  inferred  by  Rothe,  among  others,  from  a  passage  in  Clem- 
ent's £)3tsfZe  to  the  Corinthians  (c.  xliv.),  according  to  which  the  Apostles 
gave  instructions  that  "when  they  should  fall  asleep,  other  approved  men 
should  succeed  to  their  office."  But  'they'  manifestly  refers  to  those 
whom  they  had  appointed,  and  not  to  the  Apostles  themselves.  "They, 
the  Apostles,  appointed  the  foresaid  persons,  and  afterwards  provided  a 
conthiuance,  tliat  if  these  should  fall  asleep,  other  approved  men  should 
succeed  to  their  ministrations." 


THE   MINISTRY   IN   THE   SECOND   CENTURY  95 

ity  (^poliorem  principalitateiii) ,  that  is,  the  faithful  everywhere,  inasmuch 
as  tlie  apostolical  tradition  has  been  preserved  continuously  by  these 
(the  faithful)  who  exist  everywhere.  The  blessed  Apostles,  then,  hav- 
ing founded  and  built  up  the  church,  committed  into  the  hands  of 
Linus  the  office  of  the  episcopate.  Of  this  Linus,  Paul  makes  men- 
tion in  the  Epistles  to  Timothy.  To  him  succeeded  Anacletus ;  and 
after  him,  in  the  third  place  from  the  Apostles,  Clement  was  allotted 
the  bishopric.  This  man,  as  he  had  seen  the  blessed  Apostles,  and 
had  been  conversant  with  them,  might  be  said  to  have  the  preaching 
of  the  Apostles  still  echoing  and  their  tradition  before  his  eyes " 
(Adv.  Haer.  iii.,  c.  3,  1,  2,  o).i 

A  still  more  forcible  and  explicit  statement  of  the  doc- 
trine of   Apostolic  succession  was   made   by  Tertullian 

1  It  is  with  the  theory  of  Irenseus  that  we  are  here  concerned,  and  not 
so  much  with  the  facts  which  he  alleges  in  its  support.  He  goes  beyond 
the  evidence  of  history  when  he  afltirms  that  the  church  at  Rome  was 
founded  by  Peter  and  Paul.  Paul  did  not  go  to  Rome  till  the  year 
61  A.D.,  and  the  church  was  already  planted  there  when  he  wrote  his 
Epistle  to  the  Romans,  as  also  many  years  before  Peter  made  his 
visit  to  Rome.  It  is  only  admissible  to  speak  of  their  founding  the 
Roman  church  in  the  sense  of  their  having  exerted  an  influence  upon  it. 
The  statement  that  they  appointed  Linus  as  the  first  bishop  cannot  there- 
fore be  taken  literally.  The  identification  of  Clement  of  Rome  with  the 
Clement  mentioned  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Philippians  is  without  sufficient 
authority  and  is  disputed  by  Bishop  Lightfoot.  It  is  unfortunate  that  the 
text  of  the  famous  passage  in  which  Irenpeus  speaks  of  the  Roman  church 
as  having  a  superior  principality,  is  a  Latin  translation  from  a  Greek  orig- 
inal which  is  lost.  For  a  discussion  of  the  rendering  of  this  passage,  cf. 
Gieseler,  Ec.  His.,  I.,  p.  150  ;  also  Neander,  Ch.  His.,  Vol.  I.,  p.  284  (Bohn 
ed.),  who  gives  the  following  free  translation  :  "  On  account  of  the  rank 
which  this  church  maintains  as  the  ecclesia  U7'bis,  all  churches,  that  is, 
believers  from  all  countries,  must  — the  must  lies  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  —  come  together  there;  and  since  now  from  the  beginning  Christians 
from  all  countries  must  come  together  there,  it  follows  that  the  Apostolic 
tradition  has  been  preserved  from  generation  to  generation  by  the  Chris- 
tians from  all  countries  who  are  there  united  together.  Every  deviation 
from  it  would  here  fall  immediately  under  the  observation  of  all." 

For  a  discussion  of  the  early  lists  of  Roman  bishops,  cf.  Lightfoot, 
Apos.  Fathers,  Part  I.,  Vol.  I.,  §  5;  Harnack,  Die  Zeit  des  Ignatius, 
1878 ;  Lipsius,  Neue  Stndien  znr  Papstchronoloriie  in  Jahrb.  f.  Prot. 
Theol.,  1879,  1880.  That  there  was  still  a  plural  episcopate  at  Rome  at 
the  close  of  the  first  century,  and  that  the  relation  between  presbyters 
and  bishops  was  not  yet  fixed  according  to  the  Ignatian  scheme  is  plain 
from  Clement's  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  The  list  of  Roman  bishops  in 
the  first  century  cannot  be  so  well  accredited  as  are  these  circumstances. 
For  the  lists  of  bishops  in  Eusebius,  cf.  Lipsius,  Die  BischofsUsten  des 
Ensehius,  in  Jahrh.  f.  Prot.  Theol.,  1880. 


96  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

(f  220  c.)  in  his  famous  treatise  on  The  Prescription 
of  Heretics.  Tertullian  followed  Irenseus  in  the  next 
generation,  and  was  moved  as  IreniBus  had  been  by  the 
vagaries  of  Gnostic  teaching.  According  to  his  argument, 
as  contained  in  the  Prescription,  Christ  chose  the  twelve 
disciples  to  be  at  His  side  and  destined  them  to  be  the 
teachers  of  the  nations.  After  Judas  fell.  He  commanded 
the  eleven  others  on  His  departure  to  the  Father  to  go 
and  teach  the  nations,  who  were  to  be  baptized  into  the 
Father  and  into  the  Son  and  into  the  Holy  Ghost.  Imme- 
diately, therefore,  did  the  Apostles,  whom  this  designa- 
tion indicates  as  'the  sent,'  go  forth  upon  their  mission. 
"  Having  on  the  authority  of  prophecy,  which  occurs  in  a 
psalm  of  David,  chosen  Matthias  by  lot  as  the  twelfth, 
into  the  place  of  Judas,  they  obtained  the  promised  power 
of  the  Holy  Ghost  for  the  gift  of  miracle  and  of  utterance ; 
and  after  first  bearing  witness  to  the  faith  in  Jesus  Christ 
throughout  Judea  and  founding  churches,  the}'^  next  went 
forth  into  the  world  and  preached  the  same  doctrine  of 
the  same  faith  to  the  nations.  They  then  in  like  manner 
founded  churches  in  every  city,  from  which  all  the  other 
churches,  one  after  another,  derived  the  tradition  of  the 
faith,  and  the  seeds  of  doctrine,  and  are  every  day  deriv- 
ing them,  that  they  may  become  churches.  Indeed,  it  is 
on  this  account  only  that  they  will  be  able  to  deem  them- 
selves Apostolic  as  being  the  offspring  of  Apostolic 
churches  "  (De  Prses.  Hseret.,  c.  xx.).  "From  this  there- 
fore do  we  draw  up  our  rule.  Since  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  sent  the  Apostles  to  preach,  no  others  ought  to  be 
received  as  preachers  than  those  whom  Christ  appointed ; 
for  no  man  knoweth  the  Father  save  the  Son  and  he  to 
whomsoever  the  Son  will  reveal  Him.  Nor  does  the  Son 
seem  to  have  revealed  Him  to  any  others  than  the  Apos- 
tles whom  He  sent  forth  to  preach  "  (c.  xxi.).  "Let  the 
heretics  then  produce  the  original  records  of  their 
churches ;  let  them  unfold  the  roll  of  their  bishops,  run- 
ning down  in  due  succession  from  the  beginning  in  such 
a  manner  that  their  first  bishop  shall  be  able  to  show  for 
his  ordainer  and  predecessor  some  one  of  the  Apostles  or  of 


THE    MINISTRY    IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  97 

Apostolic  men,  a  man,  moreover,  who  continued  steadfast 
with  the  Apostles.  For  this  is  the  manner  in  which  the 
Apostolic  churches  transmit  their  registers :  as  the  church 
of  Smyrna,  which  records  that  Polycarp  was  placed 
therein ;  as  also  the  church  of  Rome,  which  makes  Clem- 
ent to  have  been  ordained  in  like  manner  by  Peter.  In 
exactly  the  same  way  the  other  churches  likewise  exhibit 
those  whom,  as  having  been  appointed  to  their  episcopal 
places  by  Apostles,  they  regard  as  transmitters  of  the 
Apostolic  seed"  (c.  xxxii.). 

It  is  evident  from  these  passages  that  the  presbyters 
have  now  finally  lost  their  original  function  as  the  bearers 
of  the  tradition,  which  has  been  transferred  to  the  bishops 
or  pastors  of  the  local  churches.  Since  the  time  of  Igna- 
tius the  churches  have  been  organized  on  the  basis,  for  the 
most  part,  of  one  bishop  as  the  head  of  the  community, 
and  the  presbyters  have  become  his  delegates  to  perform 
those  functions  wliich  had  hitherto  belonged  to  the  bishop 
alone ;  but  the  bishop  has  also  changed,  for  he  has  ab- 
sorbed the  presbyter's  commission  of  handing  down  or 
guaranteeing  the  Christian  tradition.  There  Avas  an 
interchange  or  exchange  of  functions  by  which  the  highest 
purpose  of  the  episcopate  is  now  and  henceforth  identified 
with  the  guardianship  of  the  faith,  while  as  the  congrega- 
tions increase  in  any  town  or  city,  the  presbyter,  at  the 
bishop's  direction,  takes  the  superintendence  of  the  wor- 
ship. The  distinction  is  a  subtle  but  most  important 
one ;  it  underlies  the  ecclesiastical  arrangements  of  the 
Catholic  church,  and  when  its  full  significance  is  seen,  it 
explains  the  later  readjustments  of  the  Christian  ministry. 
It  should  also  be  observed  that  when  the  bishop  appropri- 
ates the  presbyter's  function  of  vouching  for  the  tradition, 
he  does  so  in  his  official  character,  as  an  administrator  of 
ecclesiastical  affairs.  What  had  hitherto  been  a  spiritual 
function  requiring  spiritual  aptitudes  of  mind  and  heart, 
as  seen  in  Papias  or  Polycarp  or  Irenseus,  now  tends  to 
become  an  administrative  act,  or  part  of  the  routine  of 
official  observance.  Ireneeus  furnishes  the  illustration, 
when  he  compares   the   Apostles  to  rich  men  depositing 


98  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE    CHURCH 

their  money  in  a  bank,  from  which  all  may  draw,  of  which 
bishops  are  the  cashiers  or  custodians.  But  in  taking  the 
superintendence  of  the  worship  under  the  direction  of  the 
bishop,  the  presbyter  is  henceforth  charged  with  a  spirit- 
ual function,  in  place  of  that  which  he  had  lost,  which  is 
to  become  the  germ  of  a  great  development. 

It  is  further  to  be  inferred  from  Tertullian's  statement 
that  the  name  of  Apostle  had  now  become  restricted  to  the 
limited  Apostolate  of  the  Twelve.  The  larger  Apostolate, 
of  which  a  glimpse,  was  caught  in  the  Didache  as  it  was 
on  the  eve  of  its  disappearance,  is  unknown  to  Tertullian, 
even  those  other  seventy  also,  whom  Christ  sent  forth 
with  Apostolic  commission,  whose  names,  forgotten  on 
earth,  are  written  in  heaven.  The  identification  of  the 
Apostolate  with  the  Twelve  began  much  earlier  than 
the  age  of  Tertullian, ^  but  in  his  time  it  was  com- 
plete and  was  bringing  forth  its  fruit  in  a  disposition  to 
refer  all  arrangements  of  ecclesiastical  order  or  internal 
discipline  or  cultus  to  the  authority  or  initiative  of  the 
Twelve.  Thus  has  finally  passed  away  the  first  rank  of 
officials  in  the  spiritual  order,  as  when  St.  Paul  declared 
that  God  had  appointed  first  Apostles  ;  secondly,  prophets  ; 
thirdly,  teachers ;  or  again  Christ  gave  some  Apostles  and 
some  prophets,  and  some  evangelists,  and  some  pastors 
and  teachers. 

Ill 

We  turn  now  to  the  passing  of  the  prophets,  who  in  the 
early  years  of  the  second  century  were  still  seen  perform- 
ing their  peculiar  work,  and  were  held  in  the  highest 
honor.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  the  highest  and  most 
precious  of  divine  gifts  and  endowments  that  they  are 
most  easily  depraved  and  stand  nearest,  as  it  were,  to 
the  brink  of  failure.  Even  in  St.  Paul's  time,  when  the 
prophets  are  mentioned,  cautions  are  given  against  the 
abuses  which  wait  so  closely  upon  their  order.  As  time 
went  on  these  evils  had  not  diminished,  counterfeits  were 


1  Cf.  Justin  Martyr,  A2')ol.  xxxix., 


THE    MINISTRY    IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  99 

current  in  the  churches  which  called  for  special  diligence 
in  their  detection.  In  the  Didache  the  communities  were 
warned  against  false  prophets ;  and  Hernias,  who  is  the 
special  champion  of  their  order,  is  earnest  in  the  exposure 
of  those  who  were  exploiting  the  church  in  their  own 
interest  under  the  guise  of  prophecy.  But  the  order  of 
prophets  did  not  finally  disappear  until  after  a  loud  and 
long  and  bitter  protest.  The  essence  of  the  movement  or 
sect  known  as  Montanism  was  an  earnest  endeavor  either 
to  retain  in  the  churches  or  else  to  revive  and  rejuvenate 
the  spirit  of  prophecy. 

But  prophecy  was  a  spiritual  function  which  hindered 
the  growth  of  the  Catholic  church;  it  was  incompatible 
with  the  orderly  administration  of  worship;  it  was  an 
incongruity,  to  which  the  pastor  or  bishop  could  not  be 
reconciled.  The  prophet  might  at  any  moment  lend  the 
weight  of  his  utterance  to  thwarting  the  plans  of  the 
bishop,  who  sought  practical  ends  and  practical  means  of 
attaining  them.  If  we  may  speak  at  all  of  a  great  crisis 
or  revolution  in  the  early  church,  it  appeared  at  the 
moment  when  the  Catholic  church  became  conscious  of  its 
mission  through  the  successful  administration  of  the  bish- 
op's office.  For  it  was  a  characteristic  of  the  episcopate 
from  the  beginning,  that  it  studied  to  cultivate  unity  in 
the  congregation  as  the  means  of  promoting  its  welfare. 
The  bishop  was  not  devoted  to  aspirations  which  were  pos- 
sible only  for  a  few ;  he  kept  at  heart  the  welfare  of  the 
whole;  he  sought  to  extend  the  influence  of  the  church, 
and  primarily  to  recommend  it  by  its  gracious  results  to 
the  heathen  world.  For  it  was  a  foremost  characteristic 
among  the  bishop's  qualifications,  that  he  should  be  a  man 
of  honest  report,  and,  as  the  Apostolic  Ordinances  add,  of 
a  good  reputation  among  the  heathen.  To  meet  and  con- 
quer for  Christ  the  heathen  population  of  the  Empire,  to 
rouse  the  indifferent,  to  make  the  worship  intelligible 
and  attractive  to  the  common  people,  to  teach  the  young, 
to  discipline  the  mind  and  conscience  by  the  observance 
of  law,  — such  was  the  role  of  the  bishop,  such  also  was 
the  tendency  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  ofBce.      The 


100  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

Catholic  cliurcli  was  tending,  consciously  or  unconsciousl}', 
in  its  formative  process  during  the  second  century,  toward 
Avhat  is  called  the  principle  of  solidarity,  the  fusion  of  the 
individual  into  an  organic  body  where  the  interests  of 
the  few  are  subordinated  to  the  well-being  of  the  whole. 

Against  this  tendency,  which  was  fast  becoming  the 
ruling  motive  of  Catholicism,  the  Montanists  rose  up  in 
protest  and  rebellion,  invoking  the  spirit  of  the  prophet, 
and  of  tlie  Holy  Ghost  who  speaks  by  the  prophets,  to 
stem  the  tide  of  secularism,  which  seemed  to  be  sweeping 
away  the  church  from  its  ancient  moorings.  The  true 
aim  of  the  church,  according  to  the  Montanist  conception, 
was  to  build  up  the  individual  man  into  a  higher  religious 
life,  to  cultivate  the  higher  reaches  of  Christian  piety,  to 
nourish  the  spiritually  minded  with  the  strong  meat  of 
the  Word.  The  Montanist  was  indifferent  to  the  growth 
of  the  church  by  the  multiplication  of  its  numbers ;  to 
keep  the  church  small  was  to  keep  it  pure.  Prophecy 
appeals  only  to  the  spiritual  few,  not  to  the  carnal  many, 
as  when  St.  Paul  lamented,  in  his  letter  to  the  Corinthi- 
ans, that  he  was  unable  to  write  to  them  as  spiritual,  be- 
cause they  were  yet  carnal.  The  utterance  of  the  prophet 
was  unintelligible  except  to  those  who  had  the  spiritual 
mind.  The  canons  of  prophecy  had  been  laid  down  by 
St.  Paul  when  he  said,  "  The  Spirit  searcheth  all  things, 
even  the  deep  things  of  God.  The  natural  man  receiveth 
not  the  things  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  neither  can  he  know 
them,  because  they  are  spiritually  discerned  "  (1  Cor.  ii. 
10-16,  iii.  1-3). 

It  was,  then,  in  the  name  of  the  Spirit  that  the  Mon- 
tanists called  for  a  reformation  of  the  church,  for  a  halt, 
and  a  reversal  of  its  movement.  The  Montanist  prophets 
issued  their  reformatory  ordinances,  rigid  and  prolonged 
fastings,  abstention  from  all  worldly  amusements,  the 
avoidance  of  heathen  society  and  heathen  customs,  the 
condemnation  of  science  and  literature  and  philosophy  as 
leading  to  an  intellectualism  incompatible  with  piety, 
and,  in  a  word,  the  disapproval  of  the  ordinary  life  of 
men  in  this  world,  the  marrying  and  the  giving  in  mar- 


THE   MINISTRY    IN    THE    SECOND    CENTURY  101 

riage.  The  end  of  all  things  was  at  hand,  and  the  coming 
of  Christ  was  near,  — to  these  convictions,  to  which  the 
Catholic  church  seemed  oblivious,  the  Montanist  was 
keenly  alive.  An  evil  hour  was  impending,  for  Avhich 
the  Christian  man  should  fortify  himself  by  a  severe 
regime ;  and  when  the  persecution  fell,  he  was  to  stand  at 
his  post  and  not  to  flee,  to  welcome  martyrdom  as  bringing 
him  home  to  Christ.  But  such  ordinances  as  these  could 
not  be  enforced  upon  the  generality  of  men,  even  if  they 
were  true  or  desirable  in  themselves.  They  were  not 
contained  in  the  writings  of  the  New  Testament,  but  were 
set  forth  as  of  inspired  authority  by  Montanists  who 
claimed  the  prophetic  gift.  Not  only  were  they  resisted 
by  the  united  episcopate  of  the  Catholic  church,  but  the 
method  of  their  utterance  was  condemned  as  false.  For 
here  we  strike  the  fatal  weakness  of  the  Montanist  con- 
ception of  prophecy,  that  the  personality  of  the  prophet 
was  to  be  suppressed,  in  order  that  the  Spirit  might  play 
upon  him  as  a  lyre.  The  Montanist  prophets  spoke  from 
the  condition  of  a  trance,  and  their  whole  conception  of 
prophecy  violated  another  canon  of  St.  Paul,  that  the 
spirits  of  the  prophet  are  subject  to  the  prophet.  Such 
was  the  crisis  when  the  Catholic  church  arose  to  a  fuller 
conception  of  its  mission,  and  suppressed  a  movement 
obnoxious  in  itself  and  fatal  to  the  vision  which  it  cher- 
ished. Under  these  melancholy  circumstances  the  last 
vestiges  of  the  ancient  and  divine  order  of  the  prophets 
disappeared  from  the  Catholic  church. 

Tertullian,  after  championing  the  Catholic  church  as 
its  most  stalwart  defender,  and  after  giving  the  formula 
of  Apostolic  succession  as  the  principle  by  which  its  au- 
thority could  be  best  maintained,  left  the  Catholic  church 
and  joined  the  sect  of  the  Montanists.  That  feature  of 
the  risinof  Catholicism  airainst  which  as  a  Montanist  he 
rebelled  was  its  tendency  to  shut  up  the  divine  revela- 
tion to  the  letter  of  a  book  or  charter,  instead  of  leaving 
the  heavens  opened  so  that  God  might  speak  if  He  would 
and  impart  new  life  to  His  church.  As  a  Montanist  he 
did  not  feel  that  he  needed  the  theory  of  Apostolic  sue- 


102  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

cession,  in  order  to  the  certitude  of  his  faith;  he  thought 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  the  highest  guarantee  of  the  truth, 
that  Spirit  of  whom  Christ  had  said  that  He  should  come 
to  His  disciples  and  dwell  in  them  as  an  abiding  guest: 
"  He  shall  take  of  mine  and  shall  show  it  unto  you ;  bring- 
ing all  things  to  your  remembrance  whatsoever  I  have  said 
unto  you."  A  divine  spirit  in  humanity  as  the  guarantee 
of  the  faith,  over  against  the  charters  vouched  for  l)y  the 
bishops,  such  was  the  contrast  and  the  conflict  illustrated 
by  the  two  phases  of  experience  through  which  the  soul  of 
Tertullian  passed.  ^ 

The  Catholic  church  came  to  its  task,  as  an  ecclesiasti- 
cal organization,  with  a  definite  purpose,  through  its  suc- 
cessful resistance  to  Gnosticism  and  Montanism;  the  term 
'Catholic,'  as  its  technical  designation,  first  began  to  be 
employed  toward  the  close  of  the  second  century.  From 
both  movements  the  church  gained  elements  of  strength 
and  direction :  from  Gnosticism,  the  recognition  of  Christ 
as  having  a  world  relationship,  and  the  need  of  Greek 
culture  and  philosophy  as  aids  in  the  formation  of  a  con- 
sistent theology;  from  Montanism,  the  deeper  conviction 
of  the  Spirit's  presence  and  power  in  the  ecclesiastical 
organization.  There  was,  indeed,  an  adjustment  of  the 
issue  with  Montanism,  despite  the  severe  condemnation 
which  it  received.  From  this  time,  it  came  to  be  believed 
that  the  Spirit  was  the  special  endowment  of  the  epis- 
copate, manifesting  itself  through  the  utterance  of  bishops 
assembled  in  councils.     The  older  view,  that  the  call  to 

1  The  movement  known  as  Montanism  originated  in  Phrygia  soon  after 
the  middle  of  the  second  century.  Its  influence  was  felt  in  Asia  Minor, 
Rome,  and  Gaul,  and  in  North  Africa.  The  Montanistic  writings  of 
Tertullian  reveal  the  later  phase  of  the  movement,  which  is  different 
from  the  earlier  type  in  accepting  the  Catholic  organization  under  the 
episcopate.  Cf.  Bonwetsch,  Die  Geschichte  des  Montanismns,  1881 ;  De 
Soyres,  Montanism  and  the  Primitive  Church,  1878  ;  Cunningham,  The 
Churches  of  Asia,  1880  ;  R^ville,  TertuUien  et  le  Montanisme,  mEev.  des 
Deux  Mondes,  1864  ;  Art.  Montanismus,  by  Moeller,  in  Herzog,  B.  E.  ; 
also  Ritschl,  Entstehung,  etc.,  who  first  discerned  the  significance  of  the 
movement.  Among  earlier  writers  Neander  dwelt  on  its  Phrygian  origin, 
Baur  on  its  tenet  of  the  nearness  of  the  coming  of  Christ,  as  the  clew  to 
its  purport. 


THE   MINISTRY   IN   THE   SECOND   CENTURY  103 

the  ministry  was  but  a  recognition  of  the  previous  quali- 
fication of  the  candidate  by  the  influence  of  the  Spirit, 
tended  to  give  way  to  the  view  that  the  ministry  re- 
ceived the  Spirit  on  the  occasion  of  its  appointment  to 
sacred  functions,  as  the  means  of  their  performance.  But 
while  this  view  elevated  the  ministry  which  was  now 
to  take  the  place  of  Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers,  yet 
it  was  defective  in  that  it  tied  the  Holy  Spirit  to  the 
organized  ministry  of  the  church, — that  Spirit  whose 
larger  characteristic  is  that  it  bloweth  where  it  listeth; 
whose  sound  we  hear,  but  cannot  tell  whence  it  cometh 
or  whither  it  goeth.  This  adjustment,  therefore,  of  the 
issue  with  Montanism  was  not  a  final  one.  The  obscure 
prophet  of  Phrygia  had  raised  the  eternal  question  of 
the  ages.  On  the  one  hand,  administration  and  order, 
the  well-being  of  the  church  in  its  collective  capacity,  the 
sacred  book,  the  oral  voice  of  the  Master,  the  touch  of 
the  vanished  hand,  the  perpetuation  as  of  a  bodily  pres- 
ence, some  physical  chain,  as  it  were,  which  should  bind 
the  generations  together,  so  that  they  should  continue 
visibly  and  tangibly  to  hand  on  the  truth  and  the  life 
from  man  to  man ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the  freedom  of 
the  Spirit,  and  the  open  heaven  of  revelation,  individual 
opportunity  for  the  fullest  development  and  expression, 
the  transcendental  vision,  as  with  St.  Paul,  who  declares 
that  "though  we  have  known  Christ  after  the  flesh,  yet 
henceforth  know  we  him  no  more,"  the  vision  by  which 
each  soul  may  see  Christ  for  himself  through  direct  and 
immediate  communion  with  the  Spirit  of  God,  that  Spirit 
whose  testimony  within  the  soul  is  the  supreme  author- 
ity and  ground  of  certitude,  who  takes  of  the  things  of 
Christ  and  reveals  them  to  men  with  fresh  power  and 
new  conviction,  who  can  at  any  moment  authorize  ini- 
tiations of  change  and  progress,  which  yet  do  not  and 
cannot  break  the  succession  of  a  continuous  life  of  the 
Spirit  in  the  churches, — such  were  the  terms  of  the 
real  issue  between  Catholicism  and  Montanism,  which 
still  wait,  after  eighteen  centuries,  for  some  larger  or  final 
adjustment.     If  Catholicism  erred  in  one  direction,  Mon- 


104  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 

tanism  erred  in  another.  It  was  necessary  that  prophetism 
should  retire  for  a  AA^hile  in  order  to  its  discipline  and 
purification,  until  it  should  regain  its  self-possession, 
and  reappear  in  the  fulness  of  time  with  all  its  ancient 
authority  and  prestige.  The  true  mission  of  the  Catholic 
church  was  to  train  the  peoples  committed  to  its  charge 
till  they  should  be  competent  and  once  more  worthy  for 
the  reception  of  God's  highest  gift  to  man. 

The  suppression  of  the  Montanist  prophets  and  the  dis- 
couragement of  the  spirit  of  prophetism  in  general,  seemed 
to  close  an  important  avenue  by  which  the  influence  of 
the  Spirit  might  continue  to  act  upon  the  individual 
reason  and  conscience,  making  them  the  vehicles  of  the 
divine  voice  speaking  to  the  churches.  Such  an  avenue 
had  been  open  to  Ignatius,  when  he  heard  the  voice  of 
the  Spirit  proclaiming,  Do  nothing  without  the  bishops. 
The  method  which  was  substituted  for  this  channel  of 
individual  conviction  and  authority  was  the  utterance  of 
the  bishops  in  concert,  when  assembled  in  councils.  But 
such  an  organic  procedure  in  solidarity  did  not  fully  meet 
the  exigencies  of  human  progress.  Individual  initia- 
tive and  influence  must  always  precede  the  action  of  a 
body  of  men  who  have  met  to  aflirm  the  truth.  It  is  also 
impossible  to  annihilate  an  agency  which,  like  ancient 
Cln-istian  prophecy,  implied  the  freedom  of  the  individual 
man  to  utter  his  entire  thought  with  all  the  impressive 
sanctions  of  deep  conviction.  Hence,  in  some  respects, 
there  was  but  a  change  of  form,  and  certainly  for  the 
worse,  Avhen  the  individual  was  henceforth  driven  to  ex- 
pression in  devious,  if  not  in  dishonest,  ways.  From  this 
time  date  those  romances  of  unknown  authorships  which 
purported  to  be  genuine  history,  of  which  the  pseudo- 
Clementine  writings  are  a  conspicuous  instance ;  treatises 
also  attributed  to  the  Apostles,  such  as  the  so-called 
Apostolic  Constitutions,  which  altered  the  organization 
of  the  church  in  the  name  of  tradition,  and  introduced 
the  changes  of  Catholic  usage,  which  the  needs  of  the 
time  seemed  to  demand,  by  the  alleged  authority  of  the 
Twelve.      The    church  was    at    the    mercy    of   that   tra- 


THE    MINISTRY    IN   THE    SECOND    CENTURY  105 

dition  which  had  been  mercilessly  invoked  to  suppress 
Gnostic  teachers  and  Montanist  prophets.  The  interpo- 
lations in  approved  writers,  the  forgeries,  which  by  the 
slight  change  of  a  word  could  reverse  the  plain  state- 
ments of  an  author,  this  method  by  which  much  of  the 
ancient  Christian  literature  has  been  so  manipulated  that 
it  must  be  approached  with  suspicion,  and  tested  by  criti- 
cal inquiry  before  it  can  be  received  as  genuine,  may  be 
traced  to  the  suppression  of  individual  freedom  as  it 
sought  utterance  in  the  garb  of  prophecy,  the  only  out- 
let which  human  ingenuity  could  invent  in  order  to  get 
a  hearing  for  the  truth. 

Among-  the  Minor  Orders  of  the  Catholic  church  there 
is  an  office  known  as  the  Reader,  which  in  the  light  of 
modern  research  has  been  disclosed  as  the  last  relic  of  the 
ancient  prophetic  order.  ^  The  Reader  stands  now  next 
above  the  janitor;  but  in  the  second  century,  when  the 
transition  took  place  from  the  ministry  of  the  Apostolic 
church  to  the  Catholic  form  of  organization,  the  Reader 
occupied  a  place  between  the  presbyter  and  the  deacons. 
Thus  the  Apostolic  Ordinances,  which  may  belong  to  the 
latter  part  of  the  second  century,  describe  four  orders  of 
ministers,  — bishops,  presbyters,  readers,  deacons.  In  the 
first  of  these  Ordinances,  or  canons,  it  is  required  of  a 
bishop  that  he  should  be  "in  a  position  to  expound  the 
Scriptures ;  but  if  he  is  unlearned,  then  he  must  be  gentle 

1  To  Dr.  Harnack  belongs  the  credit  of  this  discovery,  which  in  its 
significance  for  the  history  of  the  Christian  ministry  is  hardly  less  impor- 
tant than  the  discovery  of  the  Didache.  Dr.  Harnack  has  also  first 
studied  the  relationships  of  the  minor  orders,  and  revealed  their  deep 
significance  for  the  growth  of  the  ministry.  Cf.  Die  Qnellen  der  Soge- 
nannten  Apostolischen  Kirchenoi-dnung,  nebst  einer  Untersuchung  uhe.r  den 
"Ursprung  des  Lectorats  und  des  anderen  niederen  Weihen,  in  Gebhardt 
u.  Harnack,  Texte  u.  Untersuch.,  Bd.  II.,  §  5.  The  so-called  Apostolic 
Ordinances  must  not  be  confused  with  the  later  Apostolical  Constitutions, 
where  much  that  is  given  in  the  former  work  is  set  aside  as  no  longer 
applicable  to  the  changed  conditions  of  the  ecclesiastical  organization. 
See  also  (Eng.  Trans.)  Sources  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  etc.,  vnth  Treatise 
on  the  Origin  of  the  Beadership,  by  Wheatly,  with  Introd.  Essatj,  by 
Owen,  London,  1895. 


106  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE    CHURCH 

and  filled  with  love  to  all,  so  that  a  bishop  should  never 
be  as  one  accused  of  anything  by  the  multitude."  The 
Reader  was  a  substitute  for  prophet  and  teacher  at  a  mo- 
ment when  bishop  and  presbyter  might  be  unable  to  read 
or  incompetent  to  preach.  The  qualifications  of  the 
Reader  are  given  in  the  third  of  these  Apostolic  Ordi- 
nances : 

"  For  reader,  one  should  be  appointed  after  he  has  been  carefully- 
proved;  no  babbler,  nor  drunkard,  nor  jester;  of  good  morals,  sub- 
missive, of  benevolent  intentions,  first  in  the  assembly  at  the  meet- 
ings on  the  Lord's  day,  of  a  plain  utterance  and  capable  of  clearly 
expounding,  mindful  that  he  rules  in  the  place  of  an  evangelist 
(€vayyeXL<TTov)  ;  for  whoever  fills  the  ear  of  the  ignorant  will  be 
accounted  as  having  his  name  written  with  God." 

It  is  a  striking  circumstance  that  the  Reader  should  be 
classed  here  with  the  order  of  evangelists,  of  whom  Philip 
was  one  (Acts  xxi.  8),  and  also  Timothy  (2  Tim.  iv.  5), 
who  are  said  to  be  of  Christ's  appointment :  "  He  gave 
some  apostles,  and  some  prophets,  and  some  evangelists  " 
(Eph.  iv.  11).  In  the  formal  consecration  to  his  ofiice 
the  Reader  was  also  assigned  the  compensation  for  his 
work  which  the  prophet  had  received  (a?  TLfirjv  tmv  7r/?o0e- 
Toov),^  and  further  in  the  prayer  by  which  he  was  conse- 
crated to  his  task  he  was  reminded  that  his  office  called 
for  the  prophetic  endowment :  "  Give  to  him  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  spirit  of  the  prophet."  ^  As  bishops  and  pres- 
byters gradually  assumed  the  work  of  preaching  and  ex- 
pounding the  Scriptures,  the  office  of  the  Reader  lost  its 
importance,  till  he  was  no  longer  a  necessary  official  in 
the  congregation.  Then  he  was  thrust  down  from  his 
high  position  to  one  next  to  the  lowest  among  the  minor 
orders ;  but  the  name  was  retained,  pointing  to  some 
organic  change  in  the  structural  constitution  of  the  church 
by  which  he  had  become  reduced  to  a  disused  rudimentary 
member  of  the  body  ecclesiastic. 

1  Apos.  Cons.  ii.  28. 

2  Apos.  Cons.  viii.  22,  A6s  aiircp  irveOna  dyioy,  wvev/jLa  irpo<priTwi>. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN 

The  age  of  Cyprian,  which  coincides  with  the  first  half 
of  the  third  century  (f  258),  witnessed  great  changes  in 
the  organization  of  the  Catholic  church,  and  these  changes 
are  reflected  in  the  development  of  the  episcopate.  The 
bishop,  who  had  been  hitherto  for  the  most  part  the  pastor 
of  the  local  church,  was  beginning  to  pass  over  into  the 
diocesan  bishop ;  while  the  presbyterate,  which  had  at  first 
been  an  office  connected  with  the  defence  of  the  faith  and 
with  the  cure  of  souls  as  well  as  with  discipline,  was 
assuming  the  bishop's  function  of  administering  the  eu- 
charist.  This  was  the  moment  when  the  church  was 
growing  in  the  cities  where  the  original  single  community 
was  expanding  into  several  congregations.  Such  was  the 
situation  in  Carthage,  of  which  Cyprian  was  bishop. 

The  expansion  of  the  bishop's  superintendence  of  the 
local  church  in  any  town  or  city  to  what  is  known  as  dio- 
cesan ej)iscopacy  or  the  bishop's  superintendence  of  a 
number  of  churches,  is  connected  with  the  influence  of 
the  ancient  civilization,  where  the  town  or  city  was  the 
unit,  and  not  as  in  modern  civilization,  the  individual. 
In  the  modern  church,  if  a  new  congregation  is  to  be  es- 
tablished in  any  town,  the  individual  members  who  com- 
pose it  do  not  regard  themselves  as  dependent  upon  the 
original  community,  but  call  their  own  minister,  and  thus 
become  a  distinct  organization,  as  complete  in  itself  as 
that  from  which  it  has  separated.  But  in  the  ancient 
world,  where  individualism  was  undeveloped,  the  new 
congregation  would  naturally  remain  under  the  supervi- 
sion of  the  bishop  who  represented  the  unity  of  the  civitas, 
and  receive  from  him   a  pastor,   subordinate   to  his   au- 

107 


108  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

thority  and  acting  as  his  delegate.  For  this  purpose  the 
presbyters  were  utilized  whose  original  function  as  de- 
fenders of  the  faith  had  lapsed,  and  who  were  now 
employed  for  a  practical  end  in  what  must  be  regarded 
as  an  efficient  administrative  method.  As  the  presbyter 
thus  fell  under  the  supervision  of  the  bishop,  there  could 
not  have  been  at  first  any  widespread  disaffection  with 
the  arrangement,  for  it  brought  a  new  dignity  to  the  pres- 
byter when  he  was  thus  allowed  to  assume  the  important 
and  honorable  function  of  the  bishop  in  presiding  at 
the  eucharist.  His  original  function  as  a  defender  of 
the  faith  was  henceforth  appropriated  exclusively  by  the 
bishop,  who  became  the  official  curator  of  the  charters,  in 
his  capacity  as  the  one  responsible  head  of  the  Christian 
communities,  within  the  town  or  municipality.  It  was  this 
type  of  episcopacy  which  prevailed  in  the  ancient  church. 
In  the  fifth  century  there  were  some  four  hundred  and  fifty 
bishops  in  North  Africa  alone.  In  Asia  Minor  the  number 
of  the  bishops,  according  to  Bingham,  amounted  to  four 
hundred.  Not  only  were  the  congregations  increasing  in 
the  great  cities  beyond  the  power  of  the  bishop  alone  to  meet 
their  needs,  but  in  rural  districts  or  in  the  country  adjacent 
to  the  cities  and  large  towns,  congregations  were  forming, 
which  raised  the  question  as  to  their  administration.  In 
some  cases  a  presbyter  was  put  over  them ;  in  other  cases 
a  bishop  was  appointed,  after  the  earlier  Ignatian  usage, 
who  was  known  as  the  country  bishop,  or  x^peTria-Koiro'i} 
The  situation,  therefore,  had  greatly  changed  since  the 
time  of  Ignatius.  The  presbyters  now  threatened  to 
encroach  upon  episcopal  prerogatives,  since  they  were 
taking  the  place  of  the  earlier  bishop  and  naturally  fell 
heir  to  his  honors  and  dignity.  But  the  bishops  had  also 
received  a  large  increase  of  dignity,  as  the  parish  grew 
into  the  later  diocese.  Hence  came  a  period  of  rivalry  and 
conflict.  The  presbyters  seem  jealous  of  the  bishops  who 
draw  the  deacons  more  closely  to  themselves,  as  if  for  their 
own  protection.  The  third  century  is  an  age  of  schisms 
all  more  or  less  related  to  the  attempt  of  the  bishops  to 

1  Cf.  Bingham,  Chris.  Antiq.,  B.  II.  13. 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  109 

assert  their  authority.  In  Rome,  in  Carthage,  in  Egypt, 
this  issue  may  be  traced  in  the  schisms  of  Novatian,  Fele- 
cissimus,  or  Meletius. 

It  was  under  these  circumstances  that  Cyprian  became 
the  Bishop  of  Carthage,  where  he  carried  episcopal  pre- 
rogative to  its  highest  point,  and  succeeded  in  breaking 
down  the  presbyterial  combinations  which  disputed  his 
authority.  Other  issues  were  concerned,  of  course,  beyond 
the  principle  of  episcopal  authority  over  the  presbyter, 
but  they  were  rather  the  occasions  than  the  causes  of  con- 
flict and  controversy.  Cyprian  stands  as  the  embodiment 
of  the  Roman  genius  of  administration.  It  was  no  longer 
with  him,  as  it  had  been  in  the  age  of  Irenteus,  the  impor- 
tance of  the  bishop  or  local  pastor,  who  bears  witness  to 
the  common  faith  and  becomes  the  agent  for  its  preserva- 
tion. He  was  preoccupied  with  the  Roman  theory  of  the 
transmission  of  power,  the  necessity  that  it  should  descend 
in  definite  channels,  the  impossibility  that  it  could  be 
appropriated,  as  some  honor  which  a  man  might  take 
unto  himself.  This  had  been  the  attitude  of  Clement  of 
Rome,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians:  God  had  given 
autliority  to  Christ,  Christ  in  turn  had  committed  it  to 
His  Apostles,  these  had  handed  it  on  to  the  bishops  and 
deacons.  If  presbyters  were  to  have  authority  to  minister 
to  the  congregation,  they  must  derive  it  from  the  only 
source  from  which  it  could  be  obtained,  the  episcopate. 
Cyprian  still  continued  to  pay  a  seeming  deference  to  the 
authority  of  the  people,  but  it  was  in  appearance  only. 
The  congregation  of  believers  had  no  power  from  his  point 
of  view  to  appoint  its  officers ;  their  part  in  the  transaction 
was  to  be  henceforth  limited  to  yielding  or  withholding 
their  approval.  The  question  of  ordination  now  assumes 
the  foremost  rank.  Cyprian  believed  that  in  this  rite  was 
imparted  to  the  recipient  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
which  qualified  him  for  the  work  of  the  ministry.  It 
would  have  been  lamentable  indeed  if  this  conviction  had 
been  absent  when  the  transformation  took  place  of  the 
Christian  ministry  into  a  hierarchical  administrative 
order,    whose   chief   function   was    to   be   the   sacerdotal 


110  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE   CHURCH 

offering  for  the  people ;  nor,  indeed,  without  this  convic- 
tion could  the  change  have  been  accomplished.  But  none 
the  less  was  the  change  significant  and  momentous.  The 
earlier  ministry  had  received  its  formal  appointment 
because  it  already  possessed  the  gift  of  the  Spirit,  and 
the  outward  act  of  approval,  as  in  the  laying  on  of  hands, 
bore  witness  to  the  inward  qualification.  But,  manifestly, 
an  administrative  office  transmitting  power  for  ecclesiasti- 
cal acts  could  not  qualify  the  recipient  for  the  spiritual 
gifts  of  prophecy  or  teaching.  Because  the  ministry  was 
changing  to  a  priesthood,  and  the  performance  of  a  ritual 
was  to  become  the  work  of  the  clergy,  ordination  came  to 
be  regarded  as  the  authorization  for  these  functions,  and 
rose  at  once  to  an  issue  of  the  highest  importance. 


In  the  New  Testament  there  are  three  instances  of  ap- 
pointment or  ordination  to  the  Christian  ministry  during 
the  Apostolic  age:  (1)  The  Seven  were  chosen  by  the 
brethren,  as  men  already  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  and 
were  then  appointed  (^KaTaarrjcro^iev)  by  the  Twelve,  who 
also  laid  their  hands  upon  them  (Acts  vi.  3-6).  (2)  At 
Antioch  certain  prophets  and  teachers  were  told  by  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  separate  Barnabas  and  Saul  for  the  work  to 
which  the  same  Spirit  had  previously  called  them;  and 
when  they  had  fasted  and  prayed,  the  prophets  and  teachers 
laid  their  hands  upon  them.  This  was  an  ordination  to  the 
Apostolate  (Acts  xiii.  2).  (3)  Timothy  was  appointed 
an  evangelist  by  three  concurrent  agencies :  the  gift  which 
was  in  him  came  by  prophecy  and  by  the  laying  on  of  the 
hands  of  the  presbytery  (1  Tim.  iv.  14),  and  by  the  laying 
on  of  the  Apostle's  hands  (2  Tim.  i.  6).  There  is  then 
a  formal  ordination  to  a  diaconate  of  some  kind ;  there  is 
an  ordination  of  Apostles,  by  prophets  and  teachers,  and 
an  ordination  of  an  evangelist.  But  there  is  no  reference 
to  any  ordination  of  prophets  and  teachers  themselves,  for 
they  needed  or  could  have  no  formal  warrant,  since  they 
appealed  to  the  congregation  to  recognize  in  them  the 


THE   AGE   OP   CYPRIAN  111 

direct  call  of  the  Spirit.  They  could  be  recognized  or 
rejected,  but  not  appointed.  There  is  also  an  appointment 
or  ordination  of  presbyters,  but  it  is  not  said  to  be  accom- 
panied with  the  laying  on  of  hands. ^  Barnabas  and  Saul 
are  said  to  have  ordained  (^-x^etporovr^aavre'i^  elders  or  pres- 
byters in  every  city  (Acts  xiv.  23);  Titus  is  said  to  have 
been  left  in  Crete  in  order  to  ordain  (/carao-TT^o-T;?)  presby- 
ters in  every  city  (Titus  i.  5).  But  there  is  no  mention  in 
the  New  Testament  of  the  ordination  of  bishops  or  of  the 
method  by  which  they  are  appointed.  If,  as  we  must 
suppose,  they  were  generally  taken  from  the  council  of 
presbyters,  it  may  have  been  that  they  were  not  then 
regarded  as  needing  any  additional  ordination  or  consecra- 
tion for  their  special  work  bej-ond  their  designation  or 
appointment  by  the  presbyters. 

When  we  turn  to  the  writings  of  the  second  century 
for  information  as  to  the  mode  of  appointment  to  the 
ministry,  we  are  struck  by  the  absence  of  any  allusion  to 
the  subject,  even  in  writers  who  have  the  order  of  the 
church  at  heart.  Clement  of  Rome  tells  us  that  the  Apos- 
tles appointed  the  firstfruits  of  their  labors  to  be  bishops 
and  deacons,  giving  instructions  that  these  bishops  and  dea- 
cons at  their  death  should  be  followed  by  other  approved 
men.  Those  bishops  and  deacons  therefore  who  were  ap- 
pointed by  Apostles,  or  afterward  "by  men  of  repute," 
with  the  consent  of  the  whole  church,  should  not  be 
unjustly  thrust  out  from  their  ministration  (Ad  Cor.  c. 
xliv.).     But  who    were   these  "other    men   of    repute"? 

1  The  laying  on  of  hands  is  mentioned  in  the  New  Testament  in  three 
connections:  (1)  The  healing  of  the  sick;  (2)  appointment  to  office; 
(.3)  as  supplementing  the  rite  of  baptism,  whether  of  John  or  in  the  name 
of  Jesus  only.  Cf.  Matt.  ix.  1.3,  xix.  15  ;  Mark  v.  2.3,  vi.  3,  xvi.  18  ;  Luke 
iv.  10,  xiii.  3  ;  Acts  vi.  6,  viii.  17,  19,  xiii.  3,  xix.  6.  For  its  significance 
in  ordination,  cf.  Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  I.,  §  7. 

In  his  valuable  monograph  on  Ordination,  in  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq., 
Dr.  Hatch  remarks  :  "It  is  difficult  to  determine  accurately  the  time  at 
which  x^'-poO^'retadai  came  into  general  use  in  reference  to  ordination,  be- 
cause the  texts  of  the  MSS.,  especially  of  writers  and  councils  of  the 
fourth  century,  vary  so  much  between  x^'-P"'''""^"-  ^'^^^  x^'-po^^^^"-  ^s  to 
make  the  determination  of  the  reading,  in  the  present  state  of  criticism, 
as  applied  to  patristic  Greek,  a  matter  of  great  uncertainty"  (p.  1502). 


112  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

They  may  have  been  the  leaders  (J^^ovfievoi)  or  the  pres- 
byters, but  can  hardly  have  been  the  bishops  or  deacons 
themselves.  Again,  in  the  Didache,  when  the  prophets 
fail  who  preside  at  the  Eucharist,  the  congregation  is  told 
"to  appoint  (jxetporovrjaare)  for  themselves  bishops  and 
deacons  "  (c.  xv.).  Although  Ignatius  had  left  his  office, 
as  bishop  at  Antioch,  vacant,  when  he  set  out  for  Rome, 
and  is  concerned  that  it  should  be  worthily  filled,  yet  he 
gives  no  explicit  instructions  as  to  the  manner  of  filling 
it,  beyond  the  statement  that  a  conference  be  called  for  the 
purpose.  He  urges  the  church  at  Philadelphia  to  send  a 
deacon  to  this  conference  as  their  representative,  remark- 
ing also  that  the  nearest  churches  have  sent  in  some  cases 
bishops,  in  others  presbyters  and  deacons  (Phil.  x.). 
That  the  bishop  was  to  be  elected  at  this  council  is  stated 
in  the  Epistle  to  Polycarp  (c.  vii.),  but  there  is  silence 
in  regard  to  any  further  solemnities  connected  with  his 
election. 

In  the  first  of  the  so-called  Apostolic  Ordinances,  which 
represent,  according  to  Dr.  Harnack,  the  transition  from 
the  situation  represented  in  the  Didache  to  that  which 
was  reached  by  the  end  of  the  second  century,  we  have  a 
nai've  description  of  the  making  of  a  bishop  in  some 
remote  or  rural  community:  "If  there  are  few  men  and 
not  twelve  persons  who  are  competent  to  vote  at  the 
election  of  a  bishop,  the  neighboring  churches  should  be 
written  to,  where  any  of  them  is  a  settled  one,  in  order 
that  three  selected  men  may  come  thence  and  examine 
carefully  if  he  is  worthy,  that  is,  if  he  has  a  good  report 
among  the  heathen,  if  lie  is  faultless,  if  a  friend  of  the 
poor,"  etc.^  From  this  Ordinance  it  may  be  inferred  that 
if  there  were  twelve  men  in  a  community  competent  to 
vote,  it  was  not  required  that  they  should  go  outside  the 
community  for  assistance  in  electing  a  bishop.     One  may 

1  Texts  u.  Untersuch.  II.,  §  5,  p.  7  (Eug.  Trans,  by  Wheatly,  p.  8)  : 
'Eai'  d\iyav5pla  VTrdpxV  i^o-^  fJ-'/jirov  wXijdos  Tvyx^fri  tu>v  Svvafi^vwv  tl/rjtplcracrdai 
irept  iiricFKbiTov  evrbs  deKadvo  avSpGiv,  els  rds  vXrialov  eKKX-qcrias,  ottov  rvyx"-^^'- 
Tr€ir7]yvta,  ypacpirioaav,  6irws  iKecdev  eK\€KTol  rpeis  dvdpes  irapayev^iievoi  doKip-TJ 
doKi/xdcravTes  Tbv  d^wv  6vTa. 


THE   AGE   OF  CYPRIAN  113 

note,  also,  that  these  three  invited  visitors  are  not  speci- 
fied as  officers,  but  are  apparently  laymen.  In  the  second 
of  these  Apostolic  Ordinances,  where  the  duties  and  quali- 
fications of  the  presbyters  are  given,  they  are  represented 
as  placed  on  either  side  of  the  bishop  in  the  celebration  of 
the  Eucharist,  but  there  is  also  reserved  to  them  the 
supreme  control  in  cases  of  discipline,  both  of  the  congre- 
gation and  the  bishop,  in  the  communities  which  these 
documents  represent.^ 

It  is  possible  that  another  and  different  precedent  for 
the  making  of  a  bishop  was  intended  in  the  account  given 
in  the  fictitious  Clementine  writings,  toward  the  end  of 
the  second  century,  where  Peter  is  represented  as  ordain- 
ing Clement  to  be  his  successor.  Here,  at  least,  but  in 
an  untrustworthy  document,  there  is  a  clear  and  explicit 
statement  of  the  procedure : 

"  But  about  that  time,  when  he  (Peter)  was  about  to  die,  the  breth- 
ren being  assembled  together,  he  suddenly  seized  my  hand,  and  rose 
up,  and  said  in  presence  of  tlie  chui-ch :  '  Hear  me,  brethren  and  fel- 
low-servants. Since,  as  I  have  been  taught  by  the  Lord  and  Teacher, 
Jesus  Christ,  whose  Apostle  I  am,  the  day  of  my  death  is  approaching, 
I  lay  hands  upon  this  Clement  as  your  bishop ;  and  to  him  I  intrust 
my  chair  of  discourse,  even  to  him  who  has  journeyed  with  me  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  thus  has  heard  all  my  homilies  ;  who, 
in  a  word,  having  had  a  share  in  all  my  trials,  has  been  found  stead- 
fast in  the  faith ;  whom  I  have  found,  above  all  others,  pious,  phil- 
anthropic, pure,  learned,  chaste,  good,  upright,  large-hearted,  and 
striving  generously  to  bear  the  ingratitude  of  some  of  tlie  catechu- 
mens. Wherefore  I  communicate  to  him  the  power  of  binding  and 
loosing,  so  that,  with  respect  to  everything  which  he  shall  ordain  in 
the  earth,  it  shall  be  decreed  in  the  heavens.  For  he  shall  bind  what 
ought  to  be  bound,  and  loose  what  ought  to  be  loosed,  as  knowing  the 
rule  of  the  church.  Therefore  hear  him,  as  knowing  that  he  who 
grieves  the  president  of  the  truth  sins  against  Christ  and  offends  the 
Father  of  all.'  "  ^ 

1  Texte  u.  Untersuch.  II.,  §  5,  pp.  36,  37. 

2  Ejxis.  Clem.,  2.  That  this  method  was  followed  in  some  places  may 
be  inferred  from  the  7Gth  of  the  Apostolic  Canons,  forbidding  a  bishop 
to  ordain  whom  he  pleases,  for  it  is  not  just  to  make  heirs  of  the  episco- 
pate ;  or  the  23d  Canon  of  the  Council  of  Antioch  in  341,  which  forbids  a 
bishop  even  at  the  time  of  his  death  to  appoint  his  successor.  Such 
appointments  were  to  be  held  invalid. 

I 


114  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

In  Alexandria  there  was  another  method  of  appointing 
a  bishop,  which  continued  until  near  the  middle  of  the 
third  century.  The  one  bishop  who  presided  over  all 
Egypt  lived  in  the  great  city  surrounded  by  his  twelve 
presbyters.  When  his  office  fell  vacant,  the  presbyters 
deputed  one  of  their  number  to  take  his  place ;  or,  in  the 
words  of  St.  Jerome,  upon  whose  testimony  our  informa- 
tion rests,  "  The  presbyters  always  named  as  bishop  one  of 
their  own  number  chosen  by  themselves  and  placed  in  a 
more  exalted  position,  just  as  an  army  elects  a  general  or 
as  deacons  appoint  one  of  themselves  whom  they  know  to  be 
diligent  and  call  him  an  archdeacon."  ^  That  there  should 
have  been  twelve  presbyters,  with  the  one  bishop,  may 
add  another  illustration  to  what  has  been  before  remarked 
concerning  the  development  of  the  ministry  (see  ante, 
p.  82),  that  it  was  inspired  by  a  desire  to  perpetuate  the 
scene  of  the   last  supper,   when   Christ  presided  at  the 

1  Ep.  cxlvi.  ad  Evangelum :  Alexandriae  a  Marco  evangelista  usque  ad 
Heraclam  et  Dionysium  episcopos  presbyteri  seiuijer  uuum  ex  se  electum 
in  excelsiori  gradu  collocatum  episcopum  noiuinabaut,  quomodo  si  excrci- 
tus  imperatorem  faciat,  aut  diacoiii  elegant  de  se,  quern  industrium  nove- 
rint  et  archidiaconum  vocent.  "At  tlie  close  of  the  second  century,  when 
every  considerable  church  in  Europe  and  Asia  appears  to  have  had  its 
bishop,  the  only  representative  of  the  episcopal  order  in  Egypt  was  the 
Bishop  of  Alexandria.  It  was  Demetrius  first  (a.d.  190-233),  as  Euty- 
chius  informs  us,  who  appointed  three  other  bishops,  to  which  number 
his  successor  Heraclas  (a.d.  233-249)  added  twenty  more.  This  exten- 
sion of  episcopacy  to  the  provincial  towns  of  Egypt  paved  the  way  for  a 
change  in  the  mode  of  appointing  and  ordaining  a  patriarch  of  Alexandria. 
But  before  this  time  it  was  a  matter  of  convenience  and  almost  of  neces- 
sity that  the  Alexandrian  presbyters  should  themselves  ordain  their  chief  " 
(Lightfoot,  Essay  on  the  Christian  Ministry,  p.  232).  The  testimony  of 
Eutychius,  the  orthodox  patriarch  in  Alexandria  in  the  tenth  century, 
confirms  the  testimony  of  Jerome :  Constituit  evangelista  Marcus  una 
cum  Hakania  patriarcha  duodecim  presbyteros,  qui  nempe  cum  patri- 
archa  manerent,  adeo  ut  eum  vacaret  patriarchatus,  unum  e  duodecim 
presbyteris  eligerent,  cuius  capiti  reliqui  undecim  manus  imponentes  ipsi 
benedicerent  et  patriarcham  crearent,  delude  virum  aliquem  insignem 
eligerent,  quern  secum  presbyterum  constituerent,  loco  ejus,  qui  factus 
est  patriarcha,  ut  ita  semper  exstarent  duodecim.  Neque  desiit  Alexan- 
driae institutum  hoc  de  presbyteris,  ut  scilicet  patriarchas  crearent  ex 
presbyteris  duodecim,  usque  ad  tempora  Alexandri  patriarchae  Alexan- 
driae. Is  autem  vetuit,  ne  deinceps  patriarcham  presbyteri  crearent.  Et 
decrevit,  ut  mortuo  patriarcha  convenient  episcopi,  qui  patriarcham  ordi- 
narent  (Migne,  Patr.  Graec.  CXI.,  p.  907). 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  115 

table,  surrounded  by  His  twelve  disciples.  For  this 
reason  the  bishop  represented  Christ  in  the  thought  of 
Ignatius,  and  the  presbyters  stood  in  the  place  of  Apos- 
tles. But  there  may  have  been  also  in  Alexandria  a  con- 
ception of  the  ministry  which,  like  the  Alexandrian 
theology,  expresses  another  spirit  from  that  which  domi- 
nated Rome  and  the  Western  church.  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria gives  a  glimpse  of  this  different  attitude  when, 
treating  of  dignities  in  the  church  on  earth  in  their  rela- 
tion to  degrees  of  glory  in  heaven,  he  writes : 

"  Those,  then,  also  now,  who  have  exercised  themselves  in  the 
Lord's  commandments  and  lived  perfectly  and  gnostically  according 
to  the  Gospel,  may  be  enrolled  in  the  chosen  body  of  the  Apostles. 
Such  an  one  is  in  reality  a  presbyter  of  the  church,  and  a  true  minis- 
ter of  the  will  of  God,  if  he  do  and  teach  what  is  the  Lord's ;  not  as 
being  ordained  ^  by  men  nor  regarded  righteous  because  a  presbyter, 
but  enrolled  in  the  presbyterate  because  righteous.  And  although 
here  upon  earth  he  be  not  honored  with  the  chief  seat,  he  will  sit 
down  on  the  four  and  twenty  thrones,  judging  the  people,  as  St.  John 
says  in  the  Apocalypse.  .  .  .  According  to  my  opinion,  the  grades 
here  in  the  church  of  bishops,  presbyters,  and  deacons  are  imitations 
of  the  angelic  glory  and  of  that  economy  which,  the  Scriptures  say, 
awaits  those  who,  following  the  footsteps  of  the  Apostles,  have  lived  in 
perfection  of  righteousness  according  to  the  Gospel.  For  these  taken 
up  in  the  clouds,  the  Apostle  writes,  will  first  serve,  then  be  classed 
in  the  presbyterate,  by  promotion  in  glory,  —  for  glory  differs  from 
glory,  —  till  they  grow  into  a  perfect  man."  ^ 


II 

It  is  in  the  letters  of  Cyprian  that  we  get  the  first 
authoritative  statement  of  the  method  to  be  followed  in 
making  a  bishop,  which  in  substance  was  to  become  uni- 
versal in  the  Catholic  church: 

"  You  must  diligently  observe  and  keep  the  practice,  delivered  from 
divine  tradition  and  apostolic  observance,  —  which  is  also  maintained 
among  us,  and  almost  throughout  all  the  provinces,  —  that  for  the  proper 
celebration  of  ordinations,  all  the  neighboring  bishops  of  the  same 
province  should  assemble  with  that  people  for  which  a  prelate  is 

1  X^i-poTovov Revo's,  elected.  ^  Strom.  VI.  13. 


116  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

ordained;  and  the  bishop  should  be  chosen  in  the  presence  of  the 
people,  who  have  most  fully  known  the  life  of  each  one,  and  have 
looked  into  the  doings  of  each  one  as  respects  his  individual  conduct."  ^ 

And  this,  Cyprian  adds,  was  done  in  the  case  of  "our 
colleague,  Sabinus ;  so  that  by  the  suffrage  of  the  whole 
brotherhood,  and  by  senterice  of  the  bishops  assembled  in 
their  presence,  the  episcopate  was  conferred  by  him."  It 
is  to  be  noted  in  this  account  that  there  is  no  mention  of 
the  laying  on  of  hands  as  the  essential  feature  of  ordina- 
tion ;  the  Episcopate  is  conferred  by  the  sentence  of  the 
bishops.  Whether  the  laying  on  of  hands  followed  the 
sentence  of  the  bishops,  is  undetermined  by  the  text;  but 
whether  it  did  or  not,  ordination  in  the  Cyprianic  theory 
is  not  conceived  as  dependent  upon  it.  If  the  handing  on 
of  authority  by  a  verbal  commission  forms  the  essence 
of  the  ecclesiastical  appointment,  then  the  laying  on  of 
hands  is  reduced  to  a   venerable  accompaniment  of  the 

1  Epis.  Ixvii.  5.  Cyprian  is  aware  that  this  method  does  not  yet  pre- 
vail in  some  provinces  of  tlie  church,  and  may  have  known  of  the  usage 
in  Alexandria.  His  confident  appeal  to  "divine  tradition  and  Apostolic 
observance"  in  its  behalf  may  find  its  warrant  in  the  writings  of 
Ignatius  (Ad  Phil.  c.  x.),  who  calls  upon  the  neighboring  churches  to 
aid  in  the  appointment  of  a  bishop  for  the  church  in  Antioch.  But 
Ignatius  does  not  summon  the  bishops  of  these  churches  for  this  purpose, 
but  asks  the  church  in  Philadelphia  to  send  a  deacon,  remarking  that 
other  churches  have  sent  in  some  cases  bishops,  in  others  presbyters  and 
deacons.  In  the  longer  Greek  recension  of  the  Ignatian  epistles,  the  request 
of  Ignatius  for  a  deacon  from  the  church  at  Philadelphia  is  changed  to 
the  request  for  a  bishop.  Another  precedent  for  the  Cyprianic  rule  may 
be  seen  perhaps  in  the  first  of  the  so-called  Apostolic  Ordinances  (see 
ante,  p.  112).  But  the  Cyprianic  rule  was  also  the  result  of  natural 
growth  and  of  a  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things.  It  is  in  use  to-day  among 
the  Reformed  churches,  as  well  as  those  which  follow  more  closely  the 
ancient  order.  According  to  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  the  laying  on  of 
hands  is  prescribed  in  making  a  bishop.  When  the  consent  of  the  people 
has  been  given,  Deinde  eligatur  unus  ex  episcopis  et  presbyteris,  qui 
manum  capiti  ejus  imponat.  Cf.  Achelis,  in  Texts  u.  Untersttch.,  6,  vi. 
Bie  dltesten  Qnellen  des  orientalischen  Kirchenrechtes.  Erstes  Buck,  Die 
Canones  Ilippolyti,  p.  40.  But  according  to  the  Apostolic  Constitutions, 
while  laying  on  of  hands  is  prescribed  in  the  ordination  of  presbyters  and 
deacons,  as  also  of  the  deaconess,  the  sub-deacon,  and  the  reader,  the 
bishop  is  ordained  without  the  laying  on  of  hands,  for  which  is  substi- 
tuted the  open  book  of  the  Gospels,  held  over  his  head  by  the  deacons. 
Cf.  B.  viii.  c.  3. 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  117 

transaction.  Had  the  laying  on  of  hands  been  conceived 
as  of  the  essence  of  the  rite,  it  would  surely  have  been 
mentioned  by  Cyprian.  But  herein  lies  a  departure  from 
the  Apostolic  form  of  ordination  where  the  laying  on  of 
hands  is  regarded  as  of  the  essence  of  the  rite,  for  the 
ordination  consists  in  the  recognition  by  the  human  actors 
of  a  call  already  made  and  a  qualification  already  imparted 
by  the  Spirit.      (Acts  vi.  xiii.  1,  2.) 

In  the  Cyprianic  rule  for  making  a  bishop  there  is  both 
a  method  and  a  principle  which  inspires  the  method. 
The  power  to  appoint  the  bishop  is  vested  in  the  bishops 
of  the  province,  and  is  no  longer  Avithin  the  prerogative 
of  the  Christian  community.  The  function  of  the  people 
is  limited  to  giving  information  as  to  the  character  of  the 
man  whom  the  bishops  are  to  ordain ;  but  it  is  indispensa- 
ble also  that  the  transaction  should  go  on  in  their  presence. 
The  value  of  such  a  method  is  in  guarding  more  carefully 
the  entrance  to  the  ministry.  The  bishops  now  appear  as 
a  body  or  consolidated  corporation,  acting  in  the  interests 
of  the  whole  church  as  well  as  those  of  the  local  commu- 
nity. In  his  treatise  on  the  Unity  of  the  Church,  as  else- 
where in  his  writings,  Cyprian  regards  the  whole  body  of 
the  bishops  as  constituting  the  church,  as  the  depositar}^ 
of  divine  gifts  and  powers  to  be  mediated  through  their 
agency  to  the  congregation.  The  practical  working  of 
this  doctrine  would  tend  toward  the  promotion  of  the 
unity  of  the  church,  Avhich  Cyprian  has  close  to  his  heart. 
In  this  respect  he  resembles  Ignatius,  in  making  union 
with  the  bishop  essential  to  salvation.  The  bishops  con- 
stitute the  church ,  and  outside  of  the  church  there  is  no 
salvation:  "He  that  has  not  the  church  for  his  mother 
cannot  have  God  for  his  father";  "the  bishop  is  in  the 
church,  and  the  church  is  in  the  bishop;  and  if  any  one  be 
not  with  the  bishop,  he  is  not  in  the  church.  "^  In  his 
argument  for  the  unity  of  the  church  Cyprian  reflects  the 
principle  of  Roman  administration;  and  as,  according  to 
the  imperial  idea,  the  unity  of  the  Empire  takes  its  rise 
from  one  man,  the  sacred  person  of  the  emperor;  so   in 

1  Epis.  Ixviii.  8. 


118  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  church  at  large  unity  must  have  had  its  rise  in  one 
man,  the  Apostle  Peter.  ^ 

But  there  is  also  a  principle  here  which  underlies  the 
Cj'prianic  method  of  administration.  Ecclesiastical  power 
must  be  handed  down  from  age  to  age  in  uniform  and 
tangible  fashion  which  is  visible  to  all.  While  Cy^jrian 
dwells  on  the  advantages  of  his  method  as  contributing  to 
unity,  it  is  not  merely  or  solely  because  of  this  advantage 
that  it  finds  its  warrant  or  justification.  In  the  nature  of 
the  case,  as  Cyprian  reasoned,  there  can  be  but  one  method 
by  which  the  bishop  obtains  the  qualification  for  his  office : 
it  must  come  from  those  who  already  hold  the  power  and 
are  able  to  confer  it.  This  power  the  bishops  retain  in 
their  own  possession.  In  making  a  presbyter,  they  do 
not  impart  their  whole  power,  but  only  sufficient  power 
for  the  presbyterial  ofifice.  Hence  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  a  presbyter  cannot  make  a  bishop,  for  he  cannot  im- 
part that  which  he  does  not  possess.  Nor  can  a  presbyter 
ordain  a  presbyter,  because  this  power  of  ordination  the 
bishops  reserve  to  themselves.  What  they  impart  to  the 
presbyter  is  the  right  to  perform  certain  ecclesiastical  acts 
which  are  specified  or  understood,  and  any  other  acts 
which  he  may  perform  are  lacking  in  validity.  There 
must  have  been,  therefore,  in  the  church,  so  Cyprian  rea- 
soned, from  the  beginning,  apart  from  any  evidence  for  or 
against  it,  a  succession  of  bishops  from  the  Apostles'  time 
who  have  handed  down  the  gifts  received  by  Apostles 
from  Christ  Himself.  Otherwise  there  could  have  been 
no  continuous  ecclesiastical  life.  On  this  theory,  Cyprian 
stakes  the  very  existence  of  the  church  itself. 

The  tendency  of  Cyprian's  doctrine  of  a  succession  of 
bishops  reaching  back  to  the  Apostles  was  to  overcome 
that  sense  of  contingency  about  the  ecclesiastical  order  of 
the  church,  which  may  be  traced  in  many  directions,  ac- 
cording to  which  the  bishop  had  been  placed  above  the 
presbyter  in  order  to  overcome  certain  special  dangers 
which  assaulted  the  church;  a  provisional  arrangement  for 
the  well-being  of  the  church,  and  not  a  law  for  its  exist- 

1  De  U)iit.  Eccles.  cc.  4,  5. 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  119 

ence;  which  did  not  originate  with  the  divine  will,  but 
sprang  out  of  human  emergencies.  Cyprian's  influence 
did  not  indeed  banish  from  the  church  this  explanation  of 
the  origin  of  the  episcopate.  It  is  felt  in  the  writings  of 
Ignatius,  it  is  seen  in  Tertullian,  it  may  be  traced  in  the 
Apostolic  Constitutions,  it  was  reaffirmed  by  Jerome  and 
Augustine,  reproduced  in  the  writings  of  Isidore  of  Se- 
ville, kept  alive  by  its  retention  in  the  Canon  Law,  cher- 
ished in  the  monasteries  of  the  Middle  Ages,  till  in  the 
Reformation  it  was  operative  in  the  reconstitution  of 
the  Protestant  churches.  But  the  principle  of  Cyprian 
so  far  prevailed  that  from  the  fourth  century  ordinations 
by  presbyters  alone  were  forbidden.^  It  became  a  feature 
of  the  organization  of  the  Catholic  church,  that  the  pres- 
ence or  approval  or  co-operation  of  the  bishop  was  essen- 
tial to  the  validity  of  the  rite  of  ordination.  From  the 
fourth  century,  when  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  law  univer- 
sal in  its  operation,  2  the  Catholic  church  also  may  be  said 
to  have  accomplished  the  task  which  was  begun  by  Igna- 
tius and  attained  the  end  for  which  it  has  so  long  been 
laboring.  Egypt  swung  into  line  with  the  advancing 
march  of  the  triumphant  church.  In  the  case  of  Ischyras, 
who  lived  in  the  time  of  Athanasius,  as  in  the  earlier 
difficulties  which  Origen  had  encountered,  and  notwith- 

1  For  the  13th  canon  of  the  Council  of  Ancyra,  314  a.d.,  cf.  Hefele, 
Konciliengeschichte  (Eng.  Trans.),  I.  212.  The  Greek  text  is  x'jpe7ri(rK-67rous 
IJ.7]  e^eivai  TrpeajivTipovs  ri  5iaK6vovs  x^i-poToveiv,  dXXd  fj.T)5i  Trpecr^vr^povs  7r6Xews, 
Xwpis  Tov  iiriTpairrjvai  iiird  tov  eTricrKbwov  fxera  ypafifxaTuiv  iv  eripq.  irapoiKlq.; 
and  the  literal  translation  :  "It  is  not  permitted  to  the  chorepiscopi  to  or- 
dain priests  and  deacons  ;  neither  is  this  permitted  to  the  priests  of  the 
town  in  other  parishes,  without  the  written  authority  of  the  bishop  of  the 
place."  Cf.  Kouth,  Eeliq.  Sac.  IV.,  pp.  144  ff.  ;  also  Lightfoot  for  criti- 
cism of  Routh's  interpretation,  in  Essay,  etc.,  p.  233.  In  the  text  of  the 
Canon  adopted  by  Lightfoot,  it  reads  x^p^'^i-'J'k^^^o^^  3,nd  /x-qd^  irpea^vT^poti, 
changes,  however,  which  do  not  affect  the  translation  as  given  above.  See, 
for  the  manuscript  readings,  Gore,  Christian  Ministry,  pp.  370  ff. 

2  "  A  bishop  ought  to  be  constituted  by  all  the  bishops  that  belong  to 
the  province  ;  but  if  this  be  not  practicable,  either  through  pressing 
necessity  or  the  length  of  the  journey,  three  must  by  all  means  meet ; 
and  when  they  have  the  consent  of  those  that  are  absent,  signified  by 
letter,  then  let  them  perform  the  consecration  ;  and  the  ratification  of 
what  is  done  must  be  allowed  in  each  province  to  the  metropolitan." 
Nicene  Canons,  4  (a.d.  325). 


120  OKGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

standing  the  confusion  and  obscurity  in  which  these  inci- 
dents are  involved,  we  may  read  the  issue  plainly  enough, 
that  the  Alexandrian  church  was  making  its  transition  to 
the  Catholic  order. ^  In  the  remote  islands  of  the  West, 
where,  as  in  the  Scotch-Irish  churches,  the  peculiar  ar- 
rangement existed  by  which  the  bishops  lived  in  mon- 
asteries under  the  control  of  the  abbots,  still  the  law 
was  known  and  respected  that  the  bishops  were  responsible 
for  the  ordination  of  presbyters.  When  Jerome  defined 
the  difference  between  a  bishop  and  a  presbyter  according 
to  the  ecclesiastical  law,  he  reduced  the  difference  to  this, 
—  there  was  nothing  which  a  bishop  did  which  a  presbyter 
could  not  do  except  the  performance  of  the  function  of 
ordination.  2 

But  relics  of  the  older  usage  still  continued,  as  in  the 
custom  by  which  the  bishop  addressed  the  presbyter  in 
writing  as  his  co-presbyter,  or  in  a  still  more  impressive 
fashion,  by  which,  in  the  ordination  of  a  presbyter,  the 
bishop  does  not  act  alone,  but  in  union  with  his  fellow- 
presbyters.  Although  it  is  customary  in  ecclesiastical 
language  to  speak  of  the  bishop  as  having  the  power  of 

1  Cf.  Excurs,  Katholisch  und  liomisch,  in  Harnack,  Dogmengesch.  I, 
400-412:  "Die  katholische  Kirclie  ist  wesentlich  das  Werk  der  klein- 
asiatisclien  uiid  romisclien  Kirche.  Die  alexandrinische  Theologie  und 
Kirclie  schliesst  sich  erst  im  3.  Jahrhundert  voll  an  "  (p.  403).  With  the 
triumph  of  this  ecclesiastical  polity,  the  office  of  the  teacher,  which  had 
been  proclaimed  of  divine  appointment  by  St.  Paul,  practically  came  to 
an  end  in  Alexandria,  where  it  exi.sted  longer  than  elsewhere,  and  with 
distinguished  prestige,  as  in  the  cases  of  Clement  and  Origen.  It  shows 
the  distance  wliich  the  church  had  travelled  in  two  centuries,  that  Origen, 
who  in  the  Apostolic  age  would  have  had  a  place  in  the  higher  ministry  of 
the  word  with  Apostles  and  prophets,  was  in  his  own  day  treated  as  a  lay- 
man, obliged  it  may  have  been  to  seek  the  shelter  of  the  presbyterate  in 
order  to  continue  his  work. 

"  Epis.  ad  Evangel.  According  to  the  Canons  of  Hippolytits,  there  is 
no  difference  in  the  form  of  making  a  bishop  and  a  presbyter  ;  both  are 
ordained  by  the  same  ceremony  and  by  the  same  prayer ;  but  the  bishop 
differs  from  the  presbyter  in  possessing  the  right  or  power  of  ordination  : 
"  Si  autem  ordinatur  presbyter,  omnia  cum  eo  similitur  agantur  ac  cum 
episcopo,  nisi  quod  cathedrae  non  insideat.  Etiam  eadem  oratio  super  eo 
oretur  tota  ut  super  episcopo,  cum  sola  exceptione  nominis  episcopatus. 
Episcopus  in  omnibus  rebus  aequiparetur  presbytero  excepto  nomine 
cathedrae  et  ordinatione,  quia  potestas  ordinandi  ipsi  non  tribuitur."  Cf. 
Die  Canones  liippolyti  by  Achelis,  in  Texte  u.  Untersuch.,  vol.  6,  vi.,  p.  61. 


THE  AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  121 

ordination,  yet  in  strict  parlance  it  is  the  bishop's  preroga- 
tive only  when  assisted  by  presbyters.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  an  ordination  of  a  presbyter  by  a  bishop  alone 
would  possess  validity  from  the  point  of  view  of  ecclesias- 
tical law.  But  the  bishops  alone  admit  to  the  diaconate, 
and  consecrate  to  their  own  order. ^ 

III 

The  contribution  made  by  Cyprian  to  the  development 
of  ecclesiastical  order  has  been  often  misunderstood, 
because  it  has  been  taken  for  granted  that  the  episcopate 
whose  prerogatives  he  urged  and  enforced  was  the  later 
diocesan  form,  as  it  existed  in  the  Middle  Ages,  or  as  it 
is  found  in  Germany,  France,  or  England  to-day,  where  a 
bishop  presides  over  a  large  territory,  in  whose  diocese 
may  be  found  hundreds  of  churches,  and  as  many  presby- 
ters who  serve  them.  But  in  Cyprian's  time  the  episco- 
pate still  retained  for  the  most  part  its  original  form, 
where  the  bishop  was  simply  the  pastor  of  the  local  church. 
The  presbyters  with  whom  Cyprian  came  in  conflict  cor- 

1  Cf.  Can.  III.  of  the  Council  of  Carthage,  398  a.d.  ;  also  Hatch,  Art. 
Ordination,  in  Diet.  Christ.  Antiq.  II.  1519.  In  the  Eastern  Ordinals, 
the  presence  of  the  presbyters  is  required  by  the  ritual,  but  the  bishop 
alone  imposes  hands.  According  to  the  Western  Ordinal,  the  presbyters 
lay  their  hands  upon  the  candidate  after  the  bishop  :  "  Pontifex  stans  ante 
faldistorium  suum  cum  mitra  et  nulla  oratione,  nuUoque  cantu  praemissis, 
imponit  simul  utramque  manum  super  caput  cujuslibet  ordinandi  succes- 
sive, nihil  dicens.  Idemque  faciuut  post  eum  omnes  sacerdotes."  So  also 
the  Anglican  Ordinal,  but  witliout  specifying  whether  hands  are  laid  to- 
gether or  in  succession.  In  the  ordination  of  deacons  there  are  also  traces 
of  the  ancient  order,  when  bishops  and  deacons  were  coupled  together  and 
mentioned  by  themselves,  as  if  the  deacons  stood  in  some  special  relation 
to  the  bishop  but  had  no  relation  to  the  presbyter.  The  Roman  Ordinal 
is  explicit  in  its  statement  that  the  bishop  is  here  to  act  alone.  Beneath 
the  modes  of  ordination,  however,  there  lies  a  question  about  which  opin- 
ion is  widely  divergent :  Does  the  essence  of  ordination  consist  in  the  lay- 
ing on  of  hands,  or  in  the  precise  verbal  commission  ?  The  Anglican  and 
Protestant  churches  attach  a  spiritual  importance  to  the  laying  on  of 
hands,  to  which  the  Roman  church  does  not  assent.  Cf.  Preface  to  the 
Anglican  Ordinal,  where  its  importance  is  recognized,  with  the  Encyclical 
of  Leo  XIII.,  Apostolirae  Curae  (1896),  §  7,  where  it  is  said  "the  im- 
position of  hands  by  itself  signifies  nothing  definite."  But  in  Acts  vi.  3-6, 
and  Acts  xiii.  1,  2,  it  plainly  implies  tlie  recognition  of  a  call  and  qualifica- 
tion from  the  Holy  Spirit. 


122  ORGANIZATION   OP  THE   CHURCH 

respond  in  some  degree  with  the  assistant  ministers  who 
are  to  be  found  to-day  in  the  large  city  church,  in  which 
the  work  is  greater  than  the  pastor  can  perform,  but  for 
whose  oversight  he  is  responsible.  So,  at  least,  it  was  in 
North  Africa  and  in  Italy  and  in  Asia  Minor.  But  in 
Cyprian's  time,  also,  a  beginning  had  been  made  toward 
the  transformation  of  the  office  of  bishop  into  its  later 
type  of  an  administrative  officer,  whose  administra- 
tive functions  are  so  extensive  and  absorbing  as  al- 
most to  make  impossible  any  attention  to  his  pastoral 
office.  The  germ  of  this  development  lay  in  the  episco- 
pate from  its  origin,  but  its  growth  was  stimulated  by 
the  spirit  of  Roman  institutions  and  by  the  constitution 
of  the  ancient  city.  In  some  of  the  Protestant  churches 
the  spiritual  functions  of  the  pastor  take  the  precedence, 
while  the  administrative  detail  is  subordinate  and  may 
be  intrusted  to  lay  helpers.  In  the  ancient  church, 
both  bishop  and  presbyter  were  originally  charged  with 
administrative  duties  and  only  gradually  and  to  a  lim- 
ited degree  assumed  the  functions  of  preaching  under  the 
stress  of  changing  circumstances.  It  is  hard,  if  not  in 
some  cases  impossible,  for  an  office  to  change  its  character, 
especially  in  an  age  like  that  of  Cyprian,  where  the  op- 
portunities of  theological  education  were  slight,  and  the 
motives  weak  which  should  induce  the  clergy  to  a  long 
course  of  preparation  for  their  task.  In  the  case  of  the 
presbyter  the  transformation  of  his  office  which,  in  addi- 
tion to  attesting  the  tradition,  was  originally  that  of  pas- 
toral care  and  discipline,  into  the  modern  tj^pe  of  the 
preacher  was  rendered  possible  by  his  resignation  to  the 
bishop  of  his  original  function  as  a  defender  of  the  faith 
which  left  him  free  to  develop  in  some  other  way.  But  in 
the  case  of  the  bishop,  the  native  bent  of  liis  office  was  not 
changed,  but  rather  intensified,  and  forced  by  the  circum- 
stances of  history  into  a  further  development  on  the  basis 
of  its  original  character.  Meantime,  in  the  age  of  Cyprian, 
he  was  still  performing  the  duties  of  pastor  of  the  local 
church,  and  where  the  city  in  which  he  lived  had  a  large 
population    and   Christian  congregations  multiplied,   he 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  123 

delegated  his  presbyters  to  serve  them,  and  the  office  of 
bishop  grew  in  consequence  in  power  and  dignity. 

It  was  in  the  greater  cities  of  the  Empire,  like  Rome  ^  or 
Alexandria  or  Antioch,  and  more  particularly  in  Rome, 
that  the  later  type  of  bishop  was  first  developed.  It  was 
natural  for  the  bishops  of  such  cities  to  assume  a  tone  of 
higher  authoritj^  as  if  they  almost  represented  a  different 
order  from  the  humble  bishop  or  pastor  of  some  small 
church  in  some  remote,  inaccessible  locality.  The  popu- 
lar imagination,  which  counts  for  so  much  under  such 
circumstances,  ministered  to  this  assumption  of  a  superior 
dignity.  And  it  was  this  assumption  which  Cyprian 
resisted.  Despite  his  autocratic  character  and  the  exclu- 
sive privileges  which  he  vindicated  for  the  bishop,  he  was 
in  reality  maintaining  the  equality  in  office  of  the  bishop 
or  pastor  of  the  meanest  hamlet  with  the  bishop  of  Rome. 
He  himself  was  the  metropolitan  or  presiding  bishop  in 
his  own  province  of  proconsular  Africa,  but  he  argued  for 
the  weakest  and  feeblest  of  his  brethren,  as  having  alike 
with  himself  received  the  divine  calling,  endowed  with 
the  equal  Apostolic  power  which  came  through  the  grace 
of  orders.  Everywhere  he  saw  but  one  principle  of  unity 
for  the  church,  the  one  bishop  or  pastor,  with  whom  the 
faithful  must  be  in  communion  in  order  to  salvation. 
The  totality  of  bishops  or  pastors  constituted  a  solidarity, 
which  was  the  essence  of  the  church,  and  a  part  of  this 
solidarity  was  held  by  each  bishop  or  pastor,  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  whole  body.^  To  elevate,  as  we  should  say, 
the  tone  of  the  clergy,  to  make  these  bishop-pastors  realize 
their  responsibility,  was  the  aim  of  Cyprian.  In  the  in- 
terest of  this  conception,  he  was  emboldened  to  resist 
the  attitude  of  Rome,  which  even  then  was  aspiring 
not  merely  to  precedence,  but  to  authority  over  the 
churches. 


1  The  growth  of  the  church  in  Rome,  and  possibly  the  number  of  its 
congregations,  may  be  inferred  from  tlie  statement,  in  Eusebius  (H.E.  vi. 
43),  that  in  the  middle  of  the  third  century  it  counted  forty -six  presbyters, 
seven  deacons,  etc. 

2  De  Unit.  5. 


124  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

The  influence  of  Cyprian  in  modifying  the  constitution 
of  the  ancient  church  is  to  be  seen  most  directly  in  the 
method  which  he  urged  for  the  appointment  of  the  bishop 
or  pastor.  Before  his  time,  the  right  of  the  congregation 
to  appoint  its  ministers  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  doc- 
trine that  the  ministry  was  representative  of  the  people, 
and  received  its  authority  by  their  sanction.  According 
to  Cyprian,  the  authority  came  not  from  the  congregation 
or  from  a  ministry  which  was  to  be  regarded  as  its  repre- 
sentative, but  from  without,  from  a  clergy  which  had 
received  its  authority  from  a  source  external  to  the  people, 
—  an  authority  or  commission  which  had  been  handed 
down  from  their  predecessors  in  a  sacred  ofifice,  and  which 
could  only  be  imparted  by  those  who  possessed  it  in  this 
long  chain  of  descent.  The  voice  of  the  people  was 
henceforth  restricted  to  giving  information  as  to  the 
worthiness  or  unworthiness  of  those  who  were  candidates 
for  the  office. 

This  separation  between  clergy  and  laity,  which  tended 
to  make  the  clergy  an  official  caste,  was  deepened  into  an 
impassable  barrier  by  Cyprian's  doctrines  of  the  sacerdotal 
character  of  the  ministry.  In  the  Christian  literature  of 
the  age  which  preceded  him,  there  may  be  traces  of  a 
tendency  pointing  in  the  direction  of  that  which  Cyprian 
proclaimed,  but  they  are  feeble  and  uncertain.  He  was 
the  first  to  proclaim  without  qualification  that  the  Chris- 
tian minister,  by  the  authority  given  in  ordination,  was 
a  priest,  after  Jewish  or  heathen  analogies,  not  only  in 
the  sense  of  representing  the  congregation  before  God, 
but  also  of  representing  God  and  communicating  His 
gifts  to  the  people.  There  is  a  sense,  indeed,  in  which 
the  Christian  ministry  must  always  aj^pear  as  having  a 
priestly  or  mediatorial  character,  inasmuch  as  the  truth 
which  they  proclaim  must,  in  order  to  be  effective,  pass 
through  the  medium  of  their  personality  or  be  affected  by 
the  equation  of  individual  character.  But  this  mediato- 
rial quality  pertains  also  to  every  Christian  man  who  seeks 
to  influence  his  brethren.  It  is  a  charisma  of  the  Spirit, 
which  is  not  official  in  its  character,  which  can  neither  be 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  125 

given  nor  taken  away  by  human  authority.  It  was  not  in 
this  sense  that  Cyprian  asserted  the  sacerdotal  character 
of  the  ministry.  Nothing  so  vague,  so  indeterminable  by 
ecclesiastical  law,  would  have  met  his  purpose  or  satisfied 
the  temperament  of  his  mind ;  and,  let  us  add,  perhaps  the 
exigencies  of  the  situation.  The  Christian  ministry,  as 
he  conceived  it,  is  a  priesthood  like  the  Jewish,  differing 
from  it  in  this  only,  that  if  the  one  has  passed  away,  the 
other  is  to  endure. ^  The  threatenings  of  the  older  dis- 
j)ensation  are  true  of  the  new  law,  —  the  man  that  will 
not  hearken  unto  the  priest  shall  die.  The  analogy  of 
Korah,  Dathan,  and  Abiram  is  invoked  as  applicable  still 
to  those  who,  in  their  abandoned  mind  and  sacrilegious 
daring,  question  the  authority  of  the  Christian  priesthood. 
Such  as  these  are  not  rejecting  the  individual,  but  are 
defying  God.^  So  utterly  unhistorical  was  the  mind  of 
Cyprian,  that  in  seeking  for  evidence  to  sustain  his  posi- 
tion, he  quoted  the  words  of  Christ  to  the  leper  that  was 
healed,  "Go  show  thyself  to  the  priest,"  as  indicating 
the  establishment  of  j^riesthood  as  of  perpetual  divine 
obligation.^ 

The  priesthood,  with  which  Cyprian  identified  the 
Christian  clergy,  must  needs  also  have  an  altar  and  some- 
what to  offer  thereon  for  the  people.  The  suggestion  for 
this  offering  he  found  in  the  bread  and  wine  which  the 
people  brought  as  the  material  for  the  Lord's  supper. 
That  offering,  which  the  people  had  hitherto  presented  in 
their  capacity  as  a  royal  priesthood,  and  which  had  been 
consecrated  by  the  pure  will,  is  in  Cyprian's  teaching  the 
material  for  another  and  higher  offering  to  be  made  by 
the  priest  alone.  "  The  bishops  or  pastors  come  near  to 
the  Lord  God,  the  Holy  One,  to  minister.  Purity  is 
demanded  of  them  and  unstained  character  in  order  that 
tliey  may  holily  and  worthily  offer  sacrifices  and  may  be 
heard  in  the  pra^^ers  which  they  make  for  the  safety  of  the 
Lord's  people."*  It  is  assumed  without  discussion  that 
the  congregation,  as  individuals  or  as  a  whole,  is  incora- 

^  Contra  Judcens,  17.  ^  Epis.  ad  Eogat.  Ixiv. 

2  E^yis.  ad  Cornel,  liv,  *  Epis.  Ixvii.  1,  2, 


126  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

petent  or  unfit  to  offer,  nor  are  they  competent  to  appoint 
their  rej)resentatives,  who  offer  for  them.  These  are 
appointed  by  God,  through  agencies  of  His  own  desig- 
nation, and  in  which  the  congregation  has  no  share.  Tlie 
change  seems  to  have  been  as  complete  as  it  was  sudden, 
which  has  made  it  possible  for  Cyprian  to  assume  such  an 
attitude  without  the  necessity  of  defending  it  against 
resistance.  And  yet,  not  many  years  earlier,  Tertullian 
had  written:  "Are  not  also  we  laity  priests?  It  is 
written.  He  hath  made  us  a  kingdom  of  priests  to  God 
and  His  Father.  It  is  the  authority  of  the  church  which 
distinguishes  between  clergy  and  laity,  which  has  assigned 
in  the  congregation  a  special  rank  and  special  seats  for  the 
clergy.  When  there  are  no  clergy,  you  make  the  offerings 
and  baptize  and  are  priests  solely  for  yourselves.  When 
three  are  present,  there  is  a  church,  although  they  be  lay- 
men. Because  you  have  the  power  to  exercise  the  func- 
tions of  a  priest  when  it  may  be  necessary,  you  should 
also  submit  to  the  discipline  to  which  the  ]3riests  are 
subjected."  1  If  the  laity  were  no  longer  conscious,  in 
Cyprian's  time,  of  desire  or  ability  to  make  for  themselves 
the  offering  before  God,  it  was  well  that  a  body  of  men 
should  arise  who  stood  ready  to  offer  for  them.  But  from 
the  tone  of  Cyprian's  writings,  it  is  evident  that  he  made 
no  effort  to  keep  alive  in  the  congregation  a  sense  of  its 
duty  or  privilege.  He  assumes  the  obligation  of  the 
bishop  or  pastor  to  offer  and  to  sacrifice  as  the  inherent 
and  distinctive  function  of  his  office,  for  which  God  alone 
has  qualified  him,^  through  the  verbal  commission  of  the 
episcopate  in  succession  from  the  Apostles. 

1  De  Exhor.  Castit.  c.  vii. 

2  Of.  Lightfoot,  Essay  on  the  Christian  Ministry,  pp.  242-267,  who 
finds  no  authority  for  the  sacerdotal  conception  of  the  Christian  ministry 
in  the  New  Testament,  and  regards  it  as  contradicting  the  general  tenoi 
of  the  Gospel.  The  first  germs  of  its  appearance,  which  are  found  at  the 
close  of  the  second  century,  developed  so  rapidly  that  in  the  age  of 
Cyprian  "the  plant  has  all  but  attained  its  full  growth."  Cf.  also  Harnack, 
Dogmengesch.  I.,  pp.  .386,387,  on  Cyprian's  teaching  regarding  priesthood 
and  sacrifice  :  "  Die  klerikale  Schriftauslegung  mit  ihren  Schrecklicheu 
Einfallen  hat  an  Cyprian  ihren  ersten,  und  zwar  sofort  einen  sehr  virtuo- 
sen,  Vertreter  erhalten.  .  .  .     Erst  in  den  verhangnissvollen  Decennien, 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPRIAN  127 


IV 


In  summing  up  the  work  of  Cyprian,  it  may  be  said 
that  he  strengthened  the  foundations  of  the  Catholic 
church  by  formulating  those  doctrines  of  Apostolic  succes- 
sion and  of  a  mediating  priesthood  on  which  was  built  the 
later  massive  and  imposing  structure.  In  his  time,  also, 
the  word  '  Catholic,'  as  the  designation  of  the  church, 
began  to  come  into  more  general  use,  though  it  was  not 
inserted  in  the  creeds  as  the  object  of  faith  and  allegiance 
until  the  fourth  century.  Cyprian's  view  of  Apostolic 
succession  superseded  the  earlier  theory  first  advocated  by 
Irengeus  and  in  substance  adopted  by  TertuUian,  that  the 
Apostles  handed  down  to  their  successors,  whether  pres- 
byters or  bishops,  a  teaching  received  from  Christ,  and 
these  in  turn  guaranteed  its  genuineness  and  integrity  to 
those  that  followed  them.  According  to  this  latter  view, 
adherence  to  Apostolic  teaching  is  the  evidence  of  a  legiti- 
mate descent  of  the  ministry  from  the  Apostles.  Such 
is  the  view  which  can  still  be  traced  in  the  older  church 
of  the  East,  where  a  departure  from  what  is  held  to  be  the 
true  teaching  or  tradition  is  regarded  as  throwing  doubt 
upon  the  validity  of  a  ministry.  Such,  it  may  be  also 
added,  is  the  view  which  may  be  held  in  Protestant 
churches,  that  in  adherence  to  the  teaching  of  the  New 
Testament,  the  only  tradition  which  comes  from  Christ, 
there  is  a  spiritual  bond  —  the  most  real  of  all  bonds  — 
connecting  the  ministry,  through  all  the  successive  gen- 
die  zwisclicu  der  septimianischen  und  der  decianischen  Verfolgung  liegen, 
fand  dieses  statt,  und  est  ist  in  Abendland  wiederum  Cyprian,  der  fiir  uns 
zuerst  die  neue  Betrachtung  und  Praxis  bezeugt ;  ist  fiir  Cyprian  die 
Vorstellung  asketisclier  Satisfactionen  eine  ganz  gelaufige  und  wird  von 
ihm  ini  Interesse  der  Katholicitat  der  Kirche  ausgebeutet,  hat  er  einen 
neuen  Begriff  vom  Opfer  im  Cultus  aufgestellt."  M.  R^ville  finds  the 
clear  statement  of  the  sacerdotal  principle  in  the  Epistle  of  Clement  to 
the  Corinthians,  as  in  the  assertion  that  the  ministry  possesses  a  power 
and  authority  not  derived  from  the  congregation.  Cf.  Les  Origines  de 
riSpiscnpat,  p.  391  :  "L'essentiel  ici  c'est  de  constater  la  premiere  appa- 
rition de  I'id^e  sacerdotale  et  d' observer  qu'elle  a  surgi  tout  d'abord  k 
Rome,  avant  meme  la  constitution  d'un^piscopat  monarchique  danscette 
ville." 


128  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

erations,  with  the  Master  and  His  disciples.  Such  a 
succession  as  this  has  not  been  and  cannot  be  broken. 
But  in  Cyprian's  time  the  maintenance  of  the  tradition 
was  no  longer  the  vital  issue.  The  Gnostic  vagaries  had 
been  overcome,  and  the  Canon  of  the  New  Testament  had 
been  practically  determined;  or  where  doubts  remained 
regarding  the  right  of  any  book  to  an  admission  therein, 
they  were  destined  to  yield  or  disappear  in  the  following 
generations.  Cyprian's  doctrine  of  Apostolic  succession 
introduced  another  element,  —  the  perpetuation  of  a  priest- 
hood qualified  to  sacrifice  by  a  j)ower  of  verbal  commission 
which  was  believed  to  have  been  given  by  Christ  to 
His  Apostles,  and  by  them  handed  over  to  the  bishops 
as  their  successors.  Such  a  power  or  commission  no  man 
could  take  unto  himself,  nor  was  an}^  spiritual  culture, 
however  jjure  or  high,  an  adequate  substitute. 

There  was  in  this  conception  a  certain  adaptation  to  the 
age  and  to  the  institutions  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  found 
a  place  in  the  church  for  the  presbyters,  changing  their  un- 
certain position  into  a  fixed  and  definite  one, —  a  priesthood 
appointed  to  stand  at  the  altar  and  offer  an  acceptable  sac- 
rifice to  God  for  the  people.  The  episcopate  also  rose  to 
higher  dignity  when  it  was  regarded  as  the  sole  repository 
of  the  power  which  enabled  a  priesthood  for  its  function. 
There  was  no  question  of  preaching,  for  in  an  adminis- 
trative system  like  Cyprian's,  preaching  was  no  longer 
the  method  by  which  the  church  was  to  be  strengthened 
and  consolidated.  Nor  had  presbyter  or  bishop  inherited 
the  traditions  of  the  preacher.  But  the  bishop  could 
qualify  the  presbyter  with  the  right  to  offer  the  sacrifice 
against  all  unauthorized  intruders.  The  doctrine  that  this 
power  had  been  transmitted  from  the  Apostles  through 
their  successors  grew  in  popular  favor,  nor  did  it  meet 
with  any  opposition  sufficiently  powerful  to  overcome  its 
adaptability  to  the  needs  of  the  age.  The  principle  of 
Cyprian  that  only  bishops  could  ordain  became  the  law  of 
the  church,  recommended  as  it  was  by  its  analogy  with 
Roman  conceptions  of  the  transmission  of  power,  and  by 
its  practical  value  also  as  a  working  rule,  which  subjected 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPEIAN  l2d 

candidates  for  the  ministry  to  a  close  surveillance,  thus 
preventing  the  church  from  falling  into  confusion,  as 
would  have  been  the  case  if  presbyters  and  bishops  could 
have  been  appointed  at  the  will  of  irresponsible  individu- 
als, or  at  the  instigation  of  popular  factions.  As  the  free- 
dom of  the  earlier  age  disappeared,  the  age  of  ecclesiastical 
administration  demanded  the  suppression  of  the  relics  of 
the  older  time  or  their  relegation  into  harmless  insio'nifi- 
cance.  Hence  that  principle  of  Cyprian's,  that  only 
bishops  could  ordain  to  the  priesthood,  or  at  least  that 
their  approval  was  necessary  in  case  of  ordination,  together 
with  the  rule  that  the  presence  of  neighboring  bishops 
was  necessary  when  a  bishop  was  to  be  appointed,  this 
principle  remained  to  become  the  corner-stone  of  Catholic 
administration. 

Another  feature  of  the  work  of  Cyprian  which  survived 
was  his  conception  of  the  episcopate  as  a  close  corporation. 
A  body  of  administrative  officers  is  henceforth  identified 
with  the  Catholic  church.  They  are  dignified  and  enno- 
bled by  the  theory  that  the  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  in 
their  exclusive  possession.  Hence  they  act  together  in 
councils,  and  their  decisions  carry  the  weight  of  divine 
revelation.  From  these  councils,  presbyters,  deacons, 
and  laity  were  gradually  excluded  as  the  high  estimate 
of  the  bishop's  power  grew  into  general  acceptance.  So 
far  the  work  of  Cyprian  prevailed.  But  his  conception 
of  the  equality  of  the  bishops,  for  which  he  gallantly 
struggled  against  the  Roman  church,  did  not  meet  with 
the  same  success.  Even  in  his  own  time  there  emerged 
from  the  ranks  of  the  consolidated  episcopate  individual 
bishops  who  claimed  the  power  of  presiding  over  large 
jurisdictions,  without  whose  concurrence  the  local  bishop 
was  not  authorized  to  act,  except  in  those  instances  where 
ecclesiastical  law  already  had  invested  him  with  power. 
The  words  of  Ignatius,  which  had  been  first  applied  to  the 
local  congregations,  "Do  nothing  without  the  bishop," 
were  now  applied  to  the  higher  officer,  "  Let  not  the  bishop 
do  anything  without  his  metropolitan."^     There  maybe 

1  Can.  ix,  Council  of  Antioch,  341  a.d.  ;    Can.  xxxiv,  Apos.  Can. 


130  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHUECH 

seen  in  the  rise  of  this  hierarchical  gradation  among  the 
bishops  an  endeavor  to  meet  a  difficulty  which  Cyprian 
had  not  fully  contemplated.  There  must  be  some  check 
on  the  bishops  themselves,  some  larger  office  which  with 
a  wider  outlook  and  a  broader  sympathy  could  supplement 
the  narrow,  isolated  range  of  the  local  episcopate  or  neu- 
tralize its  idiosyncrasies.  But  the  office  of  bishop,  which 
might  have  suffered  in  dignity  from  the  oversight  or  rigid 
autocracy  of  metropolitans,  was  saved  by  another  tendency 
which  began  to  operate  soon  after  Cyprian's  time,  that 
bishops  should  no  longer  be  appointed  in  places  where  a 
presbyter  could  serve  as  well.  The  suppression  of  the 
smaller  bishoprics,  as  in  country  villages,  or  in  districts 
adjacent  to  cities,  by  taking  from  their  bishops  the  power 
to  ordain,  kept  pace  with  the  growth  of  the  hierarchy,  and 
the  reason  for  the  change  was  plainly  alleged:  lest  the 
rank  of  the  bishop  should  suffer  in  dignity. ^ 

But  now,  also,  there  were  defects  in  the  Cyprianic  con- 
ception of  catholicity,  which  became  more  apparent  as 
time  went  on.  Metropolitans  of  themselves  did  not  con- 
stitute a  sufficient  check  upon  a  body  of  clergy  which  had 
been  emancipated  from  the  control  of  the  congregation  and 

1  In  the  sixth  of  the  Sardican  Canons  (a.d.  343):  "  It  is  not  allowed  to 
appoint  a  bishop  in  a  village  or  small  town,  where  one  priest  suffices,  in 
order  that  the  episcopal  dignity  may  not  suffer ;  but  the  bishops  of  the 
province  shall  only  appoint  one  for  those  places  where  there  have  been 
bishops  before.  If,  however,  a  town  is  so  populous  as  to  appear  worthy 
of  a  bishop,  it  shall  obtain  one"  (Hefele,  II.  135).  See  also  the  tenth 
Canon  of  the  Synod  of  Antioch  (a.d.  .341).  Council  of  Laodicea  (a.d. 
343-381,  the  exact  date  is  unknown,  Can.  57  :  "In  villages  and  in  the 
country  no  bishops  may  be  appointed  but  visitors  (irepiodevTal) ;  and  those 
who  are  already  appointed  shall  do  nothing  without  the  consent  of  the 
bishop  of  the  town,  as  also  the  priests  may  do  nothing  without  the  con- 
sent of  the  bishop"  (Hefele,  11.  .321). 

In  the  time  of  Leo  the  Great,  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century,  the  process 
of  restricting  the  episcopate  in  the  interest  of  its  dignity  still  continued : 

"Let  not  bishops  be  consecrated  in  any  place  nor  in  any  hamlet,  nor 
where  they  have  not  been  consecrated  before  ;  for  where  the  flocks  are 
small  and  the  congregations  small  the  care  of  the  presbyters  may  suffice, 
whereas  the  episcopal  authority  ought  to  jjreside  only  over  larger  flocks 
and  more  crowded  cities  lest  .  .  .  the  position  of  honor,  to  which  only 
the  more  important  charges  should  be  given,  be  held  cheap  from  the  very 
number  of  those  that  hold  it"  (Leonis,  Epis.  xii.  10). 


THE   AGE   OF   CYPKIAN  131 

which  acknowledged  no  responsibility  to  the  state.  It  may- 
be no  accidental  occurrence  that  in  the  later  years  of  Cyp- 
rian, there  came,  under  the  Emperor  Decius,  the  first  great 
organized  persecution,  in  which  a  systematic  effort  was 
ordered  in  every  part  of  the  Empire  for  the  suppression  of 
the  Catholic  church.  Such  a  movement  on  the  part  of 
the  state  followed  inevitably  the  effort  to  constitute  the 
church  an  imperium  in  imperio.  That  Cyprian's  attitude 
toward  the  state  implied  not  only  independence  of  the 
church  from  any  subjection  to  the  secular  power,  but  even 
fostered  in  the  church  the  tendency  toward  defiance  of  the 
civil  authority,  may  be  inferred  from  his  glowing  eulogy 
of  Cornelius,  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  who  died  about  the  time 
of  the  Decian  persecution :  "  He,  intrepid,  sat  at  Rome  in 
the  sacerdotal  chair  at  that  time  when  a  tyrant,  odious  to 
God's  priests,  was  threatening  things  that  can  and  cannot 
be  spoken,  insomuch  as  he  would  much  more  patiently 
and  tolerantly  hear  that  a  rival  prince  was  raised  up 
against  himself,  than  that  a  priest  of  God  was  established 
at  Rome."i 

The  conflict  between  the  church  and  the  Empire  may 
have  been  from  the  first  unavoidable,  but  the  motive  in 
the  Decian  persecution  may  be  clearly  discerned  as  an 
apprehension  on  the  part  of  the  state  that  a  foe  had  arisen 
whicli  was  undermining  its  power,  and  was  more  danger- 
ous to  its  existence  than  incursions  of  the  barbarians. 
The  absolute  subjection  of  Christian  people  to  the  bishop, 
to  whom  he  was  to  stand  as  the  law  of  every  action  and 
the  arbitrator  and  judge  in  all  their  differences,  whose 
weapons  for  defending  his  authority  were  superior  to  those 
of  the  state  because  they  involved  eternal  penalties,  — 
this  was  a  force  within  the  state  which  disintegrated  its 
integrity,  and  if  it  could  not  be  overcome  would  involve 
the  state  in  bankruptcy.  Cyprian,  indeed,  did  not  design 
his  policy  with  this  end  in  view,  but  none  the  less  its 
tendency  was  towards  an  usurpation  of  the  functions  of 
the  state  until  the  latter  had  become  its  subordinate  instru- 
ment for  the  execution  of  its   decrees.     The   growth  of 

1  Epis.  li.     Cf.  Harnack,  Dogmengesch.  I.,  p.  380. 


132  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

Christian  morality,  the  desire  for  some  higher  ideal,  the 
inadequacy  of  the  state  for  the  true  functions  of  govern- 
ment,—  all  these  motives  were  combining  to  create 
imperceptibly  another  organization  which  should  rise 
upon  the  ruins  of  the  discredited  and  bankrupt  Empire. 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  transformation  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry  into  a  priesthood  by  Cyprian  is  profoundly 
significant.  For  priesthoods  come  when  they  are  needed; 
they  are  in  waiting  for  a  society  which  has  lost  its  savor  or 
is  no  longer  capable  of  exercising  or  appreciating  its  free- 
dom. They  begin  their  work  beneath  the  surface  with 
the  very  fundamentals  of  discipline,  training  people  to 
the  observance  of  order  and  law,  to  subjection  to  authority. 
Such  was  the  lesson  which  the  Empire  needed.  But  it 
could  not  let  go  its  authority  and  prestige  without  a 
struggle.  How  clearly  the  Roman  state  saw  the  issue, 
was  manifested  in  the  method  which  it  pursued  ior  accom- 
plishing the  destruction  of  its  rival.  Under  Valerian 
(253-260  A.D.),  it  directed  its  attention  to  the  bishops  as 
its  most  dangerous  enemies,  as  well  as  the  mainspring  of 
the  church's  growth.  In  the  first  persecution  under 
Decius,  Cyprian  had  withdrawn  from  the  danger  which 
threatened  his  life  as  the  head  of  the  community  at  Car- 
thage. But  when  the  persecution  broke  out  anew,  he 
manfully  stood  at  his  post  and  met  his  martyrdom  like  a 
Christian  soldier.  Sixtus,  also,  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  like- 
wise became  a  martyr  for  that  cause  of  the  episco})ate,  of 
which,  no  less  than  Cyprian,  he  was  a  most  prominent 
representative. 

There  followed  another  great  general  persecution, 
the  Diocletian,  inspired  by  the  same  dread  and  hatred 
which  had  animated  the  persecutions  in  Cyprian's  time, 
and  again  it  was  demonstrated  that  the  Catholic  church 
was  too  strong  to  be  suppressed  by  physical  force.  But 
for  what  followed,  in  the  age  of  Constantine,  one  is  hardly 
prepared  who  has  taken  Cyprian  as  the  ideal  and  standard 
of  catholicity.  Both  state  and  church  reversed  their  atti- 
tude :  the  Empire  accepted  Christianity  as  the  state  reli- 
gion, and  the  bishops  bent  before  the  emperor,  submitting 


THE    AGE    OF    CYPitlAN  133 

to  the  state  as  the  check  upon  their  authority,  which 
Christian  people  as  such  in  the  congregation  could  no 
longer  exeicise.  The  significance  of  this  change  is  so 
momentous  for  the  fortunes  and  history  of  the  episcopate 
that  it  deserves  especial  consideration. 

Among  the  qualifications  for  the  office  of  a  bishop,  as 
they  were  first  set  forth  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles,  is  the 
requisition  that  "he  must  have  a  good  report  among  them 
tliat  are  without."  This  injunction  is  repeated  in  the 
first  of  the  Apostolic  Ordinances,  with  even  deeper  empha- 
sis. When  a  small  church,  which  does  not  have  so  many 
as  twelve  men  among  its  members,  is  about  to  provide 
itself  with  a  bishop,  and  the  neighboring  churches  have 
sent  three  men  to  assist  them  in  their  task,  these  delegates 
from  the  other  churches  are  to  examine  carefully  in  the 
first  place  whether  the  candidate  "is  worthy,  that  is,  if  he 
has  a  good  report  among  the  heathen."  As  one  dwells 
upon  the  significance  of  this  requirement,  it  is  seen  to 
involve  the  question  of  the  relation  of  the  church  to  the 
heathen  world,  to  the  world  of  ordinary  life  and  of  secular 
affairs.  No  such  demand  could  have  been  made  as  a  suit- 
able or  indispensable  preparation  for  the  prophetic  ofiice 
or  the  successful  fufilment  of  the  work  of  the  teacher. 
Indeed,  it  might  have  been  required  as  the  qualification 
for  the  performance  of  these  high  spiritual  functions,  that 
a  man  must  be  expected  to  incur  unpopularity,  and  even 
scorn  and  persecution,  as  the  condition  on  which  he  should 
undertake  his  office.  Otherwise  he  could  not  be  free  to 
proclaim  the  divine  Word  which  calls  for  the  condemnation 
of  evil  practices,  or  the  enunciation  of  unwelcome  truth 
in  any  form,  or  the  proclamation  of  the  doctrine  which 
should  seem  as  foolishness  to  the  heathen  mind. 

The  office,  then,,  of  bishop  or  pastor,  in  its  earliest  form, 
differed  from  the  ordinary  pastorate  of  the  modern  cliurches 
in  its  conciliatory  character  and  purpose,  so  that  the  bishop 
shall  recommend  the  church  and  the  new  religion,  to  those 
without  as  well  as  within,  by  the  graces  and  beauties  of 
the  spiritual  life,  which  even  the  heathen  must  admire. 
Even  if  he   be    not  apt   to  teacli   by  word   of  mouth,    or 


134  ORGANIZATION   OP  THE  CHURCH 

he  incompetent  to  expound  the  Scripture,  none  the  less 
he  will  appeal  to  the  world  of  ordinary  men,  who  have 
no  interest  in  doctrines  or  religious  controversies,  but  who 
judge  a  religion  by  its  fruits.  St.  Paul  was  a  teacher  and 
a  prophet  who  threatened  to  turn  the  world  upside  down 
with  the  revolutionary  doctrines  which  he  proclaimed, 
and  we  must  admit  that  for  such  men,  also,  the  world  has 
need.  The  truth  must  be  spoken  whether  men,  be  tliey 
heathen  or  otherwise,  will  hear  or  whether  they  will  for- 
bear. But  there  is  also  another  way,  and  of  this  way  the 
bishop  or  pastor  was  to  be  the  representative.  The  church 
must  adjust  itself  to  the  world  as  it  is,  before  it  can  suc- 
ceed in  overcoming  the  world.  Accommodation,  adapta- 
tion, assimilation  —  these  are  words  which  stand  for  another 
method  of  accomplishing  some  higher  result  for  the  king- 
dom of  God.  For  if  the  bishop  would  retain  the  honor 
and  confidence  of  those  without,  he  must  deal  prudently 
and  with  moderation  in  his  relation  to  things  which  can- 
not at  once  be  changed ;  he  must  be  willing  to  adopt  that 
which  is  in  itself  harmless  or  indifferent  in  heathen 
usage;  he  must  not  allow  himself  to  become  the  doc- 
trinaire advocate  of  some  theory,  one-sided  or  radical, 
which,  however  powerfully  it  might  recommend  itself  to 
a  few,  would  be  a  stumbling-block  to  the  many.  He 
must  make  the  church  grow,  recommending  it  to  the 
unbeliever  by  holy  actions  and  beneficent  fruits,  rather 
than  fly  in  the  face  of  the  world  and  keep  the  church 
small.  He  was  not  only  to  be  honest  and  above  suspicion 
as  a  business  man,  for  he  was  entrusted  with  the  care  of 
the  finances,  but  he  must  seek  to  recommend  the  cultus 
over  which  he  presided  in  ways  that  the  heathen  could 
appreciate.  He  must  adjust  himself  to  the  learning  of 
the  schools,  tolerating  the  appropriation  of  heathen  wis- 
dom and  its  fusion  with  Christian  teaching  when  it  con- 
tained nothing  at  variance  with  the  law  of  Christ.  He 
must  adjust  the  relation  of  this  world  to  another  in  no 
one-sided  fashion,  but  so  that  the  world  that  now  is  should 
be  consecrated  by  a  Christian  spirit,  and  not  anathema- 
tized as  an  evil  order  to  be  done  away.      And,  most  impor- 


THE   AGE   OF    CYPRIAN  135 

tant  of  all,  he  must  cultivate  some  attitude  toward  the 
state,  some  modus  vivendi,  which  would  make  it  possible 
for  the  church  to  live  and  grow  in  the  world,  even  under 
secular  rulers  who  did  not  understand  or  appreciate  its 
mission.  As  a  man  of  affairs,  he  would  necessarily  have 
an  interest  in  the  well-being  of  the  state,  seeking  to  pro- 
mote its  welfare,  upon  which  also  the  prosperity  of  the 
church  depended. 

But  all  this  was,  as  we  know,  most  obnoxious  to  those 
in  the  church,  who  had  inherited  and  cultivated  another 
attitude,  who  believed  that  the  destiny  of  the  church  was 
to  be  forever  at  war  with  the  existing  order,  that  every- 
thing of  heathen  origin  was  in  its  nature  evil,  that  only 
by  keeping  the  church  small  could  it  be  kept  pure,  that 
heathen  learning,  science,  and  art  were  antagonistic  to 
the  cultivation  of  piety  and  the  spirit  of  other-worldli- 
ness.  To  those  who  held  this  attitude,  and  who  were 
known  in  the  second  century  as  Montanists,  it  seemed  as 
though  the  church  had  embarked  on  a  dangerous  and 
perilous  enterprise,  when  it  removed  the  prophet  and  put 
the  catholic  bishop  in  his  stead.  The  secularization  of  the 
church  was  what  the  Montanist  dreaded,  and  this  was  the 
danger  involved  in  the  catholic  office  of  the  episcopate. 

When  we  compare  the  spirit  of  Cyprian  with  the  more 
genial  tone  of  the  catholic  episcopate  in  his  own  or  later 
ages,  it  is  evident  that  he  was  at  heart  more  in  sympathy 
with  the  Montanists,  who  disowned  the  world,  than 
with  the  catholic  spirit,  which  sought  to  appropriate 
whatever  miglit  contribute  to  the  growth  and  extension 
of  the  church.  Cyprian  was  the  forerunner  of  that 
type  of  the  later  Protestantism  which  separates  sharply 
between  the  state  and  the  church,  which  advocates  some 
theory  in  doctrinaire  manner  of  that  which  ought  to  be, 
and  refuses  to  adjust  the  church  to  the  life  of  the  state. 
To  a  certain  extent  he  inspired  the  Western  church  with 
his  spirit,  and  might  have  been  more  successful,  if  he  had 
not  been  resisted  by  the  bishops  of  Rome.  His  attitude  in 
the  controversies  of  his  age,  in  which  he  contended  for 
strict  dealing  with  those   who  had  lapsed  in  the  perse- 


136  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

cutions,  or  the  necessity  of  re-baptism  where  baptism  had 
been  j^erformed  by  a  heretic,  or  in  defective  form,  indi- 
cates that,  like  a  true  Montanist,  he  would  keep  the 
church  small  if  he  could  keep  his  ideal  of  its  purity.  His 
effort  to  mingle  Montanism  and  catholicity,  retaining  the 
exclusive  and  more  obnoxious  features  of  each  position, 
resulted  in  a  compound  which  was  as  impracticable  as  it 
was  intolerable.  He  placed  the  church  in  an  attitude  of 
defiance  toward  the  state ;  he  sought  to  emancipate  the 
bishops  from  all  control  or  check  upon  their  procedure. 
But  he  could  not  destroy  or  wholly  neutralize  that  ten- 
dency in  the  episcopate  which  made  the  office  a  mediating 
influence  between  the  church  and  the  world.  When  Con- 
stantine  held  out  his  hand  to  the  church,  the  bishops  as  a 
body  welcomed  his  advances,  they  lent  him  their  counte- 
nance and  aid  and  sympathy,  they  easily  became  officers  of 
the  state  as  well  as  of  the  church,  and  for  the  most  part  sub- 
mitted without  reluctance  to  imperial  control.  The  result 
of  this  attitude  of  the  episcopate  in  the  Eastern  church 
was  the  building  up  of  a  great  nationality,  whose  centre 
was  Constantinople,  which  endured  for  a  thousand  years 
in  the  midst  of  such  trials  and  dangers  as  hardly  any 
other  nation  was  ever  content  to  undergo.  But  in  the 
Western  or  Latin  church,  when  the  Roman  Empire  fell  in 
476,  and  the  bishops  lacked  the  protection  of  the  state, 
when  there  was  no  higher  authority  to  which  they  were 
amenable,  they  fell  into  bondage  to  a  power  with  which 
they  had  no  natural  sympathy,  but  against  which  they 
were  not  competent  to  struggle,  • —  the  absolute  authority 
of  the  bishops  of  Rome.^ 

1  Art.  Cyprianns  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.  by  E.  C.  Benson,  late  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury;  Lightfoot,  in  Essmj  on  the  Christian  Ministry; 
Articles  on  Ordination  and  Priest,  by  Hatch  in  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq. ;  also 
in  his  Bampton  Lectures,  1880  ;  lectures  v.,  vi.;  Art.  Priester,  in  Herzog, 
R.  E.  Pearson,  Annales  Cyprianici  ;  Dodwell,  Dissertationes  Cyprianae  ; 
Poole,  Life  and  Times  of  Cyprian;  Sage,  Principles  of  the  Cyprianic 
Age,  and  Vindication  of  Principles,  etc. ;  Jameson,  C.  Isotinins  in  reply 
to  Sage  ;  Gervaise,  La  Vie  de  St.  Cyprien  ;  Kayser,  Cyprien  on  Vautonomie 
de  V Episcopat,  in  Rev.  de  Theol.  xv. ;  Huther,  Cyprian''s  Lehre  von  der 
Kirche,  Haruack,  in  Dogmengesch.  I.;  TJettburg,  Thnscius  Cdcilius. 
Cyprianns ;  and  other  monographs  by  O.  Ritschl,  Eeinkens,  Fechtrup. 


CHAPTER   IX 

MONASTICISM^  IN  ITS  RELATION  TO  THE  EPISCOPATE  AND 
TO   THE   CATHOLIC    CHUKCH. 


Among  the  institutions  to  which  Christianity  has  given 
birth  there  is  none  more  important  for  its  vast  influence  and 
far-reaching  consequences  than  monasticism.  Catholicism, 
as  represented  in  the  episcopate,  had  reached  its  full  de- 
velopment and  was  at  the  height  of  its  power  when  monas- 
ticism arose.  It  was  as  if  the  ocean  of  spiritual  life  had 
been  moved  to  its  depths  ;  for  the  agitation  did  not  at  once 
subside,  but  wave  after  wave  of  monastic  influence  con- 
tinued to  roll  over  the  church,  carrying  this  peculiar  type 
of  Christianity  forward  into  new  fields  of  exertion,  and  not 
subsiding  until  it  had  accomplished  its  hidden  purpose  in 
the  age  of  the  Reformation,  after  a  thousand  years  had 
passed  away. 

As  Catholicism  had  developed  in  the  cities  of  the  Empire, 
so  monasticism  was  a  return  to  the  country.  Not  only  had 
Christianity  found  its  earliest  and  largest  opportunity  in 

1  Literature.  Ilaniack,  Das  Monchthum,  seine  Ideale  tmd  seine  Ge- 
srJiichte,  3d  ed.,  1886  ;  Mohler,  Geschichte  des  Monchthums,  1836  ;  Monta- 
leiubert,  Les  Moines  d'' Occident  depuis  St.  Benoit  jusqiCa  St.  Bernard, 
180O;  Helyot,  Histoire  des  Ordres  Monastiques,  Beliyieux  et  3Iilitaires, 
Paris,  1714  ;  Hdnrion,  Histoire  des  Ordres  Beligienx,  1835.  Articles  on 
Monasticism  in  Herzog,  B.  E.,  by  Weingarten,  and  by  Venables  in  Smith 
and  Cheetham,  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.  Also  Isaac  Taylor's  Ancient  Chris- 
tianity, Vol.  I.  ;  Lecky,  History  of  European  Morals,  Vol.  II.  ;  Newman 
on  the  Benedictine  Order,  in  Historical  Essays ;  the  general  Church  His- 
tories of  Neander,  Hase,  Moeller,  Schaff,  Fleury,  Tillemont,  etc.  Among 
the  more  important  Sources,  Athanasii,  VitdT^Antonii ;  the  Greek  his- 
torians Socrates,  Sozomen,  Evagrius ;  Theodoret,  Historia  Beligiosa ; 
Jerome,  Vita  Banli,  and  of  other  anchorets  ;  Rufinus,  Historia  Eremitica, 
Sulpicius  Severns,  Dial.  III. ;  Cassianus,  Instit.  and  Collat. 

137 


138  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

towns  and  cities,  but  in  the  city  also  had  the  later  diocesan 
episcopacy  been  developed  as  the  necessary  correspondent 
of  the  political  solidarity  for  which  the  civic  community 
stood.  But  the  monks  fled  from  the  city  as  the  first  condi- 
tion of  attaining  their  ideal.  Solitude  was  their  aim,  and 
the  country  remote  from  human  society  or  civilization 
remained  to  the  last  their  favorite  resort.  When  civiliza- 
tion threatened  to  approach  them  as  in  their  later  history 
in  Western  Christendom,  they  emigrated  anew  in  search  of 
some  deeper  recess  in  the  wilderness.  St.  Jerome  was  no 
ascetic  of  the  stricter  sort,  as  to  food,  or  raiment,  or  disci- 
pline. What  he  sought  for  was  loneliness,  where  a  man 
could  abide  with  himself.  "  Others,"  he  writes,  "  may 
think  what  they  like,  but  to  me  the  town  is  a  prison,  and 
solitude  is  paradise."  In  a  letter  to  a  young  man  proposing 
to  become  a  monk,  he  says : 

"  Since  you  ask  me  as  a  brother  in  what  path  you  should  walk,  I 
will  be  open  witli  you.  If  you  wish  to  take  duty  as  a  presbyter,  and 
are  attracted  by  the  work  or  dignity  which  falls  to  the  lot  of  a  bishop, 
live  in  cities  and  walled  towns,  and  by  so  doing  turn  the  salvation  of 
others  into  the  profit  of  your  own  soul.  But  if  you  desire  to  be  in 
deed  what  you  are  in  name,  a  monk,  that  is,  one  who  lives  alone, 
what  have  you  to  do  with  cities  which  are  the  homes  not  of  solitaries 
but  of  crowds?  Every  mode  of  life  has  its  own  exponents.  To 
come  to  our  own  case,  let  bishops  and  presbyters  take  for  tlieir  exam- 
ples the  Apostles  or  their  companions,  and,  as  they  hold  the  rank 
which  these  once  held,  let  them  endeavor  to  exhibit  the  same  excel- 
lence. And  last  of  all,  let  us  monks  take  as  the  patterns  which  we 
are  to  follow  the  lives  of  Paul,  of  Anthony,  of  Julian,  of  Hilarion,  of 
the  Macarii.  And  to  go  back  to  the  authority  of  scripture,  we  have 
our  masters  in  Elijah  and  Elisha,  and  our  leaders  in  the  sons  of  the 
prophets ;  who  lived  in  fields  and  solitary  places  and  made  themselves 
tents  by  the  waters  of  Jordan.  .  .  .  After  the  freedom  of  their  lonely 
life  they  found  confinement  in  a  city  as  bad  as  imprisonment."  ^ 

We  shall  not  err,  if,  in  endeavoring  to  fix  the  character- 
istic features  of  monasticism,  we  revert  to  the  appearance 
it  presented  in  the  hour  of  its  birth  before  changes  and 
compromises  liad  modified  its  external  aspect,  without, 
however,  overcoming  its  essential  purpose.  In  the  fourth 
century,  the  age  of  Athanasius  and  Constantine,  when 
1  Epis.  ad  Paulimim,  Iviii.  5. 


MONASTICISM  139 

monasticism  came  to  the  birth,  it  seemed  like  a  veritable 
stampede  from  the  Catholic  church,  as  though  that  great 
creation  of  Christian  energy  were  no  better  than  the  evil 
world  from  which  escape  was  sought.  For  the  thousands  of 
men  and  women  also  who  were  then  taking  their  flight  from 
the  world  practically  left  the  church  behind  them,  carrying 
with  them  no  bishops,  making  no  provision  for  ritual  or 
sacrament.  To  these  things  they  were  indifferent,  if  not 
averse.  Jerome,  the  most  distinguished  as  well  as  the 
most  typical  representative  of  early  monasticism,  the  most 
learned  man  also  of  his  age,  and  the  most  finished  scholar, 
was  finally  ordained  a  presbyter;  but  the  ordination  was 
against  his  will,  and  he  never,  it  is  believed,  officiated  in 
the  sacraments  or  rites  of  the  church.^  He  was  willing 
that  others  associated  with  him  should  do  so ;  for  himself, 
he  was  called  to  different  and,  as  he  felt,  higher  duties. 
In  a  letter  to  Augustine,  he  contrasts  his  own  work  with 
that  of  a  bishop,  whose  function  was  administration  of 
ecclesiastical  affairs,  for  which  he  had  no  aptitude  and,  it 
must  also  be  said,  no  admiration. ^ 

We  get  the  keynote  of  monasticism  on  its  ecclesiastical 
side  in  the  famous  utterance  of  St.  Jerome  Avhich  was 
never  afterwards  forgotten ;  to  the  effect  that  the  names 
'  bishop '  and  '  presbyter '  were  used  interchangeably  in  the 
New  Testament,  that  in  the  beginning  of  Christianity  the 
presbyter  was  the  equal  of  the  bishop,  and  that  the  bishop 
was  placed  above  the  presbyter  because  the  arrangement 
was  demanded  by  the  exigencies  of  an  evil  time.  He  goes 
on  to  remind  the  bishops  that  this  arrangement  was  of 
human  origin  and  not  divine,  —  a  circumstance  of  which 
the  bishops  should  be  aware  as  well  as  the  presbyters.^ 

1  Cf.  Art.  Hieronymus,  in  Smith  and  Wace,  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.  His 
ordination  (a.d.  379)  was  "against  his  will,  and  he  never  consecrated  the 
sacrament  or  officiated  as  a  presbyter"  (III.,  p.  32). 

2  Epis.  (112)  ad  Atiguslin.  For  a  vivid  picture  of  Jerome  in  his  rela- 
tion to  his  time,  vide  Thierry,  A.,  Saint- Jerome,  la  societe  Chretienne  a 
Borne  et  V Emigration  llomaine  en  Terre  Sainte,  1807.  Among  Jerome's 
letters  which  give  his  ideal  of  Monasticism,  are  :  Epis.  (14)  ad  Heliod., 
Epis.  (22)  ad  Eustoch.,  Epis.  (46)  ad  3Iarcell.,  Epis.  (125)  ad  Rustic. 

3  "  Sicut  ergo  presbyteri  .sciunt,  se  ex  ecclesiae  con.suetudhie  ei,  qui 
sibi  praepositus  fuerit,  esse  subjectos,  ita  episcopi  noverint,  se  uiagis  con- 


140  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHUKCH 

Whether  Jerome  was  right  in  this  contention  is  not  here 
the  question.  The  meaning  and  force  of  his  attitude  is  not 
overcome  by  the  detection  of  any  inaccuracy  in  his  asser- 
tion regarding  the  origin  of  the  ministry.  That  the  terms 
'  presbyter '  and  '  bishop '  were  used  as  synonyms  in  the 
New  Testament  may  be  disputed  without  affecting  the  nat- 
ure of  his  statement.  He  is  employing  an  argument  when 
he  seems  to  be  witnessing  to  historical  facts.  There  is  a 
latent  reasoning  in  his  words  to  the  effect  that  in  the  nor- 
mal spiritual  order  the  presbyter  in  his  monastic  cell  is 
the  equal  of  the  bishop  in  the  great  city.  He  does  not 
antagonize  the  existing  arrangement,  but  accepts  the  law 
of  the  church  which  has  placed  the  bishop  above  the  pres- 
byter. He  is  courteous  and  reverent  to  those  whom  the 
Catholic  church  designates  as  his  ecclesiastical  superiors. 
But  for  himself,  he  holds  his  own  position  to  be  in  the 
nature  of  the  case  the  higher  one,  and  only  asks  that  there 
shall  be  no  interference  with  his  work.  He  reproves  those 
bishops  who  seek  for  popularity  or  make  themselves  so  ob- 
noxious as  to  be  hated.^  He  reminds  them  that  the}''  are 
not  to  regard  themselves  as  lords  over  God's  heritage.^ 
But  his  strongest  indignation  was  called  forth  hy  the 
effort  to  put  the  deacons  on  a  footing  of  equality  with 
the  presbyters.  This  attempt  to  depreciate  the  spiritual 
authority  of  the  presbyter  was  the  occasion  of  his  famous 
letter  to  Evangelus,^  in  which  he  asserted  and  reiterated 
and  illustrated  his  position  that  the  presbyters  were  equal 
to  the  bishops  ;  that  they  were  charged  by  the  Apostles  with 
the  duty  of  episcopal  supervision ;  that  even  the  Apostles 
claimed  it  as  an  honor  to  belong  to  the  presbyterate ;  and 
that  traces  of  this  original  equality  were  shown  at  Alex- 
andria, wliere  the  presbyters  consecrated  the  bishops,  so 

suetudine  quam  dispositionis  Dominicae  veritatis  presbyteris  esse  majores 
et  in  commune  debere  ecclesiam  regere  "  (Comm.  ad  Tit.,  i.  7). 

"  Apud  veteres  iidem  episcopi  et,  presbyteri  fuerunt,  quia  illud  nomen 
dignitatis  est  hoc  aetatis  "  (Epis.  ad  Oceanum,  Ixix.  3). 

"Idem  est  ergo  presbyter  qui  episcopus,  et  antequam  diaboli  in- 
stinctu  studia  in  religione  fierent.  .  .  .  Communi  presbyterorum  con- 
silio  ecclesiae  gubernabantur  "  (Comm.  ad  Tit.,  i.  7). 

1  Epis.  ad  Oceannm,  Ixix.  9. 

2  Epis.  ad  Theoph.,  Ixxxii.  11.  3  Epis.  cxlvi. 


MONASTICISM  141 

late  as  the  time  of  Heraclas  (a.d.  233-249)  and  Dionysius 
(a.d.  249-265).  He  qualifies  for  himself  and  his  compan- 
ions the  duty  of  obedience,  "  refusing  to  serve  under  com- 
pulsion beneath  the  shadow  of  Episcopal  authority,  men 
whom  we  do  not  choose  to  obey."  ^  He  regards  the  service 
of  the  tables  as  inferior  to  the  higher  ministry  of  the 
Word,  which  belongs  to  the  bishop  and  presbyter  alike,  as 
if  the  Gospel  never  could  have  contemplated  placing  the 
function  of  administration  above  the  spiritual  function  of 
the  teacher  of  the  truth.  It  is,  in  other  words,  the  familiar 
argument  that  while  bishops  may  be  necessary  to  the  well- 
being  of  a  church,  they  are  not  necessary  to  its  existence. 
And  such  remained  the  motive  of  monasticism  throughout 
its  history  in  Western  Christendom.  It  never  lost  its  inner 
mood  of  antagonism  to  the  episcopate  ;  its  history  is  a  record 
of  conflicts  with  the  bishops,  of  rivalries  and  jealousies,  of 
defeats  and  of  victories,  till  it  finally  issued  in  the  age 
of  the  Reformation,  in  organized  churches  which  had  no 
bishops,  where  prophecy  or  the  preaching  of  the  Word  was 
placed  above  the  gift  of  administration. 

In  its  opposition  to  the  episcopate  monasticism  is  the  con- 
tinuation of  that  earlier  movement  known  as  Montanism, 
against  which  the  rising  Catholic  church  had  struggled  in 
the  second  century,  and  in  so  doing  had  come  to  a  clearer 
consciousness  of  its  own  character  and  purpose.^  Monta- 
nism had  been  subdued,  but  it  was  not  without  a  succession 
of  its  own.     Novatianism,  as  it  was  called,  was  a  schism  of 

1  Epis.  Ixxxii.  11. 

2  The  points  of  caffinity  between  Montanism  and  Monasticism,  by  which 
the  latter  is  seen  as  a  continuation  of  the  Montanist  spirit  and  purpose, 
are  (1)  their  common  attitude  of  renunciation  of  the  world  ;  (2)  their  in- 
difference toward  the  state  ;  (3)  their  dislike  to  the  Catholic  organization 
of  the  church  ;  (4)  their  maintenance  of  the  principle  of  direct  relation- 
ship with  God ;  (5)  the  tendency  of  individualism,  which  makes  cultiva- 
tion of  personal  piety  the  supreme  aim  ;  (6)  the  practical  adoption  by  the 
monks  of  the  reformatory  ordinances  of  Montanism,  which  they  pushc  d 
to  further  extremes ;  (7)  a  similar  doctrine  regarding  the  nature  of  tlic 
church,  which  became  increasingly  manifest  in  the  age  of  the  Reforma- 
tion;  (8)  it  was  in  monasteries  that  preaching  was  developed,  and  that 
prophetism  reappeared  after  its  long  silence,  as  in  the  "  Eternal  Gospel " 
or  in  individual  prophets  who  ai'ose  in  the  later  Middle  Ages,  to  protest 
against  the  corraption  of  the  church. 


142  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  third  century  whicli  reasserted  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  Montanism,  its  theory  of  discipline,  its  doctrine 
of  the  church  and  of  its  relation  to  the  world,  its  antago- 
nism to  the  episcopal  regime.  If  the  Novatian  schism 
yielded  under  the  vigorous  policy  of  the  Catholic  church, 
it  was  only  to  be  followed  by  another  movement  known 
as  Donatism,  which  set  up  in  the  towns  and  villages  of 
North  Africa  a  rival  church  to  the  Catholic  church,  resem- 
bling it  in  outward  organization,  but  with  an  inward  motive 
which  points  to  an  antagonism  to  catholicity,  which  neither 
argument  nor  persuasion,  kindness,  nor  even  the  force  of 
the  state  could  overcome.  The  Montanist,  the  Novatian, 
the  Donatist,  were  all  alike  in  this  respect,  that  they  did 
not  believe  that  salvation  depended  on  adherence  to  the 
Catholic  church,  that  church  out  of  which  there  was  no 
salvation  as  Cyprian  had  maintained,  and  as  Augustine  at 
a  later  time  asserted  with  equal  emphasis.  In  this  convic- 
tion monasticism  also  shared,  putting  the  conviction  into 
practical  form,  by  fleeing  to  the  desert  or  the  cell,  in  order 
to  cultivate  the  religious  life,  and  attain  reconciliation 
with  God. 

An  antagonism  so  deep,  so  radical,  and  touching  all  the 
relations  of  life,  points  to  one  motive,  as  the  only  adequate 
explanation,  — it  was  the  conflict  generated  between  those 
opposite  poles  of  all  human  thought  and  activity,  which 
however  hard  it  may  be  to  define  we  yet  can  easily  under- 
stand, and  which  have  been  designated  as  solidarity  and 
individualism.  The  Catholic  church  stood  for  solidarity, 
for  the  subordination  of  the  individual  to  society  or  to  the 
fellowship  of  the  church ;  it  stood  for  unity  as  the  crying 
need  of  the  world  in  that  age,  in  opposition  to  the  varia- 
tions, the  divisions,  which  individualism  begets.  To  the 
individual  calling  for  that  which  would  meet  his  special 
need,  asking  for  inward  assurance  of  pardon,  which  no 
external  voice  or  rite  could  convey,  or  seeking  for  a  closer 
walk  with  God,  the  Catholic  church  offered  an  organization 
which  recognized  no  inherent  differences  in  men,  a  com- 
mon ritual,  a  common  sacrament,  where  all  men  as  indis- 
tinguishable links  of  a  vast  chain  might  find  a  common  or 


I 


MONASTICISM  143 

social  salvation.  To  the  soul  crying  out  for  God  and  for 
direct  access  to  God  as  the  only  satisfaction  for  its  deeper 
distinctive  needs,  tlie  Catholic  church  offered  the  bishops, 
as  the  bond  of  unity,  to  be  acknowledged  and  obeyed, 
and,  according  to  the  teaching  of  Ignatius  and  Cyprian, 
representatives  of  God  in  every  community.  That  the 
Catholic  church  had  an  important  mission,  which  could 
be  accomplished  only  on  the  basis  of  its  organization,  must 
be  admitted.  It  was  called  to  minister  to  a  world  where 
humanity  was  conceived  as  existing  in  order  to  the  welfare 
of  the  state,  where  the  reverse  truth,  that  the  state  exists  in 
order  to  the  highest  welfare  of  the  individual,  had  not  yet 
been  recognized.  It  met  the  Empire  on  its  own  ground, 
binding  the  peoples  together  in  a  higher  and  stronger  soli- 
darity than  the  state  could  achieve.  The  purpose  of 
monasticism  was  to  prepare  the  way  for  another  concep- 
tion of  man  in  his  social  relations,  and  another  doctrine  of 
the  church,  by  which  unity  should  be  attained,  if  at  all,  by 
a  spiritual  fellowship  whose  bond  should  be  individual 
faith  and  love. 

The  several  efforts  which  had  been  made  to  resist  the 
authority  of  the  Catholic  episcopate  had  failed,  when  in 
monasticism  there  came  an  effort,  a  spontaneous  outburst 
on  so  vast  a  scale,  so  intense  too  in  its  nature,  that  it  could 
not  be  overcome,  with  which  the  Catholic  church  was  obliged 
to  come  to  terms.  But  the  Catholic  church  was  now  also 
too  strong  for  any  movement  of  resistance  to  its  authority 
to  hope  for  absolute  success.  There  resulted  a  compromise, 
therefore,  between  these  opposite  and  almost  imcompatible 
forces.  The  Catholic  church  followed  the  monks  with  priest 
and  sacrament,  they  were  not  to  be  allowed  to  escape  its  au- 
thority;  but  within  its  fold,  and  under  the  limitations  of  a 
church  within  a  church,  they  were  at  liberty  to  cultivate  the 
monastic  ideal.  The  compromise  could  not  have  been  accom- 
plished so  easily,  if  within  the  church  there  had  not  also 
been  a  wide  reaction  against  the  methods  of  ecclesiastical 
authority,  and  a  deep  sympathy  on  the  part  of  those  who 
remained  in  the  church  with  their  brethren  who  had  aban- 
doned  its   protection.     Almost  all  the  great  men  of  the 


144  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHITRCH 

fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  those  who  had  attained  any  indi- 
vidual development  beyond  their  brethren,  were  in  sym- 
pathy with  monasticism  and  even  labored  to  promote  its 
victory.  Such  were  Athanasius,  the  two  Gregories,  and 
Basil,  in  the  East;  in  the  West,  Ambrose  and  Leo  and 
Augustine. 

It  is  only  in  the  Latin  church  that  monasticism  can  be 
said  to  have  had  a  career  where  it  revealed  its  full  content 
and  the  possibilities  of  its  endowment,  and  moved  on  to 
the  attainment  of  its  hidden  purpose.  But  before  turning 
to  the  work  which  it  accomplished  in  Western  Christen- 
dom, we  may  dwell  for  a  moment  on  its  record  in  the 
Eastern  church.  The  organization  of  the  Catholic  church 
being  more  complete  in  the  East  than  in  the  West,  it  was 
from  the  first  more  difficult  for  monasticism  to  reach  there 
a  true  and  enlarged  conception  of  its  function  or  gain  the 
liberty  which  its  fulfilment  demanded.  Its  rule  of  life  was 
drawn  up  by  a  Catholic  bishop,  St.  Basil  of  Csesarea,  by 
whom  the  monasteries  were  subjected  to  episcopal  super- 
vision and  control;  and  from  the  time  that  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon  also  confirmed  the  authority  of  the  bishop  over 
monasteries  within  his  jurisdiction,  this  law  became  a  final 
arrangement  for  the  whole  church  of  the  East.  The  result 
may  be  regarded  as  the  victory  of  the  Catholic  church  over 
a  movement  which  was  at  least  indifferent  if  not  hostile  to 
ecclesiastical  authority.  But  this  was  only  part  of  the 
compromise.  If  the  bishop  was  to  govern  the  monasteries, 
it  was  fitting  that  he  should  be  himself  a  monk,  and  here 
monasticism  was  victorious  and  weakened  the  efficiency  of 
the  church  in  the  East.  The  bishops  were  henceforth  to 
be  celibate,  educated  in  the  monastery,  under  the  obedience 
of  monastic  vows,  and  called  from  the  monastery  to  their 
sees. 

In  this  compromise  between  Catholicism  and,  monasti- 
cism, it  is  evident  that  the  latter  had  won  a  real  victory, 
while  the  triumph  of  the  church  in  subjecting  the  monas- 
teries to  episcopal  control  was  merely  nominal  or  yielded 
no  valuable  results.  The  bishop  from  this  time  lost  that 
character  which  made  him  an  efficient  administrator,  who 


MONASTICISM  145 

could  mediate  between  the  church  and  the  world,  who,  as 
a  statesman,  could  take  the  large  view  of  religious  issues 
which  the  nature  of  the  office  demanded.  The  bishops 
now  tended  toward  a  narrow  and  bitter  partisanship,  and, 
influenced  by  monastic  fanaticism,  they  caught  that  Mon- 
tanist  spirit  of  timidity  which  is  always  lamenting  that  the 
church  is  in  danger.  Henceforth,  that  genial  tone  which 
had  marked  the  earlier  bishops  disappeared;  the  Mon- 
tanist  tendency  which  once  they  had  successfully  combated, 
now  weakened  the  whole  system.  How  could  men  trained 
in  the  monastery,  and  such  inchoate  imperfect  institutions 
as  the  Eastern  monasteries  were,  be  fitted  to  govern  a 
church  whose  mission  was  in  the  world  and  to  the  world? 
For  no  opportunity  came  to  the  Eastern  monks  as  to  their 
Western  brethren  to  build  up  a  new  civilization.  They 
never  in  the  East  went  beyond  the  contemplative  concep- 
tion of  the  monkish  ideal.  Henceforth,  literature  and  the- 
ology alike  declined,  the  church  was  marked  by  a  one-sided 
devotion  to  ecclesiastical  interests,  and  gradually  lost  its 
sympathy  with  the  large  human  interests  which  early  catho- 
licity had  embraced.  It  may  not  indeed  explain  the  stagnant 
condition  of  the  Eastern  church  that  she  so  unfortunately 
adjusted  her  compromise  with  monasticism,  but  it  is  evident 
that  tlie  compromise  was  of  such  a  nature  as  to  rob  both  the 
Catholic  church  and  the  monastery  of  freedom  of  develop- 
ment, and  each  tended  to  neutralize  the  purpose  of  the 
other.  From  that  day  to  our  own  there  has  been  but  little 
development,  intellectual  or  spiritual  or  moral,  in  the  Holy 
Orthodox  church  of  the  East.  Only  through  its  close 
organic  relationship  with  the  state,  has  it  been  able  to 
retain  its  dignity  and  conserve  some  limited  degree  of 
spiritual  activity. 

When  we  turn  to  the  Western  part  of  the  Empire,  the 
scene  is  a  different  one.  The  system  of  ecclesiastical  or- 
ganization as  it  had  developed  in  the  East  during  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries  had  not  been  applied  in  the  West,  nor 
had  it  been  possible  to  extend  it  there,  even  if  the  Councils 
of  the  East  had  sought  to  do  so.  For  the  church  had  not 
pervaded  Gaul  and  Spain  as  it  had  the  countries  of  Asia 


146  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

Minor,  of  Egypt,  or  Syria,  wliile  Germany  and  England  and 
Scandinavia  still  remained  in  the  darkness  of  heathenism. 
In  the  East  great  patriarchs  ruled  at  Constantinople,  at 
Alexandria,  at  Antioch,  and  Jerusalem,  to  whom  metro- 
politans were  subjected,  and  beneath  the  metropolitan  stood 
the  crowded  ranks  of  the  ordinary  parish  episcopate,  or  the 
presbyters  rising  beneath  them.  But  in  the  West,  the  met- 
ropolitan system  had  never  been  completely  applied.  There 
was  also  but  one  patriarch,  the  limits  of  whose  diocese  were 
practically  whatever  he  might  choose  or  be  able  to  make 
them.  The  Council  of  Nicsea  indeed  had  defined  the  juris- 
diction of  the  bishop  of  Rome,  but  later  councils  which 
had  gone  on  perfecting  the  ecclesiastical  organization  in  the 
East  had  paid  but  little  attention  to  the  West,  or,  so  far 
as  they  had  legislated  at  all,  had  inclined  to  recognize  a 
certain  vague  supremacy  of  the  bishop  of  Rome  over  the 
entire  West. 

If  the  system  of  ecclesiastical  organization  which  had 
been  adopted  in  the  Eastern  Empire  had  been  extended  in 
the  West,  there  should  have  been  independent  patriarchs  in 
North  Africa,  in  Gaul  and  Spain,  in  Germany,  in  England, 
and  in  Scandinavia,  as  well  as  in  Italy.  But  even  had  the 
church  in  the  East  contemplated  the  application  of  this 
system  in  the  West,  it  would  have  been  found  impossible 
because  of  the  legendary  requirement  that  a  patriarchal 
see  must  have  been  founded  by  an  Apostle.  It  was  hard 
enough  for  Constantinople,  a  new  city  built  in  the  fourth 
century,  to  fulfil  this  requirement ;  but  she  had  claimed 
St.  Andrew  as  her  Apostle,  and  as  she  was  the  capital  city 
of  the  East,  there  had  been  no  disposition  to  scrutinize  too 
rigidl}^  her  claim.  But  in  the  West  it  was  only  too  evident 
that  no  one  of  the  twelve  Apostles  could  be  utilized  in  this 
fashion.  Gaul  did  not  claim  an  Apostle  as  the  original 
founder  of  her  churches,  but  was  content  with  an  Apos- 
tolic man,  St.  Dionysius  the  Areopagite,  who  had  listened 
to  Apostolic  teaching.  The  British  church,  which  had 
ceased  to  have  any  influence  in  England  after  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  invasion,  pointed  to  no  Apostle  as  its  founder. 
Spain  might  have  used  the  name  of  St.  Paul,  who  had 


MONASTICISM  147 

declared  his  intention  to  go  there,  but  there  is  no  tradi- 
tion in  the  Spanish  church  of  his  visit,  and  for  some  rea- 
son unexf)lained,  she  endeavored  to  get  possession  of  the 
body  of  St.  James,  whose  shrine  is  now  said  to  be  at  Com- 
postello.  But  whatever  this  tradition  may  be  worth,  it  was 
not  strong  enough  to  create  an  Apostolic  patriarchal  see 
for  Hispania.  As  for  the  other  countries  of  the  Western 
Empire,  they  had  yet  to  be  converted.  And  so,  in  the 
popular  belief,  the  only  Apostolic  see  in  the  West  was  that 
of  Rome,  and  she  was  left  to  herself  to  assert  and  main- 
tain her  prestige  as  she  was  able  or  as  the  divine  will  in 
human  history  enabled  her. 

When  the  scene  opened  in  the  West,  after  the  barbarian 
invasion  was  over,  as  in  the  time  of  Pope  Gregory  the 
Great  (a.d.  590-604),  the  episcopate  was  in  a  depressed 
condition,  inactive  and  inefficient.  It  would  not  have  been, 
possible  for  Gregory  to  have  called  the  bishops  to  order  as 
he  did,  had  the  office  still  maintained  itself  in  its  pristine 
vigor.  The  cause  of  the  weakness  in  the  Western  episco- 
pate was  its  lack  of  any  centre  about  which  to  rally,  or 
to  which  it  might  look  for  support.  In  the  East  after  the 
Empire  had  been  divided,  the  old  Catholic  vision  of  a 
church  which  knew  no  distinctions  of  race  or  nation  had 
also  vanished,  and  the  great  patriarchates  practically  cor- 
responded to  national  churches.  As  one  by  one  they  fell 
under  Mohammedan  sway,  only  the  Greek  church  remained 
in  its  integrity,  calling  itself  Catholic  and  holding  the 
traditions  of  the  Empire,  while  in  reality  a  national  institu- 
tion not  aspiring  to  supremacy  over  Christendom.  But  in 
the  West  the  nations  had  not  yet  arisen,  and  the  tenta- 
tive efforts  at  monarchy  were  too  uncertain  in  their  tenure 
to  form  permanent  points  of  attachment  for  the  episcopate. 
The  system  of  governing  the  church  by  means  of  great 
synods  which  might  have  been  a  substitute  in  the  West  for 
the  patriarchal  sees  was  also  an  Eastern  institution.  All 
the  CEcumenical  Councils  had  been  held  on  Eastern  soil, 
and  for  the  most  part  were  attended  by  Eastern  bishops. 
Even  if  a  General  Council  had  been  desired  or  demanded 
in  the  West  at  this  period,  there  was  no  recognized  author- 


148  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

ity  which  could  call  a  council  or  compel  attendance,  or  pay 
the  expenses  which  it  would  involve.  The  church  had  yet 
to  be  organized  in  the  West,  and  the  only  germ  for  the 
reorganization,  recognized  as  Apostolic,  was  the  bishop  of 
Rome.  Such  were  the  circumstances  under  which  the 
development  of  monasticism  in  the  West  began. 

The  peculiar  feature  of  the  reorganization  of  the  West- 
ern or  Latin  church  which  differentiates  it  from  anything 
known  in  the  church  before  was  the  institution  of  the  pa- 
pacy. From  the  point  of  view  at  which  we  are  now  con- 
sidering it,  the  papacy  was  a  compromise  between  those 
two  historic  forces,  the  Catholic  or  secular  side  of  the 
church  represented  by  the  episcopate,  and  the  more  strictly 
religious  side  represented  by  the  monastery.  As  a  compro- 
mise it  was  vastly  more  efficient,  as  there  is  hardly  need 
to  remark,  than  the  adjustment  which  the  less  fortunate 
church  in  the  East  had  been  driven  to  adopt.  The  papacy 
did  not  arise  until  after  the  barbarian  invasion  had  done  its 
work,  antl  the  task  began  of  reconstructing  the  order  of  the 
Western  church.  The  papacy  of  course  claims  catholicity 
as  its  possession,  and  even  more  effectually  than  the  Greek 
national  church  with  Constantinople  at  its  head ;  for  it  has 
incorporated  the  word  '  Catholic  '  into  its  designation  as  a 
church,  which  its  Eastern  rival  has  failed  to  do.  There  is 
indeed  one  sense  in  which  also  it  seems  more  catholic  than 
its  Eastern  rival,  in  that  it  refuses  to  know  distinctions 
of  race  or  nation.  Such  had  been  the  purpose  of  the 
Catholic  church  when  it  first  appeared,  when  it  was  adapt- 
ing itself  to  existence  in  an  empire  which  had  abolished 
national  distinctions.  But  if  we  regard  catholicity  as  that 
divine  quality  in  the  Christian  church  which  enables  it,  and 
indeed  forces  it,  to  adapt  itself  to  the  changes  of  time  and 
environment,  in  order  the  better  to  fulfil  its  mission,  then 
the  distinction  of  catholicity  is  an  imperishable  adjunct  of 
Christian  faith,  the  mark  of  a  living  church  in  every  age 
or  country,  wherever  adaptation  of  the  external  form  to 
national  or  race  peculiarities,  or  to  the  circumstances  of 
the  time,  gives  it  new  strength  for  its  work  of  conquering 
the  world  for  Christ. 


MONASTICISM  149 

The  papacy  from  the  time  when  it  first  appeared  in  its 
living  germ  as  an  institution,  in  the  pontificate  of  Gregory 
the  Great,  leaned  more  to  the  monastic  interpretation  of 
life  than  to  the  secular  as  represented  in  the  episcopate. 
Gregory  himself  had  been  a  monk  devoted  to  his  mo- 
nastic calling,  and  sincerely  unwilling  to  leave  his  mon- 
astery when  called  to  be  bishop  of  Rome.  There  was  thus 
created  an  alliance  between  monasticism  and  the  papacy 
which  continued  to  increase  in  strength  during  all  the  ages 
of  papal  domination.  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  papacy 
was  by  no  means  exclusively  filled  by  monks,  but  great 
secular  bishops,  who  had  no  monastic  training,  were  also 
called  to  fill  the  office.  Perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  monas- 
tic side  of  the  papacy  has  left  the  deeper  impression  on 
the  Roman  church,  as  under  Gregory  the  Great,  in  the 
hour  when  the  institution  was  in  its  plastic  mould,  and 
again  under  Hildebrand,  who  must  always  be  regarded  as 
the  greatest  in  the  long  line  of  Roman  pontiffs  and  the 
real  founder  of  papal  dominion.  But  great  secular  admin- 
istrators were  not  far  behind  them,  such  as  Innocent  III., 
who  carried  the  office  to  its  highest  dignity  and  power. 
In  thus  mediating  between  these  two  aspects  of  Christi- 
anit}^  represented  by  the  episcopate  and  the  monastery, 
the  papacy  fulfilled  one  of  the  grandest  missions  which  it 
has  ever  been  given  to  any  institution  to  perform.  Herein 
is  partly  accounted  for  the  vigor  and  aggressive  activity 
of  the  Latin  church  as  compared  with  the  church  in  the 
East,  where  the  development  of  both  these  factors  was 
suddenly  arrested,  and  a  decline  ensued  to  which  the  lapse 
of  time  has  as  yet  brought  no  revival. 

II 

Monasticism  was  an  integral  part  of  the  Mediaeval  church, 
so  closely  related  to  its  life  as  an  organic  institution  that 
it  may  not  be  possible  in  every  instance  to  trace  its  peculiar 
and  special  influence.  And  yet  it  may  also  be  detached  in 
thought,  as  if  a  separate  distinct  existence  within  the  church, 
an  ecclesiola  in  ecclesia.    In  this  way  we  detach  the  papacy, 


150  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

and  study  its  rise,  its  decline,  and  fall.  So,  also,  the  episco- 
pate may  be  traced  through  the  Middle  Ages,  bearing  the 
marks  which  it  received  at  its  birth  in  the  Apostolic  age, 
while  serving  an  institution  by  which  its  own  peculiar  func- 
tion was  weakened  but  never  lost.  The  episcopate  in  the 
Middle  Agres  survived  the  chano-es  and  chances  of  that 
strange  eventful  period,  when  the  leading  ecclesiastical 
forces  of  the  time  were  ariayed  against  it.  It  survived 
and  it  reappeared  at  the  Reformation  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land and  elsewhere,  somewhat  as  it  may  have  appeared  in 
the  age  of  Constantine.  What  it  had  accomplished  for 
civilization,  what  it  had  stood  for  in  the  general  relations 
of  the  time,  will  be  alluded  to  hereafter.  But  in  passing, 
it  may  be  remarked  that  great  as  may  have  been  its  value 
or  significance,  it  has  never  been  regarded  as  one  of  the 
creative  factors  of  the  Mediaeval  church.  Its  r61e  seems 
subordinate,  for  its  opportunity  had  not  yet  come.  The 
peculiar  factors  of  the  Middle  Ages  ai-e  the  Papacy,  Mo- 
nasticism,  and  Scholasticism.  When  we  turn  our  attention 
to  monasticism,  asking  for  the  purpose  which  it  served,  the 
service  which  it  rendered  to  civilization  and  to  the  intel- 
lectual development  of  Europe  no  less  than  to  religion, 
and  how  it  compared  in  these  respects  with  the  episcopate 
between  which  and  itself  there  was  a  state  of  prevailing 
hostility,  if  not  active  warfare,  it  needs  but  a  slight  ac- 
quaintance with  the  history  of  the  early  Middle  Ages  to 
recognize  that  in  the  conversion  of  Europe  the  church  was 
mainly  indebted  to  the  zeal  and  labors  of  the  monks.  In 
the  accomplishment  of  this  vast  missionary  enterprise  the 
initiative  appears  as  coming  from  the  monasteries  rather 
than  from  the  secular  clergy  or  the  bishops.  Wherever 
we  look  in  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries,  we  find  the 
monks  engaged  in  the  task  of  carrying  the  Gospel  to  the 
heathen  ;  swarming  in  every  country,  in  Gaul  and  Ger- 
many, Switzerland,  Friesland,  and  Scandinavia.  Ireland 
and  Scotland  led  first  in  the  work,  two  countries  in  which 
the  organization  of  the  whole  church  was  monastic,  rather 
than  secular,  where  bishops  indeed  existed,  but  were  pas- 
sive or  inactive,  while  the  church  was  in  reality  governed 


MONASTICISM  151 

by  the  heads  of  the  monasteries.  The  first  missionary 
incentive  to  the  conversion  of  England  came  from  the 
monastery  of  Monte  Casino,  where  Gregory  lived.  When 
he  found  it  impossible  to  undertake  the  work  himself,  he 
sent  other  monks  in  his  place,  and  the  results  of  their 
mission  he  followed  with  paternal  care.  When  the  nortli 
of  England  relapsed  into  heathenism,  again  it  was  the 
monks  who  came  down  from  Scotland,  the  land  of  mon- 
asteries, and  reconverted  Northumbria. 

It  was  an  English  monk  known  as  St.  Boniface  (a.d.  680- 
755)  who  became  the  Apostle  of  Germany.  He  was  in- 
spired to  leave  his  country  for  his  life  work  abroad  by  the 
feeling  of  gratitude  to  Rome  for  having  sent  Augustine  for 
the  conversion  of  England.  In  reviewing  his  influence  on 
his  age,  it  becomes  apparent  that  even  the  papacy  itself  owes 
more  to  St.  Boniface  than  to  any  other  one  source,  that 
without  him  it  could  not  have  extended  its  sway  over 
Gaul  and  Germany.  It  was  the  supreme  object  of  his  life 
not  only  to  convert  the  heathen  to  Christianity,  but  to  hand 
over  the  organization  of  his  churches  to  the  control  of 
Rome.  He  visited  Rome  and  was  made  a  bishop,  and 
labored  thenceforth  to  bring  the  episcopate  into  subjection 
to  the  Roman  see.  He  himself  had  been  the  first  bishop 
to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  Rome.  With  him  began 
the  conquest  of  the  episcopate  by  the  papacy.  He  first 
organized  the  fruits  of  his  missionary  labors  in  Germany 
upon  this  principle,  and  then  proceeding  into  Gaul  at  the 
invitation  of  its  monarch  he  initiated  the  process  there  by 
which  the  episcopate  throughout  the  Frankish  monarchy 
was  finally  subjected  to  the  authority  of  Rome.  England 
might  have' had  a  different  career,  and  Germany  also,  if  it 
had  not  been  for  the  missionary  zeal  of  a  monk  at  Monte 
Casino,  whose  solitary  dream  resulted  in  such  vast  conse- 
quences for  Christendom.  We  have  here  the  alliance  of 
the  papacy  with  monasticism,  as  the  first  step  in  the  rising 
civilization,  the  combination  by  which  Europe  was  not  only 
Christianized,  but  the  early  Catholic  church  was  reorganized 
in  its  new  form.  Both  institutions,  the  papacy  and  the 
monastery,  have  a  cosmopolitan  character,  an  indifference 


152  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

to  the  ties  of  race  and  country,  which  makes  them  at  home 
among  any  people  and  in  any  land.  That  the  episcopate 
stood  for  an  indispensable  function  in  this  age  of  new 
beginnings  must  be  affirmed,  but  a  glance  at  the  names 
which  stand  supreme  in  the  missionary  annals  of  the  time 
shows  that  the  motives  to  missionary  enterprise  and  the 
accomplishment  of  the  task  must  be  credited  to  the  monas- 
tery rather  than  to  the  episcopate.  St.  Severinus  (f  482), 
the  patron  saint  for  most  of  Austria,  for  Vienna  and  Bava- 
ria ;  St.  Columba,  the  Apostle  of  Scotland  (f  597)  ;  St. 
Aidan  of  Northumbria ;  St.  Columbanus,  the  first  of  Irish 
missionaries  to  the  Continent  (f  615)  ;  St.  Fridolin,  the 
Apostle  of  the  Allemanni ;  St.  Gallus  of  Switzerland 
(f  640) ;  St.  Kilian,  the  Apostle  of  Franconia ;  St.  Willi- 
brord  (f  739),  the  Apostle  of  the  Frisians  ;  St.  Ansgar,  the 
Apostle  of  the  Scandinavians  (f  865)  ;  these  are  the  names 
of  great  missionaries,  some  of  whom  afterwards  became 
bishops,  all  of  whom  derived  their  missionary  zeal  from 
the  monasteries.  It  was  a  monk  also,  St.  Wilfrid,  trained 
at  Lindisfarne  and  then  abbot  at  Ripon,  whose  influence 
told  most  strongly  at  the  Council  of  Whitby  (a.d.  664), 
in  bringing  the  early  English  church  into  doctrinal  and 
ritual  harmony  with  the  church  at  Rome. 

Again,  in  the  intellectual  development  of  Europe,  the 
new  incentive  came  from  the  monasteries.  Learning  had 
taken  refuge  within  their  walls  at  the  moment  when  it  was 
threatened  with  total  extinction  by  the  barbarian  invasion. 
In  them  was  preserved  a  certain  respect  for  the  classical 
literature,  despite  the  pietistic  influence  of  Pope  Gregory 
the  Great,  who  thought  any  knowledge  unnecessary  beyond 
that  of  the  Bible  and  the  Fathers.  The  first  schools  were 
connected  with  the  monasteries.  There  were  schools  con- 
nected with  the  cathedrals  at  a  later  time,  but  the  monas- 
tic schools  took  the  lead  and  the  scholars  of  the  early 
Middle  Ages  were  their  inmates,  a  Bede  and  an  Alcuin. 
In  the  monasteries  of  Ireland  and  Scotland  the  knowledge 
of  Greek  survived  when  it  had  perished  elsewhere.  Thence 
went  forth  John  Scotus  Erigena,  not  a  monk  perhaps 
by  profession,  but  reviving  the  ancient  office  of  teacher 


MONASTICISM  153 

with  no  human  ordination.  The  leading  theologians  who 
carried  on  the  religious  controversies  from  the  time  of 
Charlemagne  to  Charles  the  Bald  either  were  monks  or 
had  been  trained  under  a  monastic  influence.  That  vast 
system  of  Mediaeval  philosophy  known  as  Scholasticism 
also  originated  with  the  monks.  In  its  many  phases,  it 
was  the  monks  who  stood  forth  as  its  exponents,  from  the 
time  that  it  took  shape  with  Anselm  until  it  passed  over 
into  nominalism  under  Occam.  At  one  time  nearly  all  the 
professors  at  Paris,  the  great  theological  centre,  were  men- 
dicant monks.  When  thought  first  became  sceptical,  the 
monk  Abelard  was  its  spokesman ;  when  it  became  conser- 
vative and  reached  the  height  of  its  peculiar  development 
and  influence,  two  monks  arose,  Thomas  Aquinas  and 
Duns  Scotus,  who  are  admitted  by  universal  consent  to 
stand  on  equal  footing  with  the  world's  great  thinkers. 
In  a  word,  the  intellectual  life  of  the  Middle  Ages  was 
almost  the  peculiar  appropriation  of  the  monastery. 

Or  if  we  turn  to  the  religious  life,  and  the  culture  of  piety, 
the  greatest  saints  are  ranked  among  the  monks.  Where 
shall  we  find  in  any  age  of  the  church  a  man  who  commands 
our  admiration  for  such  saintly  devotion  and  purity,  such 
simplicity  of  faith,  as  the  Venerable  Bede,  who  declined  the 
office  of  bishop,  and  preferred  to  be  a  layman  and  a  monk  ? 
Bede,  and  St.  Martin  of  Tours,  St.  Bernard,  St.  Anselm,  St. 
Bonaventura,  St.  Thomas  of  Aquinas,  and  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi,  —  these  may  be  only  the  greatest  among  many  who 
were  great  in  faith  and  in  love  and  in  good  works,  so  great 
that  they  belong  in  the  calendar  of  the  universal  church,  so 
great  in  their  spiritual  attainment  that  they  reflect  honor 
upon  the  race.  And  when  Scholasticism  fell  into  decline 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  when  the  Christian  mind  was 
confused  by  the  double  standard  which  Occam  had  set  up, 
it  was  monks  who  came  to  the  rescue,  who  developed  the 
content  of  faith  as  contrasted  with  the  reason,  Eckhart 
and  Tauler,  the  founders  of  that  higher  type  of  Mysticism 
which  prepared  the  way  for  Thomas  a  Kempis,  Savonarola, 
and  the  Reformers  before  the  Reformation. 

There  are  other  aspects  of  monasticism  in  its  relation  to 


154  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

civilization  which  are  equally  important,  but  to  which  only 
a  word  can  be  given  in  passing.  In  the  most  direct  way 
the  monks  labored  to  civilize  that  barbarous  age,  when 
they  came  forth  to  assume  the  lead,  by  ploughing  and  sow- 
ing, mowing  and  reaping,  hewing  down  the  forests,  laying 
the  foundations  of  towns  and  cities,  teaching  the  people  the 
dignity  and  sacredness  of  labor  as  well  as  the  methods  of 
agriculture,  and  all  this  combined  with  the  teaching  of 
religion  and  the  practice  of  charity.  Montalembert,  who 
wrote  a  panegyric  upon  monasticism  in  his  Histoi-y  of  the 
Monks  of  the  West,  remarks  that  the  English  bishoprics 
were  cradled  in  the  monastery.  But  it  almost  seems  as  if 
Western  civilization  itself  were  also  cradled  in  the  monas- 
tery, in  that  view  of  life  and  of  the  world,  which,  having 
gained  the  meaning  of  the  spiritual  by  renouncing  the 
world,  returns  to  the  world  again  in  order  to  rebuild  the 
temporal  and  secular  on  the  foundation  and  in  the  interests 
of  the  spiritual.  In  all  this  there  is  something  most  ex- 
traordinary, and  at  a  first  glance  almost  inexplicable.  Such 
is  the  feeling  of  the  traveller  who  pauses  for  a  moment  to 
gaze  at  the  ruins  which  the  monks  have  left  behind  them. 
He  is  impressed  with  the  vastness  of  the  labors  they  accom- 
plished ;  he  sees  the  traces  of  great  powers  of  administra- 
tion ;  he  bows  in  reverence  before  the  beauty  of  their  work 
in  architecture  and  in  art ;  but  he  also  wonders  why  they 
should  have  lived  as  they  did ;  it  seems  to  him  a  thing  so 
remote  from  modern  life  that  he  is  content  to  wonder  and 
make  no  effort  to  explain. 

The  difficulty  in  accounting  for  Western  monasticism 
lies  partly  in  the  stupendous  contradiction  which  the  sys- 
tem involves  between  its  early  motives  and  history,  as  we 
first  make  their  acquaintance  in  the  ancient  church,  and 
the  results  accomplished  in  the  Middle  Ages,  which  seem 
at  every  point  to  reverse  these  motives  and  to  falsify  the 
early  attitude.  In  the  age  when  they  arose  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries,  the  monks  appear  as  fleeing  not  only 
from  the  world  with  a  contempt  for  its  honors,  but  from 
the  Catholic  church  as  well ;  they  had  so  little  interest  in  the 
well-being  of  the  state  that  they  regarded  its  downfall  with 


MONASTICISM  155 

indifference ;  and  not  only  are  they  charged  with  want  of 
patriotism,  but  even  with  assisting  the  foes  of  the  state  in 
working  its  destruction.  At  that  time  also,  they  were  icon- 
oclasts, almost  inhuman  in  their  hatred  of  the  heathens,  in 
the  fanaticism  with  which  they  broke  down  heathen  tem- 
ples and  architectural  monuments.  They  were  the  stalwart 
opponents  of  heresy  ;  with  a  vindictive  devotion  to  anthro- 
pomorphic conceptions  of  God,  they  forced  the  bishops  into 
bitter  and  angry  controversies  over  differences  of  doctrine. 
It  was  they  who  did  most  to  overcome  and  banish  from  the 
church  that  higher  type  of  Christian  theology  represented 
by  Origen ;  they  despised  heathen  philosophy  and  are  im- 
plicated in  the  murder  of  one  of  its  famous  teachers ;  they 
turned  away  in  disgust  and  aversion  from  classical  litera- 
ture and  all  intellectual  pursuits ;  they  aimed  at  an  inac- 
tive life  in  order  to  the  practice  of  contemplation  as  their 
highest  duty ;  they  were  indifferent  to  the  extension  of  the 
church  or  the  salvation  of  society,  and  were  preoccupied 
with  the  salvation  of  their  own  individual  souls. 

And  in  the  Middle  Ages  all  this  was  reversed.  They 
struck  an  alliance  with  the  papacy,  helping  to  develop  a 
type  of  ecclesiasticism  whose  authority  over  the  con- 
science was  more  rigid  than  the  Catholic  rule  from  which 
they  fled.  From  having  been  despisers  of  the  order  of 
this  world,  they  aspired  to  become  its  conquerors  and 
sovereigns.  They  became  the  pioneers  of  civilization ; 
they  cultivated  literature  and  philosophy,  till  they  became 
the  intellectual  teachers  and  leaders  of  the  world.  They 
became  involved  in  affairs  to  such  an  extent  that  great 
abbots  and  priors  were  men  of  large  executive  capacity 
and  gave  the  models  of  administration  for  great  institutions. 
They  rejected  wealth,  and  yet  vast  revenues  were  at  their 
disposal,  so  that,  when  the  moment  was  ripe,  they  were  able 
to  give  the  first  impetus  to  ecclesiastical  architecture  and 
art,  and  in  their  devotion  to  art  they  have  made  the  modern 
world  their  debtors.  In  one  thing  alone  were  they  consist- 
ent,—  they  labored  to  secure  the  knowledge  and  to  culti- 
vate the  sense  of  immediate  and  personal  relation  to  God, 
in  order  to  the  attainment  of  salvation. 


156  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

III 

The  secret  of  this  strange  history  is  after  all  a  simple 
one,  —  the  motive  which  we  know  as  individualism,  in  con- 
trast and  in  opposition  to  solidarity.  The  Catholic  church 
had  aimed  to  solidify  the  church  and  the  world  in  unity, 
and  it  had  begun  to  appear  as  if  its  purpose  were  already 
achieved,  when  the  monks  arose  to  dispute  its  ideal,  to 
assert  the  importance  of  the  individual  man  as  greater  than 
the  institution,  as  greater  than  any  temple  which  man  could 
build,  or  wherein  he  might  worship.  The  influence  of  in- 
dividualism, as  a  superior  motive  of  life,  seemed  to  have 
been  suppressed  and  well-nigh  extinguished  when  the 
strange  phenomenon  of  monasticism  appeared,  the  harbin- 
ger of  a  vast  reaction,  in  reality  the  first  faint  beginning 
of  a  new  age.  From  the  Catholic  episcopate  which  stood 
in  its  way,  it  either  emancipated  itself,  or  else  labored  to 
subordinate  it  to  a  higher  power,  which,  like  the  papacy, 
should  be  in  sympathy  with  its  own  aim.  It  may  be  said 
of  monasticism,  in  the  modern  phrase,  that  during  the 
Middle  Ages  it  held  the  balance  of  power,  and  while  it 
was  still  a  living  force,  used  both  the  episcopate  and  the 
papacy  for  the  accomplishment  of  its  ends. 

Individualism  may  be  considered  as  the  highest  and  rarest 
product  of  human  development.  It  does  not  come  first 
in  the  order  of  time,  but  slowly  emerges  from  that  situa- 
tion in  which  humanity  appears  as  a  solid  mass,  in  which 
one  man  does  not  differ  greatly  from  another,  and  where 
the  interest  of  the  individual  is  subordinated  to  the  good 
of  the  whole.  It  is  that  potential  quality  which  distin- 
guishes humanity  from  the  lower  grades  of  the  animal 
creation.  In  the  lower  forms  of  civilization,  it  can  hardly 
be  said  to  exist,  but  betrays  its  possibility  in  the  rudest  germ, 
such  as  an  overpowering  selfishness.  Solidarity  comes  first 
in  the  historical  and  natural  order,  making  possible  the 
political  forms  of  the  tribe  or  the  nation,  where  all  may  act 
together  as  one  man  in  self-defence  or  for  mutual  support. 
When  solidarity  receives  its  highest  stamp  as  under  Chris- 
tian development,  it  becomes  the  brotherhood  and  fellowship 


MONASTICISM  157 

of  human  souls  bound  together  by  the  tie  of  love,  which  is 
both  human  and  divine.  But  wherever  a  solidarity  has 
been  established  before  individuality  has  had  a  chance  to 
develop  its  inherent  quality,  as  was  the  case  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  or  tlie  Catholic  church  of  the  early  centuries, 
there  external  force  in  some  of  its  many  varieties  becomes 
the  bond  of  unity  rather  than  the  charity,  which  is  of 
slow  growth  and  must  needs  be  first  secured  in  individual 
souls. 

The  roots  of  individualism  in  humanity  lie  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  birth  and  death,  —  that  we  come  into  the 
world  alone,  and  when  we  die  we  must  go  forth  alone  into 
the  vastness  of  infinite  space.  We  may  escape  the  fears 
or  the  inferences  which  these  facts  suggest  by  denying 
the  possibility  of  a  future  life  or  by  dwelling  in  the  mass 
of  humanity  as  indistinguishable  atoms,  until  the  sense 
of  individual  responsibility  grows  weaker  and  ceases  to 
trouble  us.  But  the  Gospel  of  Christ  places  the  empha- 
sis on  immortality  beyond  any  other  religion,  and  it  also 
asserts  the  need  of  an  individual  and  inward  preparation 
or  purification  in  order  to  secure  its  blessed  results.  The 
Gospel  everywhere  individualizes  men  as  if  one  single 
human  soul  were  valuable  enough  in  the  eyes  of  God  to 
account  for  Calvary,  as  if  Christ  would  have  died  to  save 
one  solitary  individual  man.  So  far  as  nature  is  concerned, 
the  individual  counts  for  nothing,  it  is  the  species  or  genus 
which  is  everything.     Thus  Tennyson  wrote  of  nature  : 

"  So  careful  of  the  type  she  seems, 
So  careless  of  the  single  life." 

But  when  we  rise  above  nature  into  the  sphere  of  humanity, 
the  law  of  nature  seems  to  be  reversed  and  the  law  of  the 
spirit  asserts  its  claim.  "  With  man  so  far  as  he  is  an  object 
of  interest,"  said  the  late  Mr.  Froude,  "  it  is  the  type  which 
is  nothing,  the  individual  which  is  everything.  Take  away 
from  Ulysses  or  Hamlet  their  personal  individuality  and 
leave  only  what  belongs  to  the  race,  would  you  say  that 
you  had  preserved  the  immortal  part  and  thrown  away  the 
unimportant?     Tiie  immortal  part  of  a  man  is  not  that 


158  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

which  he  shares  with  the  rest  of  his  race,  but  that  which 
he  possesses  of  his  own."  Perhaps  it  would  be  more  true 
to  say  that  it  is  the  humanity  itself  that  is  revealed  and 
made  a  secure  possession  in  the  higher  stages  of  individual 
development.  The  two  are  organically  related,  the  race 
and  the  individual,  but  the  latter  is  the  immediate  goal 
for  which  humanity  itself  may  be  said  to  labor.  Hence 
humanity  itself  prizes  the  result  of  individual  achievement 
as  if  its  highest  product,  its  flower  and  crown,  a  prophecy 
also  of  the  ultimate  redemption  of  the  race. 

When  the  monastic  movement  began,  there  was  but 
little  scope  for  the  development  of  individualism  within 
the  Catholic  church.  In  every  direction  in  which  a  man 
might  turn  for  an  opportunity  to  develop  his  capacities  and 
to  manifest  his  purpose,  the  approaches  were  blocked  by  the 
powerful  organization  whose  prestige  must  also  intimidate 
the  soul.  Freedom  of  thought,  freedom  of  inquiry  in  the- 
ology, which  was  the  only  science,  had  been  discouraged 
if  not  prohibited  by  the  later  growth  of  tradition.  To 
seek  for  new  truth  was  as  absurd  as  it  was  impossible ;  for 
all  truth,  it  was  believed,  had  been  given  in  fixed  and 
final  form  by  the  Apostles,  of  which  the  episcopate  was 
regarded  as  the  curator  and  depositary.  Under  these  cir- 
cumstances, the  rising  spirit  of  individualism  was  driven 
into  strange  and  devious  ways  for  the  utterance  or  unfold- 
ing of  the  deeper  impulses  of  the  human  soul.  Something 
at  least  could  be  done  by  way  of  protest  if  nothing  more. 
In  the  three  monastic  vows  of  poverty,  celibacy,  and  obe- 
dience, we  have  the  external  symbols  of  the  movement. 
They  were  not  originated  by  the  Christian  instinct;  they 
had  served  for  ages  as  the  mould  in  which  the  spirit  of  the 
individual  man  might  be  recast  when  seeking  possibilities 
of  escape  from  the  tyranny  of  conventional  religion,  or  of 
a  world  which  had  grown  indifferent  to  spiritual  realities. 
In  taking  the  vows  of  poverty  and  celibacy,  the  monk  flung 
defiance  in  the  face  of  the  existing  civilization,  flouting  the 
relationships  of  the  state  and  the  family  as  ties  incompati- 
ble with  the  highest  freedom  and  development.  But  he 
also  took  a  vow  of  obedience,  seeking  therein  a  further 


MONASTICISM  159 

freedom ;  for  the  obedience  was  to  be  rendered  to  one  like 
himself,  in  sympathy  with  his  purpose  and  method.  To 
these  vows  there  was  added,  in  the  Benedictine  order,  a 
restriction  which  tied  the  monk  to  his  domicile  (^stahilitas 
loci'),  a  necessary  restriction  in  order  to  overcome  the 
habit  of  wandering  generated  in  the  barbarian  invasion. 
With  these  distinctive  features,  monasticism  came  into 
conflict  with  the  Catholic  church,  and  in  the  rivalry  and 
the  struggle  which  followed  was  laid  the  foundation  for 
the  higher  civilization  of  Christendom. 

IV 

In  studying  the  institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
attention  is  apt  to  be  fastened  upon  its  more  striking  situa- 
tions, such  as  the  conflicts  between  popes  and  emperors, 
on  which  the  development  of  the  political  and  social  order 
seems  to  hinge,  those  conflicts  between  church  and  state, 
which  issued  in  the  civil  supremacy  of  the  papacy.  But 
there  were  other  conflicts,  whose  inward  working  is  more 
obscure  and  where  results  are  less  striking,  those  struggles 
of  which  it  is  sometimes  hard  to  see  any  direct  result,  but 
whose  issue  was  the  spiritual  advance  of  humanity.  From 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Ages,  we  may  discern  traces 
of  the  antagonism  between  two  types  of  Christianity,  rep- 
resented on  the  one  hand  by  that  early  Catholic  church,  of 
which  the  episcopate  was  the  representative,  and  on  the 
other  by  monasticism,  whose  indirect  aim  is  revealed  by  its 
final  outcome,  —  a  conception  of  the  church  in  harmony 
with  its  essential  principle. 

Monasticism  had  been  in  its  origin  essentially  a  move- 
ment of  the  laity  as  such,  in  contrast  to  the  clergy,  nor 
had  it  sought  or  desired  for  its  members  admission  into  the 
clerical  order.  Its  principle  had  been  the  spiritual  priest- 
hood of  the  Christian  man  as  somethingf  hiorher  and  more 
vitally  related  to  the  salvation  of  the  soul  than  the  ecclesi- 
astical priesthood.  But  when  the  work  of  converting  West- 
ern Europe  devolved  so  extensively  upon  the  monastery, 
the  monks  were  obliged  to  receive    ordination  from  the 


160  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

bishops  for  the  administration  of  ecclesiastical  rites,  until 
they  finally  came  by  their  very  profession  as  monks  to  be 
enrolled  in  the  ranks  of  the  priesthood.  Among  other 
motives  which  contributed  to  this  result,  much  was  prob- 
ably owing  to  the  popular  judgment,  which  attributed  to 
them  a  clerical  rank  and  function  or  demanded  it  of  them. 
Enrolment  among  the  clergy  thus  seemed  like  a  victory  of 
the  Catholic  order  by  which  the  monks  were  brought  into 
close  relation  to  the  bishops  and  under  obligation  to  fulfil 
the  canonical  obedience  due  from  the  clergy  to  episcopal 
authority.  But  the  earlier  Middle  Ages,  from  the  seventh 
to  the  tenth  centuries,  reveal  also  on  the  part  of  the  monas- 
teries a  decided  unwillingness  to  accept  the  common  con- 
struction of  such  relationship.  The  vow  of  obedience  to  the 
head  of  the  monastery  was  superseding  the  vow  of  obedience 
to  the  bishops  or  making  it  superfluous.  Throughout  this 
whole  period  the  struggle  went  on  between  the  bishops 
who  were  seeking,  often  with  the  support  of  the  state, 
to  subject  the  monasteries  to  their  supervision  and  control, 
and  the  monks  who  sought  to  escape  from  this  control.  In 
this  struggle  the  sympathy  of  the  papacy  was  for  the  most 
part  given  to  the  cause  of  the  monasteries.  The  records 
of  the  time  abound  in  instances  of  hostility  between  the 
two  institutions ;  the  bishops  were  accused  of  plundering 
monasteries  or  appropriating  their  revenues ;  episcopal 
rights  of  visitation  were  increasingly  limited,  and  bishops 
were  commanded  to  give  ordination  when  requested  without 
compensation.^  It  was  surely  an  anomalous  situation.  It 
was  hard  for  the  monks  to  serve  two  masters,  one  in  the 
world  and  from  the  monastic  point  of  mind  living  for  the 
world ;  and  the  other  not  of  the  world,  —  the  abbot  to 
whom  he  was  bound  by  a  special  vow  of  obedience.     So 

1  Cf.  Concil.  Tolet.  Can.  51,  in  Mansl,  X.,  where  the  bishops  are  con- 
demned for  treating  the  monks  like  slaves,  and  for  regarding  the  monas- 
teries as  if  their  own  property  ;  also  Art.  Theodore  of  Tarsus,  in  Smith 
and  Wace,  Die.  Chris.  Biog.,  for  a  similar  situation  in  England  in  the 
seventh  century,  where  the  monastic  establishments  are  seen  withdrawing 
themselves  from  the  superintendence  of  the  bishops  and  gaining  their  inde- 
pendence ;  also  Laurent,  Etudes  sur  VHistoire  de  VHumanite,  V.,  pp. 
292  ff. 


MONASTICISM  l6l 

also  was  it  incongruous  for  the  bishop  to  see  a  large 
number  of  his  clergy  in  monasteries  not  subject  to  his  con- 
trol. But  the  aggressive  i^olicy  of  the  bishops  ended  in 
failure.  The  great  monastery  of  Clugny,  founded  in  the 
tenth  century,  was  emancipated  from  episcopal  authority 
and  placed  in  immediate  subjection  to  the  pope ;  and  from 
this  time  the  new  orders  of  monks  to  which  the  later 
Middle  Ages  gave  rise  in  such  rich  variety  were  with  few 
exceptions  emancipated  from  episcopal  control.  Not  only 
so,  but  the  greater  abbots  now  aspired  successfully  to  rival 
the  bishops  in  dignity  and  authority :  they  received  from 
the  pope  the  right  to  wear  the  episcopal  mitre,  they  took 
their  seats  in  the  councils  of  princes  or  in  the  ecclesiastical 
synods,  dividing  with  the  bishops  the  power  within  the 
church  and  the  reverence  of  the  people.  One  thing  only 
they  did  not  attain,  —  the  right  to  confer  ordination, 
which  was  still  regarded,  according  to  ancient  canon  law, 
as  the  peculiar  function  of  the  episcopate. 

If  we  may  regard  the  entrance  of  the  monks  into  the 
clerical  estate  as  a  victory  of  the  episcopate  over  monasti- 
cism  by  which  the  latter  lost  something  of  its  original 
character,  on  the  other  hand,  the  next  stage  in  this  rivalry 
resulted  in  the  triumph  of  monasticism,  by  which  bishops 
and  clergy  of  all  degrees  were  compelled  to  submit  to  the 
monastic  vow  of  celibacy.  It  was  in  the  monastery  of 
Clugny,  which  by  its  constitution  was  the  first  to  be  ex- 
empted from  episcopal  authority,  that  the  purpose  was 
nourished  which  demanded  the  universal  obligation  on  the 
clergy  of  the  monastic  ideal.^  In  the  Eastern  church,  as 
has  been  remarked,  a  compromise  had  been  effected  by 
which  the  bishops  were  to  be  monks  trained  in  the  monas- 

1  The  organization  of  the  monastery  of  Clugny,  free  from  episcopal 
supervision  and  under  tlie  direct  control  of  the  papacy,  was  not  the  only 
innovation  which  Clugny  made  in  the  history  of  monasticism.  Of  almost 
equal  significance  was  the  change  which  it  initiated,  of  affiliating  its  houses 
as  they  arose  in  one  great  congregation,  in  contrast  with  the  Benedictine 
method,  where  eacli  monastery  was  independent.  Thus  monasticism  went 
through  a  progressive  development :  (1)  The  solitary  monk  or  hermit, — 
the  anchoretic  type  ;  (2)  The  community,  independent  of  other  com- 
munities ;  (3)  Tlie  affiliation  of  communities  in  one  organic  cosmopolitan 
organization. 

M 


162  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

teries,  while  the  lower  clergy  were  allowed  to  marry.  No 
such  compromise  was  possible  in  Western  Europe,  much 
less  was  it  desirable.  The  life  and  purpose  of  the  church 
in  the  West  were  stimulated  by  the  conflict  in  which  each 
party  sought  the  victory.  When  the  monks  had  entered 
the  order  of  priesthood,  it  seemed  incongruous  that  some 
of  the  clergy  should  be  bound  to  celibacy,  which  was  by 
common  consent  the  highest  spiritual  state,  while  others, 
admitting  the  ideal,  should  accept  a  lower  standard.  When 
the  movement  began  whose  aim  was  to  enforce  celibacy 
upon  all  the  clergy,  it  was  foredoomed  to  success.  Already 
had  the  bishops  and  clergy  been  subjected  to  papal  au- 
thority by  monastic  influence,  as  when  Boniface,  the 
Apostle  of  Germany,  first  took  the  vow  of  papal  obedience 
for  himself  and  then  organized  the  church  in  Germany  and 
in  France  in  harmony  with  this  principle.  Again  it  was 
a  monk,  educated  at  Clugny,  rising  to  the  papal  chair  as 
Gregory  VII.,  who  enforced  the  obligation  to  celibacy, 
which  has  ever  since  remained  binding  upon  the  Roman 
clergy.  Hildebrand  may  have  been  moved  by  other  rea- 
sons than  the  desire  to  extend  the  monastic  ideal.  It 
was  evident  enough  that  the  church  would  be  stronger  to 
carry  on  the  war  with  the  state  which  Hildebrand  was 
about  to  declare,  if  the  clergy  were  emancipated  from"  those 
secular  ties  like  marriage  which  bound  them  in  their  inter- 
ests to  dependence  upon  the  secular  power. 

But  in  this  effort  to  enforce  celibacy  upon  the  secular 
clergy,  we  may  see  more  clearly  than  at  any  other  juncture 
in  Mediaeval  history,  how  close  and  essential  was  the 
alliance  of  the  papacy  with  the  monastic  purpose.  Hilde- 
brand at  first  resorted  to  the  bishops  for  aid  in  carrying 
out  his  decree ;  but  the  episcopate  almost  as  a  body  ap- 
peared as  unwilling  instruments  of  his  power.  The  inhu- 
manity of  the  papal  attitude,  the  widespread  anguish  and 
suffering  which  ensued,  —  to  all  this  the  bishops  could  not 
or  would  not  give  their  sanction.  When  the  papacy 
failed  in  its  appeal  to  the  bishops  to  enforce  the  decree 
against  marriage  of  the  clergy,  it  turned  to  the  monks  and 
renewed  its  ancient  alliance.     Papal  autocracy  was  now 


MONASTICISM  163 

reasserted,  as  the  inmost  principle  of  the  Catholic  church. 
The  bishops  were  reminded  by  Hildebrand  that  the  monas- 
teries had  been  set  free  from  episcopal  control,  and  the 
bishops  also  exempted  from  the  power  of  metropolitans 
in  order  to  their  more  immediate  connection  with  the 
Apostolical  see  of  Rome.  The  monks  responded  to  this 
appeal,  travelling  over  the  country  in  order  to  denounce 
and  overcome  the  vicious  lives  of  the  secular  clergy.  But 
the  final  appeal  of  Hildebrand  was  to  the  laity,  who  were 
urged  to  withdraw  from  communion  with  those  secular 
clergy  who  were  refusing  obedience  to  the  papal  decree, 
since  they  were  polluting  the  sacraments  and  their  blessing 
would  be  turned  to  a  malediction.  Hildebrand  was  charged 
with  teaching  the  Donatist  theory  that  an  evil  life  in  the 
clergy  vitiated  their  sacramental  acts.  He  did  not,  indeed, 
in  so  many  words,  commit  himself  to  this  view,  which  was 
at  a  later  time  to  become  the  principle  of  Wycliffe  and 
Huss,  of  the  Waldensians  and  other  sects,  a  lever  for 
breaking  down  the  authority  of  the  Medieval  church. 
Hildebrand  stood  rather  upon  the  principle  of  obedience  to 
papal  authority  as  so  vital,  that  any  cleric  who  refused  it 
separated  himself  from  the  church.  It  is  difficult,  how- 
ever, to  see  wherein  Hildebrand's  theory  differs  from  the 
ancient  Donatism,  against  which  the  Catholic  church  had 
protested  in  the  fourth  century.  But  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  laity  to  whom  Hildebrand  appealed,  under- 
stood his  meaning  in  the  Donatist  sense ;  they  rose  up  in 
wrath  against  the  secular  clergy ;  and  from  this  time  we 
begin  to  note  the  rise  of  heretical  sects,  who  declaimed 
against  the  vices  of  the  clergy,  who  went  even  further,  as 
in  the  inference  which  they  drew  that  sacraments  and  rites 
were  unnecessary.  Hildebrand  disturbed  the  peace  of  the 
church ;  but  his  immediate  aim  was  accomplished,  celibacy 
was  enforced,  monasticism  had  now  won  its  greatest  vic- 
tory, and  the  Donatist  theory  of  the  church  had  been  the 
tacit  assumption  by  means  of  which  the  victory  had  been 
achieved.  That  theory  meant,  what  Montanists  and  also 
Novatians  had  taught,  that  it  is  the  congregation  of  faith- 
ful men,  whose  individual  faith  and  holiness  confer  sane- 


164  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

tity  upon  the  organization,  and  not  primarily  the  holiness 
of  the  church,  which  is  imputed  to  the  clergy  or  to  indi- 
vidual members,  as  had  been  the  teacliing  of  Cyprian.^ 

V 

The  most  flourishing  period  of  monasticism  is  also  the 
age  of  the  domination  of  the  Latin  church.  From  the 
tenth  century  to  the  fourteenth  the  monasteries  were  still 
growing,  putting  forth  new  shoots,  each  new  monastic  crea- 
tion differing  in  some  vital  points,  or  aiming  at  the  common 
purpose  by  some  new  method,  some  more  stringent  effort 
to  accomplish  its  ideal.  In  this  respect,  the  monasticism  of 
this  age  finds  its  parallel  in  the  vigor  and  variety  of  the 
Protestant  sects  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  and  the 
three  centuries  which  have  since  elapsed.  During  this 
period  also,  as  in  the  early  Middle  Ages,  while  the  episco- 
pate was  performing  a  great  task,  which  was  of  high  ser- 
vice to  the  later  development  of  political  institutions,  yet 
it  shows  no  special  development  within  the  church,  win- 
ning no  trophies,  giving  no  apparent  evidence  of  aroused 
activity.  It  had  practically  been  shut  off  from  aggressive 
work,  or  from  any  powerful  assertion  of  its  own  peculiar 
motive  by  the  league  between  the  papacy  and  monasticism. 
The  episcopate  had  been  beguiled,  if  we  may  use  the  expres- 
sion, by  the  opportunity  held  out  to  it  in  the  Forged  De- 
cretals of  Isidore,  of  escaping  the  infelicities  of  secular 
control,  but  only  to  fall  bound  hand  and  foot  by  a  worse 
enemy.  Any  aspirations  of  the  episcopate  for  independence 
had  been  further  checked  by  the  appointment  of  two  or  more 
metropolitans  in  every  country,  which  served  as  courts  of 
appeals,  so  that  no  one  bishop  could  stand  forth  as  primate 

1  Cf.  Neander,  Ch.  His.,  YII.,  pp.  125-137  (Bohn.  ed.)  for  a  clear 
statement  of  the  issues  raised  by  Hildebrand  ;  also  Lea,  H.  C,  Historical 
Sketch  of  Sacerdotal  Gelihacy  in  the  Christian  Church,  pp.  238-249. 
In  his  argument  against  the  Donatists,  Augustine  had  maintained  as 
the  Catholic  principle  that  Christ  miglit  operate  through  the  sacraments, 
however  unworthy  might  be  their  administrator,  Contr.  Petilian,  I.,  c.  8. 
For  an  admirable  discussion  of  the  controversy  with  the  Donatists,  cf. 
Neander,  III.  258-308.  For  the  heretical  sects  which  rose  immediately 
after  Hildebrand' s  time,  cf.  Moeller,  II.  382-390. 


MONASTICISM  165 

in  his  own  country  and  lead  any  movement  of  ecclesiastical 
revolt.  Under  monkish  activity,  the  episcopate  had  lost 
the  credit  of  converting  Europe,  and  also  the  benefit  which 
would  have  resulted  to  it  from  such  spiritual  self-sacrifice. 
In  every  direction  its  powers  were  limited,  and  the  original 
theory  of  the  office  modified  by  the  practical  needs  of  the 
church.  Not  only  from  the  time  of  Hildebrand's  reign 
were  the  monks  exempt  from  the  supervision  of  the  bishops, 
but  even  in  cathedral  churches  a  similar  movement  went 
on  by  which  the  secular  clergy,  the  dean  and  canons,  were 
set  free  from  the  bishop's  authority.  And  in  a  word,  the 
episcopal  office  which  had  claimed  to  hold  directly  from 
God  its  origin  and  authority,  was  now  qualified  as  coming 
by  the  grace  of  God  and  the  grace  of  the  Apostolic  See.^ 

The  life  and  vigor  of  monasticism  in  this  period  were 
not  only  manifested  in  the  extension  of  its  power  by  which 
it  limited  the  episcopate,  or  captured  the  field  of  missions, 
or  took  possession  of  the  universities  and  became  the  leader 
of  the  intellectual  life,  but  in  another  direction  it  sought 
to  extend  itself  by  colonizing  its  principles.  For  any  move- 
ment which  is  truly  alive  must  grow  and  expand,  and  have 
an  adequate  field  for  its  extension.  This  field  of  invasion 
monasticism  found  in  the  secular  side  of  the  church,  repre- 
sented by  the  episcopate.  After  it  had  won  its  great 
victory  in  the  imposition  of  the  monastic  vow  of  celibacy 
upon  bishops  and  clergy,  it  aimed  to  extend  the  application 
of  another  monastic  vow,  that  of  poverty,  until  it  should 
become  the  rule  of  the  secular  church.  The  rise  of  St. 
Bernard  in  the  twelfth  century  (f  1153)  marks  the  in- 
creasing tendency  to  attach  importance  to  poverty,  as 
somehow  essential  to  the  highest  spiritual  life.     Arnold 

1  In  his  work  on  the  Growth  of  Church  Institutions,  Dr.  Hatch  has 
traced  the  process  in  the  secular  churcli  under  episcopal  control,  by  which 
the  parish  priest  came  to  have  a  tenure  of  office  which  was  not  dependent 
on  the  bishop,  as  the  Ignatian  and  Cyprianic  theories  of  the  episcopate 
had  originally  required.  So  also  the  city  clergy,  and  deans,  canons,  and 
prebendaries  came  to  be  independent  of  the  bishop.  The  further  influ- 
ence of  the  monastery  on  the  secular  church  was  seen  in  the  establish- 
ment of  clergy  houses  for  the  secular  clergy,  by  which  the  majority  of 
them  were  compelled  to  live  according  to  a  common  rule  of  life.  Cf. 
pp.  51-56,  and  pp.  157-172. 


166  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

of  Brescia  (f  1155),  to  whom  Bernard  was  no  friend,  was 
only  applying  the  teaching  of  Bernard  when  he  called 
upon  the  hierarchy,  the  bishops,  and  clergy  to  forsake  their 
property,  and  embrace  the  evangelical  ideal.  Joachim  of 
Floris  (f  1201),  whose  name  is  associated  with  the  Eternal 
Gosjjel,  anticipated  that  when  the  age  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
should  begin,  the  church  would  be  purified  by  the  labors 
of  the  monks  and  the  ideal  of  monasticism  become  universal. 
All  through  the  twelfth  century  the  idea  was  taking 
deeper  root  that  poverty  was  Apostolic  in  its  origin  and 
sanction.  Heretical  sects  combined  with  reformers  and 
prophets  in  demanding  its  recognition.  At  last  came  the 
Mendicant  orders,  and  more  particularly  the  Franciscan, 
whose  foundations  were  sunk  more  deeply  in  this  subsoil 
of  poverty.  The  Benedictine  order  and  the  monastic  con- 
gregations of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  had  in- 
terpreted the  vow  of  poverty  as  pertaining  only  to  the 
individual  monk,  while  the  order  itself  to  which  he  be- 
longed was  at  liberty  to  hold  property  without  any  limit. 
St.  Francis  had  thought  to  get  rid  of  the  laxity  and  cor- 
ruption which  this  corporate  possession  of  wealth  entailed, 
by  prohibiting  the  monasteries  of  his  order  from  holding 
property  or  even  enjoying  its  use.  So  at  least  he  was 
interpreted  by  the  stricter  observants  of  his  rule.  With 
these  two  orders,  the  Dominican  and  the  Franciscan,  mo- 
nasticism culminated,  taking  on  the  form  and  the  reality 
of  cosmopolitan  institutions  within  the  Mediseval  church. 
Not  only  were  they  exempted  from  episcopal  control, 
but  they  were  allowed  by  the  papacy  to  usurp  the  func- 
tions of  the  secular  clergy,  to  take  charge  of  parishes,  to 
hear  confessions  and  give  absolution  in  the  churches  of 
Christendom  wherever  their  services  might  be  desired. 
And  the  testimony  of  the  time  indicates  that  the  friars 
or  mendicant  monks  were  everywhere  acceptable  to  the 
people,  more  so  than  the  parish  clergy.  It  was  a  great 
object  lesson,  which  the  people  were  not  slow  in  reading, 
the  vision  of  those  who  had  forsaken  all  things  for  the 
following  of  Christ.  Very  close  also  was  the  alliance 
between  the  papacy  and  the  mendicant  monks.     Domini- 


MONASTICISM  167 

cans  and  Franciscans  were  its  body-guard,  carrying  its 
authority  and  its  presence  into  every  part  of  Christendom. 
On  the  whole,  it  may  be  said  that  from  the  time  of  the 
first  close  association  of  the  papacy  with  monasticism 
under  the  pontificate  of  Gregory  the  Great,  its  career  had 
been  marked  by  a  constant  development,  and  its  persistent 
rivalry  and  conflict  with  the  secular  church  had  been 
crowned  with  success.  But  at  last  a  check  was  placed 
upon  its  growth  by  the  very  authority  which  had  minis- 
tered to  its  extension  and  power,  and  from  that  time  the 
movement  ceased  to  put  forth  new  offshoots,  or  to  pursue 
with  any  success  its  persistent  ideal.  But  when  monasti- 
cism declined,  its  patron  and  support,  the  papacy,  declined 
also,  and  both  lost  their  hold  upon  the  new  world  that  was 
arising.  They  rose  together  and  came  into  the  church 
together,  and  when  their  work  was  done,  together  they 
took  their  departure.  It  was  in  the  year  1321,  while  the 
papacy  was  living  in  its  voluntary  captivity  at  Avignon, 
that  the  crisis  came,  whose  full  meaning  was  not  at  the 
time  discerned,  but  which  now  appears  not  only  as  the 
dissolution  of  the  partnership  between  the  papacy  and 
monasticism  as  living  forces,  but  as  the  death-blow  to 
monastic  aspiration  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
the  revelation  of  the  spiritual  incapacity  of  the  papacy  for 
its  high  office  of  universal  mediation.  The  crisis  had  been 
lonor  in  comino-,  and  more  than  once  when  it  had  been  im- 
minent,  it  was  postponed  or  evaded.  Soon  after  the  death 
of  St.  Francis  in  1226,  a  division  among  his  adherents  in 
regard  to  the  possession  of  property  led  to  violent  conten- 
tion within  the  order.  The  laxer  party  maintained  that 
while  the  order  could  not  hold  property  which  it  could  call 
its  own,  it  might  be  entitled  to  the  benefit  or  usufruct  of 
property,  which  was  to  be  regarded  as  given  not  to  the 
order,  but  to  the  Roman  church  for  the  benefit  of  the  order. 
Such  was  the  interpretation  sanctioned  by  Pope  Nicholas 
III.  (1279)  in  a  bull  which  declared  that  the  usufruct 
of  earthly  goods,  though  not  their  possession,  had  been 
permitted  by  the  example  of  Christ  and  the  Apostles. 
The  decision  was  followed  by  a  schism  in  the  order,  the 


168         ORGANIZATION  OF  THE  CHUECH 

brethren  of  the  stricter  observance  forming  an  independent 
community  of  their  own.  Even  at  this  time  there  were 
rigorists  who  took  up  an  attitude  of  opposition  to  the 
papacy  and  henceforth  disowned  it  as  anti-Christ.  But 
the  final  issue  was  postponed  for  another  generation. 

In  1321  the  question  took  such  shape  that  it  could 
not  be  evaded.  The  Dominicans  in  that  year,  who  had 
already  practically  discarded  the  mendicant  principle,  be- 
came aware  that  the  Franciscans  had  formulated  their 
motive  in  the  dogmatic  statement  that  neither  as  individ- 
uals nor  as  a  society  had  Christ  or  His  Apostles  been  in 
possession  of  property.  When  the  Dominicans  disputed 
this  principle,  the  Franciscans  affirmed  its  orthodoxy,  and 
the  order  as  a  whole  in  1322  gave  its  approval.  The  case 
was  now  carried  to  the  pope,  John  XXII.,  living  in  wealth 
and  luxury  at  Avignon.  It  was  a  case  which  demanded 
an  answer  without  delay,  and  without  equivocation :  and 
the  decision  was  promptly  rendered  and  thoroughly  en- 
forced in  a  series  of  five  successive  utterances  from  the  pope, 
in  which  the  proposition  was  declared  erroneous,  that 
neither  Christ  nor  His  Apostles,  either  singly  or  collectively, 
had  been  holders  of  property.  Looking  at  the  question  and 
its  decision  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  age,  the  two 
sides  of  the  church,  secular  and  religious,  the  two  compo- 
nent elements  of  Mediaeval  Christianity  which  had  been 
in  conflict  for  centuries,  now  met  on  their  last  battle-field, 
and  the  secular  was  victorious.  The  papacy  had  deserted 
its  old  ally,  had  made  no  effort  to  compromise  or  neu- 
tralize its  utterance,  but  repeatedly  and  unequivocally 
had  condemned  the  principle  for  which  St.  Francis  stood, 
with  which  a  man  like  Occam,  the  leading  mind  of  his  age, 
was  also  in  sympathy.  No  disaster  followed  the  decision, 
no  schism,  or  other  evidence  that  the  peace  of  the  church 
had  been  broken.  Occam  and  others  like-minded  left 
Avignon  and  betook  themselves  to  the  Emperor  Louis  of 
Bavaria,  preferring  and  defending  his  cause  against  the 
pope.  For  the  rest  of  the  century  that  followed,  the  Fran- 
ciscans of  the  stricter  sort,  who  could  not  be  reconciled  to 
the  pope's  decision,  are  found  in  association  with  heretical 


MONASTICISM  169 

orders,  strange  and  weird  associations,  which  have  only  one 
element  in  common,  —  a  certain  unrest  and  dissatisfaction, 
a  desire  for  some  higher  rule  of  life.  Such  were  the  Spir- 
ituals, the  Fraticelli,  the  Friends  of  God,  the  Apostolici, 
monks  who  could  no  longer  pursue  their  calling  in  the 
monastery,  for  the  sanction  of  Christ  and  His  Apostles 
had  been  refused  to  their  ideal.  The  last  aspiration  of 
the  monastic  purpose,  to  identify  itself  with  Christ  and 
His  disciples,  had  failed ;  the  world  refused  to  regard 
poverty  as  the  true  life  of  man  on  the  earth.  A  limit  had 
been  set,  which  hindered  the  highest  monastic  ideal  from 
expanding  into  universal  application. 

But  from  our  own  point  of  view  an  ideal  so  hopelessly 
impossible  indicates  that  monasticism  must  have  already 
exhausted  its  interior  force,  that  its  mission  to  the  world 
was  over.  From  this  time  it  gave  increasing  evidence,  in 
the  moral  corruption  into  which  it  sank,  that  its  work  was 
done.  Had  it  been  upheld  by  any  living  motive,  it  could 
not  have  fallen  so  low,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  as  the 
reiterated  charges  against  it  seem  to  demonstrate.  But 
enough  has  been  said  on  this  point  by  many  writers  who 
have  pointed  out  the  depth  and  the  extent  of  the  corrup- 
tion which  now  invaded  the  monasteries  in  every  country 
of  Europe.  These  charges  may  be  exaggerated,  undoubt- 
edly they  are ;  but  making  every  allowance,  the  accusa- 
tions of  vice,  of  luxury  and  gluttony,  of  laziness  and 
ignorance,  it  is  impossible  to  overcome.  They  were  made 
in  the  first  instance  by  the  friends  of  the  monasteries,  in 
the  hope  of  their  purification.  But  the  efforts  of  two  cen- 
turies to  restore  them  to  their  old  efficiency  were  in  vain. 
They  were  suppressed  at  last,  by  Henry  VHI.  in  England 
with  hardly  a  protest  or  a  murmur,  and  with  the  approval 
of  the  people,  which  not  only  made  possible,  but  justified, 
the  act  of  the  king. 

Nor  since  that  day  has  monasticism  had  any  career  in 
the  Christian  church.  More  and  more  have  its  opportuni- 
ties been  restricted,  its  houses  closed,  its  revenues  appro- 
priated by  the  state.  In  our  own  age  we  have  seen  Italy 
and  France,  Germany  and  Mexico,  carrying  on  the  work 


170  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

begun  at  the  Reformation  of  suppressing  monastic  establish- 
ments.i  No  great  names  of  world-wide  significance,  and  but 
few  in  the  lesser  ranks  of  fame,  are  connected  any  longer  with 
the  monastery.  Henceforth  they  do  not  serve  as  retreats 
for  souls  inspired  with  some  lofty  purpose  or  dream,  in 
literature,  or  art,  or  science,  in  the  cause  of  philosophy  or 
theology,  but  so  far  as  they  may  be  said  to  live  at  all, 
they  are  recruited  by  those  who  liave  no  special  mission 
to  tlie  world ;  those  who  have  been  disillusioned  by  the 
experiences  of  life  may  still  resort  to  them,  but  they  take 
with  them  no  hope  or  heart  as  in  the  ancient  days.  Once 
again,  indeed,  it  is  true,  an  effort  was  made  with  intense 
purpose  and  devotion  to  bring  monasticism  to  the  aid  of 
the  papacy  in  the  hour  of  its  great  distress  and  weakness. 
No  more  chivalrous  soul  ever  lived  than  Ignatius  Loyola, 
nor  any  mind  more  keen  ever  came  to  the  rescue  of  the 
Mediseval  church.  He  was  wise  enough  to  discover  that, 
in  the  founding  of  a  new  order,  the  only  monastic  principle 
which  yet  remained  to  be  exploited  was  the  vow  of  obedi- 
ence. That  vow  was  now  stretched  till  it  included  the 
intellect  and  the  imagination  as  well  as  the  conscience, 
shutting  out  the  last  motive  or  opportunity  for  individual 
exertion.  It  is  not  celibacy,  it  is  not  poverty,  which,  ac- 
cording to  Ignatius,  makes  the  highest  saint,  but  obedience 
so  unhesitating  and  so  complete  as  to  annihilate  all  spon- 
taneous individual  activity,  and  so,  in  the  long  run,  to 
defeat  the  purpose  which  it  seeks  to  maintain.  With  the 
rise  of  the  Jesuit  order,  the  history  of  monasticism  may 
be  said  to  have  come  to  an  end. 

The  great  purposes  which  the  monastery  had  served 
during  the  Middle  Ages  could  be  henceforth  attained  in 

1  "The  total  number  of  monasteries  so  suppressed  in  Italy  down  to 
the  close  of  1882  was  2255,  involving  an  enormous  displacement  of  prop- 
erty and  dispersion  of  inmates.  And  yet  there  is  some  reason  to  think 
that  the  state  did  but  do  roughly  and  harshly  what  the  church  should 
have  done  more  gradually  and  wisely  ;  for  the  judgment  passed  on  the 
dissolution  by  Pius  IX.  himself,  in  speaking  to  an  I<]nglish  l\.  C.  bishop, 
was :  '  It  was  the  devil's  work  ;  but  the  good  God  will  turn  it  into  a 
blessing,  since  their  destruction  was  the  only  reform  possible  to  them'  " 
CEncyc.  Brit.,  XVI.,  p.  715). 


MONASTICISM  ITl 

other  and  better  ways.  They  had  been  retreats  to  which 
the  individual  man  could  betake  himself,  who  could  find 
no  mission  in  the  world.  They  had  cultivated  individual- 
ism when  the  prevailing  tendency  in  the  church  was 
toward  an  irresponsible  solidarity;  they  had  presented  object 
lessons  to  the  world,  of  the  highest  value,  as  to  the  worth 
of  simple  manhood,  when  seen  apart  from  all  relationship 
which  might  weaken  its  dignity  or  disguise  its  strength. 
But  now  the  times  were  changing  rapidly  from  the  four- 
teenth century.  Great  personalities  were  wanted  in  the 
world,  and  there  was  no  longer  a  necessity  for  their  leaving 
it.  The  opportunities  for  the  individual  were  increasing 
in  every  direction,  and  individual  aspirations  could  be  cul- 
tivated in  the  world  far  better  than  in  the  monastery. 
The  most  that  the  monastery  had  done  or  could  do  was 
to  nourish  the  germ  of  individualism,  to  keep  it  from  per- 
ishing from  off  the  face  of  the  earth.  But  when  it  came  to 
the  full  development  of  individualism,  the  monastery  proved 
a  sad  and  grievous  failure,  a  failure  so  disastrous  and  mel- 
ancholy that  the  new  world  rejected  the  institution,  with 
an  indignation  which  has  hardly  its  counterpart  in  the 
history  of  institutions.  For  if  the  individual  would  put 
himself  to  the  fullest  test  in  order  to  his  divine  growth,  it 
must  be  accomplished  by  the  discipline  of  relationships 
such  as  the  monk  rejected  as  unfit  for  the  spiritual  man. 
These  relationships  are  twofold,  that  of  the  family  and  that 
of  the  state,  through  which  alone  can  the  highest  manhood 
be  attained.  When  the  monk  was  condemning  these  rela- 
tions as  sinful  or  impossible  for  religion,  he  was  flying  in 
the  face  of  eternal  law  and  of  the  divine  will  as  written  in 
human  constitutions.  His  contempt  for  marriage  as  a 
hindrance  to  grace  may  be  regarded  as  the  act  of  one  who 
knew  not  what  he  did,  but  it  was  none  the  less  an  offence 
against  both  God  and  man.  Its  punishment  may  be  seen 
to  have  grown  in  this  case  directly  out  of  its  nature,  for 
they  who  aimed  at  purity  became  the  scandal  of  the  age  for 
impurity;  striving  to  be  something  above  men,  they  fell 
below  men,  and  degraded  the  human  ideal.  All  this  be- 
came apparent,  Avhen  at  last  the  state  began  to  appear  in  its 


172  OKGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

conscious  dignity,  as  in  the  pre-Reformation  age  which 
begins  with  the  fourteenth  century.  The  monk  had  been 
indifferent  to  the  state,  or  its  fortunes,  since  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  monasticism  in  the  ancient  church.  But  the 
state  which  he  then  neglected  or  abandoned  was  a  declining 
one,  the  Roman  Empire  moving  onwards  to  its  fall,  or  else 
the  feeble  condition  of  statehood  or  nationality  which  was 
struggling  for  existence  and  growth  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
Under  these  circumstances,  the  monk  had  been  at  liberty  to 
feel  that  his  own  commonwealth  or  citizenship  was  in  the 
heavens,  and  that  so  far  as  earth  was  concerned,  the  true 
man  was  at  home  in  every  country.  But  when  the  modern 
state  arose,  as  in  England,  such  a  sentiment  could  find 
little  food  for  its  support,  if  indeed  the  state  had  a  right  to 
tolerate  the  organizations  which  nourished  it.  It  was 
dangerous  to  the  nationality,  for  it  might  nourish  dis- 
loyalty and  treason,  and  the  state  needed  the  services  as 
well  as  the  faith  and  love  of  all  its  citizens. 

When  the  modern  state  arose,  the  family  regained  its 
significance  as  the  corner-stone  of  the  structure.  The  fam- 
ily became  again  the  tie  which  bound  the  individual  in 
dependence  on  the  state,  for  there  is  no  tie  so  strong  and 
deathless  as  this,  nor  is  there  a  school  equal  to  the  family 
for  training  a  man  in  the  duties  which  are  necessary  to  the 
existence  or  well-being  of  the  state.  Hence  if  the  state 
were  to  survive  and  assert  its  fullest  strength,  it  followed 
that  monasticism  must  now  be  wholly  suppressed,  as  in 
England  under  Henry  VIII.  Nor  was  it  an  accident  or 
a  merely  humorous  circumstance,  that  the  crisis  in  English 
history  in  the  hour  of  the  Reformation  did  not  hinge  upon 
any  subtle  point  of  dogma,  but  upon  the  practical  issue, 
whether  the  state  should  have  the  power  to  determine 
the  marriage  question,  or  whether  some  power  external  to 
the  state,  such  as  the  papacy,  should  continue  to  retain  the 
question  within  its  jurisdiction. 

Such  are  among  the  reasons  why  an  institution  like 
monasticism,  to  which  humanity  owes  so  much  in  one  age, 
should  become  a  desolation  and  an  offence  when  its  day 
was  done.     Bat  in  one  sense  it  lived  in  an  eternal   day 


MONASTICISM  173 

which  knew  no  decline,  which  still  goes  on  increasing. 
In  a  most  direct  and  vital  way  it  had  prepared  for  the 
Protestant  Keformation,  as  if  that  had  been  the  end  of  all 
its  labors.  Its  essential  principles  were  then  reaffirmed 
in  order  to  a  higher  and  larger  career,  when  those  methods 
were  abandoned  which  time  had  demonstrated  were  de- 
feating its  true  mission,  which  were  seen  as  no  longer 
necessary  to  the  perfection  of  a  Christian  man.  Wycliffe 
was  an  opponent  of  monasticism  on  principle,  and  more 
particularly  of  the  mendicant  monks,  as  doing  injury  alike 
to  religion  and  the  state.  But  strong  as  was  his  dislike 
and  even  contempt  of  mendicancy,  yet  he  made,  in  his  con- 
demnation of  monasticism,  an  exception  of  the  Begging 
Friars,  as  if  he  recognized  in  them  some  higher  quality, 
which  carried  the  promise  of  the  future.  He  uttered  a 
prophecy  regarding  them,  which  is  extraordinary  as  fore- 
telling an  event,  which  found  its  fulfilment  almost  to  the 
letter,  in  the  coming  of  Martin  Luther :  "  I  anticipate  that 
some  of  the  friars,  whom  God  shall  be  pleased  to  enlighten, 
will  return  with  all  devotion  to  the  original  religion  of 
Christ,  will  lay  aside  their  unfaithfulness,  and  with  the 
consent  of  Antichrist,  offered  or  solicited,  will  freely  return , 
to  primitive  truth  and  then  build  up  the  church  as  Paul 
did  before  them."  ^ 

VI 

In  this  survey  of  the  history  of  monasticism  from  its 
rise  to  its  decline,  some  things  become  apparent  as  if  they 
were  the  revelation  enforced  anew  of  the  divine  will  in 
human  society.  Every  direct  specific  purpose  of  the  monk 
seemed  in  the  long  run  to  have  been  reversed,  or  to  have 
proved  a  failure.  He  began  with  indifference  to  the  exten- 
sion of  the  visible  church  and  ended  with  reviving  the  primi- 
tive order  of  the  Apostolate  for  the  conversion  of  Western 
Europe.  His  foremost  aim  was  the  salvation  of  his  own 
soul,  and  he  became  the  most  successful  of  missionaries  for 

1  Trialogus,  IV.,  c.  30,  p.  340  ;  cf.  liPchler's  Wycliffe  and  his  English 
Precursors,  p.  323.     By  Antichrist  is  meant  tlie  papacy. 


174  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

accomplishing  the  salvation  of  others.  He  left  the  world 
of  towns  and  cities  behind  him,  but  where  he  went  the 
world  followed  him  and  towns  and  cities  sprang  up  around 
him.  He  started,  as  did  the  Montanists,  his  predecessors, 
with  an  inward  i-evolt  against  the  laws  of  outward  nature, 
or  the  ties  which  bind  the  body  and  the  soul  together ;  he 
lived  in  deserts  and  in  dens  and  in  caves  of  the  earth,  he 
fought  the  constitution  of  his  being  with  rigid  and  pro- 
longed physical  discipline.  And  yet  it  was  the  monk  who 
was  the  first  in  the  modern  world,  as  in  the  case  of  St. 
Bernard  or  St.  Francis,  to  acquire  the  love  of  nature.  In 
the  contact  with  nature,  which  was  forced  upon  him  by  his 
desire  to  be  in  solitude  and  alone  with  God,  there  entered 
into  his  soul  the  healing  power  of  nature  through  com- 
munion with  its  spirit.  Through  this  communion  with 
nature,  which  begot  the  love  of  nature,  came  the  prepara- 
tion for  modern  art.  From  holding  the  human  body  as  an 
evil  thing  at  war  with  the  soul,  he  came  to  recognize  the 
divineness  of  the  human  form  as  the  expression  of  the  in- 
ward spirit.  He  lived  in  the  atmosphere  of  the  miracle,  a 
world  of  his  own  creation  where  all  laws  might  be  sus- 
pended at  the  bidding  of  faith,  where  the  power  of  the  holy 
man  was  revealed  as  stronger  than  the  forces  of  life  or 
death,  and  thus,  as  with  Albert  the  Great  or  Roger  Bacon, 
prepared  the  way  for  modern  science  which  reveals  nature 
as  at  the  service  of  man.  Monasticism  started  with  a  con- 
tempt for  the  human  reason,  as  if  intellect  were  necessarily 
at  war  with  piety,  and  like  the  Montanist  despised  philoso- 
phy, as  incompatible  with  true  religion.  But  the  monas- 
teries, when  they  reached  the  height  of  their  development, 
produced  the  scholars,  the  thinkers,  the  philosophers  of 
the  age.  The  one  supreme  object  of  scholasticism  was 
to  defend  the  doctrines  of  the  church,  but  in  order  to  this 
end  it  was  necessar}^  to  cultivate  the  reason.  When  the 
process  of  scholasticism  was  complete,  it  ended  in  what  is 
known  as  nominalism,  which  asserts  the  importance  of  the 
thinking  mind  as  that  which  gives  reality  to  human  thought. 
In  its  origin,  monasticism  like  Montanism  was  indifferent  to 
the  welfare  of  the  state,  fleeing  to  the  desert  to  escape  its 


MONASTICISM  175 

control.  Its  indifference  to  the  political  order,  the  absence 
of  loyalty  to  one's  country,  or  the  sense  of  patriotism,  had 
hastened  the  downfall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  monks 
contributed  nothing  to  the  cause  of  nationality :  they  were 
cosmopolitan,  equally  at  home  in  every  country.  And 
yet  it  was  the  monks  who  were  called  to  rule  the  world 
which  they  despised.  It  was  a  dream  in  ancient  times 
that  it  would  be  desirable  if  a  philosopher,  who  lightly 
regarded  the  world,  could  be  brought  to  govern  the  world, 
sitting  on  the  throne  of  the  Roman  Empire ;  and  it  hap- 
pened once,  in  the  case  of  Marcus  Aurelius.  So  in  the  case 
of  Hildebrand  and  of  others  who  succeeded  him,  monks 
ruled  over  the  states  of  Europe  and  subjected  princes, 
kings,  and  emperors  to  their  sway.  They  abandoned  prop- 
erty and  took  the  vow  of  poverty,  but  they  could  not 
escape  from  wealth.  Each  successive  attempt  to  make  the 
monasteries  poor  ended  in  their  being  richer  than  before. 
They  cultivated  obedience  as  an  art,  taking  a  special  vow 
to  obe}^  and  the  end  of  the  process  was  individual  freedom. 
They  fought  the  family  and  the  institution  of  marriage  as 
beneath  the  spiritual  man,  seeking  thus  to  make  the  eccle- 
siola  of  their  Montanist  forerunners  something  purer  than 
the  larger  church,  the  bride  of  Christ  without  spot  or 
wrinkle  or  any  such  thing ;  they  took  the  vow  of  celibacy 
and  called  it  chastity,  and  the  result,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
was  such  disastrous  moral  failure  and  collapse  as  to  cast 
a  discredit  upon  the  system  of  the  monastery  from  which 
it  has  not  yet  recovered. 

But  also  beneath  these  vows  and  the  whole  attitude  of 
monasticism  toward  nature  and  the  state,  there  does  run 
a  deeper  purpose  which  could  not  be  defeated,  —  the  ac- 
complishment of  individual  personality.  In  the  ancient 
world  humanity  was  regarded  as  a  composite  part  of  or- 
ganic nature,  while  the  realization  of  the  worth  of  the 
human  soul  as  having  supernatural  significance  was  the 
precarious  possession  of  the  few.  The  monk  in  revolt 
against  natural  law,  and  in  the  cultivation  of  the  miracle, 
was  laying  deep  the  foundation  for  human  personality. 
And  again  in  the  ordering  of  the  ancient  state,  there  was 


176  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

little  or  no  conception  of  its  function  as  ministering  to 
individual  freedom  or  development.  A  man  was  conceived 
as  existing  for  the  state,  and  was  merged  in  the  solidarity 
of  those  who  were  to  be  governed  for  the  well-being  of 
the  whole.  The  deep  impulse  which  Christianity  gave  to 
the  demand  for  individual  freedom  by  its  assertion  of  the 
infinite  value  of  a  human  soul  drove  the  monk,  if  he  would 
retain  the  priceless  gift,  to  abandon  the  state  to  itself,  in 
order  that  he  might  be  free  to  cultivate  his  inward  being 
through  his  conscious  relationship  to  God. 

The  working  of  a  similar  process  may  be  detected  under 
the  monastic  vows  of  poverty,  celibacy,  and  obedience.  So 
long  as  in  the  old  world  a  man  was  only  entitled  to  con- 
sideration as  a  man  by  the  possession  of  property,  it  be- 
came necessary  to  affirm  that  manhood  could  exist  and 
assert  itself  by  its  own  intrinsic  quality,  stripped  of  every 
accessory  which  in  the  eye  of  the  law  or  of  society  gave  him 
a  fictitious  interest  or  importance.  The  Roman  theory  of 
marriage  had  not  only  gradually  brought  the  institution, 
in  connection  with  other  causes,  into  contempt,  but  by  merg- 
ing the  family  in  the  father,  with  the  right  of  property  in  wife 
and  children  and  control  of  human  life,  weakened  if  it  did 
not  destroy  the  possibility  of  attaining  to  the  consciousness 
of  individual  selfhood.  All  the  institutions  of  the  ancient 
civilization  needed  to  be  purified  and  regenerated,  reorgan- 
ized upon  some  other  basis,  and  to  this  end  the  monk  con- 
tributed. They  had  to  fight  their  way  against  the  highest 
ideal  of  the  age,  the  assumption  of  the  monasteries  that 
they  had  no  spiritual  value,  to  vindicate  their  worth  by 
justifying  themselves  at  the  bar  of  a  spiritual  tribunal. 

But  it  was  chiefly  in  the  vow  of  obedience  that  the 
monk  accomplished  and  realized  his  freedom.  In  the 
Catholic  church  obedience  also  was  required,  but  one  could 
not  choose  his  master.  Men  were  born  into  the  church, 
they  no  longer  joined  it,  as  in  the  early  Christian  centu- 
ries, of  their  own  free  will.  The  officers  of  the  church, 
the  bishop  or  the  priest,  they  had  no  voice  in  electing. 
It  was  a  vast  authoritative  system  like  the  Roman  Empire, 
whose  power  or  decision  were  not  to  be  resisted  or  ques- 


MONASTICISM  177 

tioned.  There  was  only  one  outlet  of  relief,  and  that  lay 
in  the  monastery  which  a  man  was  at  liberty  to  join,  choos- 
ing the  order  which  he  preferred,  and  having  a  voice  also 
in  the  choice  of  the  abbot  whom  he  was  to  serve.  Under 
these  conditions  there  was  a  freedom  in  the  service  which 
made  it  no  longer  bondage.  A  solidarity  grew  up  in  the 
monastery,  but  it  was  attained  by  the  free  concurrence  of 
individual  sentiment.  Thus  was  preserved  in  germ,  at 
least,  the  conception  of  the  earlier  church,  when  each 
Christian  community  chose  its  officers  and  invested  them 
with  authority.  When  in  the  course  of  the  Middle  Ages 
the  bishops  lost  their  control  of  the  monasteries  and  the 
monks  were  exempted  from  episcopal  supervision,  they 
ceased  when  ordained  to  the  priestliood  to  take  the  vow 
of  obedience  to  the  bishop,  and  in  its  place  took  the  vow 
of  obedience  only  to  the  head  of  the  monastery. 

But  all  this  bears  closely  upon  the  later  history  of  eccle- 
siastical organization.  The  secular  clergy  obeyed  a  bishop, 
the  monastic  clergy  obeyed  a  presbyter.  The  tendency  of 
monastic  influence  was  thus  to  exalt  the  presbyter  to  the 
rank  of  the  episcopate.  The  contention  of  Jerome,  that  in 
the  beginning  presbyters  and  bishops  were  equal,  became 
the  ruling  principle  of  the  monastery  and  left  its  influence 
upon  the  Catholic  church  itself.  Cyprian  had  contended 
for  an  episcopate  which  was  a  distinct  order  from  the  pres- 
byterate  holding  by  direct  divine  right,  while  the  presbyter 
held  by  mediated  right  through  the  bishops.  The  Catholic 
church  has  left  the  question  an  open  one  whether  the 
bishop  or  the  pope  belong  to  distinct  orders  from  the  pres- 
byterate  or  priesthood,  or  are  not  rather  functions  of  the 
one  only  and  common  order  of  the  priesthood.  Although 
the  monasteries  were  for  the  most  part  exempted  from 
episcopal  supervision,  and  the  monastic  clergy  no  longer 
took  the  vow  of  obedience  to  the  bishop,  yet  they  were  still 
held  in  organic  connection  with  the  secular  church  by 
common  subordination  to  the  papacy.  When  the  papacy 
declined  and  the  pope  finally  lost  his  authority  as  in  Ger- 
many or  England,  the  monk  went  forth  from  his  monas- 
tery, a  presbyter  still,  but  over  whom  there  was  no  authority 


178  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

in  the  church  which  could  ask  or  rightfully  command  his 
obedience.  In  Germany  and  in  Switzerland,  two  countries 
in  which  the  monastic  influence  had  been  deeply  felt  from 
the  time  of  their  first  conversion  to  Christianity,  there  arose 
in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  two  churches,  the  Lutheran 
and  the  Reformed,  organized  upon  the  monastic  principle 
which  Jerome  had  asserted,  that  in  the  beginning  there  was 
no  difference  between  the  bishop  and  the  presbyter. 

And,  finally,  as  the  monasteries  had  their  peculiar  type 
of  organization,  so  also  they  had  their  peculiar  mode  of 
worship.  In  the  catholic  cultus,  the  attention  had  been 
fastened  on  the  eucharist,  of  which  the  bishop  had  been 
the  administrator  from  the  earliest  appearance  of  the 
oifice.  The  development  of  the  ritual  of  the  altar  may 
be  regarded  as  the  work  of  the  episcopate  or  of  the  secular 
clergy.  In  the  course  of  its  growth,  it  had  gradually 
superseded  the  homiletic  worship  of  the  early  church, 
which  consisted  in  prayer  and  praise,  in  the  reading  of 
Scripture,  and  the  word  of  exhortation.  This  service,  dis- 
carded in  the  secular  church,  was  taken  up  by  the  monas- 
teries, and  attained  an  extraordinary  fulness  and  rich 
complexity,  but  never  losing  its  original  motive,  —  the 
appeal  to  the  individual  attention  as  the  condition  of  its 
success.  As  the  Canon  of  the  Mass  was  a  popular  service 
appealing  to  the  eye  with  its  accessories  of  color  and  light, 
and  not  demanding  individual  faith  as  the  condition  of  its 
efficacy,  but  rather  in  itself  an  effective  act,  the  opus  ope- 
ratum,  representing  the  work  of  "  Christ  for  us  " ;  so  on 
the  other  hand,  in  the  monastic  worship,  the  appeal  was  to 
the  ear,  the  reason,  and  the  conscience,  whose  motive  was 
the  "  Christ  within  us."  As  the  monks  had  accepted  the 
ritual  of  the  eucharist  developed  under  the  direction  of 
the  episcopate,  so  in  turn  the  monastery  won  another 
victory,  when  the  daily  reading  of  the  Breviary,  the  mon- 
astic book  of  devotions,  was  made  compulsory  upon  the 
secular  clergy. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE     GREEK     CHURCH  —  NATIONALITY     AND      THE     EPIS- 
COPATE 1 


In  the  Latin  or  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  it  existed 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  the  episcopate  appears  as  subordinate 
to  the  papacy.  It  not  only  contributed  nothing  directly  to 
the  peculiar  greatness  of  the  Mediaeval  church,  but  was 
rather  a  foreign  or  an  incongruous  element,  not  wholly 
in  sympathy  with  the  papacy  or  monasticism,  or  with 
that  peculiar  scholastic  philosophy  which  was  the  out- 
come and  the  crown  of  the  Mediaeval  ecclesiastical  system. 
The  episcopate,  as  it  had  been  conceived  by  Cyprian, 
was  so  changed  in  some  of  its  fundamental  aspects  as 
to  seem  another  and  different  institution.  It  submitted 
to  the  deprivation  of  its  original  claim  by  which  it  was 
authorized  to  rule  the  churches  by  divine  right,  or  by 
the  immediate  grace  of  God.  Under  the  papal  regime 
the  bishops  practically  held  their  office,  only  mediately 
from  God,  through  the  grace  of   the  pope.      The  bishop 

1  Literature.  —  Finlay,  His.  of  Greece,  "Vols.  V.,  VI.  ;  Gibbon,  De- 
cline and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  cc.  xlix.,  liii.  ;  Milman,  Latin 
Christianity,  B.  IV.,  cc.  7,  8,  9,  B.  V.,  c.  3;  Stanley,  His.  of  the  Eastern 
Church;  Ffoulkes,  Schism  between  the  Greek  and  Latin  Churches; 
Thierry,  Nestorius  et  Eiityches,  les  Grandes  Heresies  du  F«  Siecle ; 
Church,  Influences  of  Christianity  upon  National  Character,  Lect.  i. ; 
Freeman,  The  Byzantine  Empire  in  Historical  Essays,  3d  series,  who 
discusses  the  reasons  for  the  low  estimate  of  the  later  Greek  nation  or 
empire  ;  Le  Beau,  His.  du  Bas-Empire  ;  Hertzberg,  Geschichte  der  Byzan- 
tiner.  The  Sources  are  the  Byzantine  Historians,  in  Migne,  Patr.  Gr., 
Nicephorus,  Vol.  100,  Theophanes,  Anastasius,  Genesius,  Vols.  108,  109, 
Georgius  Hamartolus,  Vol.  110.  See  also  the  General  Church  Histories 
and  article  Greece  in  Encyc.  Brit. 

179 


180  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

of  Rome  stood  alone,  in  the  sovereign  exercise  of  ecclesias- 
tical power  by  divine  right.  The  bishops  were  further 
weakened  by  the  emancipation  of  the  monasteries  from 
their  control  and  jurisdiction,  as  well  as  by  the  elevation 
of  great  abbots,  who,  although  presbyters,  were  in  privi- 
leged cases  designated  prelates  and  allowed  to  wear  the 
mitre,  which  was  the  symbol  of  the  bishop's  office  and 
power.  The  secular  clergy  also  had  emancipated  them- 
selves to  a  certain  extei^kt  from  the  authority  of  the  episco- 
pate, till  the  bishop's  power,  even  in  his  own  cathedral  church, 
had  been  reduced  to  a  shadow.  But  notwithstanding  this 
reduction  of  his  influence,  the  office  of  a  bishop,  even  in  the 
Latin  church,  still  retained  dignity  and  prestige,  and  even 
in  the  Middle  Ages  the  bishops  were  still  accomplishing  a 
valuable  work,  and  indeed  indispensable,  both  for  the  church 
and  for  the  world,  for  which  they  alone  possessed  the  requi- 
site qualitications,  —  a  work  which,  without  their  co-opera- 
tion, must  have  assumed  some  other  form,  if  it  had  not  failed 
altogether  of  its  accomplishment.  The  work  of  the  episco- 
pate lay  in  aiding  the  consolidation  of  the  secular  state ;  it 
ministered  to  the  national  consciousness  at  a  time  when 
Christendom  or  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  stood  in  the  way 
of  the  development  of  the  modern  nation. 

This  characteristic  of  the  bishop,  whether  in  the  Eastern 
church  or  in  Western  Christendom,  which  makes  him  the 
natural  ally  of  the  secular  state,  inhered  in  his  office  from 
his  first  appearance  in  the  church.  It  had  been  a  mark 
of  the  Catholic  church  that  it  put  the  administration  of 
ecclesiastical  order  above  priest  or  prophet.  Hence  from 
the  first  the  bishop  became  the  bond  which  united  the 
church  with  the  world.  A  preaching  clergy  or  a  priest- 
hood would  magnify  its  office,  and  be  more  at  the  mercy 
of  theories  or  opinions.  It  would  be  more  likely  to  de- 
preciate this  world,  in  the  interest  of  eternal  and  spiritual 
things.  The  monkish  clergy  of  the  Middle  Ages  had 
no  special  concern  for  the  well-being  of  any  particular 
state,  nor  were  they  the  firmest  props  of  the  rising  mon- 
archies. But  the  bishop  also  magnified  his  office.  His 
reverence  for  ecclesiastical  affairs  fitted  him  for  the  better 


THE    INFLUENCE   OP   NATIONALITY  181 

performance  of  the  secular  functions  of  the  state,  with 
which  he  was  so  often  intrusted.  He  became  the  medium  of 
communication  therefore  between  the  state  and  the  church, 
and  tended  to  counterbalance  the  exclusive  predominance 
of  the  spiritual,  which  would  reduce  the  temporal  power  to 
bondage  and  humiliation. 

We  discern  the  working  of  this  principle,  for  which  the 
episcopate  stood,  from  the  first  appearance  of  the  office  in 
the  second  century.  So  far  was  the  Catholic  church  secu- 
larized in  the  third  century  by  the  episcopate,  despite  the 
attitude  of  Cyprian,  that  its  spiritual  side  was  weakened. 
When  Constantine  proposed  the  alliance  of  church  and 
state  in  the  fourth  century,  the  bishops  at  once  became 
his  most  ardent  supporters  and  allies.  Not  only  did 
they  see  nothing  incongruous  in  the  closer  relationship  of 
the  spiritual  and  the  temporal,  but  they  welcomed  it  as 
a  sign  of  the  divine  favor,  as  if  the  completion  of  the  divine 
revelation. 1 

It  is  the  sense  of  nationality,  which  among  all  the 
divergent  principles  separating  the  Greek  church  from 
the  Latin  church  is  the  most  important,  tliat  has  been  also 
the  most  fruitful  in  vast  consequences  both  for  church  and 
state.  It  is  true  that  other  causes  lie  nearer  to  the  sur- 
face, to  which  is  more  palpably  owing  the  great  schism 
between  Oriental  and  Occidental  Christendom.  While 
Greece  and  Rome  had  been  ostensibly  fused  together  in 
the  Roman  Empire,  yet  the  natural  tendencies  of  Greece 
had  never  been   extirpated.      It    was  impossible   for    the 

1  Eusebius  of  Csesarea  may  be  taken  as  the  type  and  spokesman  of 
the  majority  of  the  bishops  in  the  East  who  welcomed  the  accession 
of  Constantine  as  a  divine  providence,  a  sign  of  the  divine  interposition 
in  behalf  of  the  church.  The  Empei'or  was  to  Eusebius  a  sort  of  reflec- 
tion of  the  supreme  Word  ;  the  monarchy  on  earth  a  counterpart  of  the 
monarchy  in  heaven.  As  in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  the  Word  had  come 
in  the  flesh,  so  in  the  reign  of  Constantine,  the  Word  had  triumphed  over 
the  world.  Cf.  Eusebius,  Vita  Constantini,  and  his  oration  at  the  Tri- 
cennalia  of  Constantine.  For  his  relations  with  Constantine,  cf.  Art. 
Eusebius^  by  Bishop  Lightfoot,  in  Smith  and  Wace,  Die.  Chris.  Biog. 
For  what  seems  too  much  like  the  subserviency  of  the  bishops  to  the 
successors  of  Constantine,  see  UUmann,  Life  of  Gregory  Nazianzen 
(Eng.  Trans.). 


182  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

Catholic  church  to  overcome  divergences  so  deep-seated, 
so  far-reaching  in  their  results,  as  those  which  sprang 
from  the  difference  of  temperament  and  genius  and  cult- 
ure, which  marked  the  Greek  civilization  in  comparison 
with  the  Latin.  But  the  appreciation  of  the  sacredness 
of  nationality  is,  after  all,  the  deepest  motive  which  divided 
Eastern  Christendom  from  the  Latin  church  of  the  Middle 
Ages. 

Catholicity,  if  that  term  can  be  used  to  include  the  organ- 
ization of  the  church  or  its  external  aspects,  was  not  a 
product  of  the  Eastern  mind,  but  of  the  Latin,  and  had 
been  imported  into  the  Orient  after  it  had  secured  its 
form  under  Latin  influence.  It  was  the  Roman  spirit 
which  had  first  developed  the  later  doctrine  of  Apostolic 
succession,  which  had  converted  the  clergy  into  a  priest- 
hood and  separated  them  from  the  laity.^  It  was  Rome 
which  first  possessed  a  list  of  bishops  claiming  to  go 
back  to  Apostles,  riveting  the  physical  chain  of  continuity 
with  Apostolic  practice.  During  the  third  century  the 
East  accepted  the  institution  of  the  episcoj)ate  in  its 
Roman  modification,  but  Apostolic  succession  has  never 
been  to  the  Greek  church  quite  what  it  has  been  to  the 
Latin  mind.  According  to  the  Greek  construction,  the 
evidence  that  one  has  the  succession  is  to  be  found  in 
his  holding  the  pure  doctrine,  while  to  the  Western  mind, 
the  guarantee  of  pure  doctrine  is  to  be  found  only  among 
those  who  can  prove  by  their  external  descent  that  they 
hold  the  Apostolic  succession.     The  Latin  church  was  the 

1  That  the  Greek  church  has  not  made  the  same  sharp  distinction 
between  clergy  and  laity  which  holds  in  the  Latin  church,  finds  one 
illustration  among  many  in  the  controversy  in  the  ninth  century  between 
Photius,  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople,  and  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  "  The 
pope's  demand,  that  a  law  should  be  passed,  forbidding  any  layman, 
after  the  death  of  Photius,  to  be  elevated  to  the  patriarchal  dignity,  was 
not  complied  with.  The  older  examples  were  once  more  appealed  to  ; 
it  was  said  that  every  church,  as  the  Roman,  so  also  the  church  of  Con- 
stantinople, had  its  own  peculiar  and  traditional  customs,  by  which  the 
letter  of  the  law  must  be  interpreted.  On  this  occasion  many  of  the 
bishops  declared  in  a  noticeable  manner  against  the  idea  of  a  separate 
and  fixed  caste  of  priests,  and  against  the  too  sharply  marked  distinction 
between  the  clergy  and  the  laity"  (Neander,  Ch.  His.  VI.  327). 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF   NATIONALITY  183 

first  to  formulate  Christianity  in  a  creed  or  "  rule  of  faith  " 
of  which  the  type  is  the  so-called  Apostles'  creed,  originat- 
ing in  Home  about  the  middle  of  the  second  century.  In 
the  third  century  we  have  the  creed  imported  into  the 
East,  but  how  differently  conceived  from  the  Western 
fashion  is  seen  by  the  form  it  assumes  in  the  preface  of 
Origen's  treatise  concerning  First  Principles  in  theology. 
The  creed  of  Rome  was  terse  and  practical,  occupied  with 
the  assertion  of  historical  facts.  The  Eastern  creed  is 
illumined  with  an  intellectual  or  sjDiritual  inference,  re- 
vealing the  subjective  impression  of  facts  upon  the  mind. 
It  was  also  the  Roman  church  which  first  undertook  the 
formation  of  the  canon  of  the  New  Testament  determining 
the  point  at  which  the  line  should  be  drawn  where  inspira- 
tion within  the  church  had  come  to  an  end.  These  were 
the  external  features  of  the  growing  Catholic  church, 
which  Eastern  Christendom  received  to  develop  or  modify 
in  her  own  way,  but  did  not  originate.^ 

The  event  which  controlled  the  destiny  of  the  Greek 
church  was  the  building  of  the  city  Constantinople.  Like 
so  many  other  moments  in  history,  its  significance  was  not 
recognized  at  the  time.  There  may  have  been  truth  in 
the  various  interpretations  which  the  rise  of  the  new  city 
received,  as  that  Constantine  was  desirous  of  escaping 
from  the  heathenism  which  had  its  stronghold  in  the  an- 
cient capital ;  or  that  it  was  necessary  that  the  centre  of 
the  Empire  should  be  transferred  to  the  East  in  order  to 
meet  the  dangers  which  were  threatened  by  the  revival 
of  the  Persian  Empire.  But  the  full  significance  of  the 
event  appeared  only  when  its  results  were  manifest.  The 
rise  of  Constantinople,  says  Mr.  Freeman,  "tended  to  draw 
into  it  the  Hellenic  element  and  concentrate  it  there,  when 
before  it  had  been  diffused  in  great  cities  like  Antioch  and 
Alexandria."     The  city  of  Constantinople  gave  a  national 

1  Cf.  Ilaniack,  Dogmengesrhichte,  I.,  pp.  400-412,  for  Excursus  on 
Katholisch  und  Bomisch.  The  designation  of  'Orthodox'  is  the  name 
by  which  the  Greek  church  prefers  to  be  known  ;  and  while  claiming 
Catholicity,  however  it  may  be  interpreted,  she  has  left  the  designation  of 
'  Catholic  '  to  the  sister  church  in  the  West. 


184  OliGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

centre  to  Greece,  accomplishing  for  Greece  what  it  had 
never  been  able  to  achieve  under  heathen  auspices.  Names, 
indeed,  were  not  changed;  it  was  the  Roman  Empire  with 
a  new  capital  as  it  seemed ;  but  in  reality  it  was  another 
step  in  the  dissolution  of  the  Empire.  One  nation  had 
been  invested  with  the  glory  and  the  prestige  which  had 
been  created  by  the  city  of  Rome.  Rome  herself,  the 
mistress  of  the  nations,  seemed  to  have  yielded  to  Greece, 
and  Empire  to  have  been  merged  into  nationality.  What 
heathenism  could  not  do,  Christianity  had  done  for  Greece ; 
it  had  disciplined  its  people  and  given  them  new  motives 
of  energy  and  a  bond  of  unity.  Nor  was  this  a  mere  tem- 
porary process,  a  passing  mood  among  the  changing  cir- 
cumstances of  history.  The  Greek  nation,  which  began 
its  career  when  Constantinople  was  founded,  lasted  for 
more  than  a  thousand  years  before  its  melancholy  fall  into 
tlie  hands  of  the  Turks ;  which,  so  far  as  the  lives  of  the 
nations  go,  is  to  be  counted  no  ordinary  duration.  And 
further,  it  continued  to  exist  among  evils  and  dangers  so 
great,  that  only  some  marvellous  vitality  could  have  en- 
abled it  to  survive.^ 

1  "Christianity  created  in  them  [the  Greek  race],  in  a  new  and  char- 
acteristic degree,  national  endurance,  national  fellowship  and  sympathy, 
national  hope.  It  took  them  in  the  unpromising  condition  in  which  it 
found  them  under  the  Empire,  with  their  light,  sensual,  childish  exist- 
ence, their  busy  but  futile  and  barren  restlessness,  their  life  of  enjoyment 
or  of  suffering,  as  the  case  might  be,  but  in  either  case  purposeless  and 
unmeaning ;  and  by  its  gift  of  a  religion  of  seriousness,  conviction,  and 
strength  it  gave  them  a  new  start  in  national  history.  It  gave  them  an 
Empire  of  their  own,  which,  undervalued  as  it  is  by  those  familiar  with 
the  ultimate  results  of  Western  history,  yet  withstood  the  assaults  before 
which,  for  the  moment.  Western  civilization  sank,  and  which  had  the 
strength  to  last  a  life  —  a  stirring  and  eventful  life  —  of  ten  centuries. 
The  Greek  Empire,  with  all  its  evils  and  weaknesses,  was  yet  in  its  time 
the  only  existing  image  in  the  world  of  a  civilized  state.  It  had  arts,  it 
had  learning,  it  had  military  science  and  power ;  it  was,  for  its  day,  the 
one  refuge  for  peaceful  industry.  It  had  a  place  which  we  could  ill  afford 
to  miss  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Gibbon,  we  know,  is  no  lover  of 
anything  Byzantine,  or  of  anything  Christian  ;  but  look  at  that  picture 
which  he  has  drawn  of  the  Empire  in  the  tenth  century, —  that  dark  cen- 
tury when  all  was  so  hopeless  in  the  West,  —  read  the  pages  in  which  he 
yields  to  the  gorgeous  magnificence  of  the  spectacle  before  him,  and 
describes  not  only  the  riches,  the  pomp,  the  splendor,  the  elaborate 
ceremony  of  the  Byzantine  court  and  the  Byzantine  capital,  but  the  com- 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    NATIONALITY  185 

In  the  rise  of  Greek  nationality,  where  church  and  state 
seemed  to  be  fused  into  one  organism,  we  have  the  expLina- 
tion  of  much  that  is  obscure  in  ancient  Catholic  history. 
A  new  principle  had  now  appeared  in  the  Catholic  church 
which  was  to  modify  its  institutions,  leading  to  schisms 
which  could  not  be  healed,  but  illustrating  the  spirit  of 
Christianity  in  profound  and  wonderful  ways.  The  Catho- 
lic church,  as  Rome  conceived  it,  was  from  its  very  nature 
a  creation,  which  could  not  know  distinction  of  race  or 
nation.  But  this  was  a  conception  of  catholicity  which 
the  Greek  church  declined  to  receive  from  the  hitherto 
victorious  West.  It  may  seem  an  external  incident  with 
no  spiritual  importance,  that  a  nation  should  arise  out  of 
the  declining  Empire,  and  become,  as  it  were,  a  spiritual 
law  unto  itself.  But  it  was  an  event  fraught  with  spiritual 
meaning,  full  of  significance  for  the  church,  for  religion, 
for  theology,  for  all  that  concerns  the  deeper  relations  of 
human  life.  The  features  of  catholicity,  whether  of  organi- 
zation, of  creed,  or  of  cultus,  were  destined  in  consequence 
to  a  modification  of  their  inward  import,  till  in  some  re- 
spects they  should  only  faintly  resemble,  while  in  others 
they  should  widely  diverge  from  the  familiar  Roman  type. 
Rome  had  conceived  of  Catholic  unity  as  resting  upon  an 
administrative  basis,  as  having  its  origin  in  one  man,  and 
therefore  to  be  maintained  and  perpetuated  in  one  man 
whose  undisputed  sway  should  bring  unity  and  harmony  to 
the  church.  The  first  intimation  that  the  Apostle  Peter, 
as  an  individual  man,  was  great  enough  and  strong  enough 
to  be  the  foundation  for  the  Catholic  church  is  given  in 
the  pseudo-Clementine  writings,  where  Peter  is  spoken  of 

parative  prosperity  of  the  provinces,  the  systematic  legislation,  the  ad- 
ministrative experience  and  good  sense  with  which  the  vast  machine  was 
kept  going  and  its  wealth  developed,  its  military  science  and  skill,  the 
beauty  and  delicacy  of  its  manufactures,  —  and  then  consider  what  an 
astonishing  contrast  to  all  else  in  those  wild  times  was  presented  by  the 
stability,  the  comparative  peace,  the  culture,  the  liberal  pursuits  of  this 
great  state,  and  whether  we  have  not  become  blind  to  what  it  was,  and 
appeared  to  be,  when  it  actually  existed  in  the  world  of  which  it  was  the 
brilliant  centre,  by  confusing  it  in  our  thoughts  with  the  miseries  of  its 
overthrow"  (Church,  Inflrience  of  Christianity  upon  National  Char- 
acter^ \)-  31). 


186  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

as  "  so  great  a  man  that  he  is  worth  more  than  the  whole 
world."  ^  Upon  some  such  conviction  the  Roman  church 
reposed  when  it  proclaimed  Peter  as  the  source  from  which 
Catholic  unity  took  its  rise  and  by  whom  it  was  perpetu- 
ated through  his  successors,  the  bishops  of  Rome. 

So  also  Cyprian  had  reasoned  in  his  treatise  on  the 
Unity  of  the  Church.  It  was  to  Peter  first  that  Christ 
had  given  the  divine  commission,  and  although  he  had 
afterwards  invested  the  other  disciples  with  the  same  com- 
mission and  given  them  an  equal  power,  "yet  that  he 
might  set  forth  unity,  he  arranged  by  His  authority  the 
origin  of  that  unity  as  beginning  here  from  one,  and  that 
one  was  Peter."  ^  This  interpretation  of  the  mode  and  basis 
of  Catholic  unity  was  never  received  in  the  East.  Origen 
spoke  in  behalf  of  its  deeper  convictions  when  he  rebutted 
the  position  of  Cyprian,  by  maintaining  that  the  words 
spoken  to  Peter  were  spoken  to  him  as  a  Christian  man, 
not  as  an  ecclesiastical  administrator ;  "  they  were  spoken 
to  Peter  and  to  every  Peter;  every  Christian  man  is 
Peter."  ^  In  these  two  representative  utterances  the 
spirit  of  the  Western  and  of  the  Eastern  church  may  still 
be  compared.  The  Greek  church  has  never  yielded  for 
one  moment  in  its  history  to  the  Latin  conception  of 
catholicity,  which  makes  the  unity  of  the  church  to  con- 
sist in  Peter  or  in  any  of  his  so-called  successors  in  the 
Roman  see.* 

What  the  Greek  church  was  attaining  for  itself  when 
the  spirit  of  nationality  revived  in  the  fourth  century,  she 
conceded  also  to  other  countries  in  the  East,  which  in  the 
decline  of  the  Empire  were  beginning  to  feel,  however 
feebly,  the  stirrings  of  national  sentiment.     The  institu- 

1  Clem.  Rec,  VII.  7.  2  j)^  jj^j;.  Ecdes.  iv. 

3  Comm.  on  Matt.  xvi.  18. 

*  Cf.  Greenwood,  Cathedra  Petri,  Vol.  I.,  for  a  full  discussion  of  the 
Petrine  claim  ;  also  R^ville,  Les  Orig.  de  VJ^pis.,  pp.  35-43,  who  doubts 
the  genuineness  of  the  passage.  Matt.  xvi.  18,  19.  These  verses  "  appar- 
tiennent  k  une  couche  secondaire  de  la  tradition  ^vang^lique.  ...  lis 
ne  peuvent  pas  etre  authentiques  sous  leur  forme  actuelle,  mais  il  est  pos- 
sible qu'ils  soient  le  development  on  P alteration  de  quelque  parole  primi- 
tive dans  laquelle  J^sus  reconnaissait  en  Pierre  le  premier  en  date  de  ses 
v^ritables  disciples  "  (p.  39).     Cf.  Gieseler,  Ecdes.  His.,  I.,  p.  237. 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   NATIONALITY  187 

tion  of  the  'patriarchate'  was  the  embodiment  of  the 
Greek  conception  of  Catholic  unity.  It  might  seem  that 
the  recognition  of  the  great  sees  of  Rome,  Constantinople, 
Alexandria,  and  Antioch  was  simply  the  natural  culmina- 
tion of  the  hierarchy ;  that  after  the  bishops  of  capital 
cities  in  the  provinces  had  been  raised  as  metropolitans  to 
authority  over  the  other  bishops,  it  was  inevitable  that  the 
centralization  should  go  further  and  develop  into  the  pre- 
dominance of  the  few,  who  presided  in  the  great  centres 
of  the  Empire.  But  the  patriarchate  involves  another 
principle  than  that  of  a  progressive  centralization,  or  as  it 
has  been  regarded,  the  effort  after  a  closer  correspondence 
between  the  government  of  the  church  and  that  of  the 
Empire.  The  patriarchate  stood  for  the  national  principle 
which  Rome  rejected  and  condemned.  Others,  like  the 
bishops  of  Constantinople  or  Alexandria  or  Antioch,  might 
be  willing  to  receive  the  title  of  Patriarch,  but  Rome  re- 
fused it,  preferring  to  be  known  by  other  designations. 
The  very  word  itself  contained  a  suggestion  of  a  principle 
to  which  Rome  was  averse,  —the  chief  of  a  race  or  country. 
Had  Rome  been  content  to  take  the  place  among  the 
patriarchates,  to  which  it  was  assigned  by  the  Eastern 
church,  the  course  of  history  in  Western  Europe  would 
have  assumed  a  different  form.  It  has  sometimes  been 
thought  that  had  the  Eastern  church  been  more  alive  to 
the  gravity  of  the  situation,  patriarchs  would  have  been 
appointed  for  the  remoter  and  unknown  West,  Spain  and 
Gaul,  Germany  or  Britain.  But  the  national  spirit  had 
not  as  yet  arisen  in  these  countries,  and  Rome  represented 
the  only  nationality  of  which  the  East  was  aware.  Nor 
would  it  have  served  any  useful  purpose  to  nominate 
patriarchs  in  advance  of  the  national  sentiment.  A  nation 
might  beget  a  patriarch,  but  a  patriarch  could  not  create  a 
nation.  In  accordance  with  the  prevailing  theory  of  the 
age,  which  referred  the  origin  of  all  ecclesiastical  institu- 
tions to  the  twelve  Apostles,  Rome  claimed  St.  Peter  and 
Alexandria  St.  Mark  as  their  respective  founders.  Con- 
stantinople, not  willing  to  be  behind  in  such  a  matter, 
claimed  St.  Andrew,  the  brother  of  Peter,  and  earlier  called 


188  THE   ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHUKCH 

than  Peter  to  the  Apostolic  college.  But  so  far  as  the 
East  was  concerned,  this  was  hardly  more  than  an  empty 
sentiment,  which  placed  the  Eastern  sees  upon  an  equal- 
ity with  Rome,  and  at  a  later  time  elevated  Jerusalem  to 
the  same  dignity.  The  reality  behind  the  form  was  the 
revival  of  the  national  spirit  in  the  declining  Roman 
Empire. 

The  Eastern  church  had  acquiesced  in  the  decision  of 
the  Council  of  Nicsea  in  325,  which  confirmed  the  prepon- 
derance of  the  three  great  sees,  Rome,  Alexandria,  and 
Antioch,  corresponding  as  it  did  to  what  seemed  the  facts 
of  the  situation.  Ancient  Greece  had  been  fused  with  the 
Roman  Empire  as  a  constituent  part,  and  when  the  Council 
of  Nicsea  was  held  had  not  yet  become  aware  of  the  high 
destiny  awaiting  her.  Egypt  and  Syria,  however,  repre- 
sented by  Alexandria  and  Antioch,  had  never  been  really 
incorporated  into  the  Roman  Empire.  The  recognition 
given  them  by  the  council  as  5'««si-independent  countries, 
on  a  footing  of  equality  with  Rome,  though  subordinate 
in  dignity,  was  a  concession  to  their  sense  of  national  im- 
portance which  reconciled  them  to  their  position  in  one 
Catholic  church.  The  trouble  came  when  Constantinople 
as  the  seat  of  the  Byzantine  Empire,  but  in  reality  as  the 
centre  of  the  rising  Greek  nationality,  not  only  claimed  a 
place  among  the  great  sees  of  Christendom,  but  demanded 
a  position  between  the  dignities  of  Rome  and  Alexandria, 
the  second  place  in  rank,  as  being  a  new  Rome.  Such  was 
the  decision  of  the  so-called  Second  General  Council  held 
at  Constantinople  in  381.  But  in  advancing  this  high 
claim,  the  council  created  implacable  hostility  in  two 
directions,  for  the  new  patriarchal  see.  Rome  was  indig- 
nant at  an  action  which  violated  the  first  principle  of  Cath- 
olicity as  it  was  conceived  in  the  West,  making  impossible 
the  unity  and  uniformity  of  ecclesiastical  administration 
under  one  man ;  she  resented  also  the  impertinent  intru- 
sion of  a  new  see  which  had  no  Apostolic  foundation. 
The  rise  of  Constantinople  and  her  pretensions  to  high 
ecclesiastical  dignity  was  simply  what  Rome  needed  in 
order  to  the  more  clear  discernment  of  her  own  mission. 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF    NATIONALITY  189 

Henceforth  the  voice  of  Rome  began  to  be  heard,  speak- 
ing with  no  uncertain  sound ;  her  opinions  grew  into  decre- 
tals, and  she  Avas  ready  to  chiim  universal  supremacy. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  the  new  patriarchate  was  equally 
unwelcome  in  the  East,  for  it  meant  the  superiority  of 
Greece,  disguised  as  the  Roman  Empire,  over  countries 
which,  when  they  had  submitted  to  Roman  armies,  had  at 
least  not  accepted  the  hated  domination  of  the  Greeks. 
They  could  receive  Rome  as  a  mistress,  they  could  accept 
Greece  as  a  rival,  but  they  would  not  yield  to  Greek 
supremacy. 

From  this  time,  or  from  the  beginning  of  the  fifth 
century,  the  unity  of  the  Catholic  church  was  doomed,  as 
was  also  the  unity  of  the  Empire.  From  this  time  we  date 
those  controversies,  about  intricate  points  in  theology,  only 
intelligible  to  those  who  were  concerned  in  them,  —  an  evil 
weary  age,  in  which  ecclesiastical  scandals  abounded,  which 
was  rife  in  intrigues  and  dark  suspicions,  when  the  reputa- 
tion of  good  men  was  destroyed,  and  even  the  darker  crimes 
of  murder  and  implacable  hati'eds  which  were  worse  than 
murder  stained  the  records  of  the  Catholic  church.  No 
period  in  Christian  history  is  so  painful,  so  unprofitable  to 
study.  If  there  is  any  consolation  to  be  found,  it  lies  in 
recalling  that  these  strange  hatreds  among  ecclesiastical 
persons  were  not  really  religious  in  their  nature  and  ori- 
gin, but  rather  political,^  the  last  expiring  efforts  of  deca- 

1  Cf.  Freeman,  E.  A.,  in  Ed.  Bev.,  1858,  also  in  Historical  Essays, 
3d  series.  The  Byzantine  Empire.  "  In  the  East  religion  and  nationality 
are  identical.  The  ordinary  course  is  for  a  religion  to  be  first  formed  by 
the  working  of  the  national  mind  and  then  to  be  adopted  as  the  easiest 
definition  of  nationality.  The  instincts  and  tendencies  of  a  race  lead  it 
either  to  adopt  a  distinct  creed  of  its  own  or  to  modify  the  creed  of  an- 
other nation  into  a  distinct  form.  In  the  East  it  is  seldom  that  a  nation 
can  openly  a-ssert  its  distinct  political  existence.  Its  distinctive  religion 
is  commonly  asserted  as  its  outward  badge.  But  if  circumstances  are 
favorable,  the  religious  body  thus  formed  may  acquire  a  political  being 
and  may  again  become  a  nation." 

"In  Egypt  and  in  Syria  the  nations  chafed  under  the  yoke  of  political 
subjection,  but  could  not  throw  it  off.  Ages  of  foreign  despotism  had 
rendered  them  utterly  incapable  of  military  or  political  action.  One  field 
alone  remained  where  they  might  still  continue  to  assert  their  national 
indepenlence  in  a  new  form.     Ecclesiastical  controversy  formed  the  in- 


190  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE   CHURCH 

dent  nationalities,  which  had  no  future,  to  assert  their 
independence ;  just  as  quarrels  of  elderly  people,  whose 
conscience  is  seared,  whose  outlook  is  hopeless,  and  whose 
time  is  short,  surpass  all  others  in  bitterness  of  animosity 
and  in  recklessness  of  means.  Unable  to  assert  their  po- 
litical independence,  Egypt  and  Syria,  to  a  certain  extent 
Rome,  took  refuge  in  theological  formulas,  whose  diver- 
gence in  some  degree  corresponded  to  national  differences 
in  tradition,  thought,  or  temperament.  If  they  were  bound 
together  by  political  ties,  they  were  yet  at  liberty  to  have 
their  own  religions.  It  is  still  painful  to  recall  how  Egyjjt 
rose  up  in  her  angry  might,  and  in  her  triumph  became 
responsible  for  the  banishment  and  death  of  the  saintly 
Chrysostom,  and  succeeded  in  humiliating  Constantinople  ; 
how,  when  fluslied  with  her  triumph,  she  made  an  alliance 
with  Rome  and  succeeded  again  in  humiliating  the  new  see, 
through  the  banishment  and  death  of  Nestorius,  and  above 
all,  in  placing  upon  him  the  stigma  of  heresy,  the  sorest 
thrust  at  the  reputation  of  her  rival.  Once  again  the  tide 
of  war  rose  high,  and  a  third  patriarch  of  Constantinople 
was  trampled  to  death  by  the  feet  of  an  Egyptian  mob. 
Then  the  tide  turned,  the  humbled  city  of  New  Rome 
found  an  ally  in  Old  Rome,  and  allowed  the  Roman  bishop, 
Leo,  to  dictate  the  terms  of  a  theological  formula ;  and 
Egypt,  realizing  that  the  battle  had  gone  against  her,  left 
the  Catholic  church  and  came  up  to  trouble  it  no  longer. 

In  the  midst  of  these  trials  and  scandals  the  Greek  na- 
tion or  church  was  consolidating  her  strength  even  in  her 
weakness  and  humiliation.  With  the  aid  of  Rome  she 
had  overcome  Egypt,  but  the  same  council  which  was  the 
result  of   the  alliance,  —  the  Fourth  General  Council  at 

tellectual  food  of  the  age.  Intellects  therefore  which  under  other  circum- 
stances might  have  triumphed  in  the  senate  house  or  on  the  field  of 
battle,  now  became  the  leaders  of  ecclesiastical  sects,  the  orators  of  the 
pulpit,  the  victors  in  provincial  or  cEcumenical  councils.  .  .  .  The  dis- 
satisfied national  mind,  lacking  physical  vigor  to  venture  on  rebellion,  had 
full  scope  to  assert  its  independence  in  the  shape  of  heresy.  As  in  later 
times,  the  Greeks  under  Moslem  or  Catholic  bondage  consoled  themselves 
by  remaining  Orthodox,  so  the  Egyptians  under  the  bondage  of  Orthodox 
Byzantium  consoled  themselves  by  becoming  Monophysites  "  (Ed.  Eev., 
1858,  p.  328). 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   NATIONALITY  191 

Chalcedon  in  451,  —  became  the  culmination  of  the  rivalry 
with  Rome,  which  was  finally  to  issue  in  schism.  In  re- 
sponse to  Pope  Leo,  who  urged  upon  the  Greeks  the 
supremacy  of  Rome,  as  the  divinely  ordained  head  of  the 
church  and  the  successor  of  Peter,  the  Greek  church  took 
the  step  of  raising  still  higher  the  claim  of  Constantinople 
and  placing  it  on  a  footing  of  equality  with  Rome.  She 
did  not  deny  the  national  equality  of  Rome,  but  she  firmly 
rejected  its  claim  to  superior  authority.  Augustine  had 
died  in  430,  the  year  before  the  Third  General  Council 
met.  He  had  used  the  customary  phrases  about  the  unity 
of  the  Catholic  church  and  its  extension  throughout  the 
world  ;  sects  might  exist  here  and  there,  having  some  local 
reputation ;  but  the  Catholic  church  existed  everywhere 
and  was  to  be  found  in  every  place :  Securus  judicat  orbis 
terrarum.  But  had  he  lived  twenty  years  longer,  he 
would  have  seen  Syria  alienated,  Egypt  departed,  and 
the  foundations  laid  for  the  separation  of  Greece  and 
Rome.  The  Catholic  unity  which  he  had  defended  against 
the  Donatists,  continued  indeed  to  exist,  but  only  as  a 
sentiment  survives  when  the  reality  has  fled.  The  term 
'Catholic'  as  a  distinctive  epithet  appeared  no  longer  to 
the  Greek  church  a  thing  to  be  desired  or  coveted. 
She  preferred  to  be  known  as  the  Holy  Orthodox  Church, 
a  title  which  is  still  suggestive  of  the  glory  of  her  earlier 
heathen  age,  when  Plato  and  Aristotle  were  training  the 
Greek  mind  to  habits  of  right  thinking.  Unlike  the 
Roman  church,  she  did  not  assume  to  be  Catholic,  in 
the  sense  of  being  everywhere  extended,  when  it  was  no 
longer  true.  But  also  orthodoxy,  while  cherished  in  the 
West,  was  never  to  the  Roman  mind  quite  what  it  has 
been  to  the  Greek.  It  was  the  hicvhest  virtue  in  the  Latin 
church  to  submit  in  matters  of  thought,  as  in  other  things, 
to  the  obedience  of  the  supreme  pontiff.  The  Roman  church 
appropriated  the  name  of  Catholic,  defining  it  as  union 
with  the  See  of  Peter,  from  whom  unity  takes  its  rise,  and 
on  this  ground  claiming  to  be  still  the  Catholic  church, 
one  and  universal,  in  virtue  of  the  mystic  significance,  the 
perpetual  appeal  and  obligation  of  a  great  idea. 


192  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 


II 

To  trace  the  gradual  process  of  the  schism  between  the 
Greek  and  Latin  churches  cannot  be  here  attempted. 
Divergent  forms  of  civilization,  profound  differences  of  in- 
tellectual temperament,  the  difference  of  language  which 
prevented  mutual  understandings,  the  inability  of  Rome 
to  comprehend  the  speculative  mind  of  Greece,  varying 
theological  interpretations,  whether  of  creeds  or  rites,  — 
all  these  contributed  to  make  the  schism  inevitable.  But 
beneath  these  differences,  and  giving  to  them  all  their  pro- 
foundest  significance,  was  the  national  idea.  The  Greek 
church  stood  for  national  independence  and  the  autonomy 
of  national  churches ;  the  Roman  church  stood  for  im- 
perialism, the  subjection  of  nations  and  races  in  one  Catho- 
lic organization  to  one  sovereign  will.  The  theological 
question  of  the  filioque,  whether  the  Spirit  proceeds  from 
the  Father  alone  or  from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  maj', 
indeed,  be  discussed  as  an  independent  issue  in  scientific 
theology,  but  in  ecclesiastical  history  it  represents  the 
national  spirit  in  the  Greek  church  refusing  to  accept  im- 
perial dictation,  or  interference  with  national  freedom  by 
a  foreign  power. 

The  Greek  church  has  been  in  the  main  consistent  in  its 
national  policy.  Although  in  the  rivalry  with  Rome,  the 
bishop  of  Constantinople  assumed  titles  which  seem  to 
indicate  the  highest  arrogance,  yet  they  carried  with 
them  no  deep-seated  purpose  to  subject  to  his  will  the 
national  churches  of  the  East.  The  bishop  of  Constanti- 
nople called  himself  the  '  Universal  Patriarch,'  but  it  was 
an  empty  phrase  as  compared  with  the  aspiration  veiled 
under  the  garb  of  humility,  in  the  title  taken  by  the 
bishop  of  Rome,  the  '  Servant  of  the  Servants  of  God.' 
The  Byzantine  church  still  recognized  the  other  patriarchs 
of  the  East  in  their  national  capacity,  and  always  main- 
tained that  a  General  Council,  in  order  to  possess  valid- 
ity, must  be  attested  by  their  approval ;  a  test  which 
Rome  rejected,  evading  it  by  the  exigency  of  events  or 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   NATIONALITY  193 

boldly  claiming  that  no  council  had  authority  until 
approved  by  the  Roman  pontiff.  In  their  weak  and  muti- 
lated condition,  after  the  Monophysite  schism,  the  patri- 
archs of  Alexandria,  Antioch,  and  Jerusalem  continued  to 
maintain  this  formal  test  of  the  validity  of  a  General 
Council.  But  when,  in  the  seventh  century,  they  had 
fallen  under  Moslem  rule,  and  no  longer  had  freedom 
of  action,  the  principle  of  nationality  was  narrowed  down 
to  the  simple  issue  between  Rome  and  Constantinople.  It 
may  seem  as  if  Constantinople  was  the  aggressor  in  the 
conflict  with  Rome,  which  now  ensued  ;  but  it  was  Rome 
which  was  demanding  subjection,  not  Constantinople.  The 
one  was  fighting  for  supremacy,  the  other  for  freedom  of 
national  existence.  It  was  in  the  interest  of  national  inde- 
pendence that  at  the  Second  TruUan  Council  in  692,  when 
the  Byzantine  church  was  perfecting  its  system  of  order 
and  discipline  in  the  shape  in  which  it  was  to  remain  for 
centuries,  the  occasion  was  also  taken  to  condemn  the 
Roman  church  for  disobedience  to  conciliar  authority  as 
well  as  for  formal  heresy.^ 

To  those  who  are  interested  in  the  significance  of 
minor  issues  in  ecclesiastical  affairs,  the  Byzantine  church 
will  appear  on  most  of  the  points  in  which  she  then 
condemned  the  church  of  Rome  as  having  at  least  a 
show  of  reason  and  authority.  She  reproved  the  Roman 
church  for  rejecting  the  28th  Canon  of  the  Council  of 
Chalcedon,  which  placed  the  see  of  Constantinople  upon 
a  footing  of  equality  with  Rome.  She  protested  against 
the  Roman  purpose  of  subjecting  the  clergy  to  the  rule 
of  celibacy,  although  she  was  inconsistent,  when  she  her- 
self enforced  celibacy  on  the  episcopate.  She  insisted 
that  the  regulations  of  the  Apostolic  conference  in  Jeru- 
salem were  still  binding,  which  prohibited  the  eating  of 
things  strangled,  and  of  blood,  while  Rome  regarded  these 
injunctions  as  only  of  temporary  obligation.  She  con- 
demned the  Roman  custom  of  kneeling  in  the  worship  of 

1  For  the  Second  Trullan  Council,  or  the  Concilium  Qninisextnm,  as  it 
is  also  called,  cf.  ]Mansi,  XI.,  pp.  930-1006  ;  Assemani,  Bibliotheca  juris 
OrientaUs,  1766,  Vols.  I.  and  V. 
o 


194  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE  CHURCH 

the  Lord's  Day  or  at  the  Eucharist,  as  indicating  some 
misapprehension  of  the  relation  of  humanity  to  God.  In 
the  80th  Canon  of  the  Second  TruUan  Council,  which  for- 
bids all  representations  of  Christ  under  the  figure  of  a 
lamb,  there  may  be  a  hint  at  some  usage  of  the  Roman 
church,  about  which  little  is  known,  but  what  informa- 
tion concerning  which  we  do  possess,  would  seem  to  indi- 
cate that  the  sacrificial  conception  of  the  eucharist  had  been 
pushed  almost  to  the  extent  of  animal  sacrifice,  as  when 
a  lamb  was  placed  upon  the  altar.^  She  resented  the 
Roman  custom  of  fasting  on  Saturda3^s  during  Lent  as  an 
indignity  done  to  the  ancient  Jewish  Sabbath, —  the  peren- 
nial feast-day  commemorating  the  joy  of  the  creation.  In 
all  these  points,  in  those  even  which  seem  unimportant, 
there  is  to  be  discerned  the  trace  of  an  earlier  apprehen- 
sion of  Christianity  which  differed  from  the  Roman  inter- 
pretation. The  spiritual  life  which  gave  birth  to  these 
usages  of  the  elder  church  may  have  grown  feeble  and 
inactive,  but  all  the  more  tenaciously  did  she  cling  to 
them  as  if  they  enshrined  some  valuable  relic,  even  if  its 
worth  could  no  longer  be  estimated. 

The  Second  Trullan  Council  in  692  was  then  taking  the 
first  steps  in  the  accomplishment  of  the  schism  between 
the  East  and  West,  by  charging  the  Roman  church  with 
heresy  and  with  insubordination  to  ecclesiastical  authority. 
As  time  went  on,  the  divergence  grew  wider  and  deeper, 
and  other  charges  were  alleged  against  Rome,  which  from 
the  ecclesiastical  point  of  view  also  possess  no  slight  sig- 
nificance. The  modification  of  the  Nicene  creed,  by  the 
Latin  church  in  the  ninth  century,  was  to  the  Greek  mind 
an  unpardonable  offence,  an  innovation  on  the  ancient 
inviolable  tradition,  which  ought  not  to  have  been  made  at 
all,  but,  if  contemplated,  should  have  been  made  by  the 
concurrent  voice  of  the  universal  church,  an  injury,  there- 
fore, to  the  very  foundations  of  the  faith  as  the   Greek 

1  Cf.  Gieseler,  Ec.  His.,  II.,  p.  217:  "Mentiuntur  qiioque,  nos  sicut 
per  alia  ipsorum  conscripta  indicator,  agnum  in  Pascha,  more  Judaeoruni, 
super  altare  pariter  cum  dominico  corpore  benedicere  et  offerre  "  (Mansi, 
XV.,  355).     See  also  Hatch,  Hibbert  Lectures,  1888,  p.  300. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    NATIONALITY  195 

church  had  received  it.  And,  indeed,  it  was  capable  of  this 
interpretation,  an  assertion  of  autonomy  on  the  part  of  the 
revived  Roman  Empire  of  the  West,  corresponding  also  with 
the  attitude  of  Charlemagne  in  the  controversy  over  image 
worship,  when  the  Greek  church  acted  independently  of  the 
Western  at  the  Seventh  General  Council  (787).  Another 
accusation  was  now  added  to  the  list  of  Roman  heresies 
by  Photius,  the  Patriarch  of  Constantinople  (f  891)  when 
Rome  was  accused  of  robbing  the  presbyters  of  their  inher- 
ent rights  by  confining  the  administration  of  the  rite  of 
confirmation  to  the  bishops.^  The  Greek  church  had 
always  allowed  the  performance  of  the  rite  by  the  presby- 
ter, in  contrast  with  the  teaching  of  Cyprian,  that  the  bish- 
ops were  the  primary  depositary  of  the  Spirit,  or  that  the 
church  was  in  the  bishop.  And  one  other  heresy  the  Greek 
church  at  a  later  time  imputed  to  the  Roman,  which  as  the 
latest  seemed  also  the  worst  to  the  Greek  mind,  —  the  cus- 
tom of  using  unleavened  bread  in  the  Eucharist.  This 
was  one  of  the  innovations  of  Rome,  which  dates  after  the 
ninth  century,  the  prelude  to  the  coming  doctrine  of  tran- 
substantiation,  that  the  bread  in  the  Lord's  supper  should 
not  be  the  bread  of  common  life.  The  Roman  church  may 
have  had  its  reasons  for  the  change :  there  was  the  Jewish 
analogy  of  the  Passover,  and  the  connection  of  the  Lord's 
supper  with  the   Jewish  festival  of   deliverance  was  no 

1  "One  of  the  leading  causes,  or  at  least  one  of  the  alleged  occasions 
of  it  [the  schism  between  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches],  was  the  con- 
temptuous way  in  which  the  Latins  treated  the  confirmations  of  the 
Greeks.  As  being  administered  by  simple  priests,  they  considered  it 
null  and  void,  and  reconfirmed  the  Bulgarians,  who  had  been  recently 
converted  to  the  faith  by  Greek  missionaries.  Photius  raises  an  indignant 
outcry  against  what  he  describes  as  an  unparalleled  sacrilege,  and  argues 
that  to  deny  to  the  priest  the  authority  to  confirm  is  to  deny  his  priest- 
hood altogether.  In  language  highly  colored  by  recollections  of  the 
Areopagite,  he  says:  'He  consecrates  the  body  and  the  blood  of  the 
Lord  Christ,  and  with  these  sanctifies  again  those  who  were  before  ad- 
mitted to  the  secret ;  how  shall  he  not  sanctify  by  anointing  with  the 
ointment  those  who  are  now  in  course  of  initiation  ?  The  priest  baptizes, 
fully  accomplishing  upon  the  baptized  the  purifying  gift ;  how,  when  he 
is  the  rightful  accomplisher  of  the  purification,  will  you  deprive  him  of  the 
guard  and  seal  of  it  ?  '  "  (Epis.  I.,  xiii.  7.)  Mason,  The  Relation  of  Con- 
firmation to  Baptism,  p.  386.  Cf.  also  Hergenrother,  Photixis,  Patriarch 
von  Constantinopel,  1867. 


196  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

slight  point  to  maintain.  But  the  passionate  indignation 
among  the  Greeks  which  showed  itself  in  unseemly  ways, 
at  what  may  appear  to  some  so  slight  a  circumstance,  does 
also  indicate  that  there  was  a  vital  difference  between  the 
churches  from  the  first  in  regard  to  this  great  central  rite 
of  the  Christian  church.  To  the  Greek  mind  it  was  indis- 
pensable to  its  true  celebration,  that  the  bread  of  spiritual 
life  should  be  transmuted  from  the  bread  of  ordinary  life. 

These  ritual  or  theological  differences,  whatever  view 
may  be  taken  of  them,  are  bound  together  in  the  assertion 
of  one  consistent  purpose ;  on  the  one  hand  the  asser- 
tion of  its  independent  national  existence  by  the  Greek 
church,  and  on  the  other  aspiration  for  a  sovereignty  over 
the  nations  by  the  pope,  who  as  in  himself  the  highest 
source  and  sanction  of  ecclesiastical  law  could  dispense 
with  councils  or  alter  their  decrees  at  his  will.  The 
political  issue  became  clearer  to  the  bishop  of  Rome  and 
to  the  Eastern  emperor,  in  the  early  lialf  of  the  eighth 
century,  when  Leo  the  Isaurian  was  conducting  his  re- 
markable correspondence  with  Pope  Gregory  II.  Already 
the  pope  was  preparing  to  turn  away  from  the  East,  where 
his  attempt  to  assert  his  sovereignty  had  ended  in  failure. 
A  new  and  stable  monarchy  was  growing  up  in  Gaul  and 
although  the  papacy  with  its  ancient  ties  and  associations 
preferred  the  older  civilization  out  of  which  it  had  sprung, 
to  the  barbarous  states  of  the  West,  and  it  must  have 
seemed  like  humiliation  to  its  ancient  lineage  that  a  bishop 
of  Rome  should  profess  allegiance  to  barbarian  kings ; 
yet  the  emergency  was  so  great  when  the  Lombards  were 
threatening  to  take  possession  of  Rome  and  to  merge  it 
into  an  united  Italy,  that  the  popes  bent  to  the  necessities 
of  the  hour,  and  prepared  to  sever  the  connection  with  the 
ancient  Roman  Empire  of  the  East.  There  was  no  longer 
anything  to  be  gained  by  the  papacy,  in  continuing  to  pay 
allegiance  to  the  emperor  at  Constantinople  :  no  help  could 
be  expected  from  him  in  relieving  Rome  from  its  distress. 
Only  the  sentiment  remained  which  reverenced  the  Ro- 
man Empire  as  the  immutable  purpose  of  God,  —  a  senti- 
ment from  which  the  Roman  papacy  had  originally  drawn 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    NATIONALITY  197 

its  inspiration.  That  sentiment  was  now  to  change  its 
form  and  to  take  a  new  lease  of  life,  by  which  the  papacy 
would  secure  in  Western  Christendom  what  it  had  failed 
to  attain  in  the  Eastern  church. 

The  attitude  of  Gregory  II.  when  writing  to  Leo,  the 
Eastern  emperor,  shows  an  independent  and  defiant  spirit. 
Leo  had  been  endeavoring  to  suppress  image  worship 
in  the  Byzantine  Empire,  under  the  conviction  that  the 
Mohammedans  had  the  advantage  of  the  Catholic  church 
when  they  condemned  the  worship  of  the  creature  and  laid 
supreme  stress  upon  the  worship  of  one  absolute  and  sov- 
ereign will.  But  in  his  effort  to  secure  the  abolition  of  the 
images,  the  Emperor  encountered  the  sharp  opposition  of 
Rome.  In  reply  to  the  Emperor's  threat  to  chastise  the 
Pope,  and  to  carry  him  captive  to  Constantinople,  Gregory 
II.  assured  him  it  was  no  longer  possible  ;  it  was  as  im- 
possible as  to  pursue  the  winds.  He  threatens  the  Emperor 
with  a  revolt  of  the  West  from  his  authority  if  he  persists 
in  his  purpose  to  exterminate  worship  of  images.  Finally 
he  utters  the  words  which  express  the  literal  truth  of  the 
situation :  "  The  bishops  of  Rome  are  as  a  wall  between 
the  East  and  the  West."  ^ 

The  connection  of  the  West  with  the  Byzantine  Empire 
had  been  but  a  nominal  one  since  the  fall  of  the  Western 
Empire  in  the  year  476.  How  much  that  date  may  actu- 
ally represent  is  among  the  undetermined  problems  of 
history.  One  might  do  justice  to  the  confusion  and  con- 
tradiction of  the  time  as  to  what  had  happened,  by  recogniz- 
ing that  as  an  actual  fact  the  Roman  Empire  in  the  West 
had  been  destroyed  and  its  place  occupied  by  barbarian 
kingdoms.  But  the  fact  went  for  nothing  compared  Avith 
the  sentiment  or  the  idea,  —  the  popular  belief  that  the 
Western  Empire  had  not  fallen,  that  the  Eastern  emperor 
still  represented  the  true  authority  over  the  West  and  that 
with  his  consent  barbarian  princes  were  allowed  to  rule  in 
the  West  as  his  deputies.  Under  the  influence  of  this 
sentiment  the  bishops  of  Rome  had  still  continued  to  give 

1  For  the  letters  of  Gregoiy  cf.  Baronius,  Annul.  73G,  31.  See  also 
Diet.  Chris.  Biog.,  Art.  Leo  III.  ;  and  for  councils,  Mansi  XII. 


198  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

their  allegiance  to  the  Byzantine  ruler.  When  Gregory  II. 
was  writing  to  Leo,  the  last  vestige  of  imperial  power  in 
Italy  was  fading  away,  and  it  is  plain  from  their  correspon- 
dence that  both  Pope  and  Emperor  realize  the  fact.  But  the 
power  of  a  sentiment  which  dominates  and  interprets  the 
fact,  till  the  actual  event  loses  its  significance  in  the  light 
of  an  idea  or  conviction,  was  never  more  powerfully  illus- 
trated than  in  the  transactions  of  the  eighth  century.  The 
Eastern  emperor  took  the  step  which  precipitated  the  great 
change.  Leo  was  one  of  the  most  vigorous  rulers  and  far- 
seeing  of  statesmen.  Realizing  as  he  did  that  Gregory's 
fealty  to  himself  was  at  the  vanishing-point,  he  acted  be- 
fore it  was  too  late  ;  he  withdrew  the  countries  of  lUyria, 
Greece,  and  Macedonia,  Sicily  and  estates  in  Southern  Italy, 
from  papal  jurisdiction  and  placed  them  under  the  ecclesi- 
astical control  of  the  bishop  of  Constantinople.  It  is 
strange  that  they  should  have  been  allowed  to  remain  so 
long  in  subjection  to  Rome.  But  this  event,  which  increased 
the  power  of  the  Eastern  patriarchate,  finally  sundered  the 
ties  which  bound  the  Roman  bishops  to  the  East. 

In  the  eighth  century  a  new  inspiration  began  to  dawn 
in  the  soul  of  the  papacy  —  a  genuine  and  deep  conviction, 
it  must  have  been,  though  owing  its  source  to  mixed  and 
uncertain  motives,  that  God  was  abandoning  the  world  of 
the  East  and  had  entrusted  the  headship  of  the  Roman 
Empire  to  the  great  monarch  of  the  West.  When  Charle- 
magne had  consolidated  his  power,  he  appeared  as  a  prince 
ruling  within  the  ancient  confines  of  the  Empire,  but 
with  a  territory  vastly  larger  than  the  Empire  had  ever 
possessed.  The  power  was  his ;  the  Eastern  Empire  was 
weak  and  threatened  by  great  dangers ;  it  must  be  the 
divine  will,  therefore,  that  the  crown  of  the  Csesars  should 
be  transferred  from  the  East  to  the  West ;  the  divine 
symbol  of  authority  must  be  made  to  correspond  with  the 
reality.  The  bishop  of  Rome  was  not  the  agent  of  the 
transaction,  but  its  spokesman  only,  acting  as  a  prophet  to 
declare  the  will  of  God.  He  was  simply  doing  what  the 
prophet  Samuel  had  done,  when  he  declared  the  transfer 


THE   INFLUENCE   OF   NATIONALITY  199 

of  the  crown  from  Saul  to  David.  The  new  order  in  the 
West  reposed  upon  prophecy  for  its  justification,  when  the 
tangible  succession  was  lacking.  Once  in  the  history  of 
the  papacy,  the  pope  himself  posed  as  a  prophet  to  proclaim 
the  will  of  God  speaking  by  direct  communication  from  the 
heavens.  In  this  way  the  papacy  reconciled  itself  to  the 
transfer  of  its  allegiance  from  the  ancient  Roman  emperor 
to  the  Carolingian  king.^  Facts  and  imaginative  senti- 
ment, belief  in  a  divine  will  which  ordered  human  events, — 
all  these  combined  to  create  one  of  the  supreme  moments 
of  history.  Western  Christendom  was  advancing  into  the 
future  under  the  inspiration  of  a  great  conviction,  and  the 
darkness  of  the  West  was  illumined  as  with  a  divine  light. 
The  Eastern  emperor  retired  into  the  background,  and 
from  this  time  ceased  to  be  a  factor  in  the  greater  history 
which  Western  Europe  was  to  evolve.  The  Eastern  church 
as  well  was  gradually  ignored  or  forgotten,  till  at  last  it 
almost  required  an  effort  to  realize  that  it  still  existed,  or 
formed  any  part  of  Christendom,  or  was  contributing  any 
service  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 

The  history  of  the  Greek  church,  after  the  practical  con- 
summation of  the  great  schism  by  the  coronation  of  Charle- 
magne presents  no  incidents  of  importance  beyond  its 
maintenance  of  the  principle  that  catholicity  is  consistent 
with  the  existence  of  national  and  independent  churches, 
that  catholic  unity  does  not  require  subordination  of 
the  nations  to  one  imperial  and  sovereign  head.  That 
became  the  issue  in  East  and  West  alike.  The  bishop  of 
Rome  had  taken  lessons  in  the  art  of  ecclesiastical  ad- 
ministration from  the  sore  experience  of  his  rivalry  with 
Constantinople.  To  his  mind  independent  and  coequal 
patriarchates  stood  for  centrifugal  tendencies,  which  broke 
up  the  unity  of  the  church.  Tliere  was  to  be  no  repeti- 
tion of  this  evil  in  the  Holy  Roman  Church  and  Empire 
of  tlie  West. 

But  in  the  Greek  church  we  have  an  illustration,  of  no 

1  On  the  allegiance  of  the  bishops  of  Rome  to  the  Eastern  Emperor, 
cf.  Lea,  H.  C,  Studies  in  Church  History,  pp.  14-42. 


200  ORGANIZATION    OP    THE    CHURCH 

slight  value  as  an  actual  experiment,  tliat  the  highest 
bond  of  Cliristian  unity  is  not  necessarily  an  administra- 
tive or  centralizing  ecclesiasticism.  The  Greek  church 
had  its  missionaries  and  its  conquests.  The  Slavic  races 
became  related  to  it,  as  the  Teutonic  races  in  the  West 
were  related  to  Rome.  But  as  the  new  races  in  the  East 
were  converted,  each  was  allowed  to  have  the  divine 
offices  in  the  vernacular,  and  each  to  have  its  own  inde- 
pendent administration,  recognizing  only  the  tie  of  grati- 
tude which  bound  it  in  reverence  to  Constantinople,  whose 
primacy  was  of  honor,  but  not  of  supremacy.  The  great 
event  in  the  history  of  the  Greek  church  was  the  conver- 
sion of  Russia,  which  so  far  as  territory  and  numbers  were 
concerned,  placed  it  upon  an  almost  equal  footing  with 
the  Latin  church  of  the  East.  It  is  interesting  to  read  the 
story  which  records  how  Russia  was  led  to  choose  the  relig- 
ion of  Constantinople,  in  preference  to  that  of  Islam  or 
of  Rome.^  But  it  is  more  important  here  to  note  how 
when  the  Russian  church,  having  increased  in  extent  and 
numbers,  desired  its  own  independent  government,  the  see 
of  Constantinople  adopted  the  plastic  principle  of  the 
national  patriarchate,  as  it  had  developed  in  the  fourth 
century,  and  the  new-made  Patriarch  of  Moscow  took  his 
place  on  a  ground  of  equality  with  the  ancient  patriarchal 
sees.  At  a  later  time,  in  1823,  when  the  patriarchate  of 
Moscow  fell  into  disfavor  with  the  head  of  the  state,  an 
agreement  was  easily  reached  between  the  Czar  and  the 
Patriarch  of  Constantinople  by  which  it  was  abolished  and 
its  powers  delegated  to  a  commission  of  bishops  known 
as  the  Most  Holy  Governing  Synod.  In  like  manner, 
when  Greece  achieved  its  independence  and  j^referred  an 
arrangement  for  the  government  of  its  church  similar  to 
that  which  had  been  adopted  in  Russia,  the  Patriarch  of 
Constantinople  in  1852  recognized  the  Holy  Synod  of 
Greece  as  representing  this  independent  branch  in  the 
family  of  national  churches.  The  principle  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  national  church  was  also  recognized  in 
Georgia,  in  Servia,  in  Roumania,  and  in  Montenegro.     In 

1  Stanley,  His.  of  the  Eastern  Church.  Lect.  ix. 


THE    INFLUENCE    OF    NATIONALITY  201 

these  obscure  principalities,  as  also  in  Greece,  it  was  the 
church  which  had  been,  during  ages  of  oppression,  the 
bearer  of  the  nationality,  in  which  alone  the  national  con- 
sciousness and  aspiration  found  expression  and  was  nour- 
ished, till  independence  and  freedom  had  been  achieved. 

Nor  is  the  bond  a  weak  one  which  unites  these  inde- 
pendent national  churches  in  the  larger  organization  of 
the  Greek  church,  or,  as  it  prefers  to  be  called,  the  Holy 
Orthodox  Church  of  the  East.  The  sense  of  unity  reposes 
upon  a  common  creed,  whose  conservation  is  the  tie  of 
coherence  not  only  among  themselves  as  independent 
churches,  but,  as  it  is  devoutly  believed,  with  the  church 
of  all  ages  back  to  its  Apostolic  origin.  Whatever  criti- 
cism has  been  made  upon  the  unintelligent,  uncritical  ad- 
herence to  formularies  which  characterizes  the  Eastern 
church,  and  although  it  has  been  regarded  as  the  cause  of 
that  sterile  immobility  which  weakens  her  life  and  efficiency, 
yet  as  a  bond  of  unity,  at  least,  it  has  been  more  eifective, 
more  conservative  and  enduring,  than  the  ecclesiastical 
principle  which  prevailed  in  the  West,  where  the  unity 
takes  its  rise  from  the  one  man  who  occupies  the  see  of 
Peter,  in  obedience  to  whom  is  thought  to  lie  the  essence 
of  the  Christian  faith.  But  the  comparison  between  the 
organization  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches  is  incom- 
plete, until  the  development  of  nationalities  has  been 
traced  in  Western  Europe.  In  the  East  nationality  took 
refuge  in  the  church  and  in  theological  formulas  at  the 
moment  when  the  Roman  Empire  was  in  disintegration. 
In  the  West,  the  church  fled  for  shelter  and  protection  to 
spiritual  Rome,  an  intangible,  impalpable  sentiment  in- 
deed, but  one  which  proved  more  real  and  powerful,  while 
its  mission  endured,  than  secular  Rome  in  the  days  of  the 
plenitude  of  its  power. 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE   EPISCOPATE   AND   THE   PAPACY  ^ 

The  office  of  the  episcopate  underwent  no  development 
in  the  Eastern  church  after  the  rise  of  the  patriarchate  in 
the  fifth  century.  It  continued  to  retain  its  original 
character  as  a  mediator  between  things  spiritual  and  secu- 
lar, affiliating  easily  with  the  rising  nationalities.  The 
greatest  change  which  it  experienced  had  been  when 
monasticism  arose  and  forced  it  into  compromises  alien  to 
its  original  spirit.  Among  those  who  best  illustrated  its 
character  after  this  modification  were  Basil,  the  two 
Gregories,  and  Chrysostom,  all  of  whom  had  felt  the  influ- 
ence of  the  monastic  spirit,  shown  in  the  cultivation  of 
preaching  as  an  art,  or  in  a  more  intense  devotion  to 
theological  principles,  instead  of  the  more  practical  views 
of  the  Catholic  church  and  its  mission  which  marked  the 
office  at  its  birth.  Even  in  the  East  there  were  instances 
of  rivalry  between  the  bishops  and" the  monasteries,  but  for 
the  most  parts  the  law  prevailed  which  subjected  the 
monastery  to  the  bishop's  control.     The  bishops  accepted 

1  Cf.  for  the  history  of  ecclesiastical  organization,  Monumenta  Germa- 
nicB  Historica,  ed.  by  Pertz  or  by  Boretius  ;  Jaff^,  Bibliotheca  Rerum  Ger- 
manicarum ;  for  the  councils,  Mansi  and  Hefele ;  for  the  Council  of 
Constance,  H.  von  der  Hardt,  3Iagniim  ceciimenicum  Constantiense  Con- 
cilium, etc.,  and  Hist.  Cone.  Const.;  Hinschius,  Decretales  pseudo-isido- 
rianm ;  Gieseler,  Ec.  His.,  Vol.  III.  ;  Milman,  Latin  Christianity,  Vol. 
VII.;  Creighton,  His.  of  the  Papacy;  Emerton,  Mediceval  Europe,  with 
valuable  bibliographical  introduction  ;  Hatch,  Growth  of  CMirch  Institu- 
tions ;  Lea,  Studies  in  Church  History;  Mulford,  TTie  Nation;  Wells, 
The  Age  of  Charlemagne ;  Coulanges,  The  Ancient  City;  Bryce,  The 
Holy  Roman  Empire;  Guizot,  His.  of  Civ.  in  France;  Lavisse,  VHis- 
tnire  Politique  de  V Europe  (Eng.  Tr.  by  Gross) ;  Laurent,  iStudes  sur 
VHistoire  de  VHumanite,  Vol.  V.,  Les  Barheres  et  le  Catholicisme  ;  Giese- 
brecht,  Geschichte  der  Deutschen  Kaiserzeit ;  Richter,  Annalen  der  Deut- 
schen  Geschichte  ;  Hauck,  Kirchengesch.  Deutsehlands  ;  the  general  Church 
Histories,  among  others  Chastel,  Moeller,  Kurtz. 

202 


THE    EPISCOPATE    AND    THE    PAPACY  203 

the  sovereignty  of  the  state ;  and  the  office  of  Emperor 
assumed  a  quasi-sacred  character,  which  seemed  to  justify 
not  only  his  superintendence  over  the  external  relations  of 
the  church  with  the  Empire,  but  also  his  interference  or 
mediation  in  theological  controversies  when  they  threat- 
ened the  well-being  of  the  state.  There  were  occasional 
conflicts  between  the  sovereign  and  his  bishops,  as  in  the 
Image  Controversy,  when  the  bishops  at  times  sided  with 
the  emperor  in  sustaining  the  iconoclastic  princi2:)le  or 
again  resisted  him.  But  the  emperor  had  the  welfare  of 
the  church  at  heart  as  closely  as  the  bishops,  since  the 
church  was  only  another  aspect  of  the  state.  There  was 
no  great  issue  at  stake  which  separated  the  spiritual  from 
the  secular,  or  led  to  antagonisms  between  church  and 
state  which  could  not  be  healed.  Stability  was  thus  finally 
secured,  but  progress  was  sacrificed. 

It  was  otherwise  in  Western  Europe,  where  the  episcopate 
had  a  history  and  a  development  which  includes  marked 
changes  in  the  office,  conflicts  which  affected  the  life  of 
the  state  as  well  as  of  the  church,  in  which  also  were  in- 
volved the  interests  of  morals  and  religion.  It  was  forced 
to  confront  great  obstacles  which  seemed  to  hinder  its 
success ;  it  had  a  powerful  rival  in  the  monastic  orders ;  it 
was  at  the  mercy  at  one  time  of  secular  rulers,  and  at  an- 
other of  the  papacy.  But  if  it  seemed  to  be  threatened 
with  failure  through  its  secularization,  yet  it  maintained 
that  distinctive  character  with  which  it  was  endowed  at 
its  origin  and  in  its  own  important  way  contributed  to  the 
development  of  civilization,  and  ultimately  to  the  elevation 
of  the  church. 

After  the  death  of  Syagrius,  the  Roman  governor,  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  fifth  century,  Clovis  became  the  head 
of  a  new  monarchy  in  Gaul,  and  as  a  Catholic  king  was 
welcomed  as  a  second  Constantine.  The  first  change  to 
be  noted  is  the  transition  of  the  bishop  from  being  the 
local  pastor  in  the  town  or  city  to  the  ruler  of  a  large 
diocese.  Although  the  change  was  an  important  one,  yet 
it  was  accomplished  by  causes  so  natural  and  inevitable, 
springing  so  directly  from  the  situation  and  the  character 


204  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

of  the  office,  that  it  was  not  felt  as  a  revolution  which 
involved  still  greater  changes  in  state  and  church.  When 
the  Roman  government  broke  down  in  Gaul,  the  bishop 
was  left  as  the  foremost  citizen  in  the  old  municipalities, 
the  bearer  of  the  Roman  traditions  and  culture,  to  whom 
it  was  natural  that  the  Roman  population  should  look  as 
its  head  and  protector.  He  had  been  accustomed  to  act  as 
a  financial  administrator  and  as  a  judge  in  secular  affairs 
as  well  as  ecclesiastical,  thus  gaining  qualifications  which 
fitted  him  for  a  larger  sphere  of  authority.  The  expansion 
of  the  bishop's  diocese,  which  in  the  ancient  church  had  been 
limited  by  the  town  or  city,  or  its  immediate  environment, 
was  effected  by  the  combination  of  the  municipality  with 
the  Teutonic  gau  or  county ;  so  that  he  now  claimed  juris- 
diction over  the  large  territory  surrounding  his  munici- 
pality, in  which  towns  and  cities  were  yet  to  be  built,  and 
where  hundreds  of  parishes  were  yet  to  be  planted.^  The 
bishops  were  already  important  personages,  invested  with 
the  spiritual  reverence  of  the  people  as  well  as  with  secular 
power,  when  they  welcomed  the  newly  converted  mon- 
arch as  the  head  of  the  state.  The  tendency  in  the 
episcopate  to  an  alliance  with  the  earthly  sovereign,  as 
though  there  were  nothing  incompatible  in  the  relation,  but 
on  the  contrary  it  had  been  divinely  ordered  for  their 
mutual  well-being,  was  illustrated  anew  and  in  a  most  im- 
l^ressive  manner.  It  was  fortunate  for  Clovis,  the  new  king, 
that  he  received  this  support.     He  became  the  Eldest  Son 

1  Cf.  ante,  p.  107.  "  Instead  of  each  newly  formed  community  having 
its  complete  ecclesiastical  organization,  as  had  been  the  case  in  Asia 
Minor  and  North  Africa,  the  authority  of  the  city  bishop  was  conceived 
to  extend  over  all  the  communities  within  the  district  of  which  the  city 
was  the  political  centre.  For  in  the  fusion  of  Teutonic  with  what  re- 
mained of  Roman  institutions,  the  Roman  civitas  was  taken  as  the  centre 
of  the  Teutonic  gau,  or  county,  a  union  of  two  systems  of  administration 
which  was  aided  partly  by  the  fact  that  even  in  Roman  times  the  civitas 
had  round  it  a  certain  area  or  '  territorium '  (a  term  which  is  occasion- 
ally used  to  designate  the  bishop's  diocese  of  later  times),  and  partly  by 
the  fact  that  the  ga^l,  or  county,  was  probably  only  the  revival  or  the 
perpetuation  of  an  earlier  Celtic  division.  ...  It  was  in  this  way  that 
the  diocese,  in  its  modern  sense,  came  to  exist ;  the  conception  of  it  was 
Teutonic,  the  framework  was  Roman"  (Hatch,  Growth  of  Church  Insti- 
tutions, p.  14). 


THE    EPISCOPATE    AND    THE    PAPACY  205 

of  the  Cliurch,  and  the  foundations  were  laid  thus  early 
for  the  nationality  of  France. 

These  relations  of  the  bishops  to  the  Merovingian  mon- 
archs  continued  through  the  sixth  century,  despite  the 
difficulties  and  the  dangers  which  threatened  to  break  the 
alliance.  But  at  this  moment  were  also  begotten  those 
great  evils  from  which  the  episcopate  suffered  through 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  from  which  it  was  not  able  to  escape. 
The  bishops  became  rich  in  lands  and  estates,  through  the 
gifts  which  were  heaped  upon  them  by  grateful  sovereigns, 
or  by  the  piety  of  individuals,  of  whose  wealth  they  seemed 
to  be  the  most  appropriate  heirs.  Just  as  the  piet}^  of  the 
time  took  sliape  in  the  donations  to  them  of  every  kind 
of  property,  so  the  piety  of  the  bishops  was  shown  in  the 
faithful  administration  of  property  by  which  it  continued 
to  increase.  Secular  lords  might  prove  extravagant  and 
reckless,  with  no  sense  of  the  value  of  their  estates ;  but 
the  model  bishop  held  his  property  as  a  divine  possession, 
not  to  be  alienated  but  multiplied,  as  talents  entrusted  to 
him,  which  it  was  his  duty  to  increase  many  fold.  Even 
his  Merovingian  masters,  who  had  enriched  him  with  such 
prodigality,  began  to  be  alarmed  at  his  growing  power. 
"  Behold,"  said  Chilperic,  "  our  treasury  remains  poor,  be- 
cause our  wealth  is  transferred  to  the  churches.  No  one 
has  any  authority  except  the  bishops.  Our  dignity  is  per- 
ishing, and  has  passed  over  to  bishops  of  the  cities."  ^ 

The  increasing  power  of  the  bishops  in  Gaul  during  the 
sixth  century  gave  significance  to  the  contentions  which 
now  began  as  to  the  method  of  their  appointment.  And 
another  issue,  closely  connected  with  the  appointment  of 
the  bishops,  was  the  necessity  of  placing  them  in  subjec- 
tion to  some  authority.  When  in  the  age  of  Cyprian, 
and  under  his  influence,  the  power  of  appointing  bishops 
was  taken  from  the  congregation,  the  rule  had  been 
adopted  that  they  should  be  designated  and  confirmed 
by  the  bishops  of  the  neighboring  provinces.  This  rule 
had  been  adopted  at  the  Council  of  Nicsea,  when  the  con- 
currence of  three  bishops  was  made  necessary  to  a  valid 

1  Greg.  Turon.,  VI.,  c.  46. 


206  ORGANIZATION    OF  THE   CHURCH 

appointment.  But  in  Cyprian's  time  no  method  had  been 
provided  by  which  the  bishops  themselves  shoukl  be  con- 
trolled, nor  iiad  Cyprian  felt  the  necessity  of  such  super- 
vision ;  for  the  church  had  not  as  yet  come  into  organic 
relationship  with  the  state.  Ecclesiastical  synods,  held 
twice  a  year  in  the  province,  under  the  presidency  of  the 
metropolitan  bishop,  in  which  the  bishops  legislated  in 
freedom,  was  considered  an  adequate  government  for  the 
church.  Such  was  the  method  of  the  early  Gallic  bishops 
in  the  sixth  century.  They  had  their  metropolitans, 
whose  presidency,  however,  was  merely  nominal,  and  in 
their  councils  they  enacted  canons  for  the  government  of 
the  church,  a  procedure  in  which  they  were  aided  by  the 
kings.  Councils  were  not  infrequent  during  the  sixth 
century,  nor  do  the  bishops  appear  as  lacking  a  sense  of 
responsibility  for  the  removal  of  the  evils  which  the  age 
was  generating  in  church  and  state  alike. 

But  the  situation  in  the  sixth  century  had  greatly 
changed  since  the  days  of  Cyprian,  when  the  bishop  was 
the  pastor,  for  the  most  part,  of  a  local  church,  when  he 
was  yet  poor  in  worldly  goods,  and  had  not  attained  the 
combined  authority  of  a  secular  and  spiritual  magnate. 
If  the  bishops  consented  to  their  endowments  by  the  state, 
through  which  they  had  come  into  possession  of  a  great 
part  of  its  territor}'-,  there  must  be  also  some  correspond- 
ino"  obligations  to  the  head  of  the  state.  It  seemed  fittingr 
that  the  monarch  should  appoint  to  an  office  which  was 
becoming  a  secular  dignity,  and  by  its  union  with  spirit- 
ual power  threatened,  unless  brought  into  subjection  to 
the  state,  to  be  dangerous  to  the  sovereign's  authority. 
The  bishops  in  vain  struggled  against  the  purpose  which 
made  appointments  to  the  episcoj)ate  dependent  on  the 
will  of  the  king.  They  enacted  canons  in  which  the 
older  methods  were  declared  still  binding.  At  the  Coun- 
cil of  Paris  (a.d.  615),  held  in  the  time  of  Clotaire  II., 
they  declared  all  other  methods  null  and  void ;  but  the 
king,  in  his  edict  approving  the  canons,  commanded  that  no 
bishop  should  be  consecrated  without  the  royal  approval.^ 

1  Cf.  Mansi,  X.,  pp.  539  ff. ;  Hefele,  IV.,  p.  440  (Eng.  Trans.). 


THE    EPISCOPATE   AND   THE   PAPACY  207 

From  this  time,  and  during  the  seventh  century,  the 
kings  designated  their  favorites  for  the  episcopal  chair, 
with  the  result  that  councils  almost  entirely  ceased  to  be 
held  and  the  church  lapsed  into  indescribable  confusion 
and  moral  decay.  The  bishops  too  often  had  no  spiritual 
qualifications  for  their  office  and  pretended  to  none,  gain- 
ing their  position  by  flattery  and  bribery  and  intrigue.  In 
some  cases  they  may  have  been  without  ordination  or 
consecration,  desiring  the  office  only  for  its  emoluments, 
and  seeking  to  increase  their  wealth  and  power.  The 
clergy  in  the  parishes  were  under  no  discipline,  neglecting 
their  duties,  spending  their  time  in  rioting  and  drunken- 
ness and  sensuality.  The  situation  grew  worse  under  the 
mayors  of  the  palace,  who  supplanted  the  Merovingian 
kings,  after  the  death  of  Dagobert  in  639.  Tlie  territory 
of  the  church  was  confiscated  by  Charles  Martel,  who 
boldly  appointed  his  servants  to  the  sees  of  bishops  and 
met  no  longer  with  any  resistance.  The  episcopate  had 
failed  to  meet  the  situation  and  was  unable  to  provide  a 
remedy. 

The  first  suggestion  of  reform  came  not  from  the  episco- 
pate, but  from  the  monastery.  In  its  disordered,  immoral 
condition,  the  Frankish  chui'ch  had  done  nothing  for  the 
conversion  of  the  heathen  in  those  adjacent  countries  which 
now  constitute  Germany,  where  the  remains  of  an  earlier 
Christianity,  which  were  but  few,  had  been  almost  swept 
away.  This  vast  work  had  been  first  undertaken  by 
monks  from  Ireland  and  Scotland,  who  had  not  felt  tlie 
influence  of  Roman  civilization,  nor  as  yet  been  brought 
into  any  organic  relation  with  the  Catholic  church ;  where 
bishops  indeed  existed,  but  lived  in  monasteries  under 
the  supervision  of  the  presbyter-abbots.  These  monasteries 
still  maintained  the  Christian  faith  in  its  purity  and 
earnestness,  cultivating  the  missionary  spirit  to  sucli  an 
extent  that  the  continent  soon  began  to  swarm  with  men 
whose  object  was  to  proclaim  the  salvation  of  Christ.'- 
They  had  done  a  great  part  of  their  work  with  success, 

^  For  the  work  of  tlie  Irish-Scotch  missionaries,  cf.  Ebrard,  Die  iro- 
schutt.  Miasionskirche,  1873;  also  Kurtz,  Ch.  His.,  I.,  §  78  (Eng.  Trans.). 


208  ORGANIZATION    OF    THE   CHURCH 

when  they  were  followed  by  an  English  monk,  a  Saxon  by 
birth,  Boniface  (680-755  A.D.),  to  whom  has  been  assigned 
the  title  of  Apostle  of  Germany.  Others  labored  and  he 
entered  into  their  labors.  It  was  one  part  of  his  aim,  of 
course,  to  extend  the  Christian  faith,  and  he  wrouglit 
powerfully  to  this  end.  But  he  had  other  motives  as  well: 
it  was  the  cherished  purpose  of  his  life  to  overcome  the 
Irish  and  Scotch  missionaries,  to  organize  the  church  upon 
a  new  basis  by  subjecting  it  to  the  authority  of  the  bishop 
of  Rome.  He  went  from  England,  which  alone  of  the 
countries  of  Western  Europe  was  already  owing  its  con- 
version to  the  missionary  zeal  of  a  Roman  bishop,  Pope 
Gregory  the  Great,  who  little  dreamed  of  the  vast  results 
which  were  to  follow  his  interest  in  that  remote  and  prac- 
tically heathen  land.  The  conversion  of  England  under 
the  auspices  of  Rome  was  the  beginning  of  a  vast  pro- 
cess, which  took  centuries  to  accomplish,  and  ended  in 
the  supremacy  of  Rome.  Pope  Gregory  the  Great 
had  taken  a  most  unusual  step  when  he  authorized  the 
consecration  of  Augustine  as  the  missionary  bishop  of 
Canterbury.  His  successor  after  a  long  interval.  Pope 
Gregory  II.,  took  another  unauthorized  step  when  he  con- 
secrated Boniface  as  a  regionary  bishop  for  Germany.  It 
was  a  step  which  defied  the  ancient  canons  and  the  law  of 
procedure  as  it  had  been  laid  down  by  Cyprian  and  con- 
firmed by  the  Council  of  Niceea.  It  meant  that  in  an 
emergency  Rome  felt  tied  by  no  precedents,  but  adapted  her- 
self to  the  situation.  So  also  Gregory  the  Great  had  acted 
most  unwarrantably,  if  the  ancient  canons  were  to  be  ob- 
served, when  from  his  elevated  point  of  view,  as  the  waves 
of  the  barbarian  invasion  were  subsiding,  he  had  spoken  to 
the  new  world  in  the  West,  and  called  the  bishops  to  order. 
Some  had  listened  to  him,  as  in  Spain  or  Illyria  or  Africa, 
but  in  Gaul  his  voice  had  fallen  unheeded.  He  had  no 
right  to  speak,  but  he  rose  spontaneously  and  dej^ended 
for  a  liearinof  on  the  ancient  sentiment  of  reverence  for 
the  Eternal  City,  as  well  as  on  the  conscience  in  men 
which  demanded  order  at  all  hazards  without  regard  to 
the  methods  by  which  it  was  obtained. 


THE    EPISCOPATE    AND    THE    PAPACY'  209 

Boniface  handed  over  the  fruits  of  his  missionary  labors 
in  Germany  to  Rome.  He  was  a  born  administrator,  whose 
capacity  for  organization  amounted  to  genius.  Germany 
was  divided  into  bishoprics  before  the  state  existed  or 
had  effected  a  stable  government,  —  a  circumstance  which 
accounts  for  much  in  its  later  ecclesiastical  history.  After 
the  death  of  Charles  Martel  (742),  Boniface  was  allowed 
by  Pepin  to  reorganize  the  Frankish  church.  The  records 
of  councils  at  this  moment  may  fail  us,  but  the  motive 
and  the  method  of  the  unrivalled  organizer  is  clear.  His 
object  was  to  subordinate  the  parish  clergy  by  an  oath  of 
allegiance  to  the  bishop,^  and  to  subject  the  bishops  by 
a  similar  oath  to  the  authority  of  Rome.^  The  ideal  sur- 
vived, even  though  he  failed  in  the  immediate  accomplish- 
ment of  his  aim ;  it  continued  to  work  as  a  leaven  amid 

1  For  the  subordination  of  the  parish  clergy  by  a  formal  oath  of  obe- 
dience to  the  bishop,  constituting  a  sort  of  feudal  relationship,  cf.  Hatch, 
Groioth  of  Church  Institutions,  pp.  33,  46.  In  the  ancient  church  the 
presbyter  was  subject  to  the  wliole  body  of  bishops,  legislating  in  coun- 
cil ;  in  the  Middle  Ages,  each  bishop  claimed  a  direct  personal  authority 
over  the  clergy  in  his  diocese. 

2  The  oath  of  Boniface  to  the  bishop  of  Rome  is  interesting  as  reveal- 
ing his  entire  devotion  and  the  spirit  in  which  he  worked. 

"I,  Boniface,  bishop  by  the  grace  of  God,  promise  to  thee,  blessed 
Peter,  prince  of  the  apostles,  and  to  thy  vicar,  the  holy  Gregory,  and  to 
his  successors,  by  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  holy  and 
indivisible  Trinity,  and  by  thy  sacred  body,  here  present,  always  to  keep 
a  perfect  fidelity  to  the  holy  Catholic  faith  ;  to  remain,  with  the  aid  of 
God,  in  the  unity  of  that  faith,  upon  which,  without  doubt,  depends  the 
whole  salvation  of  Christians  ;  not  to  lend  myself,  upon  the  instigation  of 
any  one,  to  anything  which  can  be  against  the  universal  church,  and  to 
pi'ove,  in  all  things,  my  fidelity,  the  pureness  of  my  faith,  and  my  entire 
devotion  to  thee,  to  the  interests  of  thy  church,  who  hast  received  from 
God  the  power  to  tie  and  to  untie,  to  thy  said  vicar,  and  to  his  successors  : 
and  if  I  learn  that  the  bishops  are  against  the  ancient  rule  of  the  holy 
fathers,  I  promise  to  have  no  alliance  nor  communion  with  them,  any 
more  than  to  repress  them  if  I  am  able  ;  if  not,  I  will  inform  my  apos- 
tolic lord.  And  if  (which  God  forbid  !)  I  ever,  whether  by  will  or  occa- 
sion, do  anything  against  these  my  promises,  let  me  be  found  guilty  at 
the  eternal  judgment  —  let  me  incur  the  chastisement  of  Ananias  and  of 
Sapphira,  who  dared  to  lie  unto  you,  and  despoil  you  of  part  of  their 
property.  I,  Boniface,  a  humble  bishop,  have  with  my  own  hand  written 
this  attestation  of  oath,  and  depositing  it  on  the  most  sacred  body  of  the 
sacred  Peter,  I  have,  as  it  is  prescribed,  taking  God  to  judge  and  witness, 
made  the  oath,  which  I  promise  to  keep"  (Bonif.  Epis.  cxviii.).  Cf. 
Guizot,  His.  of  Civ.,  U.,  pp.  175  ff.  (Eng.  Trans.). 


210  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

opposition  or  neglect,  till  at  last  it  triumphed  in  the  sub- 
jection of  all  Western  Christendom  to  the  sway  of  ecclesi- 
astical Rome. 

Boniface  died  in  755,  after  having  established  the 
church  in  Germany  and  reorganized  it  in  France.  He 
left  good  men  devoted  to  their  work  in  the  sees  which 
he  founded ;  he  had  also  created  monasteries,  which  were 
to  become  centres  of  inspiration  and  moral  zeal.  He  had 
overcome  the  Scotch  and  Irish  clergy  and  driven  them 
from  the  field,  under  the  stigma  of  heresy  and  schism. 
But  his  immediate  purpose  of  bringing  the  bishops  under 
the  control  of  Rome  had  not  been  accomplished.  The 
Frankish  monarchy  which  rose  into  unity  and  power, 
under  Charlemagne  proposed  to  use  the  church  and  the 
bishops  as  the  means  of  maintaining  order  in  the  state  ; 
but  it  was  no  part  of  Charlemagne's  intention  to  allow 
the  bishopric  of  Rome  the  supreme  control  of  the  church. 
He  himself  was  to  be  the  final  court  of  appeal  for  the 
bishops  and  clergy.  In  the  interest  of  a  better  super- 
vision of  the  bishops,  he  revived  the  order  of  Metropoli- 
tans, or  Archbishops,  an  office  which  had  failed  under  the 
Merovingian  kings  to  attain  any  development  or  to  serve 
as  any  check  upon  the  episcopate.^  We  may  see  at  a 
glance  the  method  of  Charlemagne  for  controlling  the 
bishops  in  what  is  called  the  Capitulary  of  Frankfort 
(A.D.  794): 

"  It  is  enacted  by  our  lord  the  king  and  the  holy  synod 
that  bishops  shall  exercise  jurisdiction  in  their  dioceses. 
If  any  abbot,  presbyter,  deacon,  monk,  or  other  clerk,  or, 
indeed,  any  one  else  in  the  diocese  does  not  obey  the 
person  of  his  bishop,  they  shall  come  to  his  metropolitan 
and  he  shall  judge  the  cause  together  with  his  suffragans. 

1  "With  the  growing  interference  of  the  Merovingian  kings  in  eccle- 
siastical affairs,  and  the  increasing  decay  of  religious  life  which  marked 
the  end  of  the  seventh  and  the  part  of  the  eighth  century,  the  whole  sys- 
tem, both  of  metropolitans  and  of  provincial  synods,  tended  to  pass  away 
in  Gaul,  and  the  whirlwind  of  Arab  conquests  swept  it  away  in  Spain. 
There  was  a  growing  independence  on  the  part  of  diocesan  bishops,  and 
consequently  a  growing  disintegration  of  the  church  as  a  whole"  (Hatch, 
Growth  of  Church  Institutions,  p.  126). 


THE    EPISCOPATE    AND    THE    PAPACY  211 

Our  counts  also  shall  come  to  the  court  of  the  bishops. 
And  if  there  be  anything  which  the  metropolitan  bishop 
cannot  set  right,  then  let  accusers  and  accused  both  come 
with  a  letter  from  the  metropolitan,  that  we  may  know 
the  truth  of  the  matter."  ^ 

To  the  bishops,  who  combined  with  their  ecclesiastical 
authority  the  rank  and  distinction  of  the  secular  nobility, 
together  with  the  wealth  which  they  were  bent  on  increas- 
ing, it  must  have  seemed  something  like  a  degradation 
when  Charlemagne  subjected  them  to  the  control  of  the 
metropolitan,  an  arbitrary  office  as  it  were,  constituted  by 
the  will  of  the  monarch  and  not  founded  in  any  principle 
of  divine  right.  There  is  evidence  that  the  bishops  in  tlie 
time  of  Charlemagne  were  beginning  to  be  restive  under 
this  new  check  upon  their  freedom,  but  the  Emperor  was 
too  powerful  for  them  to  attempt  an  open  resistance. 
Under  his  weak  successor  Lewis  the  Pious  (814-840 
A.D.),  whose  interest  in  the  church  and  religious  things 
was  even  more  pronounced  than  his  father's  had  been, 
while  also  his  secular  sway  was  not  so  vigorous,  the 
bishops  began  to  prepare  for  their  revolt.  There  are 
some  sinister  circumstances  in  the  history  of  the  church 
at  this  period,  which  cannot  be  j^assed  over  in  silence. 
When  the  sons  of  Lewis  the  Pious  rose  up  in  rebellion 
against  their  father,  and  having  thrown  him  into  prison 
continued  to  retain  him  there  in  humiliating  captivity, 
their  unfilial  conduct  was  supported  by  the  bishops. 
Asfain  at  a  later  time  when  Lothaire  II.  of  Lotharing-ia 
wished  to  put  away  one  wife  in  order  to  marry  another, 
his  action  was  approved  and  supported  by  his  bishops 
whom  he  won  over  to  his  cause,  while  the  pope  resisted 
and  condemned  him,  standing  as  the  protector  of  morals 
at  a  critical  juncture  when  failure  might  have  been  dis- 
astrous to  the  moral  development  of  Christendom. 

The  process  by  which  the  bishops  sought  emancipation 

from  the  control  of  metropolitans,  an  emancipation  which 

was   also   intended  to  carry  with  it  the  deliverance  from 

imperial  authority,  is  still  veiled  in  mystery,  as  it  also  had 

1  Cf.  Pertz,  3Ion.  Germ.  His.  Legum,  I.  72  ;  also  Hatch,  p.  128. 


212  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

its  origin  in  a  secrecy  which  studiously  avoided  the  light. 
The  responsibility  for  the  stupendous  forgery  known  as 
the  pseudo-Isidorian  Decretals  was  formerly  laid  at  the 
door  of  the  papacy  for  the  reason  that  it  resulted  in  the 
consolidation  of  papal  supremacy.  But  later  research  jus- 
tifies the  conclusion  that  the  system  of  church  government 
which  the  Forged  Decretals  set  forth  was  the  finished 
product  of  the  monastic  ideal  first  conceived  and  partly 
accomplished  by  Boniface.  The  spirit  of  the  system  was 
anti-national  —  an  effort  to  detach  the  bishops  from  depend- 
ence on  the  secular  power,  and  to  make  them  responsible 
to  the  pope  alone.  It  constituted  a  strong  appeal  to  the 
bishops,  for  it  appeared  at  a  moment  when  they  were  restive 
under  the  vigorous  authority  of  metropolitans,  as  well  as 
suffering  from  the  evils  of  secular  interference.  From  the 
tyranny  of  local  tribunals  it  offered  an  escape  to  the  more 
distant  impartial  authority  of  Rome.  The  prominence  of 
this  feature  in  the  Forged  Decretals  obscures  their  ulterior 
purpose  which  is  the  ecclesiastical  supremacy  of  the  papacy 
in  tlie  place  of  metropolitan  or  conciliar  authority.  The 
result  of  the  system,  even  so  early  as  the  generation  fol- 
lowing its  appearance,  betrays  its  purpose  :  it  was  at  once 
appropriated  by  the  popes,  it  became  the  basis  of  ecclesi- 
astical law,  it  retarded  the  growth  of  nationalism,  and  it 
brought  the  episcopate  under  the  immediate  control  of 
Rome.  And  yet,  though  it  remained  the  basis  of  the 
Canon  Law  for  centuries,  it  could  not  extinguish  the  nat- 
ural tie  which  made  the  bishop  the  ally  of  the  sovereign 
and  the  supporter  of  the  national  purpose.^ 

1  The  best  edition  of  tlie  Forged  Decretals  is  by  Hinschius  ;  they  are 
also  given  in  Migne,  Patr.  Lat.  Vol.  CXXX.  For  the  discussion  of  their 
origin  and  purpose,  cf.  Wasserschleben,  Beitrdge  zur  Geschichte  der  fal- 
schen  Dekretalen ;  also,  by  the  same,  Die  pseudo-isklorische  Frage,  in 
Zeitschrift  f.  Kirchem-echt,  IV.  ;  and  article  in  Herzog,  lit^al  Enq/r. 
For  the  so-called  Donation  of  Constantine,  which  was  nearly  con- 
temporaneous with  the  Forged  Decretals,  combining  with  them  in  the 
foundations  for  papal  authority,  cf.  Dollinger,  Fables  and  Prophecies  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  §  v. 


THE   EPISCOPATE   AND   THE   PAPACY  213 

II 

The  time  of  the  Forged  Decretals  is  about  the  middle 
of  the  ninth  century,  nearly  contemporaneous  with  the 
appearance  of  the  Treaty  of  Verdun  (843),  which  is 
regarded  as  marking  the  rise  of  modern  nationalities. 
Hitherto  in  Western  Europe  there  had  been  many  tenta- 
tive efforts  by  the  new  races  to  establish  stable,  enduring 
governments,  and  their  failure  had  been  followed  at  last  by 
a  great  monarchy  or  empire  under  Charlemagne  which 
called  itself  Roman.  When  the  empire  of  Charlemagne 
went  down,  the  day  was  dawning  amid  storms  and  con- 
fusion which  was  to  witness  the  birth  of  the  nations.  The 
national  motive  tended  to  neutralize  the  influence  of  the 
Forged  Decretals.  Instead  of  putting  themselves  under 
papal  protection  and  control,  as  the  Forged  Decretals  in- 
vited them  to  do,  the  bishops  are  henceforth  seen  gravi- 
tating toward  the  support  of  the  nationality  and  of  the 
king  as  its  representative.  Since  it  was  necessary  and 
inevitable  that  they  should  come  under  some  control,  they 
preferred  the  national  alliance,  under  the  will  of  the  sov- 
ereign, to  that  of  the  papacy.  In  all  this,  the  bishops 
appear  again  as  following  a  tendency  inherent  in  the  office 
which  tliey  held,  which  was  visible  in  the  episcopate  from 
the  second  century  and  more  plainly  evident  in  the  fourth 
century,  when  they  gladly  entered  into  alliance  with  the 
state  under  Constantine.  Hence  also,  in  the  Eastern  church, 
nationality  had  become  the  recognized  principle  of  the 
ecclesiastical  organization,  the  bishops  were  its  support- 
ers, the  depositary  of  the  national  consciousness  in  dark 
hours  until  the  moment  should  come  for  its  assertion. 

The  episcopate  in  its  origin,  as  has  been  shown,  was  not 
primarily  a  ministry  of  the  Word,  but  rather  a  ministry  of 
the  tables,  and  it  rose  from  the  supervision  of  the  worship 
and  the  financial  responsibility  for  the  local  church  to  the 
larger  administration  of  the  diocese,  with  a  superintendence 
of  the  parish  clergy.  Its  conservative  tendency  as  an  office 
and  its  administrative  efficiency  had  been  originally  devel- 
oped in  the  controversies  with  Gnosticism  and  Montanism, 


214  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

when  it  was  called  on  to  resist  a  one-sided  intellectualism 
on  the  one  hand  and  on  the  other  an  exaggerated  spiritual 
aspiration.  The  intellectual  ambition  of  which  Gnosti- 
cism was  the  manifestation,  and  the  effort  to  fulfil  the 
counsels  of  spiritual  perfection,  together  with  the  desire 
for  individual  freedom  represented  by  Montanism,  had  at 
last  found  a  congenial  resort  in  the  monastery  after  they 
had  been  discouraged  or  made  impossible  in  the  Catholic 
church.  In  the  Eastern  church,  however,  where  monasti- 
cism  assumed  a  more  contemplative  character  than  in  the 
West  and  had  in  consequence  no  history  or  development, 
the  efficiency  of  the  episcopate  had  been  reduced  by  the 
requirement  that  the  bishops  should  be  taken  from  the 
monastery.  But  in  Western  Christendom  the  episcopate 
appeared  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  as  preserving  more 
distinctly  its  original  character,  and,  in  its  own  manner,  ful- 
filling its  mission  to  the  world. 

As  we  study  the  place  of  the  bishops  in  Mediceval  his- 
tory, it  may  be  discerned  as  one  great  part  of  their  mission 
to  meet  the  sentiment  and  existing  culture  of  the  great 
mass  of  Christian  people  to  whom  an  experimental  knowl- 
edge of  the  Christian  faith  or  its  inward  appropriation 
would  have  been  an  impossible  or  unwelcome  task ;  and 
especially  to  adjust  the  Christian  faith  to  the  apprehen- 
sion of  kings  and  princes  to  whom  the  deeper  insight  into 
the  inward  life  of  the  Spirit  was  as  yet  impossible,  who 
were  absorbed  in  the  great  world  of  human  and  secular 
affairs,  and  to  whom  Christianity  must  be  presented  as 
not  making  too  radical  exactions  upon  the  conscience,  or 
requiring  too  much  time  or  effort  of  the  spiritual  imagina- 
tion in  order  to  feel  its  message  or  obey  its  demands. 
Here  lay  the  work  of  the  bishops  in  the  Middle  Ages,  to 
represent  Christianity  in  sober  practical  fashion  to  a  world 
with  but  little  direct  capacity  for  religious  things,  which, 
if  relisrion  were  made  too  high  or  difficult  or  too  contradic- 
tory  to  the  natural  human  moods  of  the  soul,  could  not 
have  been  retained  under  its. control.  Hence  the  worship 
of  the  church  by  which  Christianity  most  directly  exerted 
a  powerful  influence  over  a  rude  and  barbarous  age,  that 


THE    EPISCOPATE   AND   THE   PAPACY  215 

worship  whose  control  was  also  still  in  the  hands  of  the 
bishop  as  in  ancient  times,  was  in  some  way  rendered  at- 
tractive and  intelligible  to  the  common  people,  without 
requiring  any  personal  effort  in  its  participation  (the  opus 
operatuiri).  Such  was  the  view  of  St.  Bernard  of  Clair- 
vaux,  who  claimed  for  himself  and  the  monastery  the 
privilege  of  a  higher  worship,  calling  for  constant  effort  on 
the  part  of  the  worshipper  to  rise  to  its  demands,  while  he 
recognized  that  the  bishop  had  another  and  no  less  impor- 
tant task.  He  comments  upon  the  circumstance  that  men 
will  "  flock  in  crowds  to  kiss  the  decorated  images  of  saints ; 
they  are  enchained  by  their  admiration  of  the  beautiful 
more  than  by  reverence  for  the  saints.  The  bishops  were 
obliged  to  let  themselves  down  to  the  different  degrees  of 
culture  among  the  men  whom  they  had  to  deal  with ;  to 
them,  therefore,  he  conceded  the  right  of  employing  such 
sensuous  means  to  excite  the  devotion  of  the  sensuous  mul- 
titude. But  it  was  otherwise  with  the  monks,  who,  dead 
to  the  sensible  world,  ought  no  longer  to  need  such  out- 
ward means  of  excitement,  but  should  strive  rather  to 
reach  the  ideal  of  the  purely  spiritual  worship  of  God."  ^ 
It  belongs  to  the  nature  of  the  administration  of  ecclesi- 
astical affairs  with  which  the  bishop  was  invested,  that  it 
is  closely  related  to,  if  indeed  it  can  be  separated  in  princi- 
ple or  practice  from,  the  administration  of  affairs  in  the 
secular  world.  The  bishop  naturally  sympathized  with 
the  state  in  its  attempt  to  build  up  a  strong  government, 
in  so  far  as  it  was  a  practical  feasible  purpose,  or  reflected 
the  popular  mood.  He  was  also  connected  with  the  state 
by  other  ties ;  especially  by  the  large  landed  property, 
which  constituted  the  revenue  of  his  see,  and  which  he 
administered  with  a  skill  and  success  which  the  secular 
nobility  could  not  attain.  It  had  fallen  to  his  lot  also  to 
become  an  administrator  of  justice,  and  to  cultivate  the 
judicial  faculty.  When  his  office  had  expanded  from  the 
simpler  oversight  of  the  local  church  into  the  ruler  of  a 
large  diocese,  he  had  acquired  a  deeper  sense  of  responsi- 

1  Neauder,  Ch.  His.,  VII.,  p.  .367  (Bohn  ed.),  and  Bernard,  Epis.  iv.  17  ; 
vi.  3. 


216  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

bility,  as  he  was  also  regarded  with  a  greater  reverence 
than  the  secular  nobility,  inasmuch  as  the  bishop  rep- 
resented two  worlds  rather  than  one,  — the  world  which 
now  is,  as  well  as  that  which  is  to  come.  As  in  the 
monastery  the  ruling  idea  was  the  worthlessness  of  this 
present  evil  world,  so  beneath  the  bishop's  attitude  there 
lay  the  tacit  assumption  of  the  sacredness  of  the  secular 
life.  For  these  reasons,  the  bishops  tended  to  become  the 
allies  of  the  kings,  their  best  advisers,  the  strongest  sup- 
porters of  the  authority  of  the  crown.  The  kings  could 
trust  the  bishops,  not  fearing  their  rivalry,  when  they 
could  not  always  rely  upon  the  disinterested  support  of 
the  feudal  nobility.  The  king's  purpose  commanded  the 
respect  of  the  bishops  and  ministered  to  the  welfare  of  the 
church  as  the  bishops  conceived  it,  and  the  bishop  was 
therefore  working  for  the  church  when  making  possible 
the  success  of  the  state. 

Had  the  patriarchal  system  as  it  prevailed  in  the  Eastern 
church  been  adopted  in  Western  Europe  from  the  time  of 
its  conversion,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  growth  of  nations 
might  have  been  facilitated  and  those  evil  consequences 
avoided  which  have  retarded  the  European  nationalities  in 
their  advance  toward  freedom  and  independence.  But  it 
must  be  remembered  also  that  the  Eastern  patriarchates  of 
Constantinople  or  Alexandria  or  Antioch  were  not  a  crea- 
tion of  councils  or  the  result  of  any  formal  or  artificial 
attempt  to  give  unity  to  the  hierarchy,  but  were  rather 
spontaneous  growths  which  Councils  recognized  and  ap- 
proved. From  the  Eastern  point  of  view,  there  was  a 
national  patriarch  in  Rome,  but  beyond  that  fact,  the  vision 
of  the  ancient  General  Councils,  which  summed  up  the 
ecclesiastical  wisdom  of  the  Catholic  church  in  the  fourth 
and  fifth  centuries,  did  not  penetrate.  In  the  metro- 
politan sees  of  Ravenna  and  Canterbury,  Mainz  and 
Rheims,  there  were  displayed  germinal  tendencies  toward 
national  primacy  and  rivalry  with  Rome,  which  the  papacy 
ultimately  overcame.  Had  Pope  Gregory  the  Great,  when 
England  was  converted,  recognized  a  patriarchate  in  Canter- 
bury, and  authorized  a  translation  of  the  sacred  books  and 


THE   EPISCOPATE    AiN'D    THE   PAPACY  217 

the  offices  of  the  church  into  the  vernacular,  he  would  have 
followed  the  precedent  and  the  methods  which  Constanti- 
nople had  approved  when  the  conversion  took  place  of  the 
Slavic  peoples  in  the  East.  If  France  and  Germany,  as 
they  began  slowly  to  realize  their  national  distinctness, 
could  have  been  aided  in  the  process  of  national  develop- 
ment by  primates  who  would  have  stood  for  the  national  as 
well  as  the  religious  consciousness,  some  of  the  calamities 
of  their  later  history  might  have  been  prevented. 

But  such  speculative  reconstructions  of  history  have  no 
other  value  than  to  afford  a  contrast  to  that  which  actually 
took  place.  The  bishop  of  Rome,  who  took  his  first  vague 
step  in  the  darkness  without  realizing  its  consequences  for 
the  papal  supremacy,  had  no  desire  or  intention  that  Eng- 
land should  form  an  independent  branch  of  the  Catholic 
church,  whose  patriarch  should  stand  on  an  equality  with 
himself.  Tentative  suggestions  of  such  a  system  for  France 
and  Germany  appear  dimly  in  the  dreams  of  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  age ;  but  they  came  to  nothing  through  the 
opposition  of  Rome,  which  conceived  of  Western  Europe 
as  an  ecclesiastical  empire  under  one  head,  with  one  com- 
mon language  for  the  expression  of  its  law  and  its  worship. 
If  this  may  seem  like  an  act  of  usurpation,  or  a  defiance  of 
the  national  purpose,  yet  there  are  points  of  view  from 
which  the  action  of  Rome  seems  justifiable  in  the  light  of 
later  history,  in  line  with  a  divine  providence  watching  over 
the  order  of  events.  It  was  the  result  of  a  natural  con- 
tempt for  the  barbarian  utterance  and  its  imperfect  tongues, 
which  made  Rome  unwilling  that  the  now  sacred  Latin 
should  be  abandoned  for  the  uncertainties  and  divisions 
which  the  variety  of  languages  would  create,  a  repetition 
of  what  happened  at  Babel,  when  the  Lord  came  down 
and  confounded  the  speech  of  the  peoples.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  vernaculars  would  have  gained  by  this  artificial 
stimulus  or  whether  the  national  literatures  would  have 
had  so  rich  a  development.  The  "longer  infancy"  in 
Western  Christendom  may  have  contributed  to  a  more  solid 
enduring  growth,  the  vernaculars  slowly  perfecting  them- 
selves until  by  their  own  force  they  should  break  the  un- 


218  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

natural  bondage  in  which  they  were  held.  And  again,  to 
have  mapped  out  the  nationalities  of  Europe  in  advance 
would  have  been  like  an  attempt  to  anticipate  the  divine 
will  on  the  part  of  the  papacy,  far  worse  than  any  usurpa- 
tion of  which  she  has  been  accused.  It  was  the  good  fort- 
une of  Western  Christendom,  not  only  that  it  was  left  to 
subdivide  into  states  in  its  own  way  and  as  the  result  of 
actual  experience,  but  also  that  in  so  doing  it  encountered 
tlie  opposition  of  an  imperial  principle  in  Rome,  against 
which  it  hurled  itself  in  severe  and  long-continued  strug- 
gles until  the  sacredness  of  nationality  had  been  vindicated, 
and  it  became  a  richer  and  more  sure  possession  than  it 
could  otherwise  have  been. 

Two  centuries  had  gone  by  since  the  attempt  had  been 
made  in  the  Forged  Decretals  to  detach  the  bishop  from 
secular  interference  and  control.  The  object  of  this  and 
kindred  documents  may  not  have  directly  contemplated  the 
advancement  of  the  papacy  to  ecclesiastical  supremacy,  but 
that  was  their  tendency  and  ultimate  result.  They  estab- 
lished a  presumption  and  a  precedent  in  behalf  of  Rome, 
which  worked  like  a  slow  leaven  in  the  intervening 
period  until  Hildebrand  came  with  a  more  definite  purpose 
and  a  clearer  conception  of  the  methods  to  be  used  in  order 
to  the  establishment  of  the  papal  see  as  the  supreme 
authority  over  the  princes  as  well  as  bishops,  over  the 
state  as  well  as  the  church.  To  subordinate  nationality  to 
a  spiritual  imperialism  was  the  aim  of  Hildebrand,  —  a 
monk  bred  in  the  cloister,  who,  inheriting  the  monastic 
ideal  that  the  spiritual  man  should  despise  and  reject  the 
world,  came  forth  to  rule  the  world  which  he  condemned. 
He  affords  the  highest  illustration  of  the  alliance  between 
the  papacy  and  the  monastery  which  constituted  the  lead- 
ing feature  of  the  Mediaeval  church.  Gregory  the  Great 
had  been  likewise  a  monk,  who  looked  on  the  world  of 
secular  interests  with  a  conviction  of  its  utter  insignifi- 
cance, when  compared  with  the  importance  of  the  church 
as  a  divine  institution  for  human  salvation.  This  first 
alliance  had  been  cemented  and  strengthened  by  another 
monk,   Boniface  the   Apostle  of   Germany,  who   had  con- 


THE   EPISCOPATE   AND   THE  PAPACY  219 

ceived  the  plan  of  subjecting  the  episcopate  to  the  papacy. 
Hildebrand  was  the  culmination  of  the  ideal  monastic 
ambition  to  subordinate  the  temporal  to  the  spiritual,  and 
to  gain  the  control  of  human  affairs  for  those  who  re- 
garded this  world  as  dross  compared  with  the  interests 
of  eternity. 

The  obstacles  in  Hildebrand's  way,  which  must  be  over- 
come before  he  could  attain  his  purpose,  were  the  rising 
nationalities,  which  by  the  eleventh  century  had  assumed 
their  outlines,  though  very  far  as  yet  from  having  attained 
the  sense  of  national  unity  and  independence.  Wherever 
he  looked,  in  England,  France,  or  Germany,  he  saw  that 
the  incipient  nationality  was  building  upon  the  church, 
using  the  church  through  the  bishops  as  the  means  of 
accomplishing  its  destiny.  The  custom  had  become 
universal  for  the  king  or  sovereign  to  invest  the  bishop 
with  the  insignia  of  authority,  the  ring  and  the  staff,  and 
to  receive  an  oath  of  homage  or  fealty  from  the  bishops 
as  the  condition  of  their  investiture.  Nor  do  the 
bishops  appear  any  longer  as  restive  under  this  arrange- 
ment, but  rather  as  if  they  had  at  last  found  in  the  state 
the  divinely  appointed  supplement  to  their  authority. 
The  natural  bent  of  the  episcopate  would  have  apparently 
rendered  it  content  with  this  adjustment,  had  not  the 
papacy  interfered. 

But  Hildebrand  stigmatized  this  arrangement  by  one  of 
the  darkest  words  in  the  ecclesiastical  vocabulary.  It 
appeared  to  him  as  nothing  else  than  the  sin  of  simony,  as 
when  Peter  said  to  Simon  Magus,  "  Thy  money  perish 
with  thee,  because  thou  hast  thought  that  the  gift  of  God 
might  be  purchased  with  money."  No  doubt  the  buying 
and  selling  of  ecclesiastical  offices,  especially  of  the  great 
sees  and  abbacies,  Avas  a  sin  and  temptation  of  the  age,  and 
indeed  it  remained  the  characteristic  vice  of  the  Middle 
Ages  under  the  later  regime  of  the  popes,  not  ceasing  until 
at  the  Reformation  the  church  was  purified,  yet  so  as  by  fire. 
But  Hildebrand  did  not  understand  simony  to  mean  ex- 
clusively or  primarily  the  buying  and  selling  of  the  gifts 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  were  supposed  to  be  vested  in 


220  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  ecclesiastical  offices.  It  was  simony  in  his  eyes  if  the 
secular  authority  demanded  allegiance  of  the  bishop  or 
clothed  him  with  the  power  of  ruling  in  his  temporal 
domain.  Before  the  spiritual  freedom  of  the  church  could 
be  realized  in  the  papacy  as  its  head,  the  bishops  must  be 
detaclied  from  that  dependence  on  the  secular  power 
which  the  secular  investiture  involved. 

The  Investiture  Controversy  is  alluded  to  here  only  for 
the  purpose  of  illustrating  the  attitude  of  the  bishops. 
In  every  case,  they  stood  by  the  sovereign  at  the  moment 
when  Hildebrand  precipitated  the  conflict.  They  were 
loyal  to  William  the  Conqueror  in  England,  to  Philip  I. 
in  France,  and  to  Henry  IV.  in  Germany.  Hildebrand 
was  discreet  with  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent,  when  he 
chose  Germany  as  the  field  in  which  he  proposed  that 
the  battle  should  be  fought.  Henry  IV.  was  not  strong 
in  the  support  of  his  great  feudal  lords  when  Hildebrand 
attacked  him,  but  he  did  have  the  sympathy  and  counte- 
nance of  the  bishops.  It  was  only  after  it  had  become 
apparent  that  the  king  could  not  hold  his  own  in  the  un- 
equal struggle  with  Hildebrand,  that  the  bishops  yielded, 
and  went  over  to  the  side  that  seemed  the  stronger.  The 
result  might  not  have  been  the  same  in  other  countries, 
had  Hildebrand  chosen  to  make  the  issue  there.  Ger- 
many was  not  only  weak  because  of  the  disaffection  of 
its  secular  nobles  toward  the  king,  but  in  Germany  also 
the  antecedents  of  the  episcopate  had  been  from  the 
first,  since  Boniface  parcelled  out  the  territory  among 
them,  more  closely  related  to  papal  authority  and  more 
deeply  affected  by  papal  prestige  than  in  France  or  in 
England. 

The  case  of  Anselm  in  England,  as  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury (11109),  fighting  for  the  papal  principle  in  the 
wars  of  the  Investiture  Controvers}^  against  his  sovereign, 
is  another  illustration  of  the  natural  S3^mpathy  of  the 
bishops  as  allied  with  the  cause  of  nationality.  Anselm 
also  was  a  monk,  deeply  imbued  with  the  monastic  ideal; 
but  even  under  so  bad  a  king  as  William  Rufus,  who  was 
sinning  against  the  church  by  refusing  to  fill  the  bishoprics 


THE    EPISCOPATE   AND    THE   PAPACY  221 

in  order  to  appropriate  to  himself  their  revenues,  —  even 
under  such  a  king,  immoral  and  vicious,  the  sympathy  of 
the  bishops  was  not  with  Anselm,  but  with  the  sovereign, 
as  their  divinely  ordered  leader,  and  they  left  Anselm 
to  fight  his  battles  alone.  Anselm  was  at  last  defeated, 
because  in  doctrinaire,  monastic  fashion  he  pushed  the 
issue  to  such  an  extent  as  to  refuse  to  take  the  oath  of 
allegiance.  But  in  one  respect  he  was  victorious,  in  the 
change  which  was  wrought  in  England,  in  consequence 
of  his  struggles,  by  which  the  order  of  making  a  bishop 
was  changed.  Before  his  time  the  investiture  by  the  king 
came  first,  and  when  homage  had  been  rendered,  and  he 
had  been  clothed  with  the  symbols  of  authority,  he  re- 
ceived his  spiritual  qualification  by  consecration.  Since 
then,  the  order  has  been  reversed,  as  it  is  fitting  that  it 
should  be ;  the  spiritual  qualification  is  followed  by  the 
secular,  and  the  king's  recognition  subordinated  to  the 
ecclesiastical  rite.^ 

It  is  generally  said  that  the  controversy  over  investi- 
ture which  Hildebrand  began  ended  in  a  compromise,  in 
which  the  church  gained  more  than  the  state.  So,  indeed, 
it  must  have  seemed  during  the  period  of  two  centuries 
which  intervened  between  Hildebrand  and  the  time  of 
Boniface  VIIL,  —  the  period  when  the  papacy  was  at  the 
height  of  its  power.  But  during  this  age  of  papal  su- 
premacy, when  the  popes  began  to  claim  the  right  of 
appointment  to  all  the  more  important  or  richer  benefices, 
as  the  trustees  of  all  ecclesiastical  property,  it  was  becom- 
ing apparent  that  those  states  had  made  the  longest  strides 
toward  nationality  in  which  the  power  of  the  popes  over 
the  bishops  was  kept  in  check  by  the  king.  This  was  the 
case  more  particularly  in  France  and  England,  where 
episcopal  elections  were  more  free,  or  required  the  con- 
firmation of  the  king.  During  this  period  it  began  to  be 
assumed  as  the  ground  of  the  papal  prerogative,  though 
it  was  never  formulated  as  a  law  or  dogmatically  asserted 
as  a  principle  beyond  dispute,  that  the  bishops  reigned  no 
longer  by  the  immediate  grace  of  God,  but  by  the  mediat- 

1  Cf,  Freeman,  Beign  of  William  Bufus,  Vol.  I.,  c.  4, 


222  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

ing  will  of  the  pope.^  The  Cyprianic  theory  of  the  epis- 
copate, that  each  bishop  was  dejiendent  on  the  divine 
law,  to  which  alone  he  was  responsible,  grew  weak  as  the 
papacy  grew  stronger  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  power  of 
the  priesthood  on  the  other.  That  the  episcopate  consti- 
tuted an  order  distinct  from  the  priesthood,  was  not  the 
prevailing  doctrine ;  the  bishop  was  primarily  a  priest 
with  certain  special  functions  attached,  which  constituted 
his  distinction.  The  papacy  itself  was  essentially  changed 
from  its  original  character  as  the  bishopric  of  Rome. 
Under  the  influence  of  the  two  powerful  sentiments  with 
which  it  was  allied,  monasticism  and  ancient  imperial 
Rome,  the  office  had  been  so  transformed  that  its  early 
origin  was  with  difficulty  realized  by  the  Christian  imagi- 
nation. The  institution  of  cardinals  eclipsed  every  other 
distinction  in  the  church,  tending  to  depreciate  the  dig- 
nity of  the  episcopate  by  creating  a  higher  ambition  than 
the  episcopate  could  gratify.  Even  a  presbyter  or  priest, 
when  vested  with  the  cardinaFs  hat,  took  precedence  in  the 
rank  of  the  hierarchy  over  bishops  who  had  not  attained 
that  honor. 

But  amid  these  depressing  circumstances  the  episcopate 
was  fulfilling  its  natural  functions,  which  appear  more 
rational  and  liumane,  more  favorable  to  the  higher  civili- 

1  Cf.  Aquinas,  Sent.,  Lib.  II.,  Dist.  44,  Qu.  2:  "  Potestas  superior  et 
inferior  dupliciter  possent  se  habere.  Aut  ita,  quod  inferior  potestas  ex 
toto  oriatur  a  superiori;  et  tunc  tota  virtus  inferioris  fundatur  supra  vir- 
tutem  superioris,  et  tunc  simpliciter  et  in  omnibus  est  magis  obedien- 
dum  potestati  superiori,  quam  inferiori :  et  sic  se  habet  potestas  Dei  ad 
omnem  potestatem  creatain  ;  sic  etiani  se  habet  potestas  Iinperatoris  ad 
potestatem  proconsulis  :  sic  etiam  se  habet  potestas  Papae  ad  omnem 
spiritualem  potestatem  in  Ecclesia  ;  quia  ab  ipso  Papa  gradus  dignitatum 
diversi  in  Ecclesia  et  disponuntur  et  ordinantur  ;  unde  ejus  potestas  est 
quoddam  Ecclesiae  fundamentum,  ut  patet  Matth.  xvi.  Et  ideo  in  omni- 
bus magis  tenemur  obedire  Papae  quam  Episcopis,  vel  Archiepiscopis,  vel 
Monachus  Abbati  absque  ulla  distinctione.  Potest  iterum  potestas  supe- 
rior et  inferior  ita  se  habere,  quod  ambae  oriantur  ex  una  quadam  suprema 
poleslate:  et  hoc  modo  se  habent  potestates  et  Episcopi  et  Archiepiscopi 
descendentes  a  Papae  potestate.  Papa  utriusque  potestatis  apicem  tenet, 
scilicet  .spiritualis  et  saecularis."  Also  Sent.,  Lib.  IV.,  Dist.  20,  Art.  4, 
Solutio  3:  "  Papa  habet  plentitudinem  pontificalis  potestatis,  quasi  Rex 
in  regno :  sed  Episcopi  assumuntur  in  partem  solicitudinis,  quasi  judices 
singulis  civitatibus  praepositi," 


THE   EPISCOPATE   AND    THE   PAPACY  ZZd 

zation  and  freedom,  as  well  as  more  truly  religious,  than 
the  fierce  and  bitter  conflicts  into  which  the  papacy  was 
plunging.  It  is  a  characteristic  of  the  episcopate  as  a 
whole  that,  when  the  papal  church  rose  up  in  its  angry 
might  to  suppress  the  ecclesiastical  sects  which  had  been 
multiplying  rapidly  in  the  twelfth  century  while  popes 
were  preoccupied  with  other  interests,  the  bishops  did  not 
make  the  best  inquisitors  in  the  search  for  heresy.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  ecclesiastical  order,  it  was  they  who 
should  have  taken  steps  for  the  defence  of  the  faith,  of 
which  they  were  the  guardians,  each  in  his  own  jurisdic- 
tion ;  and  the  papacy  in  its  first  attempts  to  suppress  the 
heretical  sects  had  evidently  relied  on  them  as  the  agents 
to  carry  out  its  purpose.  The  episcopal  synodal  courts 
were  charged  by  Pope  Lucius  III.,  in  1184,  with  the  duty 
of  exterminating  heresy,  and  bishops  who  neglected  their 
tasks  were  threatened  with  deposition.  But  for  some 
reason  the  bishops  failed  to  do  what  was  expected  of 
them,  they  were  inactive  or  indifferent,  or  they  may  have 
been  preoccupied  with  other  affairs.  They  had  not  yet 
risen,  it  is  true,  to  the  higher  conception  of  religious  toler- 
ance, and  if  their  own  prerogatives  had  been  at  stake,  they 
might  have  been  found  eager  to  defend  them  at  any  cost. 
But  it  is  possible  also  that  the  humane  features  of  the 
episcopal  office  indisposed  them  to  take  the  lead  in  the 
cruelties  which  were  to  be  inflicted  on  those  who  had 
the  right  to  look  to  them  for  protection.  Whatever  ex- 
planation may  be  assigned  for  their  inactivity,  it  is  clear 
that  the  papacy  could  not  depend  on  them,  or  it  would 
not  have  turned  elsewhere  for  the  materials  out  of  which 
to  create  the  tribunals  of  inquisition.  Again  it  was  the 
monks,  and  in  close  alliance  with  the  papacy,  by  whom 
the  supreme  effort  was  made  to  exterminate  heresy  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  —  the  Cistercians  at  first  and  finally 
the  Dominicans,  on  whom  Pope  Innocent  the  Great  (1190- 
1216),  and  after  him  Gregory  IX.  (1232),  relied  in  their 
determination  to  accomplish  their  awful  purpose,  the  exe- 
cution of  which  forms  one  of  the  most  fearful  chapters  in 
the  annals  of  human  history.     Nothing  that  took  place  in 


224  ORGANIZATION   OP   THE   CHURCH 

the  persecution  of  the  Christians  under  Roman  Emperors 
can  compare  in  severity  and  cruelty  and  inhumanity,  or  as 
to  the  number  of  victims  involved,  with  what  was  achieved 
by  the  Tribunals  of  Inquisition  for  the  suppression  of  her- 
esy. Nor  was  it  from  the  bishops  that  the  enunciation 
came  of  the  principles  by  which  the  process  of  extermina- 
tion was  justified.  It  was  a  Dominican  monk,  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  the  leading  theologian  of  his  age,  who  taught 
that  '■'■  Heresy  is  a  sin  worthy  of  death,  falsification  of 
the  faith  worse  than  false  coining,  and  deserving  not 
merely  exclusion  from  the  church,  but  also  from  the 
world."  1 

Among  the  impressive  contrasts  of  history  must  be 
noted  the  circumstance  that  the  blow  to  the  papacy  from 
which  it  never  recovered,  the  beginning  indeed  of  its 
downfall,  came  from  that  countr}^  where  the  papal  tender- 
ness of  conscience  and  solicitude  for  the  faith  had  found 
its  chief  occasion  and  manifestation.  In  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  Albigenses,  an  evil  principle  was  introduced 
into  the  French  national  temperament,  which  has  been 
the  precursor  of  other  similar  events  in  the  later  history  of 
France.  But  the  immediate  effect  of  this  massacre  of  a 
large  part  of  the  population  of  France  with  the  sanction 
of  the  papacy,  was  to  strengthen  the  French  monarchy,  to 
whom  the  vacant  territory  of  the  Albigenses  reverted.  It 
seems,  therefore,  like  an  act  of  condign  retribution,  that 
when  the  national  sentiment  in  France  had  attained  sufh- 
cient  vigor  to  enable  the  nation  to  realize  its  unity  as  a 
whole,  its  first  act  should  have  been  one  of  defiance  toward 
the  papacy.  The  story  is  familiar  and  need  not  be  repeated. 
The  significance  of  the  conflict  between  Philip  the  Fair  of 
France  and  Pope  Boniface  VIII.  consists  in  this,  that  it 
was  the  first  of  a  series  of  national  protests  which  did 
not  cease  until  the  nations  of  Western  Europe  had  ac- 
complished their  emancipation  from  external  interfer- 
ence, whether  ecclesiastical  or  imperial,  and  the  modern 
world  was  born  in  which  the  nations  stand  in  their  free- 
dom and  independence   before    God,  answerable    only  to 

1  Cf.  Moeller,  Ch.  His.,  II.  402. 


THE   EPISCOPATE    AND   THE   PAPACY  225 

God  and  the  people.  Whatever  may  have  been  the  de- 
ficiency of  the  episcopate  in  the  crusade  against  French 
heretics  from  the  papal  point  of  view,  they  were  not  lacking 
in  devotion  to  the  French  crown,  in  the  long  and  fierce 
contention  between  the  pope  and  the  king.  They  had 
their  reprisals  at  last,  after  ages  of  subjection,  and  although 
the  French  monarchy  was  afterwards  checked  and  inwardly 
hurt  by  sinister  events  in  its  history,  yet  for  what  it  did 
achieve  it  was,  in  large  measure,  indebted  to  an  episcopate 
which  supported  the  sovereign  and  was  protected  by  him, 
which  defied  the  papal  ban  and  interdict,  demonstrating 
that  against  the  spirit  of  a  united  nation,  realizing  its  call 
from  God,  no  earthly  weapons  can  prosper.  With  the 
conflict  between  Philip  and  Boniface,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fourteenth  century  when  the  papacy  was  defeated, 
begins  a  new  chapter  in  human  history.  Every  leading 
event  from  that  time  until  the  Reformation  tended  to  the 
diminution  of  papal  power  over  church  and  state,  and  also 
to  the  reduction  of  its  ally,  the  monastic  orders,  to  impo- 
tence and  decay. 

It  is  one  of  the  revelations  of  history  that  the  seeming 
appearance  of  things  does  not  correspond  to  the  reality. 
The  great  institutions  of  the  Middle  Ages  —  the  Papacy, 
Monasticism,  and  the  Scholasticism  which  was  the  prod- 
uct of  the  monastic  spirit,  are  indeed  the  manifestation  of 
a  life,  and  represent  a  stage  in  the  progress  of  humanity. 
And  yet  they  were  not  finalities  in  themselves,  but  rather 
temporary  agencies  which  were  to  be  done  away  in  the 
fulness  of  time.  Beneath  the  surface  of  Mediaeval  insti- 
tutions a  mightier  task  was  in  process  of  accomplishment, 
which  did  not  appear  as  the  supreme  issue  of  history  until 
it  was  ripe  for  its  manifestation.  The  building  up  of  the 
nation  then  began  to  be  revealed  as  the  goal  of  history,^ 


1  Cf.  Mulford,  The  Nation,  cc.  xix.,  xx.  The  Book  of  Revelation, 
which  affirms  the  undying  life  of  the  nations  and  their  sacredness  before 
God,  invoking  the  destruction  of  Rome  for  its  sins  against  the  nations, 
fell  into  disrepute  after  the  union  of  the  Catholic  church  with  the  Roman 
Empire.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  so  strong  was  the  contrast  between  its 
assertion  of  nationality  and  the  existing  situation  in  which  empire  was 


226  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

and  in  the  independence  and  freedom  of  the  nation  through 
the  consciousness  of  its  divine  calling,  the  church  was  to 
find  its  largest  opportunity.  To  this  work  the  episcopate 
contributed  so  directly,  that  without  its  aid  the  great  result 
might  not  have  been  achieved.  To  support  kings,  and  in- 
spire them  with  a  sense  of  the  divineness  of  their  vocation, 
was  one  part  of  the  bishop's  work.  But  they  mediated 
also  between  the  kings  and  the  people.  "  Whatever  their 
class  interests  may  from  time  to  time  have  led  them  to  do, 
let  it  be  remembered  that  they  existed  as  a  permanent 
mediating  authority  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the 
strong  and  the  weak,  and  that,  to  their  eternal  honor, 
they  fully  comprehended  and  performed  the  duties  of  this 
most  noble  position.  To  none  but  themselves  would  it 
have  been  permitted  to  stay  the  strong  hand  of  power,  to 
mitigate  the  just  severity  of  the  law,  to  hold  out  a  glim- 
mering of  hope  to  the  serf,  to  find  a  place  in  this  world 
and  a  provision  for  the  destitute,  whose  existence  the  state 
did  not  recognize."  ^ 

The  bishops  represented  what  in  the  language  of  the 
Middle  Ages  was  known  as  the  '  secular '  form  of  Chris- 
tianity, while  the  monastic  clergy  stood  for  another  type 
which  was  designated  as  '  religious.'  The  tendency  of  the 
age  was  to  depreciate  the  secular  as  compared  with  the 
religious.  The  alliance  of  the  papacy  with  monasticism 
was  more  intimate  and  genuine  than  with  the  episcopate. 
It  tolerated  the  existence  of  nations  as  necessary  evils  in 
the  one  family  of  Christendom.  "  Herein,"  says  Maurice, 
"lay  the  great  contradiction  of  the  Medieeval  Church,  that 
which  produced  its  monstrous  corruptions.  It  thought  that 
it  could  exist  without  distinct  Nations,  that  its  calling  was 
to  overthrow  the  Nations.  Therefore  the  great  virtues 
which  Nations  foster.  Distinct  Individual  Conscience,  Sense 
of  personal  responsibility.  Veracity,  Loyalty,  were  under- 

the  ideal,  that  it  required,  says  Renan,  feats  of  exegetical  power  to  over- 
come the  difficulties  which  it  created.     Cf.  L'' Antichrist,  c.  xviii. 

1  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  II.,  p.  375;  for  the  relations  between 
the  king  and  the  English  bishops,  cf.  Freeman,  Beign  of  William  Bufus, 
I.,  c.  iv. 


THE   EPISCOPATE   AND   THE   PAPACY  227 

mined  by  it ;  therefore  it  called  good  evil  and  evil  good ; 
therefore  it  mimicked  the  Nations  while  it  was  trampling 
upon  them;  therefore  it  became  more  bloodthirsty  than 
any  Nation  had  ever  been."  ^ 

In  behalf  of  these  virtues  the  bishops  stood,  when  they 
may  have  seemed  only  subservient  to  the  whims  and  pas- 
sions of  a  sovereign.  They  were  to  the  king  a  constant 
reminder  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  in  which  the  state  had 
its  root  and  from  which  it  drew  its  authority.  If  they  did 
not  aim  so  high  as  the  monastery,  nor  seek  to  enforce  the 
so-called  counsels  of  perfection,  nor  identify  Christianity 
with  some  one  aspect  or  theory  of  its  nature,  yet  none  the 
less  was  their  work  a  vital  one  for  the  interests  of  the 
Christian  life.  The  spirit  of  tlie  episcopate,  as  it  has  been 
called,  may  be  traced  in  the  parish  churches  scattered  over 
all  Europe,  whose  well-being  it  was  their  duty  to  promote, 
by  careful  and  loving  superintendence.  In  these  religious 
homes  of  the  common  people  of  every  grade,  as  well  as  of 
the  nobility,  we  must  suppose,  despite  all  the  irregularity 
or  indifference  or  neglect  wdiich  may  have  existed,  that 
the  essentials  of  the  Christian  faith  were  maintained  and 


1  Social  3IoralUy,  p.  180. 

"  La  papaut^  est,  par  sa  nature  meme,  un  danger  pour  I'ind^pendance 
des  nations.  Chaque  nation  est  souveraine  dans  les  limites  de  son  terri- 
toire,  peu  imports  par  qui  cette  souverainet6  est  exerc^e.  Or  la  souve- 
rainet6  implique  le  droit  de  r^gler  les  int^rets  spirituels  aussi  bien  que  les 
int^rets  temporels.  Mais  comment  ce  droit  s'exercera-t-il,  s'il  y  a  au- 
dessus  des  nations  un  pouvoir  qui  a  le  droit  de  leur  commander,  non 
seulement  dans  les  mati^res  purement  spirituelles,  niais  encore  dans  les 
affaires  temporelles,  quand  il  plait  h  ce  pouvoir  de  declarer  que  la  religion 
y  est  int^ressde  ?  Inddpendance  nationale  et  papaut6  sont  done  deux 
choses  incompatibles.  Si  le  pape  a  la  plenitude  de  la  puissance  spirituelle, 
les  nations  cessent  d'etre  souveraines ;  si  les  nations  veulent  etre  souve- 
raines,  la  papaut^  devient  impossible.  Cela  est  si  vrai  que  la  papaut6  ne 
serait  pas  par  venue  k  s'^tablir  si,  dans  les  premiers  si^cles  de  son  exis- 
tence, elle  avait  eu  en  face  d'elle  des  nations  fortement  constitutes. 
L' institution  de  la  papautd  remonte  k  la  dissolution  du  monde  romain. 
Or  sous  Perapire,  il  n'y  avait  plus  de  nations  ;  Rome  eut  la  fatale  puis- 
sance d'absorber  les  vaincus  et  de  d^truire  leur  g^nie  individuel.  Les 
Barbares  apportferent  le  germe  de  nouvelles  nationalit^s,  mais  il  leur  fallut 
des  sifecles  pour  se  d^velopper  ;  c'est  le  lent  travail  du  moyen  age.  Dans 
son  origine,  la  papaute  n'avait  done  pas  a  lutter  contre  les  nations,  car 
elles  n'existaient  pas"  (Laurent,  His.  de  V Humanite,  VL,  p.  326). 


228  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

Christian  morality  inculcated.  As  the  monasteries  sought 
to  invade  the  sphere  of  the  secular  church,  the  bishops 
resisted  their  encroachments  in  the  interest  of  a  simpler, 
more  practical,  and  more  comprehensive  estimate  of  the 
religion  of  Christ.  A  recent  writer  has  thus  characterized 
this  feature  of  the  work  of  the  bishops :  "  The  episco- 
j^ate  represents  the  Christianity  of  history ;  it  represents, 
further,  the  Christianity  of  the  general  church,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  special  opinions  and  views  of  doctrine 
which  assert  their  claims  in  it.  Its  long  lines  tie  together 
the  Christian  body  in  time ;  they  are  scarcely  less  a  bond, 
connecting  the  infinite  moral  and  religious  differences 
which  must  always  be  in  the  body  of  the  church.  The 
bishop's  oiSce  embodies  and  protects  the  large  public  idea 
of  religion,  the  common  belief  and  understanding;  that 
which  all,  more  or  less,  respond  to,  and  recognize  as 
neither  of  this  party  nor  of  that,  and  allow  a  place  to,  even 
if  not  personally  satisfied  with  it."  ^ 

The  Council  of  Constance,  which  met  in  the  year  1414, 
may  be  taken  as  the  total  picture  of  the  outcome  of  the 
Middle  Ages.  If  the  church  of  the  Eastern  Empire  could 
have  taken  part  in  its  deliberations,  it  would  have  been  a 
picture  of  a  united  Christendom.  As  it  was,  it  represented 
the  Latin  church  on  the  eve  of  its  disruption,  bringing  as 
it  were  before  God  and  the  world  the  fruit  of  its  labors 
for  nearly  a  thousand  years.  The  pope  and  the  emperor 
were  there,  princes  also,  ambassadors,  and  the  secular  no- 
bility. The  rival  forms  of  Christianity,  the  secular  church 
represented  by  the  episcopate,  and  the  monastery  repre- 
sented by  the  presbyter-abbots,  appeared  tliere  on  an  equal 
footing.  The  learning  of  the  age  was  also  recognized  as 
a  constituent  factor  of  the  Council  in  the  large  representa- 
tion of  the  teachers  or  doctors  of  theology.  So  far  as 
numbers  went,  it  was  the  most  impressive  Council  in 
Christian  history.  The  ancient  General  Councils,  which 
allowed  only  the  bishops  to  vote,  reckoned  their  attend- 

1  Church,  E.  W.,  on  The  Place  of  the  Episcopate  in  Christian  History 
ill  Pascal  and  Other  Sermons,  New  York,  1895. 


THK    EPISCOPATE    AND    THE    PAPACY  229 

ance  by  the  hundreds ;  at  the  Council  of  Constance  the 
number  of  clergy  is  estimated  at  eighteen  thousand. ^ 

The  actual  result  of  Mediaeval  development  is  revealed 
at  this  Council  in  contrast  with  the  external  appearance 
of  things,  as  it  strikes  the  eye  looking  only  to  the  visi- 
ble framework  of  the  social  organism.  It  was  not  the 
papacy  or  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  which  was  the  deepest 
ground  on  which  the  authority  of  the  Council  reposed, 
but  the  national  idea,  now  for  the  fu'st  time  in  the 
Western  church  recognized  as  the  divine  basis  for  ecclesi- 
astical organization.  The  deliberations  of  the  Council 
were  first  held  in  separate  national  conclaves,  and  the 
final  vote  was  taken  by  nations.  "  When  it  was  proposed 
to  vote  by  nations,"  says  Milman,  "the  decree  to  that 
effect,  against  which  the  pope  remonstrated,  was  passed 
with  irresistible  acclamation." 

But  the  Council  of  Constance  is  chiefly  to  be  remem- 
bered for  the  conviction  which  it  uttered,  in  the  realiza- 
tion of  its  own  greatness,  that  a  power  had  risen  at  last 
in  Latin  Christendom,  which  was  higher  than  the  papacy. 
"  The  universal  church,"  said  Cardinal  D'Ailly,  "  repre- 
sented by  a  general  council,  has  full  power  to  depose  even 
a  lawful  pontiff  of  blameless  character,  if  it  be  necessary 
for  the  welfare  of  the  church."  In  accordance  with  this 
principle,  it  deposed  one  pope  and  elected  another.  Al- 
though the  Council  was  still  loyal,  in  theory  at  least,  to  the 
papacy,  even  allowing  its  proposed  reforms  to  be  thwarted 
by  its  adherence  to  the  idea  that  before  proceeding  to  a  ref- 
ormation a  pope  should  be  elected;  yet  its  final  result  was 
to  weaken,  if  not  destroy,  the  prestige  of  Rome.  From  this 
time  the  papal  ecclesiastical  supremacy  may  be  said  to  have 

1  "The  total  number  of  Clergy,  not  perhaps  all  present  at  one  time, 
was  four  Patriarchs,  Constantinople,  Grado,  Antioch,  Aquileia ;  twenty- 
nine  Cardinals,  Italians  by  birth,  excepting  five  Frenchmen,  chiefly  of 
the  creation  of  Benedict  XIII.,  and  one  Portuguese;  thirty-three  Arch- 
bishops ;  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  Bishops,  including  thirty-two  titu- 
lars ;  one  hundred  and  thirty-four  Abbots  ;  two  hundred  and  fifty  Doctors  ; 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  Provosts,  and  other  superiors.  With  their 
whole  attendance  the  Clergy  a-mounted  to  eighteen  thousand"  (Milman, 
Lat.  Chris.,  VII.,  p.  452). 


230  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

come  to  an  end ;  for  never  afterward  was  tlie  papacy  able 
to  address  itself  with  a  voice  of  authority  to  Western 
Christendom.  But  the  great  defect  and  failure  of  the 
council  was  not  so  much  in  its  inability  to  carry  reforms 
in  head  and  members,  as  in  the  fatal  limitation  of  its 
vision  by  which  it  could  not  see  the  imperative  necessity 
of  including  within  the  church  universal  a  Wycliffe  or  a 
Huss.  It  had  not  the  prophetic  gift  to  recognize  the 
new  age  that  was  dawning,  or  the  power  of  suppressed 
spiritual  forces  which  were  threatening  a  revolution. 
When  the  papacy  finally  lost  its  last  lingering  hold  over 
the  sentiment  of  Europe,  as  was  made  evident  in  the 
throes  of  the  sixteenth  century,  these  forces  were  set  free 
to  rebuild  and  reorganize  in  their  own  way.  The  episco- 
pate and  the  presbyterate,  or  the  ruling  ideas  for  which 
they  stood,  had  no  longer  any  organic  external  tie  which 
should  bind  them  together,  as  the  bishop  and  the  monas- 
tery had  been  held  together  in  the  INIiddle  Ages.  But  a 
larger  fellowship  and  a  deeper  and  more  real  organic 
bond  of  unity  existed  which  could  not  be  broken,  an  in- 
visible Headship  of  the  church  under  whose  presence  and 
authority  the  seemingly  shattered  fragments  of  Catholic 
Christendom  were  still  united,  as  when  Gerson,  the  leader 
of  the  council,  proclaimed  that  Christ  Himself  was  the 
primal  and  perfect  Head  of  the  church  whose  union  with 
His  church  was  alone  indissoluble.^ 

This  was  the  conviction  which  inspired  and  sustained 
the  Protestant  reformers  of  the  sixteenth  century,  wliether 
in  England  or  Germany  or  Switzerland,  that  Christ  had 
now  as  it  were  resumed  His  own  headship  of  the  church 
without  the  mediation  of  any  earthly  vicars ;  and  in  this 
most  real  of  all  bonds  of  organization,  the  Catholic  or 
universal  church  was  held  in  actual  and  living  unity. 

1  Von  der  Hardt,  Condi.  Const..,  I.,  pp.  76  ft.;  Gerson,  Opera,  II., 
p.  1G2  ;  cf.  Gieseler,  Ec.  His.,  III.,  pp.  221  ff.,  for  the  larger  conception 
of  the  Catholic  church  which  was  rising  in  Gerson's  mind,  —  the  aban- 
donment of  Catholicity  as  defined  by  Hildebrand :  Qjiod  catholicus  non 
habeatur,  qui  non  concordat  Bomanae  ecclesiae.  Dictat.  Hildeb.,  in  Jaff^, 
mb.  Ber.  Ger.,  II.  174. 


CHAPTER   XII 

THE   ORGANIZATION    OF    THE   CHURCHES   IN   THE   AGE   OF 
THE   REFORMATION 

The  age  of  the  Reformation  was  a  period  of  changes 
and  adjustments,  demanded  and  made  possible  by  the 
revolution  which  had  been  in  process  during  the  two 
hundred  years  which  went  before.  In  that  revolution  the 
power  of  the  papacy  had  been  overthrown,  and  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire  had  been  dissolved.  The  revolt  of  Luther 
and  of  Henry  VIII.  only  made  apparent  that  which  in 
reality  had  been  accomplished  by  the  generations  which 
had  preceded  them.  The  changes  of  the  sixteenth  century 
were  so  vital  for  the  interests  of  Christendom,  that  in  the 
popular  judgment  they  have  been  too  closely  identified 
with  the  agencies  by  which  the  Mediseval  fabric  was 
undone.  To  correct  so  misleading  an  interpretation  of 
history  is  one  of  the  duties  which  calls  for  the  labors  of 
the  historian.  There  came  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  an  age  of  apparent  repose,  a  lull,  as  it  were, 
after  the  storm,  which  seemed  like  a  return  to  the  normal 
order,  political  or  ecclesiastical.  If  one  dwells  on  this 
moment  in  the  history,  it  almost  appears  as  if  councils 
had  failed  or  the  protest  of  kings  had  led  to  no  result. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  Reformers  of  the  sixteenth 
century  have  been  represented  as  self-willed  agitators  who 
were  unnecessarily  disturbing  the  peace  of  society.  ^ 

The  papacy  had  begun  to  lose  its  supremacy  over  the 

1  Such  is  the  attitude  of  Janssen,  in  his  learned  and  able,  but  wholly 
misleading  treatment  of  the  German  Reformation,  —  Geschichte  des 
dentschen  Volkes  seit  dem  Ausgang  des  Mittelalters.  For  the  literature 
of  the  German  and  Swiss  Reformations,  cf.  Schaff,  in  Church  History^ 
Vols,  VI.,  VII.     See  also  Fisher,  His.  of  the  Beformation, 

231 


232  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

states  of  Europe,  after  Philip  the  Fair  had  defied  Pope 
Boniface  VIII.,  when  papal  interdicts  and  bulls  of  excom- 
munication proved  inefficient.  The  silent  change  which 
robbed  the  papal  weapons  of  their  power  was  the  develop- 
ment of  the  national  consciousness.  Philip  led  in  the 
revolt,  and  German}^  followed,  declaring  in  the  Golden 
Bull  of  1356  that  the  German  emperor  was  made  by  the 
vote  of  the  electors  and  not  by  the  papal  will.  England 
contributed  Wycliffe  to  the  process  by  which  nations 
asserted  their  autonomy.  In  the  Reformatory  Councils 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  assertion  of  the  principle  that 
the  authority  of  the  council  was  superior  to  the  pope  had 
broken  down  the  ecclesiastical  supremacy  of  the  popes  over 
the  churches.  Men  thought  the  councils  were  a  failure, 
while  in  reality  they  had  done  a  work  too  great  for  the 
imaoination  at  once  to  receive.  When  a  General  Council 
had  deposed  a  pope  and  elected  his  successor,  a  new 
authority  had  risen  and  been  recognized  in  Christendom, 
and  the  old  authority  had  passed  away.  With  the  passing 
of  the  papacy,  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  had  also  dis- 
appeared. That  too  had  been  overcome  by  the  sentiment 
of  nationality.  These  things  should  be  borne  in  mind  in 
estimating  the  work  of  the  Reformers.  They  are  charged 
with  breaking  up  the  unity  of  Christendom,  but  what  they 
really  did  was  to  respond  to  the  demand  for  changes,  after 
the  old  order  had  already  become  powerless.  But  it  must 
be  also  said  that  the  papacy  did  not  realize  the  extent 
of  the  revolution,  until  the  changes  were  actually  under- 
taken which  were  demanded  by  the  new  order. 

It  sometimes  looks  as  if  the  varied  forms  of  ecclesiastical 
life  which  appeared  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  were 
accidental  or  purposeless.  But  the  deeper  study  of  the 
peculiarities  of  the  reformed  churches  shows  that  in  every 
case  they  were  following  some  law  of  development,  some 
deep  inward  principle,  which  had  its  roots  in  the  national 
life,  whose  growth  was  determined  by  political  and  geo- 
graphical as  well  as  by  religious  motives.  The  divine 
purpose  in  history  was  manifested  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation   no  less   than   in   the  ancient   church  when 


THE   AGE    OF   THE   REFORMATION  233 

otlier  and  different  motives  had  been  the  ruling  ideas 
of  history.  As  in  the  ancient  church,  so  also  in  the  age 
of  the  Reformation,  world-forces  were  in  operation  for  the 
production  of  results,  and  not  in  any  case  the  mere  whim 
of  an  individual  man. 

In  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  the  Catholic  church, 
with  its  distinctive  products,  came  up  for  review  before 
the  new  tribunals,  submitting  its  institutions,  its  organi- 
zation, its  discipline,  its  cultus,  and  its  doctrine  to  the 
requirements  of  an  advancing  Christian  civilization.  It 
was  assumed  with  unanimity  in  this  new  age  that  there 
was  something  higher  than  Catholic  tradition,  in  the 
light  of  which  it  must  be  judged.  The  appeal  was  to 
be  taken,  not  exclusively  to  the  fathers  or  to  the  General 
Council  of  the  Catholic  church,  but  to  the  voice  of  that 
earlier  church  which  spoke  in  the  pages  of  the  New 
Testament. 

The  Reformers  were  not  aiming  at  external  ecclesiastical 
unity,  as  the  founders  of  the  Catholic  church  had  done  in 
the  second  and  third  centuries.  They  were  more  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  principle  which  the  ancient  church  of  the 
East  had  followed,  when  it  rejected  the  papal  claim  to 
supremacy,  together  with  the  Latin  doctrine  that  Catholic 
unity  consisted  in  homogeneousness  of  organization  under 
the  supreme  authority  of  one  man.  Emerging  as  the 
Reformers  did  from  the  authority  of  Rome,  which  had 
maintained  a  certain  formal  unity  in  Western  Chris- 
tendom under  an  ecclesiastical  imperialism,  there  was 
no  confusion  in  their  vision  regarding  the  value  of  that 
unity,  nor  any  disposition  to  preserve  it.  The  unity 
of  the  Mediaeval  church  had  not  been  achieved  by  any 
principle  of  inward  reconciliation  between  conflicting 
tendencies,  and  it  had  been  finally  driven  to  the  use  of 
force  in  order  to  its  perpetuation.  From  the  time  that 
the  inquisition  had  been  found  necessary  to  maintain 
the  ecclesiastical  liegemony  of  Rome,  the  change  had 
begun  which  was  to  substitute  some  other  conception 
of  Christian  unity.  The  Reformers  had  another  ideal, 
the  vision  of  a  higher  unity  of  the  Spirit,  which  bound 


234  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

men  together  in  the  church  which  was  invisible.  That 
unit}^  as  they  believed,  was  more  real  than  any  scheme 
of  visible  homogeneous  organization,  because  it  existed 
in  the  divine  mind,  to  be  reproduced  in  this  lower  world. 
It  was  a  unity  which  could  not  be  broken  by  the  changes 
and  vicissitudes  incident  to  human  development.  From 
this  point  of  view  the  Reformers  were  not  dividing 
Christendom  in  the  reorganization  of  the  churches,  but 
rather  consolidating  a  higher  unity,  which  time  would 
reveal. 


The  Mediaeval  church  was  the  resultant  of  two  tenden- 
cies or  phases  of  the  Christian  spirit,  whose  opposition  had 
been  held  in  check  by  the  papacy, —  the  ancient  Catholic 
church,  whose  ecclesiastical  organization  had  been  com- 
pleted, and  whose  central  doctrine  had  been  formulated 
in  the  age  of  Constantine,  and  monasticism,  a  church 
within  a  church,  with  a  different  descent  and  another 
aim.  The  one  had  sought  to  bind  men  together  in 
organic  unity,  to  offer  a  common  worship  and  a  common 
salvation,  wherein  the  burden  was  transferred  from  the 
people  to  a  priesthood  who  mediated  in  their  behalf  before 
God;  the  other  asserted  the  responsibility  of  the  individ- 
ual soul  before  God,  to  such  an  extent  that  at  first  it  felt 
no  dependence  upon  a  common  worship,  but  drove  men 
into  the  deserts,  where  they  might  atone  for  sins  and  seek 
the  individual  assurance  of  union  and  peace  with  God. 

In  the  Eastern  church  there  came  no  development  to 
these  divergent  forms  of  apprehending  the  mission  of 
Christ.  But  in  the  West  each  had  its  history,  there  was 
conflict  between  them, —  the  secular  church  represented 
by  the  episcopate,  and  the  monastery  by  the  presbyterate. 
The  tendency  of  the  one  was  to  consolidate  the  state, 
to  minister  to  national  unity  and  independence,  to  guard 
the  religious  and  moral  welfare  of  the  great  mass  of  the 
people,  perpetuating  its  spirit  in  the  parish  churches  scat- 
tered over  the  length  and  breadth  of  Western  Christen- 
dom.    Monasticism,  on  the  other  hand,  retained  through 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  235 

all  its  changes  the  spirit  in  which  it  originated,  offering 
a  refuge  to  men  and  women  in  their  individual  capacity, 
who  were  seeking  to  satisfy  some  personal  need  or  inward 
aspiration.  It  included  elect  souls  who  sought  the  honors 
of  saintship,  for  election  was  always  the  monastic  prin- 
ciple ;  and  the  monk  felt  a  personal  call  or  vocation 
which  could  not  find  a  sphere  in  the  secular  church.  The 
greatness  and  the  wisdom  of  the  papacy  lay  in  the  recon- 
ciliation of  these  divergent  aims.  It  was  in  sympathy 
with  both,  and  never  entirely  identified  with  either. 
Thus  there  arose  a  new  conception  of  catholicity  to  which 
the  Eastern  church  was  a  stranger;  a  new  definition  was 
given  of  the  Catholic  church,  by  Hildebrand  in  the  so- 
called  Dictatus,  where  it  is  affirmed  that  no  one  is  a 
Catholic  who  is  not  in  agreement  with  the  Roman  church, 
—  Quod  catholicus  non  habeatur,  qui  iion  concordat  Roma- 
nae  ecclesiae.  This  conviction  has  been  the  soul  of  Roman 
catholicity.  It  has  been  a  conviction,  also,  which  has 
been  enforced  in  great  results,  so  that  from  the  time  of 
Hildebrand  any  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  episcopate 
toward  the  formation  of  an  independent  national  church 
was  resisted,  and  for  a  time  overcome,  not  only  by  the 
subjection  of  the  episcopate  to  the  papacy,  as  in  the 
formal  vow  of  its  consecration,  but  by  subjecting  also 
the  states  of  Europe  themselves  to  the  civil  supremacy 
of  the  Roman  pontiff.  As  a  means  also  to  this  end,  the 
monasteries  were  detached  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
bishops,  and  bound  in  close,  direct  dependence  upon 
the  papacy,  becoming  its  agents  and  representatives 
everywhere  and  allowed  free  scope  for  their  peculiar  de- 
velopment. Despite  the  rivalry  and  hostility  between  the 
secular  and  the  religious  clergy,  there  grew  up  strong  ties 
holding  them  together  in  seemingly  organic  relationship. 
Great  as  were  the  concessions  made  by  the  papacy  to  the 
monastery,  as  when  it  gave  the  title  of  prelate  to  promi- 
nent heads  of  monastic  houses  or  invested  them  with  the 
mitre  as  the  symbol  of  episcopal  authority,  yet  it  never 
conceded  what  the  episcopate  claimed  as  its  distinctive 
right, —  the  power  of  ordination.     The  presbyterate  and 


236  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

episcopate  were  equalized  as  far  as  possible,  but  the  bishop 
still  remained  in  possession  of  an  authority  which  was  his 
before  the  monastery  arose. 

But  no  scheme,  however  wise  or  subtly  adapted  to 
existing  conditions,  is  able  to  control  the  laws  of  human 
development.  Already  it  was  evident  before  the  Re- 
formers appeared  that  the  world  had  not  been  moving  in 
accordance  with  the  ecclesiastical  constitution  of  the 
Mediaeval  church.  At  the  Council  of  Constance,  it  was 
manifest  that  these  two  tendencies,  the  secular  church 
and  the  episcopate  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  monastic 
church  governed  by  the  presbyterate,  on  the  other,  had 
not  been  wholly  fused  into  one;  that  with  the  decline 
of  the  papacy,  or  its  continued  inability  to  enforce  its 
will,  they  were  standing  forth  in  characteristic  inde- 
pendence, ready  for  any  emergency  which  might  befall. 
The  prerogatives  of  tire  bishops  by  divine  right  were 
there  reasserted;  the  time,  it  was  said,  had  come  when 
they  should  be  distinguished  from  presbyters  by  some- 
thing more  than  dress  or  revenue,  hahitu  et  reditibus.^ 
But  when  the  claims  of  the  episcopate  were  boldly 
advanced,  as  by  Gerson,  another  influential  voice  in  the 
council  spoke  for  the  presbyterate.  The  Cardinal-Bishop 
of  Cambray  advocated  the  right  of  learned  presbyters  to  a 
seat  and  vote  in  the  council  by  the  same  law  which  gave 
a  place  to  the  bishop  or  the  presbyter-abbot. ^     And  other 

1  "  Etenim  quid  hodie  erant  Episcopi,  nisi  umbrae  quaedam  ?  Quid  plus 
illis  restabat,  quara  baculus  et  mitra  ?  Numquid  pastores  sine  ovibus  dici 
poterant,  cum  nihil  in  subditos  statuere  possent  ?  Nempe  cum  esset  in 
ecclesia  primitiva  episcoporum  summa  potestas,  hodie  ad  id  venei'unt,  ut 
solo  habitu  et  reditibus  superarent  presbyteros.  At  nos  eos  in  statu 
reposuimus  pristino  ;  nos  beneficiorum  collationem  ad  eos  reduximus,  nos 
eis  confirmationem  electionum  restituimus,  nos  causas  subditorum  eisdem 
reddidimus  audiendas,  nos  eos,  qui  jam  non  erant  Episcopi,  fecimus 
episcopos"  (Cardinal  Ludovicus,  at  Basle,  where  he  presided,  in  Aeneae 
Sylvii  De  Cone.  Basil,  Oper.  I.,  p.  40  (ed.  1667)  ;  cited  in  Gieseler, 
III.,  p.  341). 

2  When  the  papal  party  at  the  Council  of  Constance  wished  that  only 
the  greater  prelates,  bishops,  and  abbots  should  have  votes,  it  was  resisted 
by  Petrus  de  AUiaco,  Cardinal  of  Cambray,  who  claimed  the  right  to  vote 
for  lesser  dignitaries,  and  especially  for  teachers  of  theology:  "  Quibus, 
et  maxinie  Theologis,  datur  auctoritas  praedicandi  aut  docendi  ubique 


THE   AGE    OF   THE   REFORMATION  237 

voices  were  heard  in  that  prophetic  age,  arguing  for  the 
supreme  power  of  the  bishop  of  Rome,  as  alone  by  divine 
right,  from  whom  bishop  and  presbyter  alike  derived  their 
authority.  The  Council  of  Constance  reflected  in  advance 
the  varying  attitudes  of  the  coming  age.  Had  the  nations 
which  Avere  there  represented  maintained  the  national 
principle  in  its  integrity,  some  different  result  would 
have  been  accomplished.  But  they  were  tempted  in  their 
weakness  to  make  separate  agreements  or  concordats  with 
the  papacy,  which  so  far  redressed  their  national  griev- 
ances, that  the  day  svhich  promised  so  much  for  national 
churches  came  to  its  close  with  diminished  prospects  of 
its  attainment.  It  was  from  the  monastery  that  the  first 
effort  proceeded  which  resulted  in  an  independent  Protes- 
tant church. 

II 

The  Franciscan  order  appears  from  several  points  of 
view  as  the  forerunner  of  ecclesiastical  organizations  which 
took  their  rise  in  the  sixteenth  century.  It  not  only  pre- 
pared the  way  for  their  appearance,  but  in  some  respects 
also  afforded  the  type  they  were  to  follow.     In  its  origin, 

terrarura,  quae  non  est  parva  auctoritas  in  populo  Christiano,  sed  multo 
major  quam  unius  Episcopi  vel  Abbatis  ignorantis  et  solum  titularis" 
(Von  der  Hardt,  Con.  Const.,  II.,  pp.  224  ff.). 

And  to  the  same  effect  tlie  words  of  Philasterius,  Cardinal  S.  Marci : 
"  And  thou,  whoever  thou  art,  who  claimest  that  only  the  greater  Prelates, 
Bishops,  and  Abbots  should  have  a  voice  in  a  General  Council  :  and  thus 
excludest  Doctors,  Archdeacons,  Rectors  of  parochial  churches,  and  other 
dignitaries  to  whom  belongs  the  cure  of  souls,  besides  the  ecclesiastical 
Orders,  Priests,  and  Deacons,  say,  where  do  you  read  that  these  should 
not  be  admitted  ?  And  if  you  read  the  accounts  of  ancient  councils,  you 
will  find  that  priests  and  deacons  were  admitted. 

"  If  you  are  a  Canonist,  behold  the  text  of  the  Canon  saying  that  the 
Order  of  Doctors  (teachers)  is  as  if  chief  in  the  church  of  God.  That 
Order,  therefore,  and  as  it  were  the  highest  order,  you  repel,  and  admit 
without  distinction  Bishops  and  Abbots,  of  whom  the  greater  part  is 
unlearned :  Et  attende,  quod  Rex,  vel  Praelatus  indoctus  est  asinus  coro- 
natus.  Cum  illis  ergo  Doctores  admitte,  ut  illorurn  scientiae  defectum, 
qui  tamen  auctoritatem  habent,  istorum  scientia  et  doctrina  supple- 
ant.  .  .  .  Inter  episcopos  et  presbyteros,  quantum  ad  ordinationem 
et  meritum,  Apostolus  nuUam  differentiam  facit"  (Von  der  Hardt,  II., 
p.  226). 


238  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

it  was  a  lay  movement  to  which  the  ordinary  features  of 
monasticism  were  subordinated  in  order  to  the  execution 
of  an  aim  which  hitherto  the  monastic  orders  had  not  con- 
templated. It  passed  over  into  a  monastic  order  against 
the  will  of  its  founder,  and  because,  if  any  special  work 
were  to  be  done  within  the  church,  the  monastic  organi- 
zation was  the  only  available  method  which  the  times 
allowed.  According  to  the  conception  of  St.  Francis,  the 
whole  world  was  to  be  the  parish  in  which  his  disciples 
were  to  labor.  They  were  to  go  forth  two  by  two,  accord- 
ing to  Christ's  direction,  to  preach  repentance  and  salva- 
tion, taking  no  money  with  them,  but  dependent  on  the 
voluntary  contributions  of  the  people.  St.  Francis  con- 
templated the  revival  of  the  Apostolate,  which  should 
carry  the  Gospel  into  heathen  lands,  and  himself  set  the 
example  of  a  missionary  tour.  The  order  grew  with  as- 
tonishing rapidity,  admitting  priests  to  its  membership, 
then  under  St.  Clare  establishing  the  second  order,  to  which 
women  were  admitted,  and  finally  creating  a  third  associ- 
ated order,  the  Tertiaries,  as  they  were  called,  by  which 
men  and  women,  married  and  living  in  their  homes,  were 
entitled  to  membership  under  a  special  rule.  Thus  was 
afforded  a  wide  popular  basis  on  which  the  new  organization 
reposed.  The  different  countries  of  Europe  were  desig- 
nated as  its  provinces,  but  Germany  was  its  favorite  home 
for  missionary  work.  The  papacy  endowed  it  with  special 
privileges,  immunity  from  all  episcopal  jurisdiction  or 
supervision,  and  permission  to  its  clergy  to  preach  in 
every  land,  to  say  Mass,  or  to  hear  confessions.  The 
openness  of  the  new  order  to  all  living  influences  of  the 
time  was  one  of  its  marked  characteristics ;  it  entered 
the  fields  of  scholarship  and  theology;  when  nominalism 
arose,  it  gave  to  it  a  cordial  reception,  and  when  ecclesi- 
astical art  developed,  it  became  its  patron  and  formed  an 
appreciative  constituency  for  its  appeal.  And,  again,  it 
was  characteristic  of  this  order  that,  like  the  Benedictine 
and  the  Dominican,  it  honored  its  founder,  and  its  mem- 
bers found  nothing  incongruous  in  being  called  after  his 
name, —  an  analogy  with  some  of  the  Protestant  churches, 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   EEFORMATIOK  239 

where  the  personality  of  some  one  great  religious  teacher 
is  perpetuated  in  the  popular  title  of  recognition. 

Could  the  Franciscan  order  have  remained  upon  the 
foundation  laid  by  St.  Francis  himself,  it  might  have 
developed  into  an  independent  cosmopolitan  organization, 
ahsorbing  into  itself  the  new  world-forces  which  the  age 
was  generating.  But  its  status  as  a  monastic  order  was 
too  definitely  fixed  by  the  bull  of  Pope  Honorius  III.  in 
1220.  It  was  drawn  back  and  compressed  into  the  familiar 
mould  of  binding  monastic  vows,  along  with  its  great  rival, 
the  Dominican  order,  which  in  so  many  respects  resembled 
it,  and  both  succumbed,  in  the  age  before  the  Reformation, 
to  those  disintegrating  influences  which  affect  institutions 
that  have  done  their  work  and  no  longer  respond  to  the 
deeper  needs  of  a  growing  world.  But  the  Franciscans 
had  weakened  the  secular  church  by  their  successful  rivalry 
with  the  secular  clergy;  they  had  appropriated  parish 
churches;  they  had  cultivated  preaching  as  an  art,  and 
were  thus  presenting  to  Christendom  a  new  model  for 
an  ecclesiastical  organization. ^ 

Another  and  more  direct  preparation  for  the  coming  of 
the  reformed  churches  in  the  sixteenth  century  was  fur- 
nished by  the  Brothers  of  the  Common  Life.  They  were 
an  association  of  clergy  living  under  rule,  but  not  bound 
by  monastic  vows,  who  established  schools  and  devoted 
themselves  to  preaching,  exerting  a  wide  influence  in  the 
Netherlands  and  in  Northern  Germany  during  the  fif- 
teenth century.  They  were  vehemently  opposed  by  the 
mendicant  monks,  but  gained  the  sanction  for  their  work 
of  the  Council  of  Constance.  In  these  ways  the  presbyt- 
erate  had  been  asserting  itself,  disciplining  itself  also, 
emancipating  itself  from  the  episcopal  or  secular  church, 
when  Luther  went  forth  from  the  cloisters  of  an  Augus- 
tinian  monastery  to  become  the  leader  of  an  independent 
organization,  which  should  assume  the  work  of  the  secu- 
lar church,  and  appropriate  its  property,  acknowledging 

1  Sabatier,  Vie  de  S.  Francois  d' Assise;  Bernardin,  Vesprit  de  Saint 
Francois  d'Assisir;  Mrs.  Oliphant,  Life  of  St.  Francis;  Muller,  K,, 
Die  Anfdnge  des  Minoritenordens  und  die  Bussbruderschaften. 


240  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  CHURCH 

no  jurisdiction  or  supervision  of  bishops,  after  having 
taken  the  momentous  step  of  renouncing  the  control  of 
the  papacy.  1 

Beneath  the  changes  which  led  to  the  reconstitution 
of  churches  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  on  a  presby- 
terial  basis,  there  lay  the  conviction  that  herein  was  a 
return  to  the  principles  and  authority  of  Apostles  as  con- 
tained in  the  New  Testament.  The  Canon  Law  had 
given  its  sanction  to  the  statement  of  Jerome,  which  car- 
ried not  only  an  allegation  as  to  matters  of  historical  fact, 
as  that  in  the  beginning  of  Christ's  religion  there  was  no 
difference  in  equality  between  bishops  and  presbyters,  but 
had  also  asserted  that  the  placing  of  the  bishop  above 
the  presbyter  was  a  human  arrangement,  required  by  the 
necessities  of  the  time.  In  the  sixteenth  century,  these 
human  arrangements  of  the  Mediaeval  church  had  but 
little  weight  when  compared  with  the  higher  authority 
of  Christ  and  His  Apostles.  But  not  only  was  the 
change  in  organization  which  rejected  the  episcopate 
thus  based  upon  what  was  believed  a  divine  right,  but 
other  revolutions  were  in  the  quiet  process  of  accomplish- 
ment which  were  making  such  a  transformation  seem 
part  of  a  natural,  inevitable  law.  The  priesthood  which 
Cyprian  established  in  the  third  century  was  returning 
again  to  the  earlier  conception  of  the  presbyterate,  when 
the  cure  of  souls  and  the  practice  of  exhortation  or  preach- 

1  For  the  extent  to  which  the  monasteries  contributed  to  the  Reforma- 
tion in  Germany,  see  Kurtz,  Ch.  His.,  II.,  §  125  (Eng.  Trans.)  :  "The 
most  powerful  herakls  of  the  Reformation  were  the  monkish  orders.  .  .  . 
Evangelists  inspired  by  a  purer  doctrine  arose  in  all  parts  of  Germany, 
first  and  most  of  all  among  the  Augustinian  order,  which,  almost  to  a 
man,  went  over  to  the  Reformation,  and  had  the  glory  of  providing  its 
first  martyr.  The  order  regarded  Luther's  honor  as  its  own.  Next  to 
them  came  the  Franciscans  ...  of  whom  many  had  the  courage  to  free 
themselves  from  their  shackles.  From  their  cloisters  proceeded  the  two 
famous  popular  preachers,  Eberlin  of  Giinsburg,  and  Henry  of  Ketten- 
bach  in  Ulm,  the  Hamburg  reformer  Stephen  Kempen,  the  fervent  Lam- 
bert, the  reformer  of  Hesse,  Luther's  friend  Myconius  of  Gotha,  and 
many  more.  Other  orders  too  supplied  their  contingent,  even  the  Domini- 
cans, to  whom  Martin  Bucer,  the  Strassburg  reformer,  belonged.  Blaurer 
of  Wiirttemberg  was  a  Benedictine,  Rhegius  a  Carmelite,  Bugeuhagen  a 
Premonstratensian. ' ' 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   EEFORMATION  241 

ing,  together  with  the  presbyter's  ancient  function  as  a 
defender  of  the  faith,  were  taking  the  place  of  sacrificial 
rites,  which  during  the  Middle  Ages  had  been  the  work 
of  a  presbyter. 

The  conception  of  priesthood  had  become  to  the  Mediae- 
val church  its  strongest  conviction,  and  had  indeed  risen 
to  such  transcendent  importance,  especially  after  the 
dogma  of  transubstantiation  had  been  sanctioned,  that  the 
priesthood  threatened  to  eclipse  all  other  spiritual  distinc- 
tions. It  was  magnified  in  the  monasteries,  till  other 
ranks  and  gradations  in  the  hierarchy  were  viewed  as 
functions  of  the  one  order  of  the  priesthood.  To  offer 
the  unbloody  and  stupendous  sacrifice  of  the  altar,  to  bring 
down  Christ  from  the  heavens,  to  keep  the  communication 
open  between  God  and  man,  was  a  work  to  which  adminis- 
trative functions  must,  in  theory  at  least,  be  held  subordi- 
nate. But  while  the  highest  distinction  of  pope  or 
prelate  lay  in  belonging  to  the  order  of  the  priesthood, 
the  bishop  retained  a  certain  ascendency  by  the  ruling 
of  the  Canon  Law,  which  made  his  participation  essential 
to  the  conferring  of  this  dignity.  In  the  popular,  as  well 
as  in  the  ecclesiastical,  estimate,  he  alone  gave  the  author- 
ity to  offer  the  sacrifice  by  the  sacrament  of  ordination, 
handing  down  the  power  which,  according  to  the  received 
view,  he  himself  had  received  through  his  predecessors, 
who  had  in  the  first  instance  received  it  from  Apostles, 
and  the  Apostles  from  Christ.  According  to  strict  theory, 
the  sacrament  of  ordination,  both  in  dignity  and  impor- 
tance, took  precedence  of  all  other  sacraments,  for  upon 
it  the  very  existence  of  the  church  was  dependent. 
There  was  a  conflict  here  and  a  deep  contradiction,  which 
could  not  have  been  overcome  but  by  another  vast  and  si- 
lent process,  which  was  undermining  the  postulates  of  the 
Mediaeval  church.  The  doctrine  of  transubstantiation 
had  been  first  called  in  question  by  philosophical  thinkers, 
but  the  doubt  was  rapidly  spreading  among  the  people. 
That  doctrine,  which  may  be  called  the  keystone  of  the 
arch  of  Mediaeval  Christianity,  could  no  longer  be  main- 
tained, if  the  principles  of  the  growing  philosophy,  known 


242  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

as  Nominalism,  should  gain  acceptance  as  a  substitute  for 
the  discarded  realism  of  the  Schoolmen.  And  this  was 
what  was  coming  to  pass.  It  was  becoming  as  difficult 
to  believe  in  transubstantiation,  as  formerly  it  had  been 
impossible  to  resist  it.  It  was  ceasing  as  a  doctrine  to 
hold  the  imagination  any  longer  in  captivity  to  the 
authority  of  church  or  clergy. 

But  meantime  other  changes  of  a  positive  constructive 
character  were  in  process,  which  were  to  bring  their  con- 
tribution of  dignity  and  significance  to  the  presbyterate 
when  its  former  importance  as  a  sacrificing  priesthood 
should  have  faded  away.  The  earlier  functions  of  the 
Christian  ministry,  such  as  prophecy  and  teaching,  were 
reappearing  in  the  church  at  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
The  pre-Reformation  age  resembles  the  Apostolic  age  in 
this  respect,  that  there  came  a  revival  of  prophecy,  when 
men  who  felt  the  evils  of  the  existing  situation  were 
forced  to  look  into  the  future  and  interpret  the  vision 
which  was  accorded  to  them.  At  no  time  during  the 
Christian  ages  have  such  prophets  been  wholly  wanting, 
but  they  multiplied  in  number  and  grew  stronger  in  con- 
viction and  clearer  in  their  vision  as  the  Middle  Ages 
drew  toward  their  close.  St.  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  St. 
Brigitta,  St.  Catherine  of  Siena, —  it  is  interesting  to  note 
how  prominent  were  women  in  the  prophetic  ranks, — 
Hildegarde  also,  Joachim  and  his  school,  Roger  Bacon 
and  Dante,  Wycliffe  and  Savonarola, —  these  were  the 
leading  spirits  among  many  who  felt  called  to  prophesy, 
to  foretell  destruction  to  the  existing  order  or  else  its 
purification  yet  so  as  by  fire;  till  at  last,  in  the  words  of 
Dr.  Dollinger,  "the  prophetic  expectation  became  the 
common  consciousness,  the  saving  anchor  of  faith,  of  all 
earnest  religious  spirits." 

In  the  utterances  of  these  prophets  there  was  much  which 
was  not  fulfilled,  and  much  also  which  was  fulfilled  to 
the  letter.  They  agreed  in  denouncing  the  low  moral  con- 
dition of  the  church  and  of  the  age,  the  inefficiency  of  the 
church  in  meeting  the  spiritual  needs  of  the  people.  They 
reveal  a  deeper  sense  of  sin  and  a  deeper  consciousness  of 


THE    AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  243 

guilt,  in  which  lay  the  preparation  for  the  greater  fulness 
of  the  coming  age.  It  may  well  have  been  that  the  age 
was  not  so  much  worse  than  that  which  preceded  it,  that 
it  was  the  increased  sensitiveness  to  evil  and  wrong  which 
made  the  time  seem  out  of  joint.  It  may  have  been  that 
the  church  was  doing  its  work  in  some  respects  as  well  as 
before,  but  greater,  deeper  needs  and  higher  aspirations, 
which  the  church  did  not  satisfy,  made  its  deficiencies 
more  apparent.  But  whatever  may  have  been  the  actual 
case,  the  prophets  began  to  dream  of  the  coming  of  an 
Antichrist,  whether  as  pope  or  emperor,  in  whom  the 
evil  of  the  age  would  be  personally  concentrated.  In  them 
there  was  a  sense  of  failure  and  dread,  as  of  impending 
danger,  men's  hearts  failing  them  for  fear,  and  for  looking 
after  those  things  which  are  coming  upon  the  earth. 

But  while  denunciation  of  existing  evils,  and  porten- 
tous threats  of  disaster  to  follow,  were  staple  elements  in 
the  prophetic  vision,  yet  they  do  not  constitute  its  most 
important  features.  It  is  the  positive  element  of  hope  for 
a  greater  future  that  gave  the  prophets  their  power  and 
made  vital  their  appeal  to  their  generation.  In  the  teach- 
ing of  Joachim  and  his  school,  it  is  the  Eternal  Gospel 
which  is  to  have  free  scope  and  be  glorified.  The  age 
which  is  coming  in,  is  to  be  the  age  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
That  had  been  the  prophecy  of  Tertullian  in  the  third 
century,  when  he  looked  to  the  Montanist  prophets  for 
hope  and  encouragement.  But  to  Joachim  that  age  of 
the  Spirit  was  still  in  the  future,  though  soon  to  be  re- 
vealed. The  ages  that  had  gone  before,  he  with  Tertul- 
lian called  the  dispensations  of  the  Father  and  the  Son ; 
or  after  Apostles,  as  the  Petrine  and  Pauline  periods. 
The  new  world  was  to  be  Johannine,  when  the  Holy 
Ghost  should  be  given  in  abundant  measure. 

Many  of  the  prophets  foretold  the  decline  and  fall  of 
the  papacy  and  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  Pope  and 
Emperor  were  to  be  the  mutual  destroyers  of  each  other's 
power.  To  some  of  them  it  was  given  to  see  the  substi- 
tute, which  already  the  age  was  providing,  in  the  rise  of 
the  modern  nationalities  to  freedom  and  independence. 


244  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE  CHURCH 

Thus  St.  Hildegarde,  of  Bingen  on  the  Rhine,  portrayed 
the  spontaneous  uprising  of  the  German  nations  rather 
than  of  the  Latin  peoples.  The  time  was  coming  when 
princes  would  renounce  the  authority  of  the  popes,  when 
separate  countries  would  rally  around  their  own  church 
rulers,  and  the  power  of  the  pope  be  limited  to  Rome. 
She  also  foretold  the  secularization  of  church  property 
and  a  return  to  a  condition  where  avarice  and  love  of 
money  would  no  longer  be  the  besetting  sin  of  the 
ecclesiastical  orders.  But  while  the  prophets  were  right 
in  depicting  the  greatness  of  the  transformation  that  was 
at  hand,  they  did  not  see  how  it  was  growing  out  of  the 
existing  order  by  eternal  law,  so  that  when  the  change 
should  come  it  would  seem  like  an  easy  and  natural  tran- 
sition, which  had  been  prepared  of  old,  the  will  of  God 
from  the  foundation  of  the  world. ^ 

The  strength  of  pre-Reformation  prophecy  lay  in  its 
transcendental  character.  It  spoke  out  from  the  instincts 
within  the  soul,  from  the  depths  of  Christian  feeling, 
whose  inner  motive  was  an  awakened  conscience.  It 
trusted  itself  with  entire  abandon  to  the  intuitive  process, 
which  sees  and  knows  as  by  some  mysterious  endowment 
of  the  soul.  In  these  respects  it  resembled  what  we  per- 
ceive in  the  prophets  of  the  post-Apostolic  age.  And 
herewith  was  connected  the  same  evil  and  danger  which 
then  led  to  the  suppression  of  the  prophets  as  disturbing 
the  order  and  unity  of  the  church.  But  a  corrective  was 
at  hand  in  the  sixteenth  century  which  the  second  century 
had  not  been  able  to  supply.  The  force  which  was  to 
purify  prophecy,  without  diminishing  its  confidence  in  a 
certain  divine  insight  into  the  truth  of  Christian  revela- 
tion, lay  in  the  coming  of  the  teacher  to  take  his  place  by 
the  side  of  the  prophet,  bringing  with  him  the  stores  of 

1  For  a  comprehensive  picture  of  prophets  and  prophecy  in  the  later 
Middle  Ages,  cf.  Dollinger,  Fables  and  Prophecies  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
Eng.  Trans.,  to  which  the  editor,  the  hxte  Professor  H.  B.  Smith,  has  added 
a  vahiable  list  of  references  ;  also  Gebhart,  Ultalie  3Iystique,  Histoire  de 
la  Bennissance  Eeligieuse  ait  Moyen  Age;  Rousselot,  Histoire  de  VEvan- 
gile  Eternel ;  Renan,  Nouvelles  Etudes;  Freger,  Gesch.  d.  dtsch.  3Iysti/c., 
Vol.  I.,  also  the  general  Church  Histories  of  Gieseler  and  Moeller. 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  245 

human  learning  and  the  accuracy  of  a  laborious  and 
patient  scholarship.  The  Revival  of  Learning,  in  the 
age  before  tlie  Reformation,  was  preparing  an  ally  for 
prophecy  in  the  scholar,  which  should  prevent  the 
prophet  from  speaking  at  random  with  an  undisciplined 
reason  or  intelligence,  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
single  individual  -without  responsibility  for  the  well- 
being  of  the  community.  Human  learning,  accurate 
criticism,  the  restoration  of  corrupted  texts,  a  knowledge 
of  man  as  revealed  in  history  and  of  the  working  of  the 
human  soul  under  other  conditions  of  life, —  in  all  these 
so  far  as  they  recorded  the  slightest  accents  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  as  well  as  in  the  New  Testament,  which  was  the 
Word  of  God  to  the  church  in  every  age,  the  teacher  was 
to  be  proficient,  and  guard  the  prophet  or  the  preacher 
from  inward  failure  or  from  outward  disaster. 

Such  an  union  of  the  prophet  and  teacher  appeared  in 
its  complete  form  when  Luther,  with  his  powerful  will, 
combined  with  absolute  confidence  in  the  truth  as  it  was 
revealed  to  him  in  inward  anguish  and  long-continued 
struggles,  was  accompanied  by  Melanchthon,  the  greatest 
scholar  of  his  day.  Preceptor  Giermaniae,  whose  learning 
and  moderation  constituted  a  check  upon  the  bold,  unquali- 
fied utterance  of  his  friend  and  master.  It  was  character- 
istic of  Melanchthon,  that  he  received  no  ordination  and 
never  entered  the  pulpit  of  the  preacher,  recalling  in  this 
respect  the  function  of  the  teacher  in  the  ancient  church, 
when  Justin  or  Origen  or  Jerome  were  content  to  do  their 
work  without  any  other  ordination  than  that  with  which 
their  calling  endowed  them.  In  this  alliance  between 
prophecy  and  learning,  the  church  in  Germany  led  the  way. 
Nor  has  that  land  of  scholars  ever  failed  to  furnish  allies 
for  the  work  of  investigation,  which  prophecy  needs  for 
its  stimulus,  its  purification,  and  its  enlargement.  Its 
scholars  have  dared  to  differ  from  Luther,  as  Melanchthon 
did,  while  yet  holding  him  in  honor  and  in  reverence. 
They  have  made  mistakes,  and  sometimes  grievous  ones, 
but  have  been  ready  to  acknowledge  them  when  convinced 
that  they  were  wrong.     By  their  mistakes,  as  well  as  by 


246  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

positive  contributions,  tliey  carry  on  the  process  of  the 
search  for  truth,  with  no  other  reward  than  that  which  the 
search  for  truth  can  bring. 

But  in  this  respect  Germany  did  not  stand  alone  in  the 
Reformation.  The  English  Cranmer  possessed  the  open 
mind  of  the  scholar,  a  diligent  student  and  a  friend  of  the 
new  learning,  and  bringing  to  the  aid  of  the  Church  of 
England  his  ample  knowledge,  his  wide  sympathy,  and 
his  prophetic  insight.  In  Calvin,  also,  who  united  in 
himself  the  two  functions  of  prophecy  and  teaching,  was 
illustrated  in  the  Reformed  Church  the  same  combination 
which  marked  elsewhere  the  progress  of  the  Reformation. 
Whether  as  a  commentator  or  a  theologian  or  a  student 
of  history,  Calvin  presented  to  his  age  the  principle 
embodied  in  himself,  that  prophecy,  in  order  to  its  success 
and  permanence,  must  never  neglect  the  alliance  with 
human  learning.  It  was  because  the  Roman  church 
dropped  behind  at  this  vital  moment,  that  she  lost  her 
hold  on  the  growing  intelligence  of  Northern  Europe. 

Ill 

The  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  was  invested  with  a 
deeper  meaning  and  a  new  importance  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation.  It  had  been  developed  in  the  monastery, 
the  highest  outcome  of  monastic  aspiration ;  but  as  repro- 
claimed  by  Luther,  by  Calvin,  and  by  English  Reformers, 
substantially  in  the  form  which  Anselm  had  given  it,  it 
became  the  basis  of  hope  and  deliverance  for  every  man. 
It  implied  that  men  were  emancipated  from  the  fear  of 
divine  punishment,  from  the  torture  of  an  evil  conscience 
laboring  under  the  conviction  of  sin,  because  God  Himself 
granted  His  pardon  to  every  man  in  virtue  of  the  atoning 
work  of  His  Son.  In  the  procurement  of  this  grace  of 
the  divine  love  no  agency  intervened,  but  the  individual 
soul  must  secure  it,  if  it  was  to  be  secured  at  all,  by 
direct  approach  to  God  through  the  faith  in  Christ,  which 
could  alone  appropriate  the  heavenly  gift.  Men  who 
had  been  set  free  from  the  terrors  of  the  law  and  from 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  247 

the  fear  of  God  by  the  love  of  God,  had  attained  deliver- 
ance from  all  other  evils  which  would  be  made  manifest 
in  God's  good  time.  In  this  doctrine,  which  has  some- 
times seemed  to  a  later  age  as  if  overdone  by  the  Reformers, 
we  have  the  keynote  of  the  religious  and  social  order 
which  succeeded  to  the  prestige  of  the  papacy  or  the 
grandeur  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  It  stood  for  the 
restoration  to  the  people  of  the  authority  with  which  God 
had  invested  them.  Its  result  was  to  change  the  idea  of 
the  church,  which  was  no  longer  conceived  as  existing  in 
its  sanctity  apart  from  the  people  who  composed  it;  but  it 
was  the  congregation  of  faithful  men,  who  by  faith  had 
appropriated  the  merits  of  the  death  of  Christ. 

It  was  in  the  method  of  apprehending  the  significance 
of  ordination,  that  the  organization  of  the  Protestant 
churches  revealed  the  influence  of  this  principle.^  The 
Gospel  of  Christ,  as  the  Reformers  conceived  it,  consisted 
essentially  in  the  reproclamation  of  the  message  of  deliver- 
ance from  sin  and  its  consequences  by  the  atoning  sacrifice 
of  Christ,  offered  once  for  all.  In  response  to  the  need 
for  this  proclamation,  the  preacher  had  appeared.  But 
the  qualification  for  the  work  of  preaching  the  Gospel 
of  truth  could  not  be  handed  down  in  succession,  or  the 
gift  imparted  by  any  ministerial  commission.  It  was  one 
thing  to  empower  a  priesthood  to  offer  the  sacrifice  of  the 
Mass ;  it  was  another  thing  to  fit  the  preacher  for  his  task. 
In  ecclesiastical  language,  the  matter  of  ordination  was 
now  found  in  the  call  of  the  Spirit  and  His  operation 
within  the  soul  of  the  ordinand ;  the  form  lay  in  the 
imposition  of  hands,  as  the  expressive  symbol  of  recog- 


'  The  words  in  the  Latin  Ordinal,  Accipe  Spiritmn,  etc.,  which  have 
also  been  retained  in  the  English  Ordinal,  have  been  sometimes  inter- 
preted to  mean  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  then  imparted  in  order  to  qualify 
the  candidate  with  the  power  of  absolution,  and  hence  importance  has 
been  attached  to  this  formula,  as  if  it  were  essential  to  the  constituting  a 
priesthood.  But  it  has  been  shown  that  they  were  not  introduced  into 
the  Latin  Ordinal  until  the  thirteenth  century.  For  collections  of  early 
Latin  Ordinals,  cf.  Morinus,  De  Sacris  Ecclesiae  Ordinationihus,  and  Mar- 
tene,  De  A  iitiquis  Ecclesiae  liitihus.  See  also,  for  discussion  of  this  point, 
Lefroy,  The  Christian  Ministry,  pp.  391  ff. 


248  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

nitioii,  before  God  and  the  people,  of  an  antecedent  divine 
act.  Beneath  this  conception  of  ordination,  as  also  beneath 
other  rites  or  sacraments,  was  the  tacit  assumption  that  the 
action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  must  have  done  its  initial  work 
in  order  to  justify  the  human  procedure.^ 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  wide  divergence  is  manifest 
between  the  new  and  the  old  order.  There  were  varia- 
tions and  differences  in  the  churches  reorganized  in  the 
Reformation ;  in  some  cases  the  power  of  appointing  a 
minister  or  pastor  was  believed  to  lie  in  the  congregation, 
while  in  other  cases  greater  significance  attached  to  the 
action  of  the  clergy,  as  specially  empowered  by  the  Spirit 
to  act  for  the  congregation.  On  this  point  the  church 
in  Germany  differed  from  the  church  at  Geneva.  The 
later  Independents  or  Congregationalists  here  took  issue 
with  the  Presbyterians.  But  in  all  cases  it  was  the 
Spirit  which  qualified,  and  the  act  of  ordination  which 
ratified.  It  had  been  the  teaching  of  Thomas  Aquinas, 
who  in  this  resj^ect  represented  the  inmost  purjDose  of 

1  Dorner,  His.  Prot.  TheoL,  I.,  p.  274  ;  Hagenbach,  His.  of  Doc,  III., 
§  256 ;  for  summary  of  Luther's  teaching  on  ordination :  Gieseler, 
Ec.  His.,  Vol.  IV.,  §  46;  Kurtz,  Ch.  His.,  Vol.  II.,  §  142;  Richter, 
Geschichte  der  evangelischen  Kirchenverfassung  in  Deutschland,  and 
LeJirbnch  des  katholischen  und  evangelischen  Kirchenrechts ;  Rietschel, 
Luther  und  die  Ordination ;  Stahl,  Die  Kirchenverfassung  nach  Lehre 
und  Becht  der  Protestanten.  "  Die  Ordination  ist  Auf nahme  in  den  '  geist- 
lichen  Stand.'  Gewiss  giebt  es  einen  'geistlichen  Stand'  audi  in  der 
evangelischen  Kirche.  Auch  fiir  die  evangelische  Kirche  ist  es  zweifellos, 
dass  die  Geistesgaben  (Charismen)  verschieden  sind.  Alle  Christen  sind 
'  Geistliche ' ;  im  engeren  Sinn  sind  '  Geistliche '  die  vor  Anderen  durch 
Geistesgaben  Ausgezeichweten.  Im  kirchlichen  Sinn  sind  'Geistliche' 
(dem  'geistlichen  Stande '  a.ngehorig)  die  Ordinierten,  d.  h.  diejenigen, 
deren  sonderliche  Geistesgabe  kirchlich  anerkannt  ist.  Nur  diese  sind 
im  stande,  in  der  Kirche  als  Geistliche  aufzutreten.  Nur  diese  konnen 
daher  in  der  Kirche  das  offentliche  Predigtamt  verwalten.  Allen  anderen 
fehlt  der  con-seusus,  die  voluntas  ecclesiae.  Die  Ordination  ist  die  Bezeu- 
gung  der  gottlichen  (durch  das  Charisma  gegebenen)  Berufung  zum 
Lehramt  (der  Wahlder  Urzeitentsprechend)  mit  nachfolgender  Handauf- 
legung"  (Sohm,  Kirchenrecht,  I.  497).  Calvin  distinguished  between  the 
divine  call  to  the  ministry  and  the  human  call,  as  by  the  public  order 
of  the  church,  which  is  ordination.  Of  the  first  call,  he  remarks  that 
"  those  whom  the  Lord  has  destined  for  this  great  office  he  previously 
provides  with  the  armor  which  is  requisite  for  the  discharge  of  it,  that 
they  may  not  come  empty  and  unprepared"  {Instit.,  B.  IV.,  c.  3,  §  11). 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   KEFOliMATION  249 

the  Latin  church  from  the  time  of  Cyprian,  that  in  the 
sacrament  of  orders,  the  virtue  and  the  excellency,  that 
is,  the  spiritual  power,  came  through  the  ministrant 
himself  ;  while  in  the  other  sacraments  the  gift  was 
derived  from  God,  not  from  the  ministrant.^  The  Latin 
church  was  here  involved  in  the  anomaly  of  holding  that 
ordination,  which  was  the  sacrament  by  which  the  church 
existed  and  was  maintained,  owed  its  power  and  validity 
to  a  human  agency,  but  this  same  human  agency  qualified 
for  a  priesthood  which  could  mediate  the  divine  power 
as  in  the  sacrament  of  baptism  or  of  the  altar.  The 
reformed  churches  escaped  from  this  strange  anomaly  by 
referring  the  initial  act  which  maintains  the  church  and 
the  ministry  to  the  continuous  direct  agency  of  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

The  Lutheran  and  Genevan  forms  of  church  govern- 
ment, while  claiming  a  divine  sanction,  reflect  also  the 
monastic  experience  and  practice;  whether  in  the  demo- 
cratic scheme  proposed  for  the  church  in  Hesse,  by  Lam- 
bert, a  Franciscan  monk,  which  resembles  the  earlier 
Benedictine  order  in  making  each  local  church  indepen- 
dent or  sufficient  in  itself;  or  in  the  plan  of  government 
by  presbyterial  consistories  advocated  by  Calvin,  which 
reflects  the  later  organization  of  great  monastic  orders 
with  many  houses  affiliated  under  a  common  constitution. 
Again,  the  influence  of  the  monastery  is  seen  in  the 
restoration  to  the  presbyter  of  the  episcopal  dignity  of  a 
defender  of  the  faith.  In  the  Roman  ordinal  for  making  a 
presbyter,  the  candidate  underAvent  no  examination  before 

1  Cf.  Thomas,  Summa,  p.  iii ;  Sxippl.  Q.  34,  Art.  5:  "Quia  hoc  quod 
confertur  in  aliis  sacramentis,  derivatur  tantum  a  deo,  non  a  ministro, 
qui  sacramentum  dispensat,  sed  illud  quod  in  hoc  sacramento  traditur, 
sell,  spiritualis  potestas,  derivatur  etiain  ab  eo  qui  sacramentum  dat, 
sicut  potestas  imperfecta  a  perfecta.  Et  ideo  efficacia  aliorum  sacra- 
mentorum  principaliter  consistit  in  materia,  quae  virtutem  divinam  et 
significat  et  continet,  ex  sanctificatione  per  ministrum  adhibita.  Sed 
efficacia  huius  sacramenti  principaliter  residet  penes  eum,  qui  sacra- 
mentum dispensat,  materia  autem  adhibetur  magis  ad  denionstrandam 
potestatem,  quae  traditur  particulariter  ab  habente  earn  complete,  quam 
ad  potestatem  causandam,  quod  patet  ex  hoc,  quod  materia  competit  usui 
potestatis."     Cf.  also  Harnack,  Dogmengesch.,  III.,  pp.  520  ff. 


250  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  people  as  to  qualifications  for  his  office,  no  inquiry- 
was  made  into  his  religious  experience  or  theological 
belief;  those  who  presented  him  certified  to  his  fitness, 
and  he  himself,  after  having  been  empowered  to  offer  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  took  but  one  voav, —  that  of  obedience 
to  his  bishop.  But  in  the  rite  of  consecrating  a  bishop, 
the  examination  was  elaborate  and  minute,  taking  up  the 
creeds  as  a  whole  as  well  as  in  their  separate  articles. 
The  presbyter  was  here  regarded  as  receiving  these  truths 
by  assent  to  authority,  while  in  the  case  of  the  bishop,  as 
the  defender  of  the  faith,  there  was  required  a  more 
interior  knowledge  and  as  it  were  an  inward  persuasion. 
Hence  the  presbyters  took  no  vow  to  defend  the  faith, 
while  in  the  bishop's  consecration  this  vow  is  prominent 
and  emphatic.  It  is  assumed  also  that  the  bishop  is 
acquainted  with  the  Scripture,  and  will  employ  it  for 
maintaining  the  faith.  But  in  the  Protestant  churches 
it  became  a  primary  feature  in  the  ordination  of  a  pres- 
byter, that  he  should  be  carefully  examined  on  the  con- 
tents of  Christian  doctrine  before  his  certification  to  the 
people  as  competent  for  the  work  of  the  ministry. 

How  greatly  the  situation  had  changed  in  the  sixteenth 
century  from  what  it  had  been  in  the  second  century  is 
shown  in  this,  that  the  prerogative  of  the  bishops  to  be 
the  guardians  of  a  deposit  of  faith  received  by  tradition 
from  the  Apostles  had  lost  its  hold  on  the  Christian  mind. 
Irenyeus  had  urged  the  claim,  and  so  had  Tertullian,  and 
both  had  applied  the  principle  to  the  church  at  Rome,  in 
which  the  faith  had  been  preserved  in  its  purity.  But  to 
have  urged  that  argument  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation 
would  have  seemed  to  the  Reformers  like  mockery.  The 
faith  as  they  held  it  had  been  covered  up  with  additions, 
obscured  and  neutralized  not  only  by  the  see  of  Rome,  but 
by  the  bishops  in  union  with  Rome.  In  the  consecration  of 
the  bishop  in  the  Latin  church,  while  the  first  interrogation 
called  for  his  vow  to  teach  the  people,  both  by  word  and 
example,  what  he  found  in  Holy  Scripture,  the  next  inter- 
rogation called  for  his  assent  to  the  traditions  of  the 
orthodox  Fathers,  and  to  the  decretals  and  constitutions 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  251 

of  the  holy  and  Apostolic  see  of  Rome.  But  it  was  now 
the  ruling  idea  of  any  reform,  that  the  faith  and  doctrine 
of  Christ  must  be  sought  alone  in  the  New  Testament, 
and  to  this  end  the  decretals  and  constitutions  of  Rome 
must  be  rejected.  And  again,  among  the  traditions  of 
the  church  but  little  had  been  handed  down  in  regard  to 
what  it  was  so  important  to  know, —  the  formation  of  the 
books  of  Scripture,  the  time  when,  or  the  authors  by 
whom,  they  had  been  written.  And  not  only  so,  but  the 
Latin  church  had  preserved  the  Gospel  only  at  second 
hand  in  the  translation  of  the  Latin  Vulgate,  nor  was  it 
eager  to  assist  in  the  task  of  restoring  the  original  Greek 
text  in  which  the  words  of  life  had  originally  been  given. 
But  further,  the  Reformers  were  placing  the  axe  at  the 
root  of  the  tree  from  which  had  grown  the  Mediaeval  epis- 
copate, with  its  territorial  sovereignty  and  power,  when 
they  proclaimed  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith.  It 
was  the  bishop  Cyprian  who  had  first  announced  the  prin- 
ciple, in  his  treatise  on  alms-giving,  that  salvation  was 
aided  and  pardon  more  easily  secured  by  gifts  to  the 
church.  That  principle  had  become  the  ruling  idea  of 
the  church  in  the  Middle  Ages,  boldly  proclaimed  with- 
out resistance  or  scruple.  It  had  enriched  the  bishops 
with  lands  and  patrimonial  estates  as  the  foundations  of 
their  wealth  and  social  dignity.  The  States  of  the  Church 
in  Italy  had  been  accumulated  in  similar  fashion.  The 
monasteries  had  sought  to  achieve  poverty  as  an  ideal, 
but  they  had  failed,  because  the  working  of  this  prin- 
ciple inevitably  brought  to  them  the  wealth  which  they 
shunned.  Successive  generations  of  devout  men,  aiming 
at  the  regeneration  of  the  monastic  life  by  a  more  rigid 
enforcement  of  the  vow  of  poverty,  had  not  succeeded, 
because  they  could  not  banish  the  test  of  piety  which  was 
everywhere  accepted,  — that  to  give  to  the  church  was  to 
lay  up  treasure  in  heaven.  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  was  the 
first  to  illustrate  a  higher  principle,  though  he  failed  to 
secure  its  adoption  in  the  order  which  he  left  behind  him. 
Not  to  lay  up  treasure  in  heaven,  but  to  do  good  on  earth 
for  its  own  sake,  and  to  make  acts  of  charity  out  of  pure 


252  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

love  for  human  souls,  without  the  motive  of  securing 
one's  own  salvation,  was  his  aim;  and  so  exceptional  was 
his  career,  in  that  alms-giving,  alms-seeking  age,  that  his 
followers  had  looked  upon  him  as  a  second  Christ. 
Wycliffe  also  recurs  to  the  mind  in  this  connection  as 
struggling  against  the  evils  which  the  wealth  of  the 
church  was  creating.  He  sanctioned  the  effort  to  restore 
this  wealth  again  to  the  state,  where  it  properly  belonged. 
It  was  no  robbery  of  God  in  his  opinion,  when  the  money 
or  land  which  had  been  given  to  the  church  in  the  name 
of  God  was  appropriated  by  the  state;  for  Christ  had 
invested  the  state  alone  with  dominion  to  rule,  and  had 
entrusted  to  the  church  the  function  of  ministry  or  service. 
All  the  attempts  to  overcome  this  principle  and  motive, 
which  claimed  its  warrant  in  the  sacred  text,  that  those 
who  had  houses  or  lands  and  sold  them  and  brought  the 
proceeds  and  laid  them  at  the  Apostles'  feet,  these  diverse 
and  long-continued  efforts  to  overcome  a  conception  of 
religion  which  tended  toward  its  deterioration,  may  have 
been  contributing  silently  to  that  end.  But  it  was  in  the 
doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  as  Luther  proclaimed  it, 
that  the  counter  motive  was  found,  whose  acceptance  at 
once  placed  the  church  upon  another  basis.  Just  as  the 
evils  and  corruption  which  permeated  the  church,  which 
were  making  its  hierarchy  a  scandal  and  offence  in  the 
later  Middle  Ages,  had  sprung  from  the  principle  that  the 
giving  of  money  contributed  to  salvation;  so  the  doctrine 
of  Luther,  which  he  drew  from  St.  Paul,  tended  wherever 
it  was  received  at  least  to  check  this  abuse.  As  a  doctrine 
it  had  other  and  positive  aspects,  not  alluded  to  here. 
But  it  had  the  negative  effect  of  discrediting  the  theory 
and  practice  of  indulgences,  as  it  also  stopped  the  drain 
on  secular  property  for  the  enrichment  of  the  church.  Of 
Luther  and  of  Zwingli  and  of  Calvin,  it  may  be  said  that 
they  made  no  money  by  their  profession,  and  died  alike  in 
poverty.  It  was  a  remark  about  Calvin,  attributed  to  one 
of  the  popes,  that  nothing  could  be  done  with  such  a 
man,  because  he  did  not  care  for  money. 


THE   AGE    OF   THE   REFORMATION  263 

IV 

In  two  of  the  countries  of  Europe  where  the  Reforma- 
tion prevailed,  the  episcopate  was  retained,  —  England  and 
Sweden;  in  all  the  other  countries,  Switzerland,  Ger- 
many, the  Netherlands,  Denmark,  and  Scotland,  it  was 
rejected.  It  becomes  necessary  then  to  inquire  why  it 
should  have  been  preserved  in  some  countries  and  aban- 
doned in  others,  seeing  that  the  principles  of  the  Reforma- 
tion prevailed  in  all  alike,  in  England  and  in  Sweden  no 
less  than  in  Switzerland  or  Germany. 

It  has  sometimes  been  maintained  that  there  were  pecul- 
iar difficulties  in  the  Swiss  and  German  situation  which 
made  it  impossible  to  retain  the  episcopate,  even  if  its  re- 
tention had  been  desired.  On  this  ground  English  writers, 
such  as  Hooker  and  Lord  Bacon,  explained  or  apologized 
for  the  orofanization  of  the  Continental  churches.  In  this 
view  there  is  truth,  but  not  to  the  extent  that  the  German 
Reformers  could  not  have  secured  the  ordination  of  their 
ministers  by  bishops  if  it  had  been  really  desired  or  thought 
essential.  Several  of  the  bishops  in  Germany  gave  in 
their  adherence  to  the  Reformation,  three  at  least, —  the 
number  required  by  the  Council  of  Nicsea  for  making 
a  bishop, —  and  these  were  allowed  to  hold  their  office  till 
their  death.  But  they  were  not  called  upon  to  exercise 
their  prerogative  of  ordination,  nor  do  they  appear  to 
have  insisted  on  its  necessity  to  a  valid  ministry.  Me- 
lanchthon,  and  to  a  certain  extent  Luther,  had  no  objection 
to  the  episcopate,  as  exercising  a  function  of  supervision 
over  the  churches,  if  it  could  have  been  based  upon  human 
right,  y?«rg  humano,  and  wot  jure  divino.  But  Melanchthon 
went  further,  and  would  not  have  objected  to  the  papacy, 
if  the  office  could  have  been  regarded  as  one  created 
by  the  suffrages  of  Christian  people. ^  Nor  did  Calvin 
have  any  dislike  for  the  office  of  bishop  as  such.  On 
the  contrary,  he  rather  approved  on  the  whole  of  the 
organization  of  the  church  in  the  second  and  third  cen- 

1  Cf.  Hagenbach,  His.  of  the  Beformation,  II.,  p.  234;  and  Gieseler, 
Ec.  His.,  IV.,  §46, 


254  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

turies,  when  the  bishop  was  the  pastor  of  the  local  church, 
with  presbyters  and  deacons  for  his  assistants,  remarking 
upon  the  system,  that  those  who  introduced  it  did  not 
stray  far  from  the  divine  enactments  of  Scripture.^  But 
he  did  not  think  the  system  was  drawn  from  the  New 
Testament  or  could  claim  its  sanction.  The  situation  at 
Geneva  was  peculiar.  For  many  years  its  magistrates  and 
citizens  had  been  engaged  in  a  struggle  for  liberty,  in 
which  they  were  resisting  the  power  of  the  prince  bishop, 
to  whom  the  city  belonged.  When  they  had  been  success- 
ful in  this  effort,  it  was  hardl}^  conceivable  that  they  should 
have  regarded  it  as  important  to  reintroduce  episcopal 
authority  by  setting  up  another  bishop.  The  political 
situation  was  bad  enough  as  it  was,  but  this  might  have 
made  it  worse  and  put  again  in  jeopardy  the  liberty  of 
the  city. 

It  was  assumed  by  the  Continental  Reformers  that  epis- 
copacy, as  it  then  existed,  had  no  warrant  from  Scripture 
or  from  Apostolic  usage.  That  alone  would  have  deter- 
mined the  question.  The  doctrine  of  Jerome  had  done  its 
work,  that  in  the  beginning  of  Christ's  religion  there  had 
been  no  distinction  between  the  bishop  and  the  presbyter. 
The  teaching  of  Jerome  acted  as  a  solvent  of  the  old 
ecclesiastical  order,  carrying  as  it  did  not  only  the  state- 
ment of  the  supposed  fact,  but  also  an  argument,  that  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  there  was  no  inherent  superiority 
of  the  bishops  over  the  presbyters.  It  had  been  a  matter 
of  ecclesiastical  arrangement,  which  as  it  had  once  been 
done  could  be  undone,  should  circumstances  demand  it.  It 
seemed  to  the  Reformers,  to  Luther,  to  Zwingli,  and 
Calvin,  that  the  time  for  a  change  and  a  reversion  to  the 
earlier  order  had  now  com^.  But  in  England,  also,  the 
Reformers  were  familiar  with  Jerome's  principles,  and,  as 
in  the  case  of  Cranmer,  were  influenced  by  them,  and  yet 
not  to  the  extent  of  rejecting  the  episcopate.  The  case 
of  the  Old  Catholic  church,  as  it  is  called,  in  our  own 
day,  which  on  separating  from  Rome  at  once  took  steps  to 
provide  for  an  episcopal  succession,  or  of  the  Jansenist 
1  Jnstit.,  B.  IV.,  c.  4,  §  1. 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  255 

church  in  Holland,  which  attached  a  like  importance  to 
the  office  and  became  the  source  from  which  the  Old 
Catholic  movement  received  consecration  for  its  bishops, 
may  serve  to  indicate  that  the  difficulties  in  the  way  in 
Germany  or  in  Switzerland  were  not  insuperable,  had  it 
been  thought  essential  to  preserve  the  office  of  the  episco- 
pate as  a  higher  order  than  the  presbyterate.  The  qaes- 
tion,  therefore,  why  in  some  countries  the  episcopate  was 
retained,  and  in  others  rejected,  calls  for  a  further  exami- 
nation of  the  actual  situation. 

The  sixteenth  century  exhibits  as  its  most  deep  and 
characteristic  principle  an  inward  freedom  and  voluntari- 
ness, which  affected  the  life  of  the  nations  no  less  than  the 
spirit  of  the  churches.  For  a  moment,  the  world  seemed  to 
have  been  left  free  to  make  its  choice,  when  all  the  hidden 
influences  which  had  been  at  work  for  ages  could  manifest 
their  fruit,  the  outcome  for  which,  consciously  or  indi- 
rectly, they  had  been  laboring.  It  was  the  great  day  of 
manifestation,  when  the  long  and  weary  process  of  develop- 
ment had  reached  its  limits,  when  the  nations,  as  well  as 
interior  movements  within  the  church,  were  to  come  bring- 
ing their  honor  with  them,  their  contribution  to  the  fort- 
unes of  humanity.  It  was  a  day  of  national  as  well  as 
of  ecclesiastical  reform,  which  had  been  made  possible 
by  the  decline  of  the  papacy.  That  revolution  by  which 
tlie  papacy  was  overthrown,  included  in  its  range  all 
other  changes,  an  event  so  momentous  that  it  affected 
alike  the  fortunes  of  the  episcopate  in  the  national 
churches,  no  less  than  those  of  the  presbyterate  in  the 
monastery.  It  marks  the  extent  of  the  change  in  the  atti- 
tude of  the  papacy,  that  it  was  forced  to  submit  the  ques- 
tion of  its  own  continued  existence,  or  its  retention  in 
some  modified  form,  to  the  will  of  the  princes.  It  was 
to  become  from  henceforth  a  voluntary  institution,  which 
the  nations  were  at  liberty  to  receive  or  reject  at  their 
pleasure,  and,  as  it  seemed  at  the  moment,  on  their  own 
terms.  Its  subsidence  as  a  world-power  had  left  standing, 
and  as  it  were  confronting  each  other,  these  two  distinct 
and  divergent  types  or  ideals  of  the  Christian  church,  the 


256  ORGANIZATION    OP   THE   CHURCH 

secular  or  national  represented  by  the  episcopate,  and  the 
religious  or  individual  represented  by  the  presbyterate. 

In  Germany  and  Switzerland  the  Reformation  was 
begun  by  presbyters,  relying  on  their  divine  right,  inde- 
pendent of  pope  or  bishop,  but  responsible  alone  to  God. 
The  bishops  nowhere,  with  the  possible  exception  of 
England,  appear  as  leaders  in  the  movement  for  ecclesi- 
astical readjustment.  Their  position  was  a  difficult  one, 
for  they  were  bound  by  the  oath  taken  at  their  consecra- 
tion to  maintain  "the  traditions  of  the  orthodox  fathers 
and  to  hold  in  reverence,  to  teach,  and  to  obey  the  sacred 
decretals  of  the  Apostolic  see,  and  to  exhibit  their  faith 
in  and  their  subordination  and  obedience  to  the  blessed 
Apostle  Peter,  to  whom  God  had  given  the  power  of 
binding  and  loosing,  and  to  his  vicar  the  Lord  Pope,  and 
his  successors."  ^  The  presbyters,  when  they  left  the 
monasteries,  as  Luther  had  done,  were  set  free  from  their 
oath  by  the  light  of  a  conviction  which  rendered  such  an 
oath  null  and  nugatory  before  God.  The  presbyterate, 
which  was  to  arise  spontaneously  under  Calvin,  was 
limited  by  no  oath  to  any  allegiance.  But  the  episcopate 
was  bound  not  only  to  the  papacy,  but  also  to  the  state. 
If  it  was  to  escape,  as  a  bod}^  or  to  relax  the  rigidity  of 
its  vow,  it  must  be  by  the  agency  of  the  secular  authority, 
by  the  influence  of  the  elevating  principle  of  national 
unit}^  and  independence. 

When  the  countries  of  Europe  were  called  upon  to 
choose  in  the  great  alternative,  Italy  and  Spain,  Austria 
and  France,  decided  to  abide  by  the  old  ecclesiastical 
order,  reducing,  however,  the  papacy  to  a  primacy  so  far 
as  the  national  interests  were  concerned.     But  even  in 

1  Interrogatio 
Vis  traditiones  Orthodoxorum  Patruin,  ac  Decretales  sanctae  et  Apos- 
tolicae   sedis   Constitutiones  veiieranter  suscipere,   docere,   ac  servare  ? 
Volo. 

Interrogatio 
Vis  beato  Petro  Apostolo,  cui  a  Deo  data  est  potestas  ligandi,  ac  sol- 
vendi  ;   ejusque  Vicario   Domino  nostro,   Domino  N.   Papae  N.  suisque 
successoribus,  Itomanis  Pontificibus ;   fidem,  subjectionem,   et  obedien- 
tiam,  secundum  canonicam  auctoritatem,  per  omnia  exbibere  ?     Volo. 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   PtEFORMATIOK  257 

these  countries,  the  revolution  showed  its  influence  in 
raising  anew  for  prolonged  and  painful  discussion  the 
question  whether  the  bishops  held  by  an  immediate  divine 
right  or  by  the  mediate  grace  of  the  pope.  With  the  ex- 
ception of  Italy,  the  tendency  of  the  bishops  in  these 
countries  was  to  reclaim  their  lost  prerogatives  and  in- 
sist on  the  divine  right  of  episcopacy;  in  this  demand 
they  were  aided  and  abetted  by  their  respective  sover- 
eigns. The  question  came  up  for  discussion  at  the  Coun- 
cil of  Trent,  when  through  the  agency  of  the  papal  legates 
it  was  finally  waived,  so  that  no  decision  was  formally 
decreed.  But  it  is  not  with  these  countries  which  decided 
to  adhere  to  the  Latin  obedience  that  we  are  chiefly  con- 
cerned, except  so  far  as  they  illustrate  the  voluntary  prin- 
ciple that  the  episcopate  was  retained  wherever  the  king 
and  bishops  were  united  in  a  common  national  purpose. 

Among  the  northern  nations  who  rejected  the  papal 
authority,  this  same  conjunction  of  monarchy  and  ej^isco- 
pacy  is  to  be  seen,  those  countries  alone  retaining  the  epis- 
copate in  which  the  Reformation  was  led  by  the  king,  with 
the  acquiescence,  if  not  the  cordial  support,  of  the  bishops. 
Such  was  the  case  in  England,  where  the  king  moved  first 
with  the  co-operation  of  the  laity,  as  in  Parliament,  and 
where  the  bishops  supported  the  king,  acknowledging  the 
changed  order  by  which  the  king  took  the  place  of  the 
pope,  holding  their  allegiance  to  their  sovereign  as  higher 
than  their  allegiance  to  the  pope.  In  one  other  country 
alone  was  there  a  similar  attitude:  in  Sweden  the  king 
was  allowed  to  have  his  will  in  the  reconstruction,  and 
there  also,  though  not  with  cheerful  acquiescence,  the 
bishops  submitted,  and  the  order  of  the  episcopate  was 
allowed  to  remain.  In  Scotland,  there  was  at  first  an 
alliance  between  the  king  and  the  bishops  in  the  interest 
of  the  papal  allegiance.  But  the  kingship  in  Scotland 
had  never  been  fortunate  in  its  history;  and  when  the 
monarchy  proved  a  failure  after  the  death  of  James  V., 
or  Avas  not  able  to  overcome  the  incidents  in  its  career 
which  had  ministered  to  its  weakness,  the  nobility  took 
the  lead,  and  the  episcopate  was  rejected.     The  case  of 


258  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

the  Netherlands  is  peculiar,  where  a  strong  nationality 
was  ultimately  developed.  Here  there  were  great  leaders 
supported  by  the  popular  will,  but  kingship  did  not  exist. 
When  Philip  II.  endeavored  to  bind  the  country  more 
closely  to  his  authority  by  the  multiplication  of  bishops, 
there  was  begotten  a  new  motive  of  resistance  to  his  pur- 
pose ;  and  when  the  Netherlands  attained  their  freedom, 
the  episcopate  had  disappeared.  In  Denmark,  the  bishops 
resisted  the  king's  desire  to  change  the  ecclesiastical 
status,  and  here  the  episcopate  was  lost,  or  subsided  into 
a  merely  titular  position,  retaining  the  name,  but  not  the 
functions,  of  their  order.  Switzerland  had  given  birth  to 
two  Reformers,  Zwingli  and  Calvin,  both  of  whom  built 
upon  the  divine  right  of  the  presbyterate,  both  of  Avhom 
held  the  monastic  ideal  of  the  church,  as  the  congregation 
of  those  whom  God  should  elect.  But  in  the  Swiss  Con- 
federacy, which  received  the  call  to  nationality  earlier 
than  the  surrounding  states,  there  was  no  king  who  stood 
as  the  focus  and  centralization  of  the  national  conscious- 
ness, and  hence  there  was  no  national  support  for  the  epis- 
copate upon  which  it  could  rely  when  its  prerogatives 
were  assaulted. 

As  to  Germany,  she  lagged  behind  the  other  nations  in 
her  advance  to  nationality.  It  had  been  her  misfortune, 
in  some  respects,  that  during  the  Middle  Ages  she  had 
been  so  closely  united  to  Italy  by  the  theory  of  the  Holy 
Roman  Empire.  Her  emperors  should  have  been  her 
kings,  by  the  consolidation  of  whose  power  the  state 
would  have  realized  its  unity.  But  as  in  Italy  the  pope 
had  been  sufficiently  powerful  to  keep  the  state  divided, 
so  in  Germany  his  influence,  or  the  influence  of  a  theory, 
had  kept  the  emperors  weak,  and  a  stable  hereditary  mon- 
archy had  not  been  attained.  The  emperors  had  aimed  to 
get  control  of  Italy  in  harmony  with  the  theory  which 
made  them  her  kings,  and  thus  their  attention  was  diverted 
from  their  proper  work,  till  Germany  was  allowed  to  divide 
into  numerous  independent  states,  and  the  power  of  its 
sovereign  was  reduced  to  emptiness.  The  episcopate  in 
Germany  had  also  a  peculiar  history.     It  had  been  set  free 


THE    AGE   OF   THE   KEFORMATION  259 

from  the  control  of  the  metropolitans  under  the  Carolin- 
gian  rulers,  only  to  attain  still  greater  freedom  and  inde- 
pendence when  the  Carolingian  monarchy  gave  way  to 
the  feudal  regime.  The  great  archbishops  and  other 
bishops  of  Germany  were  secular  lords,  having  the  rights 
of  absolute  authority  within  their  domains,  with  powers 
of  administering  justice,  regulating  coinage,  seeking  the 
aggrandizement  of  their  wealth  and  power  by  war  upon 
their  neighbors,  or,  when  commerce  and  trade  increased  in 
their  cities,  robbing  the  merchants  and  burgesses  by  unjust 
taxation.  Where  episcopal  sees  constituted  independent 
principalities,  and  were  sufhciently  strong  to  resist  inva- 
sion, they  survived;  but  within  the  territories  of  princes 
who  accepted  the  Reformation,  their  secular  possessions 
were  appropriated  by  the  prince,  and  the  bishops  disap- 
peared. Their  allegiance  to  the  emperor  might  have  pre- 
served their  order  even  in  these  states,  but  the  emperor  had 
only  a  nominal  authority  and  could  not  enforce  his  will. 
This  close  relationship  of  dependence  between  the  epis- 
copate and  the  royal  authority,  which  becomes  so  apparent 
in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  illustrates  more  clearly 
the  nature  and  work  of  the  episcopate  in  the  Middle  Ages. 
To  a  large  extent  the  bishops  had  been  doing  the  work  of 
the  state,  at  a  time  when  the  state  was  still  in  its  infancy, 
unable  to  fulfil  its  true  functions.  They  performed  the 
duties  which  afterwards  were  to  be  devolved  upon  the 
secular  JLidge  or  magistrate.  Their  connection  with  secu- 
lar affairs  had  reacted  upon  their  religious  duties.  They 
were  binding  together  the  secular  and  the  sacred  in  an 
organic  relationship,  preparing  the  nation,  when  it  should 
come  of  age,  to  recognize  the  sacredness  of  its  calling, 
illustrating  and  enforcing  the  important  truth,  that  the 
spiritual  life  was  not  to  be  detached  from  the  duties  which 
bind  men  to  their  neighborhood  or  country,  but  is  rather  a 
motive  which  consecrates  all  the  relations  of  life.  We 
may  still  trace  their  work  in  the  episcopal  cities  in  which 
they  ruled,  in  the  vast  cathedrals  which  their  religious 
zeal  or  ambition  suggested  and  their  enormous  wealth 
enabled  them  to  realize.     In  schools  and  charitable  insti- 


260  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHUIICH 

tutions,  in  university  foundations,  we  may  read  what  the 
bishops  were  when  at  their  best.  But  it  was  one  of  the 
nobler  aspects  of  their  office  to  represent  to  the  monarch 
and  to  the  common  people  an  idea  of  religion  which  was 
not  overstrained,  or  whose  aspirations  were  not  so  high 
and  unearthly  as  to  discourage  or  intimidate.  They  sailed 
lower  in  their  flight  than  their  monastic  rivals,  and  if 
they  fell,  they  did  not  fall  so  low.  If  in  some  countries 
they  disappeared,  they  bequeathed  the  result  of  their 
labors  to  be  incorporated  into  the  secular  domain.  The 
state  appropriated  their  tasks  when  it  reached  its  majority, 
but  the  spirit  in  which  it  had  been  done  still  survived  and 
was  represented  in  other  agencies.  It  is  easy  to  mis- 
represent them,  and,  by  taking  individual  instances  as 
representing  their  order,  to  underrate  the  importance  of 
their  contribution  to  religion,  as  well  as  to  Christian 
civilization.  But  however  unworthy  individual  bishops 
may  have  been,  or  inadequate  their  appreciation  of  their 
duties,  we  are  always  nearer  tlie  truth,  Avhen  we  take  the 
higher  estimate  than  the  lower,  that  which  redounds  to 
their  credit  rather  than  that  which  signals  their  failure. 
It  is  true  of  kings  and  of  princes,  of  monks  and  abbots, 
of  popes,  also,  and  of  bishops,  that  when  weakness  strikes 
them  wliich  they  cannot  overcome,  it  is  a  sign  tliat  their 
work  has  been  done,  or  that  other  forms  of  administra- 
tion are  needed  in  order  to  suit  the  needs  of  an  advanc- 
ing world.  If  the  bishops  became  inefficient  or  seemed 
unnecessary,  it  was  in  part  because  the  state  was  begin- 
ning to  assume  their  secular  functions.  In  some  cases, 
and  chiefly  in  England,  they  were  enabled  to  make  the 
transition  to  a  different  conception  of  their  order,  by  the 
aid  of  the  state ;  in  others  they  failed  to  do  so,  and  their 
office  was  abolished.  In  some  cases,  as  in  Germany  and 
Switzerland,  Scotland,  the  Netherlands,  and  Denmark,  the 
episcopate  not  only  appeared  as  unnecessary,  but  as  in- 
compatible with  the  spirit  of  the  Reformed  churches. 
But  in  England  the  episcopate  was  transformed  by  its 
emancipation  from  the  control  of  the  papacy,  as  well  as 
by  other  adjustments,  and,  thus  set  free,  devoted  its  ener- 


THE   AGE   OF  THE   KEFORMATION  261 

gies  anew  to  the  support  and  defence  of  the  crown  in  the 
most  difficult  period  of  its  history.  The  result  in  Eng- 
land was  not  only  a  stable  monarchy,  a  nationality  which 
has  outstripped  others  in  the  race,  but  a  stable  ecclesias- 
tical institution  also  in  the  established  Church,  which 
has  never  failed  to  reflect  and  to  promote  the  interests  of 
the  state,  as  well  as  the  religious  life  of  the  people.^ 

It  may  throw  some  further  light  upon  the  question  why 
the  episcopate  was  retained  in  certain  countries  and  re- 
jected in  others,  if  we  look  at  the  situation  in  Western 
Europe  at  the  moment  of  its  conversion  to  Christianity. 
It  is  not  without  significance  to  find  that  in  those  coun- 
tries which  had  been  Christianized  before  the  monasteries 
arose,  such  as  Italy,  France,  and  Spain,  the  Reformation 
of  the  sixteenth  century  was  not  demanded ;  they  adhered 
to  the  Latin  church  and  to  the  episcopate  which  had  been 
a  constituent  element  in  its  original  constitution.  But 
wherever  the  monks  had  travelled,  especially  those  from 
the  Irish-Scotch  monasteries,  with  their  peculiar  appre- 
hension of  the  religion  of  Christ,  there  an  influence  had 
been  exerted  which  was  never  entirely  lost.  In  this  way 
subtle  forms  of  spiritual  influence  may  have  entered  into 
the  life  of  the  people,  to  reappear  again  when  all  memory 
of  their  origin  had  long  been  lost.  Scotland  had  from  the 
first  a  monastic  form  of  Christianity,  in  which  bishops  were 
not  prominent,  and  when  the  Reformation  came,  it  accepted 
the  monastic  ideal  of  the  church.  The  influence  of  the 
monks  in  Switzerland  and  Germany  had  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  the  church  and  had  been  perpetuated  in  powerful 
monastic  foundations  as  well  as  by  a  monastic  episco- 
pate.    So  it  was  also  in  the  Netherlands,  converted  by 

1  The  question  of  the  relation  of  church  and  state  underlies  the  pres- 
ent ecclesiastical  situation,  and  to  one  who  goes  beneath  the  surface  it 
appears  as  fraught  with  living  issues  and  involving  the  solution  of  exist- 
ing difficulties.  The  opinion  of  Rothe  and  Dr.  Arnold,  that  the  state  is 
the  final  form  which  Christianity  will  assume,  has  been  more  recently 
asserted  V)y  Seeley  in  Natural  Beligion,  c.  iv. :  "  Under  the  modern  state 
there  lurks  an  undeveloped  church  ;  .  .  .  Every  community  is  in  one 
aspect  a  church,  as  in  another  it  is  a  state  "  (p.  189). 


262  OKGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHUliCH 

monastic  preachers,  where  bishops  had  always  been  few 
in  number. 

England,  also,  it  is  true,  had  been  converted  by  the 
agency  of  the  monastery,  after  the  country,  which  had 
once  been  Christian,  had  lapsed  into  heathenism  in  con- 
sequence of  the  Anglo-Saxon  conquest.  And  again  at  a 
later  time,  when  Northern  England  had  fallen  away  from 
the  church,  it  had  been  reconverted  by  the  monks  who  came 
from  Scotland.  But  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  English  history 
that  its  kings  were  not  only  consulted  as  to  the  introduc- 
tion of  Christianit}'',  but  their  approval,  their  co-operation, 
and  even  their  initiative  action  appear  as  an  element  in  the 
process  of  England's  conversion.  This  was  true  of  England 
as  it  was  not  of  Germany,  where  the  royal  power  hardly 
existed  when  the  work  of  its  conversion  began.  In  Eng- 
land the  germs  of  nationality  through  kingship  had  taken 
earlier  and  deeper  root  than  in  other  purely  Teutonic 
countries.  That  in  England  also  monasticism  never  be- 
came as  influential,  despite  its  early  opportunities,  as  in 
other  countries,  may  be  inferred  from  the  circumstance 
that  England  never  gave  birth  to  any  great  monastic  order, 
as- well  as  from  the  ease  with  which  the  monasteries  were 
swept  away  in  the  sixteenth  century.^  Her  monastic 
houses  were  importations  from  abroad.  Some  of  her  chief 
monastic  ornaments,  such  as  Alcuin  or  Occam,  migrated 
to  other  homes.  Twice,  indeed,  in  English  history,  great 
monks  appear  as  closely  connected  with  the  throne, — 
Dunstan  (f  988),  who  was  a  statesman  and  for  a  time 
seems  to  have  controlled  the  state,  and  then  Anselm 
(f  1109),  whose  ultramontane  attitude  prepared  the  way 
for  England's  subjection  to  the  papacy.  But  in  the  long 
survey,  it  is  England's  kings  and  their  policy  which  forms 
the  leading  feature  of  English  history,  while  monasticism, 
which  at  heart  remained  indifferent  to  nationality,  as  it 
had  been  in  its  origin,  does  not  attain  the  power  or  promi- 

1  For  a  sketch  of  English  monasticism,  see  Gairdner,  Early  Chroni- 
clers of  Europe  ;  England.  Cf.  also  Gasquet,  Henry  VIII.  and  the  Eng- 
lish Monasteries,  and  Dixon,  History  of  the  Church  of  England,  Vol.  I.  ; 
both  of  whom  write  in  the  interest  of  the  monasteries. 


THE   AGE   OF   THE    REFORMATION  263 

nence  which  its  early  introduction  might  seem  to  have 
deserved.  1 

It  is  in  harmony,  then,  with  the  spirit  of  English  tradi- 
tions, that  her  greatest  Reformer,  in  some  respects  the 
greatest  man  whom  she  has  produced,  should  have  issued 
forth  from  the  secular  church  rather  than  from  the  monas- 
tery. The  influence  of  Wycliffe  may  not  be  directly 
traced  in  the  English  Reformation,  while  at  the  same  time 
the  leading  principle  of  his  conception  of  reform  was 
embodied  in  the  legislation  of  the  sixteenth  century.  He 
had  taught  more  clearly  and  forcibly  than  any  one  who 
preceded  or  followed  him  the  divine  authority  of  the 
secular  power.  He  had  been  the  defender  of  the  pre- 
rogatives of  Parliament  in  its  conflict  with  the  pope.  His 
alliance  with  the  state  was  most  intimate  and  real,  because 
it  sprang  from  the  deep  religious  conviction  that  the  king 
was  clothed  with  the  dominion  of  Christ.  It  was  his  con- 
viction that  one  source  of  the  evil  which  afflicted  the  church 
sprang  from  the  temptations  of  the  wealth  which  was  pos- 
sessed by  bishops  and  clergy  and  by  the  monasteries.  He 
taught  that  the  church  should  be  poor  in  imitation  of  its 
Master.  He  did  not  lay  down,  as  Luther  did,  a  principle 
which  overcame  the  difliculty  at  its  source,  but  he  believed 
that  the  state,  acting  as  Christ's  representative,  had  the 
divine  right  to  take  from  the  church  its  property,  whenever 
it  was  misused.  Since  the  state  possessed  the  dominium 
of  Christ,  while  the  ministerium  was  the  function  of  the 

1  "From  the  earliest  period  in  England,"  says  Makower,  "church 
and  state  remained  in  intimate  union.  It  is  true,  occasions  arose  when 
the  archbishop  of  Canterbury  openly  opposed  the  king.  Such  dissen- 
sions, however,  were  of  a  personal  and  transient  character ;  there  were 
no  real  and  la.sting  controversies  as  to  the  relation  of  state  and  church. 
As  a  rule,  the  king,  with  the  assistance  of  the  archbishoiJ  of  Canterbury, 
directed  alike  the  secular  and  the  ecclesiastical  administration  of  Eng- 
land "  (Constit.  His.  of  the  Ch.  of  Eng.,  p.  8). 

The  history  of  Scandinavia  furnishes  an  analogous  case  with  Eng- 
land, since  there  also  the  king  invited  the  missionary  monks  into  the 
country  and  labored  with  them  for  its  Christianization.  Here,  too,  as  in 
Sweden,  the  king  and  the  bishops  together  accepted  the  Reformation,  and 
the  episcopate  was  retained.  But  Scandinavia  was  retarded  in  its  advance 
toward  nationality  by  the  loss  of  so  large  and  energetic  a  part  of  its  popu- 
lation in  the  Norman  invasion. 


264  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

church,  preaching  and  the  cure  of  souls  appeared  to  him 
as  the  true  work  of  the  Christian  ministry,  from  which 
it  had  been  withdrawn  by  the  extraneous  duties  it  had 
assumed,  the  discharge  of  which  belonged  rather  to  the 
state  than  to  the  church.  From  this  point  of  view  the 
distinction  between  bishop  and  presbyter  lost  its  im- 
portance to  his  mind.  Like  the  later  Reformers  on  the 
Continent,  he  was  influenced  by  Jerome's  principle  of  the 
parity  of  bishops  and  presbyters  in  the  age  of  the  begin- 
nings of  the  church.  The  English  Church  retained  the 
episcopate  at  the  Reformation,  but  in  other  respects  it 
followed  the  purpose  of  Wycliffe.  He  had  made  bitter 
war  in  his  later  years  against  the  endowed  monastic  orders ; 
and  as  he  met  with  their  resistance,  as  well  as  that  of  the 
mendicant  orders,  he  carried  his  opposition  still  further, 
and  condemned  the  principle  of  mendicancy  as  false  to  the 
teaching  of  Christ.  His  opposition  to  monasticism  was 
grounded  also  on  its  indifference  or  hostility  to  the  royal 
power,  or  its  alliance  with  the  papacy,  whose  aim  was 
to  lower  the  royal  dignity  by  robbing  it  of  its  divine  right. 
It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  second  step  in  the  English 
Reformation,  after  the  papacy  had  been  rejected,  Avas  the 
abolition  of  the  monasteries,  and  the  appropriation  of  their 
property  by  the  state.  In  this  we  may  recognize  the  influ- 
ence of  Wycliffe's  teaching,  as  well  as  the  natural  result 
of  England's  peculiar  history  as  a  nation. 

The  interest  which  attaches  to  Wycliffe  has  grown 
deeper  in  recent  years,  as  his  writings  have  been  more 
clearly  studied,  and  especially  his  unpublished  manu- 
scripts. A  sense  of  the  greatness  of  his  personality  has 
increased,  of  his  representative  character  as  a  comprehen- 
sive mind  in  whom  his  age  found  its  most  ample  reflection. 
He  went  deeper  also  than  his  contemporaries  could  follow ; 
indeed,  his  principles  seem  to  ally  him  with  the  modern 
socialistic  conception  of  refoi-m.  He  appears  at  times  to 
be  one-sided  and  extreme  in  his  passionate  opposition  to 
great  evils  imbedded  in  corporate  ecclesiastical  institu- 
tions. He  was  claimed  by  the  later  Puritans  as  their 
forerunner  and  representative,  because  of  his  principle  of 


THE    AGE    OF   THE    REFORMATION  265 

the  parity  of  the  ministry,  and  for  other  reasons,  but  in 
reality  he  belonged  to  another  cause,  the  sacredness  of  the 
state  and  its  organic  relation  to  the  church  —  that  doctrine 
which  has  been  the  mainspring  of  what  is  highest  and 
most  attractive  in  English  history,  which  was  reaffirmed 
with  deeper  emphasis  at  the  Reformation,  and  which  still 
survives  in  the  English  Church,  as  one  source  of  its 
strength,  as  that  which  differentiates  it  to  some  extent  in 
principle  from  the  other  Protestant  churches. ^ 

V 

The  English  Reformation  differed  from  the  contemporary 
reforms  on  the  Continent,  in  that  it  was  a  movement  led  by 
king  and  Parliament,  with  the  co-operation  of  the  episco- 
pate. Among  the  bishops  there  was  practical  unanimity 
of  conviction  and  action,  when  after  the  long  preparation 
of  centuries  a  king  arose  who,  as  the  representative  of  the 
national  will,  stood  ready  to  sever  the  connection  between 
the  English  nation  and  the  bishop  of  Rome.  With  one 
exception,  the  bishops  supported  the  king  and  rejected  as 
no  longer  binding  the  ordination  vow,  which  the  English- 
man Boniface  had  been  the  first  to  take,  of  obedience  and 
subjection  to  the  papacy.  In  view  of  the  many  similar 
antecedents  and  precedents  in  English  histor}^  it  seems 
impossible  to  conceive  that  they  should  have  taken  any 
other  course.  The  national  purpose  then  demanded  the 
rejection  of  papal  authority,  and  with  that  demand  the 
episcopate,  which  had  always  been  the  support  and 
the  bearer  of  the  national  idea,  was  in  close  and  natural 
sympathy. 

The  English  Reformation  differs  further  from  the  move- 
ments led  by  Luther  and  Calvin  in  that  to  a  bishop  and 

'  Amono;  the  many  histories  of  the  Church  of  England,  one  of  the 
latest  and  best  is  Perry,  His.  of  the  Ch.  of  Eng.,  3  vols.,  1862.  Among 
others  may  be  mentioned  the  works  of  Burnet,  Strype,  Heylin,  Fuller, 
Maitland,  Hook,  Ma.ssingberd,  Short,  Carwithen,  Southey,  Soames, 
Blunt,  Wakeman,  and  Hunt,  His.  of  Beligious  Thought  in  England. 
For  the  pre-Reformation  history,  Bede,  Ussher,  Stillingfleet,  Soames, 
and  Collier.  See  also  Art.  Church  of  England  by  Perry  in  Enc-  Brit., 
Vni.,  pp.  370  ff. 


266  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

not  a  presbyter  was  assigned  the  task  of  revising  the 
standards  and  of  reforming  doctrine,  discipline,  and 
worship.  The  large-minded  and  scholarly  Cranmer,  an 
adherent  of  the  new  learning  and  in  sympathy  with  the 
spirit  of  the  age,  reflected  in  himself  the  prevailing 
ideas  of  his  time,  accepting  the  doctrine  of  justification 
by  faith,  the  doctrine  of  election  also,  and  rejecting  the 
ideas  of  transubstantiation  and  priesthood.  In  these  re- 
spects, the  English  Reformation  was  conducted  on  lines 
similar  to  those  followed  in  Germany  and  Switzerland. 
But  yet  there  was  a  divergence  even  here,  since  in  all 
that  was  done,  whether  in  rejecting  the  old  or  accepting 
the  new,  the  concejjtion  of  a  national  church  was  a  dis- 
tinct motive,  the  welfare  of  the  nation  was  a  spiritual 
principle,  and  the  appeal  was  to  national  authority  as  the 
divine  warrant  by  whose  sanction  reforms  were  made. 

But  it  is  in  the  treatment  of  the  monasteries  that  the 
peculiar  features  of  the  English  Reformation  most  dis- 
tinctly appear.  The  monks  not  only  did  not  share  in  the 
great  movement,  but  for  the  most  part  were  in  opposition 
to  the  policy  of  the  king.  The  secular  church  had  devel- 
oped in  England  to  such  an  extent,  and  with  such  deep 
hold  upon  the  people,  that  when  the  king  stood  ready  to 
abolish,  at  one  stroke  as  it  were,  that  whole  side  of 
Mediaeval  Christianity,  it  was  accomplished  without  diffi- 
culty, without  protest  or  resistance.  In  Germany  or  in 
the  Netherlands  and  Switzerland  there  was  a  more  com- 
plete fusion  of  the  'religious  '  and  the  'secular  ' ;  the  mon- 
astery united  with  the  secular  clergy  in  one  common  aim 
and  result,  the  monastic  spirit,  however,  possessing  the 
ascendency.  But  in  England  the  monastic  clergy  were 
not  consulted;  place  was  made  for  them  in  the  secular 
church  as  it  might  be  found  convenient;  they  appear  as 
conquered  subjects,  resigned  to  a  will  which  for  a  time 
they  were  powerless  to  dispute.  Whether  any  other  ad- 
justment was  possible,  need  not  be  here  discussed.  The 
Reformers  of  the  English  Church  had  gone  a  long  way 
toward  reconciling  the  monastic  spirit  with  the  secular 
ecclesiastical  order,  when  they  made  the  worship  which  had 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  267 

been  developed  in  the  monastery  the  basis  of  the  revised 
ritual,  giving  henceforth  in  all  the  parishes  the  foremost 
place  to  the  Morning  and  Evening  Prayer,  and  thus  recog- 
nizing the  appeal  of  monastic  worship  to  the  intelligence 
of  the  individual  worshipper.  Unless  some  such  change 
had  been  accepted,  the  peaceable  reform  of  the  church 
could  not  have  been  accomplished.  In  this  way  the 
Church  of  England  swung  into  line  with  the  leading  ten- 
dencies of  the  age,  recognizing  the  spirit  and  the  result  of 
monastic  Christianity,  the  priesthood  of  all  Christians,  as 
manifested  in  one  common  sacrifice  of  prayer  and  praise. 

But  still  the  violent  suppression  of  the  monasteries 
remained  as  bearing  witness  to  the  employment  of  force 
in  effecting  the  reform.  Admirable  as  was  the  reform  in 
itself,  there  remained  an  element  in  the  kingdom  which 
had  not  been  consulted  in  its  adoption.  When  the  state 
proceeded,  as  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  to  use  the 
bishops  as  the  agents  of  the  crown  in  enforcing  uniformity 
of  worship,  there  came  an  outbreak  of  resistance,  which 
showed  that  the  monastic  spirit  still  survived.  While 
Germany  was  convulsed  with  theological  controversies, 
there  was  maturing  in  England  the  preparation  for  a  great 
schism, —  the  severest  ordeal  through  which  England  had 
ever  been  called  to  pass,  the  motive  of  which  was  no  other 
than  the  ancient  hostility  of  the  monastic  presbyterate 
against  the  secular  episcopate.  It  was  not  that  the  Puri- 
tans objected  so  much,  after  all,  to  the  order  of  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer,  although  they  did  object;  what  they 
most  deeply  resented  was  its  enforcement  by  the  bishops. 
There  was  no  longer  any  outlet  for  their  dissatisfaction, 
as  in  the  Middle  Ages  there  had  been,  when  the  papacy 
mediated  between  bishop  and  presbyter.  The  issue  which 
Jerome  had  raised  about  the  original  equality  of  bishop 
and  presbj^ter  now  came  up  for  discussion  and  ventilation 
as  never  before  in  the  history  of  the  church.  Neither  side 
could  convince  the  other,  and  neither  would  make  conces- 
sions, nor  could  a  compromise  be  reached  until  both  parties 
had  tested  their  strength  in  a  prolonged  and  bitter  struggle 
for  the  supremacy. 


268  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE  CHURCH 

When  James  I.  espoused  the  cause  of  the  bishops,  as  in 
his  famous  remark,  "No  bishop,  no  king,"  what  had  been 
originally  a  religious  movement  was  passing  into  political 
warfare,  in  which  the  parties  contested  for  the  possession 
of  the  state.  In  that  conflict,  the  issues  and  the  results 
were  vital.  The  emigration  to  New  England  began,  with 
the  avowed  purpose  of  setting  up  "a  church  without  a 
bishop,  and  a  state  without  a  king."  The  bishops  clung 
more  closely  to  the  king,  in  proportion  as  the  issue  seemed 
to  involve  the  abolition  of  the  monarchy  altogether.  They 
paid  dearly  for  their  adhesion  to  the  sovereign,  but  it  was 
in  keeping  with  their  traditions  since  English  history 
began,  that  they  should  support  the  throne  in  its  emergen- 
cies. It  was  not  with  them  a  question  of  whether  the 
king  was  right  or  wrong;  they  stood  by  his  side  as  the 
bearer  of  a  sacred  principle, —  the  divine  life  of  the  state, 
which  was  struggling  in  mortal  throes.  The  first  result 
of  the  struffffle  was  the  disestablishment  and  overthrow  of 
the  church,  which  for  a  generation  lay  prostrate  at  the  feet 
of  victorious  Puritanism.  Then  came  a  change,  when  the 
king  was  brought  back,  and  the  church  was  restored.  But 
the  issue  was  not  over  until  the  Revolution  in  1688,  which 
brought  the  final  compromise,  —  religious  toleration  for 
individuals  and  for  churches  who  rejected  the  authority 
of  the  episcopate.  Since  then  the  English  Nonconforming 
churches  have  taken  the  place  of  the  ancient  monasteries, 
building  upon  the  same  principles  outlets  of  activity  and 
refuge  in  which  individualism  may  assert  itself,  when  it 
can  find  no  other  vent.  When  a  man  is  emerging  into 
the  knowledge  of  himself,  and  wishes  to  exercise  the  fun- 
damental prerogative  of  manhood  in  making  a  choice,  it  is 
in  the  things  of  religion  that  he  first  feels  the  obstacles  in 
his  way.  There  are  those  who  prefer  to  be  born  into  a 
church,  and  are  grateful  for  the  privileges  which  the 
absence  of  choice  in  the  matter  has  brought  them.  There 
are  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  find  that  the  essence  of 
religion  involves  one  supreme  determination  of  the  will. 
To  such  in  England,  nonconformity  still  offers  the  pos- 
sibilities which  in  the  MedicEval  church  created  a  rich 


THE    AGE    OF   THE   REFORMATION  269 

variety  of  monastic  orders.  It  is  the  tendency  of  the 
Church  of  England  to  minister  to  individual  freedom  on 
the  basis  of  the  solidarity  of  the  state;  the  tendency  of 
the  Nonconformist  churches  is  to  create  groups  of  soli- 
darities on  the  basis  of  individual  freedom  and  agreement 
in  religious  opinion. 

The  conflict  between  the  episcopate  and  the  presbyterate, 
which  has  now  been  traced  in  brief  outline  from  its  origin, 
must  not  be  dismissed  without  a  word  as  to  certain  larger 
bearings  which  it  involves.  It  has  not  been  a  conflict  con- 
fined to  the  Christian  church.  When  we  turn  to  Jewish 
history,  the  same  issue  may  be  detected  in  the  long  strug- 
gle from  the  time  of  the  rise  of  Jewish  monarchy  till  its 
decline.  The  question  then  took  the  shape  of  a  rivalry 
between  the  prophet  and  the  king.  In  the  Jewish  theoc- 
racy, where  church  and  state  were  one,  the  king  had  the 
function  of  ecclesiastical  oversight,  while  the  prophet 
was  to  declare  the  Word  of  God  to  all  alike,  without 
distinction  of  rank.  Should  prophetism  be  placed  above 
royalty,  or  royalty  above  prophetism,  or  were  they  co- 
ordinate powers  which,  when  they  came  in  conflict,  must 
settle  their  differences  as  best  they  could  under  the  uni- 
versal solvent  —  the  well-being  of  the  nation  ?  In  the 
Northern  kingdom,  prophetism  had  gained  the  advan- 
tage over  the  kings.  The  Northern  state  was  founded  by 
the  advice  of  prophets,  and  dynasties  were  displaced  at 
their  pleasure,  with  the  result  that  monarchy  was  weak- 
ened and  the  state  came  to  a  premature  end.  In  the 
Southern  kingdom  a  different  modus  vivendi  was  reached, 
where  the  prophet  appears  more  as  a  co-ordinate  authority 
subject  to  the  king,  and  yet  free  to  proclaim  his  conviction. 
In  the  Southern  kingdom  there  were  conflicts  also,  but 
occasional  glimpses  are  given  of  a  happier  adjustment. 
David  appears  no  less  a  king,  when  he  accepts  the  word 
of  the  prophet  which  was  condemnation  of  his  evil-doing; 
and  the  prophet,  while  he  approaches  the  king  in  free- 
dom, reverences  also  an  authority  which  is  divine  and 
co-ordinate  Avith  his  own.     So  it  was  with  Hezekiah  and 


270  ORGANIZATION    OF   THE   CHURCH 

Isaiah.  But  when  the  kingdom  of  Judah  began  to  decline 
kings  appeared  who  aimed  to  suppress  the  freedom  of  the 
prophet  in  uttering  his  entire  message  from  God.  And 
it  is  not  only  in  Judah,  but  in  every  history  of  every 
state,  that  the  same  eternal  issue  is  forever  arising,  and 
upon  its  solution  depend  the  fortunes  of  the  nation. 

Such  is  the  essence  of  the  struggle  in  the  Christian 
church  from  its  foundation.  There  is,  on  the  one  hand, 
the  function  of  preaching,  which  demands  freedom  of 
utterance.  The  teacher  must  speak  with  all  boldness  the 
lesson  of  the  hour,  adjusting  the  form  of  the  proclamations 
of  the  message  from  God  in  accordance  with  human  learn- 
ing and  the  changes  which  time  and  progress  demand. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  the  function  of  administration 
of  ecclesiastical  affairs,  in  the  interest  of  growth  and  of 
order,  of  unity  and  peace.  Which  shall  be  supreme  over 
the  other,  when  their  interests  conflict?  Or  is  their  true 
relation  one  of  co-ordinate  authority?  In  the  Catholic 
church,  from  the  time  of  Cyprian  and  by  his  agency,  the 
effort  was  made  to  place  the  function  of  administration 
above  preaching  or  prophecy.  In  the  Eastern  church,  the 
state  appears  as  exercising  important  episcopal  functions, 
and  the  church  with  bishops  and  presbyters  is  in  such 
close  sympathy  with  the  state  that  the  issue  rarely  rises 
to  the  surface.  In  Western  Europe,  with  the  rise  of 
monasticism  and  the  growing  consciousness  of  the  church 
as  distinct  from  the  state,  the  question  of  bishop  and  pres- 
byter became  a  vital  principle.  The  papacy  mediated 
between  them,  and  for  a  long  period  with  such  success 
that  the  secular  episcopate  and  the  monastic  presbyterate 
were  held  together  in  one  great  organization.  When  the 
papac}'  lost  its  power  or  capacity  for  successful  mediation, 
the  two  elements  of  Mediseval  Christianity  fell  apart,  and 
have  since  remained  under  different  forms  of  church  gov- 
ernment, with  no  visible  organic  unit3\  In  the  present 
day  the  question  has  arisen  whether  the  settlement  of  the 
Reformation  was  a  final  one.^ 

1  It  throws  light  upon  the  Oxford  Movement,  if  it  is  regarded  as  a  mo- 
nastic protest  within  the  Church  of  England  against  its  secular  aspect  as 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION"  271 

The  question  of  administration  embarrassed  the  Ger- 
man Reformers.  Luther  handed  over  to  the  state  the 
function  of  episcopal  supervision,  which  in  turn  intrusted 
its  duties  to  a  consistory  of  clergy.  The  arrangement  was 
not  intended  to  be  permanent,  but  was  regarded  as  meet- 
ing the  existing  emergency.  But  both  Melanchthon  and 
Luther  felt  that  while  they  had  provided  the  highest  place 
for  the  preaching  of  the  Word,  they  had  not  adequately 
provided  for  the  oversight  and  administration  of  eccle- 
siastical affairs.  In  the  Reformed  Church,  the  function 
of  preaching  also  assumed  the  place  of  highest  honor, 
while  administration  appears  as  somewhat  subordinate, 
inasmuch  as  it  is  shared  by  the  ministry  with  the  ruling 
elders  met  together  in  synods. ^  In  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, the  presbyter  was  restored  to  a  footing  of  equality 
with  the  bishop,  in  so  far  as  the  function  of  preaching  was 
treated  as  the  highest  prerogative  of  the  ministry.  The 
English  form  for  making  a  presbyter  was  modelled  after  the 
Latin  form  for  making  a  bishop.  In  both  cases  in  the 
Anglican  ordinal  there  is  an  examination  of  the  ordinand 
before  the  congregation ;  to  the  presbyter  is  restored  the 
privilege,  which  was  his  in  the  Apostolic  age,  of  defending 
the  faith ;  to  both  alike  is  handed  the  Bible  as  the  object  of 
study  and  the  source  of  authority  in  teaching.  But  the 
rank  of  the  bishop,  who  has  the  functions  of  ordination  and 

the  established  church  which,  during  the  eighteenth  century,  had  been  pre- 
dominant. This  point  of  view  is  confirmed  by  the  language  of  its  leader, 
the  late  Dr.  Pusey,  who  writes  regarding  the  bishops  :  "I  am  not  dis- 
turbed, because  I  never  attached  any  weight  to  the  bishops.  It  was  per- 
haps the  difference  between  Newman  and  me  :  he  threw  himself  upon  the 
bishops  and  they  failed  him  ;  I  threw  myself  on  the  English  Church  and 
the  Fathers  as  under  God  her  support"  {Life,  Vol.  III.,  p.  163). 

1  In  his  system  of  church  government,  Calvin  assigned  the  higher  dig- 
nity to  the  pastors  and  teachers  who  preach  the  Word  and  administer  the 
sacraments.  But  he  also  provides  in  an  explicit  way  for  the  function 
of  administration  of  ecclesiastical  affairs,  which  consists  of  two  depart- 
ments, —  government  and  care  of  the  poor :  ' '  By  these  governors  I  under- 
stand seniors  selected  from  the  people  to  unite  with  the  bishops  [i.e. 
presbyters,  for  the  terms  '  bishop,'  'presbyter,'  'pastor,'  and  'teachers'  are 
regarded  by  Calvin  as  synonymous]  in  pronouncing  censures  and  exer- 
cising discipline.  .  .  .  From  the  beginning,  therefore,  each  church  had 
its  senate,  composed  of  pious,  grave,  and  venerable  men,  in  whom  was 
lodged  the  power  of  correcting  faults"  (Instil.,  B.  IV.,  c.  3,  §  9). 


272  ORGANtZATION   OP   THE   CHURCH 

confirmation,  and  of  supervision  also,  as  the  executive  of 
ecclesiastical  law,  is  higher  than  that  of  the  presbyter. 
He  is  ordained  like  the  presbyter,  but  is  further  conse- 
crated to  his  episcopal  office. 

From  one  point  of  view  the  form  of  ecclesiastical  organ- 
ization was  regarded  by  the  Reformers  as  a  matter  of 
supreme  importance,  inasmuch  as  the  rejection  of  papal 
headship  was  deemed  essential  to  the  constitution  of  a  pure 
church.  This  was  a  common  tie  which  bound  the  Protes- 
tant churches  together  in  mutual  sympathy.  Beyond  this 
point  there  was  little  discussion  of  the  form  which  organi- 
zation should  assume,  nor  was  the  outward  form  regarded 
as  essential,  so  long  as  the  true  doctrine  was  maintained. 
Hence  the  Church  of  England  regarded  the  ministry  of  the 
Continental  churches  as  valid,  and  those  who  had  not 
received  episcopal  ordination  were  allowed  to  minister  in 
her  parishes.^ 

VI 

The  word  'Protestant'  was  not  regarded  in  the  sixteenth 
century  as  the  antithesis  of  Catholic.  Rather  did  the 
Reformers,  English,  German,  and  Swiss,  claim  the  word 
'Catholic'  as  a  true  and  fitting  designation  of  the  Protes- 
tant churches.     They  had  rejected  the  Roman  definition  of 

1  "During  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I.,  the  clergy  of  non- 
episcopal  churches  outside  England  were,  in  the  opinion  of  the  day,  ac- 
counted regularly  ordained  priests  ;  under  Elizabeth,  and  temporarily 
after  the  restoration  of  episcopacy  under  Charles  II.,  priests  who  had  not 
been  ordained  by  bishops  were  allowed  to  officiate  even  within  the 
Church  of  England"  (Makower,  Constitutional  History  of  the  Church  of 
England,  §  18,  who  also  cites  the  evidence).  Cf.  also  Keble's  Preface  to 
his  edition  of  Hooker's  Works ;  Burnet,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  in  Commen- 
tary on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Art.  V. ;  Lord  Bacon  in  Works,  Spedding, 
Ellis  and  Heath  ed.,  VIII.  87;  Archbishop  Bramhall,  in  Introduction  to 
Works;  citations  to  the  same  effect,  from  Bridges,  Bishop  of  Oxford; 
Whitgift,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  ;  Cooper,  Bishop  of  Lincoln  ;  Bishop 
Cosin,  Archbishop  Ussher,  and  others,  in  Goode,  On  Orders.  For  the 
ordination  of  the  Scotch  bishops  in  1611,  cf.  Spotiswood,  His.  of  Church 
and  State  in  Scotland;  episcopal  consecration  was  then  given  to  pres- 
byters who  had  not  received  episcopal  ordination.  See  also  Collection 
of  Becords  appended  to  Burnet,  History  of  the  Reformation,  Bk.  III., 
§  21,  for  the  discussion  of  the  question  of  Orders  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII. 


THE   AGE   OF  THE   REFORMATION  273 

catholicity,  as  consisting  in  union  and  agreement  with 
Rome ;  but  the  Greek  etymology  of  the  word  gave  them 
their  favorite  definition,  —  that  the  Catholic  church  was 
universal  in  the  sense  of  including  all  faithful  disciples 
of  Christ  in  every  age  and  place,  in  this  world  and  in 
another.  Hence  they  denied  that  the  Roman  church  was 
or  could  be  catholic  in  the  true  sense,  and  affirmed  that 
catholicity  was  the  essential  mark  of  Protestantism.  In 
this  sense  they  recited  the  creeds  which  called  for  faith  in 
the  Holy  Catholic  Church.  With  this  church  they  were 
sure  they  were  united  in  the  deepest  way  and  by  ties  that 
could  not  be  broken.^ 

But  there  was  another  sense,  a  more  exact  and  historical 
sense,  in  which  the  Protestant  churches  could  claim  posses- 
sion of  catholicity.  They  received  in  common  the  Canon 
of  Scripture  as  containing  the  teaching  of  Christ  and  His 

1  The  two  creeds,  the  '  Apostles' '  and  '  Nicene '  as  they  are  called,  were 
retained  by  all  the  Protestant  churches.  But  in  Germany,  the  word 
'  Catholic  '  was  translated  into  its  equivalent  Christliche,  by  Luther  in  his 
Small  Catechism;  in  the  Heidelberg  Catechism  it  reads  allgemeine  christ- 
liche Kirche.  Cf.  Calvin,  Institutes,  IV.  1,  §§  1,  3,  for  his  commentary  on 
the  creed,  where  he  vigorously  contends  for  the  necessity  of  union  with 
the  Catholic  church  understood  in  this  larger  sense.  The  Church  of 
England  retained  the  word  '  Catholic '  in  the  creeds,  as  elsewhere  in  her 
oifices,  but  it  was  defined  in  the  Prayer  for  all  Conditions  of  Men,  as  "  all 
those  who  profess  and  call  themselves  Christians,"  and  again  as  in  the 
Litany,  "  the  holy  church  univei'sal "  ;  in  Canon  55,  of  the  Canons  of  1604  : 
"  Ye  shall  pray  for  Christ's  Holy  Catholic  Church,  that  is,  for  the  whole 
congregation  of  Christian  people  dispersed  throughout  the  whole  world." 
Cf.  The  Catechism  in  Becon,  Works,  p.  42  (Parker  Soc.  ed.),  for  a  rep- 
resentative statement  of  the  Anglican  doctrine  in  this  period  :  "  Father. 
Why  is  this  church  called  '  Catholic '  or  universal  ?  Son.  Because  it  is 
not  bound  to  one  certain  place,  kingdom,  or  empire,  but  is  dispersed 
throughout  the  whole  world;  so  that  in  all  places  God  hath  His  elect  and 
chosen  people  which  believe  in  Him,  call  on  His  holy  name  and  worship 
Him  according  to  His  word  even  in  spirit  and  in  truth."  Jewell,  Bishop 
of  Salisbury,  also  contended  for  the  catholicity  of  Protestant  doctrines, 
as  given  by  Christ  and  His  apostles,  as  well  as  for  the  translation  of 
'Catholic'  into  'universal'  as  its  true  equivalent.  Cf.  Works,  I.  426; 
II.  1030.  Other  Church  of  England  writers  took  the  same  view  :  "  il/.  To 
what  purpose  dost  thou  call  this  church  Catholic?  S.  It  is  as  much  as  if 
I  called  it  universal"  (Nowell,  Works,  p.  173  [Par.  Soc. ed.]);  "  Assuredly 
that  man  will  never  be  a  good  Catholic  whom  well-collated  Scriptures  can- 
not bring  to  adopt  a  Catholic  opinion  "  ( Whitaker,  Works,  p.  480)  ;  "  Eo- 
mana  ecclesia  nan  est  Catholica  ecclesia'^  (Whitgift,  Works,  III.,  p.  622). 

T 


274  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

Apostles.  Luther  raised  doubts  regarding  certain  books 
of  the  New  Testament,  but  the  Lutheran  Church,  as  well 
as  the  Reformed  Church  and  the  Church  of  England,  took 
the  New  Testament  as  the  authoritative  source  of  Chris- 
tian truth.  1  Hence  they  could  claim  an  Apostolic  succes- 
sion, according  to  the  definition  which  had  been  given  of 
it  by  Irenseus  ^  in  the  second  century,  when  the  Christian 
faith  was  denied  by  the  Gnostic  and  other  teachers,  and 
when  the  test  and  foundation  of  catholicity  consisted  in 
holding  by  the  teaching  which  had  descended  from  the 
Apostles.  There  is  also  still  another  historical  applica- 
tion of  the  term  'Catholic  '  to  the  Protestant  churches, 
which  is  justified  by  their  attitude  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation,  and  to  which  reference  will  be  made  in  a 
later  chapter. ^ 

1  Cf.  Thirty-nine  Articles,  Art.  VIII. :  "The  Nicene  Creed,  and  that 
which  is  commonly  called  the  Apostles'  Creed,  ought  thoroughly  to  be 
believed  and  received ;  for  they  may  be  proved  by  most  sure  vrarrant  of 
Holy  Scripture." 

2  Cf.  ante,  p.  94. 

3  There  are  various  private  interpretations  of  catholicity,  all  of  which, 
however  they  may  differ,  agree  in  regarding  the  word  as  the  desig- 
nation of  the  ideal  or  perfect  church,  but  for  none  of  which  can  be 
claimed  any  universal  sanction.  Such  was  the  Vincentian  theory 
originating  in  Gaul  in  the  fifth  century,  which  postulates  as  the  test  of 
Catholic  truth.  Quod  semper,  ubiqiie  et  ab  omnibus  ;  a  canon,  to  say  the 
least  of  it,  very  difficult  of  application.  Coleridge  was  the  author  of  a 
certain  popular  use  of  the  term  '  Catholic '  :  "  The  present  adherents  of  the 
Church  of  Rome  are  not,  in  my  judgment.  Catholics.  We  are  the 
Catholics.  We  can  prove  that  we  hold  the  doctrines  of  the  primitive 
church  for  the  first  three  hundred  years.  ...  A  person  said  to  me 
lately,  '  But  you  will  for  civility's  sake  call  them  Catholics,  will  you 
not  ?  '  I  answered  that  I  would  not  tell  a  lie  upon  any,  much  less  upon 
so  solemn  an  occasion.  The  adherents  of  the  Church  of  Rome,  I  repeat, 
are  not  Catholic  Christians.  If  they  are,  then  it  follows  that  we  Protes- 
tants are  heretics  and  schismatics,  etc."  (Table  Talk,  April  29,  1823). 
According  to  Bishop  Ken,  the  Catholic  church  maintained  its  existence 
until  the  schism  between  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches.  The  High 
Anglican  view  asserts  that  episcopacy  is  of  the  essence  of  catholicity. 
This  view  was  first  broached  by  some  of  the  Caroline  divines  in  the 
seventeenth  century  in  opposition  to  the  Puritans,  and  has  been  reas- 
serted by  the  leaders  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  e.g.  Newman  and  Pusey. 
For  its  statement  and  defence  see  Gore,  The  Church  and  the  3Iinistry ; 
also  Tracts  for  the  Times,  passim.  Others  again  of  the  same  school  regard 
the  epithet  '  Catholic '  as  distinctive  of  the  church  before  the  Reformation, 
and  therefore  as  the  antithesis  of  '  Protestant.' 


THE   AGE   OF   THE   REFORMATION  275 

The  Protestant  world,  differing  as  it  does  in  so  many 
aspects,  whether  in  doctrine  or  organization  or  worship, 
from  the  Mediaeval  world  out  of  which  it  grew,  does 
yet  retain  a  striking  resemblance,  in  external  appear- 
ance at  least,  to  the  Christendom  which  it  superseded. 
The  larger  divisions  of  Protestantism  still  perpetuate 
the  various  attitudes  of  monasticism,  so  far  as  they  were 
expressions  of  certain  permanent  tendencies  in  religion, 
each  of  which  needs  and  seeks  the  shelter  of  institutional 
life,  all  of  which  together,  and  no  one  of  them  apart  from 
the  rest,  are  competent  to  represent  the  workings  of  the 
soul  under  the  tuition  of  the  Spirit.  It  was  the  wisdom 
of  the  papacy,  and  its  signal  service  to  humanity,  that  it 
recognized  them  all  and  tolerated  them  all, —  not  only  the 
greater  orders,  but  those  seemingly  countless  divisions 
and  subdivisions  which  we  cease  to  follow,  so  minute  are 
their  ramifications,  but  each  standing  nevertheless  for 
some  one  special  doctrine  of  the  faith  or  historic  fact 
in  the  life  of  Christ,  some  single  truth  which  the  world 
seemed  in  danger  of  neglecting.  And  if  a  human  in- 
stitution like  the  papacy  could  rise  to  such  an  expanded 
view  of  the  demands  of  the  religious  life,  and  conserve 
their  utterance,  much  more  can  the  Protestant  world, 
always  under  the  headship  of  Christ  and  sharing  in  His 
life,  recognize  this  unity  amidst  great  diversity.  From 
this  point  of  view  we  may  remind  ourselves  how  the  di- 
visions of  Protestantism  still  retain  reminders  of  a  world 
which  they  have  outgrown.  In  the  Lutheran  Church 
may  be  traced  the  spirit  of  the  Augustinian  order,  with 
which  its  origin  was  so  clearly  connected, —  the  reverence 
for  Augustine  and  for  that  theology  and  type  of  piety  with 
which  his  name  is  forever  associated.  The  Reformed 
Church  has  points  of  affinity  with  the  Dominican  order,  —  in 
its  wide  diffusion  in  every  land,  in  the  importance  which, 
like  the  Lutheran  Church,  it  attaches  to  doctrine  and  to 
preaching,  but  also  to  organization,  upon  which  it  lays  a 
deeper  stress.  The  Methodist  Church  is  almost  a  reproduc- 
tion of  the  Franciscan  order,  and  Wesley  as  it  were  the  suc- 
cessor of  Francis  of  Assisi,  taking  the  world  for  his  parish. 


276  ORGANIZATION   OF   THE   CHURCH 

with  his  ardent  love  of  souls,  differing  from  the  Reformed 
Church  on  those  points  in  which  the  Franciscan  differed 
from  the  Dominican,  and  pre-eminently  in  all  that  relates 
to  or  flows  from  the  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of  the  human 
will.  The  Church  of  England  perpetuates  more  distinctly 
the  secular  church  of  the  Middle  Ages,  but  in  its  capacity 
as  a  national  church  has  included  more  than  one  variety 
of  monastic  attitude.  In  the  High  Anglican  school  may 
be  seen  the  reproduction  of  the  spirit  of  Clugny,  with  its 
doctrine  of  church  authority,  and  its  love  of  a  rich,  elab- 
orate ritual  or  its  devotion  to  an  imposing  architecture ; 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  Low  Church  party,  as  it  is 
called,  we  catch  the  tone  of  Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  who 
regarded  ritual  with  indifference  and  impressed  upon  the 
Cistercian  order  the  sin  of  spending  money  upon  the 
details  of  gorgeous  rites,  or  the  adornment  of  the  houses 
for  the  worship  of  God  with  meaningless  architectural 
decoration,  who  gave  the  inward  experience  of  religion 
the  highest  place,  accompanied  only  with  the  worship 
which  is  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  The  Congregational 
Church,  which  has  been  prolific  in  offshoots  organized  on 
the  same  principle  of  the  independence  of  the  local  church, 
appears  like  a  reversion  to  the  earlier  and  simpler  organi- 
zation of  the  Benedictine  order,  when  each  monastery  was 
independent  and  complete  in  itself, —  an  order  which  has 
rivalled,  if  not  surpassed,  the  Dominican  in  learning  and 
scholarship  and  in  devotion  to  Christian  literature.  It 
would  be  impossible  to  enumerate  them  all,  but  the  Bap- 
tist Church  may  be  mentioned  with  its  logical  insistence 
upon  what  theories  imply,  with  its  endeavor  to  secure 
a  more  complete  discipline  and  realization  of  all  that  a 
Protestant  church  involves,  with  its  recognition  in  an 
emphatic  way  of  the  significance  of  the  Old  Testament  in 
its  relation  to  the  New, —  in  this  attitude  there  is  a  sug- 
gestion of  one  of  the  larger  but  more  rigid  monastic  orders, 
the  Carmelite,  which  claimed  as  its  founder  a  great  prophet 
of  the  older  dispensation,  Elijah  upon  Mount  Carmel,  an 
order  whose  extensive  membership  exhibited  a  devotion 
and  enthusiasm  for  their  monastic  foundation  which  is  not 


THE   AGE   OP   THE   REFORMATION  277 

surpassed  in  monastic  annals.  And  how  many  other  lesser 
orders  there  were,  who  had  learned  the  truth  that  God 
speaks  to  the  soul  in  silence,  and  that  in  silent  prayer  and 
silent  worship  the  Spirit  is  active,  helping  the  infirmi- 
ties of  men  in  those  groanings  which  cannot  be  uttered. 
If  the  monastic  orders  were  one  under  the  headship  of  the 
papacy,  these  Protestant  orders  are  quite  as  surely  one 
under  Christ,  holding  to  the  Catholic  faith  also,  of  which 
the  essence  is  the  God-man,  a  divine-human  leader,  Jesus 
the  Son  of  the  living  God. 

It  requires  only  the  exercise  of  the  spiritual  imagination 
to  see  and  to  feel  that  the  Protestant  world  is  the  product 
of  world-forces  which  are  still  active,  that  the  evils  which 
we  bemoan  have  not  yet  bred  essential  weakness  in  its 
constitution,  or  impaired  it  by  failure  or  decay.  A  recent 
writer,  who  was  familiar  with  the  history  of  the  church 
before  and  since  the  Reformation,  has  enumerated  these 
evils:  "The  loss  of  that  organic  unity  which  served  in 
bygone  days  as  a  powerful  evidence  in  aid  of  Christian 
truth;  the  intermission  of  fraternal  fellowship  between 
communities  related  to  each  other,  not  by  blood  and  lan- 
guage merely,  but  in  some  essential  points  by  creed;  the 
sad  dismemberment  of  families;  the  multiplication  of 
parties,  schisms,  and  factions  rising  out  of  religious  preju- 
dice and  often  issuing  in  religious  wars ;  the  growth  of 
mental  habits  leading  either  to  indifferentism  on  one  side 
or  to  interdicted  speculations  on  the  other;  the  diffusion 
of  an  egotistic,  self-complacent,  and  subjective  spirit,  mak- 
ing light  of  all  ecclesiastical  traditions  and  exciting  con- 
troversies whose  vibrations  are  still  felt  in  almost  every 
part  of  Europe, —  these  were  some  of  the  immediate  and,  it 
may  be,  necessary  accompaniments  of  struggles  which  then 
rose  between  the  ancient  and  modern  modes  of  thought,  be- 
tween the  Mediseval  and  Reforming  principles."  "But," 
he  continues, 

"  While  confessing  and  deploring  such  results,  we  should,  on 
the  other  hand,  reflect  that,  in  the  present  stage  of  man's  existence, 
great  advantages  must  generally  be  jiurchased  by  corresjoonding  sacri- 
fices ;  and  that  if  we  fairly  balance  gain  with  loss,  the  Reformation  is 


278  ORGANIZATION   OF  THE   CHURCH 

to  be  esteemed  among  our  very  choicest  blessings.  It  recovered  vphat 
is  far  more  precious  than  ecclesiastical  unity,  —  the  primitive  and 
Apostolic  faith.  From  it  accordingly  has  dated  a  new  era  in  the 
moral  progress  of  the  Western  nations,  and  the  spiritual  development 
of  man.  It  has  replaced  him  in  the  liberty  wherewith  Clirist  had 
made  him  free.  It  has  unloosed  the  trammels  that  oppressed  not 
only  his  understanding  but  his  conscience.  It  has  led  to  the  rejection 
of  that  semi-Judaism  in  thought  and  feeling,  which,  however  it  was 
overruled  for  good  in  training  the  barbaric  nations  of  the  north,  was, 
notwithstanding,  a  melancholy  relapse  into  the  servile  posture  of  the 
Hebrew,  as  distinguished  from  the  free  and  filial  spirit  that  should 
characterize  the  children  of  God.  Above  all,  the  Reformation  vindi- 
cates for  our  Blessed  Lord  the  real  Headship  of  the  Church,  exalting 
Him  as  the  one  source  of  life  and  righteousness,  and  thereby  placing 
saints,  and  priests,  and  sacraments  in  their  true  subordination.  Per- 
sonal faith  in  Him,  the  Reconstructor  of  humanity,  the  living  Way 
unto  the  Father,  was  now  urged  with  emphasis  unequalled  since  the 
age  of  St.  Augustine;  and  this  quickening  of  man's  moral  conscious- 
ness imparted  a  new  stimulus  to  individual  effort.  Doubtless  many 
wild  exaggerations  followed,  and  still  follow,  in  the  track  of  the  great 
movement,  partly  owing  to  the  natural  waywardness  of  men,  and 
partly  to  the  irrepressible  force  of  the  revulsion  caused  by  hatred  of 
the  ancient  superstitions.  Yet  in  spite  of  all  such  drawbacks,  it  is 
manifest  that  the  reformed  are,  as  a  rule,  entitled  to  rank  higher  than 
the  unreformed  communities,  surpassing  these  not  only  in  the  vigor 
of  their  intellectual  faculties  and  their  material  prosperity,  but  also 
in  the  social,  moral,  and  religious  elevation  of  the  people.  Exactly 
whei'e  the  leaders  of  the  Reformation  were  true  to  their  first  princi- 
ples, and  struggled  to  preserve  the  middle  way,  —  in  which  the  doctrine 
of  authority  is  made  consistent  with  individual  freedom,  —  in  the  same 
proportion  we  behold  their  labors  crowned  with  rich  and  permanent 
success ;  and  exactly  where  the  seed  they  scattered  found  a  peaceful 
and  congenial  soil,  we  recognize  the  most  intelligent  and  manly,  the 
most  truthful,  upright,  and  magnanimous  people  in  the  world."  ^ 

1  A  History  of  the  Christian  Church  during  the  Reformation,  by 
Charles  Harclwick,  31. A.,  late  felloio  of  St.  Catherine's  College,  Divinity 
Lecturer  at  King''s  College,  and  Christian  Advocate  in  the  University  of 
Cambridge,  2d  ed.  revised  by  Francis  Procter,  M.A.,  London,  1865, 
pp.  10-12.  See,  also,  Fisher,  Professor  G.  P.,  History  of  the  Reformation, 
c.  XV.,  on  the  Relation  of  Protestantism  to  Culture  and  Civilization, 
which  contains  many  profound  reflections  on  the  significance  of  the 
Protestant  attitude. 


Book  II 

THE  CATHOLIC  CREEDS  AND  THE  DEVELOP- 
MENT  OF  DOCTRINE 

CHAPTER   I 

THE   CATHOLIC    CREEDS  ^ 

In"  the  foregoing  discussion  of  the  organization  of  the 
church,  differences  in  the  ecclesiastical  order  appear  as 
related  to  the  development  of  Christian  civilization,  as 
well  as  to  the  fuller  and  richer  assertion  of  the  Christian 
life.  The  conflicting  motives  of  solidarity  and  individu- 
alism, of  imperialism  which  knows  no  distinction  of  race 
or  country,  and  of  nationality  which  brings  freedom  to 
those  of  common  kindred,  have  been  cherished  by  the 
antagonistic  tendencies  in  ecclesiastical  institutions,  until 
they  were  revealed  in  their  full  significance  in  the  age  of 
the  Reformation.  We  must  judge  of  institutions  by  the 
results  they  have  created.  In  their  final  manifestation 
may  be  read  more  clearly  than  in  their  professed  aim  or 
their  formal  declaration  of  principles  what  has  been  the 
deeper,  though  often  unconscious,  motive  of  their  exist- 
ence. The  life  of  Luther  and  the  later  intellectual  history 
of  Germany  is  a  commentary  on  monasticism,  inter- 
preting its  higher  spirit  better  than  the  rules  of  the 
Benedictine  order.  The  Anglican  Reformation  and  the 
later   history  of    England  best  disclose   the  purposes  of 

1  Schaff,  Creeds  of  Christendom ;  Hahn,  Bibliothek  der  Symhole  nnd 
Glaubensregeln  der  apostolisch-katholischen  Kirche ;  Caspari,  Qnellen 
zur  Geschichte  des  TcmfsymhoJs ;  article  on  Creeds  by  Swainson  in 
Diet.  Chris.  Biog.,  also  his  Literary  History  of  the  Nicene  and  Aj>ostles' 
Creeds;  Harvey,  History  nnd  Theology  of  the  Three  Creeds;  Lumby, 
History  of  the  Creeds;  Heurtley,  Harmonia  Syrnbolica ;  Hefele,  History 
of  the  Councils. 

279 


280  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

the  episcopate  in  its  bearing  upon  religion  and  civiliza- 
tion. The  Reformed  Church,  from  its  centre  at  Geneva 
growing  into  a  cosmopolitan  organization,  which  was  at 
home  in  every  country,  is  a  disclosure  of  the  purpose  at 
which  monasticism  was  aiming,  but  was  unable  to  accom- 
plish in  consequence  of  its  limitations.  Only  in  the  long 
process  of  the  ages  is  the  meaning  revealed  of  much  which 
seems  incongruous  or  alien  to  the  Christian  spirit.  In  a 
modified  form  the  institutions  still  persist,  which  in  their 
Mediseval  analogies  seem  foreign  and  repulsive  to  the 
modern  mind. 

In  turning  now  to  the  ancient  creeds,  the  same  questions 
call  for  an  answer.  Why  they  took  the  shape  they  did. 
What  relation  they  sustain  to  that  increasing  purpose 
which  exists  beneath  the  surface  of  consciousness,  and 
reveals  its  presence  and  its  power  in  the  great  historical 
moments  of  human  manifestation.  What  the  creeds  affirm 
has  its  connection  with  the  political  and  social  aspects  of 
life,  no  less  than  with  the  religious,  or  may  carry  as  in  a 
germ  the  content  of  philosophical  or  speculative  attitudes 
toward  the  world.  While  they  are  primarily  the  state- 
ments of  simple  personal  faith,  or  of  historical  facts  in  the 
life  of  Christ,  whose  recitation  in  worship  serves  a  religious 
end,  they  may  also  be  the  war-songs  of  great  victories  in 
which  the  fate  of  civilization  was  at  issue.  What  the 
creeds  omit  is  significant  also,  as  well  as  what  they  con- 
tain. When  the  age  of  creed-making  was  over,  it  was 
followed  by  an  age  when  systems  of  theology  were  devel- 
oped, expanding  the  content  of  the  human  soul  in  its 
relation  toward  God  with  a  fulness  and  richness  which 
has  found  its  adequate  symbol  in  some  vast  cathedral.  If 
the  creeds  may  be  regarded  as  the  products  of  the  Catho- 
lic church,  as  the  expression  of  the  episcopate  seeking 
that  Avhich  was  common  and  necessary  for  all  the  world ; 
systems  of  theology,  on  the  other  hand,  were  first  devel- 
oped by  monks  as  in  the  Middle  Ages,  by  the  presbyterate 
inheriting  the  traditions  of  the  ancient  teacher,  an  Origen 
or  a  Jerome,  building  indeed  upon  the  creeds,  but  more 
concerned  about  their  deeper  interpretation.     The  modern 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  281 

Protestant  churches  surpass  the  ancient  Catholic  church 
in  possessing  not  only  the  creeds,  but  the  results  of  theo- 
logical inquiry,  embodied  in  Confessions  of  Faith.  The 
Catholic  church  dwelt  mainly  upon  the  theology  of  the 
incarnation,  but  when  raonasticism  arose  another  issue  was 
slowly  developed,  which  finally  took  form  as  the  theology 
of  the  atonement.  The  incarnation  speaks  to  man  in  his 
relations  to  the  race  of  humanity ;  the  atonement  is  the 
application  of  the  incarnation  to  the  needs  of  the  individ- 
ual soul.  There  are  two  small  books  whose  influence  has 
been  out  of  all  proportion  to  their  size,  the  two  most  rep- 
resentative books  in  Christian  literature,  —  Athanasius,  De 
Incarnatlone  Verbi,  and  Anselm,  Cia-  Deus  Homo,  one 
written  by  the  patriarchal  bishop  of  a  national  church,  the 
other  by  a  monastic  presbyter  in  his  lonely  cell. 


There  are  three  creeds,  which  out  of  many  have  survived 
by  gaining  the  support  of  popular  recognition,  none  of 
which  are  strictly  entitled  to  the  names  by  which  they  are 
known,  —  the  Apostles'  Creed,  the  Nicene  Creed,  and  the 
Athanasian  Creed.  Of  these  the  only  one  which  can  be 
said  to  possess  oecumenical  authority  is  the  so-called  Creed 
of  Nicaea,  which  was  set  forth  with  the  formal  approval  of 
the  Council  of  Chalcedon  in  451  a.d.,  which  to-day  is  re- 
cited in  the  liturgies  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  and  Anglican 
churches,  and  which,  if  not  in  liturgical  use  in  the  Lutheran 
and  Reformed  churches,  retains  their  confidence  and  ap- 
proval. The  Apostles'  Creed  is  unknown  in  the  Greek  and 
Oriental  churches  and  has  never  had  the  sanction  of  con- 
ciliar  authority.  The  creed  called  after  Athanasius  is  a 
symbol  still  more  restricted  in  its  use,  and  since  the  Refor- 
mation has  failed  to  commend  itself  to  the  popular  mind. 
Its  historical  significance  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  boldly  iden- 
tifies the  Catholic  faith  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 

The  Apostles'  Creed  ^  is  the  oldest  of  the  three,  and  its 

1  Rufinus,  Expositio  in  Symbohim  Apostolorum,  in  Migne,  Patro., 
XXI. ;  Ussher,  De  Symbolo  Apostolico ;   M.  Nicholas,  Le  Symhole  cles 


282  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

date,  in  its  original  form,  may  be  placed  about  the  middle 
of  the  second  century.  In  its  structure  it  is  the  expansion 
of  the  baptismal  formula, —  the  name  of  the  Father,  the 
Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost.    This  creed  first  read  as  follows  : 

"  I  believe  in  God  the  Father  Almighty ;  and  in  Jesus  Christ  His 
only  Son,  our  Lord ;  who  was  born  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  Mary  the 
Virgin  ;  under  Pontius  Pilate  was  crucified  and  buried ;  on  the  third 
day  He  rose  from  the  dead ;  He  ascended  into  heaven ;  He  sitteth 
on  the  right  hand  of  the  Father ;  from  thence  He  shall  come  to  judge 
the  living  and  the  dead ;  and  in  the  Holy  Spirit ;  the  holy  church ; 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  ;  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh."  ^ 

Nothing  is  known  regarding  the  origin  of  this  creed, 
beyond  the  fact  that  it  was  originally  written  in  Greek. 
The  time  when  it  was  written  is  a  matter  of  inference,  but 
may  be  regarded  as  established.  Whether  it  originated  at 
Rome  or  was  imported  from  Asia  Minor  is  uncertain. 
Why  it  should  have  taken  the  shape  it  did,  or  whether  it 
reflects  the  theological  moods  of  the  hour,  are  questions  not 
determined  with  certainty.  In  the  New  Testament  there 
are  given  brief  confessions  which  reveal  no  traces  of  con- 
troversy, or  of  protest  against  erroneous  conceptions.  Such 
was  Peter's  confession :  "  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
the  living  God  " ;  or  the  baptismal  confession  in  Acts  viii. 
37,  whose  genuineness  is  doubtful :  "  I  believe  that  Jesus 
is  the  Son  of  the  living  God  ";  or  again  the  form  of  words 

Apotres ;  Westcott,  Apostles'  Creed ;  Baron,  Greek  Origin  of  Apostles' 
Creed ;  Kattenbusch,  Das  Apostolische  Symbol ;  seine  Entstehung,  sein 
geschichtliches  Si7in,  seine  ursprilngliche  Stellung  in  Kultus  ii.  in  der 
Theologie  d.  Kirche,  1895. 

1  Cf.'  Iren.,  C.  Haer.  1,  c.  10,  §  1 ;  Tertull.,  Praes.  Haer.,  c.  xiii.  The 
creed  of  Cyprian  is  much  briefer,  and  is  a  reduction  probably  like  that  of 
Novatian,  neitlier  of  them  giving  the  creed  in  full,  but  taking  it  for 
granted.  Cf.  Schaff,  Creeds  of  Christendom,  II.,  pp.  20,  21  ;  also  Hahn, 
Bibliothek  der  Symbole,  etc.,  p.  74.  For  the  origin  of  the  Roman  creed, 
cf.  Caspari,  III.,  pp.  267  ff.  Dr.  Hort  suggested  its  Oriental  origin  on 
the  ground  of  the  expression  nopoyei'T}s  vlbs,  in  his  Two  Dissertations, 
etc.  In  the  lately  discovered  Apology  of  Aristides,  a  Christian  philoso- 
pher at  Athens  in  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius,  may  be  found  the  mate- 
rials, which,  when  placed  together  as  by  Professor  Rendel  Harris,  closely 
resemble  the  Roman  symbol,  and  must  be  nearly  contemporaneous  with 
it.  Cf.  Apol.  in  Greek  version,  cc.  14,  15,  in  Vol.  IX.,  in  Ante-Nicene 
Fathers,  ed.  Chris.  Lit.  Co. ;  cf.  also  Scott,  The  Nicene  Theology,  p.  328. 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  283 

given  by  St.  Paul :  "  I  delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that 
which  I  also  received,  how  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins 
according  to  the  scriptures  and  that  he  was  buried  and 
that  he  rose  again  the  third  day  according  to  the  script- 
ures." Whether  or  not  the  Apostles'  Creed  contemplated 
the  existing  situation  in  the  church,  or  its  object  was  to 
overcome  Gnosticism  and  Montanism  by  the  assertion  of 
fundamental  Christian  teaching,  it  was  adapted  to  this  end 
and  may  be  regarded  as  the  characteristic  utterance  of  the 
Catholic  church  when  it  realized  its  great  mission  to  the 
world.  In  the  writings  of  Ignatius  (110-117  a.d.)  there 
is  an  earlier  confession  of  faith  closely  resembling  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  whose  object  was  to  overcome  that  mode 
of  thinking  known  as  Docetism,  which  denied  the  objective 
reality  of  the  person  of  Christ,  refusing  to  believe  that  He 
possessed  a  human  body,  or  that  He  actually  died  upon  the 
cross.  Hence  Ignatius  dwelt  upon  historic  facts  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  transcendental  scepticism  : 

"Jesus  Christ,  who  has  descended  from  David,  and  was  also  of 
Mary ;  who  was  truly  born  and  did  eat  and  drink.  He  was  truly 
persecuted  under  Pontius  Pilate ;  He  was  truly  crucified,  and  truly 
died,  in  the  sight  of  beings  in  heaven  and  on  earth  and  under  the 
earth.     He  was  also  truly  raised  from  the  dead."^ 

The  Apostles'  Creed  furnishes  also  the  model  which 
was  universally  followed,  —  the  expansion  of  the  baptismal 
formula.  About  the  threefold  name  of  Father,  Son,  and 
Holy  Ghost  clustered  the  statements  regarding  the  dis- 
tinctive work  of  each,  which,  as  in  the  rules  of  faith  given 
by  Irenseus  and  Tertullian,  might  vary  without  affecting 
the  substance  of  the  creed.  The  distinctive  feature  of  the 
Apostles'  Creed  was  in  the  historical  character  of  the  ex- 
pansion connected  with  the  name  of  Christ.  Herein  lay  its 
value,  that  it  professed  to  deal  with  actual  events  or  facts 
capable  of  being  fixed  as  to  place  or  time,  of  which  the 
report  might  be  attested  by  those  who  knew,  and  further 
might  be  handed  down  in  tradition  from  one  man  to 
another.      It  was    this   feature  of   the  creed  which  com- 

1  Cf .  Ad  Trail,  ix. ;  also  Ad  Mag.  xi. ;  Ad  Smyr.  i. 


284  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

mended  it  to  the  Western  churches,  whether  in  Italy, 
Gaul,  or  North  Africa.  It  required  no  profound  intellect- 
ual preparation  in  order  to  its  comprehension ;  it  spoke  the 
language  of  no  speculative  school ;  it  did  not  deal  with 
theories  about  the  person  of  Christ,  but  laid  the  stress  on 
the  supreme  circumstances  in  the  life  on  earth  of  the  in- 
carnate Son  of  God,  His  birth,  His  death,  His  resurrection, 
and  His  ascension  to  the  Father. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  this  creed  was  known  in  the 
Eastern  churches  before  the  time  of  Origen.  Clement  of 
Alexandria  (f  220)  makes  no  reference  to  it,  nor  does  he 
seem  to  be  aware  of  its  existence.  But  Origen  (f  254) 
had  been  to  Rome  and  while  there  may  have  become 
acquainted  with  it,  as  also  with  the  belief  that  it  had  been 
composed  by  the  twelve  Apostles,  from  whom  it  had  de- 
scended by  the  continuous  succession  of  the  episcopate. 
In  writing  his  theological  treatise  on  First  Principles^ 
Origen  gives  the  Roman  Creed  in  its  distinctive  features, 
but  with  a  free  rendering  of  his  own,  to  adapt  it  to  a 
somewhat  different  theological  atmosphere.  He  also  in- 
terprets the  creed  as  if  its  design  were  to  overcome  Gnos- 
tic or  Docetic  heresies,  amplifying  its  tel^se  expressions  by 
saying  that  Christ  was  truly  born  and  did  truly  suffer,  did 
truly  die  and  truly  rise  from  the  dead.  The  difference  in 
tone  and  spirit  between  Rome  and  Alexandria  is  also 
apparent  in  Origen's  conviction  that  the  interpretation  of 
the  creed  is  a  matter  of  vital  importance.  Over  against 
the  claim  of  tradition  he  vindicates  the  right  of  free  theo- 
logical inquiry: 

"The  holy  Apostles,  in  preaching  the  faith  of  Christ,  delivered 
themselves  with  the  utmost  clearness  on  certain  points  which  they 
believed  to  be  necessary  to  every  one,  even  to  those  who  seemed  some- 
what dull  in  the  investigation  of  divine  knowledge;  leaving,  however, 
the  grounds  of  their  statements  to  be  examined  into  by  those  who 
should  deserve  the  excellent  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  and  who,  especially  by 
means  of  the  Holy  Spirit  Himself,  should  obtain  the  gifts  of  language, 
of  wisdom,  and  of  knowledge;  while  on  other  subjects  they  merely 
stated  the  facts  that  things  were  so,  keeping  silence  as  to  the  manner 
or  origin  of  their  existence,  clearly  in  order  that  the  more  zealous  of 
their  successors,  who  should  be  lovers  of  wisdom,  might  have  a  sub- 


THE   CATHOLIC    CREEDS  285 

ject  on  which  to  display  the  fruit  of  their  talents,  —  those  persons,  I 
mean,  who  should  prepare  themselves  to  be  fit  and  worthy  receivers 
of  wisdom."  ^ 

The  origin  of  the  creeds  in  the  Eastern  church  is  obscure. 
They  are  later  than  the  Roman  creed,  and  there  is  a  cer- 
tain resembhince  between  them ;  but  whether  they  have 
followed  it  or  have  expanded  the  baptismal  formula  with- 
out knowledge  of  it  is  uncertain.  The  Eastern  creeds 
betray  the  influence  of  the  rising  controversy  on  the  re- 
lation of  tlie  Son  to  the  Father.  They  began  to  appear 
toward  the  close  of  the  third  century  and  from  that  time 
until  after  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  there  was  an 
epoch  of  creed-making  which  rivals  in  activity  and  fertility 
the  period  in  Protestant  history  which  followed  the  Refor- 
mation. While  the  church  in  the  West  had  but  one  creed, 
that  of  Rome,  which  is  substantially  reproduced  by  Ire- 
ngeus  and  Tertullian  and  others,  the  Eastern  church  was 
more  independent  and  its  creeds  may  have  many  centres. 
The  oldest  of  these  is  that  of  Gregory  Thaumaturgus 
(c.  233-270),  a  disciple  of  Origen  and  Bishop  of  Neocaesarea. 
Its  tone  is  profoundly  theological  and  in  this  respect  it  is 
representative  of  the  many  Eastern  creeds  of  later  date. 
In  Bishop  Bull's  translation  it  reads : 

"  There  is  one  God,  Father  of  Him  who  is  the  living  Word,  sub- 
sisting Wisdom  and  Power  and  Eternal  Impress.  Perfect  Begetter 
of  the  Perfect,  Father  of  the  only  begotten  Son.  There  is  one  Lord, 
Alone  of  the  alone,  God  of  God,  Impress  and  Image  of  the  Godhead, 
the  operative  Word ;  Wisdom  comprehensive  of  the  system  of  the 
universe,  and  Power  productive  of  the  whole  creation ;  true  Son  of 
true  Fatlier,  Invisible  of  Invisible,  and  Incorruptible  of  Incorruptible, 
and  Immortal  of  Immortal,  and  Eternal  of  Eternal.  And  there  is 
one  Holy  Ghost,  who  hath  his  being  of  God,  who  hath  appeared 
through  the  Son,  Image  of  the  Son,  Perfect  of  the  Perfect ;  Life,  the 
Cause  of  all  them  that  live ;  Holy  Fountain,  Holiness,  the  Bestower 
of  sanctification,  in  whom  is  manifested  God  the  Father,  who  is  over 
all  and  in  all,  and  God  the  Son,  who  is  through  all.  A  perfect  Trin- 
ity, not  divided  nor  alien  in  glory  and  eternity  and  dominion."  ^ 

1  Origen,  De  Princip.  in  Pref.  3. 

2  Cf.  Art.  Gregorius  Thaumaturgus  in  Smith  and  Wace,  Diet.  Chris. 
Biog.  for  discussion  of  genuineness  of  this  creed.  It  is  defended  by  Cas- 
pari  in  appendix  to  C^iiellen,  etc.     Tor  the  creed  of  Lucian  of  Antioch 


286  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

A  peculiar  interest  attaches  to  the  creed  of  the  church 
in  Cgesarea  because  it  was  presented  by  Eusebius,  its  bishop 
at  the  Council  of  Nictea,  as  a  summary  of  the  Christian 
faith,  which  "  we  received  from  the  bishops  before  us  in 
our  first  catechetical  instruction  and  when  we  were  bap- 
tized."    This  creed  was  as  follows : 

"  We  believe  in  one  God,  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  all  things 
both  visible  and  invisible,  and  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Word  of 
God,  God  of  God,  Light  of  Light,  Life  of  Life,  the  only  begotten  Son, 
the  First-born  of  eveiy  Creature,  begotten  of  the  Father  before  all 
worlds,  by  whom  also  all  things  were  made.  Who  for  our  salvation 
was  made  flesh,  and  lived  amongst  men,  and  suffered,  and  rose  again 
on  the  third  da)',  and  ascended  to  the  Father,  and  shall  come  in  glory 
to  judge  the  quick  and  the  dead.  And  we  believe  in  One  Holy 
Ghost."  1 

Such  was  the  basis  of  the  famous  symbol  known  as 
the  Nicene  Creed.  But  this  creed  of  Caesarea  was  not 
acceptable  to  the  Council  because  the  Arians  professed 
themselves  willing  to  receive  it.  It  was  therefore  amended 
by  additions  which  the  Arians  were  unwilling  to  accept 
and  thus  took  form  as  the  original  creed  of  the  Council 
of  Nicoea.  With  the  additions  and  certain  minor  changes, 
it  was  as  follows  : 

"  We  believe  in  one  God,  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  all  things 
both  visible  and  invisible. 

"  And  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  begotten  of  the 
Father,  only  begotten  that  is  to  say  of  the  substance  of  the  Father,  God 
of  God,  Light  of  Light,  very  God  of  ver>i  God,  begotten  not  made,  being 
of  one  substance  ivith  the  Father  [^ofxoovaLov  tw  Trarpt],  by  whom  all 
things  were  made,  both  things  in  heaven  and  things  in  earth,  who 
for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation  came  down  and  was  made  flesh,  and 
was  made  man,  suffered,  and  rose  again  on  the  third  day ;  went  up 
into  the  heavens,  and  is  to  come  again  to  judge  the  quick  and  the 
dead. 

"  And  in  the  Holy  Ghost. 

"  But  those  that  say  '  there  was  when  He  was  not,'  and  that  '  He 
came  into  existence  from  what  was  not,'  or  who  profess  that  the  Son 

(t  c.  112)  see  Mansi,  Cone,  III.  398,  Hefele,  II.,  p.  77  (Eng.  Trans.),  and 
Schaff  in  Ch.  His.,  II.,  p.  537. 

1  Of.  Athanasius,  De  Deer.  Syn.  Nic.  .32  ;  Socrates,  H.  £".,  i.  8;  Hort, 
J)issert.,  p.  56  I  Stanley,  His.  of  East.  Ch.,  pp.  226  ff. 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  287 

of  God  is  of  a  different  'subsistence,'  or  'substance,'  or  that  He  is 
created,  or  changeable,  or  variable,  are  anathematized  by  the  Catholic 
church."  1 

There  is  another  ancient  Oriental  creed  to  which  a  deeper 
interest  attaches  than  to  the  creed  of  Csesarea  as  given 
by  Eusebius :  the  creed  of  the  church  at  Jerusalem,  which 
first  appears  in  the  Catechetical  Lectures  of  Cyril  (c.  350), 
though  its  age  must  be  greater  than  the  date  of  its  first 
appearance.  Within  recent  years  the  important  discovery 
has  been  made,  that  what  is  now  known  and  recited  as  the 
Nicene  Creed  rests  for  its  base  upon  the  creed  of  the 
church  of  Jerusalem,  which  has  been  revised  and  enlarged 
and  in  its  final  shape  has  superseded  the  creed  of  Nicaea. 
It  has  been  for  age's  the  received  view,  that  the  original 
creed  set  forth  at  Nicaea  was  expanded  at  the  Second 
General  Council  held  at  Constantinople  in  381  by  the 
addition  of  all  that  follows  the  sentence,  '  I  believe  in  the 
Holy  Ghost,'  with  which  the  Nicene  symbol  terminated,  as 
also  by  the  other  additions  in  the  body  of  the  creed.  But 
it  has  now  been  established  on  critical  grounds  that  the 
Second  General  Council  did  not  touch  the  creed  of  Nicsea 
but  reaffirmed  it  as  it  was  first  proclaimed,  as  if  it  were 
intended  to  remain  an  unique  document  permanent  and 
unalterable.  What  happened  at  Constantinople  which  may 
have  given  rise  to  the  view  that  the  Nicene  Creed  was 
there  enlarged,  as  well  as  reaffirmed,  was  the  presentation 
to  the  council  by  some  individual,  probably  the  bishop 
Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  of  a  creed  or  confession  of  faith,  whose 
object  was  to  show  that  he  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
Nicene  faith.  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  had  for  some  years  been 
affiliated  with  the  semi-Arian  school,  who  were  unwilling 
to  approve  the  '  Homoousion.'  At  some  moment,  previous 
to  the  meeting  of  the  council,  he  had  given  in  his  adherence 
to  the  Athanasian  doctrine,  and  in  a  creed  which  was  en- 

1  Mansi,  VI.  957.  For  the  additions  to  the  creed,  see  Hort,  Dissert., 
pp.  54  ff.,  and  for  a  comparison  of  the  creeds  of  Csesarea  and  Nicsea,  pp. 
138,  139.  It  was  Dr.  Hort's  opinion  that  the  Nicene  Creed  was  regarded 
by  the  council  as  a  theological  formula,  and  not  intended  for  a  baptismal 
confession  or  for  use  in  public  worship  (p.  108). 


288  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

larged  on  the  base  of  the  original  creed  of  Jerusalem  he 
may  have  borne  witness  to  the  change  in  his  attitude.  The 
creed  of  Jerusalem  about  the  year  350,  as  found  in  Cyril, 
read  as  follows : 

"  We  believe  in  one  God  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven 
and  earth,  and  of  all  things  visible  and  invisible ;  And  in  one  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God,  begotten  of  the  Father, 
very  God  before  all  ages,  by  whom  all  things  were  made ;  who  was 
made  flesh  and  became  man ;  was  crucified  and  was  buried ;  rose  on 
the  third  day;  and  ascended  into  the  heavens,  and  sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  the  Father ;  and  will  come  again  in  glory  to  judge  the  living 
and  the  dead;  whose  kingdom  shall  have  no  end;  And  in  one  Holy 
Ghost,  the  paraclete,  who  spake  in  the  prophets.  And  in  one  baptism 
of  repentance  for  the  remission  of  sins ;  and  in  one  holy  Catholic 
Church ;  and  in  the  resurrection  of  the  flesh  and  in  life  everlasting." 

When  and  by  whom  this  creed  was  afterwards  enlarged 
remains  uncertain ;  it  may  have  been  by  Cyril  himself,  as 
Dr.  Hort  has  suggested,  but  in  its  enlarged  form  it  is 
found  for  the  first  time  in  the  Ancoratus  of  Epiphanius, 
written  about  the  year  374,  and  this  enlarged  form  was 
designated  by  him  as  the  Nicene  Creed.  It  looks  as  if  this 
creed  of  Epiphanius  had  been  growing  in  popular  use, 
and  when  presented  by  Cyril  to  the  Council  at  Constan- 
tinople as  evidence  of  his  orthodoxy,  it  was  approved. 
This  creed  which  Cyril  presented  in  381,  and  which  is 
found  substantially  in  the  Ancoratus,  and  which  the  Coun- 
cil approved,  was  as  follows : 

"  We  believe  in  one  God  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven 
and  earth  and  of  all  things  visible  and  invisible. 

"  And  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  the  only  begotten, 
of  the  Father,  begotten  before  all  ages ;  Light  of  Light,  very  God  of 
very  God,  begotten  not  made,  consubstantial  with  the  Father,  by 
whom  all  things  were  made ;  who  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation 
came  down  from  heaven,  and  was  incarnate  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and 
Mary  the  Virgin,  and  was  made  man ;  He  was  crucified  for  us  under 
Pontius  Pilate  and  suffered  and  was  buried ;  and  rose  again  the  third 
day  according  to  the  scriptures ;  and  ascended  into  heaven  and  sitteth 
on  the  right  hand  of  the  Father ;  and  shall  come  again  with  glory  to 
judge  the  quick  and  the  dead;  whose  kingdom  shall  have  no  end. 

"  And  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord,  the  Life  Giver,  who  proceedeth 
from  the  Father,  who  with  the  Father  and  the  Son  together  is  wor- 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  289 

shipped  and  glorified,  who  spake  through  the  prophets.  In  one  holy 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church ;  we  acknowledge  one  baptism  for  the 
remission  of  sins ;  we  look  for  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  and  the 
life  of  the  world  to  come.     Amen." 

This  creed,  which  Cyril  is  supposed  to  have  presented  to 
the  Council  at  Constantinople  as  his  personal  confession  of 
faith  and  on  the  presentation  of  which  he  was  acquitted 
by  the  council  of  any  accusation  or  suspicion,  has  become 
known  in  history  as  the  Nicene  Creed.  When  the  confusion 
between  these  creeds  began,  or  at  what  time  the  creed  of 
Cyril  was  substituted  for  the  Nicene  symbol,  has  not  been 
determined.  In  431,  at  the  Council  of  Ephesus,  no  men- 
tion was  made  of  any  other  creed  than  that  set  forth  at 
NicaBa  in  325,  which  was  recited  in  its  original  form  and  con- 
firmed. The  same  Council  also  formulated  the  resolution 
that  "  no  one  should  be  allowed  to  present  or  write  or  com- 
pose any  other  creed  than  that  which  was  definitely  framed 
by  the  holy  fathers  at  Nicaia  with  the  aid  of  the  Holy  Spirit," 
under  penalty  of  deposition  or  anathema  QCanon  vii.). 
But  at  the  Fourth  General  Council  held  at  Chalcedon  in 
451,  tlie  creed  of  Jerusalem,  enlarged  as  it  may  have  been 
by  Cyril  or  as  found  substantially  in  the  Ancoratus  of 
Epiphanius,  was  presented  to  the  assembled  bishops  as  a 
creed  which  had  been  composed  and  authoritatively  put 
forth  by  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  fathers  at  Constan- 
tinople, seventy  years  before.  There  was  discussion  and 
opposition  when  the  creed  was  thus  presented,^  but  all  that  is 
important  to  note  here  is  that  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  still 
distinguished  between  the  creed  of  Nicrea  and  that  which 
was  now  called  the  creed  of  Constantinople,  though  allow- 
ing the  latter  to  take  its  place  by  the  side  of  the  former. 
At  some  moment  unknown  in  the  age  that  followed  the 
Council  of  Chalcedon,  the  latter  creed  was  substituted  for 
the  former,  and  invested  with  all  the  dignity  and  authority 
of  the  Council  of  Nicsea,  and  thus  has  come  down  in 
history  .2 

1  Of.  Mansi,  VI.,  pp.  630  ff. ;  VII.,  pp.  22  ff. 

2  Of.  Hort,  Dissprtation  nn  the  Constantmopolitan  Creed;  Harnack, 
in    Herzog,   B.E.,   Vol.    VIII.,   Art.   Konstantinopolitanisches   Symbol, 


290  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

The  expanded  creed  triumphed  in  the  churches  and 
superseded  the  older  creed  of  Nicsea  by  virtue  of  its  own 
intrinsic  merit.  Its  association  with  the  church  of  Jeru- 
salem is  more  precious  than  the  tie  of  relationship  between 
the  original  creed  of  Nicsea,  and  the  church  at  Csesarea. 
But  it  also  has  its  close  connection  with  the  first  great 
Christian  council,  in  that  it  quotes  from  the  creed  of 
Nicaea  its  most  striking  clause,  "  Light  of  Light,  very  God 
of  very  God,  begotten  not  made,  of  one  substance  with  the 
Father."  It  is  a  more  complete  creed  in  consequence  of 
its  introduction  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Two  Natures,  as  also 
in  its  expansion  in  the  latter  part  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  It  assimilates  the  early  Roman  creed  with  the 
creeds  of  the  East,  and  thus  furnished  a  symbol  acceptable 
to  the  entire  church ;  and  there  was  a  gain  when  the  anathe- 
mas appended  to  the  symbol  of  Nicaea  were  dropped  as 
incongruous  with  the  spirit  of  devotion.  It  does  not 
bristle  with  the  language  of  theological  controversy  as 
did  the  creed  which  it  supplanted.  It  possesses  a  musical 
rhythm  and  melodious  diction,  where  the  older  creed  read 
somewhat  roughly  in  consequence  of  the  injection  of  purely 
theological  phrases.^  It  sang  itself,  as  it  were,  into  the 
heart  of  the  church,  and  became  a  constituent  part  of  the 
language  of  devotion,  at  the  moment  of  high  exaltation  in 
the  ritual  of  the  Eucharist. 

The  creed  which  had  won  its  way  in  the  East  to  general 
acceptance  and  become  known  as  the  Nicene  Creed,  proved 
equally  acceptable  in  the  West,  supplanting  for  a  time  at 
least  the  Roman  symbol  known  as  the  Apostles'  Creed. 
The  history  of  the  latter  is  obscure.  It  fell  into  disuse  at 
Rome,  as  it  appears,  and  when  next  encountered,  it  has 
been  enlarged  by  several  additions.  It  seems  probable 
that  the  revision  was  made  in  Gaul,  where,  in  its  final 
shape,  it   is  first   found  in  the  writings  of   Pirminius,  a 

"Who  concludes  that  this  creed,  attributed  to  Constantinople,  was  pre- 
sented by  Cyril  in  his  personal  defence  ;  also  Swainson,  The  Xicene  and 
Apostles^  Creeds,  and  Art.  Creed  in  Smith  and  Wace,  Diet.  Christ.  Biog. 
1  One  of  the  theological  phrases  of  the  Nicene  Creed  was  omitted 
altogether,  toOt'  €<ttIv  eK  ttjs  oiiaias  tou  Trarpos,  which  had  been  inserted 
for  the  purpose  of  defining  the  foregoing  woi'ds  "  the  only  begotten  Son." 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  291 

Gallic  abbot  (f  758).  In  this  shape  it  returned  again  to 
Rome,  it  was  incorporated  in  the  Breviary,  and  is  known 
to-day  as  the  Apostles'  Creed.  As  it  stands  in  Pirminius, 
the  clauses  of  the  creed  are  separately  assigned  to  the 
Twelve  Apostles  as  follows : 

"  Petrus  :  Credo  in  Deum  Patrem  omnipotentem  Creatorem  coeli  et  terrae. 
Joannes:  Et  in  Jesum  Christum  Filium  ejus  unicum  Dominum  nostrum. 
Jacobus  dixit :  Qui  conceptus  est  de  Spiritu  sancto,  natus  ex  Maria  vir- 
(jine.  Andreas  ait :  Fassus  sub  Pontio  Pilato,  crucijixus,  mortuus  et 
sepuUus.  Philippus  dixit :  Descendit  ad  inferna.  Thomas  ait:  Tertia 
die  suiTexit  a  7nortuis.  Bartholomaeus  ait:  Ascendit  ad  coelos,  sedet  ad 
dexteram  Dei  Palris  omnipotentis.  Matthaeus  ait :  Inde  venturus  judi- 
care  vivos  et  mortiios.  Jacobus  Alphaei  dixit :  Credo  in  Spiritum 
sanctum.  Simon  Zelotes  ait :  Sanctam  Ecclesiam  Catholicam.  Judas 
Jacobi  dixit:  Sanctorum  communionem,  remissionem  peccatorum.  Item 
Thomas  ait :   Carnis  resurrectionem,  vitam  aeternam."  ^ 

These  two  creeds,  which  have  now  become  known  as 
the  Apostles'  and  the  Nicene,  have  undergone  no  change 
or  revision  since  they  received  their  final  shape,  the  one 
in  the  eighth  century,  and  the  other  in  the  fifth.  But  as 
has  been  shown,  they  are  in  substance  older  than  their 
present  form ;  they  have  their  roots  in  remotest  Christian 
antiquity ;  they  seem  almost  coeval  with  the  birth  of  the 
Christian  church.  The  circumstances  or  conditions  which 
attended  their  first  utterance,  as  expansions  of  the  baptis- 
mal formula,  cannot  be  traced.  These  circumstances  must 
have  differed  in  the  Eastern  church  from  those  of  the 
West,  —  a  difference  which  is  reflected  in  the  tone  of  the 
creeds,  that  of  the  East  being  more  theological  and  specu- 
lative, while  that  of  the  West  is  practical  and  concrete. 
The  one  gives  the  prominence  to  the  Christian  idea  or 
thought,  the  other  to  the  historical  facts,  and  thus  they 

1  The  Treatise  of  Pirminius,  in  which  the  creed  thus  enlarged  is  con- 
tained, is  entitled  De  singulis  libris  Canonicis  scnrapsus  (i.e.  Collectio), 
and  is  given  in  Migne,  Patrol.  Lat.,  Vol.  LXXXIX,  1030  ff.  For  other 
legendary  assignments  of  the  parts  of  the  creeds,  cf.  Hahn,  pp.  67  ff. 
The  additions  to  the  early  form  of  the  creed  consist  in  the  phrases, 
'Maker  of  heaven  and  earth,'  'He  descended  into  hell,'  'the  com- 
munion of  saints,'  the  Insertion  of  'Catholic'  as  a  designation  of  the 
church,  and  the  words  '  the  life  everlasting.'  See  Harnack,  Das  Apost. 
Glaubensbekenntniss,  p.  28. 


292  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

supplement  each  other  when  taken  together.  "  A  religion 
that  is  a  true  religion,"  as  Coleridge  has  said,  "  must  con- 
sist of  ideas  and  facts  both ;  not  of  ideas  alone  without 
facts,  for  then  it  would  be  a  mere  philosophy;  nor  of 
facts  alone  without  ideas  of  which  those  facts  are  the 
symbols,  or  out  of  which  they  arise,  or  upon  which  they 
are  grounded,  for  then  it  would  be  a  mere  history." 

The  difference  in  tone  between  the  two  creeds  may 
explain  in  part  why  it  was  that  after  the  Apostles'  Creed 
had  been  supplanted  at  Rome  and  the  Nicene  Creed  had 
been  given  the  place  of  honor  in  the  eucharistic  office, 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  after  its  expansion  in  Gaul,  should 
have  returned  again  to  Rome  and  resumed  its  ancient  im- 
portance. The  moment  when  the  Apostles'  Creed  was  thus 
restored  to  Rome  may  coincide  in  a  general  way  with  the 
growing  alienation  between  the  Eastern  and  Western 
churches,  when  the  church  in  the  West  was  feeling  an 
increasing  sense  of  its  own  importance,  when  it  even  took 
the  liberty  of  adding  to  the  Nicene  symbol  the  filioque, 
and  of  formulating  anew,  for  its  own  use,  the  Catholic 
faith,  as  in  the  creed  commonly  called  the  Athanasian. 
While  the  Nicene  Creed  may  possess  a  certain  external 
authority  which  the  Apostles'  Creed  cannot  exhibit,  inas- 
much as  it  can  claim  the  sanction  of  General  Councils,  yet 
the  Apostles'  Creed  without  this  sanction  has  been  re- 
ceived in  the  West  as  of  equal  prestige.  While  the  Apos- 
tles' Creed  is  unknown  in  the  Greek  church,  yet  in 
Western  Christendom  it  has  become  the  baptismal  Con- 
fession of  Faith,  and  surpasses  the  Nicene  symbol  in  its 
wide  and  almost  general  acceptation.  It  has  become  the 
creed  of  the  laity,  the  briefest  form  in  which  the  Christian 
faith  has  been  presented. 

The  Nicene  Creed  has  a  grander  and  more  majestic 
tone :  it  embodies  the  consciousness  of  victory  of  the 
Catholic  faith ;  it  recalls,  as  one  recites  it,  the  eventful 
moments  in  the  history  of  the  church.  But  it  is  theological 
and  controversial  even  in  the  moderated  form  in  which  it 
has  come  down  to  us  from  the  Fourth  General  Council. 
Its  opening  note,  "  I  believe  in  07ie  God,"  recalls  the  chal- 


THE   CATHOLIC   CREEDS  293 

lenge  of  Christianity  to  the  many  gods  of  heathenism,  and 
the  long  conflicts,  the  persecutions,  which  the  church  en- 
dured, until  at  last  it  became  manifest  that  the  one  God 
was  supreme  in  all  the  earth.  The  declaration  of  the  one 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  as  consubstantial  or  of  the  same  essence 
with  the  Father  recalls  the  Arian  controversy,  in  which 
this  truth  was  denied.  The  emphatic  language,  "who  came 
down  and  was  incarnate  by  the  Holy  Ghost  of  the  Virgin 
Mary  and  was  made  man,"  was  a  challenge  to  the  heathen 
world.  The  word  '  incarnate '  is  a  reminder  of  other 
controversies,  about  the  double  nature  of  the  person  of 
Christ,  when  the  patriarchs  of  Constantinople  and  Alex- 
andria—  the  theological  schools  of  Antioch  and  Alexan- 
dria—  were  unable  to  agree  as  to  the  meaning  of  the 
incarnation,  and  the  church  was  rent  with  dissensions  which 
finally  ultimated  in  schisms  which  have  not  yet  been  over- 
come. Another  obscure  and  difficult  controversy  may  be 
hinted  at  in  the  clause,  "•  whose  kingdom  shall  have  no 
end,"  which  reminds  one  of  some  of  the  more  painful  in- 
cidents in  the  progress  of  the  conflict  between  Athanasius 
and  his  opponents.  Again,  a  subtle  theological  principle 
is  indicated  in  the  clause  which  speaks  of  Christ  as  the 
"Light  of  Light"  (^<i>(o<;  eV  ^I'fUTo's),  in  which  the  essence 
of  Deity  seems  to  be  postulated  as  Light,  which  is  and 
always  has  been  the  fundamental  conviction  of  the  Ori- 
ental church,  as  compared  with  the  later  theology  of  the 
West,  which  laid  the  stress  upon  the  Will  of  God  as  the 
inmost  of  the  divine  attributes ;  or,  still  further,  these 
three  clauses,  now  so  difficult  to  interpret  by  any  one  un- 
familiar with  ancient  theosophic  development,  which,  when 
they  are  translated  literally,  read,  God  from  or  out  of  God, 
Light  out  of  Liglit,  Very  God  out  of  very  God,  a  reminder 
of  the  theories  of  emanation  or  evolution,  which  embar- 
rassed ancient  speculative  systems,  and  which  were  over- 
come by  the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  incarnation,  till 
these  words  as  originally  interpreted  carried  no  longer 
their  ancient  emphasis,  but  have  become  equivalent  to 
the  coequality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father.  And,  again, 
in  the   doctrine  concerning  "  The  Holy  Ghost,  the  Lord 


294  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

and  Giver  of  Life,"  one  remembers  that  the  clause  "  who 
proceedeth  from  the  Father,  who,  with  the  Father  and 
the  Son  together  (or  coequally),  is  worshipped  and  glori- 
fied "  bears  its  protest  against  those  who  reduced  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  a  creature,  —  supernatural,  it  is  true,  but  called 
into  existence  by  the  Son ;  or,  in  "  the  one  baptism  for  the 
remission  of  sins,"  the  attention  is  called  to  painful  dis- 
cussions which  agitated  the  church  in  the  third  century, 
as  to  whether  the  baptism  by  heretics  was  valid. 

From  these  reminders  of  religious  controversy  or  these 
enduring  associations  of  conflicts  and  of  victories  in  the 
Catholic  church,  the  Apostle's  Creed  carries  us  back  to 
an  earlier  age  in  which  they  had  not  as  yet  arisen,  —  the 
atmosphere  of  peace  and  simplicity.  In  its  undogmatic 
character,  it  appeals  more  directly  to  the  universal  Chris- 
tian instincts.  Even  in  those  clauses  which  were  added 
to  it  in  Gaul,  by  Firminius  or  by  some  other  writer,  which 
the  Nicene  Creed  does  not  contain,  —  "  He  descended  into 
Hades,"  and  "the  communion  of  saints,"  —  there  is  no 
association  with  controversy ;  they  are  the  vistas  of  the 
spiritual  imagination,  whose  significance  has  never  been 
authoritatively  defined  or  about  which  opinion  has  dif- 
fered, but  in  which  all  may  find  the  elements  of  divine 
hope  and  consolation. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE   DOCTRINE  OF  THE  TRINITY  —  ITS  PLACE  IN   HISTORY 
AND   ITS   RELATION   TO   HUMAN   PROGRESS 


It  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  ancient  theology,  that  it 
fastened  upon  the  Person  of  Christ  as  the  essence  of  the 
Christian  faith.  We  can  conceive  that  a  different  course 
might  have  been  followed,  —  that  either  the  ethical  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  as  given  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  or  else 
the  experience  of  St.  Paul,  which  gave  prominence  to  the 
atoning  death  of  Christ  in  order  to  the  forgiveness  of  sin, 
might  have  been  regarded  as  the  central  dominating  prin- 
ciple of  the  new  religion.  These  important  and  vital 
aspects  of  Christianity  were  not,  indeed,  neglected  by  the 
ancient  cliurch,  but  they  were  subordinated  to  what  was 
held  as  the  supreme  issue,  — -  the  Person  of  Christ,  as  con- 
centrating in  Himself  the  new  life  and  the  light  that  had 
come  into  the  world.  Those  passages  in  the  evangelical 
narratives  which  arrested  attention,  as  the  most  marvel- 
lous words  that  had  ever  fallen  from  human  lips,  were 
such  as  these  —  "  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  are  weary  and 
heavy  laden  and  I  will  give  you  rest'"';  '■'■  Where  tivo  or  three 
are  gathered  together  in  my  name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst 
of  them^\'  "/am  the  way  and  the  truth  and  the  life^\-  "/ 
am  the  light  of  the  world ";  "  /  am  come  that  they  might 
have  life,  and  that  they  might  have  it  more  abundayitly.^'' 
The  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  of  God  in  Christ,  and  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  which  gives  it  expression,  became 
therefore  in  Greek  theology,  from  the  first,  the  all-absorb- 
ing tlieme,  whether  to  the  heart  of  faith  or  to  the  Christian 
intellect  seeking  for  some  adequate  formula  in  which  to 
embody  the  fulness  of  its  conviction.      But  such  a  con- 

295 


296  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

viction  in  regard  to  the  person  of  the  founder  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith  could  not  have  existed  without  leaving  deep  and 
permanent  impression  upon  Christian  institutions.  And 
it  must  also  have  had,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  an  influ- 
ence upon  human  progress  and  the  development  of  the 
social  order.  For  this  reason  the  leading  doctrines  of 
Christianity  demand  a  survey,  however  brief  and  cursory, 
in  a  history  of  the  institutions  which  have  been  the  out- 
growth of  the  Christian  spirit.  It  may  not  be  possible  to 
demonstrate  the  connection  as  having  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect,  but  at  least  it  can  be  shown  that  the  faith  in 
Christ  as  the  incarnate  and  coequal  Son  of  God  has  never 
lost  its  hold  upon  the  Christian  consciousness,  that  it  has 
been  the  antecedent  of  the  changes  which  have  modified, 
if  not  created,  our  modern  civilization. i 

The  formula  of  the  Trinity  grew,  like  the  Catholic  creeds, 
out  of  the  declaration  of  the  divine  name  as  given  in  the 
New  Testament, — the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy 
Ghost.  In  the  writings  of  St.  Paul,  the  threefold  name 
appears  at  every  turn,  with  every  variety  of  utterance  and 
application.  It  was  the  formula  of  benediction,  —  the  love 
of  the  Father,  the  grace  of  Christ,  the  fellowship  of  the 
Spirit.  It  was  the  rule  of  the  religious  life,  —  through  Him 
(Christ)  we  have  access  by  one  Spirit  unto  the  Father. 
The  three  are  presented  as  distinct,  and  yet  associated  in 
unity ;  the  language  used  in  speaking  of  each  implies  distinct 
personality  ;  but  unity  is  assumed  as  if  they  were  one. 
They  are  represented  as  having  distinct  functions,  but 
there  is  no  scrupulous  effort  to  maintain  uniformity  or 
consistency  when  describing  their  work  ;  to  each  alike  is 
ascribed  the  work  of  creation,  of  redemption,  and  sanctifica- 
tion,  and  yet  it  is  also  primarily  the  Father  who  creates, 
the  Son  who  redeems,  the  Spirit  who  sanctifies.  As  the 
threefold  divine  name  appears  in  the  New  Testament,  so 
also  it  appears  in  the  litei'ature  of  the  early  church.  There 
is  distinction  and  discrimination,  but  unity  is  assumed. 
There  is  a  certain  gradation  of  rank,  —  it  is  the  Father, 

^  For  an  interesting  discussion  of  tliis  point  in  some  of  its  phases,  cf. 
Bois,  Le  Dogme  Grec  et  la  Civilization,  1893, 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    TMNITY  297 

the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  but  the  three  appear  as  co- 
equal in  the  possession  of  divine  attributes. 

The  triune  name  of  Deity  in  the  Christian  revelation  cor- 
responds with  the  large  divisions  of  religious  experience  as 
they  have  been  known  in  history,  or  as  they  existed  in  the 
Roman  Empire  at  the  coming  of  Christ.  The  ancient  re- 
ligions recognized  a  divine  life  in  nature,  some  overarching 
providence  which  controls  human  destiny.  If  this  divine 
life  were  identified  with  outward  nature,  or  believed  to 
be  embodied  in  natural  phenomena,  we  have  the  nature- 
religions  as  they  are  called,  in  which  the  various  forces  of 
nature  were  deified,  or  its  most  striking  objects  appeared  to 
the  imagination  as  worthy  of  worship.  Sun,  moon,  and 
stars  became  objects  of  reverence  in  which  some  deity 
dwelt;  there  was  a  spirit  in  the  ocean  and  in  rivers,  in 
mountain  or  forest,  or  in  the  under-world.  Such  was  the 
Egyptian  religion  in  its  origin  and  history,  where  the  divine 
life  was  worsliipped  as  indwelling  in  the  animal  creation. 
There  were,  however,  other  religions,  in  which  the  con- 
science was  more  active,  and  the  effort  was  made  to  sepa- 
rate the  Divine  Being  from  the  work  of  His  hands.  Such 
was  Judaism,  whose  history  was  one  of  conflict  with  the 
nature-religions,  till  it  triumphed  over  the  temptations  they 
offered  by  the  growing  conviction  that  nature  was  under 
the  power  of  God  as  its  Creator,  and  by  the  steadfast  re- 
fusal to  identify  Deity  with  His  creation.  But  even  be- 
neath the  nature-religions  a  similar  effort  may  be  detected 
to  gain  unity  by  postulating  some  central  force  to  which 
the  phenomena  of  nature  were  subordinated. 

There  was  another  religious  attitude,  of  which  Greek  re- 
ligion is  the  type,  which  magnified  men  and  worshipped 
great  heroes,  calling  them  sons  of  God,  holding  them  to  be 
embodiments  in  some  special  degree  of  the  divine  life. 
While  Greek  religion  did  not  disown  the  worship  of  nat- 
ure as  containing  a  divine  life,  yet  it  had  risen  so  far 
above  the  nature-worships,  that  its  favorite  divinities  were 
deified  men,  who  had  wrous^ht  g^reat  deeds  in  human  his- 
tory,  or  were  distinguished  above  their  fellows  by  the  pos- 
session of  rare  endowments.     Thus  it  contained  the  germ 


298  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

of  the  truth  that  humanity  exhibits  in  some  higher,  closer 
way  than  outward  nature  the  manifestation  or  revelation 
of  divine  power  and  will. 

There  was  a  third  attitude,  which  Avas  never  v/ithout  its 
witnesses  in  any  of  the  forms  of  old  religion,  which  may 
be  defined,  in  a  general  way,  as  the  recognition  of  some 
divine  voice  speaking  in  the  mysterious  depths  of  the  human 
soul,  disturbing  the  inner  life  and  manifesting  itself  in 
strange  and  even  repulsive  ways,  —  those  inward  motions 
of  the  human  spirit,  which  do  not  rest  contented  with  the 
manifestations  of  Deity  in  outward  nature  or  in  the  favored 
sons  of  humanit}^,  which  do  not  seek  to  appease  the  divine 
by  external  offerings  in  sacrifice,  but  which  prescribe  the 
offering  of  the  inward  self  as  the  only  oblation  which  God 
demands.  St.  Paul  has  given  the  phrase  which  describes 
the  tumultuous  life  of  the  spirit  within  a  man  when  moved 
by  the  divine,  —  "the  groanings  which  cannot  be  uttered." 
Hence,  every  religion  has  had  its  devotees,  who  seek  the 
satisfaction  which  the  soul  demands  in  isolation  and  con- 
templation, in  the  mortification  and  torture  of  the  body. 
That  which  was  ultimately  to  be  highest  in  religion  assumes 
at  first  the  aspect  of  what  is  lowest,  most  irrational,  or  most 
repulsive.  Such  are  the  forms  of  monasticism  in  every  age 
and  country. 

These  three  attitudes  in  religious  history  follow  this 
order  of  development,  —  that  the  nature-religions  come  first, 
then  follows  the  recognition  of  the  relation  of  Deity  with 
humanity  as  closer  and  higher  than  that  which  nature 
sustains,  and  lastly  comes  the  effort  to  find  the  relation  of 
God  to  the  inner  spirit  of  the  individual  man  as  something 
•deeper  and  more  important  than  any  external  revelation 
of  the  divine.  These  three  attitudes  appear  as  distinct 
and  separate,  each  complete  in  itself;  they  have  given  birth 
to  religions,  which  have  satisfied  the  religious  instincts  of 
peoples  and  races,  as  though  each  in  itself  were  an  adequate 
expression  of  human  aspiration.  They  not  only  existed  in 
the  ancient  world,  but  they  still  exist  in  the  modern  world, 
distinct  and  separate,  each  claiming  to  be  an  adequate 
sphere  and  motive  for  human  existence.      The  study  of 


THE   DOCTKINE   OF   THE   TKINITY  299 

external  nature  which  gives  birth  to  science,  is  a  pursuit  so 
absorbing  and  so  rich  in  its  results  and  achievements  that 
all  else  appears  as  secondary  or  unimportant.  But  there  is 
another  sphere  of  human  interest  and  inquiry,  which,  to  its 
votaries,  far  surpasses  in  importance  and  its  vast  conse- 
quences the  study  of  nature ;  and  that  is  the  study  of 
human  history,  which  includes  not  only  the  course  of 
events,  but  the  biographies  of  great  men,  in  whom  history 
seems  to  be  impersonated.  If  science  reveals  God  as  mani- 
fest in  nature,  history  reveals  the  Deity  as  the  controlling 
will  in  the  career  of  humanity  as  a  whole,  until  the  convic- 
tion grows  of  some  remoter  purpose  of  the  Divine  to  which 
the  whole  creation  moves.  These  spheres  are  so  distinct 
and  separate,  that  rarely  or  never  does  one  arise  who  is 
equally  at  home  in  both.  The  scientific  student  who  has 
penetrated  deeply  into  the  secrets  of  nature  can  with 
difficulty  enter  that  other  realm  of  the  historian,  who 
explores  the  significance  of  events  and  circumstances  or 
gets  a  glimpse  of  the  glory  of  man  and  the  wonders  he  has 
wrought ;  while  the  historian  may  remain  blind  to  the 
significance  of  external  nature  in  its  relations  with  hu- 
manity. But  there  is  also  a  third  attitude  in  the  modern 
world  which  may  take  a  double  form  whose  aspects  seem 
to  have  no  relation.  There  is  the  department  of  literature 
and  poetry  and  art,  whose  significance  lies  in  the  inner 
revelations  of  the  contents  of  the  human  spirit,  disclosed 
not  so  much  in  event  and  circumstance  of  history  as  in 
the  motions  of  an  inner  life,  whose  deepest  source  is 
enveloped  in  the  mystery  of  the  human  personality.  Or 
in  its  other  aspect  it  is  the  sphere  of  personal  and  individual 
religion,  the  deeper  culture  of  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul 
of  man,  which  gives  birth  to  many  subtle  varieties  and 
shades  of  religious  experience.  It  is  rare  that  any  one 
preoccupied  with  the  demands  of  literature,  or  seeking 
satisfaction  for  the  questionings  of  the  soul,  can  feel 
entirely  at  home  in  the  sphere  of  the  student  of  science 
or  of  human  history.  What  they  take  from  these  depart- 
ments they  take  on  trust,  appropriating  as  they  are  able, 
but  are  not  competent  to  speak  with  authority.     Nor  does 


300  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

the  Cliiistian  heart,  absorbed  in  the  exercises  of  piety, 
greatly  concern  itself  with  the  revelation  of  God  in  nature 
or  in  history,  but  often  shrinks  from  them  as  if  they 
endangered  the  inward  communion  of  the  soul  with  God. 

Other  illustrations  may  be  drawn  from  Christian  his- 
tory, which  reveal,  as  still  existing  and  productive,  that 
tendency  in  the  older  world  to  beget  religions  which  shall 
stand  for  these  distinct  conceptions  of  the  one  divine 
revelation.  In  the  eighteenth  century  what  prestige  and 
potency  was  attached  to  the  so-called  religion  of  nature, 
which  was  based  on  or  deduced  from  the  observation  of 
natural  order  and  law,  at  a  moment  when  the  new- 
born natural  sciences  were  in  the  first  flush  of  triumphant 
vigor.  Under  the  influence  of  the  religion  of  nature 
as  then  expounded  and  practised,  historical  Christianity 
was  losing  its  meaning  and  value,  and  seemed  threat- 
ened with  extinction.  Again,  there  are  to-day  Christian 
churches,  and  notably  the  Church  of  Rome,  which  in 
reactionary  mood  asserts  historical  Christianity  as  of  pri- 
mary importance,  but  subordinates  the  religion  of  nature 
and  the  personal  or  individual  apprehension  of  the  teaching 
of  Christ,  till  they  find  no  adequate  expression  within  its 
fold,  till  science  and  free  inquiry  are  placed  under  the 
ban,  if  they  assert  their  original  birthright,  —  the  one  as 
endangering  the  supernatural,  the  other  as  resting  upon 
mere  subjectivity,  as  it  is  called,  with  no  basis  or  authority 
in  the  revelation  of  the  divine.  Thus  the  modern  world 
is  divided  as  was  the  ancient  world,  and  yet  beneath  the 
threefold  assertion  of  the  divine  activity  there  lurks  the 
conviction  of  a  deeper  unity,  and  efforts  are  made  not  with- 
out success  to  assert  it.  It  may  never  come  to  pass  that 
those  living  under  the  influence  of  one  of  these  forms  of 
revelation  will  be  able  to  do  justice  to  all  that  is  contained  in 
the  others  ;  but  yet  against  the  inborn  persistent  tendency 
which  not  only  distinguishes  but  separates,  wliich  constantly 
tempts  the  advocates  of  one  phase  of  religion  to  declare  that 
those  who  differ  from  them  are  worshipping  a  different  God, 
there  is  the  undying  protest  of  the  formula  of  the  Trinity, 
"  I  believe  in  one  God." 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  301 

If  the  course  of  Christian  history  discloses  the  enduring 
tendency  to  distinguish  between  the  revehition  of  the 
Father  in  creation,  and  in  the  order  of  the  visible  world, 
the  revelation  of  the  Son  in  the  redemption  of  humanity 
as  a  process  revealed  in  history,  or  the  revelation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  the  inward  life  of  the  individual  soul,  as 
though  either  of  these  might  constitute  a  religion  without 
the  others,  so  also  does  the  history  of  the  church  reveal  the 
threefold  consciousness  and  will  and  purpose  in  unity,  as 
if  no  one  of  the  three  were  to  be  excluded  or  subordinated 
to  the  others.  These  three  agree  in  one.  Beneath  the 
diversity  there  is  an  underlying  unity  which,  if  it  be 
not  denied,  still  asserts  its  claim,  and  at  least  keeps  the 
problem  forever  real.  When  unity  is  sought  for  by  the 
customary  methods  of  suppression,  the  higher  unity  is 
reasserted  by  division  and  schism.  In  the  ancient  church 
also  when  the  effort  was  made  to  overcome  the  nature- 
religions  as  by  the  first  Christian  apologists,  who  failed, 
however,  at  the  same  time  to  do  justice  to  the  divine  life 
as  revealed  in  nature,  the  principle  inherent  in  those  old 
religions  came  back,  and  entering  the  church  in  unsus- 
pected wa3^s  revolutionized  its  cultus.  When  in  the  an- 
cient church  there  was  a  tendency  toward  the  suppression 
of  the  inner  personal  life  by  external  authority,  when 
prophetism  was  discouraged  and  finally  banished,  there 
arose  in  monasticism  a  protest  in  behalf  of  the  inner  life 
of  the  Spirit  and  its  coequal  importance  when  compared 
with  the  interests  of  historic  religion,  —  such  a  protest  as 
the  world  has  not  witnessed  before  or  since.  Thus  the 
conflicts  of  the  church  and  its  inner  revolutions  attest  the 
coequality  of  the  three  distinctions  in  the  one  divine  essence. 
Natural  religion  or  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  historical  Chris- 
tianity or  the  worship  of  the  Son,  the  inward  experience 
wrought  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  these  three  also  agree  in  one. 
But  no  one  of  them  is  complete  without  the  others.^ 

1  Omnipotens  sempiterne  Deus,  qui  dedisti  famulis  tuis  in  confessione 
verae  fldei  aeternae  Trinitatis  gloriam  agiioscere,  et  in  potentia  majestatis 
adorare  Unitatem :  quaesumus  ut  ejusdam  fidei  firmitate  ab  omnibus 
semper  muniamur  adversis  (Miss.  Sar.,  In  die  Sanctae  Trinitatis). 


302  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  ^  differs  from  other  Christian 
doctrines,  in  that  it  appears  in  history  as  the  one  doctrine 
about  which  the  Catholic  church  was  agreed,  whose  procla- 
mation caused  no  schism.  The  definition  at  a  later  time  of 
the  Two  Natures  in  the  Person  of  Christ  was  followed  by 
two  successive  schisms,  the  Nestorian  and  the  Monophysite, 
which  have  never  yet  been  overcome ;  but  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  ultimately  triumphed  without  dividing  the 
church,  and  the  opposition  to  it  gradually  faded  away. 
This  doctrine  also  appears  as  one  to  whose  development 
every  part  of  the  church  contributed,  —  Gaul  in  the  person 
of  Ireneeus ;  North  Africa  as  represented  by  Tertullian ; 
Italy  by  Hippolytus,  Callistus,  Noetus,  and  Dionysius ; 
Egypt  by  Clement  and  Origen,  and  finally  by  Athanasius. 
The  Eastern  church  further  participated  in  the  discussion, 
as  in  the  work  of  Basil,  Gregory  Nazianzen,  and  Gregory  of 
Nj^ssa;  and  in  the  West,  there  were  Hosius  of  Cordova, 
Hilary  of  Poitiers,  and  Augustine.  But  even  further: 
when  the  process  was  complete,  it  appeared  that  those 
who  had  been  regarded  as  heretics  had  also,  by  insisting 
upon  partial  truths,  kept  before  the  mind  of  the  church 
the  diverse  elements  which  constituted  the  problem  to 
be  solved,  no  one  of  which  could  be  passed  over  without 
injury  to  the  final  solution.  Thus  the  various  forms 
of  Ebionitism,  which  was  the  perpetuation  of  Judaism 
within  tlie  church,  persisted  in  maintaining  the  worship 
of  the  Father  as  the  one  and  only  God,  subordinating 
Christ  till  He  appeared  as  one  of  the  prophets,  filled  with 

1  Cf.  the  histories  of  Socrates,  Sozomen,  and  Theodoret  and  Evagrius  ; 
the  writings  of  Fathers  Athanasius,  Hilary,  Basil,  Gregory  of  Nazianzus, 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  and  Augustine  ;  Petavius,  De  Trinitate  ;  Bull,  Defensio 
fidei  Nicaenae. ;  Waterland,  Vindication  of  ChrisVs  Divinity;  Liddon, 
Bampton  Lectures,  1866  ;  Coleridge,  Literary  Bemains  in  Works,  Vol.  V. 
(Am.  Ed.)  ;  Maurice,  in  Beligions  of  the  World  and  in  other  writings; 
Dorner,  Person  of  Christ;  Shedd,  History  of  Doctrine,  Vol.  I.  ;  Scott, 
Origin  and  Development  of  the  Nicene  Theology;  Gwatkin,  History  of 
Arianism;  Steenstra,  The  Being  of  God,  as  Trinity  and  Unity;  Gordon, 
G.  A.,  The  Trinity  the  Ground  of  Humanity  ;  Meier,  Geich.  d.  Trinitdts- 
lehre  ;  B&ur,  Dreieinigkeitslehre  ;  Schultz,  Die  Lehre  v.  d.  Gottheit  Christi ; 
Harnack,  Dogmengeschichte,  II.  183-302.  See  also  in  general  the  Doctrine- 
histories,  and  General  Church  Histories,  Hefele  on  the  Councils,  Gibbon, 
Decline  and  Fall,  etc. 


THE  DoCTiimE  OF  THE  TRINITY  303 

the  divine  power  beyond  other  men,  yet  not  rising  above 
the  pLane  of  humanity.  But  before  the  process  was  over 
even  Ebionitism  showed  a  tendency,  as  in  the  case  of  Paul 
of  Samosata,  to  exalt  Christ  to  the  honors  of  divinity. 
The  Gnostics,  who  were  for  the  most  part  hostile  to  Judaism, 
inclined  to  place  the  eternal  Father  in  the  background, 
dwelling  with  supreme  interest  upon  the  Sonship  of  Christ 
in  time  and  eternity  and  especially  in  the  dispensations 
of  human  history.  And  again,  it  was  the  mission  of  the 
Montanist  prophets  to  keep  alive  the  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  the  highest  form  of  the  divine  revelation,  and  this 
at  a  moment  when  the  devotion  to  Christ  and  to  historical 
Christianity  threatened  to  impair  the  vision  of  the  Spirit's 
influence. 

Again,  in  the  early  stages  of  its  development,  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  suffered  from  one-sided  efforts, 
now  to  maintain  the  unity,  at  the  expense  of  distinction 
and  diversity  within  the  divine  nature,  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  from  the  tendency  to  magnify  the  distinctions  so  as 
to  weaken  the  unity.  The  doctrine  known  as  Patripas- 
sianism  or  Sabellianism  was  not  without  its  attraction  and 
deep  inward  appeal  when  it  so  identified  the  Father  and 
the  Son  that  God  the  Father  was  represented  as  djdng 
upon  the  cross ;  for  the  world  was  hungering  for  the  truth 
that  absolute  Deity  was  in  sympathy  with  man  and  had 
come  to  his  relief.  But  there  was  a  deeper  undercurrent 
of  conviction,  which  refused  to  identify  the  eternal  Son 
with  the  eternal  Father;  for  there  is  another  demand  of 
the  soul,  calling  for  the  assurance  that  in  the  inmost  depth 
of  the  Godhead,  at  the  source  and  fountain  of  all  exist- 
ence, there  should  be  rest  and  peace  ;  sympathy  indeed,  and 
participation  in  all  that  affects  humanity,  but  without  pain 
or  suffering,  —  the  promise  and  the  pledge  of  immutable 
Deity  that  the  final  outcome,  after  all  the  fears  and  the 
storms  of  life,  was  endless  bliss. 

But  the  greatest  obstacle  to  be  overcome  in  formulating 
the  Christian  idea  of  God  was  the  prevalence  of  the  phil- 
osophical assumption,  inherent  in  all  systems  of  ancient 
tlioiiglit,  that  what  proceeded   forth   from  God  must   be 


304  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

inferior  to  God.  Such  was  the  tlieor}'^  of  emanation,  the 
ancient  equivalent  for  the  modern  word  '  evolution,'  which 
infected  the  speculations  of  Gnostics  or  Neoplatonists,  — 
that  what  came  from  God  was  stamped  with  the  badge  of 
weakness  and  imperfection  in  varying  degree,  so  that  the 
manifestation  of  life  in  all  the  grades  of  universal  exist- 
ence was  forever  deteriorating  in  its  divine  quality  from 
one  stage  to  another  of  imperfection,  until  humanity  and 
this  world  were  reached  in  the  lowest  stage,  and  most 
remote  from  Deity.  It  mattered  not  that  all  things  shared 
in  the  divine  life  to  some  extent,  so  long  as  this  depress- 
ing doctrine  held  sway,  whose  effect  was  to  separate  man 
from  God.  So  long  as  this  doctrine  prevailed,  no  recon- 
struction of  the  religious  or  social  order  was  possible.  Until 
it  had  been  overcome  humanity  was  exposed  to  oppression 
and  tyranny  without  redress.  The  church  Fathers,  Ter- 
tullian  and  Hippolytus,  Clement  and  Origen,  none  of 
them  quite  escaped  its  influence,  as  shown  in  a  tendency 
to  place  the  Son,  or  the  Logos  which  emanates  from  God, 
in  subordination  to  the  highest  Deity,  as  if  some  lower 
God.  Such,  at  least,  was  their  theory,  which  they  con- 
tradicted in  practice  by  worshipping  the  Son  as  coequal 
with  the  Father.  But  these  same  church  Fathers,  as  well 
as  heathen  thinkers,  were  also  striving  to  escape  the  con- 
sequences of  their  thought ;  so  that  Athanasius,  when  he 
appeared,  came  as  the  climax  and  culmination  of  many 
efforts,  the  long  process  of  the  centuries.  With  the 
doctrine  of  the  6/xoov<tlov,  that  the  Son  is  "  the  only  be- 
gotten, that  is  of  the  essence  of  the  Father,"  and  con- 
substantial  with  the  Father,  there  came  the  final  and 
essential  abandonment  of  heathen  principle  of  emanation. 
Again,  it  was  characteristic  of  the  controversy  about  the 
relation  of  Christ  to  the  Father,  that  while  it  was  begun 
under  the  influence  of  Greek  philosoph}^  and  indeed  never 
wholly  lost  its  dependence  upon  Greek  philosophical  no- 
menclature, yet,  as  time  went  on,  there  was  a  tendency  to 
translate  the  language  of  Greek  philosophy  back  again 
into  the  simpler  terms  of  common  life  as  they  were  used 
in  the  Gospel  narrative.      TertuUian  employed  the  term 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  305 

'  Son  '  (u/09)  as  a  substitute  for  the  word  X6709,  and  was 
followed  by  Origen,  who  employed  the  word  'generated' 
instead  of  'emanated.'  The  difficult  expressions,  Xoyo^; 
ivBcddero'i  and  A.0709  7rpo(j)opLK6<;^  which  embarrassed  earlier 
thinkers,  yielded  to  the  idea  of  an  eternal  Sonship,  as  the 
correlative  of  eternal  Fatherhood.  So  long  as  it  was  a 
question  of  the  schools,  debated  only  by  those  trained  to 
philosophical  discrimination  and  capable  of  drawing  subtle 
distinctions,  the  controversy  did  not  affect  the  life  of  the 
church  nor  disturb  its  peace.  But  a  new  issue  arose, 
which  was  also  a  clear  and  simple  one,  when  Arius  ap- 
peared with  a  new  teaching  unheard  of  in  the  church 
before,  that  the  Son  was  created  in  time  and  by  the  will 
of  the  Father,  a  being  supernatural  indeed,  but  inferior  to 
the  Father  and  of  a  different  essence.  Then  was  born  the 
formula  of  the  ofioovaiov  tm  Trarpi,  which  was  simple  and 
intelligible  to  the  popular  mind,  and  destined  to  be  fruitful 
in  vast  results,  —  the  Son  is  coequal  with  the  Father.^ 

II 

The  coming  of  Constantine,  the  alliance  of  the  Catholic 
church  with  the  Roman  Empire,  the  rise  of  Arius  and 
of  Athanasius  are  contemporaneous  events.  It  is  proba- 
ble that,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  even  if  we  could  not 
trace  the  internal  relationship  between  these  events,  there 
is  some  deep  inward  connection,  in  the  light  of  which  their 
interpretation  gains  clearness  and  significance.  Arianism 
may  be  regarded  as  a  tacit  understanding  of  the  terms 
on  which  the  union  of   church  and  state   reposed.     The 

1  For  a  just  criticism  of  the  Nicene  theology  in  its  formal  aspects,  cf. 
Fairbairn,  The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  c.  iv.,  §5.  "In 
contending  for  the  Deity  of  the  Son,  it  too  much  forgot  to  conceive  the 
Deity  through  the  Son  and  as  the  Son  conceived  Him.  .  .  .  The  church, 
when  it  thought  of  the  Father,  thought  more  of  the  First  Person  in  rela- 
tion to  the  Second  than  of  God  in  relation  to  man ;  when  it  thought  of 
the  Son,  it  thought  more  of  the  Second  Person  in  relation  to  the  First 
than  of  humanity  in  relation  to  God"  (p.  91).  These  defects,  which 
appear  in  formal  controversy,  tend  to  disappear  in  the  worship.  But 
they  could  not  be  fully  overcome  until  the  Third  Person  had  revealed 
Himself  in  the  inner  experience  of  humanity  in  the  slow  courses  of  history. 


306  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

fundamental  tenet  of  the  Arian  creed  may  be  regarded 
as  an  act  of  submission  to  the  Empire  ;  the  Arian  theology 
and  its  view  of  Christ  were  so  far  in  harmony  with  the 
principle  of  Roman  imperialism  as  to  support  the  claims 
of  the  emperors  to  absolute  authority.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  Nicene  faith,  and  more  particularly  Athanasius  as  its 
exponent,  stand  for  resistance  to  the  Empire,  and  in  the 
last  analysis  of  causes,  it  was  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
or  the  coequality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father  which  com- 
pleted the  disintegration  of  Roman  power  and  resolved  the 
Empire  into  its  original  fragments. 

Constantine,  it  is  true,  gave  his  approval  to  the  teaching 
of  Athanasius,  and  by  his  authority  helped  to  gain  a  nomi- 
nal victory  for  Athanasius  at  the  Council  of  Nicsea.  But 
hardly  had  he  done  so,  when  he  withdrew  his  sanction 
from  the  Nicene  symbol  and  co-operated  with  the  enemies 
of  Athanasius,  who  were  seeking  to  destroy  his  influence. 
Whether  Constantine's  acquiescence  in  the  Nicene  faith 
was  ever  more  than  a  formal  act,  or  whether  he  changed 
his  faith  and  became  an  Arian,  may  be  uncertain ;  but  at 
least  he  came  to  believe  that  Athanasius  was  disturbing 
the  peace  of  the  Empire,  and  in  this  conviction  he  was  not 
mistaken.  In  his  later  years,  Constantine  was  associated 
in  close  intimacy  with  members  of  his  own  family  who 
were  hostile  to  the  Nicene  formula,  with  bishops  like  Euse- 
bius  of  Csesarea  who  disliked  it,  or  Eusebius  of  Nicomedia 
who  rejected  it;  and  by  the  latter  he  was  finally  baptized 
in  his  last  sickness.  To  his  son  Constantius,  who  became 
sole  emperor  in  350,  Athanasius  was  a  persona  non  grata^ 
as  he  had  been  to  his  father.  Constantius  did  what  lay  in 
his  power  to  make  Arian  ism  the  creed  of  the  church.  The 
Emperor  Julian  (361-363),  although  a  heathen,  indifferent 
toward  parties  in  the  church,  could  not  be  indifferent  to 
Athanasius,  and  regarded  him  with  aversion  as  a  man  dan- 
gerous to  the  peace  of  the  Empire.  The  Emperor  Valens 
in  the  East  (364-378)  became  an  active  and  bitter  perse- 
cutor of  the  adherents  of  the  Nicene  Creed.  Those  bishops 
who  dared  defy  the  emperors  in  the  strength  of  some  new- 
born courage  were  men  who  championed  the  principle  of 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    TRINITY  307 

the  Homoousion^  —  Basil  and  the  two  Gregories,  and  in  the 
West  Ambrose,  who  had  sat  as  a  pupil  at  the  feet  of  these 
Eastern  teachers.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  did  not 
finally  triumph  until  the  new  city  of  Constantinople  rose  to 
power  and  made  itself  felt  in  the  counsels  of  the  Empire. 
The  proclamation  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  as  the 
true  Catholic  faith  by  Theodosius  in  380  was  followed,  in 
381,  by  the  declaration  that  Constantinople  was  the  New 
Rome,  second  only  in  dignity  to  the  ancient  capital  of  the 
Empire.  But  the  rise  of  Constantinople  was  the  signal  for 
the  rise  of  other  nationalities  in  the  East,  and  for  Rome  also 
in  the  West,  and  from  that  moment  may  be  dated  the  down- 
fall of  the  Roman  Empire.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  or 
of  the  coequality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father,  was  incompati- 
ble with  the  spirit  of  empire  resting  on  force  for  its  sanction; 
it  promoted  individual  liberty  and  national  freedom,  but  it 
meant  the  ultimate  destruction  of  an  imperial  despotism. 

The  Arian  conception  of  Deity  was  identical  with  the 
thought  of  God  upon  which  imperialism  rests  for  its  sanction. 
The  God  whom  Arius  proclaimed  was  not  the  constitutional 
sovereign  of  the  universe,  whose  will  was  in  harmony  with 
truth,  and  goodness,  and  justice,  as  men  could  read  those 
qualities  in  human  experience,  but  was  rather  the  arbi- 
trary absolute  will,  unconditioned  and  without  relationship, 
incomprehensible  to  man ;  a  will  which  no  insight  could  pen- 
etrate, which  called  for  absolute  unhesitating  submission. 
Arianism  was  further  in  harmony  with  the  usage  of  Roman 
imperialism,  in  that  it  deified  a  creature,  for  such  was  Christ 
in  the  Arian  scheme,  —  a  creature  who  did  not  share  in  the 
divine  essence  or  nature,  who  did  not  know  the  God  who 
called  Him  into  existence,  but  was  simply  the  agent  for 
the  execution  of  a  higher  will.  But  such  was  the  principle 
of  Roman  imperialism  also,  which  authorized  the  deification 
of  the  Roman  emperors,  who  were  sent  into  the  world  to 
enforce  obedience  to  the  will  which  sent  them,  and  when 
their  work  was  done  were  to  be  honored  with  a  place  at  the 
banquet  of  the  gods.^ 

1  The  teaching  of  Arius,  as  preserved  by  Athanasius  in  quotations  from 
the  writings  of  Arius,  known  as  the  Thalia,  is  as  follows :  "  God  was  not 


308  CREEDS  AND  DOCTRINES 

The  teaching  of  Athanasius  is  comprised  in  one  simple 
conviction,  that  in  Christ  God  had  entered  into  humanity. 
Since  God  was  eternally  the  Father,  there  must  have  been 
an  eternal  Son,  and  this  Son  was  coessential  and  coequal 
with  the  Father.  There  was  no  deification  of  Christ  in 
the  thought  of  Athanasius,  for  Christ  shared  in  the  divine 
essence  with  the  Father.  But  there  followed  in  the  mind 
of  Athanasius,  as  an  inevitable  inference  from  the  doctrine 
of  the  incarnation,  the  deification  of  men,  of  that  whole 
race  of  humanity  which  God  in  Christ  had  taken  into 
organic  relationship  with  Himself. 

The  writings  of  Athanasius  and  of  the  Greek  Fathers 
who  carried  on  his  work  bear  witness  in  a  striking  way  to 
the  significance  of  the  doctrine  of  the  coequality  of  the 
Son  with  the  Father,  which  had  been  set  forth  at  Nicsea, 
as  if  therein  were  involved  the  principle  of  human  freedom, 
in  every  form,  whether  national  or  individual,  the  eternal 
ground  and  sanction  of  the  dignity  of  man.  There  have  been 
other  teachers  who  have  proclaimed  these  truths  in  later 
days,  but  none  has  surpassed,  and  few  have  dared  to  rival, 
the  exalted  language  in  which  Athanasius  and  his  com- 
peers proclaimed  the  divinity  of  human  nature.  Only  at 
a  moment  of  exalted  enthusiasm,  before  the  inevitable 
decline  which  overtakes  all  human  movements,  could 
words  like  those  of  Athanasius  have  been  coined  —  "He 

always  a  Father ;  once  God  was  alone  and  not  yet  a  Father,  but  after- 
wards He  became  a  Father.  The  Son  was  not  always  ;  He  was  made  out 
of  nothing ;  once  He  was  not ;  He  was  not  before  His  origination ;  He 
had  an  origin  of  creation.  For  God  was  alone,  and  the  Word  as  yet  was 
not  nor  the  Wisdom.  Then  wishing  to  form  us,  thereupon  He  made  a 
certain  one  and  named  Him  Word  and  "Wisdom  and  Son  that  He  might 
form  us  by  means  of  Him.  The  Word  is  not  the  very  God  ;  though  He 
is  called  God,  yet  He  is  not  very  God  ;  by  participation  of  grace.  He,  as 
others,  is  God  only  in  name.  The  Word  is  alien  and  unlike  in  all  things 
to  the  Father's  essence  and  propriety.  Even  to  the  Son  the  Father  is 
invisible  ;  the  Word  cannot  perfectly  either  see  or  know  His  own  Father. 
He  knows  not  his  own  essence  ;  the  essences  of  the  Father  and  the  Son 
and  the  Holy  Ghost  are  separate  in  nature  and  estranged  and  discon- 
nected and  alien  and  without  jjarticipation  of  each  other  ;  utterly  unlike 
from  each  other  in  essence  and  glory  unto  iniinity  "  {Oral.  I.,  c.  2). 

For  the  Creed  of  Arius,  at  a  later  time  presented  to  Coustantine,  and 
which  is  reticent  about  the  points  in  dispute,  see  Socrates,  H.  E.,  i.  26  ; 
Sozomen,  H.  E.,  ii.  27  ;  Schaff,  II.,  p.  28,  and  Hahn,  p.  292. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  309 

was  made  man  that  we  might  be  made  God."  ^  Or  again, 
"  The  Word  was  made  flesh  that  we,  partaking  of  His  Spirit, 
might  be  deified."  ^  "  For  man  had  not  been  deified  if 
joined  to  a  creature  {i.e.  the  Arian  conception  of  Christ) 
or  unless  the  Son  were  very  God."  ^  "  He  has  become 
man  that  He  might  deify  us  in  Himself."^  "For  as  the 
Lord,  putting  on  the  body,  became  man,  so  we  men  are 
deified  by  the  Word  as  being  taken  to  Him  through  His 
flesh  and  henceforward  inherit  life  everlasting."  ^  This 
apprehension  of  the  result  of  the  incarnation,  which  Atha- 
nasius  never  tires  of  enforcing,  is  not  limited  by  any  prin- 
ciple of  election,  but  is  presented  as  if  the  consequences  of 
the  incarnation  extended  to  all.  "  He  first  sanctified  Him- 
self that  He  might  sanctify  us  all.  The  Spirit  as  a  precious 
ointment  is  poured  forth  from  Him  over  all  humanity. "  ^ 
"  The  world,  taken  with  guilt,  lay  under  the  condemnation 
of  the  law  ;  but  the  Word  took  the  judgment  up  into  Him- 
self, and  suffering  in  the  flesh  for  all  He  bestowed  salva- 
tion upon  all."  '^     Or  in  the  words  of  Gregory  of  Nyssa  : 

"  That  Deity  should  be  born  in  our  nature,  ought  not  I'easonably 
to  pi'esent  any  strangeness  to  the  minds  of  those  who  do  not  take  too 
narrow  a  view  of  things.  For  who,  when  he  takes  a  survey  of  the 
universe,  is  so  simple  as  not  to  believe  that  there  is  Deity  in  every- 
thing, penetrating  it,  embracing  it,  and  seated  in  it?  For  all  things 
depend  on  Him  who  is.  If,  therefore,  all  things  are  in  Him  and  He 
in  all  things,  why  are  they  scandalized  at  tlie  plan  of  Revelation, 
when  it  teaches  that  God  was  born  among  men,  that  same  God  whom 
we  are  convinced  is  even  now  not  outside  mankind?  For  although 
this  last  form  of  God's  presence  amongst  us  is  not  the  same  as  that 
former  presence,  still  His  existence  amongst  us  equally  both  then 
and  now  is  evidenced ;  only  now  He  who  holds  together  Nature  in 
existence  is  transfused  in  ws,  while  at  that  other  time  He  was  trans- 
fused throughout  our  nature,  in  order  that  our  nature  might  by  this 
transfusion  become  itself  divine,  rescued  as  it  was  from  death,  and 
put  beyond  the  reach  of  the  caprice  of  the  antagonist.  For  His  return 
from  death  becomes  to  our  mortal  race  the  commencement  of  our 
return  to  the  immortal  life."  ^ 

^  De  Incar.,  §  54.  *  Epis.  Ix.  Ad  Adeph.  4. 

2  De  Decretis,  c.  iii.  14.  s  Orat.  III.  c.  Ar.,  §  26,  §  34. 

3  Orat.  II.,  c.  Ar.,  §  70.  6  Orat.  I.  c.  Ar.,  §48. 
■^  Orat.  II.  c.  Ar.  §  69,  and  I.  §  60. 

8  Cat.  Mag.,  c.  xxv. ;  cf.  also  Greg.  Naz.,  Epis.  ad  Cled.,  c.  i. 


310  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

So  deep  a  conviction,  expressed  in  language  so  emphatic, 
and  shared  also  by  the  great  church  teachers  of  the  age 
could  not  have  existed  without  leaving  some  impression 
both  on  the  church  and  the  world.  We  have  here  the 
motive  which  strengthened  Athanasius  in  his  resistance 
to  the  Roman  Emperor.  He  has  sometimes  been  regarded 
as  a  theologian  fighting  in  behalf  of  a  dogma,  which  when 
riveted  on  the  church  limited  its  intellectual  freedom.  But 
his  true  character  is  that  of  a  national  hero,  fighting  for 
the  liberty  of  simple  manhood,  —  a  man  who  has  realized 
his  freedom  and  dignity  as  a  man  by  the  power  of  the 
incarnation  and  henceforth  will  defy  princes  and  the  whole 
tyranny  of  the  Empire,  in  the  cause  of  the  emancipation 
of  his  brethren.  The  same  characteristic  is  seen  in  the  other 
Greek  Fathers,  in  Basil,  in  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  or  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  in  Ambrose  also  in  the  West  and  in  Chrysostom, 
all  of  whom  had  caught  the  same  spirit.  These  men  alike 
felt  their  superiorit}^  as  free  men  who  had  been  redeemed 
in  Christ,  to  the  Roman  emperors.  They  boldly  asserted 
their  superiority ;  they  hesitated  not  to  reprove  the  heirs  of 
the  Caesars ;  they  threatened  them  with  the  divine  punish- 
ment for  their  injustice  or  iniquity.  In  this  way  was  the 
doctrine  of  the  incarnation  or  the  coequality  of  the  Son 
with  the  Father  invalidating  the  power  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  as  also  the  theory  that  the  will  of  the  Emperor 
was  the  highest  and  only  source  of  authority. 

From  this  point  of  view  the  period  of  fifty  years  which 
followed  the  Council  of  Niceea  reveals  the  meaning  of 
the  o/xoovaiov  as  it  cannot  be  revealed  by  theologica,!  com- 
mentaries, or  by  weary  analysis  of  phrases,  or  argumen- 
tative terms,  which  the  combatants  in  the  controversy 
employed.  It  was  a  struggle  of  the  Empire,  in  the  persons 
of  the  Roman  emperors,  to  subdue  one  man,  who  felt  him- 
self a  man  of  God  and  a  man  in  Christ,  by  the  power  of  the 
incarnation.  The  heathen  empire  had  attempted  to  exter- 
minate the  Christian  church  as  an  organization  and  had 
failed.  The  Christian  empire  attempted  a  seemingly  easy 
task  when  it  proposed  to  subdue  one  solitary  individual 
man,  but  the  result  was  a  failure.      The  same  task  was 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF   THE    TRINITY  311 

attempted  again  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  when  the 
power  of  the  revived  Holy  Roman  Empire  of  the  West 
was  unable  to  compass  the  destruction  of  Luther.  The 
analogy  between  these  two  men,  and  the  situations  which 
they  represented,  is  so  close  as  to  reveal  in  both  cases  one 
common  motive, — the  freedom  of  the  individual  man,  and 
the  freedom  of  the  state,  through  which  individual  liberty 
is  made  a  real  possession. 

From  this  point  of  view,  the  deep  interest  of  Athana- 
sius  in  the  cause  of  the  rising  monasticism  becomes  more 
clear.  For  monasticism,  under  its  most  obscure  and  re- 
pugnant forms,  was  still  a  movement  toward  individual 
freedom,  to  be  accomplished  by  flight  from  the  haunts 
and  associations  of  despotic  authority,  whether  political 
or  ecclesiastical,  as  well  as  by  the  more  immediate  com- 
munion of  the  soul  with  God.  The  eminent  champions 
of  the  Nicene  faith  were  all  of  them  in  sympathy  with  the 
monastic  principle.  Basil  and  the  Gregories  made  their 
preparation  for  the  ministry  under  monastic  training. 
Ambrose  was  its  sturdy  defender  in  the  West,  where  also 
Athanasius  endeavored  to  win  favor  for  the  new  institu- 
tion which  was  at  first  regarded  with  fear  and  dislike. 
The  Life  of  St.  Antony.,  which  may  have  been  written 
by  Athanasius  himself,^  breathes  the  air  of  an  emanci- 
pated manhood,  through  the  power  of  the  incarnation. 
St.  Antony  taught  the  people,  it  is  there  said,  that  "  the 
Son  of  God  was  the  Eternal  Word  and  Wisdom,  of  the 
essence  of  the  Father.'"  The  independent  spirit  of  the 
founder  of  monasticism,  as  he  is  called,  is  brought  out 
in  the  story  of  his  relations  to  the  Roman  emperors,  as 
if  it  were  felt  at  the  time  that  it  had  some  special  sig- 
nificance : 

"  And  the  fame  of  Antony  came  even  unto  kings.  For  Constantine 
Augustus  and  his  sons  Constantius  and  Constans,  the  Augusti,  wrote 
letters  to  him,  as  to  a  father,  and  begged  an  answer  from  him.     But 

1  Vita  S.  Ant.,  c.  69.  For  a  summary  of  the  discussion  regarding  the 
authorship  of  the  Vita,  of.  Robertson,  Proleg.  to  the  writings  of  Atha- 
nasius in  Sdcct  Library  of  Nicene  and  post-Xicene  Fathers,  Vol.  IV., 
pp.  188  ff.     Among  recent  writers  wlio  have  pronounced  in  favor  of  the 


312  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

he  made  nothing  very  much  of  the  letters,  nor  did  he  rejoice  at 
the  messages,  but  was  the  same  as  he  had  been  before  the  emperors 
wrote  to  him.  But  when  they  brought  him  the  letters,  he  called  the 
monks  and  said,  '  Do  not  be  astonished  if  an  emperor  writes  to  us,  for 
he  is  a  man ;  but  rather  wonder  that  God  wrote  the  law  for  men,  and 
has  spoken  to  us  through  His  own  Son.'  And  so  he  was  unwilling  to 
receive  the  letters,  saying  that  he  did  not  know  how  to  write  an 
answer  to  such  things.  But  being  urged  by  the  monks  because  the 
emperors  were  Christians,  and  lest  they  should  take  the  ground  that 
they  had  been  spurned,  he  consented  that  they  should  be  read,  and 
wrote  an  answer  approving  them  because  they  worshipped  Christ,  and 
giving  them  counsel  on  things  pertaining  to  salvation  ;  not  to  think 
much  of  the  present,  but  rather  to  remember  the  judgment  that  is 
coming,  and  to  know  that  Christ  alone  was  the  true  and  Eternal 
King."  1 

III 

The  work  of  Athanasius  was  resumed,  not  in  Italy  or 
in  North  Africa,  but  in  Gaul.  Already  had  Gaul  been 
closely  connected  with  the  East  by  the  missions  wliich  car- 
ried to  it  the  Christian  faith,  and  by  Irenseus,  who,  taking 
up  his  residence  there,  had  brought  with  him  something 
of  the  spirit  of  the  Eastern  church.  But  in  the  fourth 
century,  also,  Gaul  possessed  a  theologian  in  Hilary  of 
Poitiers,  who  was  at  once  original  and  profound,  —  capa- 
ble of  entering  into  the  subtle  distinctions  of  controversy, 
while  yet  maintaining  the  pre-eminence  of  the  spiritual 
issues  of  life.  Like  Athanasius,  he  regarded  the  question 
of  the  one  Godhead  with  the  triune  distinctions  not  as 
an  ingenious  problem  of  the  speculative  mind,  to  be 
solved  by  metaphysical  reasoning,  but  as  a  practical  issue 
involving  the  freedom  and  the  elevation  of  humanity. 
With  Athanasius,  he  recognized  that  the  doctrine  of  the 
coequality  of  the  Son  with  the  Father  was  the  inmost 
kernel  of  Christian  thinking,  but  of  even  higher  impor- 
tance for  the  Christian  life,  because  it  carried  with  it  the 
implication  of  the  nobility  of  the  human  soul.  He  re- 
sembled Athanasius  in  the  inferences  which  he  drew  from 

Athanasian  authorship  are  Harnack,  MoUer,  and  Eichhorn.     The  objec- 
tions are  given  in  Gwatkin,  Studies  of  Arianism^  pp.  98  ff.,  and  in  Farrar, 
Lives  of  the  Fathers,  I.,  pp.  385,  386. 
^  Vita,  c.  81. 


THE   DOCTKINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  313 

the  incarnation  of  God  in  Christ.  To  Hilary,  the  incar- 
nation was  a  witness  of  a  certain  inward  adaptability  of 
the  human  for  the  union  with  the  divine.  The  Eternal 
Son  was  to  him  the  divine  image  in  every  man,  the 
idea  or  pattern  of  every  human  soul.  Hence  the  incar- 
nation must  have  been  part  of  God's  eternal  plan  for  the 
revelation  of  Himself  to  man.  That  which  Christ  had 
accomplished  in  Himself,  the  elevation  of  humanity  into 
the  divine  essence,  was  also  henceforth  the  destiny  of 
human  souls.  In  Christ,  as  Hilary  taught,  humanity  as  a 
whole  had  been  reborn,  and  in  its  identification  with  Christ 
all  mankind  had  died  and  risen  again,  to  sit  down  hereafter 
with  Him  upon  His  throne.  The  existence  of  such  a  man 
in  Gaul,  at  a  critical  moment  in  history,  must  have  left  an 
influence  behind  which  could  not  be  effaced.  He  went 
into  exile  at  the  imperial  command,  a  living  illustration 
of  the  truth  which  possessed  him,  the  realization  of  a  free 
manhood  under  the  power  of  a  great  conviction.^ 

After  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  the  new  races  in  Western 
Europe  are  found  adhering  to  the  Arian  creed  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  Nicene  symbol.  It  may  seem  like  a  contingent 
circumstance  that  they  clung  to  Arianism,  as  though  they 
could  not  have  understood  the  subtle  argument  or  the  fine 
distinctions  by  which  Athanasius  and  his  disciples  sup- 
ported the  Homoousion.  But  it  had  not  been  by  argument 
alone  that  the  doctrine  of  the  coequality  of  the  Son  with 
the  Father  had  become  the  formula  of  the  Catholic  church, 
and  been  proclaimed  as  the  definition  of  catholicity. 
Rather  it  had  been  a  profound  conviction,  which  argument 
had  purified  and  deepened  or  adapted  to  the  intellectual 
methods  of  the  age,  —  a  conviction  of  the  true  relationship 
of  humanity  with  God,  which  the  influence  of  Christ  had 

1  For  an  exposition  of  Hilary's  thought,  cf.  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ 
(Eng.  Trans.),  Div.  I.,  Vol.  2,  pp.  399-420  :  "  We  have,  in  the  first  place, 
to  remark  in  general  the  high  estimate  he  formed  of  the  nobility  of  the 
human  soul.  It  is  not  of  foreign  substance,  like  the  body,  which  is  taken 
fi'om  the  earth,  but  springs  from  God,  and  is  a  likeness  of  the  image  of 
God  (imaginis  Dei  exemplum)  of  the  First-born  of  the  creation.  By  its 
thoughts  and  their  infinite  speed,  the  spirit  imitates  the  omnipresence 
of  God."  Cf.  also  Smith,  The  Church  in  Boman  Gmil  ;  Art.  Hilary, 
by  Semisch,  in  Herzog,  Beal  Encyc,  and  Reinkens,  Hilar,  v.  Poitiers. 


314  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

implanted  in  the  soul.  The  Arian  formula  commended 
itself  to  the  new  races  in  the  West  as  a  badge  of  difference 
and  distinction,  by  which  they  might  maintain  their  sepa- 
rateness  and  superiority  over  the  conquered  Roman  popu- 
lation, by  which  also  it  was  hoped  to  build  up  a  barbarian 
empire  in  the  place  of  the  Roman  on  whose  ruins  they 
had  trampled.^  The  Arian  formula  stood  to  the  barbarian 
peoples  of  the  West  for  the  rude  conviction  that  Deity  is 
primarily  in  its  essence  omnipotent  power  and  absolute 
will ;  as  the  same  formula  had  also  stood  in  the  Roman 
world  for  an  act  of  submission  to  the  imperial  will  of  the 
Roman  Emperor.  The  purpose  of  the  barbarians  to  sub- 
stitute another  empire,  based  on  the  power  of  conquest, 
was  defeated  ;  and  in  the  obscure  history  of  the  time  it  is 
evident  that  the  watchword  of  freedom  was  the  Nicene 
faith,  that  until  the  new  races  had  received  it,  they  could 
not  take  the  first  step  toward  building  up  a  permanent  order 
or  overcome  the  repugnance  of  the  Catholic  population, 
with  which  it  was  essential  they  shouldsomehow  become 
reconciled.  The  dark  scenes  in  which  the  Ostrogothic 
kingdom  expired  in  Italy  indicated  that  there  was  a  fatal 
weakness  at  the  sources  of  its  power  which  no  skill  or 
wisdom  or  good  intentions  could  overcome.^  Once  more, 
as  in  the  days  of  Athanasius,  it  became  the  supreme  issue 
between  Barbarism  and  Romanism,  whether  Christ  were 
equal  with  the  Father  because  sharing  in  the  eternal  di- 
vine essence,  or  were  rather  some  supernatural  delegate  to 
declare  the  divine  will. 

It  is  hard  to  believe  that  rude,  barbarian  warriors,  like 
Clovis,  were  sensible  to  these  spiritual  distinctions.  But 
when  Clovis  accepted  the  Nicene  faith,  he  was  hailed  by 
the    bishops  in   Gaul    as  a  second    Constantine  who   had 

1  "  The  fact  of  the  Arian  doctrine  being  more  easily  apprehended,  and 
hatred  to  the  Romans,  procured  the  confidence  of  the  Germans  in  Arian- 
ism  ;  and  it  soon  obtained  the  reputation  of  being  as  generally  the  Christ- 
ianity of  the  Germans  as  Homoousianism  of  the  Romans."  Gieseler,  Ec. 
His.  /.  461. 

2  Cf.  Hodgkin,  Theoderic,  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Nations  series,  for  the 
purpose  to  build  up  a  monarchy  which  should  include  the  peoples  holding 
the  Arian  creed ;  also  his  Italy  and  her  Invaders. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  315 

come  to  the  rescue  of  the  church.  That  he  was  in- 
structed as  to  the  significance  of  his  new  creed,  and  was 
aware,  at  least,  of  its  social  importance,  is  apparent  from 
the  writings  of  Gregory  of  Tours,  who  has  preserved  the 
reports  of  conversations  held  with  the  Arians.  These  dis- 
cussions are  interesting  as  disclosing,  despite  their  crudity, 
the  intensity  of  conviction  as  well  as  the  aggressive  zeal  of 
the  Catholic  Christian.  Thus  there  came  to  the  King  Chil- 
peric  an  ambassador  named  Agila,  who,  in  passing  through 
Tours,  combated  the  doctrine  of  the  church : 

"  That,"  said  he,  "  was  an  impious  statement  of  the  ancient  bishops, 
which  declared  that  the  Son  was  equal  to  the  Father ;  for  how  could 
he  be  equal  to  the  Father  who  himself  affirmed.  My  Father  is  greater 
than  I.  He  who  does  the  will  of  another,  as  Christ  did,  is  inferior  to 
Him  whose  will  he  obeys.  It  is  not  right  that  he  should  be  regarded 
as  coequal  with  the  Father,  who  called  himself  inferior,  who  bemoaned 
to  his  Father  the  liarduess  of  his  death,  to  whom  at  the  last  moment 
he  recommended  in  death  his  spirit."  ^ 

We  note  in  the  discussion,  as  it  proceeds,  the  negative 
attitude  of  Agila,  chiefly  concerned  in  denying  that  which 
the  Catholic  affirmed.  Leaving  out  of  the  question  the 
truth  of  the  issue  at  stake,  one  is  impressed  with  the  posi- 
tive richness  and  beauty  which  the  Nicene  doctrine,  as 
Gregory  enforced  it,  lends  to  this  present  world.  The 
Arian  Agila,  who  was  no  mean  opponent  of  the  Catholic 
bishop,  is  entangled  and  weakened  by  negations  :  "  The 
Son  was  not  equal  to  the  Father" ;  "There  was  a  time  when 
the  Son  did  not  exist "  ;  "  He  only  became  the  Son  of  God 
from  the  time  when  he  became  man."  Gregory  was,  at 
least,  inspired  to  utter  great  positive  aiSrmations :  "  The 
Son  of  God  was  the  Wisdom  of  God,  His  light.  His  truth. 
His  life,  His  justice  ;  since  these  are  essential  to  the  Deity, 
God  Himself  could  not  exist  without  the  Son ;  if  the  Son 
affirms  inferiority,  it  is  the  expression  of  the  grace  of  his 
humility,  for  he  also  says,  "I  and  my  Father  are  one"; 
it  does  not  make  him  inferior  to  God  that  he  obeys  the 
divine  will,  for  the  Father  is  in  the  Son  as  the  Son  is 
in  the  Father ;  if  he  laments  his  death  in  prayer  to  his 

1  Greg.  Tur.,  V.  44. 


316  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

Father,  yet  he  also  prays,  "Glorify  Thou  Me  with  the 
glory  which  I  had  with  Thee  before  the  world  was  " ;  to 
which  cry  the  Father  responded :  "  I  have  already  glori- 
fied Thee  and  will  glorify  Thee  again."  To  the  words  of 
the  Evangelist  which  Gregory  quoted,  the  Arian  made 
no  answer :  "  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the 
Word  was  with  God,  and  the  Word  was  God,  —  that 
Word  which  has  been  made  flesh  and  has  dwelt  amongst 
us." 

The  argument  then  turns  to  the  Holy  Spirit,  whom 
Agila  affirms  to  be  a  creature  inferior  to  the  Son  as  well 
as  to  the  Father,  because  it  is  declared  that  He  is  sent  by 
both,  and  he  who  is  sent  is  inferior  to  those  who  send  him. 
But  Gregory  warns  him  of  the  sin  of  speaking  against  the 
Holy  Spirit.  The  Son  of  God  has  come  to  prepare  in  this 
world  of  sin  a  place  in  which  the  Spirit  of  purity  might 
dwell.  Henceforth,  it  is  He  who  actuates  all  things,  giv- 
ing to  each  one  severally  as  He  wills,  and,  therefore,  ex- 
ercising the  divine  function,  one  with  the  Father  in 
kingdom  and  majesty  and  power.  Agila  finally  withdrew 
from  the  colloquy,  complaining  that,  at  least,  it  was  no 
crime  to  think  as  he  did,  as  though  Gregory  had  been 
abusing  his  creed.  But  hard  and  bitter  words  passed  be- 
tween them  before  they  separated,  the  Arian  declaring 
that  he  would  die  before  he  would  accept  the  communion 
from  a  priest  of  the  Catholic  church;  and  Gregory  declar- 
ing it  to  be  profanity  to  dispense  the  sacred  emblems  to 
the  dogs.  But  Gregor}^  adds  that,  later,  when  Agila  was 
enfeebled  by  sickness,  he  was  converted  of  necessity  to 
our  religion. 

Another  of  these  archaic  pictures  of  the  new  world  of 
the  sixth  century,  which  reveals  how  the  thought  of  men 
was  moving,  has  been  preserved  by  Gregory.  An  Arian 
named  Ophila  came  from  Spain,  bringing  presents  to  King 
Chilperic,  and  who,  on  arriving  at  Tours  on  Easter  Day, 
proclaimed  himself,  in  response  to  Gregory's  inquiry,  as 
of  the  same  religion.  But  the  bishop  noticed  that  while 
he  came  to  the  cathedral  and  assisted  in  the  ceremonies  of 
the  sacrament  of  the  altar,  he  did  not  partake  of  the  sacri- 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    TRINITY  317 

fice,  and  Gregory  was  convinced  that  he  carried  a  lie  in 
his  right  hand.  The  conversation  began  after  dinner, 
when  Ophihi  remarked  in  reply  to  Gregory's  further  ques- 
tioning, that  he  believed  in  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the 
Hol}^  Spirit  as  constituting  one  power.  "  Why,  then," 
said  Gregory,  "did  you  not  commune  with  us?"  "Be- 
cause," said  Ophila,  "  you  do  not  respond  as  you  ought  in 
the  Gloria ;  for  we  say  with  Paul  the  Apostle,  '  Glory  to 
the  Father  by  the  Son,'  and  you  say,  '  Glory  to  the  Father 
and  to  the  Son  and  to  the  Holy  Spirit.'  The  Son  has 
announced  the  Father  as  He  to  whom  glory  is  due :  '  To 
the  King  eternal,  immortal,  invisible,  the  only  wise  God, 
be  honor  and  glory  for  ever  and  ever.'  "  Gregory,  in  reply, 
contends  that  the  Arian  formula  deprives  the  Son  of  His 
glory,  as  if  He  could  not  share  in  the  glory  of  His  Father, 
because  He  had  revealed  the  Father  to  the  world.  It  had 
been  necessary  that  God  the  Father  should  send  His  Son 
into  the  world  in  order  to  show  forth  God  in  person,  so 
that  they  who  had  refused  credence  to  patriarchs  and  law- 
givers and  prophets,  should  at  least  believe  in  His  Son. 
Many,  it  is  true,  had  not  accepted  Him  ;  He  came  to  His 
own  and  His  own  received  Him  not ;  but  as  many  as  re- 
ceived Him,  to  them  gave  He  power  to  become  the  sons  of 
God,  even  those  who  believe  in  His  name.  Wherefore  it 
is  necessary  to  say,  "  Glory  to  God  the  Father  who  has  sent 
His  Son  ;  Glory  to  God  the  Son  who  has  redeemed  the 
world  by  His  blood ;  Glory  to  God  the  Holy  Spirit,  who 
sanctifieth  the  man  who  has  been  redeemed."  To  overcome 
the  fear  of  Ophila,  that  equal  glory  rendered  to  the  Son 
was  reducing  the  glory  due  to  God,  Gregory  appealed  to 
the  evangelical  narrative  where  God  Himself  appears  as 
glorifying  the  Son,  in  response  to  the  petition  of  the  Son, 
"  Glorify  Thy  Son,  that  Thy  Son  also  may  glorify  Thee."  ^ 
One  may  linger  over  these  scenes  in  the  early  morning 
of  Western  civilization,  as  carrying  the  germ  of  a  great 
future,  as  also  indicating  the  character  it  was  to  assume. 
Men  appear  as  living  in  the  light  of  great  convictions 
which  dispel  the  surrounding  darkness.  The  nomenclat- 
1  Greg.  Tiir.,  VI.  41. 


318  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

ure  of  Greek  philosophy  in  which  the  discussion  of  the 
Trinity  had  first  been  clothed  has  here  yielded  to  the 
simpler  language  of  Scripture  or  of  human  relationships.^ 
The  exaltation  of  Christ  implied  the  exaltation  of  human- 
ity. Ignorant  and  brutal  as  were  the  kings  of  the  new- 
monarchy  that  was  rising  in  the  West,  yet  they  were  not 
incapable  of  seeing  the  difference  between  the  Arian  and 
the  Nicene  theologies. 

IV 

The  Arian  creed  disappeared  from  Gaul,  and  from  West- 
ern Christendom,  as  it  had  also  yielded  in  the  East,  not 
in  consequence  of  persecution,  but  from  an  inability  to 
hold  its  own  against  the  rising  enthusiasm  which  waited 
upon  the  Nicene  faith.  While  it  is  true  that  political 
necessity  seemed  to  require  the  new  rulers  in  the  germi- 
nating nationalities  of  the  West  to  accept  the  doctrine  of 
the  coequality  of  Christ  with  the  Father  as  the  condition 
of  the  recognition  of  their  authority  by  the  Roman  popu- 
lation, yet  this  does  not  account  for  their  devotion  to  the 
Nicene  faith,  which  led  them  to  go  beyond  the  standards 
of  the  Eastern  church  in  the  effort  to  do  honor  to  the  name 
of  Christ.  The  addition  of  the  filioque  to  the  Nicene 
Creed,2  by  which  the  Holy  Ghost  is  declared  to  proceed 

1  "Hilary  tells  us  that  he  heard  the  Nicene  Creed  for  the  first  time 
only  when  he  was  about  to  go  into  exile,  long  after  his  baptism,  and 
even  when  he  had  been  some  time  a  bishop.  But  with  the  guidance  only 
of  the  evangelical  and  apostolical  tradition,  he  had  ever  believed  that 
which  the  homoousion  lays  down  and  that  which  the  homoiousion,  if 
truly  understood,  equally  implies"  (Smith,  The  Church  in  Roman  Gaul, 
p.  195). 

2  Cf.  Pfoulkes,  The  Church'' s  Creed  and  the  Crown''s  Creed;  Mansi, 
XII.,  for  the  synods  at  which  the  question  of  the  filioque  was  discussed  ; 
Art.  Creeds,  by  Swainson,  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.  The  origin  of  the 
filioque  is  still  obscure,  but  its  formal  insertion  in  the  creed  known  as 
the  Nicene  coincides  with  the  conversion  of  the  Gothic  king,  Reccarcd, 
in  Spain,  where,  at  a  synod  held  at  Toledo  in  589,  it  was  approved  and 
signed  by  the  king  and  bishops  present,  and  ordered  to  be  recited  at  the 
Mass  before  the  distribution  of  the  elements.  From  Spain  the  creed 
thus  amended  passed  into  Gaul  and  into  England.  It  was  approved  by 
Charlemagne  and  his  bishops  in  706  at  the  Synod  of  Friuli,  and  again  at 
a  council  held  in  Aix-la-Chapelle  in  809.  Mr.  Ffiiulkes  was  right  in  affirm- 
ing it  to  be  the  Crown's  Creed  instead  of  the  Church's  Creed  ;  it  was  the 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  319 

from  the  Father  and  the  Son,  may  have  its  political  aspects 
as  the  national  banner  which  divided  and  distinguished  the 
West  from  the  Eastern  Empire,  but  it  also  reveals  the  de- 
sire for  a  stronger  assertion  of  the  dignity  of  the  Son  by 
which  His  coequality  with  the  Father  should  be  more  com- 
pletely proclaimed,  and  the  last  seeming  trace  of  inferiority 
obliterated.^ 

If  this  interpolation  of  the  creed  betrays  the  influence 
of  national  motives,  so  also  does  the  hymn  Quicunque  vult, 
also  known  as  the  "Symbol  of  St.  Athanasius,"  which  con- 
denses into  rhythmic  formulas  the  dialectic  distinctions  of 
a  long  and  complicated  theological  controversy.  Its  exact 
date  and  also  its  authorship  have  not  yet  been  finally 
determined,  but  the  probability  increases  that,  in  its  origi- 
nal form,  it  belongs  to  the  first  half  of  the  fifth  century. 
The  suggestion  of  Waterland,  that  it  was  written  by  the 
bishop  Hilary  of  Aries  (f  449),  has  recently  been  reasserted 
with  a  strong  array  of  evidence.^  Hilary  was  claiming  for 
the  metropolitan  see  of   Aries  an  authority  over  all  the 

appropriation  of  the  Catholic  faith  by  the  Western  states  in  their  inde- 
pendent national  capacity.  But  the  pope  Leo  III.,  Charlemagne's  con- 
temporary, ordered  the  creed  to  be  recited  at  Rome  in  its  uninterpolated 
form,  though  not  denying  the  truth  of  the  Jilioque. 

1  The  doctrine  of  the  Spirit's  relation  to  the  Son,  as  implied  in  the 
Jilioqiie,  had  already  found  expression  in  writers  of  the  Eastern  church  — 
as  in  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  and  also  more  fully  in  Augustine's  book  on  the 
Trinity,  before  it  was  incorporated  into  the  creed  as  recited  in  Spain. 
Its  interpolation  may  have  been  at  first  an  accident,  or  through  ignorance 
of  the  exact  wording  of  the  creed.  Cf.  Art.  Holy  Ghost,  by  Swete,  H.  B., 
in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog. 

2  Cf.  Burn,  The  Athanasian  Creed  and  its  Early  Commentaries,  1896. 
The  creed  is  divided  into  two  parts,  the  first  dealing  with  the  Trinity,  the 
second  with  the  Incarnation.  In  this  respect,  it  differs  from  the  Apos- 
tles' and  Nicene  creeds,  which  are  expansions  of  the  baptismal  formula 
and  are  divided  into  three  parts.  In  determining  the  time  of  its  origin, 
the  negative  considerations  must  have  weight,  that  it  contains  no  refer- 
ence to  the  subject  of  the  Two  Wills  in  Christ,  which  was  defined  at  the 
Sixth  General  Council  in  680,  nor  to  the  Adoptionist  controversy  in  Spain 
from  785  ;  from  which  it  nmst  be  inferred  that  it  was  written,  as  Caspari 
has  maintained,  before  the  seventh  century.  While  the  early  history  of 
the  creed  is  in  some  respects  still  uncertain,  it  is  probable  that  it  under- 
went changes  by  addition,  till  it  was  known  in  its  present  form  in  the 
eighth  century  when  it  assumed  a  greater  importance  than  in  the  earlier 
period  of  its  formation,  in  consequence  of  political  motives  ;  yet  it  is 
evident  that  theological  as  well  as  political  motives  are  connected  with 


320  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

churches  of  Gaul,  the  anticipation,  as  it  were,  of  a 
national  patriarchate,  and  was  defying  the  claims  of  the 
bishop  Leo  the  Great  of  Rome  to  any  control  in  his  juris- 
diction. He  was  also  quite  competent  to  have  written 
the  creed,  in  virtue  of  his  careful  education  as  well  as  of 
his  known  theological  attitude.  He  was  connected,  as  was 
Vincentius,  his  contemporary,  with  the  monastery  of  Lerins, 
and  Vincentius  quoted  from  the  creed,  as  it  then  existed, 
passages  which  it  still  retains.  The  well-known  attitude 
of  Vincentius  toward  the  Augustinian  theology,  as  having 
no  place  in  the  Catholic  faith,  is  reflected  in  the  pointed 
language  of  the  opening  clauses  of  the  Athanasian  Creed, 
which  is  twice  repeated  afterward,  to  the  effect  that  the 
Catholic  faith  is  identical  with  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
from  which  the  inference  of  Vincentius  follows  that  specu- 
lations about  the  fall  and  original  sin  and  predestination 
are  novelties  which  have  no  vital  relationship  to  human 
salvation,  or  the  well-being  of  the  Catholic  church.^    From 

its  origin.  It  is  suggestive  that  the  ancient  Roman  Creed  should  have 
had  its  adherents  in  Gaul  at  this  time  wlien  it  was  no  longer  recited 
at  Rome,  and  that  its  final  expansion  into  its  present  form  as  the 
Apostles'  Creed  should  have  been  made  in  Gaul  and  not  in  Rome.  The 
Athanasian  Creed  resembles  the  enlarged  Roman  Creed  in  its  incor- 
poration of  the  phrase,  "He  descended  into  hell,"  but  in  place  of  the 
familiar  formula  of  the  Roman  Creed,  "Conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost, 
born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,"  is  substituted,  "  God  of  the  Substance 
of  the  Father,  begotten  before  the  worlds ;  and  Man  of  the  Substance  of 
His  Mother,  born  into  the  world."  The  creed  closes  with  what  may  be 
regarded  as  a  qualification  or  explanation :  it  is  not  the  acceptance  of 
dogma  which  determines  salvation,  but  the  character  of  the  life  :  "  They 
that  have  done  good  shall  go  into  life  everlasting  and  they  that  have  done 
evil  into  everlasting  fire."  It  is  possible  that  the  Athanasian  Creed,  even 
in  its  own  home  in  Gaul  was  misliked  on  account  of  its  numerous  and 
subtle  distinctions  and  its  reminders  of  controversy,  and  that  for  this 
reason  the  ancient  Roman  symbol  was  again  revived  and  enlarged  in 
order  to  overcome  its  use.  The  revival  of  the  Roman  symbol  may  have 
also  its  ecclesiastical  significance,  as  a  bond  of  unity  with  the  Roman 
church.  Cf.  Art.  Quicunque  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.;  Ommany,  The  Early 
History  of  the  Athanasian  Creed;  Lumby,  His.  of  the  Creeds. 

1  In  one  of  its  clauses  also  the  Athanasian  Creed  records  a  protest 
against  the  rising  tendency  in  Greek  and  Latin  Christianity  alike,  as 
shown  in  the  sacrament  of  the  altar,  to  reconvert  Christ  into  the  flesh 
and  to  worship  the  body.  Of  the  Person  of  Christ  it  is  here  said  that  He 
is  one  Christ,  although  He  be  God  and  man,  "  One  ;  not  by  conversion  of 
the  Godhead  into  flesh;  but  by  taking  of  the  Manhood  into  God.'" 


THE   DOCTRINE    OF    THE   TRINITY  321 

this  point  of  view  the  Athanasian  Creed,  in  its  original 
form,  may  have  been  not  only  the  symbol  of  a  national 
aspiration,  but  may  also  be  regarded  as  a  protest  in  behalf 
of  simplicity,  the  creed,  as  it  has  been  called,  of  a  liberal 
Christianity  in  that  distant  age. 

To  the  modern  mind,  construing  this  creed  as  a  formal 
document,  its  historical  associations  have  become  obscured, 
till  it  no  longer  interprets  a  vast  spiritual  movement, 
in  which  modern  society,  civil  as  well  as  religious,  was 
taking  its  rise.  Not  only  is  its  terminology  misleading, 
in  consequence  of  the  changes  which  time  has  wrought 
in  the  significance  of  the  Latin  word  persona,^  but  as  a 
creed,  when  it  is  regarded  as  such,  its  opening  statement 
seems  impossible  and  irrational  if  not  inhuman,  —  "  Who- 
soever will  be  saved ;  before  all  things  it  is  necessary, 
that  he  hold  the  Catholic  Faith ;  which  Faith  except  every 
one  do  keep  whole  and  undefiled,  without  doubt  he  shall 
perish  everlastingly " ;  or  its  concluding  statement,  — 
"  This  is  the  Catholic  Faith,  which  except  a  man  believe 
faithfully  he  cannot  be  saved."  But  these  words  assume 
another  and  a  different  meaning,  when,  no  longer  inter- 
preted apart  from  their  historical  associations,  they  are 
listened  to  as  a  voice  from  the  inmost  being  of  an  age  and 
a  people  who  were  in  mortal  combat  with  enemies  whose 
triumph  would  have  been  fatal  to  human  progress  and  free- 
dom. So,  at  least,  it  seemed  then,  and  there  is  reason  for 
believing  that  the  fear  was  based  on  real  grounds.  We 
must  judge  of  what  might  have  been  from  that  which  has 

1  The  word  persona,  as  used  in  the  Athanasian  Creed,  carried  at  first 
the  meaning  of  function  or  office,  nearly  equivalent  to  the  Greek  Trp6(xu)irov. 
Thus  in  early  English  it  became  parson.  But  the  modern  English  person 
is  equivalent  to  an  individual,  and  thus  is  very  remote  from  the  original 
Latin  persona,  and  its  use  in  the  creed  accounts  in  some  measure  for  the 
popular  tritheistic  view  of  the  Deity.  Upon  this  word  person,  as  thus 
used,  Canon  Liddon  has  remarked  in  his  Bampton  Lectures:  "In  the 
common  language  of  the  Western  church,  these  distinct  forms  of  being 
(in  the  Divine  Essence)  are  named  Persons.  Yet  that  term  cannot  be 
employed  to  denote  them  without  considerable  intellectual  caution " 
(p.  32).  If  the  word  jipj'son,  as  used  in  this  creed,  may  be  taken  as  the 
equivalent  of  personality,  which  is  something  lai-ger  than  mere  indi- 
viduality, it  would  not  inadequately  represent  the  force  of  the  Greek 
virda-Tdais  as  understood  by  the  Greek  Fathers  of  the  fourth  century. 

Y 


322  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

been.  The  Nicene  faith  prevailed  and  so  has  a  Christian 
civilization,  which  has  moved  steadily  forward,  despite 
great  obstacles,  into  the  light  and  the  liberty  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God.  Not  only  against  Arianism,  whicli  denied 
that  God  had  taken  humanity  by  the  power  of  the  incar- 
nation into  close  organic  relation  with  Deity,  was  the 
Catholic  church  contending,  but  in  this  same  period,  it 
was  girding  itself  for  the  final  conflict  with  Islam,  which, 
if  it  had  prevailed  in  Western  Europe,  would  have  de- 
stroyed the  fairest  prospect  in  the  world's  history.  Living 
in  the  consciousness  of  these  dangers,  a  creed  may  become 
something  more  than  a  theological  formula,  it  may  be  a 
banner,  a  war-song  or  a  triumphal  hymn.  In  its  glori- 
fication of  Christ  as  the  son  of  God  and  coequal  with  the 
Father,  whom  truly  to  know  is  life  eternal,  a  creed  like 
this  becomes  the  expression  of  the  Christian  heart  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  Mohammedan  formula,  — "  Far  be  it  from 
God  that  he  should  have  a  son."  The  rise  of  the  Athana- 
sian  creed  into  confessional  importance  coincides  with  the 
age  of  the  Saracen  invasion  of  Gaul,  and  with  the  great 
victory  on  the  plains  between  Tours  and  Poitiers  in  732, 
when  the  Mohammedans  were  driven  back  and  Christian 
Europe  was  saved  from  the  great  calamity  which  threatened 
it.  The  analogies,  therefore,  of  the  Quiciinque  vult  are  to 
be  found,  not  in  the  Apostles'  or  the  Nicene  Creed,  so 
much  as  in  the  song  of  Miriam  on  the  crossing  of  the  Red 
Sea,  or  the  hymn  of  Deborah  on  the  conquest  of  the  foes 
of  a  chosen  people,  or  the  war-cry  of  the  ancient  psalmist: 
"  Let  God  arise  and  let  His  enemies  be  scattered  ;  let  them 
that  hate  Him,  flee  before  Him."  It  was  in  this  spirit  that 
the  so-called  "  Symbol  of  St.  Athanasius "  became  the 
emblem  of  hope  and  deliverance.^ 

^  The  late  Mr.  Maui'ice  (F.  D.)  was  an  ardent  advocate  of  the  Atbana- 
sian  Creed,  although  thinking  its  recital  unwise,  in  view  of  the  prevailing 
dislike  to  what  are  called  its  "  damnatory  clauses."  He  maintained  that 
these  clauses  were  capable  of  a  truer  interpretation:  "The  name  of  the 
Trinity,  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  is,  as  the  fathers  and 
schoolmen  said  continually,  the  name  of  the  Infinite  Charity,  the  perfect 
Love,  the  full  vision  of  wliich  is  that  beatific  vision  for  wliicli  saints  and 
angels  long  even  while  they  dwell  in  it.     To  lose  this,  to  be  separated 


THE   DOCTltlNE   OF   THE  TRINITY  323 

There  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  the  Middle  Ages  to 
indicate  that  the  motive  was  ever  reversed  or  overcome, 
whose  influence  first  became  apparent  when  the  Nicene 
symbol  was  accepted  as  the  social  contract  for  the  adjust- 
ment of  relations  between  the  Christian  church  and  the  civil 
order.  When  the  Roman  Empire  accepted  the  Nicene  faith, 
its  dissolution,  as  empire  based  upon  force,  began,  and  the 
formative  process  also  appeared  which  tended  toward  na- 
tionality as  its  ultimate  goal.  The  revival  of  ancient  sen- 
timent under  the  form  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  was 
confined  in  its  influence  chiefly  to  Germany  and  to  Italy, 

from  this,  to  be  cut  off  from  the  Name  in  which  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being,  is  everlasting  death.  .  .  .  But  who  incur  tliis  separa- 
tion ?  I  know  not.  You  and  I,  while  we  are  repeating  the  creed,  may  be 
incurring  it.  The  Unitarian  may  be  much  nearer  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
than  we  are.  He  may  in  very  deed  less  divide  the  substance,  less  con- 
found the  persons,  than  we  do.  For  I  feel  myself  that  when  I  fall  into 
an  unchristian,  heartless  condition,  I  do  divide  the  substance,  I  do  con- 
found the  persons  inevitably,  even  though  I  may  be  arguing  ingeniously 
and  triumphantly  for  the  terms  that  denote  distinction  and  union  "  {Life 
and  Letters,  Vol.  II.,  p.  413). 

QUICUNQUE   VULT 

Whosoever  will  be  saved  :  before  all  things  it  is  necessary  that  he 
hold  the  Catholic  Faith.  Which  Faith  except  every  one  do  keep 
whole  and  undetiled :  without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly. 
And  the  Catholic  Faith  is  this:  That  we  worship  one  God  in  Trinity, 
and  Trinity  in  Unity;  neither  confounding  the  Persons  :  nor  dividing 
tlie  Substance.  For  there  is  one  Person  of  the  Father,  another  of  the 
Son  :  and  another  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  But  the  Godhead  of  the 
Father,  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  is  all  one  :  the  glory 
equal,  the  majesty  co-eternal.  Such  as  the  Father  is,  such  is  the  Son  : 
and  such  is  the  Holy  Ghost.  The  Father  uncreate,  the  Son  uncreate  : 
and  the  Holy  Ghost  uncreate.  The  Father  incomprehensible,  the 
Son  incompi-ehensible  :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  incomprehensible.  The 
Father  eternal,  the  Son  eternal :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  eternal.  And 
yet  they  are  not  three  eternals :  but  one  eternal.  As  also  there  are 
three  incomprehensibles,  nor  three  uncreated  :  but  one  uncreated  and 
one  incomprehensible.  So  likewise  the  Father  is  Almighty,  the  Son 
Almighty :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  Almighty.  And  yet  they  are  not 
three  Almighties  -  but  one  Almighty.  So  the  Father  is  God,  the  Son 
is  God :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  is  God.  And  yet  they  are  not  three 
Gods  :  but  one  God.  So  likewise  the  Father  is  Lord,  the  Son  Lord : 
and  the  Holy  Ghost  Lord.  And  yet  not  three  Lords  but  one  Lord. 
For  like  as  we  are  compelled  by  the  Christian  verity  :  to  acknowledge 


824  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

and  it  was  also  accompanied  in  the  divine  providence  by 
the  rise  of  the  papacy,  which  became  its  mortal  antagonist 
and  strove,  not  unsuccessfully,  to  neutralize  its  power. 
The  papacy  stood  for  law  as  the  larger  environment  witliin 
which  liberty  must  make  its  home.  When  the  modern 
states  arose  at  the  Reformation,  the  papacy  fell,  but  the 
larger  freedom  of  humanity  was  still  co-ordinated  with 
law,  that  law  of  national  life  which  had  its  origin  and 
guarantee  in  the  consciousness  of  a  free  people.  If  re- 
ligious and  civil  liberty  seemed  to  have  been  retarded  in 
their  growth  in  that  ancient  Gaul  whose  national  represen- 

every  Person  by  himself  to  be  God  and  Lord;  so  we  are  forbidden 
by  the  Catholic  religion  :  to  say,  There  be  three  Gods  or  three  Lords. 
The  Father  is  made  of  none  :  neither  created  nor  begotten.  The  Son 
is  of  the  Father  alone  :  not  made,  nor  created,  but  begotten.  The 
Holy  Ghost  is  of  the  Father  and  the  Son :  neither  made,  nor  created, 
but  proceeding.  So  there  is  one  Father,  not  three  Fathers ;  one  Son, 
not  three  Sons  :  one  Holy  Ghost,  not  three  Holy  Ghosts.  And  in  this 
Trinity  none  is  afore,  or  after  other :  none  is  greater,  or  less  than 
another;  But  the  whole  three  persons  are  co-eternal  together:  and 
co-equal.  So  that  in  all  things,  as  is  aforesaid :  the  Unity  in  Trinity, 
and  the  Trinity  in  Unity  is  to  be  worshipped.  He  therefore  that  will 
be  saved :  must  thus  think  of  the  Trinity. 

Furthermore,  it  is  necessary  to  everlasting  salvation :  that  he  also 
believe  rightly  the  Incarnation  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  For  the 
right  Faitli  is,  that  we  believe  and  confess :  that  our  Lord  .Jesus 
Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  is  God  and  Man ;  God,  of  the  Substance  of  the 
Father,  begotten  before  the  worlds :  and  ALan,  of  the  Substance  of  his 
Mother,  born  into  the  world ;  Perfect  God  and  perfect  Man  :  of  a 
reasonable  soul  and  human  flesh  subsisting;  Equal  to  the  Father  as 
touching  his  Godhead :  and  inferior  to  the  Father,  as  touching  his 
JNlanhood.  Who  although  he  be  God  and  Man  :  yet  is  he  not  two, 
but  one  Christ;  One;  not  by  conversion  of  the  Godhead  into  flesh: 
but  by  taking  of  the  INIanhood  into  God ;  One  altogether  ;  not  by  con- 
fusion of  Substance  :  but  by  unity  of  Person.  For  as  the  reasonable 
soul  and  flesh  is  one  man  :  so  God  and  Man  is  one  Christ ;  who 
suffei-ed  for  our  salvation  :  descended  into  hell,  rose  again  the  third 
day  from  the  dead.  He  ascended  into  heaven,  he  sitteth  on  the  right 
hand  of  the  Father,  God  Almighty :  from  whence  he  shall  come  to 
judge  the  quick  and  the  dead.  At  whose  coming  all  men  shall  rise 
again  with  their  bodies  :  and  shall  give  account  for  their  own  works. 
And  they  that  have  done  good  shall  go  into  life  everlasting  :  and  they 
that  have  done  evil  into  everlasting  fire.  This  is  the  Catholic  Faith  : 
which  except  a  man  believe  faithfully,  he  cannot  be  saved. 


THE   DOCTKINE   OF   THE   TKINITV  325 

tatives,  Hilary  of  Poitiers,  Hilary  of  Aries,  and  Gregory 
of  Tours,  gave  promise  of  its  first  arriving  at  its  goal,  yet 
it  was  France  which  struck  the  first  blow  at  papal  suprem- 
acy, offering  the  first  illustration  to  Europe  of  national 
unity  and  independence.  And  if,  afterwards,  France  Avas 
inwardly  hurt  by  the  selfish  alliance  with  the  papacy,  or 
misled,  as  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  from  her  true 
purpose  by  dreams  of  aggrandizement  and  of  empire,  yet 
this  was  only  a  delay  and  not  a  defeat  of  the  national  pur- 
pose. The  postponement  only  made  the  moment  more 
awful,  when  at  last  the  nation  was  driven  to  achieve  by 
force  what  its  kings  in  union  with  the  hierarchy  had  at- 
tempted to  stifle  or  suppress.  The  calamities  and  horrors 
of  the  French  Revolution  were  the  price  Avhich  the  nation 
was  called  upon  to  pay  for  the  privilege  of  writing  upon 
its  portals  the  national  motto,  —  Liberty,  equality,  and 
fraternity. 

V 

In  the  age  of  the  Reformation  the  various  churches  put 
forth  Catechisms  and  Confessions  of  Faith  which,  while 
supplementing  the  Catholic  creeds,  were  not  intended  to 
disown  or  supersede  them.  These  Confessions  or  Articles 
of  Religion  are  to  a  great  extent  occupied  with  the  state- 
ment and  elaboration  of  convictions  which  the  Catholic 
creeds  do  not  express.  There  had  grown  up  from  the  time 
of  Augustine,  and  under  the  influence  of  his  teaching,  a  con- 
ception of  man  and  of  his  relation  to  God,  and  also,  at  a  later 
time,  a  doctrine  of  atonement,  which,  while  revealing  deep 
motives  in  human  experience,  yet  found  no  corresponding 
expression  in  the  ancient  Catholic  church  which  gave  birth 
to  the  creeds.  The  comparative  stud}'  of  these  Confessions 
of  Faith  has  dwelt  so  long  upon  their  teaching  in  reference  to 
these  later  theological  tenets,  that  one  important  feature  has 
been  overlooked  which  is  a  common  characteristic,  —  that 
they  unite  in  affirming  the  Catholic  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
as  handed  down  in  the  Catholic  creeds.  The  Reformers, 
whetlier  in  Germany,  in  England,  or  Switzerland,  not  only 
had  no  intention  of  leaving  the  fold  of  the  Catholic  church, 


326  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

or  any  misgivings  that  they  had  done  so,  but  they  had 
the  distinct  purpose  of  remaining  within  it,  and  of  plead- 
ing their  cause  on  the  basis  of  their  retention  of  pure  and 
genuine  Catholicity.  Indeed  it  was  because  they  still 
held  the  Catholic  faith,  that  it  was  possible  to  gain  the 
support  of  kings  and  princes  as  it  was  also  impossible  that 
the  Latin  church  should  treat  with  them  on  any  other  basis 
than  that  they  were  still  within  the  pale  of  Catholicism. 

In  order  to  understand  the  relation  of  the  Reformers 
to  the  Catholic  church,  we  must  revert  to  that  early 
period,  when  by  heathens  and  Christians  alike  the  Roman 
Empire  was  believed  to  be  eternal.  Within  that  Empire 
the  church  had  arisen,  at  first  in  conflict  with  it  and 
then  embracing,  transforming,  and  renewing  it.  When 
Constantine  made  his  alliance  with  the  Catholic  church, 
no  terms  of  treaty  or  agreement  were  formally  acknowl- 
edged ;  the  two  powers  came  together  in  friendly  rela- 
tionship, the  church  ministering  to  the  state,  and  the  state 
protecting  the  church.  But  hardly  had  the  alliance  been 
made  when  the  Arian  controversy  arose  which  shook  the 
Empire  and  the  church  to  their  foundations.  The  imme- 
diate result  of  the  controversy  was  to  place  the  Empire,  in 
the  persons  of  its  emperors,  for  nearly  two  generations  in 
hostility  to  Athanasius  and  the  Nicene  formula.  Those 
years  constitute  the  crisis  of  the  Empire,  the  period  of  its 
revolution  and  transformation,  until  it  came  to  rest  for  its 
authority  and  permanence,  its  inward  unity  and  peace, 
upon  a  Christian  principle.  And  that  principle  was  given 
in  the  Nicene  symbol,  —  the  coequality  of  the  Son  with  the 
Father.  This  was  the  social  compact,  as  it  may  be  called, 
which  defined  the  basis  and  rights  of  Christian  society  ;  and 
on  this  basis  the  church  entered  upon  its  formal  alliance 
with  the  state,  while  the  Empire  in  turn  became  Christian 
or  was  only  another  aspect  of  the  Catholic  church. 

The  social  compact  by  which  the  Roman  Empire  con- 
sented to  become  a  Christian  empire,  resting  upon  the 
Nicene  faith  as  the  primary  canon  of  civil  as  well  as  of 
ecclesiastical  law,  was  promulgated  by  the  three  emperors, 
Gratian,  Valentinian,  and    Theodosius,  in  the   year  380. 


THE    DOCTIilNE    OF    THE   TRINITY  327 

According  to  this  decree,  the  Nicene  doctrine  of  the 
coequality  of  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost  is  declared  to 
be  the  Catholic  faith.  Those  who  accept  this  faith  are 
alone  to  enjoy  the  privilege  of  being  known  as  Catholics.^ 
Henceforth  the  term  '  Catholic '  was  no  question  of  per- 
sonal or  private  interpretation.  Efforts  to  appropriate  this 
renowned  historical  designation  in  the  interest  of  some 
restricted  view  of  the  church,  whether  of  its  usage  or  its 
organization,  whether  in  ancient  days  or  in  our  own,  have 
no  value  and  certainly  no  prestige  compared  with  the  defi- 
nition which  gave  a  new  foundation  for  Christian  society. 
The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  was  ratified  by  succeeding 
emperors,  and  particularly  by  Justinian,  with  whose  sanc- 
tion it  was  incorporated  in  the  Justinian  Codex,  as  it  stood 
already  in  the  Code  of  Theodosius,  taking  the  precedence 
of  all  other  laws  or  decretals.^ 

This  definition  of  Catholicity  was  further  ratified  by  popu- 
lar sentiment  as  well  as  by  Christian  conviction.  When 
the  barbarians  overran  the  Empire,  they  were  powerless 
to  build  up  states  within  its  fold  until  they  had  accepted 
the  Catholic  formula.  The  difference  between  Barbarie 
and  Romanic  was  reduced  to  one  single  point,  —  whether  or 
not  the  Son  was  consubstantial  with  the  Father.  It  was 
an  open  question  with  the  leaders  of  the  new  races,  whether 
to  overthrow  the  Empire  or  to  build  within  it  upon  its  old 
foundations.    When  it  was  finally  decided  that  they  should 

1  Inippp.  Gratiarius,  Valentinianus  et  Theodosius  AAA.  ad  populum 
urbis  Constantihopolitanae. 

Cunctos  populos  quos  clemaotiae  nostrae  regit  imperium,  in  tali  volu- 
mus  religione  versari,  quam  divitium  Petrura  Apostolum  tradidisse  Ro- 
raanis,  religio  usque  nunc  adhuc  ab  ipso  insinuata  declarat  quamque 
pontificem  Damasum  sequi  claret,  et  Petrum  Alexandriae  episcoporum, 
virum  apostolicae  sanctitatis,  hoc  est,  ut  secundum  apostolicam  discipli- 
nam  evangelicamque  doctrinam  patris  et  filii  et  spiritus  sancti,  unam  dei- 
tatem  sub  pari  maiestate,  et  sub  pia  trinitate  credamus.  Hanc  legem 
sequentes  Christianoruai  Catliolicorum  nomen  iubemus  amplecti,  reliquos 
vero  dementes  vesanosque  iudicantes,  haeretici  dogmatis  infaniiara  sus- 
tinere,  divina  priraum  vindicta,  post  etiam  motus  animi  nostri,  quem  ex 
caelesti  arbitrio  sunipserimus,  ultione  plectendos. 

D.  Ill  K.  Mart.  Thessalonica  Gratiano  V.  et  Theodosio  AA.  conss.  a. 
380. 

^  Codex  Justin.,  I.,  c.  1 :  De  summa  Trinitate  et  cle  fide  CathoUca. 


328  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

remain  and  accomplish  their  work  within,  they  accepted 
the  social  compact  as  enjoined  by  Roman  law,  and  in 
accepting  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  were  reconciled  and 
fused  with  the  Roman  population.  The  Athanasian  Creed, 
so-called,  still  retains  a  deep  historical  interest,  because  of 
its  identification  of  the  Catholic  faith  with  the  doctrine 
of  NicaBa.  In  the  later  Middle  Ages  there  had  been  set 
forth  another  definiton  of  catholicity,  as  in  the  so-called 
Blctatus  H'ddehrandiyii, — that  it  consisted  in  union  with 
the  Roman  church.  That  definition  played  its  part  for  a 
while,  but  when  the  study  of  Roman  law  was  revived  from 
the  thirteenth  century,  every  student  was  confronted  with 
the  older  definition  of  catholicity  as  embodied  in  the 
Theodosian  and  Justinian  codes,  and  the  way  was  thence- 
forth open  to  renounce  the  papacy  without  breaking  the 
continuity  of  the  Catholic  church. 

The  Reformers  were  keenly  alive  to  the  importance  of 
abiding  by  this  social  compact,  on  which  the  Empire  and 
the  church  alike  rested  for  their  authority.  To  have  re- 
jected it  would  have  made  them  social  outlaws.  Princes 
could  protect  them,  as  still  within  the  Catholic  church,  so 
long  as  they  held  by  this  definition  of  catholicity;  for 
kings  and  princes  also  went  back  to  Roman  law,  and  no 
longer  to  the  papacy,  for  the  sanction  of  their  own 
authority  and  the  justification  of  their  procedure.  The 
Roman  law,  which  nowhere  recognized  the  papacy,  but 
did  recognize  the  Catholic  church,  thus  became  a  lever 
for  the  removal  of  abuses  and  a  warrant  for  reform.  The 
evidence  that  the  Reformers  were  aware  of  their  strong- 
hold, in  this  definition  of  catholicity,  and  were  conscious 
that  the}^  still  formed  a  constituent  part  of  the  Catholic 
church  despite  their  rejection  of  Mediaeval  usages,  is 
shown  in  the  unanimity  of  their  action  in  placing  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  the  foreground  of  their  Con- 
fessions of  Faith.  Thus  in  the  Augsburg  Confession,  the 
earliest  of  Protestant  compendiums  of  belief,  the  first  Arti- 
cle of  the  Chief  Articles  of  Faith,  relates  to  the  Trinity  : 

"  The  churches  with  common  consent  among  us  do  teach  that  the 
decree  of  the  Nicene  Synod  concerning  the  unity  of  the  divine  essence 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    THE    TRINITY  329 

and  of  the  three  persons  is  true  and  without  doubt  to  be  believed  :  to 
wit,  that  there  is  one  divine  essence  which  is  called  and  is  God,  eternal, 
without  body,  indivisible  (without  parts),  of  infinite  power,  wisdom, 
goodness,  the  Creator  and  Preserver  of  all  things  visible  and  invisible  ; 
and  that  yet  there  are  three  persons  of  the  same  essence  and  power, 
who  also  are  coeternal,  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost.  And 
they  use  the  name  of  person  in  that  signification,  in  which  the  eccle- 
siastical writers  (the  Fathers)  have  used  it  in  this  cause,  to  signify 
not  a  part  or  quality  in  another,  but  that  which  properly  subsists." 

The  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  Religion  of  the  Church  of 
England  also  begin  with  a  statement  entitled,  "  Of  Faith 
in  the  Holy  Trinity  "  : 

"  There  is  but  one  living  and  true  God,  everlasting,  without  body, 
parts,  or  passions ;  of  infinite  power,  wisdom,  and  goodness,  the 
Maker  and  Preserver  of  all  things  both  visible  and  invisible.  And 
in  unity  of  this  Godhead  there  be  three  persons,  of  one  substance, 
power,  and  eternity :  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost." 

The  Institutes  of  Calvin  takes  the  form  of  a  commentary 
upon  the  Apostles'  and  Nicene  creeds,  which  leads  him  in 
the  early  chapters  of  his  work  to  a  discussion  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity.  The  object  of  his  argument  is  to 
show  that  the  doctrine  has  the  warrant  of  Scri^jture,  but 
he  was  not  averse  to  accepting  the  terminology  of  the 
ancient  Catholic  church,  but  defended  the  speculative 
language  in  which  the  doctrine  had  been  defined,  as  only 
another  form  of  expression  for  the  teaching  of  the  New 
Testament.^  But  in  making  Scripture  the  final  authority 
for  the  doctrine  of  the  Catholic  creeds,  Calvin  did  not 
stand  alone.  It  is  declared  in  the  Thirty-nine  Articles 
that  these  creeds  are  to  be  "  received  and  believed  because 
they  have  the  most  sure  warrant  of  Holy  Scripture." 
Such  also  was  the  conviction  of  Luther  and  Melanchthon, 
nor  was  any  voice  raised  among  the  Reformers  in  behalf 
of  the  authority  of  tradition  or  the  infallibility  of  general 

1  Instit.,  I.,  c.  13,  §  5.  After  calling  attention  to  the  difficulty  of 
interpreting  the  terminology  of  the  Fathers  and  their  variations  of  state- 
ment, he  remarks  :  "  The  modesty  of  these  holy  men  should  be  an  ad- 
monition to  us,  not  instantly  to  dip  our  pen  in  gall  and  sternly  denounce 
those  who  may  be  unwilling  to  swear  to  the  terms  which  we  have  de- 
vised." And  again  :  "  Say,  that  there  is  a  Trinity  of  Persons  in  one 
Divine  essence,  you  will  only  express  in  one  word  what  the  Scriptures  say." 


330  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

councils  as  the  sole  ground  on  which  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  rested  for  its  support.  Yet  there  is  evidence  that 
on  this  point  none  of  thera  were  indifferent  to  the  value 
of  the  tradition,  but  felt  additional  confidence  in  the 
strength  of  their  attitude  in  consequence.  In  holding  to 
the  tradition  of  the  universal  Christian  society  which  was 
the  Catholic  church  or  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  their 
position  was  secure  against  all  their  foes. 

This  point  is  of  peculiar  importance  as  showing  that  in 
every  country  where  the  Reformation  prevailed,  there  was 
an  unbroken  consciousness  of  unity  with  the  Catholic 
church,  when  catholicity  was  taken  in  its  authoritative 
interpretation,  as  it  had  come  down  through  the  ages. 
There  was  no  sense  of  innovation  as  if  new  churches  or 
new  forms  of  Christian  society  were  to  be  established. 
There  was  no  revolution  in  the  fundamental  constitution 
of  the  Catholic  church,  whatever  might  be  the  changes  of 
external  form,  so  long  as  the  ancient  charter  of  catho- 
licity was  preserved  which  defined  the  Catholic  faith  as 
identified  with  the  Nicene  doctrine  of  the  coequality  of 
the  Son  with  the  Father.  It  is  this  underlying  conscious- 
ness which  explains  some  features  of  the  age,  which  would 
otherwise  be  inexplicable  —  some  of  which  also  must  be 
mentioned  only  to  be  condemned.  When  Cranmer  drew 
up  the  Reformatio  Legum  Eeelesiasticarum^  which  was  in- 
tended to  take  the  place  of  the  Roman  Canon  Law,  it  was 
plainly  modelled  after  the  Codex  Jiistinianus^  as,  for  exam- 
ple, in  the  common  title  of  the  first  book.  Be  Summa  Trini- 
tate  et  Fide  CatJioUca,  which  was  followed  by  the  command 
of  the  king  to  all  his  subjects,  to  accept  the  Christian  faith 
as  identified  with    the  doctrine  of   the  Trinity.^     In  the 

^  Cf.  c.  16,  Epilogus  :  "  Caeterum  quoniam  perlongum  esset,  et  plane 
opus  valde  laboriosum,  omnia  nunc  distincte  scribere  quae  Catholica  Me 
sunt  credenda,  sufficere  judicamus  quae  breviter  de  summa  Trinitate,  de 
Jesu  Christo  Domino  nostro,  et  de  salute  per  eum  humano  generi  parta 
diximus." 

C.  17:  ^'-  Pereunt  qui  Catholicae  fidei  adversantur  vel  ab  ea  deficiunt. 
Hoc  ipsum  tamen  silentio  praeterire  non  possumus,  eos  omnes  niisere 
perire  qui  orthodoxam  Catholicamque  fidem  amplexi  noluiit ;  et  longe 
gravius  eos  esse  damnandos  qui  ab  ea  semel  agnita  et  suscepta  defece- 
runt."     Cf.  ed.  Card  well,  Oxford,  1850. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   THE   TRINITY  331 

preface  to  the  Second  Helvetic  Confession,  written  by  Bul- 
linger  in  1596,  the  most  elaborate  of  the  Swiss  Confes- 
sions, the  imperial  edict  of  Theodosius,^  is  quoted  in  full,  a 
challenge,  as  it  were,  to  the  Roman  church  and  the  Council 
of  Trent,  that  the  Swiss  church  stood  upon  the  basis  of  gen- 
uine catholicity  according  to  its  only  authoritative  exposi- 
tion.2  To  the  same  effect  is  the  language  of  Luther  himself 
in  his  preface  to  a  treatise  on  the  Three  Creeds :  "  I  have 
ex  ahundanti  caused  to  be  published  together  in  German 
the  three  symbols  or  Confessions  which  have  hitherto 
been  held  throughout  the  whole  church ;  by  this  I  testify 
once  for  all  that  I  adhere  to  the  true  Christian  church 
which  up  till  now  has  maintained  those  symbols."  ^ 

It  was  this  attitude  of  the  Reformers  toward  Catholic 
tradition  which  led  them  carefully  and  anxiously  to  dis- 
criminate their  movement  from  sectarians  as  they  were 
called  and  particularl}'-  from  Anabaptists,  who  broke  with 
the  principle  of  Catholic  society  by  their  denial  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  That  the  Anabaptists  were  a 
common  terror  to  all  the  Reformers  is  shown  by  their  em- 
phatic condemnation  in  the  various  Protestant  Confessions 

1  See  ante,  p.  328. 

2  Cf.  Schaff,  Creeds  of  Christendom,  II.,  p.  235. 

3  Die  drei  Si/mbola,  in  Walch,  X.,  p.  1198 ;  also  cited  in  Ritschl,  Die 
christl.  Lehre  d.  Rechtfertigung  u.  Versohnung  (Eng.  Trans.,  p.  130); 
which  also  contains  a  valuable  discussion  of  the  relation  of  the  Re- 
formers to  the  Catholic  cimrch.  "It  must  at  once  be  admitted,"  says 
Ritschl,  "that  the  Reformers  themselves  hardly  ever  expressed  a  clear 
consciousness  of  the  fact  that,  by  their  recognition  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity,  they  were  hokUng  the  legal  standing-ground  given  them  by  the 
Roman  Empire.  They  only  knew  that  in  virtue  of  this  confession  they 
were  maintaining  the  ground  of  the  Catholic  church.  Neither  can  it 
be  doubted  that  the  said  doctrine  was  originally  accepted  by  the  Re- 
formers in  virtue  of  church  tradition,  and  not  in  virtue  of  the  specific 
authority  of  Scripture.  It  was  their  constantly  widening  separation 
from  the  Roman  church  that  first  made  it  necessary  for  them  to  base  this 
doctrine  on  Scripture,  as  soon  as  its  defence  (chiefly  on  account  of 
Michael  Servetus'  denial)  came  to  be  a  work  of  special  importance  to 
them."  See  also  Harnack,  DogmengeschicMe,  III.,  pp.  720  ff.  and  735 
ff.,  for  Luther's  relation  to  Catholicity.  "Luther  rechnete  sich  und  sein 
Unternelimen  stets  in  die  eine  Kirche,  die  er  allein  kannte,  in  die  katho- 
lische  Kirche  (wie  er  sie  verstand)  ein.  Er  behauptete,  dass  diese  Kirche 
ihm  den  Rechtstitel  zur  Reformation  selbst  gebe  "   (III.,  p.  735). 


332  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

of  Faith.^  But  there  was  a  melancholy  story  connected 
with  this  determination  to  adhere  to  the  Catholic  faith 
which  cannot  be  forgotten,  which  may  be  explained  while 
it  cannot  be  palliated,  —  the  burning  of  Servetus  for  his 
denial  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  This  much  at  least 
may  be  said,  as  throwing  light  upon  the  tragedy,  that 
Servetus,  in  an  age  when  as  yet  religious  tolerance  was 
unknown,  when  the  Reformers  were  united  as  one  man  in 
clinging  to  Catholic  truth  as  the  only  possible  basis  for  a 
Christian  society,  the  one  condition  which  made  a  reforma- 
tion possible;  Servetus  appeared  to  be  recklessly  en- 
dangering not  only  the  prospects  of  the  Reformation  but 
the  foundation  of  Christian  as  well  as  of  social  order. 
Only  some  such  extraordinary  conviction  can  explain  the 
approval  which  Melanchthon  and  others  lent  to  an  act 
which  has  never  since  ceased  to  be  a  cause  for  mourning 
and  repentance.  But  whatever  may  be  said  of  Calvin's 
personal  attitude  in  this  transaction,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  the  other  Reformers  were  not  moved  by  sinister  or 
hypocritical  motives  or  by  blind  and  timid  conservatism 
when  they  upheld  the  Catholic  tradition  against  what 
seemed  to  them  like  the  hand  of  anarchy  raised  to  destroy 
the  social  fabric.^ 

1  The  second  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  the  English  church  was 
influenced  by  opposition  to  Anabaptist  negations.  Cf.  Hardwick,  His. 
of  the  Articles.!  pp.  88,  96  ;  also  Augsburg  Confession,  Arts.  I.,  IX. ; 
Calvin,  Instit.  I.,  c.  1.3,  §§  22,  23. 

2  Cf.  Willis,  Servettis  and  Calvin;  Dardier,  Michael  Servet  d''apres  ses 
plus  recents  biographes;  and  for  a  summary  of  the  case,  Trechsel,  Art. 
Servetus,  in  Herzog,  B.  E.,  with  literature. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE  MIRACLE 

The  Catholic  church,  from  the  second  century  to  the  age 
of  the  Reformation,  laid  the  greater  stress  upon  the  revela- 
tion of  the  Son,  and  although  it  struggled  to  maintain  its 
hold  upon  the  revelation  in  outward  nature  and  in  the  hu- 
man spirit,  it  was  successful  only  in  varying  and  imperfect 
measure.  A  glance  at  the  external  form  of  the  Catholic 
creeds  reveals  the  situation  as  in  a  picture.  In  the  expan- 
sion and  amplification  of  the  divine  name,  the  fullest  treat- 
ment is  accorded  to  the  Son.  Of  the  Father,  it  is  predicated 
that  He  is  the  "  maker  of  heaven  and  earth,"  to  which  was 
added  later  "  and  of  all  things  visible  and  invisible."  Con- 
cerning the  Holy  Spirit  nothing  was  directly  affirmed  in 
the  Apostles'  Creed,  and  the  original  creed  of  Nicsea  ended 
with  the  words,  "  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost."  In  the 
course  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  during  which 
there  were  deep  searchings  of  heart  as  to  the  office  and 
work  of  the  Spirit,  the  clauses  came  to  be  added  which 
defined  the  working  of  the  Spirit:  "The  Lord  and  the 
Giver  of  Life,  who  proceedeth  from  the  Father,  who  with 
the  Father  and  the  Son  is  worshipped  and  glorified,  who 
spake  by  the  prophets."  The  greater  fulness  of  assertion 
in  regard  to  the  Son,  in  all  the  creeds  alike,  corresponds 
with  the  stress  which  was  laid  upon  His  peculiar  work, 
whether  in  the  Eastern  or  the  Western  church,  whether  in 
organization  or  doctrinal  controversy,  or  in  worship  and 
cultus.  This  is  what  is  sometimes  called  historical  Chris- 
tianity, to  which  is  still  accorded  a  certain  pre-eminence 
of  authority  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches,  as  though 
the  Protestant  development  of  doctrine,  life,  or  worship 
were  a  departure  from  the  normal  standard  of  catholicity. 

333 


334  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

In  this  attitude  of  these  ancient  churches  there  is  still 
preserved,  it  is  true,  an  element  which  the  modern  churches 
have  not  preserved  with  equal  force.  The  Sonship  of  Christ 
stands  for  human  redemption,  for  human  history,  for  the 
development  of  man,  and  for  the  solidarity  of  the  race,  in 
the  power  of  the  incarnation.  Human  history  practically 
begins  with  the  coming  of  Christ,  from  whose  entrance 
into  the  world  and  into  humanity,  it  is  fitting  that  time 
should  be  dated  in  the  Christian  centuries.  The  interest 
of  the  Middle  Ages  lies  in  history,  as  it  centres  in  humanity 
in  itself,  not  in  its  relation  with  nature,  or  in  the  evolution 
of  human  thought.  Philosophy  passes  lightly  over  the 
long  period  from  the  time  when  Greek  philosophy  came 
to  an  end,  until  its  revival  with  the  coming  of  Descartes. 
The  study  of  nature  was  neglected  from  the  time  when 
Neoplatonism  arose  in  the  third  century,  with  its  exclu- 
sive interest  in  man,  until  it  was  resumed  in  feeble  and 
sometimes  grotesque  ways  in  the  age  which  preceded  the 
Reformation. 

In  assigning  importance  to  the  miracle,  the  Catholic 
creeds  were  reflecting  the  impression  which  the  life  of 
Christ  had  made  upon  His  first  disciples.  The  evangelical 
narratives,  in  this  respect,  are  in  harmony  with  the  creeds, 
abounding  as  they  do  in  every  page  with  the  wonderful  works 
of  Christ:  His  supernatural  birth,  His  power  over  disease, 
His  command  of  natural  law,  and  His  final  conquest  over 
death.  The  Gospel  is  presented  as  having  its  birth  in 
miracle  and  its  whole  environment  in  a  miraculous  atmos- 
phere.^ Hence  a  peculiar  interest  attaches  to  the  Roman 
symbol,  afterwards  to  be  known  as  the  Apostles'  Creed, 
that  without  apology  or  explanation  it  inserted  the  miracle 
in  the  life  of  Christ  as  a  constituent  part  of  the  Christian 
revelation.  It  was  otherwise  in  the  Eastern  church, 
where,  as  in  the  rule  of  faith  given  by  Ignatius  or  the 
comment  of  Origen  on  the  Roman  symbol,  the  introduction 

1  In  this  respect,  an  analogy  is  seen  in  Jewish  history,  where  the  era 
of  prophecy  is  introduced  with  miracle,  which  also  marks  the  rise  of 
Judaism  to  its  greatest  height  as  a  divine  revelation,  as  well  as  the  source 
of  its  influence  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  life  of  man. 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE    OF   THE   MIRACLE       335 

of  the  miracle  is  made  subordinate  to  a  theological  motive, 
the  endeavor  to  overcome  the  ultra-spiritualism  of  Gnos- 
tic teachers,  who  denied  that  Christ  possessed  a  human 
body.  Hence,  as  with  Ignatius,  the  epithet  truly,  which 
qualifies  every  miraculous  affirmation, —  Christ  was  truly 
born,  truly  suffered,  truly  died,  and  truly  rose  from  the 
dead.  But  the  Roman  creed  has  no  qualification,  as 
if  the  Gnostic  dream  had  not  been  heard  of,  or  were  not 
worth  noticing,  —  "  He  was  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost; 
born  of  the  Virgin  Mary ;  suffered  under  Pontius  Pilate ; 
was  crucified,  dead,  and  buried ;  on  the  third  day  rose  again, 
and  ascended  into  the  heavens." 

In  the  creeds  of  the  Eastern  church  the  same  importance 
was  not  at  first  attached  to  the  miracle  as  such,  but  rather 
was  it  subordinated  to  theological  ^r  other  issues.  The 
creed  of  Gregory  Thaumaturgus  makes  no  allusion  to  the 
miracle.  In  the  creed  of  Ctesarea,  in  the  early  creed  of 
Jerusalem,  In  the  creed  of  Nicsea,  the  miracles  mentioned 
are  the  resurrection  and  the  ascension.  The  Eastern 
church  reflected  the  Oriental  feeling  towards  nature,  and 
interpreted  he  miracle  in  its  own  way,  according  to 
its  peculiar  bias.  Its  relation  to  nature  has  been  closer  and 
more  sympathetic  than  in  the  West,  where  Roman  influence 
prevailed,  whose  object  was  to  subdue  men  to  law  and  gov- 
ernment, rather  than  to  cultivate  tlie  harmony  between 
man  and  his  external  physical  environment.  But  in  the 
fifth  century  the  Eastern  and  the  Western  creeds  coalesced ; 
what  was  distinctive  in  the  Roman  symbol  was  adopted 
into  the  creed  which  became  known  as  the  Nicene ;  and 
this  creed,  in  turn,  was  received  in  Rome  and  throughout 
the  West.i 

1  For  opinion  in  regard  to  the  miracle  in  the  ancient  church,  cf.  Origan, 
Contra  Celsum,  who  subordinates  its  value  as  testimony,  to  the  evidence 
of  the  Spirit,  treating  the  miracles  as  symbols  or  allegories  of  a  higher 
.truth,  and  regarding  the  words  of  Clirist  as  having  been  fulfilled  in  the 
moral  miracle,  —  the  disciples  of  Christ  have  done  greater  miracles  than 
their  Master.  On  the  whole,  it  cannot  be  said  that  Origen  magnified  the 
miracle.  Cf.  Patrick,  The  Apology  of  Origen,  pp.  309  ff.  and  .321,  and 
Bigg,  Christian  Flatonists  of  Alexandria,  p.  26.3.  For  a  view  of  a  similar 
kind,  cf.  Athanasius,  De  Incar.  (c.  29).  Augustine  looked  at  the  miracle 
more  distinctly  as  an  expression  of  the  divine  will,  and  saw  in  the  creation 


336  CREEDS*  AND   DOCTRINES 

It  is  difficult  if  not  impossible  to  define  the  miracle, 
because  it  stands  for  the  mystery  of  human  existence.  Its 
manifestation  is  on  the  border  land  where  humanity  is  seen 
in  its  twofold  relationship,  involved  on  the  one  hand  in 
the  fortunes  of  physical  nature  and  on  the  other  revealed 
in  its  exaltation  as  sharing  in  the  life  of  the  Son  of  God. 
Hence,  the  miracle  cannot  be  defined  in  terms  of  the  physi- 
cal life  alone,  nor  can  it  be  defended  wholly  by  evidence 
which  appeals  to  the  senses.  There  is  a  point  of  view 
from  which  it  may  still  be  said  that  no  amount  of  testi- 
mony can  prove  a  miracle.  Faith  must  here  be  conjoined 
with  the  evidence  of  the  senses.^ 

The  miracles  of  Christ  are  represented  as  calling  for 
faith  in  Him  before  they  can  be  wrought.  Hence,  it  is 
said  of  a  certain  place  which  He  visited,  that  "He  could 
do   there   no  mighty  works    because    of   their   unbelief." 

an  act  analogous  to  the  miracle,  -which  indeed  became  the  supreme  miracle, 
the  prophecy  and  justification  of  later  miracles.  Cf.  De  Civ.  Dei,  X.  12  ; 
XXI.  6,  7,  8.  Anselm  finds  the  possibility  of  the  miracle  like  Augustine 
in  the  creation,  as  the  free  act  of  the  divine  will.  Cf.  De  Concept.  Virg., 
c.  11.  Aquinas  distinguished  between  the  real  miracle  and  the  wonder,  or 
the  subjective  estimate  of  miracles.  His  definition  of  a  miracle  may  stand 
for  the  later  Mediseval  opinion  :  "  Dicendum,  quod  miraculum  proprie  dici- 
tur,  cum  aliquid  fit  praeter  ordinem  naturae  ;  sed  non  sufiicit  ad  notionem 
miraculi,  si  aliquid  fiat  praeter  ordinem  naturae  alicujus  particularis,  quia 
sic,  cum  aliquis  projicit  lapidem  sursum,  miraculum  faceret,  cum  hoc  sit 
praeter  ordinem  naturae  lapidis.  Ex  hoc  ergo  aliquid  dicitur  esse  miracu- 
lum, quod  fit  praeter  ordinem  totius  naturae  creatae  ;  hoc  autem  non 
potest  facere  nisi  Deus,  quia  quidquid  facit  angelus  vel  quaecunque  alia 
creatura  propria  virtute,  hoc  fit  secundum  ordinem  naturae,  et  sic  non  est 
miraculum.  Unde  relinquitur,  quod  solus  Deus  miraculum  facere  possit" 
(Pars  i.,Q.  110,  art.  4). 

1  "The  essential  question  of  miracles  stands  quite  apart  from  any  con- 
sideration of  testimony"  (Powell,  Study  of  Evidence,  p.  141) ;  and  again, 
the  acceptance  of  the  miracle  depends  i;pon  "a  religious  principle  of 
faith,  and  not  an  assent  of  the  understanding  to  external  evidence" 
(Powell,  Order  of  Nature,  p.  367). 

"Die  Ueberzeugung  dass  ein  Wunder  geschehen  sei,  bzw.  dass  man 
ein  Wunder  erlebt  habe,  ist  eine  freie,  religiose  und  gegeniiber  aller 
wissenschaftlichen  Exorterung  gleichgiiltige.  Sie  ist  auch  bei  andern ' 
nicht  durch  Demonstrationen  und  Experimente,  sondern  nur  durch 
den  Einfluss  der  personlichen  Autoritat  und  der  eigenen  Frommigkeit 
und  Ueberzeugungskraft  hervorzurufen.  Ohne  religiose  Motive  und  reli- 
giosen  Sinn  ist  sie  iiberhaupt  sinnlos  oder  nackter  Aberglaube  "  (Borne- 
mann,  Unterricht  in  Christentum,  p.  129). 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICAJSrCE   OP   THE   MIRACLE        337 

When  Jesus  walked  on  the  sea  and  Peter,  attempting  to 
follow,  began  to  sink,  he  was  rebuked  by  Jesus  :  "  O  thou 
of  little  faith."  To  the  Syro-Phenician  woman,  the  words 
are :  "  Great  is  thy  faith ;  be  it  unto  thee  even  as  thou 
wilt."  Or,  again,  in  the  case  of  the  young  man  possessed 
by  an  evil  spirit,  Jesus  reproaches  his  disciples  for  not  giv- 
ing relief :  "  O  faithless  and  perverse  generation  "  ;  and 
when  the  disciples  asked  for  the  cause  of  their  failure,  the 
answer  was  :  "  Because  of  your  unbelief ;  for  if  ye  have 
faith,  ye  shall  say  to  this  mountain,  Remove  hence  to 
yonder  place,  and  it  shall  remove;  and  nothing  shall  be 
impossible  unto  you  "  (Matt.  xvii.  20).  The  instance  of 
the  feeding  of  the  multitude  is  prefaced  with  the  same 
accusation:  "O  ye  of  little  faith,  why  reason  ye  among 
yourselves,  because  ye  have  no  bread?"  (Matt.  xvi.  8). 
Not  as  wonders  appealing  to  the  sense  of  the  marvellous, 
do  the  miracles  possess  their  deepest  significance :  "  A 
wicked  and  adulterous  generation  seeketh  after  a  sign ; 
and  there  shall  no  sign  be  given  unto  it." 

The  evidence  for  the  miracle  of  the  resurrection  of 
Christ  must  be  sought  in  the  faith  of  the  disciples,  and 
in  their  testimony  so  far  as  it  is  an  evidence  of  their 
faith ;  otherwise,  the  witness,  which  they  allege,  is  marked 
by  variation  or  contradiction,  such  as  always  waits  upon 
human  testimony.  The  highest  evidence  for  the  miracle 
is  found  in  a  certain  conviction  perpetuated  within  the 
church,  which,  as  a  living  institution,  becomes  the  heir  of 
spiritual  influences  and  bears  testimony  as  no  eye-witness 
can  do.  Such  faith  is  seen  in  the  process  of  its  quickening 
transition,  in  the  rule  of  faith  given  by  St.  Paul :  "  For  I 
delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that  which  I  also  received, 
how  that  Christ  died  according  to  the  Scriptures,  and 
rose  again  on  the  third  day  according  to  the  Scriptures." 
From  this  point  of  view,  the  revolution,  for  it  was  noth- 
ing less,  is  explained  and  justified  by  which  the  Jewish 
Sabbath  was  subordinated  to  the  Lord's  Day  or  the  Chris- 
tian Sunday,  whose  weekly  recurrence  becomes  a  standing 
monument,  witnessing  to  some  objective  fact  in  human  ex- 
perience.    The  Easter  festival,  whose  annual  commemora- 


338  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

tion  is  almost  coeval  with  the  birth  of  the  church,  becomes 
another  monumental  evidence  to  the  mysterious  event  in 
which  the  Gospel  had  its  rise,  a  strong  supplementary 
evidence  to  the  victory  over  the  doubt  of  Thomas,  or  the 
appeal  of  the  empty  sepulchre ;  for  in  these  festivals  is 
deposited  the  faith  of  humanity.  Without  that  faith,  they 
would  long  ago  have  vanished  as  a  dream. ^ 

While,  then,  it  is  difficult  to  define  the  miracle,  and 
while  the  evidence  which  substantiates  it  is  not  of  a  kind 
which  demonstrates  its  actuality  to  the  cool  inquirer  seek- 
ing for  scientific  proof,  yet  we  may  approximate  a  true  con- 
ception of  the  miracle  by  studying  its  place  in  history  and 
the  function  it  has  subserved.  It  was  one  primary  result 
of  the  miracle  that  in  the  ancient  church  it  helped  to 
disentangle  Deity  from  the  outer  world  with  which,  in 
pantheistic  fashion.  He  was  identified  or  confused.  The 
miracle  revealed  God  as  above  nature  and  distinct  from 

1  That  faith  is  essential  to  the  recognition  of  the  miracle  does  not 
imply  that  inquiry  into  the  evidence  for  every  miracle  or  alleged  miracle 
should  be  discouraged  in  the  interest  of  faith.  On  the  contrary,  the 
closest  scrutiny  and  the  most  careful  weighing  of  evidence  should  be 
welcomed.  Credulity  and  the  superstition  which  the  unthinking  accept- 
ance of  the  miracle  has  begotten  are  evils  to  be  deplored.  The  one 
miracle  on  which  the  attention  must  be  concentred  is  the  resurrection 
of  Christ,  partly  because  of  its  transcendent  interest,  partly  because  the 
evidence  is  more  abundant.  For  the  negative  criticism  on  the  resurrec- 
tion, consult  Martineau,  The  Seat  of  Authority  in  Beligion,  who  fails, 
however,  to  trace  the  evidence  in  the  experience  or  organization  of  the 
church.  See  also  Baur,  Kirchengeschichte  der  drei  ersten  Jahrhunderte, 
p.  39  (Eng.  Trans.,  p.  42);  in  Ewald,  His.  of  Apos.  Age,  Vol.  VI.,  Gesch. 
d.  Volkes  Israel,  pp.  52  ff.  ;  and  in  Keim,  Gesch.  Jesu  von  Nazara.  For 
the  admissions  of  these  and  other  writers,  see  a  very  striking  summary 
in  Schaff,  His.  of  the  Chris.  Church,  I. ,  pp.  183  ff.  The  vision-hypothesis 
is  not  sufficient  to  meet  all  the  implications  of  the  historical  situation. 
It  is  an  extraordinary  circumstance  that  there  was  no  cult  of  the  tomb 
of  Jesus  in  the  early  church,  as  also  that  the  eucharist  (cf.  the  Iguatian 
Epistles)  from  the  first  was  a  substitute  for  the  reverence  whicli  is  sliown 
and  felt  in  other  cases  for  the  sepulchre.  The  discussion  of  the  concrete 
reality  of  the  miracle  calls  for  a  knowledge  of  the  thought  and  experience 
of  the  church,  and  the  most  careful  psychological  analysis,  without  which 
facts  cannot  gain  their  full  meaning.  There  is  an  analogy  with  the  sci- 
ence of  political  economy,  which,  though  dealing  with  the  concrete  and 
the  actual  visible  transaction,  is  yet  better  carried  on  by  the  closest 
metaphysical  reasoning,  and  calls  for  ability  in  the  detection  of  logical 
sequences. 


HISTORICAL    SIGNIFICANCE    OF   THE   MIRACLE        339 

nature,  while  yet  indwelling  in  it.  Deity  was  greater 
than  His  work  in  the  whole  created  universe,  for  He  was 
represented  by  the  miracle  as  not  bound  by  its  forces, 
but,  in  His  freedom  and  independence,  at  liberty  to  tran- 
scend its  laws.  This  was  the  weakness  and  the  misery 
of  the  nature-religions,  that  they  could  not  escape  the 
inference  that  Deity  was  but  part  of  the  natural  order, 
which  were  involved  together  in  some  mysterious  process  of 
emanation.  The  desire  to  separate  Deity  from  the  physi- 
cal world  was  manifested  from  the  first  appearance  of 
the  Christian  church,  but  the  Gnostic  speculations  are  a 
commentary  on  the  method  followed  when  this  result  was 
sought  without  reference  to  the  miracle.  The  Gnostics 
condemned  with  an  anathema  the  physical  universe  as 
a  Godless  sphere,  while  tlie  Catholic  creeds  proclaimed 
Deity  as  the  free  Creator  of  heaven  and  earth. 

The  miracle  stands  also  for  the  motives  which  inspire 
humanity  in  its  active  contest  with  the  powers  of  sin  and 
evil,  whether  as  latent  in  nature  or  in  the  body,  which  hold 
humanity  captive  in  the  life  of  nature.  The  miracle  in- 
spired men  with  a  sense  of  their  divine  endowment,  as 
created  in  the  image  of  the  freedom  of  God,  enabling  them  to 
believe  in  their  divine  capacity  for  heroic,  impossible  deeds.^ 
It  was  the  trumpet  call  to  men  to  rouse  themselves  from 
their  lethargy  where  they  lay  supine  at  the  feet  of  nature, 

1  Cf.  Cherbuliez,  UArt  et  la  Nature,  §§  17,  18,  for  many  suggestive 
remarks  on  the  emancipation  of  man  from  nature  by  the  power  of  the 
arts.  "Architecture,  statuaire,  peinture,  musique,  et  poesie,  chaque  art 
a  sa  fa9on  particulifere  de  travailler  h  la  d^livrance  de  notre  imagination 
et  ^  la  glorification  de  I'homme.  .  .  .  Tous  les  arts  tendent  h  une  double 
fin;  tous  les  arts  sont  une  protestation  contre  la  nature  qu'ils  imitent" 
(p.  220). 

"Les  individus  sont  pour  la  nature  un  jouet  dont  elle  s'amuse  quelques 
heures  et  qu'elle  met  au  rebut.  La  sculpture  lui  arrache  ce  jouet  dcs 
mains,  et  aprfes  I'avoir  transform^  par  son  travail,  elle  la  met  au  d^fi  de 
le  briser.  Elle  substitue  k  la  chair  p^i-issable  une  mati^re  compacte, 
r^sistante,  fifere  et  pr^cieuse,  capable  de  durer  autant  qu'une  esp6ce  ou 
qu'une  id^e.  Elle  le  glorifie  encore  en  hissant  son  image  sur  un  pi^destal 
qui  1' Eloigns  de  la  terre  et  du  haut  duquel  il  regarde  les  sifecles  couler  h 
ses  pieds.  ...  La  sculpture  est,  de  tous  les  arts,  celui  qui  a  le  plus  fait 
pour  accroitre  I'importance  des  individus  et  pour  que  Phomme  se  sentit 
r^gal  de  la  puissance  qui  le  d^truit.  Mais  la  nature  ne  s'en  doute  point: 
elle  est  trop  occup^e  a  faire  et  k  d^faire  des  mondes  "  (pp.  220,  221). 


340  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

wliicli  they  worshipped,  and  in  the  name  of  the  Son  of 
God  to  take  possession  of  the  earth  and  subdue  it.  When 
we  regard  the  miracle  in  its  historical  significance,  it  be- 
comes the  symbol  of  the  pre-eminence  of  spirit  over  nature. 
There  is  implied,  in  the  miracle,  it  must  be  admitted,  a 
consciousness  of  antagonism  between  the  spirit  in  man  and 
all  else  in  nature  which  is  not  man ;  and  thus  is  begotten 
a  conflict,  which,  whatever  the  evils  it  engendered,  has 
been  the  condition  of  human  progress.  When  Christianity 
entered  the  world,  it  encountered  the  tendency  in  the 
popular  heathenism  to  worship  nature,  to  deify  its  forces, 
to  regard  its  tendencies,  however  immoral,  as  constituting 
the  law  for  man,  or  precedents  for  action,  whether  human 
or  divine.  In  that  class  of  writings  known  as  Apologies,  in 
which  the  Christian  intellect  first  displayed  its  awakened 
activity,  it  was  against  the  nature-worship,  the  mytholo- 
gies of  old  religion,  that  the  early  Fathers  directed  their 
assaults.  If  we  would  interpret  the  spirit  and  purpose  of 
the  Catholic  church  in  its  fairest  form,  and  in  its  promise 
for  the  future,  it  is  to  these  Apologies  we  must  go,  as  in- 
dicating how  radical  was  the  opposition  between  the  new 
faith  and  the  old  decaying  order.  The  Apologies  and  the 
Creeds  are  contemporaneous  in  their  origin.  In  the  one 
we  have  the  exposition  of  the  folly  and  the  immorality 
of  mythologies  which  were  the  symbolical  rendering  of  the 
life  of  nature ;  in  the  other  the  life  of  One  whose  whole 
career  is  represented  as  above  nature,  the  Christ  of  the 
creeds  whose  life  is  set  forth  as  in  its  origin  transcending 
natural  law,  and  in  its  close  culminating  in  events  which 
defy  nature  and  seem  to  violate  its  inmost  secret.  The 
law  of  death  was  broken,  which  had  all  their  lifetime  held 
men  in  bondage ;  even  the  law  of  gravitation  appeared 
to  be  suspended,  which  made  this  earth  the  sole  focus  of 
human  interests,  the  final  home  of  humanity,  to  whose 
inner  centre  all  things  tended  ;  and  another  centre  of  human 
aspirations  was  created,  because  Clirist  had  not  only  risen, 
but  ascended  to  His  Father  and  to  our  Father,  to  His  God 
and  to  our  God. 

The  prominence  of  the  miracle  in  the  New  Testament, 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE    OF   THE   MIRACLE        341 

and  in  the  creed  and  cultus  of  the  Catholic  church,  con- 
stitutes a  problem  which  calls  for  solution  in  any  effort  to 
interpret  Christianity  or  its  history ;  especially  in  view  of 
the  fact  that  Judaism  did  not  give  it  an  equal  prominence 
and  that  Buddhism  and  Islam  should  have  rejected  it.^ 
Some  meaning,  some  practical  result,  must  surely  be  in- 
volved in  the  circumstance  that  historical  Christianity 
should  have  thus  exalted  the  miracle,  and  yet  have  been 
the  religion  associated  with  the  world's  highest  civiliza- 
tion, whose  forces  are  still  unspent  and  whose  aspiration 
is  far  beyond  its  present  achievement.  In  no  other  reli- 
gion has  the  miracle  been  so  incorporated  in  the  organic 
expression  of  religious  faith  as  in  the  institutions  of  the 
Lord's  Day  and  the  Christian  Year.  If  the  miracle  be 
regarded  as  a  revelation  to  man,  not  only  of  the  freedom 
of  the  divine  will,  but  also  as  the  prophecy  of  his  own 
freedom  and  of  his  relation  to  nature  as  its  lord,  which  it 
is  given  him  to  read  and  to  study  but  also  to  improve  and 
perfect  and  subdue  to  his  will,  as  it  were  so  much  material 
at  his  disposition,  —  if  the  miracle  has  ministered  to  the 
sense  of  his  dignity  and  power  and  divine  calling,  then 
one  can  undei'stand  why  Christian  history  should  have 
been  a  greater  history  than  before  had  been  known,  and 
indeed  that  history  itself  should  be  almost  the  creation  of 
the  Christian  spirit. 

The  influence  of  the  miracle,  and  of  the  belief  in  the 

1  "The  Buddhist  legends  are  full  of  miracles  which  Buddha  and  his 
disciples  are  reported  to  have  done  ;  some  of  these  are  precisely  analogous 
to  the  miracles  of  the  Gospels,  but  most  of  them  are  more  extraordinary ; 
and  yet,  in  the  canonical  writings  of  the  Buddhists,  the  words  are  pre- 
served in  which  the  founder  forbade  his  disciples  to  work  miracles,  even 
if  the  people  should  call  out  for  signs  and  wonders  ;  the  true  miracle,  he 
said,  was  that  they  should  go  and  hide  their  good  works  before  men,  but 
confess  before  them  their  sins.  In  the  same  way,  the  Mohammedan 
legend  narrates  a  great  number  of  miracles  of  Mohammed,  and  yet  he 
himself  says  in  the  Koran  that  he  is  a  man  like  other  men  and  he  con- 
siders it  unworthy  of  himself  to  work  miracles,  and  appeals  to  the  great 
miracles  of  Allah  :  the  rise  and  the  going  down  of  the  sun,  the  rain  which 
fertilizes  the  earth,  the  plants  which  grow  and  the  souls  which  enter  into 
human  existence  without  any  one's  being  able  to  tell  whence  they  come ; 
these  are  the  true  signs  and  miracles"  (Pfleiderer,  Phil,  of  Bel.,  IV., 
p.  83  [Eng.  Trans.]). 


342  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

possibility  of  the  miracle,  may  be  read  in  the  experience 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  appealed  to  the  imagination  and 
thus  enlarged  the  range  of  life.  To  the  inmates  of  the 
monastery,  ignorant  of  the  laws  of  nature  and  insensible  to 
its  beauty,  to  whom  the  natural  order  was  evil  and  under 
the  control  of  an  evil  agency,  the  miracle  was  a  compensa- 
tion so  great  that  they  did  not  feel  their  limitations.  The 
emancipated  spirit  became  a  law  unto  itself,  creating  its 
own  environment,  revelling  in  the  sense  of  freedom  and 
power.  The  world  was  to  them  what  they  made  it  in 
imagination.  In  that  subjective  world  of  the  Mediseval 
aspiration,  the  laws  of  nature  were  no  hindrance,  the  prin- 
ciple of  gravitation  was  scouted,  new  senses  and  faculties 
seemed  to  be  added  to  the  soul  so  that  men  could  ascend 
like  the  angels,  rivalling  the  birds  in  their  flight,  surpass- 
ing the  brute  creation  in  physical  strength.  As  they  came 
and  went,  the  obstacles  of  dead  matter  offered  no  interfer- 
ence. The  power  of  a  saint,  even  in  his  grave,  could  be 
exerted  to  heal  disease.  Future  events  could  be  foretold. 
It  was  believed  that  men  had  returned  from  the  other 
world  and  revealed  its  mysteries.  The  belief  in  the  miracle 
created  a  world  as  beautiful  in  its  way  as  that  of  the  old 
mythology.  These  wonders  of  earth  and  air  were  instead 
of  literature  and  art,  the  substitutes  for  poetry  and  science, 
and  contain  the  germs  of  them  all.  If  this  experience 
which  has  now  forever  passed  away  has  any  lesson  for  us, 
it  is  in  the  revelation  of  man  to  himself,  the  protest  of  the 
soul  against  dead  necessity  and  a  blind  fatalism.  It  is  not 
a  question  here,  whether  any  or  how  much  actual  objective 
reality  corresponded  to  the  miraculous  dream  of  the  monk, 
or  whether  the  supernatural  halo  with  which  the  people 
invested  the  head  of  a  holy  man  was  justified  by  the  out- 
ward fact.  We  are  dealing  with  what  humanity  has  be- 
lieved, and  with  the  influence  of  that  belief  upon  human 
development.  At  least  the  belief  itself  grew  out  of  the 
objective  reality  of  the  miraculous  Christ  of  the  creeds, 
The  effect  of  the  miracle  was  to  concentrate  attention 
upon  the  greatness  and  dignity  of  a  redeemed  humanity. 
To  this    result    ministered    the    separation    of   man    from 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE   MIRACLE        343 

nature.  In  the  revolt  against  nature  as  evil,  man  came 
into  closer  relationship  with  himself.  "  It  appears  to  be 
a  law,"  as  an  eminent  American  naturalist  has  observed, 
"that  you  cannot  have  a  deep  sympathy  with  both  man 
and  nature.  Those  qualities  which  bring  you  near  to  the 
one,  estrange  you  from  the  other." 

In  the  miracle,  and  in  the  history  of  tlie  miracle,  we  may 
trace  the  preparation  for  modern  science.  The  study  of 
nature  with  the  determination  to  know  its  secrets,  which 
dates  from  the  age  of  the  Renaissance,  was  not  wholly  a 
new  departure  with  a  distinct  origin  of  its  own,  but  appears 
rather  as  a  Christian  product,  drawing  its  inspiration  and 
success  from  Christian  motives.  No  other  religion  has 
been  so  associated  as  has  the  Christian  with  scientific  de- 
velopment. Indeed,  science  only  exists  where  Christian 
institutions  have  prepared  the  way  for  its  advent ;  and  it 
builds  upon  the  conviction  which  the  miracle  has  aided  to 
develop,  that  nothing  is  impossible  to  man  in  his  struggle 
with  nature  in  order  to  clothe  himself  with  its  power  and 
to  subdue  its  forces  to  the  control  of  the  human  will,  till 
it  becomes  the  fulfilment  of  the  words  of  Christ :  "  And 
greater  works  than  these  shall  ye  do,  because  I  go  unto 
my  Father."  There  is,  of  course,  the  trite  objection  that 
Christianity  checked  the  first  beginnings  of  science  in 
Greek  civilization,  by  calling  attention  away  from  this 
world  to  another,  preoccupying  the  soul  with  a  future 
world,  compared  with  which  this  present  world  and  out- 
ward nature  were  but  emptiness  and  vanity.  But  it  was 
the  heathen  mind  and  not  the  Christian  which  first  grew 
weary  of  the  study  of  nature  and  sought  in  another  world 
the  interest  which  this  world  no  longer  afforded.  It  was 
Neoplatonic  philosophy,  or  Gnostic  thinkers  draAving 
their  inspiration  from  heathen  sources,  which  brought  the 
development  of  the  old  world  to  its  close.  The  doctrine 
that  nature  was  evil,  and  matter  the  source  of  evil,  was  in 
its  origin  a  heathen  conception.  The  church  fought  this 
dark  conception  as  it  was  able  by  the  doctrine  of  the  Father 
as  the  creator  of  heaven  and  earth.  If  the  church  was  not 
able  at  once  wholly  to  overcome  the  conviction  that  the 


344  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

world  was  evil,  yet  it  was  within  the  church  as  some  for- 
eign substance,  which  never  gained  formal  approval  as  a 
dogma,  an  incumbrance  from  which  the  church  sought  to 
rid  itself  from  the  moment  when  it  affected  the  popular 
belief.  How  Christian  thought  labored  to  this  end,  and 
how  especially  the  Christian  cultus  resisted  it,  will  be 
shown  in  later  chapters. 

But  it  must  also  be  admitted  that  it  would  have  been  a 
misfortune  for  the  natural  sciences,  if  they  had  risen  and 
flourished  on  the  basis  of  the  old  consciousness  that  nature 
was  divine,  before  man  had  been  fully  revealed  as  distinct 
from  nature  or  as  having  spiritual  possibilities  which  tran- 
scend the  range  of  the  natural  order.  So  long  as  natural 
forces  were  deified,  the  human  mind  could  not  come  to 
their  study  apart  from  prejudice,  or  from  misleading  pre- 
sumptions. So  long  as  man  regarded  himself  as  part  of 
nature  and  had  not  yet  attained  by  painful  experience  the 
consciousness  of  possessing  a  human  soul,  he  would  have 
been  in  no  position  to  subdue  nature  to  himself,  to  conquer 
the  earth  and  make  it  his  own.  Nature  would  have  ex- 
erted a  tyranny  over  him  as  in  those  lands  where  human 
beings  worship  the  animals  which  prey  upon  them,  or  have 
feared  to  rescue  a  drowning  man  from  the  waters  for  dread 
of  offending  the  deity  of  the  waters  who  may  demand  him 
for  a  sacrifice.  Strange  and  evil  have  been  the  dreams 
begotten  by  the  worship  of  nature,  — unspeakable  cruelties, 
monstrous  imaginations,  which  have  rendered  human  life 
a  perpetual  nightmare,  on  which  tyrants  have  flourished 
and  every  form  of  evil  has  increased  and  magnified,  till  life 
became  a  burden  and  it  only  needed  a  Buddha  to  found  a 
religion  upon  that  premiss  in  order  to  bring  relief.  The 
consequences  of  the  popular  belief  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
that  the  world  was  in  possession  of  the  devil,  may  have 
been  a  temporary  hindrance  to  civilization  by  discouraging 
enterprise,  by  creating  fears  of  the  ocean,  of  the  mountain, 
or  of  the  forest,  but  it  was  better  so  than  to  lie  down 
supinely  at  the  feet  of  nature,  to  resign  the  struggle  to 
which  man  lias  been  called  by  his  constitution  as  a  spiritual 
beinof.    It  was  an  inherent  element  in  the  religion  of  ancient 


HISTORICAL   SIGNIFICANCE   OF   THE   MIRACLE        345 

Scandinavia,  that  humanity  was  at  perpetual  warfare  with 
the  powers  of  nature,  in  the  heavens  above  as  in  the  earth 
beneath ;  and  with  this  conviction  the  Christ  of  the  creeds 
coalesced  in  essential  harmony,  who  in  His  birth  and  in 
His  death,  as  in  all  His  intervening  years,  illustrated  the 
superiority  of  spirit,  and  became  the  prophecy  of  its  ulti- 
mate redemption  from  nature's  power.^ 

1  For  a  summary  of  the  history  of  opinion  regarding  the  miracle,  cf. 
Kostlin,  Art.  Wuuder,  in  Herzog,  E.  E.  Among  other  interesting  and 
important  discussions  of  the  subject  may  be  mentioned  Mozley,  J.  B., 
Lectures  on  Miracles;  Buslmell,  Nature  and  the  Supernatural ;  Rothe, 
Zur  Dogmatik  in  Studien  und  Kritiken,  1858  ;  Newman,  on  Ecclesiastical 
Miracles,  who  lias  been  met  by  Abbott,  in  Philomythus,  with  a  severe  but 
just  criticism,  and  by  Twistleton,  TJie  Tongue  not  Essential  to  Speech ; 
Duke  of  Argyle,  Reign  of  Laiv ;  Isaac  Taylor,  Ajicient  Christianity. 
Among  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  Middleton,  Warburton,  and 
Hume.  For  the  popular  scientific  estimate  of  the  miracle,  Lecky,  His. 
of  nationalism,  c.  ii. ;  Origen,  C.  Celsum,  for  the  objections  to  the  miracle 
in  the  second  century  ;  for  the  attack  of  Spinoza,  Tract.  Theol.  Polit., 
c.  vi.;  Schleiermacher,  Christ.  Glaube,  §  14,  gives  the  modern  religious 
attitude,  which  finds  no  aid  for  piety  in  the  miracle.  For  the  most  recent 
comprehensive  discussion  of  the  miracle,  see  Bruce,  Miraculous  Element 
in  the  Gospels,  and  Apologetics,  cc.  iii.,  iv.,  v.;  also  Fisher,  G.  P., 
Supernatural  Origin  of  Christianity. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE  LIFE  OF  THE  SPIRIT  —  THE  DOCTRINE  OF  THE 
ATONEMENT  —  THE  RELATION  OF  THE  DIVINE  TO  THE 
HUMAN 

I 

The  Catholic  creeds  assert  the  Divine  Name,  —  the 
Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  that  which  sepa- 
rates and  distinguishes  Christianity  from  Judaism  and 
from  every  form  of  heathen  thought,  while  it  also  em- 
braces in  comprehensive  unity  all  that  was  true  in  both 
Judaism  and  heathenism.^  But  they  are  silent,  with  an 
impressive  silence  in  which  is  heard  no  echo  of  the  con- 
troversies which  have  disturbed  the  later  history  of  the 
Christian  church.  Opinion  has  been  divided  by  theories 
of  the  incarnation ;  there  have  been  different  judgments 
regarding  the  relation  of  the  divine  and  the  human,  men 
have  disagreed  about  the  results  of  the  fall,  the  nature  and 
consequences  of  original  sin,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  the 
principle  of  election,  the  nature  and  method  of  atonement. 
These  have  been  the  points  on  which  controversies  have 
turned,  about  which  there  has  been  eager  inquiry ;  they  are 
all  of  them  questions  of  importance  and  deepl}^  related  to 
the  well-being  of  the  church  and  to  the  faith  and  hope  of 
the  individual  man.  But  the  Catholic  creeds  do  not  deter- 
mine them ;  they  may  be  read  into  the  creeds,  but  cannot 
be  found  in  them.  From  the  point  of  view  of  this  majes- 
tic silence,  it  might  seem  as  though  on  these  points  differ- 
ences were  inevitable,  and  were  alike  included  and  found 

1  That  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  embraced  the  fundamental  ideas  of 
heathenism  and  Judaism  in  regard  to  the  being  of  God,  doing  justice  alike 
to  plurality  and  unity  in  the  divine  essence,  is  asserted  by  John  of  Damas- 
cus, De  Fide  Orthod.,  I.,  c.  vii. ;  cf.  also,  for  a  similar  view,  Greg.  Nyss., 
Cat.,  0.  iii. 

346 


THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ATONEMENT  347 

a  common  shelter  under  the  all-comprehensive  revela- 
tion of  the  Divine  Name.  The  Catholic  creeds  reveal 
the  unity  of  Christendom,  despite  its  divergences  and 
divisions ;  they  represent  an  elevation  from  which  the 
differences  have  disappeared,  or  are  as  though  they  had 
no  existence.  They  may  be  recited  in  good  faith  by  Nes- 
torians  and  Eutychians,  Duoph3^sites  and  Monophysites, 
Augustinians  and  Pelagians,  Protestants  and  Catholics, 
Calvinists  and  Arminians.  They  represent  the  Catholic 
side  of  the  church,  its  "secular"  aspect,  as  it  was  called 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  in  contrast  with  the  "religious"  or 
monastic  aspect.  They  are  impersonal  in  their  origin,  but 
they  reflect  the  work  of  the  bishops  or  pastors  in  their 
parishes,  not  of  the  monk  in  his  cell.  They  stand  for 
historical  Christianity,  as  it  is  called ;  and  in  form  and 
in  essence  their  origin  is  almost  coeval  with  the  birth  of 
the  Catholic  church. 

But  this  silence  of  the  Catholic  creeds,  while  from 
one  point  of  view  it  constitutes  a  signal  merit,  reflects 
also  the  religious  deficiency  of  the  age  which  produced 
them.  They  exalt  one  phase  of  the  divine  revelation, 
the  Son  of  God  manifested  in  the  world  and  in  human 
history ;  but  the  fuller  revelation  of  the  Fatherhood  of 
God  in  external  nature,  and  the  revelation  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  the  inner  experience  of  the  individual  soul, 
these  were  spheres  to  which  the  ancient  church  was  almost 
a  stranger.  But  it  is  in  these  two  spheres  of  the  threefold 
revelation  that  the  modern  world  has  dwelt  and  still  is 
dwelling.  The  ancient  Fathers  found  a  difficulty  in  defin- 
ing the  work  and  office  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  partly  because 
they  were  preoccupied  with  the  office  and  work  of  the  Son 
of  God,  partly  because  the  work  of  the  Spirit  could  not  be 
understood,  till  after  many  generations  had  devoted  them- 
selves to  the  study  of  the  life  within  the  soul.  The  Spirit 
of  God  was  to  lead  the  church  into  the  fuller  truth,  tak- 
ing of  the  things  of  Christ  and  showing  them  unto  men, 
bringing  back  all  things  to  their  remembrance,  whatsoever 
Christ  had  said  unto  them.  Slowly  and  painfully  and  by 
the  bitter  experience  of  life,  struggling  with  the  eternal 


348  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

mystery,  has  the  Spirit  of  God  been  fulfilling  the  promise 
of  the  departing  Christ.  The  experience  of  many  centuries 
could  not  have  been  anticipated  in  the  age  when  the  doc- 
trine was  proclaimed  of  the  coequality  of  the  Spirit  with 
the  Father  and  the  Son.  He  of  whom  it  was  said  in  the 
Nicene  Creed  that  He  was  to  be  "  glorified  with  the  Father 
and  the  Son,  as  the  Lord  and  Giver  of  Life,  who  spake  by 
the  prophets,"  had  much  to  reveal  to  the  individual  man, 
before  it  was  possible  that  the  full  significance  of  His  divine 
office  could  be  even  approximately  understood. 

But  again,  the  ancient  church  was  shut  out  as  by  the 
divine  will  from  the  fuller  knowledge  of  external  nature  and 
the  laws  of  God  as  written  in  the  visible  creation.  The 
first  beginnings  of  natural  science  in  the  Greek  world  led 
up  to  nothing.  There  was  no  interest  in  the  study  of 
nature,  after  the  Catholic  church  became  supreme.  The 
love  of  nature  still  survived  in  the  Oriental  church,  and 
begot  a  receptiveness  for  its  beneficent  influences.  But 
what  the  church  Fathers  knew  regarding  nature  and  its 
deeper  secrets,  was  what  they  could  gain  by  superficial 
observation  with  the  unaided  natural  vision.  The  eter- 
nal majesty  and  uniformity  of  law,  the  infinite  wisdom 
and  care  and  love  disclosed  in  perfecting  the  details  of 
animated  existence,  the  fuller  knowledge  of  the  laws 
of  nature  by  which  it  has  been  subjected  to  the  service  of 
man,  —  these  were  not  revealed  to  them,  but  the  natural 
world  in  which  they  lived  was  a  meagre,  inadequate  con- 
struction of  their  own,  feebly  reflecting  the  greatness,  the 
goodness,  and  the  glory  of  God.  It  was  something  that 
in  the  Oriental  church  the  love  of  nature  still  survived, 
a  fact  which  was  destined  to  color  its  later  development. 
In  the  Western  church,  fear  of  nature  became  the  motive 
which  shut  men  out  from  its  study,  as  if  to  penetrate  its 
secrets  was  dangerous  presumption  and  destructive  to 
spiritual  life.  Hence  in  the  West  a  greater  opportunity 
was  offered  to  cultivate  an  acquaintance  with  the  inner 
experience  of  the  soul.  But  while  this  process  went  on 
of  exploring  the  inner  contents  of  the  spirit  as  they  were 
brought    to   light    by   religious    contemplation,    yet   still, 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   ATONEMENT  349 

throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  it  was  the  miracle  in  which 
they  chiefly  rejoiced,  as  attesting  the  power  of  the  human 
soul.  The  Lives  of  the  Saints  have  little  to  tell  us  con- 
cerning their  personality  or  their  actual  history,  but  they 
revel  in  the  miraculous  power  which  a  holy  man  must 
exhibit,  as  the  evidence  of  his  superiority  to  otlier  men. 
Of  the  spii'itual  beauty  and  perfection  of  the  character  of 
Christ  as  it  has  at  last  shone  out  again  to  the  modern 
world,  the  Mediaeval  church  was  ignorant;  it  was  con- 
cerned with  Christ  chiefly  in  His  eternal  relationship,  His 
supernatural  power.  His  world  affiliation  as  the  redeemer 
and  the  final  judge. 

A  change  was  in  process  from  the  close  of  the  fourth 
century  which  indicates  that  great  popular  wants  re- 
mained unsatisfied.  The  symptoms  of  the  change  Avere 
the  sudden  rise  of  the  worship  of  the  Virgin  Mother, 
regarding  which  the  creeds  are  silent,  but  whose  rapid 
spread  no  creeds  could  hinder,  till  it  became  a  most 
influential  motive  in  the  development  of  the  cultus ;  and 
the  rise  of  monasticism,  which  by  the  close  of  the  fourth 
century  had  become  a  potent  factor  in  ecclesiastical  life. 
It  is  with  the  latter,  with  tlie  influence  of  monasticism  in 
the  development  of  the  Life  of  the  Spirit,  that  we  are 
now  concerned.  The  influence  of  the  worship  of  Mary  is 
more  closely  related  to  the  development  of  worship  in 
the  Eastern  church,  from  whence  it  was  carried  into  West- 
ern Christendom. 

In  the  monasteries,  it  was  the  study  of  man,  in  his 
inner  being  and  in  his  relation  to  God,  which  became 
the  absorbing  theme.  Monasticism  resumed,  at  first  in 
feeble  and  uncertain  ways,  the  task  which  had  been  in- 
terrupted, when  Montanism  was  suppressed  or  its  life 
driven  inward  to  find  outlet  in  some  other  form.  Monas- 
ticism was  also  to  prove  the  continuation  of  the  efforts 
of  condemned  Gnostic  teachers  to  build  up  all  human 
knowledge  into  sj'stems  of  theology.  But  it  differs  from 
Montanism  and  from  Gnosticism  in  this  respect,  that  the 
Catholic  creeds  have  been  laid  as  the  foundation  on 
which  it  must  build.     It  may  go  beyond  them,  but  it  will 


350  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

not  contradict  them  in  a  formal  manner;  it  may  not  do 
justice  to  them;  it  may  even  fail  to  preserve  their  true 
spirit,  but  it  will  be  an  unconscious  perversion,  not  a 
formal  denial  of  their  meaning.  The  essential  character- 
istic  of  monasticism  in  its  work  for  theology  was  that  it 
turned  the  attention  inward  to  the  discussion  of  issues 
that  sprang  from  personal  religious  experience  or  aspira- 
tion, as  compared  with  the  Catholic  creeds  which  were 
exponents  of  an  objective  impersonal  faith,  which  dealt 
with  humanity  as  a  whole  or  in  solidarity,  which  might  be 
introduced  with  "  I  believe  "  or  "  We  believe." 

Such  was  the  controversy  about  the  Two  Natures  in  the 
Person  of  Christ,  which  lasted  for  two  centuries  before  it 
came  to  a  close,  and  then  it  was  settled  for  a  part  of  the 
church  but  not  for  the  whole,  and  was  also  destined  to 
reappear  in  other  forms.  In  this  controversy  about  the 
inner  content  of  the  divine  nature,  as  compared  with,  or 
related  to,  the  human  nature,  the  leaders  on  each  side 
came  forth  from  the  monastery,  —  Nestorius,  an  Anti- 
ochian  monk,  who  became  patriarch  of  Constantinople, 
and  Cyril,  the  patriarch  of  Alexandria,  who  had  been 
trained  in  the  monastery  of  Nitria.  Eutyches  also  was  a 
monk,  who  by  his  teaching  regarding  the  body  of  Christ 
plunged  the  church  into  deeper  waters  of  controversy. 
The  leaders  of  the  Monophysite  party  of  the  sixth  cen- 
tury were  monks,  and  so  also  was  Leontius  of  Byzantium, 
who  succeeded  in  giving  a  Monophysite  interpretation 
to  the  decision  of  Chalcedon.  In  the  following  century, 
Sophronius  and  Maximus,  who  took  the  most  prominent 
part  in  the  IMonothelete  controversy,  were  inmates  of  the 
monastery.  John  of  Damascus  was  a  monk  who  gave  the 
final  expression  to  the  orthodox  theology  of  the  Eastern 
church. 

The  coming  of  Augustine  (f  430)  marked  an  epoch  in 
the  Western  church.  He  held  the  monastic  theory  of  life, 
and  by  his  influence  impressed  it  upon  the  Latin  church ; 
but  more  than  this,  he  contributed  the  ideas  and  principles 
which  were  henceforth  to  be  the  staple  material  not  only 
of  religious  controversy,  but  of  profound  inward  struggles, 


THE   DOCTKINE   OP   ATONEMENT  351 

issuing  in  a  new  world  of  religious  experience.  No  such 
book  as  his  Confessions  had  hitherto  been  written,  which 
narrates  the  inward  life  of  the  soul,  its  fears,  its  doubts, 
its  hopes,  which  contains  the  conversation  of  the  soul  with 
its  Maker.  Oriental  Christian  literature  is  singularly- 
devoid  of  what  are  known  as  devotional  books  which 
reveal  the  stirrings  and  emotions  of  the  individual  soul. 
Its  piety  tends  to  assume  a  conventional  or  objective  im- 
personal form,  or  is  clothed  with  a  deep  reserve,  beneath 
which  it  is  impossible  to  penetrate  to  the  heart  in  its 
inmost  moods.  Augustine  is  almost  the  only  man  in  the 
ancient  church  who  has  given  us  the  revelation  of  himself, 
whom  we  may  be  said  to  know  personally,  as  modern 
biography  enables  us  to  know  our  contemporaries.  We 
know  things  about  Athanasius  or  Cyril,  but  in  the  case 
of  Augustine  we  know  the  man.  With  him  individuality 
as  a  new  force  may  almost  be  said  to  have  been  born,  and 
to  have  passed  from  him  into  the  monasteries  of  the  West, 
where  it  was  to  be  cultivated  by  inward  piety,  by  the 
personal  struggle  of  the  soul  for  communion  with  God. 
The  questions  which  Augustine  raised  had  never 
troubled  the  church  in  the  East,  such  as  the  nature  of 
sin,  the  fall  and  its  consequences,  the  mode  of  escape,  in 
what  consists  the  grace  of  God  which  alone  can  bring  for- 
giveness and  freedom  and  salvation,  the  election  by  God 
of  those  whom  He  wills  to  save ;  these  were  the  issues 
which  passed  over  into  the  Western  monasteries  to  be 
wrought  up  into  theological  systems  and  to  reappear  in 
the  Confessions  of  the  Protestant  churches.  It  was  by 
a  monk,  Pelagius,  that  the  teaching  of  Augustine  was 
resisted  in  the  interest  of  a  form  of  piety  conscious  of 
no  inward  struggles  and  resting  upon  an  ethical  basis, 
instead  of  an  emotional.  It  was  in  the  monasteries  that 
the  disturbing  influence  of  Augustine's  teaching  in  regard 
to  the  inability  of  a  man  to  contribute  to  his  own  salvation 
was  first  experienced,  as  at  Adrumetum  in  North  Africa, 
where  the  monks  fell  into  distress  of  spirit  and  despaired  of 
salvation.  Again  in  the  monasteries  of  Gaul,  at  Massilia 
and  at  Lerins,  Augustine's  teaching  found  its  champions 


352  CR*EEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

and  its  opponents.  Notwithstanding  the  modification  of 
Augustine's  tenets  by  the  practical  working  of  the  Latin 
church,  predestination,  which  is  only  another  word  for 
individualism,  has  been  for  the  most  part  the  doctrine 
of  the  monasteries,  in  contrast  with  that  other  stream 
of  tendency  which  is  content  with  the  Catholic  creeds. 
As  individualism  developed  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it  struck 
an  alliance  with  the  reason  in  dialectics,  giving  birth  to 
those  monastic  systems  of  theology,  the  counterparts  of 
the  great  secular  cathedrals,  whose  vast  proportions  and 
minute  detail  are  at  once  the  wonder  and  the  despair  of 
an  age  which  has  rejected  them.  As  the  great  doctors 
in  the  Middle  Ages  produced  each  his  Summa,  so  theo- 
logical teachers  in  Protestant  churches  which  have  in- 
herited most  directly  the  traditions  of  the  monastery, 
have  continued  to  produce  Systems  of  Divinity  whose 
scope  is  the  presentation  of  the  whole  field  of  Christian 
thought  so  far  as  it  may  be  apprehended  by  the  individual 
mind.  Modern  systems  of  philosophy  also  are  continua- 
tions, in  some  of  their  aspects,  of  the  method  which 
Augustine  originated  for  the  Western  world,  when  he 
plunged  into  the  recesses  of  his  spirit  and  laid  bare  its 
contents  to  the  gaze  of  all.  This  inward  process  of  indi- 
vidual thought  and  feeling  has  passed  into  poetry  and 
modern  literature,  commenting  on  the  same  issues  in  their 
manifestation  in  the  every-day  life  of  the  world,  which 
once  constituted  the  fascination  of  theological  systems, 
the  freedom  of  the  will  or  the  chains  of  necessity,  the 
consequences  of  sin  and  the  manifestations  of  hereditary 
evil,  the  working  out  of  one's  destiny,  the  principle  of 
predestination  by  which  one  is  taken  and  another  left. 

II 

In  the  history  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  may 
be  read  the  process  of  human  emancipation  from  the 
dread  of  Satan  or  of  God,  the  two  sources  of  fear  which 
kept  in  bondage  the  Mediaeval  world.  In  the  silence 
of  the   Catholic   creeds  upon   the   subject  of  the   Atone- 


THE   DOCTRINE    OF    ATONEMENT  353 

merit,  as  compared  with  the  emphatic  assertion  which 
was  given  to  this  doctrine  in  the  Protestant  Confessions 
of  Faith,  we  may  note  the  distance  which  the  Christian 
world  has  travelled,  as  well  also  as  the  way  which  it  has 
taken,  since  the  ancient  church  made  its  profession  of 
Christian  faith.  The  death  of  Christ  is  mentioned  by  the 
ancient  symbols,  but  in  connection  with  His  birth.  His 
resurrection  and  ascension  as  forming  an  incident  in  His 
incarnate  life.  Whatever  the  ancient  church  may  have 
held  regarding  the  transcendent  import  of  the  death  upon 
the  cross,  as  set  forth  by  individual  writers  or  as  embodied 
in  its  liturgies,  the  creeds,  at  least,  make  no  application  of 
it  to  the  individual  soul  seeking  to  appropriate  the  redemp- 
tion which  has  been  accomplished  and  is  offered  in  Christ. 
In  the  Apostles'  Creed  the  forgiveness  of  sins  is  mentioned, 
but  in  connection  with  the  belief  in  '  holy  church,'  a  pro- 
test, it  may  be,  against  the  Montanist  teaching,  that  no 
forgiveness  on  earth  Avas  possible  to  one  who,  having  tasted 
the  gift  of  life,  should  afterward  fall  away.  In  the  Nicene 
Creed,  belief  is  enjoined  in  "  one  baptism  for  the  remis- 
sion for  sins,"  a  possible  allusion  to  the  controversies  in 
Cyprian's  time,  when  the  bishop  of  Carthage  maintained, 
against  the  higher  conviction  of  the  age,  that  when  baptism 
had  been  performed  by  a  heretic,  even  with  the  approved 
formula,  it  should  be  repeated  in  order  to  admission  into 
the  Catholic  church. 

The  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  is  vitally  related  to  the 
development  of  thought  and  religious  experience  which 
ultimated  in  the  Protestant  Reformation,  as  also  a  divid- 
ino-  line  ever  since  between  the  Protestant  churches  and 
the  old  Catholic  order.  Its  prominence  in  the  Confessions 
of  Faith  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  ;  the  importance 
attached  to  it  by  the  Reformers,  Luther,  Zwingli,  and 
Calvin ;  the  controversies  which  have  since  been  w^aged 
on  its  nature  and  method;  the  significance  given  to  it 
anew  by  Wesley,  when  examining  the  foundations  of  his 
belief ;  its  hold  upon  the  religious  experience  in  the  Evan- 
gelical Awakening  in  England  or  America,  —  these  and 
other  indications  point  to  some  deep  conviction  for  which 
2  a 


354  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

the  doctrine  stands,  despite  the  variations  in  its  statement 
or  the  difficulties  attending  its  elucidation.  Any  full  dis- 
cussion of  so  important  a  point  belongs  to  the  history  of 
doctrine ;  but  the  larger  bearings  of  the  subject  are  so 
closely  related  to  the  institutions  of  the  church,  that  they 
must  be  briefly  reviewed  in  order  to  a  deeper  appreciation 
of  the  meaning  of  Christian  history. 

The  ancient  church,  like  the  modern,  regarded  the  com- 
ing of  Christ  as  bringing  a  deliverance  to  man,  in  which 
lay  the  source  of  the  deepest  gratitude  of  the  soul  toward 
God.  The  consciousness  of  deliverance  from  the  evil 
which  presses  most  heavily  upon  the  soul  may  be  traced 
in  every  religion,  taking  form  and  expression  according  to 
the  experience  of  fears  and  suffering  begotten  by  the  differ- 
ent types  of  evil  with  which  the  history  of  the  world  has 
made  us  familiar.  Such  a  motive  lay  in  the  background  of 
Jewish  religion,  when  the  great  deliverance  at  the  crossing 
of  the  Red  Sea,  by  which  a  people  were  redeemed  from 
slavery  and  born  into  a  nation,  became  the  inspiration  of 
later  faith  and  hope,  recalled  annually  in  the  great  fes- 
tival of  the  Passover.  The  Christian  church  accepted  the 
Passover  as  an  enduring  type  of  the  greater  deliverance 
wrought  by  Christ,  —  the  redemption  of  humanity  and  not 
merely  of  a  nation.  The  Eucharistic  feast  and  the  annual 
keeping  of  the  Easter  festival  bear  witness  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  a  deliverance  from  sin,  and  from  the  power 
of  sin,  from  the  evil  agencies  by  which  humanity  has  been 
kept  under  the  dominion  of  sin.  From  this  point  of  view 
the  deliverance  wrought  by  Christ  is  seen  as  the  object 
and  the  effect  of  His  incarnation,  and  is  the  answer  to  the 
question  with  which  the  Christian  mind  in  every  age  has 
been  consciously  or  unconsciously  wrestling,  Why  did  He 
become  man,  —  Cur  Dens  Homo? 

The  largest  and  most  inclusive  answer  to  the  problem, 
which  the  church  of  the  Catholic  creeds  was  practically 
unanimous  in  rendering,  set  forth  the  ignorance  of  man 
as  the  source  of  the  evils  in  which  he  was  engulfed  and 
out  of  which  he  vainly  sought  to  escape,  his  ignorance  of 
the  true  nature  of  God  and  of  His  relation  to  the  world; 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    ATONEMENT  355 

ignorance  of  the  true  constitution  of  man  and  of  his 
high  destiny.  Christ  came  as  the  enlightener,  the  light 
which  came  forth  from  the  eternal  light,  to  recreate  or 
to  rejuvenate  humanity,  to  disclose  to  men  their  true 
relationship  with  God.  In  ways  which  could  not  be  de- 
fined, He  broke  the  power  of  sin  and  overcame  its  deadly 
fascination.  It  was  assumed  that  the  soul  was  made  for 
God,  and  that  when  light  was  revealed,  man  by  the 
inner  law  of  his  being  would  respond  to  light.  To  know 
the  truth,  was  to  be  set  free;  the  knowledge  which 
acted  through  the  mind  upon  the  conscience  and  the 
heart,  involved  obedience :  This  is  life  eternal  to  know 
God  and  Jesus  Christ  ivhom  He  has  sent.  In  this  way 
the  world  Avas  reconciled  unto  God  and  God  unto  the 
world. 

While  the  ancient  Catholic  church  put  forth  no  formal 
theory  for  the  expression  of  its  conviction  in  regard  to  the 
deliverance  which  Christ  had  wrought,  yet  a  theory  did 
exist  which  lends  unity  and  depth,  as  well  as  consistency, 
to  the  variety  of  utterances  on  the  mystic  significance 
of  the  death  of  Christ.  It  was  assumed  by  Athanasius 
that  in  the  incarnation  Christ  had  identified  Himself 
with  humanity  in  all  its  fortunes,  so  that  His  life  be- 
came a  representative  one,  so  that  all  men  had  been 
reborn  or  recreated  in  Him,  all  had  died  in  Him  and 
with  Him  to  sin,  all  had  risen  in  Him  to  the  life  of  the 
Spirit  in  God.  "  He  sanctified  Himself,  in  order  that  He 
might  sanctify  us  all."  ^  "  He  took  perishing  man  into 
Himself,  renewing  him  by  a  lasting  renewal  into  eternal 
life."  ^  He  endured  death  for  us  as  man  in  order  that  He 
might  present  Himself  to  the  Father  in  our  behalf.  "As 
He  died  for  us,  so  also  has  He  been  exalted  on  our  behalf, 
in  order  that  like  as  all  died  in  the  death  of  Christ,  even 
so  we  might  all  be  unutterably  exalted  in  Him."  ^  "  His 
death  was  a  ransom  for  the  sins  of  men  and  a  death 
of  death.     He  took  the  judgment  up  into   Himself  and, 

1  Or.  I.  c.  Ar.,  46.  2  Or.  IV.  c.  Ar.,  33. 

3  Or.  I.  c.  Ar.,  41  ;  cf.  also  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ  (Eng.  Trans.), 
Div.  I.,  Vol.  II.,  pp.341  ff. 


356  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

suffering  in  the  flesh  for  all,  He  bestowed  salvation 
upon  all,"  ^ 

This  conception  of  the  redemptive  work  of  Christ, 
which  identifies  humanity  in  its  fortunes  with  its  Head 
and  Leader,  is  brought  out  with  even  greater  distinctness 
by  Gregory  of  Nyssa:  "Just  as  the  principle  of  death  took 
its  rise  in  one  person  and  passed  on  in  succession  through 
the  whole  of  human  kind,  in  like  manner  the  principle  of 
the  resurrection  life  extends  from  one  person  to  the 
whole  of  humanity."  ^  "  Since  there  was  needed  a  lifting 
up  from  death  for  the  whole  of  our  nature.  He  stretches 
forth  a  hand,  as  it  were,  to  prostrate  man,  and  stooping 
down.  He  came  so  far  within  the  grasp  of  death  as  to 
touch  a  state  of  deadness,  and  then  in  His  own  body  to 
bestow  on  our  nature  the  principle  of  the  resurrection,  .  .  . 
as  though  the  whole  of  mankind  was  a  single  living 
being,"  so  that  the  resurrection  principle  of  this  member 
"  passes  through  the  entire  race  by  virtue  of  the  continuity 
and  oneness  of  the  nature."^ 

Beyond  this  conviction  of  the  solidarity  of  the  race  in 
Christ,  the  thought  of  the  ancient  Greek  Fathers  did  not 
go.  In  most  of  them,  with  minor  qualifications,  this 
principle  was  assumed.  Out  of  it  had  grown  the  doctrine 
of  the  incarnation  that  He  who  was  the  Head  and  Leader 
of  humanity  must  be  God,  since  only  God  is  competent  to 
be  the  leader  of  man  ;  but  also  man,  since  the  race  needs 
in  its  leader  one  who  is  identified  with  his  followers. 
When  this  truth  of  the  incarnation  had  been  gained,  its 
influence  was  felt  in  intensifying  the  belief  in  His  power 
to  emancipate  men  from  the  evil  and  corruption  of  sin. 
As  a  doctrine  of  atonement,  it  may  be  seen  underlying  the 
later  theories  about  the  method  bv  which  God  reconciles 
the  world  to  Himself,  even  though  its  explicit  statement 
may  be  lacking.  We  may  trace  it  in  Anselm's  famous 
argument,  or  in  the  discussions  of  the  later  Scholastics,  or 
in  the  teaching  of  the  Reformers,  that  the  sins  of  men  are 
imputed  to  Christ,  whose  righteousness  in  turn  is  imputed 

1  Or.  I.  c.  Ar.,  51  ;  II.  69.  2  (j^t.  Mag.,  c.  xvi. 

3  Cat.  Mag.,  c.  xxxii.;  cf.  also  Greg.  Naz.,  Or.,  XXIV.  4  ;  XLV.  28. 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    ATONEMENT  "  357 

to  believers.  One  may  read  its  presence  also  in  hymns 
which  have  become  the  deepest  expression  of  the  soul,  as 
it  faces  the  mystery  and  the  crisis  of  death : 

"  Rock  of  Ages,  cleft  for  me, 
Let  me  hide  myself  in  Thee." 

But  this  doctrine  of  the  identification  of  Christ  with 
humanity  as  the  mode  of  deliverance  from  sin  and  of 
reconciliation  with  God,  might  be  construed  in  different 
ways,  as  the  question  was  asked  to  whom  did  Christ  make 
the  offering  of  Himself,  or  what  was  the  power  which  held 
humanity  in  thraldom  from  which  it  was  delivered  by  the 
ransom  which  He  paid.  From  an  early  moment  there  are 
traces  of  the  belief  that  an  evil  spirit  held  the  human 
race  in  his  grasp.  This  had  been  the  teaching  of  the 
Gnostics,  and  although  they  had  been  condemned  and 
banished  from  the  church  their  influence  remained  as  an 
evil  leaven  to  affect  its  thought.  The  Catholic  creeds 
had  indeed  escaped  the  contagion,  but  they  were  not 
sufficient  to  prevent  the  infiltration  into  the  Christian 
mind  of  a  sentiment  which  was  widespread  in  the  con- 
temporary world.  In  the  writing  of  Irenseus  there  are 
suggestions,  however  faint  or  confused,  that  the  deliver- 
ance or  redemption  of  man  implied  that  an  evil  spirit 
had  captured  the  human  race,  and  that  Christ  had  set 
it  free,  since  the  devil's  rule  was  an  usurpation,  founded 
upon  deceit  and  fraud,  since  also  the  sovereignty  of  the 
universe  belonged  to  God.  Irenteus  may  not  have  taught 
explicitly  that  Christ  paid    a    ransom    to  the   devil,^  but 

1  Cf.  Adv.  Haer.,  V.  1,  1  ;  21,  .3.  There  is  uncertainty  whether  Ire- 
nseus  taught  that  Christ  acted  upon  the  minds  of  men,  and  thus  set  them 
free  from  Satan's  power,  or  whether  He  acted  in  some  fashion  to  induce 
Satan  to  relax  his  hold.  Cf.  Baur,  Die  chrbtliche  Lehre  von  der  Versohnunrj , 
pp.  30  ff. ;  also  Ilarnack,  Dngmengeschichte,  I.  520,  521 :  "  Dem  Irenaeus 
liegt  nochder  Gedanke  anwirkliche  Rechte  des  Teufels  an  den  Menschen 
ebenso  fern,  wie  der  unsittliche  Einfall,  dass  Gott  seine  Erlosung  durch 
einen  Betrug  voUzogen  habe."  On  the  other  side,  cf.  the  doctrine  histo- 
ries of  Gieseler,  Thomasius,  and  Dorner.  Thomasius  finds  traces  of  the 
Anselmic  theory  in  Irenseus  ;  cf.  Dogmeju/eschlchte,  III.  17(i.  If  Irenaeus  is 
interpreted  in  harmony  with  his  remarks,  V.  21 ,  he  taught  that  the  redemp- 
tion of  humanity  was  accomplished  by  the  successful  resistance  of  Christ 
to  the  temptations  of  Satan  during  the  forty  days  in  the  wilderness. 


358  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

the  early  hints  of  this  theory  are  to  be  found  in  his 
writings.  It  was  a  theory  so  consonant  with  current 
ideas  that  it  was  destined  to  wide  acceptance  as  a  con- 
trolling element  in  the  popular  consciousness.  That 
Christ  had  redeemed  man  by  paying  a  ransom  to  the 
devil  for  his  deliverance  was  never,  indeed,  the  formal 
dogmatic  teaching  of  the  ancient  church.  But  most  of 
the  leading  writers  recognized  some  degree  of  truth  in 
the  theory.  Origen  gave  expression  to  it  so  forcibly 
that  he  has  been  sometimes  held  responsible  for  its  cur- 
rency in  the  church.  Even  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  despite 
his  strong  and  clear  enunciation  of  the  higher  truth, 
that  humanity  is  redeemed  by  its  solidarity  with  its 
Head,  also  countenanced  the  idea  of  some  transaction  by 
which  the  devil  was  deceived  and  lost  his  hold  upon 
the  world. ^  The  same  thought  was  countenanced  by 
Augustine,^  though  it  does  not  express  the  fulness  of 
his  mind  upon  the  salvation  by  Christ,  and  from  him  it 
passed  into  the  theology  of  the  Latin  church.  Its  original 
source  was  not  in  Christian  revelation,  but  rather  in  the 
contagion  of  the  darker  moods  of  paganism,  in  the  period 
from  the  decline  of  the  Empire  to  its  fall,  when  the  con- 
viction was  bred  that  the  anger  of  the  gods  was  the  ex- 
planation of  the  evil  hour  which  had  fallen  upon  the 
world. ^ 

So  long  as  the  belief  that  Christ  had  ransomed  men  from 
the  power  of  the  devil  was  associated  with  or  subordinated 
to  the  positive  and  larger  conviction  of  the  solidarity  of 
the  race  in  Christ,  it  might  be  regarded  as  an  unimportant 
speculative  tenet,  which  had  no  vital  relationship  with 
Christian  experience,  and  as  such  it  appears  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Origen  or  Gregory  of  Nj^ssa.  But  in  the  church  of 
Western  Europe,  this  larger  conviction  faded  away,  if  in- 
deed in  Italy  or  North  Africa  it  had  ever  been  held  as  it 
was  held  in  the  Eastern  church.  The  work  of  Christ  in  the 
redemption  of  humanity  was  therefore  reduced  in  its  scope 

1  Cat.  Mag.,  c.  xxiii.  2  2)e  Trin.,  IV.,  c.  1.3. 

^  Of.  Cyprian.  Ad  Demetrianum ;  and  Augustin.  De  Civitate  Dei,  for 
the  influence  of  this  conviction  on  the  church. 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF    ATONEMENT  359 

from  an  actual  deliverance  to  a  potential  or  possible  one, 
the  realization  of  which  must  be  sought  and  obtained 
within  the  church.^  But  other  changes  also  were  in 
process  of  accomplishment  in  the  Latin  church  after  the 
fourth  century,  which  were  modifying  the  Christian  out- 
look upon  the  world.  One  of'  these  related  to  the  con- 
ception of  the  Catholic  church,  which  was  identified  by 
Augustine  with  the  kingdom  of  God.^  Instead  of  being 
regarded  as  an  agency  for  promoting  or  realizing  the  divine 
will,  which  existed  independently  and  found  embodiment 
in  other  forms,  as,  within  certain  limits,  in  the  state,  or  in 
systems  of  thought  or  ethics,  whose  origin  was  apart  from 
the  Christian  faith,  the  church  became  to  the  Latin  mind 
the  sole  representative  of  God's  direct  activity  and  inter- 
est in  the  world.  When  the  papacy  had  developed  its 
supremacy,  the  true  church  of  God  in  the  world  was  held 
to  consist  only  of  those  in  communion  with  the  pope.  A 
theory  like  this  was  incompatible  with  the  older  principle, 
that  humanity  itself,  the  race  as  a  whole,  had  been  redeemed 
in  Christ.3 

A  change  so  fundamental  as  this  implies  some  corre- 
sponding change  in  philosophical  attitude.  It  was  the 
transition  from  Platonism  to  the  Aristotelianism  which 
was  destined  to  become  from  henceforth  the  accepted 
philosophy  of  the  Latin  church.  According  to  Plato,  the 
idea  exists  primarily  in  the  divine  mind  and  is  always  so 
far  distinct  from  and  independent  of  its  embodiment,  that 
the  earthly  form  can  never  be  identical  or  conterminous 
with  the  divine  idea.     Such  had   been  the  philosophical 

1  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ,  Div.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  1-11. 

2  "Augustine  was  led,"  says  Dr.  Harnack,  "in  liis  controversy  with 
the  Donatists  and  as  an  apologist,  to  idealize  the  political  side  of  the 
Catholic  church,  —  to  grasp  and  elaborate  the  idea  that  the  church  is  the 
kingdom  of  Christ  and  the  city  of  God.  Others  before  him  may  have 
taken  the  same  view,  and  he,  on  the  other  hand,  never  forgot  that  true 
blessedness  belongs  to  the  future ;  but  still  he  was  the  first  who  ventured 
to  teach  that  the  Catholic  church,  in  its  empirical  form,  was  the  kingdom 
of  Christ."     (Cf.  Art.  MlUennhim,  in  Encijc.  Brit.,  XVI.,  p.  317.) 

3  It  is  characteristic  of  tlie  Church  of  England,  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation,  that  it  reverted  to  this  belief.  Cf.  Church  Catechism  :  "He 
hath  redeemed  me  and  all  mankind." 


360  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

motive  of  the  earlier  church  down  to  the  fourth  century. 
But  such  a  conception  implies  constant  movement  and 
progress,  or  even  revolution,  in  order  to  the  attainment 
of  some  unfulfilled  ideal.  With  Aristotle,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  idea  is  imbedded  in  the  institution,  apart  fi-om 
which  it  does  not  exist,-  and  where  alone  it  can  be 
studied.  Hence  the  institution  is  consecrated  as  divine 
and  final,  and  must  develop  from  within,  instead  of 
through  the  concentrated  gaze  upon  an  ideal  which  is  for- 
ever above  and  beyond  the  present  attainment,  or  in  the 
mind  of  God.  Remote  as  these  philosophical  theories  may 
seem,  they  are  also  closely  connected  with  the  practical. 
It  is  often  said  that  the  knowledge  of  God  is  essential  as 
the  primary  requisite  to  the  knowledge  of  man :  that  it  is 
easier  to  know  God  than  it  is  to  know  ourselves.  But  the 
Aristotelian  method  begins  with  the  knowledge  of  man. 
Hence  the  foundations  of  the  Latin  church  were  laid  in 
anthropology  rather  than  in  theology,  as  in  the  Pelagian 
controversy,  while  in  the  Eastern  church  the  thought  had 
revolved  incessantly  about  the  idea  of  God.^ 

Connected  with  this  change  in  the  conception  of  the 
church  was  a  profounder  change  in  the  thought  regarding 
God.  This  also  was  wrought  out  for  the  first  time  in  the  ex- 
perience of  Augustine.  During  the  Pelagian  controversy, 
he  was  led  to  attach  a  supreme  importance  to  the  will  of  God 
as  also  to  the  will  in  man,  which  was  in  marked  divergence 
from  the  Eastern  theology,  where  the  supreme  stress  was 
laid  upon  the  mind  and  character  of  God,  upon  the  nature 
of  God  rather  than  His  will.  Religious  thought  in  the 
East  had  for  centuries  revolved  about  that  expressive 
word  '  Logos,'  which,  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  define, 
stands  in  general  for  the  mind  of  God,  the  reason  of 
God,  or  the  wisdom  of  God,  in  which  mind,  or  reason,  or 

1  "For  three  centuries  or  more  Platonic  idealism  had  been  supreme. 
Aristotelian  realism  was  now  on  the  point  of  displacing  it.  The  signs  of 
the  change  can  be  noticed  in  theology  and  in  politics.  In  one  sense  it 
was  necessary  as  a  condition  for  the  development  of  medisevalism.  The 
institutions  of  the  past,  which  carried  with  them  the  noblest  and  symbol- 
ized the  old  order,  were  now  emptied  of  their  true  life"  (Bishop  AVest- 
cott,  in  Eeliglons  Tho^ight  in  the  West,  p.  222). 


THE    DOCTRINE    OF    ATONEMENT  361 

wisdom  humanity  shares  in  virtue  of  its  constitution  in 
the  divine  image.  This  Logos,  coeternal  with  God,  had 
become  incai-nate  in  the  Son  of  man.  As  the  Nicene  Creed 
had  defined  Him,  He  was  Light  proceeding  forth  from  or 
generated  by  Light ;  the  Light  of  Light.  The  Eastern  the- 
ology had  not  indeed  failed  in  its  own  way  to  adjust  the 
divine  will  with  the  divine  reason,  but  so  that  the  will 
should  be  always  conceived  as  the  executive  of  the  reason. 
It  was  taken  for  granted  also,  that,  in  man,  to  illuminate 
his  reason  was  to  secure  the  obedience  of  his  will.  It  had 
been  a  characteristic  of  Arius  that  he  was  out  of  sympathy 
with  this  conception,  that  his  view  of  God  and  of  Christ 
and  of  the  nature  of  religion  placed  the  will  of  God  in  the 
foreground  and  left  the  interpretation  of  the  divine  mind 
as  something  with  which  man  had  no  concern  or  for  which 
he  had  no  capacity,  —  an  anticipation,  as  it  has  often  been 
remarked,  of  that  strange  religion  which  was  afterwards  to 
take  its  rise  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia,  whose  prophet  had 
no  other  function  than  to  declare  the  divine  will,  and  in- 
spire his  followers  to  enforce  it  by  the  sword.^ 

The  Roman  church  may  be  said  to  have  begun  its  inde- 
pendent career  and  to  have  received  its  most  distinctive 
motive  with  this  change  in  the  conception  of  God,  by  which 
the  divine  will  was  placed,  as  it  were,  above  the  divine 
mind,  beyond  also  the  range  of  the  human  mind  to  in- 
terpret the  significance  of  the  divine  action  in  the  world. 
God's  will  was  to  be  seen  and  known  in  the  institution 
of  the  church  to  whose  hierarchy,  and  more  especially 
to  the  bishop  of  Rome,  it  had  been  given  to  make  known 
His  decrees  and  enforce  their  obedience.  Leo  the  Great 
came  forward  with  his  proclamation  that  it  was  the  divine 

1  When  Mohammedanism  was  making  its  conquests  in  Egypt  and 
Syria,  thei-e  arose  a  controversy  in  the  Eastern  church  in  the  seventh 
century,  which  was  undoubtedly  impressed  with  the  influence  of  Islam. 
It  was  then  discussed  whether  there  were  in  Christ  two  wills  or  one. 
Beneath  the  discussion  lay  the  assumption,  foreign  to  the  Eastern  mind, 
that  His  work  of  redemption  had  been  accomplished  by  an  act  of  His 
will.  The  controversy  was  the  least  important  in  which  the  Eastern 
church  had  engaged,  and  the  final  decision  was  formulated  at  the  Sixth 
General  Council,  with  the  co-operation  of  the  bishop  of  Rome. 


362  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

will  alone,  not  any  human  arrangement,  such  as  the 
dignity  of  cities,  which  had  given  the  supreme  authority 
over  the  church  to  the  bishop  of  Rome.  The  controversies 
of  the  East  about  the  Logos,  or  the  mind  and  character 
of  God  as  revealed  in  Christ,  had  already  become  unfa- 
miliar. Augustine  had  written  an  important  treatise  on 
the  Trinity,  but  he  was  unacquainted  with  the  process  of 
thought  out  of  which  had  emerged  the  formula  of  the 
Council  of  Nicsea.  The  church  Fathers  in  the  East  had 
endeavored  to  reconcile  the  triune  distinction  with  the 
unity  of  God,  but  Augustine  reversed  the  method  and 
found  the  problem  to  be,  how  to  reconcile  the  conviction 
of  the  one  God  with  the  triune  existence.^  The  incarnation 
of  Christ  receded  into  the  background  and  the  church 
stepped  forward  into  the  vacant  place.  The  spirit  of  the 
Roman  Empire  and  of  Roman  law,  which  was  identified 
with  the  will  of  the  Roman  Emperor,  now  took  possession 
of  the  Roman  church,  transmuting  its  representatives  into 
law-givers  and  its  gospel  into  the  New  Law.  A  new  age 
was  beginning,  of  which  the  purpose  and  the  justification 
was  the  training  of  the  peoples  under  the  lead  of  a  priest- 
hood into  the  obedience  of  law.^ 

1  Cf.  Harnack,  Grundriss  der  Dogmeiigeschichte,  p.  153. 

2  On  the  difference  between  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches,  at  this  mo- 
ment of  their  divergence,  cf.  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ  (Eng.  Trans.),  Div. 
II.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  270  ff. :  "  The  (Roman)  church  and  its  ministers  were  not 
[as  is  the  case  in  the  Greek  church  down  to  the  present  day  ;  for  example, 
even  in  connection  with  the  Holy  Eucharist]  looked  upon  as  the  instru- 
ments by  which  the  living  and  ever-present  Christ,  discernible  as  it  were 
by  the  eye  of  faith,  accomplishes  His  work  in  individuals,  —  that  work 
which  He  has  reserved  in  His  own  hands  ;  but  Christ,  when  He  had 
founded  the  institution,  which  is  His  kingdom,  retired,  as  it  were,  after 
a  Deistic  fashion,  into  the  background,  and  to  the  foreground  advanced 
the  present  authorities,  who  represent  Him  in  His  absence."  For  the 
Deistic  tendency  in  Augustine,  which  separates  God  from  the  world,  so 
that  He  acts  upon  it  from  without,  instead  of  from  within,  cf.  A.  Dorner, 
Augustinus,  sein  theologisches  System,  etc.,  pp.  392  ff.  and  for  other 
references  see  Register  of,  under  Deistische  Biclituny.  Cf.  De  Civitate 
Dei,  IX.,  c.  17:  "Is  that  sentiment  of  Plotinus  forgotten?  —  'We  must 
fly  to  our  beloved  fatherland.  There  is  the  Father,  there  our  all.  What 
fleet  or  flight  shall  convey  us  thither?  Our  way  is  to  become  like  God.' 
If,  then,  one  is  nearer  to  God  the  liker  he  is  to  Him,  there  is  no  other 
distance  from  God  than  unlikeness  to  Him." 


THE   DOCTRINE    OF    ATONEMENT  363 

The  teaching  of  Augustine  regarding  God  and  His 
relation  to  the  world  and  to  humanity  gradually  changed 
the  conception  of  the  nature  of  the  deliverance  which 
had  been  wrought  by  Christ.  There  was  much  in  the 
earlier  thoufjht  of  Aug^ustine  which  was  in  conflict  with 
the  conception  of  Deity  which  he  reached  in  the  Pelagian 
controversy,  and  which  also  passed  over  ultimately  into 
the  possession  of  the  Mediseval  church.  The  earlier  view, 
which  he  attained  when  he  was  making  the  transition 
from  heathenism  to  the  church,  had  been  substantially 
in  harmony  with  Neoplatonic  speculations,  by  which  the 
world  was  in  some  sense  an  emanation  from  Deity  and  man- 
kind was  still  related  in  some  organic  waj^  to  the  highest 
God.  In  the  Pelagian  controversy,  he  took  his  departure 
from  moral  considerations,  according  to  which  Deity  ap- 
peared as  absolute  and  sovereign  will,  from  whom  humanity 
was  separated  by  the  original  sin  of  Adam,  and  not  only  sep- 
arated, but  the  whole  race  was  condemned  in  consequence 
to  endless  punishment.  The  decree  of  the  divine  and 
sovereign  will  henceforth  appears  as  the  highest  agency  in 
redemption  or  deliverance  ;  for  only  those  whom  God  elects 
and  visits  with  His  grace  are  capable  of  salvation  from  the 
impending  doom.  In  Augustine's  own  experience  this  had 
been  the  sole  determining  principle  which  satisfied  his  rea- 
son and  his  heart,  as  he  reviewed  the  sore  struggles,  the 
long  and  painful  hesitation,  the  sudden  emergence  into  light, 
the  consciousness  he  had  attained  of  the  love  of  God  and 
communion  with  His  will.  He  still  preserved  the  for- 
mal principle  of  a  deliverance  fi'om  the  power  of  Satan 
by  the  death  of  Christ,  but  it  becomes  subordinate  to  the 
consciousness  of  an  individual  deliverance  wrought  by 
God  Himself,  who  had  Himself  imparted  the  faith  and 
the  love,  and  by  whose  act  of  sovereign  will  alone,  with 
no  merit  of  his  own,  the  deliverance  from  sin  and  its 
consequences  had  been  effected.  It  was  the  value  of  Augus- 
tine's position,  if  it  could  have  been  adopted  as  he  under- 
stood it,  that  it  brought  each  individual  soul  face  to  face 
with  the  infinite  will,  and  after  the  struggles  of  submission 
were  over,  it  entered  into  loving  relationship  with  God. 


364  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

But  this  doctrine,  so  novel  to  the  church  of  the  fifth 
century,  had  many  vicissitudes  to  undergo  and  obscura- 
tions also  before  it  was  accepted.  It  can  hardly  be  said 
of  it  that  it  was  ever  received  in  its  fulness  by  the 
church  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  carried  with  it  the  awful 
implication  that  the  whole  heathen  world  was  shut  out 
from  the  scope  of  the  decree  of  divine  election ;  or  the 
still  more  dreadful  inference  that  children  dying  unbap- 
tized  were  forever  lost  to  the  beatific  vision,  for  which 
loss  it  was  but  slight  compensation  to  concede  that  their 
punishment  would  be  slight,  or  their  condition  a  tolera- 
bly happy  one.  Even  those  who  were  baptized,  however, 
could  not  be  sure  that  the  divine  will  had  decreed  their 
regeneration  in  the  laver  of  baptism ;  for  regeneration,  as 
Augustine  held  it,  did  not  invariably  accompany  the  rite. 
But  regeneration  was  to  be  had  only  in  and  through  bap- 
tism, and  in  this  way  he  connected  his  latest  teaching  with 
the  institution  of  the  church,  which  was  the  kingdom  of 
God  in  the  world. 

The  Eastern  church  rejected  this  whole  line  of  teaching, 
as  firmly  as  it  rejected  the  papal  supremacy.  Even  in 
the  West  it  encountered  great  opposition,  as  in  Southern 
Gaul,  where  the  influence  of  Irenseus  or  of  Hilary  still  sur- 
vived. An  effort  was  there  made,  as  by  Vicentius  of 
Lerins,  to  read  Augustine  out  of  the  Catholic  church,  as  if 
in  heretical  fashion  he  had  denied  the  Catholic  teaching  of 
antiquity.  But  the  doctrine  of  God  as  sovereign  will,  who 
had  decreed  existing  institutions  as  the  expression  of  His 
will,  and  the  enforcement  on  the  conscience  of  His  retrib- 
utive justice,  was  called  for  by  the  age  in  its  moral 
decline  or  its  revolutionary  throes.  But  even  among 
those  who  accepted  the  teachings  of  Augustine  there 
were  inward  misgivings  and  painful  doubts,  as  if  the 
foundations  of  faith  had  been  disturbed.  The  idea  of 
God,  as  will,  acting  contingently,  whose  decrees  were  not 
determined  by  any  principle  of  justice  which  human  rea- 
son could  discover,  created  alarm  and  deep  inward  uncer- 
tainty, which  no  exposition  of  the  Augustinian  teaching 
could  remove.     The  result  was,  therefore,  to  magnify  the 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF    ATONEMENT  365 

importance  of  the  institution  of  the  Catholic  church,  which 
now  stepped  in  as  a  mediator  between  the  soul  and  God, 
adjusting  in  its  own  way,  and  mainly  by  means  of  the 
sacrament  of  penance,  the  relationship  with  God,  which 
the  intimidated  soul  was  no  longer  competent  to  adjust 
for  itself. 

From  the  time  of  Gregory  the  Great  the  Latin  church 
was  occupied  with  the  solution  of  the  problem  which 
Augustine  had  raised,  —  How  to  escape  tlie  punishment 
which  the  divine  will  ordains  for  human  sinfulness.  There 
had  entered  into  the  conscience  of  man  a  sense  of  contra- 
diction and  misery  never  again  to  disappear,  which  the 
church  endeavored  to  allay,  but  never  with  complete  suc- 
cess. The  theory  was  still  held  as  theory,  that  Christ 
had  delivered  man  from  the  grasp  of  the  devil,  but  man 
himself  had  the  growing  consciousness  that  he  was  not 
the  weak  being  which  such  a  theory  involved,  —  a  mere 
prey  of  hostile  external  forces  ;  a  consciousness  that  he  had 
failed  in  his  service  toward  God,  and  that  his  own  will  was 
resisting  the  divine  will,  and  that  herein  lay  the  cause  of  the 
misery  and  sin.  It  was,  then,  a  great  moment  in  the  history 
of  the  church  when  Anselm  arose  to  restate  the  issue  and  to 
express  the  deeper  instincts  of  his  age.  Anselm  saw,  in 
the  light  of  his  knowledge  of  God  as  sovereign  will,  that 
the  old  conception  of  the  world  as  subject  to  Satan,  from 
whom  it  had  been  released  by  the  death  or  resurrection  of 
Christ,  besides  involving  the  unworthy  principle  that  the 
devil  had  been  tricked  in  the  transaction,  was  no  longer 
the  deliverance  which  spiritual  men  with  an  awakened 
conscience  demanded.  The  deliverance  which  was  de- 
manded was  from  God  Himself. 

The  treatise  of  Anselm,  entitled  Cur  Deus  Homo^  must 
be  regarded,  not  only  as  exhibiting  the  capacities  or  the 
methods  of  the  speculative  mind,  but  as  proceeding  from  the 
inmost  depths  of  the  Christian  heart.  We  may  turn  over 
his  sentences  as  ingenious  exercises  in  metaphysical  reason- 
ing, weigh  the  exact  significance  of  words  and  phrases  and 
in  so  doing  lose  at  the  same  time  their  spiritual  import. 
There  were,  indeed,  deficiencies  in  his  thought.     He  was 


366  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

inclined  to  acquiesce  in  the  popular  mood  of  his  age,  which 
regarded  the  escape  from  the  punishment  of  sin  as  the 
highest  deliverance  which  the  redemption  in  Christ  accom- 
plished. He  erred  in  his  analogy  of  Deity  with  some  feudal 
over-lord  whose  dignity  and  honor  have  been  wounded  by 
human  sinfulness  and  demand  reparation.  In  his  compari- 
son of  sin  to  debt,  he  did  not  follow  out  the  parable  of  Christ 
to  its  legitimate  conclusion  or  discern  its  deeper  and  diviner 
application.  But  the  positive  value  of  Anselm's  work  lies 
in  calling-  attention  to  Christ  as  the  incarnation  of  God  in 
humanity,  as  one  with  God  and  one  with  man,  so  that  as 
man  he  pays  the  debt  of  human  sinfulness,^  while  as  God 
he  frees  us  from  the  dread  of  God.  As  Christ  delivered 
the  ancient  world  from  its  dread  of  demoniac  agencies,  so 
He  delivered  the  Mediseval  world  from  the  unnatural  dread 
of  God  which  the  church  was  engendering.  The  escape 
from  God  was  shown  by  Anselm  to  consist  in  fleeing  to  God. 
Thus  the  Cur  Deus  Homo^  proceeding  not  from  the  secu- 
lar church  of  the  liierarchy,  dealing  with  sacrament  and 
penance  and  priestly  absolution,  as  the  means  of  deliverance 
from  sin ;  but  from  the  cell  of  the  monastery,  where  the 
problem  was  in  solution  by  the  more  interior  processes  of 
the  soul,  exhibits  Anselm  as  the  forerunner  of  Luther,^ 

1  In  his  treatise  of  De  Imar.,  cc.  5,  6,  7,  8,  Athanasius  appears  as 
anticipating,  in  some  respects,  tlie  attitude  of  Anselm.  But  tlie  treat- 
ment is  incidental  and  not  worked  out,  and,  moreover,  is  subordinate 
to  another  thought,  —  the  solidarity  of  the  race  in  Christ.  No  one 
can  be  said  to  have  taught  any  truth  which  he  does  not  labor  directly 
and  with  special  emphasis  to  enforce.  But  these  incidental  hints  are 
always  suggestive.     Cf.  Thomasius,  Christi  Person^  III.,  pp.  191  ff. 

2  "Anselm  von  Canterbury,  vielleicht  der  bedeutendste  aller  mittelalter- 
lichen  Theologen.  Zwar  hat  er  mit  Augustin  die  Notwendigkeit  des 
Autoritatsglaubens  betonend  (Proslog.  1,  1,  227 :  neque  enim  qunprn 
intelligere,  ut  credam,  sed  credo,  ut  intelligaw  ;  cf.  de  fide  trinit.  I,  2QZ : 
si  potest  [Christiamis~\,  intelligere,  deo  gratias  agat ;  si  non  potest,  non 
inmittat  cornua  ad  ventilandnm  sed  suhmittat  capiit  ad  venerandum),  als 
Ziel  der  neuen  dialectischen  Theologie  sich  gedacht :  rationahili  necessi- 
tate intelligere  esse  oportere  omnia  ilia,  quae  nobis  Jides  catholica  de 
Christo  credere  praecipit  (cur  deus  homo  i,  25  ;  i,  400) ;  zwar  ist  schon 
sein  Theologisieren  oft  nur  ein  ratione  solvere  qiiaestiones,  satisfacere 
objectionibiis :  allein  er  hat  weit  mehr  gethan,  als  die  Tradition  formalis- 
tisch  zu  verarbeiten.  Er  hat  auch  nicht  nur  exampla  meditandi  de 
ratione  fidei  (Proslog.  prooem.  i,  223)  gegeben,  wie  das  de  divinitatis 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF   ATONEMENT  367 

who  was  toi'turecl  by  the  inability  to  escape  from  the  fear 
and  the  dread  of  God,  until  he  found  release  in  the  convic- 
tion of  justification  by  faith. 

Anselm  lived  in  the  beginning  of  the  age  of  papal 
domination  extending  from  Hildebrand  to  Boniface  VIII. 
(1050-1300),  when  the  principle  of  papal  absolutism  was 
asserted  without  qualification,  —  that  the  pope  had  been 
placed  by  the  will  of  God  above  kings  and  bishops.  The 
will  of  the  pope  was  then  affirmed  to  be  the  source  of  law 
for  church  and  state,  wliile  the  pope  himself  stood  above 
the  law  which  he  ordained,  enforcing  it  or  granting  dis- 
pensation from  it  at  his  pleasure.  He  was  not  only  The 
Vicar  of  Christ,  but,  as  Innocent  III.  declared.  The  Vicar 
of  God,  to  whom  belong  the  earth,  the  universe,  and  all 
that  dwelt  therein.  Over  against  this  attitude  may  be 
placed  the  meditations  of  Anselm  in  his  monastery  at  Bee, 
to  whom  it  was  revealed  that  the  conception  of  Deity 
inspiring  the  papal  monarchy  was  untrue.  Even  God 
Himself  did  not  possess  the  absolute  power  that  the  pope 
was  claiming,  for  omnipotence  and  bare  will  were  not  the 
ultimate  factors  in  Deity,  but  were  limited  by  the  require- 
ments of  the  divine  nature.  There  were  things  which 
God  could  not  do  by  the  exercise  of  His  will ;  He  could 
not  forgive  sin  except  by  some  interior  adjustment  in  His 
nature,  some  expensive  process  wherein  the  justice  de- 
manding satisfaction  should  be  reconciled  with  the  love 
which  yearns  to  save.  Anselm  was  an  ultramontanist  in 
his  devotion  to  the  papal  cause,  while  yet  he  was  under- 
mining the  lowest  foundations  of  papal  authority.  He 
introduced  a  principle  into  Mediaeval  theology,  from  which 
henceforth  it  could  not  escape.      If  we  cannot  trace  its 

essentia  Monologium  (1,  141-223)  mit  seinem  kosmologischeii,  das  Pros- 
logion  seu  alloquium  de  del  existentia  (1,  223  bis  232)  init  seinein  onto- 
logischen  Gottesbeweise  ;  seine  lihri  duo  cur  dens  homo?  (i,  360-342)  sind 
trotz  ihres  Formalismus  ein  genialer  Versuch.  alle  kirchlichen  Dogmeu 
in  einen  centralen  Gedanken  zusaminenzufassen  (cf.  Boso's  Sclilussge- 
standnis  :  per  unins  quaestionis,  quam  proposnimus,  solntionem,  qnidquid 
in  novo  veteriqne  testamento  continetur,  prohatum  intelligo.  i,  432  ;  vgl. 
§  23,  3);  ja  mehr  als  dies:  sie  sind  die  wiclitigsten  der  Mittelstufen 
zwisclien  August  in  und  der  Reformation  "  (Loofs,  Leitfaden  fur  seiner 
Vorlesungen  ilber  Dogmengeschichte,  p.  157). 


368  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

relation  as  cause  to  effect,  yet  the  history  of  thought  and 
of  institutions  was  from  this  time  a  commentar}'-  upon  its 
growtli,  until  his  idea  of  God  was  finally  acknowledged  as 
the  basis  of  all  government,  secular  or  ecclesiastical,  — 
that  truth,  justice,  and  love  are  placed  above  the  will 
which  enforces  them  in  the  world.  Thus  was  won  another 
victory  for  humanity  in  the  name  of  the  Son  of  God, 
coequal  with  the  Father,  without  whose  co-operation  even 
the  Divine  Fatherhood  could  not  be  made  manifest  for 
human  redemption. 

The  peculiar  teaching  of  Anselm  on  the  nature  and 
exact  process  of  the  atonement  was  not  accepted  in  the 
age  which  followed  him.  No  later  writer  among  the 
Schoolmen,  with  the  exception  of  Bonaventura,  fully  ac- 
cepted his  conviction  of  an  absolute  necessity  in  the  being 
of  God  for  a  satisfaction  of  the  divine  justice  in  order  that 
sin  might  be  pardoned.  St.  Bernard  even  still  clung  to 
the  earlier  view  that  a  ransom  was  paid  to  Satan.  But  if 
the  result  of  Anselm's  thought  was  not  accepted,  y^et  his 
method  of  inquiry  prevailed,  that  called  for  a  study  of 
the  nature  of  God  and  the  answering  nature  of  man,  the 
effort  to  get  beneath  the  formula  and  justify  it  at  the  bar 
of  human  reason.  Many  were  the  questions  arising  in 
consequence  of  this  method  whose  origin  may  be  traced 
to  Anselm's  meditations.  Was  the  death  of  Christ  an 
expression  of  God's  hatred  for  sin ;  or  was  it,  as  Abelard 
taught,  a  manifestation  of  His  love,  a  divine  appeal  to  the 
human  soul  ?  Was  the  death  of  Christ  an  actual  penalty, 
a  punishment  inflicted  upon  Him  as  the  substitute  for  man 
and  equivalent  to  the  punishment  that  justice  demanded 
for  all  human  transgressions ;  or  was  it  not  rather,  as 
Aquinas  taught,  that  the  offering  of  Christ  was  a  propi- 
tiation of  the  heart  of  Deity,  to  be  accredited  to  the 
human  family  which  Christ  represented,  wherein  also  the 
sin  of  man  might  be  covered?  Why  could  not  God  have 
forgiven  man  as  one  man  forgives  another?  What  is  for- 
giveness ?  Does  pardon  take  away  the  consequences  of  sin, 
or  only  remove  the  consciousness  of  guilt,  reconciling  the 
sinner  to  God,  but  leaving  him  still  to  endure  its  penalty? 


THE   DOCTRINE   OF   ATONEMENT  369 

Or  must  it  be  held,  as  Duns  Scotus  taught,  that  these  ques- 
tions are  insoluble  ;  that  so  far  as  reason  can  discern,  any 
sinful  man,  aided  by  the  divine  grace,  could  make  satisfac- 
tion for  his  own  sins,  if  God  were  willing  to  accept  it ;  that 
there  is  no  interior  fitness  between  Christ's  work  and  the 
end  to  be  accomplished?  God  might,  if  He  had  chosen, 
have  reached  His  purpose  in  some  other  way.  He  might 
have  accepted  some  other  substitute  than  Christ,  or  have 
forgiven  sin  without  any  vicarious  offering,  if  it  had 
pleased  His  absolute  will.^ 

It  is  not  with  the  answers  to  these  questions  that  we 
are  here  concerned,  but  with  the  questions  themselves,  in 
so  far  as  they  are  the  result  of  monastic  meditations  upon 
the  problems  of  theology.  They  indicate  that  thought  is 
becoming  subjective,  going  beneath  the  surface  of  formal 
theology  or  ritual  observance ;  that  new  foundations  are 
placed  for  speculative  philosophy  and  psychology,  as  also 
for  literature  and  art.  As  the  papacy  did  not  fall  until  the 
idea  of  God  on  which  it  rested  had  been  abandoned,  so  the 
Renaissance  was  impossible  without  this  interior  process, 
this  deeper  search  into  the  moods  of  the  human  soul. 

In  the  Protestant  Reformation  an  equal  prominence  was 
attached  to  the  two  great  principles  having  their  origin 
and  development  in  the  monastery,  —  the  doctrine  of  pre- 
destination first  asserted  by  Augustine,  and  the  idea  of 
God  as  set  forth  by  Anselm.  The  one  stood  for  individual- 
ism in  opposition  to  the  unthinking  tyranny  of  solidarity, 
and  the  other  broke  down  the  theory  of  the  abstract  om- 
nipotence of  God,  —  the  motive  and  the  model  for  human 
usurpations.  Thus  the  doctrine  of  an  atonement,  whose 
blessing  was  no  longer  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  hierarchy 
to  distribute,  but  was  mediated  by  individual  faith,  became 

1  For  exposition  and  criticism  of  the  Anselmic  and  later  teaching  on 
the  Atonement,  cf.  Ritschl,  Die  christliche  Lehre  von  der  Bechtfertigung 
unci  Versohnung,  1870  (also  Vol.  I.  in  Eng.  Trans.,  A  Critical  History  of 
the  Christian  Doctrine  of  Justification  and  Beconciliation,  Edin.  1872) ; 
Baur,  Die  christliche  Lehre  von  der  Versohnung  in  Hirer  geschichtlichen 
EntwicJdung,  etc.  ;  Schwane,  Dogmengesch.  d.  mittleren  Zeit ;  Shedd, 
Historii  of  Doctrine,  Vol.  II.,  and  other  doctrine  and  general  church 
histories. 


370  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

the  safeguard  of  human  liberty.  The  Calvinistic  theology 
has  sometimes  appeared  as  more  severe  and  rigid  than 
the  Augustinianism  upon  which  it  builds.  But  if  it  is 
considered  in  the  age  when  it  arose,  Calvinism  marks  an 
advance  upon  the  attitude  of  Augustine,  who  knew  no  doc- 
trine of  atonement  such  as  was  evolved  in  the  Middle 
Ages ;  to  whom  God's  will  was  absolute,  undetermined 
by  any  motive  in  the  divine  nature  which  man  could  dis- 
cern. The  words  of  Augustine,  beautiful  and  true  as  they 
are  when  taken  as  an  expression  of  devout  feeling,  —  Da 
quod  juhes  etjiihe  quod  vis,  — -become  untrue,  and  a  source  of 
danger  when  regarded  as  an  intellectual  formula,  the  dogma 
of  the  unconditioned  will.  Thus  the  teaching  of  Augus- 
tine harmonized  with  Roman  imperialism,  and  made  possible 
the  career  of  the  papacy  and  of  the  Latin  church.  While 
something  of  this  defect  still  inhered  in  the  teaching  of 
Calvin,  it  was  in  a  measure  neutralized  by  the  prominence 
he  gave  to  the  atonement.  The  Reformed  church  which 
he  organized  became  the  unwearied  antagonist  of  every 
form  of  imperialism,  not  only  ministering  through  the 
doctrine  of  election  to  the  sense  of  individual  importance 
and  freedom,  but  upholding  a  justice  in  the  divine  nature 
that  requires  the  conformity  of  the  divine  will ;  and  must 
therefore  be  followed  by  every  human  ruler  who  claims  to 
rule  in  the  name  of  God.  In  the  age  of  the  Reformation, 
when  the  will  of  God  was  made  the  lever  of  deliverance 
from  the  absolutism  of  the  papacy,  more  than  ever  was  it 
necessary  to  affirm  that  the  divine  will  was  determined  by 
the  divine  nature.  To  get  rid  of  contingency  in  Deit}^ 
was  to  take  the  first  step  toward  constitutional  forms  of 
human  government. 

The  history  of  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  since  the 
Reformation  shows  the  same  characteristics,  the  same  vicis- 
situdes of  opinion,  that  marked  its  discussion  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  proportion  as  its  legal  aspects  have  been  urged 
whereby  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  became  a  vicarious  penalty 
demanded  by  the  divine  justice,  there  has  been  a  ten- 
dency to  assert  its  moral  aspects  as  they  are  called,  —  the 
reconciliation  of  man  to  God,  rather  than  the  reconcilia- 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF  ATONEMENT  37l 

tion  of  God  to  man.  The  older  language  thus  seemed 
obnoxious  or  irrational,  when  it  spoke  of  the  punishment  of 
Christ,  or  of  penalty  endured  by  Him,  or  of  His  vicarious 
substitution,  or  the  equivalence  of  His  sufferings  as  the 
God-man  for  human  punishment.  Grotius  endeavored  to 
mediate  between  these  attitudes  by  dwelling  upon  analogies 
of  human  government.  In  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Deists  were  unanimous  in  holding  that  no  atonement  was 
necessary,  that  repentance  was  the  sole  condition  for 
obtaining  the  divine  forgiveness.  But  the  interest  in  the 
doctrine  was  quickened  again  in  the  Evangelical  Awaken- 
ing, becoming  a  staple  element  in  popular  preaching,  and 
giving  rise  to  a  rich  as  well  as  most  voluminous  literature. 
In  New  England  more  particularly,  from  the  time  of  Jona- 
than Edwards,  in  Scotland,  in  England  under  the  influence 
of  Wesley,  in  Germany  since  the  revival  led  by  Schleier- 
maclier,  has  the  belief  in  the  atonement  of  Chiist  gained  a 
deeper  hold  in  the  Christian  consciousness,  illustiated  and 
enforced  as  it  has  been  by  argument  drawn  from  human 
experience  in  every  age.  Two  writers  in  particular  have 
added  contributions  to  the  rich  complexity  of  interpreta- 
tion which  envelops  this  eternal  mystery  of  the  soul, — 
the  late  McLeod  Campbell  of  Scotland,  who  regarded  tlie 
atonement  made  by  Christ  as  consisting  in  His  rendering 
an  adequate  repentance  for  human  sinfulness  rather  than 
in  undergoing  an  equivalent  penalty ;  so  that  His  "  confes- 
sion of  sin  is  a  perfect  Amen  in  humanity  to  the  judgment 
of  God  on  the  sin  of  Man."  The  late  Mr.  Maurice  took  a 
new  departure  in  liis  treatment  of  the  great  theme  by  his 
persistent  appeal  to  the  Fatherhood  of  God  as  constituting 
the  controlling  idea  of  all  human  thought  about  the  atone- 
ment for  sin. 

In  the  light  of  this  truth  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God, 
speculative  theories  about  the  divine  nature  and  its  demands 
have  been  readjusted  in  accordance  with  an  analogy,  which 
the  ignorant  man  may  read  with  as  unerring  instinct  as  the 
erudite  theologian.  The  will  of  God  throughout  the  uni- 
verse, and  as  related  to  every  man,  becomes  henceforth  a 
fatherly  will,  not  to  be  escaped  by  man,  but  from  which  the 


372  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

soul  no  longer  desires  to  escape,  since  in  the  execution  of 
that  will  lies  the  hope  of  the  individual's  salvation  no  less 
than  the  realization  of  the  redemption  for  all  mankind. 
The  atonement  of  Christ  becomes,  therefore,  not  only  the 
process  wherein  the  reconciliation  of  God  with  the  world 
is  revealed  and  maintained,  but  it  becomes  still  further  the 
ruling  principle  of  the  Christian  life,  in  Avhose  imitation 
by  each  man  for  himself,  but  also  for  every  other  man,  lies 
the  soul's  salvation.  Christ  offered  Himself  in  life  and 
death  as  a  voluntary  sacrifice  to  the  will  of  the  Father,  and 
thus  establishes  the  method  incumbent  on  those  who  would 
approach  Him.  The  law  of  sacrifice  becomes  thus  the 
universal  law  for  man.  But  it  is  not  a  law  that  God 
imposes,  without  having  Himself  first  participated  in  its 
inmost  essence.  For  it  had  been  illustrated  in  the  bosom 
of  God  from  all  eternity,  in  the  relationship  of  eternal 
Fatherhood  with  the  coeternal  and  coequal  Son.  In  this 
way  is  secured  more  firmly,  what  the  ages  have  been 
struggling  after.  The  punishment  of  sin  becomes  a  reme- 
dial agency ;  the  divine  sympathy  is  assured  to  humanity 
in  its  suffering  ;  and  beneath  all  events  and  circumstances 
of  life,  the  divine  will  pursues  its  fatherly  course  of  lifting 
men  above  themselves,  above  the  conviction  of  sin  and 
guilt,  into  the  spiritual  and  moral  life  of  God.^ 

1  The  modern  literature  on  the  Atonement  is  too  voluminous  to  be 
given  here  ;  but  mention  may  be  made  of  Maurice,  Doctrine  of  Sacrifice., 
deduced  from  the  Scriptures,  1872  ;  Davies,  Llewellyn,  The  Woi-k  of  Christ, 
or  the  World  reconciled  to  God,  with  a  preface  on  the  Atonement  Contro- 
versy ;  Jonathan  Edwards,  Satisfaction  for  Sin,  Vol.  I.  (Worces.  ed.), 
p.  582,  which  contains  the  suggestion  afterwards  worked  out  by  Campbell 
in  his  Nature  of  the  Atonement;  also  Bushnell,  The  Vicarious  Sacrifice 
and  Forgiveness  and  Laio  ;  Bruce,  The  Humiliation  of  Christ ;  Dale,  The 
Atonement;  Park,  Edward  A.,  Introdtictory  Essay  to  The  Atonement,  a 
Series  of  Essays,  etc.  Among  recent  German  writers  is  Hofmann,  Der 
Schriftheweis,  1860.  For  the  controversy  which  his  theory  created  in 
Germany,  cf.  Deutsche  Zeitschrift  fur  christliche  Wissenschaft,  etc. ,  1860, 
and  Jahrbiicher  fur  deutsche  Theologie,  1858.  For  the  attitude  of  the 
Oxford  School,  see  Tracts  for  the  Times,  Article  on  Religious  Beserve, 
and  Oxenham,  The  Atonement,  which  indicate  a  disposition  to  reveit  to 
the  earlier  attitude  of  the  Catholic  church  before  theories  had  been  devel- 
oped. A  similar  tendency  is  seen  in  Correspondence  of  A.  Knox  tvith 
Bishop  Jehh,  the  earlier  pioneers  of  the  Oxford  movement. 


THE  DOCTRINE   OF   ATONEMENT  373 

As  one  contemplates  the  many  and  conflicting  theories 
of  the  atonement,  or  the  vast  amount  of  profound  and 
subtle  thought  expended  in  efforts  at  its  elucidation  since 
the  time  of  Anselm,  the  vitality  of  opinions  which  seem  to 
have  been  refuted,  the  apparent  impossibility  that  common 
agreement  should  be  reached,  —  in  view  of  this  one  is 
tempted  to  look  with  more  complacency  upon  the  liturgies 
of  the  ancient  church,  —  the  work  of  the  bishops  in  their 
capacity  of  pastors  dealing  directly  with  the  'people  and 
not  dominated  by  monastic  aspiration.  In  the  ritual  of 
the  altar,  no  effort  is  made  to  explain  the  great  transac- 
tion on  Calvary,  but  it  is  held  up  before  the  people  as  if  it 
needed  or  could  have  no  explanation,  or  as  though  the 
simple  event  in  itself  spoke  with  direct  plainness  and  power 
to  the  Christian  heart.  The  late  Dr.  Bushnell  experienced 
this  passing  mood,  which  has,  however,  a  representative 
significance,  when  at  the  close  of  his  book  on  The  Vicari- 
ous Sacrifice  he  urged  the  retention  of  the  altar  language, 
notwithstanding  that  it  had  been  "so  long  and  dreadfully 
misapplied  by  the  dogmatic  schemes  of  expiTition  and 
judicial  satisfaction."  In  the  objective  symbols  of  the 
altar,  there  might  be  a  cure  for  the  wearied  self-conscious- 
ness forever  seeking  to  square  the  fact  with  the  theor3^ 
To  the  altar  men  could  turn,  "  with  confession  and  tender 
worship,  without  thinking,  for  the  time,  of  anything  but 
what  is  before  us  and  is  done  for  us."  Without  constant 
recourse  to  the  objective  forms  of  worship  as  creating  a  new 
element  of  peace  and  reconciliation,  there  was  danger  of 
turning  the  Christian  oblation  into  a  philosophy  of  Christ, 
a  gospel  without  an  atmosphere,  our  very  repentance  ham- 
pered by  too  great  subjectivity,  our  subjective  applications 
of  Christ  confuted  and  inefficacious.  The  language  of  the 
Christian  heart,  as  exemplified  in  objective  form,  might  go 
deeper  than  theories,  as  when  it  commemorates  the  death  of 
Christ,  "•  who  by  His  one  oblation  of  Himself  once  offered, 
has  made  a  full,  perfect,  and  sufficient  sacrifice,  oblation, 
and  satisfaction  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world."  But  in 
the  further  experience  of  the  same  writer,  there  is  a  con- 
tinuance of  the  parable ;  for  he  again  resumed  his  inquiry, 


374  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

undaunted  by  his  misgivings,  with  the  result  that  he 
qualified  the  conclusions  of  his  previous  inquiry  and 
gained  a  deeper  insight  into  the  mystery  of  the  ages. 

Ill 

The  doctrine  of  the  Atonemeiit,  in  its  various  statements 
and  its  historical  development,  may  be  regai'ded  as  the 
application  of  the  truth  of  the  incarnation  to  the  inmost 
wants  of  the  individual  soul.  It  has  also  other  aspects, 
as  in  its  bearing  upon  human  freedom,  the  deliverance  of 
man  from  the  fears  haunting  the  imagination  and  the 
conscience.  In  all  its  phases,  it  presents  humanity  as 
looking  to  Christ  for  redemption.  But  as  a  doctrine,  its 
history  has  been  confined  to  the  church  in  Western 
Christendom,  where  personality  has  had  a  larger,  freer 
development  than  in  the  East.  It  has  been  pre-eminently 
the  doctrine  of  the  monastery,  where  the  individual  desire 
to  appropriate  the  salvation  of  Christ  has  always  been  a 
powerful  motive.  Its  development  since  the  Reformation 
has  been  in  those  Protestant  churches  whose  connection  is 
closest  with  the  monastic  principle  of  predestination,  and 
where  individualism  has  been  the  religious  basis.  The 
Church  of  England  as  a  national  church  has  sanctioned  no 
special  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  of  atonement.  Like- 
wise in  the  national  churches  of  the  East,  there  has  been 
little  or  no  interest  in  the  inquiry,  and  thought  upon  this 
subject  remains  where  it  was  left  in  the  age  which  pro- 
duced the  Catholic  creeds.  But  the  Eastern  church,  as 
will  be  seen  hereafter,  was  working  out  the  same  issue  in 
a  different  way. 

There  is  one  problem,  however,  in  the  history  of  the- 
ology, wherein  all  the  churches  alike  have  been  con- 
cerned, which  from  the  time  when  it  first  emerged  in  the 
ancient  Catholic  church  has  never  ceased  to  be  a  fruitful 
source  of  controversy.  On  this  question  also  the  creeds 
are  silent,  suggesting,  indeed,  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem, but  offering  no  reconciliation.  It  is  the  question  of 
the  relation  between  the  divine  and  the  human  ;  how  they 


THE   HUMAN   AND   THE   DIVINE  375 

shall  be  defined  ;  in  what  way  they  are  to  be  distinguished ; 
whether  they  have  any  mutual  affiliation  or  kinship ;  what 
are  the  canons  of  judgment  for  determining  whether  ideas, 
acts,  processes,  or  results  are  human  or  divine.  This  ques- 
tion enters  alike  into  all  the  departments  of  Christian  life, 
Christian  thought,  and  Christian  worship,  and  lies  beneath 
the  principles  of  ecclesiastical  organization. 

The  problem  was  first  broached  when  it  was  newly  real- 
ized that  in  the  incarnation  of  Christ  the  human  and  the 
divine  had  met  together.  But  the  effort  to  determine  how 
the  human  and  the  divine  were  related  in  the  person  of 
Christ  revealed  deep  divergences  of  attitude  in  the  ancient 
church  of  the  fifth  century,  that  no  formula  could  recon- 
cile. In  what  is  known  as  Nestorianism,  there  may  have 
been  perpetuated  something  of  the  influence  of  Jewish 
thought,  —  that  Semitic  tendency  which,  placing  the  stress 
upon  the  ethical,  regards  man  essentially  in  his  difference 
and  separation  from  God,  and  is  unable,  therefore,  to  bring 
together  the  divine  and  the  human  in  the  incarnation  of 
Christ  except  in  some  formal  or,  as  it  were,  mechanical 
alliance.  Whatever  Nestorius  may  actually  have  held, 
his  name  has  become  a  synonym  for  a  doctrine  of  the 
incarnation,  allowing  to  Christ  two  natures,  a  human  and 
a  divine,  yet  not  regarding  them  as  interpenetrating  each 
other  but  as  remaining  distinct  and  separate,  allied  but  not 
united.  The  Person  of  Christ,  thus  conceived,  becomes 
something  non-natural,  without  close  organic  relation  to 
humanity.  The  incarnation  becomes  the  alliance  of  the 
divine  personality  with  some  individual  man,  and  the 
redemption  of  humanity  by  the  entrance  into  it  of  a 
divine  life  can  no  longer  be  conceived  or  understood. 

Such  was  the  estimate  placed  upon  the  teaching  of  Nes- 
torius by  Cyril  (f  444),  his  antagonist,  the  patriarch  of 
the  great  church  of  Alexandria.  The  moral  character  of 
Cyril  has  met  with  unqualified  condemnation,  but  as  a  the- 
ologian it  must  be  admitted,  however  reluctantly,  that  he 
possessed  no  small  capacity;  at  least  he  discerned  that 
there  was  something  wanting  in  the  view  of  Nestorius, 
which   he   set   himself    to   supply.       According  to   Cyril's 


376  CREEDS   AND  DOCTRINES 

view,  the  divine  Word  permeated  human  nature  ;  humanity- 
was  taken  up  into  the  divine  ;  there  was  mutual  interpene- 
tration,  so  that  the  human  claimed  the  divine  as  its  own, 
while  human  weakness  and  infirmity  became  the  predicates 
of  the  divine.  So  complete  was  the  identification  or  fusion 
of  the  divine  with  the  human,  that  there  existed  no  longer, 
after  the  incarnation,  two  natures,  but  the  human  had 
been  o-lorified  and  transmuted,  till  there  remained  but  one 
nature  in  reality,  —  of  the  God  who  had  become  fiesh  and 
had  been  made  man.^ 

The  history  of  the  controversy  in  the  ancient  church 
over  this  issue,  lasting  for  more  than  two  hundred  years, 
cannot  be  considered  here.  It  was  a  history  full  of 
vicissitudes,  of  movements  leaning  now  to  one  side  and 
now  to  the  other,  illustrating  the  law  of  action  and  reaction. 
It  was  an  Oriental  controversy,  but  twice  the  Western 
church  intervened,  at  the  Council  of  Chalcedon  in  451 
and  at  the  Council  of  Constantinople  in  680,  when  the 
existence  of  the  human,  under  Cyril's  influence  in  danger 
of  disappearing  in  the  divine,  was  reasserted.  The  formu- 
las of  Chalcedon  and  Constantinople  inspired  by  Rome, 
declared  that  the  divine  and  the  human  were  not  to  be 
mingled  or  confounded,  while  yet  they  were  not  to  be 
separated  or  divided.  The  tendency  in  the  West  was 
toward  a  qualified  sympathy  with  the  School  of  Antioch, 
of  which  Nestorius  had  been  an  inadequate  representative. 
But  the  tendency  in  the  East  gravitated  toward  the  atti- 
tude of  Cyril,  —  that  the  distinction  between  the  divine 
and  the  human  had  disappeared  in  the  one  personality 
of  the  God  who  became  man.  Twice  had  this  monophy- 
site  tendency  also  found  expression  in  the  councils  of  the 
church,  as  at  Ephesus  in  431  and  again  at  Constantinople 
in  553.  But  the  formula  of  Chalcedon  asserting  the  two 
distinct  natures  in  the  one  person,  carried  a  weight  hard 
for  the  Orientals  to  endure.  To  rescind  it  was  found 
impossible  after  many  efforts,  but  by  means  of  a  subtle 
dialectic,  giving  to  it  an  interpretation  in  harmony  with 
the  Oriental  spirit,  it  ceased  to  be  a  source  of  annoyance. 
1  Cf.  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ,  Div.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  55  ff. 


THE   HUMAN    AND   THE   DIVINE  377 

The  Eastern  cliureh  thus  escaped  the  dualism  between  the 
human  and  the  divine,  but  it  also  obscured  the  distinction 
between  them,  and  thus  weakened  the  motives  of  human 
progress. 

There  were  many  defects  in  the  controversy,  as  in  the 
failure  to  define  the  terms  '  nature  '  and  '  person,'  nor  was 
there  a  common  understanding  of  what  unity  between 
them  implied.  The  real  content  of  the  human  nature  had 
not  yet  been  opened  up  to  the  ancient  world,  by  the 
meditation,  the  anxious  study,  the  inward  experience 
of  the  man}^  centuries  which  were  to  follow.  There 
was  an  unconquerable  tendency  in  both  parties,  the  An- 
tiochian  and  the  Alexandrian,  to  define  spiritual  things 
in  the  terms  of  sense,  so  that  nature  was  somehow  con- 
ceived, whether  in  God  or  man,  as  a  ^wasi'-physical  essence. 
The  importance  of  the  ethical  was  lost  sight  of  in  the 
failure  to  consider  the  essence  of  the  divine  nature  as 
love.  National  ambitions,  race  prejudices,  ecclesiastical 
rivalries,  also  complicated  the  issue.  But  apart  from  all 
these  evils,  defects,  and  failures,  this  problem  of  the  ages 
was  clearly  enough  conceived,  and  the  actors  recognized 
their  true  affinities,  whenever  the  opportunity  presented. 

The  discussion  of  the  relation  between  the  divine  and 
human  in  the  person  of  Christ  inevitably  involved  the  ap- 
plication of  the  same  issue  in  all  the  relations  of  humanity 
to  God,  where  the  divine  and  the  human  meet.  It  was 
assumed  in  the  Pelagian  controversy  by  both  parties,  by 
Augustine  as  well  as  by  Pelagius,  that  whatever  was 
ascribed  to  the  human  agency  in  the  matter  of  salvation 
was  so  much  taken  from  the  divine.  The  ideas  of  God 
and  man  were  so  far  mutually  exclusive  that,  to  the  mind 
of  Augustine,  no  less  than  to  that  of  Pelagius,  what  was 
done  by  man,  whether  in  conversion  or  in  human  history, 
appeared  to  be  so  much  done  without  God  ;  what  was 
done  by  God  seemed  like  "a  hand  from  behind  the  clouds 
suddenly  thrust  into  the  web  of  human  affairs."  From 
this  point  of  view,  the  development  of  the  ecclesiastical 
organization  could  not  be  regarded  as  divine  or  authorita- 
tive, in  so  far  as  it  was  an  adaptation  to  human  needs  and 


378  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

springing  from  the  demand  for  their  satisfaction ;  but  a 
divine  warrant  and  origin  for  the  government  of  the 
church  must  be  sought  and  somehow  found  in  an  explicit 
injunction  proceeding  from  Christ  through  His  Apostles,  or 
the  church  was  a  merely  human  affair,  of  man's  suggestion 
and  arrangement.  Thus  the  Roman  church  could  not  con- 
ceive that  the  divine  will  in  human  history  might  operate 
through  human  agency,  thus  sanctioning  for  a  time  the 
centralized  authority  of  the  bishop  of  Rome,  as  a  means  of 
unity  and  peace  ;  but  it  was  compelled  if  it  would  exhibit 
a  divine  claim,  to  fall  back  upon  the  words  of  Christ  to 
Peter,  with  a  forced  interpretation  having  no  necessary 
connection  with  the  process  of  history. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  illustrate  here  the  working  of 
this  principle,  first  exhibited  in  the  ancient  controversy 
about  the  Two  Natures  in  the  Person  of  Christ.  Every- 
where it  is  apparent  in  the  interpretation  of  life;  it  was 
assumed  in  the  monastery  as  the  ground  theory  on  which 
religion  rested,  and  became  the  motive  of  resistance  to 
the  authority  of  the  state  or  of  the  secular  church,  that 
what  was  of  human  origin  could  not  be  divine.  The  dan- 
ger which  the  Roman  church  has  always  chiefly  feared 
is  Pantheism,  the  commingling  of  the  human  with  the 
divine ;  while  the  error  against  which  the  Oriental  church 
has  guarded  is  Deism,  the  separating  of  God  from  man. 
But  in  the  Protestant  churches,  also,  the  same  controversy 
goes  on  with  unabated  interest,  as  it  has  done  since  the 
Reformation. 

In  the  still  debated  question  regarding  the  divine  and 
the  human  element  in  Holy  Scripture,  we  have  the  anal- 
ogy with  ancient  controversy,  the  bond  of  connection 
which  unites  the  modern  with  the  ancient  cliurch  in  a 
common  consciousness.  Ever  since  the  Bible  became  the 
authoritative  utterance  of  the  divine  will,  as  with  the 
Protestant  churches,  there  have  been  these  two  attitudes, 
one  maintaining  its  exclusive  divine  character  and  origin, 
and  the  other  contending  for  the  recognition  of  the  human 
element,  as  if  revelation  must  be  made  through  human 
nature  and  experience.     It  has  been  maintained  that  the 


THE   HUMAN    AND   THE   DIVINE  379 

Bible  is  a  book  of  which  God  is  the  author,  in  such  a 
sense  that  no  human  moods,  weaknesses,  or  errors  are  to  be 
found  within  its  pages ;  as  if  God  had  dictated  its  very 
words  to  amanuenses,  whose  faculties  were  in  abeyance, 
while  they  recorded  the  divine  oracle.  Whenever  piety 
and  devotion  have  been  at  the  highest  degree  of  fervor, 
the  reverence  for  the  unique  character  of  the  Bible  as  the 
Word  of  God  has  grown  more  intense  and  uncompromising, 
accompanied  with  a  deep  hostility  against  those  who  find 
in  every  book  of  Scripture  a  human  element  that  has 
colored  its  teaching  or  through  whose  medium  the  divine 
has  spoken.  A  resentment  as  fierce  as  the  hatred  of  Cyril 
for  Nestorius  has  been  shown  toward  those  who  seek  to 
trace  the  historical  or  geographical  environment  of  the 
sacred  writers,  or  who  find  in  their  utterance  the  evidence 
of  contemporary  thought,  or  the  influence  of  contemporary 
systems  of  philosophy,  or  the  intrusion  of  prevailing  con- 
ceptions of  God  and  man,  and  of  their  relations  to  each 
other.  After  three  centuries  of  discussion,  men  are  still 
propounding  definitions  of  inspiration  or  drawing  distinc- 
tions between  inspiration  and  revelation,  seeking  some 
basis  of  compromise  wherein  the  infallible  revelation  of 
the  sacred  Scriptures  may  be  harmonized  with  the  results 
of  human  research,  as  it  seeks  to  study  the  personality 
of  the  men  who  wrote  and  the  circumstances  of  the  age 
which  influenced  them.  But  at  the  end  of  three  centu- 
ries opinion  is  still  divided.  The  new  generation  which 
has  fed  upon  the  truth  in  the  Bible,  as  the  veritable  food  of 
life,  and  in  its  purely  religious  preoccupation  has  been 
shut  out  from  the  intellectual  sphere  where  scholars  labor, 
is  inclined  to  regard  the  work  of  Biblical  criticism  as  a 
belittling  and  degrading  of  the  Word  of  God,  as  though  it 
were  aiming  to  rob  mankind  of  its  most  precious  treasure, 
the  supernatural  Word,  spoken  from  the  heavens  to  this 
lower  world. 

The  danger  of  such  an  attitude  is  not  at  first  apparent. 
But  as  we  study  the  controversy  in  the  ancient  church, 
the  analogy  of  the  dangers  becomes  more  clear.  There 
are  points  of  view  from  which  it  is  important  to  maintain 


380  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

the  distinction,  but  not  the  separation,  between  the  human 
and  the  divine.     For  when  a  place  and  activity  is  denied 
to  the  human,  as  in  the  Person  of  Christ,  or  when  God 
alone  is  regarded  as  the  author  of  the  Bible  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  the  human  agency,  then  there  follows  the  strange 
result,  —  that  the  human,  which  has  been  thus  disowned 
in  theory,  suddenly  appears  as  in  reality  enthroned  in  the 
place  of  the  divine.     In  the  ancient  church,  it  became  cus- 
tomary in  Cyril's  time  and  afterward  to  speak  of  Christ  as 
if  He  had  no  human  nature,  and  then  men  said  God  had 
been  born,  God  had  suffered  or  thirsted  or  hungered,  God 
had  died  on  the  cross.     They  spoke  of  the  mother  of  God, 
the  brothers  of  God,  the  grandparents  of  God.      Jerome 
said  of  a  certain  woman  that  she  was  the  sister-in-law  of 
God.     What  in  reality  was  happening  was  the  loss  of  the 
humanity  of  Christ,  His  removal  from  human  sympathy  and 
comprehension  into  some  unreal  sphere,  followed  by  the 
emergence  of  substitutes  of  every  kind  to  fill  the  vacant 
place  of  the  divine  but  also  human  mediator.     So,  also,  if 
the  Bible  were  to  be  made  a  book  exclusively  divine,  and 
inspiration  implied  the  suppression  of  the  human  agency, 
it  would  quench  all  other  literature  at  its  source  ;  because 
when  God  was  speaking,  who  would  care  to  listen  to  the 
utterance  of  man.     And  not  only  so,  but  there  would  also 
result,  as  in  the  Monophysite  conception  of  the  Person  of 
Christ,  such  a  deification  of  the  human  intellect,  as  that 
the  thought  and  the  reason  of  man  would  be  substituted 
for  the  divine  Word.     The  human  inference  and  human 
judgment,  in  which  Scripture  abounds,  the  local  and  the 
transitory  elements  in  a  progressive  revelation,  would  be 
mixed   and  confounded   with   the    unchanging   Word   of 
eternal  life,  till  the  very  principle  of  revelation  would  be 
endangered,  if  not  lost  altogether.      There  is  danger,  of 
course,  that  Biblical  criticism  may  be  pursued  in  so  one- 
sided a  manner  that  the  Bible  may  come  to  be  regarded  as 
the  subjective  working  of  the  human  mind,  varying  from 
one  age  to  another,  with  no  standard  by  which  its  products 
should  be  tested.      The  predominance  of  either  of  these 
tendencies  is   guarded   against  not  only  by  the   zealous 


THE    HUMAN    AND    THE    DIVINE  381 

insistence  upon  the  distinction  between  the  human  and 
the  divine,  but  also  by  their  association,  inseparable  and 
indivisible,  in  that  mysterious  process  wherein  the  revela- 
tion is  made  to  the  world. 

A  beautiful  light  has  been  shed  by  poetry  upon  the 
entanglements  of  theological  controversy,  revealing  that 
hostile  disputants  who  could  find  no  ground  for  harmony 
have,  after  all,  been  reflecting  opposite  phases  of  the  same 
movement,  —  that  instinct  in  every  devout  soul,  coming 
to  the  knowledge  of  itself  by  the  love  of  God  and  yet 
fain  to  renounce  itself  in  the  passionate  adoration  it  ren- 
ders to  the  divine.  Thus  George  Herbert  writes,  in  lan- 
guage recalling  the  confusion  of  theological  distinctions 
between  the  divine  and  ■  the  human,  and  yet  suggesting 
the  method  of  their  reconciliation  : 

"  Lord,  Thou  art  mine  and  I  am  Thine, 
If  mine  I  am ;  and  Thine  much  more, 
Than  I  or  ought  or  can  be  mine. 

Yet  to  be  Thine,  doth  me  restore ; 
So  that  again  I  now  am  mine, 

And  with  advantage  mine  the  more. 
Since  this  being  mine,  brings  with  it  Thine, 
And  Thou  with  me  dost  Thee  restore. 
If  I  without  Thee  would  be  mine, 
I  neither  should  be  mine  or  Thine. 
O  be  mine  still !     Still  make  me  Thine ; 
Or  rather  make  no  Thine  or  mine." 


CHAPTER   V 

THE  PERSON  OF  CHRIST  IN  MODERN  THOUGHT  —  DIFFI- 
CULTY WITH  THE  MIRACLE  —  ANGLICAN  AND  GERMAN 
THEOLOGY 

The  points  at  issue  in  the  doctrinal  controversies  of  the 
ancient  church  were  these  :  How  had  the  divine  entered 
into  humanity  in  the  Person  of  Christ ;  and  How  had  the 
redeemed  humanity  of  Christ  become  the  world's  posses- 
sion. To  these  questions  Cyril  of  Alexandria  had  returned 
representative  answers,  in  harmony  with  the  tendencies  of 
the  aofe.  The  human  nature  of  Christ  had  been  infused 
with  the  life  of  the  divine  Logos,  the  divine  nature  had 
also  appropriated  as  its  own  the  weaknesses  of  the  human 
nature,  till  there  resulted  one  divine  personality,  uniting 
God  and  man  in  organic  indissoluble  fellowship.  The 
Logos  did  not  unite  Himself  with  one  individual  man,  in 
order  to  form  the  Person  of  Christ,  but  the  alliance  was 
with  human  nature  itself  as  a  living  conscious  entity, 
while  yet  impersonal.  Hence  it  could  be  held  that  hu- 
manity as  a  whole  had  been  redeemed  in  the  power  of  the 
incarnation,  to  share  henceforth  in  the  life  of  the  Son  of 
God.  The  appropriation  of  this  divine  humanity  by  the 
church  and  by  each  individual  man,  did  not  depend  upon 
personal  inquiry  or  self-conscioas  effort,  but  was  mediated 
through  the  eucharist,  wherein  was  offered  participation 
in  the  glorified  humanity  of  Christ,  in  the  bread  and  the 
wine  transmuted  by  the  agency  of  the  Holy  Spiiit. 

In  the  modern  church  the  same  issues  abide,  but  the 
mode  and  result  of  their  determination  is  in  contrast  with 
the  method  and  conclusion  of  the  ancient  church.  In 
place  of  the  ancient  tendency  to  discuss  the  Person  of 
Christ  in  an  abstract  way,  as  some  geometrical  figure 
might  be  explained,  where  spiritual  things  are  conceived 

382 


THE   PERSON    OF   CHRIST  383 

in  accordance  with  physical  analogies,  there  has  been  sub- 
stituted the  concrete  historical  inquiry.  Attention  has 
been  increasingly  concentrated  upon  the  actual  life  of 
the  Son  of  God,  as  it  was  lived  in  the  flesh,  till  Christ 
has  become  again  the  possession  of  the  church  as  has  not 
been  since  the  days  when  His  disciples  stood  in  His  pres- 
ence and  listened  to  His  teaching,  or  witnessed  His  deeds 
of  love  and  mercy.  In  this  study  of  the  Person  of  Christ, 
the  stress  of  thought  and  inquiry  has  been  laid  upon  His 
moral  character.  His  human  insiglit  and  sympathy.  His 
spiritual  elevation ;  and  above  all  His  consciousness  of 
entire  and  perfect  union  with  the  Father,  yet  with  no 
sense  of  guilt  or  confession  of  sin,  or  cry  for  forgiveness, 
—  characteristics  making  His  career  unique  in  the  reli- 
gious history  of  man.  In  the  Lives  of  Christ  put  forth  in 
such  profusion,  or  in  the  modern  pulpit  finding  in  the 
personality  of  the  Christ  of  the  Gospels  an  exhaustless 
source  of  interest  and  power,  it  is  the  moral  character  of 
Christ  and  His  spiritual  teaching  that  constitute  Him  the 
leader  and  the  head  of  the  race  of  man. 

In  this  endeavor  to  study  the  inner  life  of  Jesus,  the 
modern  church  has  the  advantage  of  eighteen  centuries 
of  His  influence  as  a  force  in  human  history,  or  of  His 
redemptive  power  in  inward  experience,  —  forming,  as  it 
were,  His  spiritual  psychology,  as  it  is  also  the  further 
continuous  revelation  of  the  Spirit.  The  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  is  read  with  a  new  and  deeper  sense  of  its  mean- 
ing as  the  transcendent  revelation  of  His  personality.  He 
is  seen  as  in  Himself  the  embodiment  of  the  beatitudes 
He  pronounces,  —  the  meekness  that  inherits  the  earth, 
the  quality  of  mercy  in  its  highest  perfection,  the  pov- 
erty of  spirit  to  which  belongs  the  kingdom  of  God,  the 
purity  that  lives  face  to  face  with  the  vision  of  God. 
As  the  peacemaker,  he  is  pre-eminently  the  Son  of  God. 
His  soul,  which  hungers  and  thirsts  after  righteousness,  is 
filled  with  the  fulness  of  God.  In  the  courage  with  which 
He  faces  the  premonitions  of  persecution  for  righteous- 
ness' sake,  He  becomes  the  supreme  ideal  of  martyrdom  for 
the  cause  of  truth  and  the  redemption  of  man.    This  is  the 


384  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

Christ  who  speaks  the  parable  of  the  Prodigal  Son,  the 
rarest  exhibition  of  divine  love  which  human  language 
can  portray,  which,  if  all  the  rest  of  His  teaching  were 
lost,  would  still  remain  as  the  highest  Gospel  ever  pro- 
claimed to  a  world  weary  and  hopeless  under  the  burden 
of  sin ;  the  Christ  who  speaks  the  parables  of  the  faithful 
servant,  of  the  good  Samaritan,  of  the  shepherd  who  knows 
his  sheep  and  calls  them  all  by  their  names.  It  is  He  who 
sympathizes  with  the  human  humiliation  of  the  soul  in  the 
presence  of  God,  as  in  the  story  of  the  Publican  who 
would  not  so  much  as  lift  up  his  eyes  unto  heaven.  Again 
it  is  the  Christ  who  cleanses  the  temple  in  the  name  of 
His  Father,  and  who  denounces  the  religious  zealots  and 
bigots  of  His  age  and  of  every  age, — those  who  care  more 
for  the  formulas  of  religion  tlian  for  its  essence,  who  perse- 
cute good  men  and  multiply  human  sorrow  and  suffering 
in  the  belief  that  they  are  doing  God's  service.  He  is  not 
of  the  world,  but  He  reads  the  world  and  estimates  its 
beauty  and  worth.  His  insight  into  the  soul  is  marvel- 
lous, as  in  the  beautiful  instances  of  the  woman  at  the 
well  of  Samaria ;  the  woman  whom  He  acquits  and  com- 
mands to  go  and  sin  no  more ;  or  in  the  commendation  of 
the  woman  who  in  faith  and  humility  would  fain  eat  of 
the  crumbs  that  fall  from  the  Master's  table ;  or  of  the 
centurion  who  had  faith  while  still  a  heathen ;  or  of  the 
widow,  who,  in  placing  her  mite  in  the  treasury,  put  in 
more  than  they  all. 

Again  with  what  divinely  beautiful  tact  He  deals  with 
Nicodemus  who  came  to  Him  by  night;  or  with  the  young 
ruler  who  hesitates  to  sacrifice  his  wealth,  while  yet  he 
would  fain  make  the  sacrifice  of  himself ;  or  Zacchseus, 
the  despised  and  hated  tax-collector  whose  righteousness 
he  recognizes  as  genuine  and  whose  house  he  honors  by 
his  presence.  And  what  words  are  those  spoken  to  the 
savage  robber  who  hung  with  him  upon  the  cross.  This 
is  the  Christ  also  whose  love  for  little  children,  and  appre- 
ciation of  their  worth,  might  have  seemed  enough  to  redeem 
humanity  had  He  said  no  more.  He  declares  the  love  and 
special  providence  of  God  as  extending  to  the  lily  of  the 


THE   PERSON   OF   CHRIST  385 

field  and  as  watching  over  tlie  birds  of  the  air,  and  His 
argument  is  that  such  love  must  be  profoundly  concerned 
therefore  with  the  experiences  of  the  sons  of  men,  who 
are  made  in  the  image  of  God.  He  gave  to  His  disciples, 
asking  to  be  taught  how  to  pray,  a  form  of  sound  words, 
which  every  man  in  all  the  world  might  use,  —  so  brief 
and  so  simple  that  a  child  may  comprehend  it  and  yet  so 
profound  that  it  contains  as  it  were  the  philosophy  of  all 
religion,  and  so  vast  in  its  scope  that  there  is  no  need  of 
any  other  petition.  Or  once  more  that  divine  presence  as 
it  shines  through  the  tragedy  of  His  crucifixion,  when,  de- 
serted by  His  disciples.  He  faces  the  agony  alone,  sustained 
by  the  presence  and  the  love  of  the  Father,  into  whose  hands, 
at  the  last  moment,  with  confidence  unshaken.  He  com- 
mends His  spirit. 

It  was  a  defect  in  the  attitude  of  the  ancient  Catholic 
church,  especially  after  the  fourth  century,  that  it  lost  the 
conception  of  Christ  as  the  teacher,  dwelling  almost  ex- 
clusively on  His  priestly  function  as  exhibited  in  the  sacri- 
fice of  Himself  upon  the  cross.  From  the  time  when  the 
office  of  teacher  disappeared  from  the  ranks  of  the  Chris- 
tian ministry,  the  function  of  Christ  as  the  teacher  also 
suffered  an  eclipse.  But  in  the  Four  Gospels,  it  is  as  the 
teacher  that  Christ  is  presented,  who  by  His  teaching 
enters  into  humanity  as  a  reconstructing,  redeeming  power. 
More  than  forty  times  in  the  Gospels  is  He  called  or  ad- 
dressed as  the  Teacher  (AtSacr/caXo'?),  a  word  whose  full 
significance  escapes  in  the  rendering  of  it  by  Master,  in 
the  received  and  revised  versions  of  the  New  Testament.^ 
It  was  through  His  personality,  His  life,  and  His  doctrine 
as  a  teacher,  that  His  own  spirit  entered  into  human  lives, 
as  an  inspiring,  purifying  force.  The  conception  that  hu- 
manity, in  the  language  of  the  schools,  is  an  actual  entity 
and,  like  some  physical  entity,  may  be  infused  with  a 
higher  divine  potency,  becomes  indeed  a  sj^mbol  of  some 

1  Cf.  Young,  Analytical  Concordance  of  the  Bible,  under  Master.  "In 
the  Gospels  the  word  Aidd<rKa\o$  occurs  forty-eight  times,  and  yet  in 
our  English  version  we  find  it  rendered  by  the  word  '  Teaclier '  only  twice 
and  by  the  word  '  Master '  forty-six  times  "  (Morison,  J.  H.,  in  Memoir  of, 
p.  237). 

2c 


886  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

greater  reality, — a  prophetic  preservation  in  ritual,  until 
the  fuller  truth  has  been  restored.  The  entrance  of  God 
into  human  nature  as  a  redeeming  power,  first  in  the  per- 
son of  Christ,  and  then  passing  into  the  body  of  humanity 
or  into  the  church,  follows  the  methods  of  human  influence 
and  development.     As  a  recent  wiiter  has  finely  said : 

"  This  is  the  office  of  Chi'ist  to  the  soul  of  every  man.  Entering 
so  deeply,  purging  away  everything  that  is  impure  or  wrong,  and  yet 
so  tenderly  calling  out  and  fostering  in  us  every  true  and  delicate  affec- 
tion, coming  to  us  with  principles  so  uncompromising  and  sevei'e, 
reaching  into  the  inmost  recesses  of  our  being,  and  yet  coming  not 
to  destroy  but  to  fulfil  .  .  .  not  to  destroy  the  smallest  virtue  which 
even  in  its  lowest  eiforts  gives  some  indication  of  the  law  of  heaven 
and  of  every  great  achievement;  not  to  quench  even  the  feeblest  hope, 
which,  though  enveloped  in  smoke  and  darkness,  is  still  a  prophecy 
of  good  struggling  upward  toward  fulfilment  in  some  better,  more 
satisfying,  experience,  —  so  Christ  addresses  Himself  to  each  one  of 
us.  Every  faculty  of  our  nature,  by  its  appropriate  exercise  in  Chris- 
tian living.  He  would  train,  educate,  refine,  and  strengthen,  till  God's 
purpose  in  our  creation  begins  to  be  fulfilled  in  us.  He  lays  His  con- 
secrating hand  upon  us,  even  in  our  common  labors,  and  sets  us  apart 
for  the  highest  end  and  fulfilment  of  our  being.  He  reaches  down 
into  the  inward  soul  of  man,  and,  quickening  it  with  His  own  divine 
love,  makes  that  the  controlling  power  within  us,  and  thus  exalts  and 
sanctifies  our  work."  ^ 

With  this  vision  of  Christ,  and  this  conception  of  His 
redemptive  work  as  a  power  in  the  soul  of  humanity,  whose 
influence  grows  with  the  ages,  communicating  itself  from 
man  to  man  as  by  the  contagion  of  life,  the  modern  mind 
has  been  so  absorbed  and  preoccupied  that  the  Christ  of  the 
Catholic  creeds  seems  to  many  like  a  remote  and  artificial 
product  of  the  ecclesiastical  imagination.  For  the  Catholic 
creeds  are  not  only  silent  where  the  modern  mind  demands 
expression  and  amplification,  but  the  Christ  they  present, 
with  His  miraculous  environment.  His  supernatural  birth, 
His  resurrection  from  the  grave.  His  ascension  to  the 
Father,  and  His  coming  again  to  judgment,  is  not  the  Christ 
whom  they  have  learned  to  love  and  to  worship.  The  two 
conceptions  seem  almost  incompatible.     The  miracle  has 

1  Morison,  J.  H.,  in  Memoir  of,  p.  219. 


THE    PERSON    OF   CHRIST  387 

become  to  many  an  offence  and  a  stumbling-block,  and  even 
when  not  denied,  it  has  been  cast  into  the  background 
of  the  consciousness  in  order  that  it  may  not  check  the 
growth  in  the  soul  of  adoration  for  the  Christ,  who  repre- 
sents the  glory  and  perfection  of  human  nature,  whose 
exaltation  as  revealed  in  Him  they  worship  as  divine. 
There  are  many  who  can  make  their  own  the  confession  of 
Peter,  "  Thou  art  the  Christ  the  Son  of  the  living  God," 
for  whom  the  Nicene  or  Apostles'  creeds  possess  no  spir- 
itual or  ethical  appeal. 

The  difficulties  in  accepting  the  miracle  not  only  spring 
from  its  seeming  lack  of  sufficient  evidence  to  attest  its 
reality,  but  from  other  and  deeper  sources,  in  the  minds 
of  many  who  would  fain  accept  the  Christian  revelation. 
The  ancient  Catholic  cliurch  found  no  difficulty  with  the 
miracle,  but  at  the  time  when  the  creeds  took  form,  much 
was  hidden  from  the  gaze  of  that  elder  world  to  be  re- 
vealed in  overflowing  measure  to  its  latest  descendants. 
To  the  revelation  of  God  the  Son  in  humanity,  upon  which 
the  Catholic  church  reposed,  has  been  now  added  the  fuller 
knowledge  of  the  revelation  of  God  the  Father  in  the  visi- 
ble creation,  as  in  the  discoveries  of  natural  science ;  and 
of  the  revelation  also  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  in  all  the 
phases  of  religious  thought  and  its  correspondent  inward 
experience,  through  the  labors  of  the  monastery  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  the  work  of  Biblical  scholarship  in  the  in- 
terpretation of  Scripture,  in  the  higher  literature,  in  phi- 
losophy and  in  poetry,  as  well  as  in  the  steady  growth 
of  free  inquiry  in  theolog3\  In  one  or  other  of  these  two 
spheres  of  the  divine  revelation  many  are  living  to-day, 
oblivious  of  the  claims  of  the  presence  of  God  in  human 
history.  If  one  dwells  in  the  revelation  of  the  divine 
life  in  outward  nature,  there  is  to  be  found  there  no  mir- 
acle, but  rather  a  principle  which  seems  to  make  the 
miracle  impossible, — the  uniformity  and  unalterableness 
of  the  divine  will,  the  immutability  of  God,  the  sense  of 
eternal,  unchanging  law.  To  the  religious  heart,  as  well 
as  to  the  man  of  science,  there  is  here  a  truth  which 
the   spirit   needs   and   liungers    after,   amid    the    perplexi- 


388  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

ties  and  the  confusions  bred  by  the  opening  up  of  the 
mysteries  in  the  life  of  the  human  soul.  Or  one  may 
live  so  long,  and  so  exclusively  in  the  sphere  of  the 
inner  life,  the  world  of  subjective  impressions,  where  ab- 
stract thought  and  inward  experience  reign  supremely, 
that  he  estimates  and  interprets  life  by  some  individual 
standard  ;  he  becomes  incompetent  to  go  out  of  himself ;  he 
cannot  escape  himself;  he  becomes  a  law  unto  himself,  and 
all  which  he  cannot  appropriate  or  understand  becomes  as 
if  it  had  no  meaning  or  reality.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  natural  sciences,  the  miracle  in  history  becomes 
impossible ;  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  inward  sub- 
jective experience,  it  becomes  unnecessary.  In  neither' 
sphere  is  there  any  revelation  of  the  miracle.  No  man 
now  encounters  the  miracle;  no  one  pretends  to  work 
the  miracle ;  false  pretensions  are  easily  exposed ;  what 
seemed  like  miracles  to  other  ages  are  often  reduced  to 
the  manifestations  of  known  law,  —  whence  the  inference 
that  the  miracle  was  never  at  any  time  more  than  a 
dream,  some  objective  form  given  to  the  working  of  the 
human  imagination. 

It  is  a  truth,  amid  the  confusions  of  controversy,  some- 
times found  difficult  to  receive  or  apply,  that  fundamental 
ideas  may  still  be  operative  while  the  intellectual  formulas 
enshrining  them  may  be  rejected  as  obnoxious  or  untrue. 
We  may  take,  for  example,  such  an  institution  as  monasti- 
cism,  which  seems  to  have  passed  away  and  whose  origin, 
history,  and  inward  life  are  now  studied  as  a  curious 
inquiry ;  it  may  be  denounced  in  some  of  its  aspects  justly 
enough  as  barbarous  or  inhuman,  as  injurious  to  human 
progress;  while  yet  its  essential  purpose  lives  on,  its  out- 
look upon  life  is  maintained,  its  spirit  perpetuated  as  in 
the  great  divisions  of  Protestant  Christendom.  Its  formal 
disappearance  is  explained  by  the  fact  that  it  changed  its 
form  in  order  to  some  higher  and  purer  development  and 
on  a  larger  scale.  The  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith, 
whose  meaning  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  there  was  no 
difficulty  in  understanding,  the  lever,  as  it  were,  by  which 
the  papal  authority  over  the  individual  reason  and  con- 


THE   PERSON    OF    CHRIST  38D 

science  was  removed,  has  in  later  times  been  found  hard 
to  explain  and  has  often  been  condemned  as  untrue,  or 
if  not  wholly  rejected  has  given  rise  to  various  attempts 
at  modification  and  adjustment;  while  yet  it  is  also  true, 
that  it  has  now  entered  into  the  religious  life  so  deeply, 
as  the  essential  constituent  of  faith  and  hope,  that,  like 
the  atmosphere  we  breathe,  it  is  taken  for  granted,  with 
no  thought  given  to  its  mode  of  working ;  or  it  is  clothed 
in  otlier  forms  of  expression,  literary  and  philosophical, 
as  well  as  in  the  language  of  common  life,  so  that  it  has 
become  disguised  and  is  not  recognized  as  the  principle 
in  whose  light  every  man  must  live  and  under  whose  con- 
solation he  dies.  The  doctrine  of  the  atonement  has  been 
fruitful  in  theories,  and  the  source  of  much  controversy ; 
it  has  been  by  many  in  this  later  age  rejected  as  unneces- 
sary, if  not  spurned  as  doing  injustice  to  God  and  dishonor 
to  man  ;  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  has  been  argued,  no 
atonement  was  required.  And  yet  again,  those  who  deny 
the  doctrine  may  still  live  by  the  light  it  has  shed  and 
the  results  which  it  has  accomplished.  For  wherever  any 
one  believes  that  access  to  God  is  open  to  the  individual 
soul,  that  no  barrier  exists  between  Deity  and  humanity 
making  forgiveness  impossible,  there  the  doctrine  of  atone- 
ment has  done  its  work  and  has  entered  as  a  constituent 
element  into  the  atmosphere  of  the  religious  life.  It  may 
be  said,  therefore,  of  the  miracle,  and  always  pre-eminently 
of  the  great  miracle  recorded  in  the  Catholic  cieeds,  that 
the  consciousness  of  dislike  or  of  inward  resistance  does 
not  imply  its  rejection.^    As  in  the  illustrations  above  men- 

1  In  his  Bmnpton  Lectures  on  3Iiracles,  when  treating  of  the  "Influ- 
ence of  Imagination  on  Belief,"  Canon  Mozley  calls  attention  to  the 
consciousness  of  resistance  in  the  mind  to  events  unlike  the  order  of 
nature.  We  resist  many  things  which  we  know  to  be  true.  "  If  I  take 
mere  resistance  for  denial,  I  am  confined  in  every  quarter  of  ray  mind." 
"I  conclude,  therefore,  that  I  may  resist  and  believe  at  the  same  time." 
"  Resistance  is  not,  therefore,  disbelief,  unless  by  an  act  of  my  reason  I 
give  it  an  absolute  veto." 

"Such  a  reply,"  he  continues,  "would  be  both  true  in  itself  and  also 
a  caution  against  a  mistake  which  both  older  and  younger  minds  are  apt 
to  fall  into,  that  of  confounding  the  impression  of  resistance  to  a  miracle 
with  the  veto  of  reason.     Upon  the  facts  of  the  Gospel  history  being  first 


390  CREEDS   AND  DOCTRINES 

tioned,  the  miracle  has  been  so  incorporated  in  the  history 
of  Christendom,  that  those  who  reject  it  still  furnish  the 
evidence  of  its  power. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  causes  creating  dislike 
or  resistance  to  the  miracle  are  not  easily  met.  What 
was  once  so  plain  as  to  be  almost  self-evident,  requiring 
no  careful  array  or  scrutiny  of  proof,  is  now  confronted 
with  objections  which  seem  insuperable.  The  mind  of 
the  later  age  is  confused,  and  the  confusion  appears  in 
efforts  to  reduce  the  miracle  to  the  domain  of  natural  law, 
or  else  to  present  it  as  still  the  working  of  law,  although 
unknown.  By  some  it  is  defended  as  the  evidence  of 
the  truth  of  a  revelation,  and  by  others  the  objection  is 
strongly  urged  that  revelation,  if  true,  commends  itself  to 
the  wants  of  the  soul  and  needs  no  other  evidence.  Curi- 
ous questions  are  raised  as  to  when  the  age  of  miracle 
ended,  or  why  it  should  have  been  discontinued.  The 
credulity  or  the  tendency  to  absurd  exaggerations  of  the 
miraculous  sentiment  in  the  Middle  Ages  are  imputed 
to  those  who  first  held  to  the  faith  in  the  resurrection  of 
Christ.  By  some  it  is  maintained  that  a  miracle  is,  in 
the  nature  of  the  case,  impossible;  b}^  others  that  it  is 
not  incredible,  but  is  lacking  in  scientific  proof.  And 
again,  that  sense  of  antagonism  between-  the  spiritual 
man  and  outward  nature,  prevailing  in  the  early  church 
and  throughout  the  Middle  Ages,  has  now  given  way  not 
only  to  a  sense  of  reconciliation,  but  to  a  love  of  nature 
which  has  become  so  widely  the  passion  of  the  modern 
world,  as  to  make  the  miracle  repugnant,  if  it  is  meant 
as  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  nature.  The  human  soul 
struggling  with  the  problems  of  thought  or  aspiring  after 

realized,  they  necessarily  excite  this  resistance  to  a  greater  extent  than 
they  did  when  they  were  mainly  excepted  by  habit ;  but  this  resistance 
is  in  itself  no  disbelief,  though  some  by  the  very  mistake  of  confounding 
it  with  disbelief  at  last  make  it  such,  when  in  consequence  of  this  mis- 
conception they  begin  to  doubt  about  their  own  faith.  Nor  is  it  dealing 
artificially  with  ourselves  to  exert  a  force  upon  our  minds  against  the 
false  certainty  of  the  resisting  imagination,  —  such  a  force  as  is  necessary 
to  enable  reason  to  stand  its  ground,  and  bend  back  again  that  spring  of 
impression  against  the  miraculous  which  has  illegally  tightened  itself  into 
a  law  of  the  understanding"  (pp.  72,  73), 


THE    PERSON    OF    CHRIST  391 

moral  perfection,  or  the  man  engaged  in  the  close,  hard 
struggle  for  existence,  with  its  clashing  of  human  wills 
and  antagonistic  human  interests,  alike  take  refuge  in  the 
repose  of  nature,  the  order  and  the  peace  which  come 
from  obedience  to  uniform  law,  and  to  this  mood  the 
miracle  is  a  disturbance  and  intrusion. 

The  controversy  over  the  miracle  has  now  lasted  nearly 
two  centuries,  and  has  not  yet  reached  its  limit.  It 
has  not  been,  however,  without  its  results,  which  have 
affected  science  no  less  than  theology.  There  have  been 
many  efforts  to  reconcile  these  two  antagonists,  but  they 
have  proved  of  no  avail.  At  this  present  moment  in  the 
controversy,  it  does  not  appear  that  the  Christian  church 
in  its  various  forms  has  relaxed  its  hold  upon  the  miracle ; 
on  the  contrary,  the  crowning  miracle  of  the  resurrection 
has  grown  in  the  popular  recognition,  although  no  evidence 
has  yet  been  adduced  in  its  behalf  which  satisfies  the  scien- 
tific mind.  It  looks  as  though  it  were  wiser  for  the  present 
to  accept  the  contradiction,  as  in  itself  containing  the  larger 
truth,  while  we  wait  for  its  reconciliation.  There  is  but 
one  oriound  on  which  the  miracle  can  be  defined  and  main- 
tained,  — it  is  not  so  much  an  evidence  of  the  truth  of  the 
revelation,  as  in  itself  the  revelation,  a  constitutive  element, 
as  Rothe  has  said,  in  the  manifestation  of  God  to  man.^ 

1  "  Daher  ist  mir  das  Wunder  ein  constitutive  Element  der  gottlichen 
Manifestation  selbst,  eben  als  das  'Zeichen'  in  welchem  der  iiber  den 
Naturlauf  erhabene  Gott  sich  in  der  Geschichte  unzweideutig  wahrnehm- 
bar  macht.  .  .  .  Ich  sage  unbedenklicli  mit  Martensen,  '  Der  Begriff  der 
heiligen  Geschichte  ist  unzertrennlich  von  dem  Begriff  des  Wunders'  " 
(Rothe,  Zur  Dogmatik,  in  Studien  und  Kritiken,  1858,  p.  24). 

While  Rothe  vs^as  strenuous  in  affirming  the  necessity  of  the  miracle 
as  a  constitutive  element  in  the  divine  revelation,  yet  he  regarded  its 
place  in  history  and  its  results  as  so  secure  that  he  could  write  in  a  tone 
of  genial  comprehensive  inclusiveness  for  those  who,  following  Christ, 
rejected  or  found  difficulty  with  the  miracle  : 

"  Let  us  beware  of  wishing  to  force  those  who  are  already  in  possession 
of  revelation  to  admit  its  miraculous  origin  and  to  make  their  salvation 
depend  on  this  belief.  It  is  already  much  if  the  light  of  divine  revelation 
shines  upon  them,  and  if  they  walk  illuminated  by  this  sun.  If  their 
convictions  clash  against  miracles,  I  say  to  them :  My  friends,  I  do  not 
wish  to  impose  the  faith  in  miracles  upon  you.  Bencficln  non  ohtrialun- 
tur.  Are  you  not  able  to  accept  them  ?  Well,  then,  let  them  alone.  It 
is  for  you  to  see  how  you  will,  without  their  aid,  explain  history  and  the 


392  CREEDS    AND    DOCTRINES 

The  evidence  for  its  actuality,  as  recorded  in  the  creeds, 
must  be  sought  in  the  history  of  the  church,  as  well  as  in 
the  faith  and  testimony  of  the  New  Testament.  If  the 
miracle  be  a  reality  in  the  life  of  Christ,  it  becomes  the 
key  unlocking  the  mystery  of  the  larger  purpose  of  human 
life,  as  revealed  not  only  in  the  church,  but  in  the  higher 
qualities  of  Christian  civilization, — the  struggle  to  over- 
come nature  and  subdue  it  to  human  progress,  to  assert 
the  freedom  of  the  human  spirit,  constituted  after  the 
image  and  the  freedom  of  the  divine  personality. 

In  the  foregoing  discussion  of  the  Catholic  creeds  as  re- 
lated to  monastic  theology  many  points  have  been  omitted 
illustrating  the  richness  and  many-sidedness  of  the  pro- 
cess of  human  thought  working  upon  the  contents  of  the 
divine  revelation,  as  compared  with  the  brevity,  the  sim- 
plicity, the  silence  or  the  reserve  of  the  creeds.  Not  only 
are  the  creeds  silent  upon  the  absorbing  issues  of  original 
sin,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  the  doctrine  of  predestination, 
and  the  nature  of  the  atonement ;  but  they  give  no  defini- 
tion of  the  church,  whether  it  depends  upon  forms  of 
ecclesiastical  organization  or  whether  variation  in  organi- 
zation, such  as  that  created  by  the  papacy,  affects  its 
validity ;  they  make  no  reference  to  Scripture  as  the  Word 
of  God  or  the  authority  for  faith ;  they  offer  no  theory  of 
the  method  of  revelation  or  inspiration ;  of  conversion  and 
regeneration,  in  what  they  consist  or  how  they  are  to  be 
distinguished,  of  these  also  there  is  no  mention  ;  the  nature 
and  working  of  divine  grace  is  also  omitted ;  the  Lord's 
Supper,  which  has  been  so  vital  an  element  in  the  Christian 
life,  is  passed  over,  and  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation 
so  prominent  in  the  Mediaeval  church ;  and  as  to  the  last 
things,  the   intermediate  state,  the  later  ideas  of  purga- 

course  of  events  which  we  only  understand  by  their  means.  For  my 
part,  I  do  not  admit  miracles  from  a  sort  of  dogmatic  cupidity,  but  in  a 
historical  interest ;  because,  in  presence  of  certain  incontestable  facts,  I 
cannot  do  without  miracles  as  furnishing  the  only  truly  rational  explana- 
tion, not  because  they  make  gaps  in  history  to  my  eyes,  but  because  they 
rather  help  me  to  cross  over  yawning  abysses."  Quoted  in  Lichtenberger, 
History  of  German  Theology  in  the  Nineteenth  Century^  p.  521. 


THE    PERSON    OF    CHRIST  393 

tory,  the  doctrine  of  endless  punishment,  in  place  of  these 
is  the  simple  confession  of  Christ's  second  coming  in  glory 
to  judge  both  the  quick  and  the  dead,  and  the  avowal  of 
faith  in  the  life  everlasting,  in  the  world  which  is  to 
come. 

The  only  theory  in  any  degree  explaining  the  form  of 
the  creeds,  their  contents  as  well  as  omissions,  is  the  com- 
mon understanding  of  the  age  Avhen  they  appeared,  that 
catholicity  consisted  in  holding  the  faith  in  the  triune 
God,  brought  home  to  men  in  the  light  of  the  incarnation ; 
that  in  this  faith,  not  in  modes  of  organization,  not  in  sys- 
tems of  doctrine,  lay  the  essence  of  the  Catholic  church. 
The  divisions  of  Christendom  date  from  the  moment  when 
monasticism  appeared  and  the  age  of  theological  contro- 
versy began,  whether  in  the  East  or  in  the  West.  But  as 
monasticism  was  essentially  the  principle  of  individualism, 
where  the  human  mind  appears  as  seeking  for  the  deeper 
significance  of  Christian  truth  in  its  widest  application  to 
the  needs  of  the  personality,  so  the  creeds  stand  and  have 
ever  since  remained  the  confession  of  the  churcli  in  its 
totality  or  solidarity,  the  utterance  of  the  "  secular " 
cliurch,  as  it  was  known  in  the  Middle  Ages  in  contrast 
with  the  "  religious "  in  the  monastery,  where  theology 
had  its  development. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose,  as  with  Vincentius  of 
Lerins,  that  the  Catholic  faith  is  in  opposition  to  the  in- 
ward and  individual  development  of  theology,  as  it  began 
with  Augustine  ;  or  that  Protestant  theologies  inheriting 
the  methods  and  traditions,  as  well  as  the  spirit,  of  the 
great  monastic  theologians  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  their 
desire  to  make  theology  the  one  complete,  all-embracing 
science,  have  in  so  doing  departed  from  Catholicity  or  vio- 
lated its  essential  principle.  Against  any  such  inference 
all  the  churches  alike  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  pro- 
tested. Each  put  forth  its  supplementary  confession  of 
faith;  the  Roman  church  no  less  than  the  Anglican,  the 
Lutheran,  or  the  Genevan ;  the  Greek  church  also  was 
affected  by  the  same  mood,  and  set  forth  extensive  and 
elaborate  confessions.     It  was  as  thougfh  out  of  the  long- 


394  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

interior  process  of  religious  reflection  in  the  monasteries, 
each  church  was  rescuing  whatever  was  adapted  to  its 
spirit  or  its  needs,  so  that  nothing  should  be  lost.  The 
existing  situation  is  a  difficult  one  to  grasp  or  to  define. 
But  it  practically  amounts  to  this,  that  the  range  of  choice, 
whether  of  individual  or  national  preference,  has  been  en- 
larged since  the  Reformation,  till,  instead  of  two  churches, 
the  Latin  and  the  Greek,  there  are  man}^ ;  and  one  may 
hold  the  Nicene  Creed  with  the  commentary  which  he  pre- 
fers, —  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  the  Trentine  definitions, 
the  Augsburg  Confession  and  the  Formula  of  Concord,  or 
Calvin's  Institutes  and  the  Westminster  Catechism. 

It  is  no  easy  task  to  harmonize  these  varying  confessions 
with  their  contradictory  attitudes  and  intricate  distinctions, 
yet  the  attempt  is  now  made  at  least  to  bring  them  to- 
gether in  some  comparative  estimate.  While  the  task  of 
the  Mediseval  and  Protestant  theologians  has  not  been 
abandoned,  and  systems  of  theolog}^  continue  indeed  to 
be  produced,  yet  they  are  forced  to  compete  with  a  new 
method  of  theological  inquiry  which  is  known  as  the  His- 
tory of  Doctrine.  Since  the  last  century  has  this  new 
method  of  treating  theology  grown  into  increasing  favor, 
until  the  question  is  before  us,  as  it  was  never  before  the 
Christian  world  in  any  other  age,  What  is  the  meaning  of 
these  diverse  attitudes  in  religious  thought ;  in  what  rela- 
tion do  these  differing  results  of  theological  belief  or  in- 
quiry stand  to  each  other  ;  what  has  been  their  genesis  and 
their  development?  From  this  new  method  of  procedure, 
much  of  the  highest  valtie  has  already  proceeded,  and  more 
is  yet  to  come.  Already  do  the  doctrine-histories  form  by 
themselves  alone  a  large  library,  each  of  them  contributing 
to  the  common  inquiry.  The  student  of  theology  now  pro- 
duces his  History  of  Doctrine,  as  the  Protestant  theologian 
once  produced  his  System  of  Divinity,  or  the  scholastic 
philosopher  contributed  his  Summa.  The  new  method  is 
in  some  respects  a  better  one  than  the  method  it  threatens 
to  supersede ;  for  it  demands  the  effort  to  enter  into  the 
thought  of  other  ages ;  it  calls  for  the  dispassionate  love 
of  inquiry  for  its  own  sake,  instead  of  resting  content  with 


THE   PERSON   OF   CHRIST  395 

justifying  some  one  particular  phase  of  theological  develop- 
ment. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  doctrine-histories,  the 
distinction  between  the  creed  and  the  theologies  tends  to 
disappear.  But  the  distinction  between  creed  and  doc- 
trine is  an  important  one.  It  is  not  necessary  to  hold  that 
they  are  mutually  exclusive  of  each  other,  but  something 
is  sacrificed  when  they  are  put  upon  the  same  footing. 
In  this  respect  the  Church  of  England  stands  alone  among 
the  churches,  in  according  to  the  Catholic  creeds  the  high- 
est place  of  honor,  calling  for  their  recitation,  in  the  ver- 
nacular, as  the  Roman  church  does  not  do,  in  the  Morning 
and  Evening  Prayer,  as  well  as  in  the  Communion  Office, 
in  the  rites  of  baptism,  visitation  of  the  sick,  or  burial 
of  the  dead.  The  Church  of  England  differs  from  the 
other  churches,  whether  reformed  or  unreformed,  in  pos- 
sessing no  one  name  in  the  history  of  theological  thought 
which  is  to  her  what  John  of  Damascus  has  been  to  the 
Greek  church,  or  Aquinas  to  the  Latin  church,  Luther  to 
the  German  church,  or  Calvin  to  the  various  branches  of 
the  Reformed  church.  Her  theological  confession  in  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles  is  meagre  compared  with  the  West- 
minster Confession,  the  voluminous  definitions  of  Trent, 
the  Orthodox  Confession  of  the  Greek  church  (1643),  or 
the  Longer  Catechism  set  forth  in  1839  for  use  in  Russia. 
It  is  a  circumstance,  in  itself  a  commentary  on  her  atti- 
tude, that  no  history  of  doctrines  has  been  put  forth  by 
any  representative  of  the  Church  of  England.  While  the 
Germans  elaborate  their  Dofjinenf/eschichte,  and  labor  for 
its  perfection,  the  tendency  of  English  theology  is  to  seek 
expression  under  the  categories  of  the  Catholic  creeds. 

In  the  doctrine  of  the  Nicene  symbol  is  contained  the 
Christian  formula  which,  to-day,  as  in  the  ancient  church 
or  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  is  the  comprehensive 
formula  of  Christian  unity.  "  What  all  the  churches," 
says  Coleridge,  "  of  the  East  and  the  West,  what  Romanist 
and  Protestant,  believe  in  common,  that  I  call  Christian- 
ity." But  this  common  element  is  the  confession  of  the 
divine  name.  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  the  three  as 


396  CREEDS   AND   DOCTRINES 

One,  and  coequal  in  the  one  divine  essence.  The  diffi- 
culties which  this  Christian  formula  of  the  divine  name 
encountered  in  the  ancient  church  have  not  3'et  been 
solved;  they  are  only  experienced  with  deeper  intensity 
and  involve  deeper  conflicts  with  the  growth  of  humanity 
and  the  progress  of  time.  The  Greek  Fathers  found  the 
problem  to  consist  in  how  the  Three  could  be  One.  The 
great  Latin  Father  Augustine,  who  was  unfamiliar  with 
the  process  of  thought  in  which  the  Greek  Fathers  were 
laboring,  reversed  the  problem  and  strove  to  understand 
how  the  One  could  be  Three.  The  deficiency  in  Greek 
theology  lay  in  the  fact  that  it  did  not  know  and  could 
not  anticipate  the  revelation  of  the  Spirit,  as  it  was  to  be 
given  in  its  fulness  in  the  course  of  time.  Hence  its 
external  objective  character.  It  was  too  much  a  thing  of 
the  intellect,  apart  from  Christian  piety,  or  from  an  actual 
experience  ;  it  saw  and  worshipped  the  Trinity  in  eternity, 
but  not  so  clearly  revealed  in  time.  Augustine  gave  the 
first  impetus  to  the  subjective  mood  of  the  soul,  wherein 
the  Spirit  works,  who  convinces  of  sin,  of  righteous- 
ness, and  of  judgment.  But  he  maintained  the  unity,  not 
by  a  full  recognition  of  the  work  of  the  Father  and  the  Son, 
but  by  subordinating  it  to  the  work  of  the  Spirit.  It  was 
characteristic  of  his  thought,  that  he  found  no  place  for 
the  revelation  of  God  in  nature  and  the  creation,  nor  for 
the  revelation  of  the  Son  in  the  history  of  humanity ;  but 
he  lived  in  an  age  when  the  interest  in  nature  had  disap- 
peared, and  when  belief  in  histor}^  had  suffered  a  rude 
shock,  as  the  course  of  human  development,  by  the  bar- 
barian invasion  which  was  overturning  authority  and  lay- 
ing waste  the  provinces  of  the  Empire.  He  sought  refuge 
within,  and  clung  to  the  God  which  spoke  within  the  soul. 
Such  was  the  imprint  he  left  upon  Medi;eval  theology. 

To  the  modern  world  it  has  been  given  to  discern  the 
threefold  revelation  corresponding  to  the  threefold  Name. 
But  the  difficulty  with  every  thinker,  as  with  ever}^  de- 
vout heart,  is  to  realize  that  the  three  are  One.  It  is 
beyond  the  power  of  any  individual  man  to  live  at  once 
and  with  equal  ease  in  each  of  the  threefold  divisions  of 


THE   PERSON    OF   CHRIST  397 

human  interest  and  activity.  We  are  still  apprehensive  of 
the  work  of  science,  as  though  it  might  demonstrate  results 
in  conflict  with  the  purpose  of  historical  development,  or 
with  the  personal  needs  of  the  soul.  We  dare  not  wholly 
trust  ourselves  to  believe  that  history  is  the  record  of  a 
process  of  divine  revelation,  and,  as  a  whole,  carries  with 
it  a  deep  responsibility  for  the  individual  soul.  The  char- 
acteristic of  our  theology  is  still  too  much  its  subjectivity 
drawn  from  the  monastery,  as  if  it  were  solely  an  inward 
personal  process  whose  problem  must  be  solved  by  the 
individual  reason,  rather  than  by  the  larger  reason  of  the 
race.  But  any  scheme  of  thought  which  does  justice  to 
the  divine  Name,  must  grant  an  equal  place,  first,  to  the 
revelation  of  the  Father  unveiled  to  science  by  the  study 
of  the  visible  world ;  secondly,  to  the  revelation  of  the 
Son  —  which  is  the  revelation  also  of  the  Father  in  the 
Son  —  of  whom  patriarchs  and  lawgivers,  heroes  and  kings, 
are  types,  who  guides  the  life  of  nations  in  their  secular 
no  less  than  their  ecclesiastical  activity;  and  thirdl}^,  the 
revelation  of  the  Spirit,  who  worketh  where  He  listeth,  in 
literature,  poetry,  and  art,  but  more  supremely  in  the  con- 
science and  in  religious  experience,  the  end  of  whose  revela- 
tion is  to  lead  us  into  all  truth,  of  whom  it  is  better  said 
by  Western  than  by  Eastern  confessions,  that  He  "  pro- 
ceedeth  from  the  Father  ayid  the  Son."  But  now  these 
three  are  held  apart;  the  working  of  the  Spirit  appears 
too  often  to  the  scientific  mind  devoted  exclusively  to 
the  study  of  nature  and  of  external  physical  laws,  as  an 
unreal  meaningless  dream,  an  interference  with  the  well- 
being  of  humanity;  so  also  to  the  historical  mind  con- 
templating history  as  a  succession  of  outward  facts  or 
achievements,  the  inward  life  of  man  is  but  the  play  of 
the  imagination ;  while  to  the  theologian,  too  often,  nature 
is  a  closed  book  and  the  history  of  the  world  and  of  the 
church  possesses  no  divine  weight  of  meaning  or  purpose. 
There  is  jealousy  and  estrangement,  suspicion  and  con- 
tempt, where  unity  should  prevail,  because  indeed  it 
already  exists.  This  at  least  is  the  teaching  of  the  Catho- 
lic creed  that  the  Three  are  One,  for  the  One  has  revealed 


398  CREEDS    AND   DOCTRINES 

Himself  as  threefold  personality.  Or  as  it  has  been 
summed  up  in  the  brief  reduction  of  what  the  creeds  were 
given  to  teach,  where  the  claims  of  individualism  are 
recognized  and  supported,  while  yet  they  are  reconciled 
with  solidarity :  "  I  learn  first  to  believe  in  God  the 
Father,  who  has  made  me  and  all  the  ivorld ;  secondly,  in 
God  the  Son,  who  has  redeemed  yne  and  all  mankind; 
thirdly,  in  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  who  sanctifieth  me  and  all 
the  people  of  Crod." 


Book  III 

CHRISTIAN  WORSHIP 
CHAPTER   I 

BAPTISM  1 


There  are  two  features  or  institutions  of  Christianity 
which,  more  than  any  others,  reveal  its  meaning  and  pur- 
pose, —  the  sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper. 
They  stand  forth  as  monuments  against  the  Christian 
horizon  at  every  point  of  time  or  space,  even  across  the 
span  of  eighteen  centuries.  If  we  coukl  imagine  that  the 
Christian  church,  in  tlie  course  of  distant  ages,  shoukl 
vanish  from  the  eartli  as  ancient  heatlien  religions  have 
done,  and  some  inquirer  should  try  to  interpret  its  secret 
by  reading  its  remains,  it  would  not  be  its  creeds  or  con- 
fessions, its  organization,  its  architecture,  or  its  ritual  that 
would  best  reveal  the  secret  of  its  life,  for  these  have 
varied  with  the  moods  and  exigencies  of  the  hour  ;  but 
its  two  sacraments,  which  are    not  dependent   upon   hu- 

1  Cf.  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.,  Art.  Baptism;  Bing- 
ham, Antiq.  of  Chris.  Church,  Bks.  X.,  XL,  XII.;  Martigny,  Diet,  des 
Antiq.  Chret.,  Art.  Bapteme  ;  Lichtenberger,  Encyc.  des  Sciences  Beliej . ; 
Wetzer  and  VVelte,  Kirchen-Lexikon,  Art.  Tanfe ;  also  Wall,  His.  of 
Inf.  Bap.  ;  Dale,  Inquiry  into  the  Meaning  of  BaTrrt'fw;  for  some  of  the 
more  important  Sources,  see  Didache,  c.  vii. ;  .Justin,  ApoL,  cc.  61,  05; 
Tertullian,  De  Bap..,  De  Coron.  Mil.  3,  De  Bes.  Cam..,  c.  8;  Cyprian, 
Epis.  04,  68,  69,  70;  Cyril,  Cat.  Mag.  i.,  xvl.  26  ;  Apos.  Cons.  iii.  15-17, 
vii.  22,  39;  the  controversial  literature  which  in  the  modern  church  has 
turned  (1)  on  the  method  of  baptism,  and  (2)  on  the  recipients,  is  too 
voluminous  to  be  cited  here.  For  valuable  remarks  on  the  points  at 
issue,  cf.  Bunsen,  Christianity  and  Mankind,  Vol.  II.,  and  Coleridge, 
Aids  to  Beflection,  Aphorism  xxiv. 

399 


400  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

man  speech  for  their  significance,  which  appropriate  tlie 
physical  elements  of  external  nature  as  the  most  forcible 
expositions  of  the  Christian  idea:  the  water  standing 
for  purification,  the  bread  and  the  wine  for  the  suste- 
nance of  life :  humanity  purifying  itself  in  order  to  sit 
down  at  the  banquet  of  the  Eternal.  Into  these  sacra- 
ments, in  the  successive  eras  of  history,  men  have  read 
their  hopes,  their  fears,  their  aspirations,  till  they  have 
become  summaries  of  the  Christian  life.  Much  that  is 
irrational,  or  puerile,  or  superstitious,  has  gathered  around 
these  venerable  rites,  temporary  accretions,  local  associa- 
tions, heathen  notions  it  may  be,  as  well  as  passing  phi- 
losophies. We  need  not  seek  to  determine  the  exact  method 
or  degree  of  these  influences ;  for  such  things  are  hidden 
from  our  view.  But  the  appeal  which  these  sacraments 
carry  to  the  very  elements  of  external  nature,  in  order  to 
make  themselves  felt  and  understood,  has  given  them 
vitality  and  significance  in  the  rudest  ages.  They  not 
only  bind  together  the  Christian  world  into  one  organic 
whole ;  as  Coleridge  expressed  it,  they  are  not  so  much 
parts  of  Christianity,  but  rather  they  are  Christianity 
itself,  —  the  one  the  initial  conversion  or  light,  the  other 
the  sustaining,  invigorating  life.  A  line  can  only  begin 
once,  so  that  there  can  be  no  repetition  of  baptism  ;  but  a 
line  may  be  endlessly  prolonged  by  continual  production  ; 
hence  the  sacrament  of  love  and  life  goes  on  continually. 

Curious  minds  may  seek  to  antedate  the  origin  of  these 
venerable  rites,  carrying  it  back  into  pre-Christian  ages, 
even  to  savage  customs  before  the  beginning  of  history. 
But  we  must  learn  to  outgrow  the  fallacy  that  the  origin 
of  an  institution  neutralizes  its  validity;  for  certainly  no 
cruder,  grosser  origin  could  be  demonstrated  than  is  now 
set  forth  by  the  scientific  principle  of  evolution  for  the 
origin  and  descent  of  man.  If  Jews  or  heathens  can  be 
shown  to  have  anticipated  such  rites  as  these,  it  only  con- 
firms their  significance.  We  have  got  beyond  the  old 
apologetic,  which  sought  to  prove  that  Christianity  in  its 
doctrines,  or  ethics,  or  practice  was  something  entirely 
new  to  the  world.     Its  coincidences  with  other  religions 


BAPTISM  401 

or  older  ethical  systems  are  so  many  fresh  illustrations  of 
its  truth. 

The  doctrine  of  baptism  in  the  early  church  is  exalted 
and  positive  in  its  tone.  It  was  spoken  of  as  "  the  begin- 
ning and  source  of  the  Christian  graces,"  "  a  new  creating 
wave,"  "a  water  of  life,"  "  a  second  birth  into  a  new  man," 
"a  union  with  immortality."  But  this  language  applies 
to  adult  baptism,  which  was  at  first  the  prevailing,  if  not 
the  exclusive,  custom.  Previous  to  the  administration  of 
the  rite,  the  candidate  had  undergone  a  process  of  reli- 
gious education  and  discipline,  lasting  from  two  to  three 
years,  and  known  as  the  Catechumenate.  Nothing  could 
have  been  devised  more  impressive  to  the  imagination,  or 
calculated  to  stir  the  soul  more  profoundly,  creating  some 
inward  revolution,  than  the  immersion  beneath  the  puri- 
fying wave,  as  the  culmination  of  years  of  waiting  and 
expectation.  What  the  rite  of  baptism  may  have  been 
as  a  factor  in  ethical  progress  may  be  inferred  from  the 
experience  of  Cyprian,  bishop  of  Carthage,  who  was  con- 
verted from  heathenism.  Writing  to  his  friend  Donatus, 
he  says : 

"While  I  was  still  lying  in  darkness  and  gloomy  night,  wavering 
hither  and  thithev,  tossed  in  the  foatn  of  this  boastful  age,  and  uncer- 
tain of  my  wandering  steps,  knowing  nothing  of  my  real  life  and 
remote  from  truth  and  liglit,  I  used  to  regard  it  as  difficult,  in  respect 
of  my  character  at  that  time,  that  a  man  should  be  capable  of  being 
born  again :  .  .  .  that  a  man  quickened  to  a  new  life  in  the  laver  of 
saving  water  should  be  able  to  put  off  what  he  had  previously  been ; 
and  although  retaining  his  bodily  structure,  should  himself  be  changed 
in  heart  and  soul.  How,  said  I,  is  such  a  conversion  possible  that 
there  should  be  a  sudden  and  rapid  divestment  of  all  which,  either 
innate  in  us,  has  been  hardened  in  the  corruption  of  our  material 
nature,  or  acquired  by  us,  has  become  inveterate  by  long-accustomed 
use?  .  .  .  These  were  my  frequent  thoughts.  For  as  I  myself  was  held 
in  bonds  by  the  innumerable  errors  of  my  previous  life,  from  which 
I  did  not  believe  I  could  possibly  be  delivered,  so  I  was  disposed  to 
acquiesce  in  my  clinging  vices  ;  and  because  I  despaired  of  better 
things,  I  used  to  indulge  my  sins,  as  if  they  were  actually  parts  of  me. 
But  after  that,  by  the  help  of  the  water  of  new  birth,  the  stain  of 
former  years  had  been  washed  away,  and  a  light  from  above,  serene 
and  pure,  had  been  infused  into  my  reconciled  heart ;  after  that,  by 
the  agency  of  the  Spirit,  breathed  from  heaven,  a  second  birth  had 

2  D 


402  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

restored  me  to  a  new  man,  —  then,  in  a  wondrous  manner,  doubtful 
things  at  once  began  to  assure  themselves  to  ijie,  hidden  things  to  be 
revealed,  dark  things  to  be  enlightened,  w"hat  before  had  seemed  dif- 
ficult began  to  suggest  means  of  accomplishment,  what  before  had 
been  thought  impossible  to  be  capable  of  being  achieved ;  so  that  I 
was  enabled  to  acknowledge  that  what  previously,  being  born  of  the 
flesh,  had  been  living  in  the  practice  of  sins,  was  of  the  earth  earthy, 
had  begun  to  be  of  God  and  was  animated  by  the  Spirit  of  holiness."  ^ 

In  this  beautiful  description  Cyprian  does  not  stop  to 
distinguish  between  the  long  inward  preparation  and  the 
outward  act  in  which  it  terminates.  Such  is  the  manner 
of  rhetoric  in  every  age.  But  the  stress  of  the  description 
is  ethical,  —  the  transition  from  the  death  of  sin  to  the  life 
of  righteousness. 

The  rite  of  baptism  has  undergone  many  changes  in  the 
lapse  of  time ;  immersion,  which  was  the  prevailing  mode 
in  the  ancient  church,  has  given  place  to  sprinkling  or 
pouring ;  the  baptism  of  infants  means  something  differ- 
ent from  the  baptism  of  an  adult ;  and  yet  beneath  the 
variations  the  essential  idea  and  purpose  of  baptism  has 
been  preserved.  In  the  ancient  church  and  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  it  was  held  to  be  necessary  to  salvation,  — -  a  neces- 
sity so  great  that  if  a  running  stream  was  not  convenient 
for  immersion,  pouring  might  suffice  ;  or  even  the  sands  of 
the  desert,  if  water  could  not  be  had ;  the  baptism  of 
blood  in  martyrdom  might  be  an  equivalent,  where  the 
actual  rite  was  wanting.  The  universal  necessity  for 
baptism  in  some  form  was  so  imperative,  that  in  the  case 
of  those  who  had  died  without  it,  there  was  an  obscure 
practice  of  baptizing  for  the  dead ;  and  even  in  the  Jewish 
and  pagan  under-worlds  the  rite  might  still  be  adminis- 

1  Epis.  i.,  Ad  Donatum.  Cf.  Stanley,  Christian  Institutions,  c.  1., 
who  traces  the  analogy  between  such  an  experience  as  Cyprian  describes 
and  the  regenerating  influences  in  modern  life.  "  With  us  these  changes 
are  brought  about  by  a  thousand  different  methods  ;  education,  afflictioii^ 
illness,  a  new  field  of  usefuhiess,  —  every  one  of  these  gives  us  some 
notion  of  the  early  baptism  in  its  better  and  more  permanent  side  "  (p.  10). 
See  also  Stanley,  Life  and  Letters,  II.,  p.  148:  "Marriage  is  the  only 
event  in  modern  life  which  corresponds  to  what  baptism  was  in  the 
ancient  church,  —  a  second  birth,  a  new  creation,  old  things  passing  away, 
all  thin<rs  becomine;  new." 


BAPTISM  403 

tered.  If  these  notions  are  now  regarded  as  superstitions, 
yet  the  principle  for  which  they  stood  lives  on  in  the 
modern  church,  —  an  inward  purification  as  the  condition 
of  entering  into  spiritual  life. 

While  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  the  Athanasian  Creed 
are  silent  concerning  the  sacraments,  yet  in  the  Nicene 
Creed  a  clause  has  been  inserted  declarinor  that  there  can 
be  but  "one  baptism  for  the  remission  of  sins."  The  state- 
ment points  to  a  deep  and  almost  universal  conviction, 
which  also  still  abides,  however  its  spirit  may  be  evaded, 
that  baptism  is  a  rite  which  ought  not  to  be  repeated ;  or 
else  its  dignity,  its  majesty,  its  transcendent  import,  would 
suffer  diminution.  So  deep  was  this  conviction,  combined, 
it  is  true,  with  other  notions,  that  the  church  decided  to 
hold  baptism  as  valid,  without  regard  to  its  agents,  even 
though  performed  by  heretics,  by  laymen,  by  nurses.  When 
administered  in  sport,  as  by  Athanasius  when  a  boy,  it 
should  be  allowed  to  stand. 

After  the  third  century  the  formula  of  baptism  was  the 
name  of  the  Trinity,  and  baptism  otherwise  performed  was 
declared  invalid.  But  in  the  early  church,  as  also  in  the 
Apostolic  age,  there  is  evidence  that  the  baptismal  formula 
of  the  name  of  Jesus  only  was  not  unusual.^  There  are 
difficulties  connected  with  this  circumstance  which  have 
not  been  explained.  But  the  fact  remains  that,  in  the 
time  of  Cyprian,  so  important  a  personage  as  Stephen,  the 
bishop  of  Rome,  defended  the  validity  of  baptism  when 
performed  in  the  name  of  Jesus  only,^  and  was  opposed 
with  great  vehemence,  as  well  as  with  every  argument  he 
could  command,  by  the  bishop  of  Carthage.  In  the  con- 
troversy between  Cyprian  and  Stephen  we  may  trace  the 
obscure  hints  of  some  crisis  through  which  the  church  was 
passing.  Those  baptisms  which  had  been  performed  in  the 
name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  must  be  either  legitimated  or  con- 
demned as  invalid.     To  follow  the  latter  course,  as  Cyprian 

1  Cf.  Acts  ii.  38;  viii.  16;  x.  48;  xix.  5;  with  Matt,  xxviii.  19;  and 
Didache,  c.  viii. 

'^  Cf.  Cyprian,  JE'^j/s.  Ixii.  17,  18;  Ixxiii.,  Ixxiv. ;  and  see  also  Augustine, 
Contra  Donat.,  V.,  c.  23. 


404  •  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

proposed,  was  not  only  to  follow  Montanist  theories,  but  to 
shut  out  from  salvation  those  in  the  early  church  who  had 
been  baptized  after  what  had  since  come  to  be  regarded  as 
a  defective  formula.  The  attitude  of  Rome  was  wiser  than 
that  of  Cyprian.  In  a  treatise  belonging  probably  to  the 
age  of  Cyprian,  entitled  De  Hebaptismo,  we  may  discern 
the  process  of  the  transition,  the  bridging  of  the  gulf 
created  by  the  ecclesiastical  temper  that  was  demanding  the 
fulfilment  of  the  letter.  This  unknown  writer  reveals  to 
us  the  existence  of  an  attitude  in  that  hour  of  the  triumph 
of  the  sacerdotal  principle,  of  which  otherwise  we  should 
have  little  evidence,  at  least  in  the  church  of  the  West.  He 
urges  the  baptism  of  the  S^Dirit  as  more  important  than  the 
baptism  by  water.  He  pleads  eloquently  for  the  freedom 
of  the  Spirit,  who,  while  He  accompanies  the  formal  rite, 
may  also  act  independently,  coming  in  advance  even  of  the 
baptism  by  water  (Acts  x.  44,  47),  and  imparting  His 
gifts  before  the  ecclesiastical  recognition  is  given.  No 
matter  liow  defective  the  form  of  baptism  in  its  formula  or 
in  its  agent,  there  must  be  no  rebaptism ;  but  if  the  Spirit 
be  invoked,  as  in  the  rite  of  laying  on  of  hands,  in  what 
was  called  Confirmation,^  all  deficiencies  are  overcome. 
But  he  will  not  admit  that  the  formula  of  baptism  which 
invoked  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  only  is  defective. 
Whether  the  invocation  of  that  name  in  baptism  be  made 
by  heretic  or  Catholic,  it  carried  with  it  the  potency  as- 
cribed to  it  by  St.  Paul  when  he  said  that  there  was  no 
other  name  under  heaven  given  among  men  whereby  we 

1  The  origin  and  history  of  Confirmation  are  in  some  respects  still 
obscure.  Whether  the  rite  consists  in  anointing  with  oil,  or  in  laying  on 
of  hands ;  whether  it  is  part  of  baptism  and  should  be  administered  in 
connection  with  it,  or  postponed  as  a  distinct  rite  to  a  later  period  ; 
whether  it  should  be  performed  by  the  presbyter,  or  by  the  bishop  only, 
are  points  of  difference  in  the  usage  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  churches.  In 
the  Anglican  and  Lutheran  churches,  the  rite  has  been  retained  but  no 
longer  as  a  sacrament,  and  now  corresponds  with  what  baptism  stood  for 
in  the  early  church.  It  has  not  been  retained  in  the  Reformed  Church, 
but  a  profession  of  faith  before  the  congregation  has  become  its  substi- 
tute. Cf.  Art.  Confirmation,  in  Herzog,  Benl  Encyc.  ;  Smith  and  Cheet- 
ham,  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.  ;  Calvin,  Instit.  Bk.  IV.,  c.  19;  Mason,  Baptism 
and  Confirmation. 


BAPTISM  405 

must  be  saved ;  or,  again,  He  hath  given  Him  a  name 
which  is  above  every  name,  that  in  the  name  of  Jesus 
every  knee  shall  bow,  of  things  in  heaven  and  things  in 
earth.  To  rebaptize,  as  Cyprian  urged,  any  one  over 
whom  the  name  of  Jesus  had  been  invoked,  whether  by  a 
heretic  or  by  one  sound  in  the  faith,  was  to  do  dishonor 
to  Christ  and  imperil  the  existence  of  His  church.  Only 
this  large  and  truly  catholic  attitude  could  have  saved  the 
church  at  such  a  crisis.  To  have  rejected  the  baptism  per- 
formed by  heretics  in  the  name  of  Jesus,  would  have  been 
to  call  in  question  the  validity  of  all  the  ecclesiastical  rites. 
Who  could  be  sure,  so  late  as  the  middle  of  the  third  cen- 
tury, whether  baptism  had  been  always  administered  by 
those  in  Apostolic  descent  and  with  the  formula  of  the 
Trinity  ?  Not  only  was  it  uncertain,  but  many  possibilities 
made  it  certain  that  the  reverse  was  true.  It  became  neces- 
sary, if  the  Catholic  church  was  to  exist  at  all,  that  the  bap- 
tisms of  the  past  should  be  legitimated,  however  stringent 
might  be  the  provisions  for  the  future.  The  unknown 
author  of  the  treatise  on  Rebaptism  discloses  the  method 
of  rescuing  the  church  from  the  disaster  into  which  Cyp- 
rian's policy  would  have  plunged  it,  —  recourse  to  the 
Holy  Spirit,  whose  invocation  over  any  baptism,  together 
with  the  laying  on  of  hands,  was  the  act  of  faith  supple- 
menting all  supposed  or  actual  deficiencies.^ 

The  thought  and  the  practice  of  the  ancient  church 
regarding  baptism  has  been  often  and  unstintedly  con- 
demned because  of  its  unethical  and  superstitious  char- 
acter, or  its  heathen  affiliation  in  attaching  a  magical 
potency  to  water  as  the  means  to  a  spiritual  result.  But 
it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  from  the  first  it  was  also 
accompanied  by  an  ethical  training  in  the  Catechumenate. 
The   coexistence  of  a  teaching  church  is  invariably  as- 

1  In  his  treatise,  De  Spir.  Sane,  Ambrose  (t  397)  seems  aware  of  the 
significance  of  this  issue  regarding  baptism.  "He  who  is  blessed  in 
Christ  is  blessed  in  the  name  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son  and  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  because  the  name  is  one  and  the  power  is  one ;  .  .  .  So  they 
were  baptized  in  tlie  name  of  Jesus  Clnlst ;  .  .  .  For  when  it  is  said,  in 
the  name  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Clirist,  the  mystery  is  complete  through  the 
oneness  of  the  name"  (c.  iii.). 


406  CHRISTIAN  WORSHIP 

sumed  also  in  the  later  administration  of  the  rite,  nor  has 
the  administration  of  baptism  been  allowed  to  outstrip  the 
advance  of  the  ecclesiastical  organization,  as  though  other- 
wise baptism  would  lose  its  efficiency.  To  this  statement 
there  are  some  apparent  exceptions.  There  is  a  report 
that  the  Jesuits,  in  their  excessive  zeal,  were  accustomed 
to  shake  the  sacred  drops  upon  the  heads  of  children 
as  they  passed,  muttering  the  Christian  incantation  ;  it  is 
even  said  that  on  one  occasion  they  locked  the  doors  of 
the  building  where  the  heathens  were  assembled,  and 
administered  baptism  by  the  aid  of  a  sprinkler.  But  if 
these  cases  be  more  than  inventions,  they  only  bring 
out  in  stronger  relief  the  prevailing  order,  which  has 
always  associated  baptism  with  a  moral  education  as  the 
condition  of  its  validity.  One  exception  there  is,  but  in 
appearance  only,  —  the  case  of  children  or  others  at  the 
hour  of  death,  in  the  confidence  that  the  training  inter- 
rupted on  earth  will  be  resumed  beyond  the  skies. 
Again,  it  has  been  truly  said  that  the  primary  aim  of  the 
Catholic  church  never  appears  as  predominantly  ethical, 
but  rather  the  enforcement  of  institutional  ideas,  —  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  the  divine  humanity,  the 
solidarity  of  a  race  redeemed  in  Christ,  and  the  kingship 
of  God  in  the  world.  But  these  ideas  constitute  the  soil 
or  the  medium  for  moral  growth.  It  is  also  true  that 
ethical  culture  is  better  promoted  indirectly  rather  than 
by  making  it  the  direct  and  ostentatious  aim.  But  what- 
ever moral  training  the  church  has  given  was  originally 
connected  with  baptism,  or  else  has  grown  out  of  it  as  its 
inevitable  consequence.  So  that  the  rite  has  never  lost 
its  significance  as  presenting  the  necessity  for  inward 
purification. 

Among  the  many  variations  accompanying  the  history 
of  baptism,  the  most  important  was  the  transition  from 
adult  to  infant  baptism.  It  is  possible  that  infant  baptism 
was  practised  to  some  extent  from  the  first,  or  even  that 
it  was  administered  by  the  Apostles.  But  there  is  no  de- 
monstrative evidence  on  this  point  to  which  we  can  appeal. 
That  the  prevailing  custom  in  the  early  church  was  adult 


BAPTISM  407 

baptism  is  admitted.  Evidence  that  a  change  was  taking 
place  is  abundant  in  the  third  century.  This  change  is 
one  of  the  most  significant  that  has  passed  over  the  his- 
tory of  the  church.  Adult  baptism  stood  for  the  principle 
of  individualism,  demanding  intelligence  as  the  condition 
of  repentance  and  faith,  and  the  personal  vow  of  obedience 
as  the  ground  of  its  proper  administration.  But  the  social 
aim  of  the  church,  looking  to  the  welfare  of  all,  taking 
men  in  their  collective  capacity  as  a  whole,  the  need  for 
an  institution  representing  the  solidarity  of  the  Christian 
world  in  its  common  hopes  and  fears,  —  this  necessity 
influenced  the  transition  from  adult  to  infant  baptism. 
The  principle  of  individualism,  the  characteristic  of  the 
church  of  the  first  three  centuries,  was  passing  into  des- 
uetude. The  church  had  a  work  to  do  for  the  people 
which  they  could  not  do  for  themselves.  The  obliga- 
tion of  humanity  to  the  church  became  universal.  It 
was  to  become  no  longer  a  question  of  "joining  the 
church  "  as  the  expression  goes  ;  the  union  of  individuals 
no  longer  created  the  church.  The  world  of  man  was 
henceforth  to  be  created  within  the  church  ;  infants  from 
their  birth  were  to  be  received  into  its  fold.  The  transi- 
tion at  least  bore  witness  to  the  faith  that  all  men  were 
capable  of  receiving  a  divine  nurture,  and  that  education 
is  the  divine  method  of  evoking  the  image  of  God  in  man. 
Whether  such  a  change  was  justifiable  or  not  is  a  ques- 
tion that  has  been  much  discussed.  It  may  be  assumed 
as  the  prerogative  of  the  church  that  it  has  the  divine 
right  to  adapt  its  institutions  to  the  changes  of  life. 
In  accordance  with  this  principle,  a  deep  Christian  instinct 
must  be  further  assumed  as  underlying  the  requirement 
that  the  baptism  of  the  infant  should  be  performed  at  the 
earliest  possible  moment  —  the  conviction  of  the  sanctity 
of  human  life  from  the  moment  of  its  appearance.  It  may 
be  that  this  conviction  could  not  have  become  universally 
potent  if  it  had  not  been  associated  with  another  belief, 
that  the  salvation  of  the  child  was  imperilled  by  any  delay. 
To  this  usage  of  infant  baptism  must  be  traced  the  ex- 
tinction of  the  practice  of  infanticide,  so  common  in  the 


408  CHEISTIAN    WORSHIP 

old  world  as  to  be  regarded  with  no  disapproval,  and 
prevailing  in  the  highest  society  in  the  Roman  Empire  at 
the  coming  of  Christ.  Such  a  custom  could  not  be  broken 
up  by  denunciation  or  by  legislation,  or  by  the  permeation 
of  a  gradual  moral  influence ;  it  required  an  immediate 
act  enforced  by  the  most  powerful  sanctions.  The  doctrine 
of  infant  damnation  is,  indeed,  the  most  horrible  in  the 
category  of  human  beliefs ;  but  it  may  have  been  the  de- 
graded form  in  a  conventional  theology  of  an  unreasoning 
instinct,  that  tended  originally  to  promote  the  value  of 
a  human  soul,  or  to  kill  the  hard  indifference,  the  cruel 
stolidity,  which  exposed  children  to  death,  at  the  whim 
of  parental  authority.  It  is  a  truth  whose  confirmation 
is  abundant  in  the  history  of  the  church,  that  those  beliefs 
or  institutions  that  seem  irrational  or  absurd  or  unworthy 
of  the  Christian  spirit,  have  come  into  vogue  in  order  to 
kill  some  deeper  evils,  not  otherwise  to  have  been  de- 
stroyed. 

And,  again,  it  is  clear  that  if  the  church  was  to  gain  any 
hold  upon  the  society  of  the  old  world,  which  was  to  pass 
away,  or  upon  the  new  races  that  were  to  take  their  place, 
it  must  receive  them  into  its  fold  as  they  were.  It  was 
no  time  to  wait  until  they  had  experienced  what  is  called 
conversion.  The  institution  of  the  Catechumenate,  which 
carefully  trained  the  individual,  as  a  preparation  for  bap- 
tism, had  begun  to  decline  when  the  heathens  from  the 
age  of  Constantine  were  flocking  into  the  church  in  large 
numbers.  It  was  impossible  to  apply  this  method  of 
training  before  baptism  to  the  new  races  as  they  were 
converted  to  Christianity.  They  believed  they  could 
enter  the  church  by  baptism  as  they  entered  the  Empire 
by  conquest.  When  Clovis  was  converted  in  the  sixth 
century  he  had  some  doubts  as  to  whether  his  people 
would  follow  him.  But  when  tliey  were  consulted,  they 
replied  that  they  were  ready,  and  with  their  leader  they 
went  down  by  thousands  into  the  regenerating  wave.  Of 
them  all  it  was  proclaimed  alike  that  they  were  children 
of  God,  members  of  Christ,  and  inheritors  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven.     In  other  words,  they  shared  in  a  divine  hu- 


BEPENTANCE  409 

manity,  constituting  their  title  to  the  blessings  that  the 
church  might  hold  in  store.  Their  redemption  had  been 
potentially  accomplished  by  the  revelation  of  Christ,  which 
showed  what  humanity  was,  or  might  become  ;  this  poten- 
tial redemption  was  to  be  made  actual  within  the  church, 
if  the  church  fulfilled  the  obligations  it  had  assumed. 
And  at  least  the  effort  was  made  to  fulfil  them.  The 
training  which  hitherto  had  preceded  baptism  was  now 
placed  after  the  rite,  and  was  known  as  Discipline.  A 
vast  educational  system  was  developed,  by  which  the 
church  sought  to  implant  the  first  principles  of  moral 
culture.  So  great  importance  was  attached  to  discipline 
that  it  was  finally  enumerated  among  the  sacraments 
which  are  necessary  to  salvation.  The  sacrament  of  bap- 
tism must  be  made  effective  by  means  of  the  sacrament  of 
penance. 

II 

The  Mediaeval  church  differed  from  the  church  of  the 
first  three  centuries  in  placing  the  ethical  training  and 
discipline  after  baptism,  instead  of  before  baptism,  as  the 
indispensable  means  of  its  recei^tion.  The  fourth  century 
is  the  age  of  transition  when  the  Catechumenate  began 
to  yield  as  an  institution  to  a  system  known  as  penitential, 
whose  object  was  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  offender  who 
had  sinned  after  baptism.  What  is  known  as  the  sacra- 
ment of  penance  came  to  rival  in  importance  and  necessity 
the  baptismal  rite.  Thus  there  grew  up  a  system  of  disci- 
pline which,  while  it  was  the  creation  of  the  hierarchy, 
was  also  a  response  to  popular  religious  needs. ^  To  this 
system  of  discipline  the  clergy  also  were  amenable,  and, 

1  On  the  subject  of  Discipline,  cf.,  in  general,  Acts  of  Councils  and 
Gapitnlaries  of  Charlemagne  ;  Migne,  Patro.  Lat.,  Vol.  XCIX.  for  the  Peni- 
tential  Books ;  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Conncils  and  Eccles.  Documents 
rel.  to  Great  Britain  and  Ireland;  Smith  and  Cheethain,  Arts.  Penance, 
Penitential  Books;  Bingham,  Bk.  XIV.;  Wetzer  and  Welte,  Kirrhen- 
Lexikon,  II.,  Bussdisciplin  ;  Lea,  His.  of  Auricular  Confession  and  Indul- 
gences in  the  Latin  Church  (1896);  Wasserschleben,  Bussordnungen  d. 
abendldnd.  Kirche;  Marshall,  Penitential  Disripline  of  the  Primitive 
Church;  also  Gieseler,  Ec.  His.,  II.,  and  Schaff,  Ch.  His.,  IV. 


410  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

indeed,  in  theory  it  was  so  devised  as  to  bear  more  heavily 
upon  the  priesthood  than  on  the  people.  Where  the 
layman  was  punished  lightly  by  fine,  the  priest  was  liable 
to  deposition  or  excommunication.  Such  was  the  theory, 
even  if  not  carried  out  into  practice.  The  papacy  strove 
for  exemption  from  the  possibilities  of  humiliation  under 
such  a  system,  and  may  be  said  to  have  stood  above 
the  system  until  at  the  last  moment,  when  discipline  was 
beginning  to  f)ass  away,  the  popes  themselves,  as  at  the 
Reformatory  Councils  in  the  fifteenth  century,  were 
brought  into  subjection  to  its  control. 

In  what  are  known  as  the  "  penitential  books,"  we  have 
the  first  rude  treatises  in  ethics.  Taking  them  in  rela- 
tion to  their  age,  they  aim  at  inculcating  those  duties 
that  relate  to  the  well-being  of  the  social  order.  The 
sins  most  hurtful  to  society  were,  for  the  most  part,  those 
known  as  mortal  sins.  As  society  was  constituted  in  the 
church,  heresy  became  the  greatest  sin  because  it  seemed 
like  a  deadly  blow  to  the  life  of  the  ecclesiastical  order  on 
which  social  regeneration  was  depending.  But  the  peni- 
tential books  are  not  without  the  recognition  of  offences 
injurious  to  the  personality  more  than  the  social  order. 
When  the  system  of  discipline  first  began  to  be  developed, 
its  application  was  chiefly,  if  not  exclusively,  to  sins  open 
and  known,  which  brought  scandal  upon  the  church. 
From  open  sins  the  transition  was  easy  and  natural  to 
secret  sins  known  only  to  the  offender.  The  working  of 
the  human  conscience  led  inevitably  to  the  confessional, 
it  was  a  method  of  relief  sought  by  the  people,  quite  as 
much  as  imposed  upon  them  from  without.  It  never 
could  have  arisen,  of  course,  in  an  age  when  the  sense 
of  individuality  was  strong;  for  a  deep  personality  rebels 
against  the  lifting  of  the  veil  that  shrouds  the  sanctuary 
of  the  inner  life.  The  confessional  was  at  first  a  voluntary 
method  of  seeking  relief.  It  is  well  to  recall  that  even 
under  this  milder  form  a  great  man  like  St.  Jerome  pro- 
tested against  the  growing  conviction  that  the  priest  could 
grant  absolution,  or  that  his  intervention  was  needed  be- 
tween the  soul  and  God.     But  Leo  the  Great  stated  what 


REPENTANCE  411 

people  were  already  inclined  to  believe,  that  only  through 
sacerdotal  mediation  could  pardon  be  secured.  The  hu- 
man race  in  that  age  had  begun  to  be  afraid  of  dealing 
directly  with  God ;  in  its  weakness  and  fear,  it  was 
experiencing  the  mood  of  the  ancient  Hebrew  people 
gathered  together  in  fright  at  the  foot  of  Horeb,  or  ad- 
dressing the  lawgiver  as  he  came  down  from  the  mountain  : 
"  Speak  thou  to  us ;  let  not  God  speak  to  us  or  we  die." 

The  hierarch}^  of  the  Latin  church  took  charge  of  this 
whole  department  of  human  life  because  in  those  days 
no  state  any  longer  existed  strong  enough  to  enforce 
obedience  to  moral  law ;  nor  was  the  moral  capital  of 
the  old  Roman  world  sufBcient  for  the  emergency.  The 
order  of  the  civil  state  was  yet  among  the  possibilities 
of  the  distant  future.  The  disasters  of  the  social  revolu- 
tion in  the  age  of  the  invasion  of  the  barbarians  had  made 
the  moral  situation  worse  even  than  before.  Thus  the 
German  people,  who  had  moral  convictions  and  moral 
codes  before  they  entered  the  Empire,  had  degenerated 
in  consequence  of  their  contact  with  the  Empire  into  an 
indescribable  moral  degradation.  Their  leaders  felt  no 
restrictions  of  law  or  authority,  exhibiting  their  brutal 
or  sensual  impulses  without  restraint,  and  the  corruption 
of  their  followers  was  a  matter  of  course.  Under  these 
circumstances,  any  power  was  to  be  welcomed  which  could 
insure  order,  or  create  the  sentiment  of  wrong,  or  rouse 
the  conscience  to  the  dread  of  evil.  The  most  fearful 
penalties  the  imagination  could  conceive  were  not  too 
strong  to  be  invoked  in  the  attempt  to  develop  the  moral 
sense.  In  view  of  the  situation,  it  may  have  been  in- 
evitable that  the  penitential  systems  should  be  enforced 
by  all  the  terrors  at  the  command  of  the  clergy.  In  acting 
as  the  substitute  for  the  state,  the  church  had  no  punisli- 
ments  at  her  disposal  except  those  appealing  to  the 
spiritual  imagination.  Perhaps,  also,  it  was  necessary  and 
desirable  that  the  human  soul  should  be  turned  inside  out, 
as  it  were,  in  the  confessional  in  order  to  know  itself  and 
be  known  in  its  evil  capacity  and  its  dark  proclivities.  The 
state  now  does  what  the  church  attempted  then.     When  a 


412  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

man  becomes  liable  for  his  offence  to  the  civil  law,  there  is 
no  respect  for  his  personality  at  the  hands  of  lawyer  or 
judges.  The  inner  life  is  ruthlessly  invaded,  the  sacred 
sense  of  reserve  is  forced  to  give  way  as  almost  the  worst 
punishment  the  offender  can  be  called  upon  to  endure. 
Something  like  this  was  the  function  of  the  confessional  in 
the  Middle  Ages.  The  sacredness  of  the  individual  life, 
whose  citadel  should  be  held  secure  from  intrusion,  whose 
only  confessional  should  be  the  Word  of  God,  the  pulpit 
of  the  preacher,  or  the  revelation  of  literature,  was  then 
violated  without  protest  or  murmur. 

As  the  desire  or  the  necessity  for  the  confessional 
developed,  the  language  of  Christ  was  recalled,  as  its 
divine  justification :  "  Whosesoever  sins  ye  remit  shall  be 
remitted;  and  whosesoever  sins  ye  retain  they  shall 
be  retained  ;  Whatsoever  thou  shalt  loose  on  earth  shall 
be  loosed  in  heaven,  or  whatsoever  thou  shalt  bind  on 
earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven."  Sublimer  words  were 
never  uttered  if  we  take  them  in  their  truest,  which  is 
also  their  largest,  meaning.  They  proclaim  the  endow- 
ment of  humanity  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  with  the  power 
of  discerning  moral  truth ;  they  constitute  the  commission 
of  the  Christian  preacher ;  they  imply  the  unchanging 
essence  of  moral  distinctions,  so  that  the  moralitj'"  of  earth 
is  one  with  the  morality  of  heaven.  The  verdict  of  the 
conscience  becomes  the  verdict  of  God.  Much  as  these 
words  may  have  been  or  still  are  perverted  by  false  limita- 
tions, the  j)rinciple  they  contain  may  yet  be  traced  in 
the  discipline  of  the  hierarchy,  in  the  days  of  its  power  and 
in  its  better  aspects,  when  it  stood  for  the  conscience  of 
man.  However  great  or  numerous  the  misapplications  of 
the  ethical  ideal  may  have  been  in  the  Middle  Ages,  the 
truth  was  never  entirely  obscured.  What  humanity  in 
the  main  then  condemned  as  wrong  has  ever  since  been 
condemned ;  and  the  condemnation  has  been  ratified  in 
heaven.  The  consensus  as  to  what  constitute  the  moral 
duties  of  life  has  not  varied  in  essentials ;  with  some 
qualifications  there  is  also  substantial  agreement  in  the 
ethical  codes  of  the  world. 


REPENTANCE  413 

The  chief  interest  in  the  study  of  discipline  does  not 
lie  in  seeking  for  the  justification  either  of  its  principles  or 
methods ;  about  these  we  are  now  substantially  agreed ; 
we  say  that  it  may  have  been  necessary  for  the  age,  and 
so  dismiss  the  subject.  There  is  another  line  of  in- 
quiry which  is  more  interesting,  —  to  note  the  defects  in 
the  penitential  system  and  trace  them  to  their  remoter 
causes.  Some  inherent  evil  there  was  in  the  method 
adopted  for  grounding  men  in  moral  distinctions.  The 
penitential  books  gave  lists  of  offences,  graded  for  the 
most  part  after  some  external  or  social  standard,  from 
the  most  heinous  down  to  the  least  venial.  Over  against 
each  offence  stood  the  amount  of  penance  required,  either 
in  fasting  or  stripes,  which  might  also  be  commuted  into 
money  payments.  In  such  a  system  the  outward  act,  and 
not  the  inward  motive,  could  alone  be  estimated.  No 
mortal  man  could  weigh  the  inner  motive  and  assign  a 
penance  relatively  exact.  The  monk  Abelard,  in  the 
twelfth  century,  proposed  to  the  world  a  new  principle, 
whose  tendency  was  toward  individualism  as  contrasted 
with  solidarity,  when  he  said  that  the  essence  of  sin  lay 
in  the  motive.  But  the  church  did  not  accept  the  sugges- 
tion, and,  indeed,  it  could  not,  without  abandoning  its 
social  aim,  the  object  of  its  existence.  And,  again,  if  the 
motive  is  that  which  it  is  most  important  to  reach,  still  it 
remains  true  that  the  outward  act  must  be  estimated  to  some 
extent  apart  from  the  motive ;  or  that  the  motive  must  be 
artificially  estimated  as  the  most  heinous  whose  result  hurts 
most  deeply  the  constitution  of  the  social  order.  It  was 
also  through  the  consciousness  of  the  outward  act,  that 
the  painful  experience  must  be  gained  of  the  strength  and 
persistency  of  the  evil  motive.  But  at  this  point  the 
discipline  was  weak,  revealing  a  great  gap ;  it  called  for 
some  profound  modification  at  its  very  root,  which  should 
bring  the  soul  into  relation  with  Him  unto  whom  all 
hearts  are  open.  The  social  aim  was  not  exhaustive; 
there  was  a  wide  range  of  duties,  a  higher  aspiration, 
which  the  penitential  system  did  not  and  could  not  reach. 
The    defect  of   ecclesiastical    discipline    was   revealed   in 


414  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

this  —  that  too  often  those  suffered  the  heaviest  punish- 
ment at  the  hands  of  the  church  who  were  innocent  before 
God,  or,  indeed,  might  merit  the  divine  approval. 

It  was  another  evil  in  this  method  of  discipline  that 
the  custom  of  fines  for  the  various  offences,  a  custom 
the  church  adopted  because  it  found  it  already  in  vogue 
among  the  German  peoples,  bore  more  hardly  upon  the 
poor  than  on  the  rich.  A  man  with  money  at  his  dis- 
posal could  do  penance  for  sins  with  ease,  which  it  would 
take  a  poor  man  a  lifetime  to  expiate.  Nor  could  they 
rid  themselves,  in  that  age,  of  the  idea  that  the  punish- 
ment of  a  substitute  was  as  effective  as  the  actual 
suffering  of  the  offender  himself.  Even  the  Venerable 
Bede  in  England,  the  most  spiritual  man  of  the  eighth 
century,  admitted  that  if  a  man  was  not  able  to  execute 
his  penance,  another  might  do  it  for  him.  We  need  no 
better  illustration  of  how  profoundly  the  principle  of 
solidarity  was  imbedded  in  the  Mediaeval  consciousness. 
It  was  still  another  defect  in  the  system  that  the  punish- 
ments assigned  to  offences  were  of  an  arbitrary  character, 
not  growing  directly  out  of  the  evil  itself ;  and  because 
they  were  or  seemed  arbitrary  and  external  to  the  soul, 
the  inference  was  natural  that  to  escape  from  the  punish- 
ment was  a  clear  gain.  We  are  studying  here  the  history 
of  ethical  culture,  where  it  is  as  important  to  note  the 
defects  as  it  is  to  do  justice  to  the  good  it  may  have 
wrought ;  and  at  this  point  we  reach  the  deepest  interest 
the  system  possesses.  For  if  humanity  appears  as  sub- 
mitting to  an  ethical  training  from  without,  it  also  appears 
as  going  through  a  mighty  and  prolonged  effort  to  over- 
come that  principle  in  its  moral  training  which  assigned 
arbitrary  penalties  as  the  results  of  sin. 

The  first  step  toward  this  end  was  taken  by  the  church 
itself,  when  it  set  forth  baptism  as  the  escape  from  original 
sin  whose  consequence  was  endless  punishment.  The 
motive  of  endless  punishment  as  a  deterrent  from  sin  was 
used  so  sparingly  in  the  ancient  church,  and  especially  by 
the  Greek  Fathers,  that  in  many  cases  it  is  doubtful  whether 
the  doctrine  was  actually  held.     It  was  in  the  Latin  church 


REPENTANCE  415 

that  the  appeal  was  taken  to  it,  as  by  Tertullian  and  Cyp- 
rian, but  chiefly  by  Augustine,  to  whose  powerful  person- 
ality the  doctrine  was  essential,  as  the  shadow  cast  by 
the  conviction  of  the  iDossibilities  of  an  endless  life.  The 
experience  of  Augustine  teaches  us  that  the  doctrine  of 
endless  punishment  is  the  accompaniment  of  the  awakened 
conscience  of  the  individual ;  that  its  force  is  most  strongly 
felt  by  one  who  aspii-es  most  deeply  after  the  love  of  God 
and  union  with  the  divine.  The  attempt  to  realize  all  that 
salvation  means  inevitably  leads  the  sensitive  soul  to  fore- 
cast the  significance  of  its  loss.  What  otherwise  might 
have  been  a  precarious  tenure  thus  becomes  converted 
into  the  deeper  consciousness  of  actual  irreversible  pos- 
session. In  this  aspect  of  tlie  doctrine  can  be  understood 
the  circumstance  that  it  should  be  more  forcibly  urged  in 
those  ages  or  in  those  institutions  where  individualism 
has  been  predominant,  than  in  the  Mediaeval  church,  which 
was  the  exponent  of  solidarity.  Very  moderate  was  the 
employment  of  this  appeal  in  the  Middle  Ages,  as  com- 
pared with  the  Protestant  churches  where  the  cultivation 
of  the  personality  was  the  predominant  aim  ;  and  where 
the  doctrines  of  election  and,  at  a  later  time,  of  conversion 
called  upon  the  individual  to  sound  the  lowest  depths  of 
his  spiritual  nature  in  order  to  measure  his  attitude  toward 
God.  It  was  in  the  monasteries  of  the  Middle  Ages,  also, 
that  this  doctrine  of  endless  punishment  became  the  accom- 
paniment of  religious  experience  rather  than  in  the  secular 
church,  where  it  was  reserved  for  those  who  defied  the 
church's  authority,  a  terror  for  the  few  who  were  in 
danger  of  falling  out  of  the  ranks  of  solidarity  within  the 
church,  rather  than  for  those  who  professed  submission  to 
its  decrees.  Hence  it  did  not  weigh  heavily  upon  the  pop- 
ular consciousness,  where  the  sense  of  individual  responsi- 
bility was  weak,  and  where  baptism  was  regarded  as  the 
escape  from  its  operation  as  an  arbitrary  divine  enactment. 
It  served  to  intensify  the  sense  of  difference  between  the 
church  and  the  world  outside  Avhich  lay  in  darkness  —  that 
heathen  world  doomed  to  this  awful  destiny. 

Within   the  Latin  church  of  the  Middle  Ages   purga- 


416  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

tory  was  the  real  source  of  fear  and  dread;  and  human 
instincts  began  from  an  early  hour  to  work  for  the  over- 
throw of  this  conception  of  punishment  in  so  far  as  it  did 
not  grow  out  of  sin  by  a  necessary  law,  but  was  regulated 
by  the  enactments  of  the  church.  Even  the  system  of 
ecclesiastical  discipline  here  appears  as  aiding  or  abetting 
the  popular  instinct.  As  the  penalties  themselves  were 
arbitrary  and  external  to  the  soul,  so  also  the  relief  was 
alike  arbitrary  and  external  which  was  known  as  indul- 
gences. The  church  professed  at  first  to  deal  only  with 
the  temporal  penances,  imposed  by  its  own  authority.  If 
a  man  was  unable  to  pay,  or  a  lifetime  was  not  sufficient  to 
expiate  his  offences,  the  church  in  her  discretion  might 
remit  the  penalty  either  in  whole  or  in  part.  That  seemed 
rational  and  might  be  just.  The  principle  was  tried  on  a 
large  scale  when  the  Crusades  first  began,  and  its  results 
seemed  to  justify  its  adoption. 

But  the  church  had  not  assumed  that  temporal  penalties 
covered  the  whole  case.  There  was  to  be  another  reckon- 
ing with  God  hereafter,  wherein  she  could  not  interfere. 
She  could  grant  absolution,  but  it  was  conditional  in  form, 
having  the  efficacy  of  devout  prayer  that  the  sin  for  which 
the  priest  exempted  the  oiJender  on  earth  might  also  be 
forgiven  by  God.  For  the  great  majority  of  souls  within 
the  church,  purgatory  was  the  destination,  —  a  place  where 
venial  sins  were  expiated,  a  period  indefinite  in  extension, 
of  whose  nature  there  was  no  attempt  at  rigid  definition, 
beyond  the  certainty  that  its  punishments  would  at  some 
moment  come  to  an  end.  If  humanity  had  found  an  escape 
from  endless  punishment  by  methods  that  seemed  arbitrary 
or  external,  such  as  baptism  or  the  doctrine  of  atonement, 
there  was  no  reason  why  some  method  of  escape  should 
not  be  also  devised  from  the  pains  of  purgatory.  These 
too  partook  of  the  same  arbitrary  character  as  other  pun- 
ishments ;  there  was  no  inward  necessity  why  they  should 
not  be  abridged  or  averted  altogether. 

The  conviction  grew  up  in  the  popular  mind  that  the 
church  was  equal  to  the  emergency  of  delivering  souls 
from  purgatory.     No  ecclesiastical  council  formulated  the 


REPENTANCE  417 

principle.  It  was  the  mind  of  Europe,  the  imagination 
of  a  whole  people,  investing  the  church  with  all  divine 
prerogatives.  It  began  to  take  form  at  the  moment  when 
the  church  was  winning  her  victories  over  emperors  and 
princes,  when  Innocent  the  Great  asserted  the  authority 
of  the  papacy  in  every  country  in  Europe.  The  church 
could  not  but  accept  the  honor  and  the  power  with  which 
she  was  being  clothed  anew,  adding  to  her  dominion 
on  earth  the  dominion  over  heaven.  The  theological 
principle  by  which  the  penalties  of  purgatory  were  to  be 
overcome,  was  set  forth  by  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  it  re- 
flects the  inmost  life  of  the  Middle  Ages, —  the  principle 
of  solidarity  in  its  final  culmination  or  apotheosis.  The 
members  of  the  church  constituted  a  great  whole,  they 
were  members  of  Christ,  and  therefore  of  one  another;  it 
was  therefore  possible  that  the  merits  of  one  might  be 
transferred  to  another,  and  the  deficiencies  of  some  be 
made  good  by  the  redundant  virtues  of  their  favored 
brethren.  There  were-  the  saints,  for  example,  who  had 
not  only  fulfilled  the  church's  requirements,  but  had  by 
their  life  of  painful  self-abnegation  created  a  superfluous 
accumulation  of  merit  for  which  there  was  no  use  unless  it 
could  be  brought  into  a  general  circulation  or  deposited  to 
the  credit  of  those  who  had  fallen  into  spiritual  poverty  or 
destitution.  If  this  common  treasure  of  human  merit  was 
not  vast  enough  to  stand  the  drain  upon  its  resources, 
when  it  was  thrown  open  to  all,  it  could  be  made  to  ex- 
pand into  infinite  resources,  because  it  was  unfailingly 
supplied  by  the  infinite  merits  of  Christ.  And  this  inex- 
haustible treasury  was  at  the  disposal  of  the  church  to  be 
distributed  at  need  and  according  to  her  discretion.  This 
whole  story  of  indulgences  reads  like  some  fairy  tale,  as  if 
humanity,  instead  of  being  spiritually  poor  and  bankrupt, 
had  suddenly  become  rich  beyond  the  power  of  the  imagi- 
nation to  measure,  waking  up  to  find  itself  the  heir  of 
Christ  and  of  the  saints.     When  we  are  tracino-  the  origin 

o  o 

of  some  of  our  most  cherished  convictions,  the  sacredness, 
the  dignity,  the  grandeur,  the  nobility  of  human  nature,  — 
the  conception  of  humanity  as  an  ideal,  worth  laboring  and 


418  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

suffering  for,  in  the  mind  of  some  so  glorious  as  to  be 
a  substitute  for  God,  we  must  revert  to  this  moment 
in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  enthusiasm  for  humanity, 
as  it  were,  became  the  one  controlling  motive  in  life, 
and  went  beyond  the  bounds  of  moderation  and  dis- 
cretion. 

At  the  very  moment  when  this  exercise  of  indulgences 
was  producing  an  unwonted  excitement,  at  the  beginning, 
that  is,  of  the  fourteenth  century,  Dante  was  writing  his 
Divine  Comedy.  He  was  in  downright  opposition  to  the 
temper  of  the  age,  to  the  attitude  of  the  church.  He  met 
the  fate  of  all  those  who  try  to  stem  the  current  of  a  popu- 
lar conviction.  He  was  showing  men  that  punishments 
were  not  arbitrarily  assigned  by  some  external  authority, 
but  grew  out  of  evil  as  its  inevitable  consequence,  and  the 
nature  of  the  evil  might  be  seen  reflected  in  the  misery 
which  it  created.  Hell  and  purgatory  and  heaven  corre- 
sponded to  an  inward  condition  of  the  soul.  But  the  age 
did  not  heed  the  teaching  of  Dante,  nor  for  centuries  was 
that  voice  from  the  depth  of  the  Middle  Ages  to  command 
the  audience  of  the  world. 

When  a  man  who  has  been  poor  suddenly  becomes  rich, 
with  a  wealth  allowing  the  full  gratification  of  his  whim 
or  imagination,  we  are  interested  in  noting  whether 
he  will  stand  the  test,  in  what  ways  he  will  proceed  to 
indulge  his  sense  of  power.  Humanity  in  the  Middle 
Ages  was  coming  into  the  supposed  possession  of  spiritual 
wealth  in  an  inexhaustible  treasury,  at  the  same  moment 
when  the  wealth  begotten  of  trade  and  commerce  was 
transforming  the  world.  The  heavenly  and  the  earthly 
treasures  were  placed  in  competition.  The  idea  of  a  com- 
mutation in  money  payments,  which  had  always  been 
recognized  in  the  ecclesiastical  discipline,  now  revived 
with  unwonted  force.  The  wealth  obtained  by  industry 
was  turned  over  into  heavenly  securities.  On  the  whole, 
we  must  admit  that  humanity  behaved  with  credit  to  itself ; 
that  the  vision,  before  it  disappeared,  leaving  emptiness 
and  bitterness  in  its  stead,  does  reveal  humanity  as  inclined 
to  respond  to  ideal  ends,  as  the  highest,  most  characteristic 


KEPENTANCE  419 

aim  of  its  existence.  There  was  almost  a  spiritual  panic, 
as  men  in  their  eagerness  hastened  to  take  possession  of 
their  spiritual  treasury.  There  was,  of  course,  a  selfish 
desire  to  buy  their  own  pardon,  their  own  deliverance  from 
purgatory ;  but  the  strongest  motive,  the  most  pathetic 
aspect  of  the  whole  business,  was  the  desire  to  release  their 
friends,  their  parents,  their  wives,  their  children,  from  the 
unknown  world  of  human  anguish  and  suffering. 

One  may  note,  in  this  curious  phase  of  Mediaeval  re- 
ligious experience,  the  common  characteristic  of  all  the 
phases  of  the  deeper  life  of  the  Mediaeval  church.  The 
social  aim  predominates.  The  duties  of  life  sj)ring  out 
of  our  solidarity  as  a  race,  duties  to  the  church,  to  the 
social  order,  or  to  one  another.  The  highest  expression 
of  this  social  aim  was  seen  when  the  sense  of  the  bond 
uniting  humanity  on  earth  with  humanity  in  the  invisible 
world,  led  to  one  great  effort  to  emancipate  that  part  of  the 
race  which  was  suffering  in  purgatory.  It  was  as  though 
the  church  on  earth  led  another  crusade  for  the  object  of 
recovering  the  human  soul  from  the  sepulchre  of  terrors 
in  which  it  was  entombed. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  touch  upon  the  evil  side  of  this 
subject  of  indulgences.  Its  history  is  familiar  and  needs 
no  fresh  exposition.  The  whole  system  of  ecclesiastical 
discipline  was  working  badly  in  the  age  of  the  Renais- 
sance. Instead  of  moral  improvement,  moral  corruption 
seemed  to  be  its  outcome.  For  two  hundred  years  there 
went  on  an  increasing  protest  against  the  abuses  it  en- 
gendered. But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  that  the 
discipline  had  wrought  only  evil.  It  was  very  much  with 
the  penitential  system  of  the  church  as  it  was  with  the 
professions  of  the  monastic  life.  The  monks  aimed  at 
poverty  and  inevitably  grew  rich;  defeating  their  direct 
end,  no  doubt,  but  yet  retaining  tlie  perfect  ideal  of 
man,  as  having  a  real  existence  apart  from  the  fictitious 
surroundings  of  his  life.  The  system  of  discipline  had 
contributed  to  the  social  structure,  grounding  it  in  the 
principle  of  Christian  solidarity.  There  was  vastly  moi'e 
humanity  in  the  Middle  Ages,  a  kindlier  relationship  and 


420  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

sense  of  dependence  among  classes  of  society,  than  in  the 
age  which  followed. 

What,  then,  was  the  hidden  cause  of  the  abuses,  the 
failures  and  corruptions,  under  which  the  world  was 
laboring  and  complaining  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth 
centuries,  before  Luther  appeared  ?  It  was  not  altogether 
that  the  church  had  failed  to  accomplish  its  mission,  but 
that,  by  accomplishing  its  mission,  it  had  brought  human- 
ity to  a  point  where  the  lack  of  some  higher  motive  was 
felt  than  the  church  could  at  once  supply.  It  was  the 
work  of  the  German  people  to  supply  this  motive  ;  they 
became  the  bearer  of  what  seemed  like  a  new  revelation, 
in  reality  the  restoration  of  an  older  truth,  for  which, 
under  the  imperial  regime  of  Latin  Christianity,  there  had 
been  no  place  or  opportunity.  The  Germans  were  called 
to  this  task  by  a  divine  Providence,  so  ordering  their 
political  history  that,  when  other  nations  were  on  the 
eve  of  national  independence  and  prosperity,  for  Ger- 
many there  was  reserved  division,  defeat,  and  humiliation. 
Germany  had  entered  more  deepl}'  than  any  other  country 
in  Europe  into  the  Medii  val  ideal.  Italy  itself  had  not 
been  so  overcome  by  tl^  presence  in  its  midst  of  the  spir- 
itual head  of  the  church,  as  had  Germany  by  the  doctrine 
of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire.  It  was  German  emperors, 
not  French  or  English  kings,  that  had  suffered  the 
deepest  humiliations  at  the  hands  of  the  papacy.  From 
the  time  when  the  Empire  lay  prostrate,  after  the  last 
representative  of  the  Hohenstaufen  dynasty  had  died 
ignominiously  on  the  scaffold,  Germany  began  to  turn  its 
attention  to  the  interior  life  of  the  soul,  in  order  to  find 
in  its  inward  experience  the  consolation  which  it  needed. 
The  characteristic  movements  in  Germany  in  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries  are  religious,  when  else- 
where they  are  political  or  secular.  The  most  typical 
German  man  before  Luther  appeared  was  Eckhart,  the 
mystic  philosopher ;  the  most  typical  book  was  the  Imi- 
tation of  Christ,  where  it  is  no  longer  humanity  offering 
consolation  or  pardon  to  itself  as  in  priestly  absolution, 
but  the  voice  of  God  is  heard  once  more,  speaking  imme- 


REPENTANCE  421 

diately,  speaking  in  the  first  person,  the  "  I  am,"  in  the 
depth  of  the  soul.  These  were  among  the  most  direct 
precursors  of  Luther,  to  whom  he  owed  most,  from  whom 
he  borrowed  most.  Germany  more  than  any  other  country 
had  exploited  the  significance  of  ecclesiastical  discipline. 
Indulgences  had  found  their  greatest  demand  in  Germany, 
tlieir  sale  had  been  prolonged  there  when  it  was  unfruitful 
elsewhere.  But  discipline  was  just  that  feature  of  Medi- 
Eeval  Christianity  letting  us  down  most  deeply  into  the 
recesses  of  spiritual  or  human  experience,  the  most  inward 
process  of  the  soul.  It  Avas  concerned  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  evil,  the  need  of  repentance,  the  desire  for  pardon ; 
in  a  word,  purification,  reconciliation,  and  everlasting 
peace.  This  was  the  absolute  truth  also  for  which  Luther 
was  seeking  when  he  entered  the  monastery  of  Erfurt. 

The  highest  aims  of  life  are  sometimes  the  unconscious 
ones.     Luther  had  no  other  apparent  object  than  to  gain 
what  the  church  had  to  offer,  the  same  sense  of  pardon  and 
reconciliation  for  which  the  thousands  who  had  preceded 
him  had  sought.     He  was  exhausting  in  the  convent  cell 
the  resources  of  the  church  in  ministering  to  the  soul.    The 
inward  distress  which  he  experienced,  from  which  he  could 
not  escape,  was  the  symbol  of  a  vast  and  mighty  revolution, 
whose  purport  he  was  long  in  realizing.     Humanity,  even 
in  its  fairest  and  purest  attitude,  could  not  bring  relief.    He 
had  touched  the  weak  spot  in  the  whole  method  of  Mediae- 
val   discipline  and  education.     When,   according  to  the 
theory,  he  ought  to  have  been  satisfied,  he  became  more 
profoundly  dissatisfied ;  when  he  had  done  all  that  could 
be  done  for  reconciliation  and  pardon,  he  was  further  from 
its  attainment  than  when  he  began  his  expiation.    His  soul 
was  expanding   on  its  Godward  side,  and  the  higher  he 
stood,  the  larger  grew  the  ideal  and  its  obligation,  till  it 
seemed  to  assume  infinite  proportions.      The  duty  toward 
man  might  be  approximately  felt  or  fulfilled,  it  was  cer- 
tainly definite  and  clear  -,  but  the  duty  toward  God  knew 
no  limit  to  its  range,  to  seek  for  its  fulfilment  was  to  forever 
enlarge  its  scope.     In  this  emergency  of  the  soul,  there 
was  no  man  that  could  help  him,  and  even  the  church  had 


422  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

failed  him.  There  is  nothing  like  this,  at  once  so  awful 
and  so  sublime,  in  the  history  of  Christian  experience.  It 
was  the  beginning  of  a  new  era,  —  when  one  man  came 
forth  out  of  the  heart  of  humanity  who  was  forced  to 
stand  alone,  who  could  no  longer  rely  on  the  solidarity  of 
the  race  to  save  him,  who  in  his  spiritual  isolation  con- 
fronted the  whole  world,  the  Empire  as  well  as  the  Church, 
who,  when  humanity  failed  him,  threw  himself  upon  God, 
and  stood  by  the  strength  of  a  righteousness  which  was 
not  his  own,  except  in  so  far  as  his  longing  after  it  made 
it  his  own.  Such  is  the  principle  of  individual  salvation, 
the  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith. 

The  defect  in  the  statement  of  Thomas  Aquinas, 
whereby  he  had  justified  the  doctrine  of  indulgences,  was 
also  the  defect  of  Medieval  ethics  and  ethical  training, 
the  assumption  that  there  was  a  limit  to  human  obligation, 
that  it  was  possible  for  the  saint  to  do  all  that  was  required 
of  him.  Here  lay  the  source  of  corruption,  which  was 
generating  the  abuses  of  the  age.  It  was  a  check  to  the 
advance  of  humanity,  because  it  gave  no  room  for  expan- 
sion, reducing  life  to  a  dreary,  dead  monotony.  Luther 
saw  that  complete  fulfilment  of  human  aspiration  was  not 
feasible,  because  man  was  connected  through  Christ  with 
a  world  of  infinite  possibility.  Justification  by  faith  was 
the  only  alternative.  Peace  with  God  was  attained  uot  b}' 
fulfilment  of  obligation,  but  by  aspiration  for  the  divine. 
The  longing  after  goodness  was  the  ultimate  promise  of 
its  attainment.  To  have  faith  in  Christ,  was  what  God 
demanded,  and  faith  was  the  germ  of  the  righteousness 
which  justified.  Faith  brought  the  soul  into  union  and 
communion  with  God  in  Christ,  the  highest  result  which 
man  could  achieve  on  his  Godward  side. 


Ill 

In  the  complex  system  of  Mediaeval  discipline,  with  its 
adjustments  and  compromises  as  developed  in  the  process 
of  time,  there  may  be  discerned  a  twofold  tendency  and 
result.     In  the  first  place,  it  had  bred  a  scrupulous  anxiety 


FAITH  423 

about  personal  salvation  carrying  with  it  a  heavy  hurden 
of  responsibility,  a  sense  of  uncertainty,  an  inward  condi- 
tion of  irritation  with  the  vexatious  penitential  methods ; 
and  all  this  enhanced  by  the  requirements  of  the  church, 
which  from  the  thirteenth  century  made  confession  to 
a  priest  obligatory  upon  every  one  who  would  remain  in 
the  fellowship  of  salvation.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there 
kept  pace  with  this  system  the  opposite  method,  which 
laid  stress  upon  the  opus  operatum  principle  in  the  sacra- 
ment of  the  altar,  whose  effectiveness,  according  to  the 
theory,  required  no  effort  on  the  part  of  the  worshipper. 
Any  one  might  participate  in  its  benefits  simply  by  his 
presence,  by  putting  no  obstacle  in  the  way  of  its  bene- 
ficial action.  But  it  was  a  growing  characteristic  of  the 
age  before  the  Reformation,  that  the  ritual  of  the  altar 
was  losing  its  hold  upon  the  reason  or  its  charm  for  the 
imagination.  The  doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  which 
was  the  crude  Latin  equivalent  for  the  subtler  view  of 
the  Greek  Fathers,  could  no  longer  justify  itself  to  the 
awakened  mind  seeking  to  escape  from  dependence  on 
physical  methods  of  realizing  a  spiritual  result.  A  re- 
turn to  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  Platonic  philos- 
ophy was  making  the  presuppositions  of  Mediaeval  cultus 
irrational  and  impossible. 

But  the  principle  of  the  opus  operatum^  however  irra- 
tional its  presentation  in  the  sacrament  of  the  altar,  yet 
represents  the  groping  after  a  spiritual  truth  demanded  by 
the  inmost  necessities  of  the  religious  life.  It  stands  for 
the  conviction  that  God  is  responsible  for  human  salva- 
tion, that  the  burden  rests  primarily  upon  Him  rather  than 
on  the  individual  soul,  that  He  voluntarily  assumes  the 
burden  and  Himself  supplies  the  soul  with  the  food  of 
life ;  or,  as  the  Psalmist  has  said  of  the  whole  animal 
creation,  "  These  all  seek  their  meat  from  God ;  what 
thou  givest  them  they  gather ;  thou  openest  thine  hand 
and  they  are  filled  with  good " ;  or,  again,  the  words  of 
Christ,  "  The  birds  of  the  air  sow  not,  neither  do  they 
reap,  nor  gather  into  barns ;  yet  your  heavenly  Father 
feedeth  them."     At  the  moment,  then,  when  the  Reforma- 


424  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

tion  made  its  protest  against  the  penitential  system  of 
the  Roman  church,  which  kept  the  soul  in  uncertainty 
and  anxiety  about  its  salvation,  burdening  it  with  petty 
exactions  and  routine  metliods ;  and  when  also  the  coun- 
teractive principle  in  the  opus  operatum  of  the  sacrament 
of  the  Lord's  Supper  had  lost  its  force  and  meaning,  Luther 
came  to  the  rescue  with  his  doctrine  of  justilication  by 
faith  only,  and  Calvin  with  his  doctrine  of  election  by 
sovereign  divine  decree, — convictions  which  alike  throw 
the  burden  upon  God  and  set  man  free  from  the  harass- 
ing exaction  of  a  diseased  and  morbid  conscience,  made 
diseased  by  an  unnatural  effort  which  was  defeating  its 
own  end.i 

It  was  the  standing  complaint  against  the  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith,  even  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation, 
that  it  did  not  call  for  works,  that  it  tended  toward  moral 
laxity  or  indifference,  even  if  it  did  not  encourage  a 
tendency  to  sin.  The  Reformers  themselves  became  sen- 
sitive lest  the  doctrine  should  be  abused  and  perverted 
from  its  true  significance.  It  was  also  true  of  the  doctrine 
of  election,  that  it  begot  the  inference  that  so  long  as  a 
man  was  predestined  to  salvation  by  the  divine  will,  his 
own  conduct  could  not  affect  the  result  whether  it  were 
good  or  bad.  But  the  same  objections  applied  with  even 
greater  force  to  the  prevailing  view  of  the  sacrament  of 

1  For  Luther's  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith,  cf.  his  earlier  treatises, 
in  the  years  immediately  following  the  posting  of  the  Theses :  An  den 
christl.  Aflel  deutscher  Nation ;  De  Captivitate  Bahylonica  Ecclesiae ; 
and  Von  der  Freiheit  eines  Christenmannes,  in  Werke,  ed.  Walch  ;  also 
his  Tischreden,  ed.  Forstemann  and  Bindseil  ;  where  one  gets  the  setting 
of  the  doctrine  in  its  more  flexible  forms.  Cf.  also  Harnack,  Dogmen- 
geschicJite,Ill.,vp.  (391  ff.  ;  Dorner,  His.  of  Prot.  Theol,  Vol.  I.  ;  Mtiller, 
St/mbolik.  Vergleichende  Darstellung  der  christlichen  Hanptkirchen  nach 
ilirem  Griindzuge  und  iliren  wesentUchen  Lehen-Saussererungen.  Among 
the  lives  of  Luther,  Kostlin,  Martin  Lttther''s  Leben  u.  s.  Schriften. 
Among  the  best  English  estimates  of  Luther  are  essays  by  Tulloch  in 
Leaders  of  the  Beformntion  ;  Carlyle  in  Heroes  and  Hero  Worship  ;  and 
Froude  in  Short  Studies.  The  best  English  life  is  by  Beard.  Luther 
kept  himself  apart  from  the  humanists,  but  they  welcomed  his  appear- 
ance and  his  teaching  —  a  prophecy  of  the  destiny  of  his  doctrine  of 
justification,  wlien  it  should  be  appropriated  by  the  transcendental  school 
in  philosophy,  and  made  the  ruling  principle  in  ethical  culture. 


FAITH  425 

the  altar,  that  faith  was  not  necessary  to  its  participation, 
that  even  the  wicked  man  received  the  body  of  Christ, 
and  pressed  it  with  his  teeth,  no  less  than  the  faithful 
soul,  whose  gaze  was  fixed  on  Christ. 

All  the  Protestant  churches  in  the  Reformation,  Lu- 
theran, Anglican,  and  Calvinist,  made  their  protest  against 
the  sacerdotal  discipline  of  the  Middle  Ages,  rejecting 
its  principle  and  its  method.  They  would  fain,  indeed, 
out  of  the  force  of  long  association,  have  retained  some 
reminiscence  of  its  operation,  but  it  was  feeble  and  soon 
vanished.  In  the  Reformed  Church,  another  form  of  dis- 
cipline had  been  substituted,  which  Calvin  had  drawn  in 
its  leading  outline  at  Geneva.  The  Calvinists  had  not 
reacted  so  much  against  discipline  in  itself,  as  against  the 
sacerdotal  method  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  lingered 
longer  in  the  Reformed  Church,  Avhere,  however,  it  was 
not  sacerdotal  but  the  self-discipline  of  the  congrega- 
tion ;  even  there  also  it  was  doomed  to  vanish  as  incon- 
gruous with  higher  methods  for  the  cultivation  of  the 
spiritual  life.  But  in  the  Anglican  and  Lutheran  churches 
no  substitute  had  been  provided,  and  the  idea  of  a  disci- 
pline of  the  laity  at  the  hands  of  the  clergy  disappeared. 
It  was  not  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  individual  emancipa- 
tion and  freedom,  the  liberty  of  the  children  of  God,  into 
which  the  Reformation  ushered  the  modern  world.  But  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  penitential  system  did  not 
disappear  until  the  modern  state  had  arisen,  and  regained 
the  functions  of  which  it  had  been  deprived  by  the  imperial 
church.  The  state  now  takes  cognizance  of  those  sins 
injurious  to  the  social  order  or  hindering  its  free  develop- 
ment, which  it  once  fell  to  the  priesthood  to  punish  in  the 
confessional.  Marriage,  confessedly  one  of  the  most  diffi- 
cult of  social  problems,  has  now  become  a  civil  rite, 
without  losing  its  religious  character  in  the  eyes  of  the 
church.  Education,  upon  which  the  well-being  of  the  state 
depends,  is  now  in  the  control  of  the  state,  as  it  should 
be,  and  no  longer  the  exclusive  prerogative  of  the  clergy. 
There  are  moments  when  the  church  feels  that  the  state 
may  not  be  fulfilling  its  moral  functions  to  the  best  advan- 


426  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

tage,  but  the  remedy  does  not  lie  in  a  return  to  Mediaeval 
methods,  but  rather  in  bringing  the  force  of  religious  ideals 
to  bear  upon  the  state,  in  order  to  the  clearer  recognition 
and  the  better  exemplification  of  its  ethical  purpose. 

The  religious  world  which  the  Reformation  expanded 
and  elevated  is  the  richer  for  the  variations  displayed 
by  the  churches  in  their  ethical  modes  and  standards. 
For  these  variations  were  of  deep  significance,  as  is  also 
the  common  unity  which  underlies  them.  The  Lutheran 
principle  was  justification  by  faith ;  the  Calvinistic  idea 
was  God's  decree.  While  the  former  accepted  the  doctrine 
of  election,  yet  it  did  not  place  upon  it  an  equal  emphasis; 
and  while  Calvin  held  firmly  to  justification,  yet  it  was  in 
some  different  way  from  Luther,  so  that  justification  by 
faith  has  never  been  to  the  Reformed  Church  what  it  has 
been  to  the  Germans.  The  Church  of  England,  as  became 
a  comprehensive  church  for  the  nation,  gave  an  equal  place 
to  both  tenets,  incorporating  them  into  her  Articles  of  Re- 
ligion. But  neither  of  these  principles  has  furnished  the 
exclusive  inspiration  for  faith  and  morals  in  the  Anglican 
church.  It  has  given,  in  practice,  a  greater  prominence  to 
the  method  of  religious  nurture  in  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  which,  placed  as  it  is  in  the  hands  of  every 
member  of  the  church  from  childhood  to  age,  as  though  it 
possessed  equal  authority  with  Scripture,  tends  to  build 
up  the  institution  of  the  church  and  magnify  its  impor- 
tance, while  beneath  its  use  lies  another  conception  of  the 
j)rinciple  involved  in  justification  by  faith  and  in  election, 
—  the  great  doctrine  of  the  priesthood  of  all  Christians. 
By  this  one  effective  act,  the  Church  of  England  ele- 
vated the  laity  to  an  equality  with  the  clergy.  In  succes- 
sive Acts  of  Parliament  enforcing  the  use  of  the  Prayer 
Book  by  the  will  of  the  nation,  was  cemented  the  alliance 
between  church  and  state,  wherein  the  church  has  con- 
tinued to  minister  to  England's  power  and  greatness. 

In  the  Reformed  Church  the  doctrine  of  election  has 
ministered  in  another  way  to  human  civilization.  It  has 
been  a  levelling  force,  by  which  social  distinctions  and  the 
pride  of  caste  have  been  overcome.     All  men  stand  alike 


FAITH  427 

before  God,  in  virtue  of  a  principle  taking  precedence 
of  every  other,  that  human  salvation  is  the  direct  imme- 
diate work  of  God.  In  its  first  working,  when  this  prin- 
ciple is  to  be  seen  to  best  advantage,  it  was  an  invitation 
to  men  to  rise  from  the  humiliation  of  human  tyrannies, 
to  go  forth  free  from  an  ecclesiastical  discipline  which 
hampered  and  belittled  the  soul ;  it  was  an  offer  of  escape 
from  the  anxiety  and  uncertainty  about  one's  spiritual 
condition,  whereby  men  were  kept  in  bondage  to  an  eccle- 
siastical hierarchy.  All  this  was  accomplished  by  the  con- 
viction which  had  long  been  growing,  the  most  popular 
conviction  in  the  age  of  the  Reformation,  tliat  God 
Himself  and  He  alone  was  responsible  for  eternal  des- 
tinies. The  call  that  came  to  man  was  to  gird  himself 
for  the  accomplishment  of  the  divine  will  in  this  present 
world.  Too  long  had  the  world  been  gazing  at  unreality, 
preoccupied  with  a  ritual  whose  splendors  were  an  antici- 
pation of  a  world  to  come,  but  seducing  men  into  a  mood 
of  indifference  or  inaction,  when  gigantic  evils  were  call- 
ing for  redress. 

The  Reformed  Church  differed  from  the  Lutheran  in 
the  manifestation  of  a  deep-seated  antagonism  to  Medieeval 
ritual,  while  the  German  church  was  primarily  a  })rotest 
against  the  spirit  and  the  method  of  jNIediwval  discipline. 
Both  motives  in  the  Anglican  church  were  subordinated  to 
nationality.  While  all  three  of  these  movements  accepted 
the  doctrine  of  a  personal  election,  and  thus  threw  back  upon 
God  the  responsibility  for  man,  it  was  the  Reformed  Church 
which  made  this  conviction  its  one  supreme  controlling 
motive.  If  in  later  times  this  motive  has  been  so  con- 
ceived or  perverted  as  to  reverse  its  original  purpose,  yet 
it  may  still  be  contemplated,  in  its  first  acceptation,  when 
in  the  age  of  the  Reformation  it  became  the  signal  of 
revolt  against  the  imprisonment  of  man  whom  God  had 
predestined  to  spiritual  freedom  and  to  the  enforcement  of 
His  will  in  human  society.  The  Reformed  Church  resem- 
bled the  Latin  church  in  assuming  a  cosmopolitan  charac- 
ter, which  made  it  at  home  in  every  land.  It  subordinated 
nationality,  and  the  subjective  aspirations  of  the  soul,  to  a 


428  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

divine  objective  call  to  subdue  human  opposition  to  the 
divine  will.  It  is  seen  in  its  most  distinctive  aspect  when 
engaged  in  this  task,  whether  at  Geneva  or  in  the  Nether- 
lands, in  France,  in  Scotland,  or  the  Puritan  struggle  in 
England.  It  was  capable  of  affiliation  with  the  national 
purpose,  as  in  the  Netherlands  or  in  Scotland ;  but  under 
this  coalition  it  tended  to  change  its  character,  and  to 
assume  the  more  moderate  comprehensive  mood  of  a 
national  church.  But,  as  it  is  revealed  in  history,  the 
Reformed  Church  has  not,  like  the  Anglican,  promoted  and 
consolidated  a  powerful  and  dominant  nationality.  It  has 
also  met  with  a  check  in  its  inherent  tendency  to  produce 
sects  and  divisions,  as  has  not  been  true  of  Anglicanism  or 
Lutheranism,  more  closely  identified  as  they  have  been  with 
national  interests.  But  beneath  all  its  divisions,  however 
diverse,  there  still  runs  the  same  undercurrent  of  convic- 
tion, which  in  times  of  quiet  and  repose  turns  inward  and 
produces  the  storms  and  the  conflicts  of  religious  experi- 
ence. Yet  it  only  slumbers  and  waits  for  its  opportunity 
to  manifest  itself  anew  in  its  original  form,  when  methods 
of  discipline  that  the  human  will  may  devise,  threaten 
to  defeat  the  plan  of  the  divine  discipline  or  nullify  the 
calling  and  the  vocation  of  God. 

The  doctrine  of  justification  by  faith  has  found  its  fullest 
exposition  in  the  land  which  gave  it  birth.  The  organiza- 
tion of  the  German  church  may  seem  inferior  when  com- 
pared with  the  organization  of  the  Church  of  England,  or 
with  the  system  of  government  which  Calvin  set  forth  as 
having  the  warrant  of  divine  authority.  There  were  ob- 
stacles in  Germany  to  the  free  exercise  of  gifts  of  adminis- 
tration which  did  not  exist  so  powerfully  elsewhere.  The 
organization  of  the  German  church  seems  too  much  like  a 
makeshift  adopted  in  haste,  or  bent  to  the  conditions  or 
necessity  or  expediency  —  some  temporary  arrangement 
until  a  more  perfect  order  could  be  had.  But  Luther  did 
not  possess  the  organizing  genius  of  Calvin,  nor  was  he 
chiefly  interested  in  matters  of  administration.  As  in  the 
arrangement  of  the  cultus,  he  was  indifferent  to  the  form; 
for  his  assurance  was  strong  that  the  doctrine  of  justifica- 


FAITH  429 

tion,  if  it  could  be  implanted  in  the  heart  of  the  people, 
would  be  the  geim  of  a  life  which  would  clothe  itself  with 
an  expressive  manifestation.  It  may  be,  however,  that  this 
doctrine  does  not  lend  itself  easily  or  naturally  to  the  pur- 
poses of  an  institution.  It  still  remains  what  it  was  when 
it  first  took  shape  in  Luther's  soul,  the  last  refuge  of  the 
individual  soul,  the  hope  and  the  inspiration  of  man  in 
his  deepest  moods,  the  highest  consolation  in  life,  and 
the  surest  support  in  the  hour  of  death.  In  this  respect 
Luther  stands  as  a  type  of  the  German  people,  giving  ex- 
pression to  its  inmost  soul.  "  There  has  never  been  a 
German,"  said  DoUinger,  "  who  so  intuitively  understood 
his  fellow-countrymen,  and  Avho  in  return  has  been  so 
thoroughly  understood,  nay,  I  should  say  has  been  so  com- 
pletely imbibed  by  his  nation,  as  this  Augustinian  friar 
of  Wittenberg.  The  mind  and  the  spirit  of  the  Germans 
were  under  his  control  like  the  lyre  in  the  hands  of  a 
musician." 

But  if  the  Germans  have  not  built  up  a  great  institu- 
tion as  the  expression  of  their  religious  life,  on  the  other 
hand  they  have  not  been  dominated  by  one  to  the  limita- 
tion or  suppression  of  individual  freedom.  In  England 
there  was  a  tendency  to  repress  religious  freedom,  as 
under  the  Tudors  and  the  Stuarts,  except  in  so  far  as  it 
accorded  with  the  interests  of  national  policy.  Those  who 
were  in  sympathy  with  this  policy  were  free,  but  for  those 
who  were  not,  it  seemed  like  a  worse  tyranny  than  papal 
authority.  But  in  Germany,  where  political  or  national 
freedom  was  sacrificed  through  exiofencies  which  could  not 
be  escaped,  religious  freedom  was  secured  to  a  greater 
degree  than  elsewhere  in  Christendom.  No  imposing  in- 
stitution, like  the  national  Church  of  England,  intimidated, 
with  its  prestige  or  splendor,  the  consciousness  of  the  Ger- 
man people.  Luther  was  greater  than  any  organization 
which  the  Germans  could  construct.  In  accepting  his 
principle  of  "private  judgment,"  which  is  the  inevitable 
deduction  from  the  premisses  of  justification  by  faith,  the 
Germans  have  exemplified  the  value  of  individual  freedom, 
in  ways  which  have  made  the  religious  world  their  debtor. 


430  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

Private  judgment  is  but  another  name,  perhaps  not  the 
best  one,  for  that  process  which  Luther  went  through  in 
the  monastery,  when  he  felt  the  force  of  Christian  history 
entering  his  soul,  and  leaving  its  stamp  upon  his  person- 
ality. Most  men  are  content  to  leave  the  concerns  of  the 
soul  to  be  managed  for  them  by  others  ;  to  give  their  assent 
to  Avhat  is  declared  by  some  supposed  competent  authority 
to  be  true,  or  withhold  their  assent,  if  it  pleases  them  to 
do  so.  But  Luther  was  not  content  with  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  facts  of  Christian  history,  as  imparted  by  cate- 
chetical instruction,  but  was  bent  upon  the  process  of 
interpreting  those  facts,  till  he  read  in  them  their  deepest 
response  to  his  own  personal  needs.  He  entered  into  the 
experience  of  humanit}^  making  it  his  own,  and  was  thus 
prepared  to  state  what  he  believed.  Thus  he  came  to  the 
truth  for  himself.  Such  a  process  had  not  been  seen,  in 
such  completeness,  since  St.  Paul  made  the  transition  from 
Judaism  to  the  Christian  church.  Personal  conviction, 
which  is  only  another  name  for  private  judgment,  does 
not  mean  that  a  man  picks  and  chooses  what  he  likes  from 
the  treasure  house  of  Christian  faith  and  tradition,  but  that 
he  allows  the  stream  of  human  experience  to  flow  through 
his  soul  and  to  produce  its  legitimate  result.  This  inward- 
ness, this  force  of  conviction,  has  been  the  mark  of  German 
thought  and  of  German  religion,  as  it  has  not  been,  to  an 
equal  extent,  of  any  other  church  or  people.  Luther  stands 
for  the  principle  that  each  man  must  find  out  the  truth  for 
himself,  if  so  be  that  he  feels  himself  called  to  the  endless 
search ;  and  his  disciples  have  illustrated  the  depth,  the 
extent,  the  exhaustiveness,  of  the  process  required  to 
this  end.  If  a  man  would  know,  in  the  fullest  sense  of 
knowledge,  what  it  is  that  he  believes,  he  must  know  what 
the  church  has  believed  in  every  age,  and  the  ground  on 
which  its  belief  has  rested. 

To  read  the  history  of  the  past  is  to  study  one's  own 
inward  and  possible  experience.  The  thinkers  and  the 
scholars  of  Germany  have  not  been  untrue  to  the  method 
of  their  leader.  Failures  are  to  be  expected  in  such  a 
method,  but  thej^  contribute  in  the  long  process  to  the  end 


FAITH  431 

to  Ibe  achieved.  Schleiermacher  and  Neander,  Gieseler, 
Rothe,  Dorner  and  Baur,  Ritschl,  Harnack  or  Wellhau- 
sen,  these  in  theology;  Leibniz  and  Kant,  Hegel  and, 
Lotze,  and  many  others  in  philosophy ;  even  Goethe  in 
the  realm  of  purely  human  culture,  are  alike  disciples  of 
the  monk  of  Wittenberg.  The  principle  of  modern  phi- 
losophy, that  the  world  of  event  or  thought  or  experience 
must  be  brought  to  a  focus  in  the  individual  consciousness, 
as  the  ground  of  reality  and  truth,  is,  after  all,  but  the 
confirmation  of  Luther's  struggle  in  his  cell  at  Erfurt, 
when  he  was  wrestling  with  Mediaeval  discipline,  and 
demonstrated  its  inadequacy  as  the  method  for  training 
the  human  soul.  Whatever  may  be  the  deficiencies  of  the 
German  church  as  an  institution  meeting  the  people's 
need,  yet  it  has  had  its  mission  and  its  compensation  in 
the  contribution  it  has  made  to  the  universal  welfare  of 
humanity.  Some  influence  still  clings  to  Germany,  an 
inheritance,  it  may  be,  from  the  days  of  Mediaeval  imperial- 
ism when  she  was  allied  with  the  papacy,  leading  her 
to  seek  after  universal  ends  and  impelling  the  individual 
to  expand  himself,  if  he  would  achieve  his  freedom,  to  the 
measure  and  the  standard  of  the  race  of  man. 

Luther  rejected  the  Mediaeval  discipline,  with  its  sacer- 
dotal directorship  for  the  soul,  in  order  to  set  man  free  for 
the  fulfilment  of  his  duty  toward  God.  But  to  define  what 
this  relationship  toward  God  requires  is  beyond  the  power 
of  reason  or  imagination.  The  soul  is  in  danger  of  losinof 
itself  in  the  infinite  expanse,  when  God  is  taken  into  the 
calculation  of  human  obligation  and  responsibility.  But 
from  this  obligation  there  is  no  escape  by  seeking  again  to 
find  satisfaction  in  the  apparently  simpler  task  of  the  duty 
toward  man ;  for  human  relationships  have  their  Godward 
aspect  and  their  infinite  outlook.  The  m^'stics  were  not 
far  from  the  truth  when  they  felt  that  they  knew  God 
better  than  they  knew  themselves  ;  when  they  argued  from 
God  to  man,  as  from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  What 
God  requires,  as  Eckhart  thought,  is  only  that  the  soul 
should  open  itself  to  receive  Him,  the  sacramental  pas- 
sivity which  imposes  no  bar  to  the  divine  activity.     The 


432  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

ideal  of  a  Christian  man  in  his  freedom,  as  Luther  conceived 
it,  demands  the  adjustment  of  the  duty  toward  God  with 
the  duty  toward  man : 

"  I  say,  therefore,  that  neither  pope,  nor  bishop,  nor  any  man,  has 
the  right  of  imposing  a  single  syllable  upon  a  Christian  man,  unless 
it  be  done  by  his  own  consent ;  and  whatever  is  done  otherwise  is 
done  in  the  spirit  of  tyranny." 

But  he  recognizes  another  aspect  of  Christian  freedom : 

"A  Christian  man  is  a  free  Lord  over  all  things  and  subject  to  no 
one,  and  a  Christian  man  is  a  ministering  servant  of  all  things  and 
subject  to  every  one.  On  the  one  hand,  he  has  the  perfect  freedom 
of  a  king  and  priest  set  over  all  outward  things ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  yields  complete  submission  in  love  to  his  neighbor,  which  as 
consideration  of  the  weak  his  very  freedom  demands." 

All  this  is  good  and  true,  and,  though  indefinite,  is  still 
a  formula  for  the  solution  of  the  problem  that  demands 
the  reconciliation  between  the  duty  toward  God  and  the 
duty  toward  man.  The  Latin  church  had  constituted  its 
discipline  mainly  with  reference  to  the  fulfilment  of  tliose 
duties  involved  in  the  relationsliip  of  men  with  each 
other  in  the  social  order.  Tliat  social  order  had  then 
taken  shape  as  the  Roman  church,  with  the  papacy  as  its 
head ;  and  to  this  social  organization  even  the  duty  toward 
God  was  regarded  as  subordinate.  From  this  point  of  view, 
the  sin  of  heresy  was  the  deadliest  sin,  because  it  endan- 
gered the  existence  of  this  social  order.  The  Latin  church 
had  recognized  a  certain  qualified  escape  from  a  social 
pressure  which  would  have  annihilated  individual  freedom, 
by  the  constitution  of  the  monastery,  where  the  duty  toward 
God  of  self-cultivation  in  its  higher  reaches,  as  they  were 
then  conceived,  might  be  realized.  In  the  age  of  the  Re- 
naissance, the  expansion  of  the  individual  ideal  had  become 
so  vast  and  so  multiplex,  that  the  monastery  was  outgrown 
and  cast  aside  as  an  inadequate  provision  rather  ham- 
pering than  helping  a  man  in  the  fulfilment  of  his  duty 
toward  God.  For  the  duty  toward  God  demands  the  abso- 
lute freedom  of  the  individual  in  order  to  the  obedience  of 
his  divine  vocation,  the  recognition  of  the  call  which  comes 


FAITH  433 

to  every  man's  conscience  to  develop  to  the  utmost  the 
gifts  with  which  God  has  endowed  him.  In  poetry,  in  art, 
in  the  rising  science,  in  philosophy,  and  in  literature,  in 
statecraft,  in  trade  and  commerce,  there  were  openings  for 
the  individual  vocation,  which  had  hitherto  been  unknown. 
The  revelation  of  man  to  himself  has  been  ever  since  the 
ruling  idea  of  the  modern  world,  with  a  richness  and 
glory  of  manifestation  it  is  impossible  to  enumerate  or 
describe,  in  comparison  with  which  the  ages  that  go  before 
seem  empty  and  barren.  The  doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith  has  been  not  only  the  basis  of  the  modern  religious 
life,  but  it  has  been  translated  into  a  larger  formula  envelop- 
ing every  vocation  in  life  with  a  divine  halo  in  so  far  as  it  is 
fulfilled  in  a  spirit  of  sincerity  and  of  devotion  to  ideal  ends. 
But  in  our  own  age,  there  has  risen  a  social  ideal  whose 
form  is  yet  indeterminate,  which,  like  the  Mediaeval  order, 
threatens  individual  freedom  under  the  specious  pretexts  of 
emancipation  from  the  burdens  of  personality  or  of  false 
economic  systems.  Under  its  prevalence,  the  belief  in  a 
personal  God  and  the  sense  of  personal  immortality  would 
be  weakened,  as?  also  the  recognition  of  the  duty  toward 
God.  The  possession  of  wealth  and  its  employment  for 
ideal  ends,  apart  from  purely  social  obligations,  is  regarded 
with  jealousy  and  suspicion.  There  exists  an  uneasy  con- 
sciousness, as  though  the  duty  toward  man  now  called 
for  the  sacrifice  of  the  duty  toward  God.  Self-culture, 
whether  intellectual  or  aesthetic,  is  for  the  moment 
hindered  or  embarrassed,  or  pursued  with  a  sense  of 
inward  contradiction.  The  joyousness  of  an  inward  free- 
dom is  giving  way  to  inward  confusion  and  to  vague 
fears,  incompatible  with  the  highest  individual  devel- 
opment. A  similar  mood  found  expression  in  Walther 
von  der  Vogelweide,  who  died  in  1230,  on  the  eve  of 
the  transition  to  a  higher  order ;  of  whom  it  was  said 
that  he  knew  above  all  others  to  give  the  fittest  word  for 
the  movements  of  the  German  spirit.  At  that  moment 
when  the  old  order  was  drawing  to  a  close  he  was  commun- 
ing deeply  with  his  own  heart  ■  "  Anxiously  did  I  consider 
with  myself  how  one  ought  to  live  in  this  world.  But  no 
2r 


434  CHRISTIAN  "WORSSI? 

advice  wag  1  able  to  obtain,  how  one  should  appropriate 
to  himself  three  things,  in  order  that  he  should  possess 
the  fulness  of  his  power.  Two  of  these  things  are  honor 
and  wealth,  which  often  do  injury  to  each  other.  The 
third  is  God's  grace,  worth  more  than  the  other  two. 
These  three  things  I  would  fain  have  as  my  own  within 
a  shrine.  But  alas!  it  cannot  be  that  riches  and  honor  and 
the  grace  of  God  should  come  together  in  a  single  life." 

There  is  danger  to-day  lest  ecclesiastical  organizations 
should  stand  in  the  way  of  the  divinely  ordered  develop- 
ment of  the  individual  man.  Among  those  who  would 
fain  pursue  a  divine  call  to  the  utmost  bounds,  there  is 
a  fear  lest  the  church  should  hamper  freedom  and  restrict 
opportunities  until  a  man  should  be  less  a  man  within  its 
fold  than  if  he  maintained  himself  outside  its  range.  But 
the  ecclesiastical  attitude,  which  is  restricting  the  divine 
within  too  narrow  limits,  is  a  temporary  mood.  The 
social  development  also  must  grant  individual  opportunity, 
unless  it  would  become  a  tyranny  worse  than  that  from 
which  Luther  suffered,  and  escaped  by  the  doctrine  of 
justification  by  faith.  In  the  confusion  of  the  moment, 
amid  the  groping  and  the  uncertaint}^  the  vague  desires 
that  can  fasten  on  no  adequate  ideal,  it  is  something  to 
recall  the  story  of  Luther,  in  whose  experience  is  somehow 
revealed  the  secret  of  life.  He  has  presented  an  ethical  no 
less  than  a  religious  ideal,  Avhich  is  no  abstraction,  wherein 
we  believe,  even  if  we  cannot  describe  or  define.  Human- 
ity must  realize  its  destiny  in  relationship  with  nature  and 
with  society  on  the  one  hand,  and  with  God  on  the  other. 
The  obligations  by  which  the  individual  life  is  perfected 
may  take  shape  in  plain  and  simple  duties  to  our  fellows, 
but  they  stretch  away  into  the  infinite,  including  the  true, 
the  good,  and  the  beautiful,  when  we  consider  our  duty 
toward  God.  In  escaping  from  the  horrors  of  his  prison 
house  at  Erfurt,  Luther  has  emancipated  us  from  our  nar- 
rowness, our  seclusion,  our  petty  fears.  Henceforth  we 
should  have  the  courage  to  stand  with  firmer  feet  upon 
God's  earth,  realizing  ourselves  and  the  divine  endowment 
of  our  human  nature. 


FAITH  435 

The  history  of  the  human  race  from  the  ethical  point  of 
view  assumes  a  discouraging  aspect,  if  judged  alone  by 
the  results  that  have  been  accomplished.  It  is  true  of 
humanity  as  a  whole,  as  it  is  of  the  individual,  that  it  is 
justified  by  faith  only.  The  goal  of  perfection  is  in  the 
remote  future,  so  distant  that  it  is  almost  lost  to  our  view. 
If  we  condemn  human  order  or  society  too  strongly  in  the 
unreformed  period  of  Christian  history,  bringing  into  the 
unrelieved  light  the  hideous  picture  of  its  abases,  the  same 
method,  when  applied  to  our  modern  civilization,  reveals 
the  failure  to  redress  great  evils  or  attain  the  highest 
good.  It  is  desirable  to  show,  if  it  can  be  shoAvn,  that 
the  human  race  lias  never  at  any  moment  altogetlier 
wasted  its  time.  If  the  progress  has  been  slow,  it  has 
been  real.  If  we  are  discouraged  when  we  consider  the 
time  it  has  required  to  take  even  one  short  step  in  advance, 
the  remedy  for  the  depression  is  to  dwell  on  the  persist- 
ency of  the  ideal  and  its  expansion,  as  the  sign  of  a 
progress  which  can  be  measured  in  no  other  way. 

The  truth  that  we  are  justified  by  faith  is  then  the  deep 
inward  principle  of  the  spiritual  life  and  the  ground  of 
Christian  hope,  whether  for  ourselves  or  others.  It  is  be- 
cause it  lies  so  deep  beneath  the  surface  of  our  ordinary 
consciousness,  not  because  it  is  denied  or  underrated,  that 
its  proclamation  is  so  rarely  heard  in  formal  manner.  It 
is  only  in  great  crises  of  history  that  it  emerges  into 
dogmatic  affirmation ;  twice  only  in  the  history  of  the 
Christian  church  that  the  appeal  has  been  taken  to  it  in 
order  to  new  and  higher  stages  of  human  development, — 
those  moments  which  produced  St.  Paul  and  Martin  Luther. 
The  one  opened  the  doors  of  the  church  to  the  Gentile 
world,  and  undid  Jewish  legalism ;  the  other,  alone  and 
single-handed,  resisted  the  most  powerful  religious  organi- 
zation the  world  has  ever  seen,  and  led  forth  the  people 
who  were  able  to  follow.  Both  of  them  underwent  a  trial 
of  religious  experience  threatening  to  rend  their  inmost 
being,  before  they  struggled  out  of  darkness  into  light, 
the  sword  piercing  their  hearts,  that  the  thought  of  many 
hearts  might  be  revealed. 


436  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

In  the  final  test  of  things,  tlie  last  solitary  tribunal 
of  the  soul,  the  man  who  has  known  Christ,  as  God  has 
revealed  Him,  cannot  fall  back  upon  what  he  has  actually 
accomplished  as  his  justification  before  God.  It  is  not  by 
works  of  righteousness  which  we  have  done.  That  which 
has  been  achieved  is  so  slight,  compared  with  that  which 
ought  to  have  been  or  might  have  been,  that  in  the  self- 
review  it  almost  disappears.  Have  we  grown  better,  have 
we  made  progress,  can  we  measure  the  progress  in  moral 
attainment  by  any  practical,  trustworthy  standards,  has  the 
world  progressed,  and,  if  so,  what  are  the  tests  by  which  we 
judge,  what  is  meant  by  this  perpetual  self-accusation  of 
failures  and  transgressions  of  which  we  are  conscious, 
how  much  has  the  world  itself  accomplished  in  comparison 
with  evils  yet  remaining  to  be  overcome,  —  when  we  ask 
these  questions,  in  deep  and  sad  sincerity,  there  is  but  one 
answer,  but  one  consolation :  if  we  have  not  succeeded  in 
doing  much,  yet  we  have  not  lowered  the  ideal  or  been 
recreant  to  the  heavenly  vision.  Notwithstanding  the 
failure  or  the  lapse,  wilful  or  unconscious,  it  is  much  to  be 
able  to  say,  "  I  have  loved  righteousness  and  hated  in- 
iquity." Hildebrand  and  Luther  here  stand  upon  a  common 
ground.  The  most  that  the  individual  man  or  the  race  can 
offer  before  God  as  an  acceptable  sacrifice,  is  not  works  that 
have  been  done,  but  Christ,  the  inspirer  and  finisher  of  our 
faith.  When  the  fight  has  been  fought  and  the  course  has 
been  run,  this  is  the  only  justification  for  saint  or  for  sin- 
ner, for  humanity  as  a  whole,  or  individual  man,  that 
Christ  has  never  been  disowned,  —  the  confession  of  St. 
Paul,  I  have  kept  the  faith. 

The  sense  of  personal  responsibility,  if  unrelieved,  might 
become  a  burden  too  heavy  to  bear.  This  sense  and  this 
burden  have  grown  out  of  the  doctrine  of  baptism,  out  of 
catechetical  instruction,  penitential  books,  systems  of  disci- 
pline, a  compulsory  confessional,  and  modes  of  penance  and 
absolution.  The  Mediaeval  church  lightened  the  burden 
with  the  doctrine  of  the  opus  operatum  in  the  sacrament  of 
the  altar.  When  that  failed,  Luther  proposed  the  principle 
of  justification  by  faith  ;  Calvin  and  his  discii)les  found  com- 


FAITH  437 

fort  in  the  divine  decree  of  election  by  which  God  assumed 
the  responsibility  of  human  salvation ;  of  which  it  is  said, 
in  Article  XVJI.  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  that  it  is  full 
of  "  sweet,  pleasant,  and  unspeakable  comfort "  to  such  as 
rightfully  receive  it.  The  formulas  of  the  Reformation 
may  have  fallen  into  disuse,  but  their  spirit  remains,  and 
has  at  last  found  its  supreme  and  final  utterance  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    PRINCIPLES    WHICH    AFFECTED 
THE   CULTUS 

In  the  liistoiy  of  the  Christian  cultus  or  worship  may- 
be traced  the  same  line  of  cleavage  which  runs  through  the 
history  of  ecclesiastical  organization  or  through  the  de- 
velopment of  Christian  doctrine.  The  contrast  between 
administration  and  prophecy,  the  episcopate  and  monasti- 
cism,  the  interests  of  the  "  secular  "  as  contrasted  with  the 
"  religious  "  aspects  of  the  church,  the  Catholic  creeds  and 
the  large  systems  of  theological  thought  developed  in  the 
monastery  and  assuming  expression  in  the  expanded  con- 
fessions of  the  Reformation  age,  —  this  same  contrast 
manifests  itself  in  the  sphere  of  the  worship.  The  pre- 
vailing tendency  in  the  cultus  of  the  first  three  centuries 
was  homiletic  or  intellectual,  appealing  to  the  conscience 
and  the  reason  ;  while  the  disposition  which  asserts  the 
essential  importance  of  the  physical  symbols  and  which 
found  its  supreme  expression  in  the  Eucharist  was  held  in 
abeyance.  In  the  ancient  church,  it  was  the  boast  of  the 
Apologists  that  there  was  neither  temple  nor  sacrifice  nor 
altar,  but  a  spiritual  worship  consisting  in  the  offering 
of  a  grateful  heart  to  a  purely  spiritual  being,  of  whom 
no  image  could  be  framed.  After  the  fourth  century  this 
order  was  reversed,  the  material  symbols  assumed  the  pre- 
dominance, the  homiletic  service  was  discontinued  in  the 
parish  churches  as  a  distinct  form  of  public  worship ;  the 
Eucharist  became  the  sole  embodiment  of  the  Christian 
aspiration  for  union  and  communion  with  God. 

The  monasteries  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  characterized 
by  a  distinctive  worship  of  their  own,  no  less  than  by  a 
peculiar  and  independent  organization.     They  took  up  the 

438 


PRINCIPLES   OF   THE  CULTUS  439 

homiletic  service  of  prayer  and  praise  and  of  preaching 
or  exhortation,  developing  its  features  into  a  system  rich 
and  minute  in  its  details,  the  intellectual  or  ethical  ele- 
ment still  retaining  the  predominance  ;  while  in  the  secu- 
lar church,  the  sacrament  of  the  altar  was  clothed  with 
all  the  accessories  of  beauty  and  s^Dlendor  and  dramatic 
power  which  the  Christian  imagination  could  devise. 
Both  aspects  of  the  worship  appear  in  a  certain  organic 
relationship  in  the  Middle  Ages ;  the  monastery  accepted 
the  secular  cultus,  while  the  homiletic  worship  was  recog- 
nized in  varying  degrees  by  the  secular  clergy.  But  this 
adjustment  did  not  obscure  the  distinction  between  these 
divergent  aspects  of  Christian  worship. 

The  Eastern  church,  as  compared  with  the  Latin,  gave  a 
fuller  development  to  the  sacrament  of  the  altar.  While 
the  Latin  church  was  struggling  in  the  throes  of  the  bar- 
barian invasion,  wrestling  with  the  issues  born  of  the 
Augustinian  theology,  or  fulfilling  the  task  of  converting 
the  new  peoples  to  the  Christian  faith,  the  Oriental  church, 
supported  by  a  stable  government,  was  devoting  itself  to  for- 
mularizing  the  principles  of  sacramental  worship,  grounding 
them  in  a  nature-philosophy  which  would  give  consistency 
and  unity  to  the  mysteries  of  the  cultus.  No  such  task  was 
undertaken  by  the  Latin  church,  nor  would  it  have  been 
wliolly  congenial  to  the  spirit  of  the  West.  The  doctrine 
of  transubstantiation  was  indeed  appropriated  from  the 
Orient,  but  after  a  mode  differing  from  the  Oriental  inter- 
pretation, diverging  from  it  so  widely,  indeed,  as  to  be 
almost  a  Latin  creation,  when  it  took  its  final  shape  in  the 
Fourth  Lateran  Council  (1215).  It  was  a  characteristic 
of  the  Eastern  church  that  the  nature-philosophy  which 
underlay  the  development  of  the  Christian  Mysteries,  was 
acceptable  to  the  Oriental  church,  as  the  inmost  expression 
of  the  Oriental  temperament.  But  when  in  the  ninth 
century  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation  first  gained 
formal  expression  in  the  Western  church,  it  encountered 
strong  and  intelligent  opposition  at  the  court  of  Charles 
the  Bald.  The  treatise  of  Ratramnus,  Oti  the  Body  and  the 
Blood  of  the  Lord,  written  at  the  request  of  the  Emperor 


440  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

in  order  to  combat  the  obnoxious  teaching  of  transub- 
stantiation  first  propounded  by  Radbertus,  still  remains, 
after  centuries  of  discussion,  a  classic  on  the  subject  of 
the  Eucharist.^  Opposition  to  the  doctrine  of  transub- 
stantiation  was  again  made  by  Berenger,  a  monk  in  the 
eleventh  century,  who  agreed  with  Ratramnus  in  den}^- 
ing  that  any  change  was  effected  in  the  elements  of  bread 
and  wine  and  in  asserting  that  Christ  is  spiritually  present 
to  the  believer  only  and  received  into  the  soul  by  faith. 
With  this  view,  Hildebrand,  the  reigning  pope,  was  in 
sympathy.  These  typical  protests  are  sufficient  to  show 
tliat  the  mind  of  the  Latin  church  was  divided,  even  in  the 
Middle  Ages ;  while  in  the  East  no  opposition  was  raised 
to  the  teaching  of  nature-philosophy  that  physical  elements 
may  be  transmuted  into  spiritual  potencies. 

This  divergence  in  the  inmost  consciousness  of  the  Latin 
church,  even  in  the  age  of  its  supremacy,  was  not  overcome 
by  the  later  mysticism,  which  sought  to  interpret  the 
dogma  of  transubstantiation  in  harmony  with  the  demands 
of  reason  or  to  reconcile  it  with  spiritual  aspirations  after 
inward  communion  with  God.  In  the  age  preceding  the 
Reformation,  the  doctrine  was  either  denied,  or  else  rele- 
gated to  the  sphere  of  an  exoteric  worship,  symbolic  of 
some  higher  truth.  In  the  age  of  the  Reformation  it  was 
condemned  and  rejected  as  false  to  the  reason  and  to  the 
Word  of  God,  in  all  the  Protestant  churches.  The  revo- 
lution then  accomplished  in  the  cultus  was  deeper  and 
more  extensive  than  any  changes  in   organization.     The 

1  Cf.  Migne,  Pat.  Lat.,  Vol.  CXXI.  This  treatise  has  been  often 
translated.  In  the  tenth  century,  its  substance  was  worked  up  into  a 
homily  by  ^Ifric,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  (995-1005),  which  was  set 
forth  by  authority  "  to  be  spoken  unto  the  people  at  Easter  before  they 
should  receive  the  Communion."  It  was  reissued  by  Parker,  Archbisliop 
of  Canterbury,  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  with  the  title,  "The 
Sermon  of  the  Paschal  Lambe."  The  original  treatise  of  Ratramnus 
(Bertram)  was  studied  by  Ridley  and  Cranmer,  and  through  them  has 
passed  over  into  the  communion  office  of  the  Church  of  England.  It  was 
the  teaching  of  Ratramnus  that  the  body  of  Christ  in  the  Eucharist  was 
not  the  body  which  was  born  of  Mary,  that  no  change  took  place  in  the 
elements  in  consequence  of  consecration,  but  in  a  spiritual  sense  they 
become,  by  means  of  the  faith  of  the  recipient,  the  body  and  the  blood  of 
Christ. 


PRINCIPLES    OF    THE    CDLTUS  441 

accretions  of  religious  symbolism  from  the  fifth  century, 
together  with  the  philosophy  which  inspired  them,  had 
lost  their  meaning  and  their  attraction.  The  worship  of 
the  saints  and  their  invocation  was  forbidden ;  images  and 
relics  were  cast  foi'th  from  the  sanctuaries ;  the  cultus  of 
the  Virgin  Mother,  the  stimulus  to  the  most  enthusiastic 
devotion  of  the  Middle  Ages,  was  abandoned;  the  sacra- 
mental principle  was  restated  in  a  spiritual  form  which 
nullified  the  tendency  to  regard  physical  acts  as  in  them- 
selves possessing  spiritual  validity.  The  church  of  the 
first  three  centuries,  neglected  and  almost  forgotten  in  the 
long  regime  of  the  sacramental  and  sacerdotal  theologies, 
then  became  the  court  of  final  appeal  and  a  higher  stand- 
ard for  worship,  when  as  yet  there  was  no  priesthood  or 
altar  or  sacrifice,  in  the  sense  those  words  had  carried  in 
the  Latin  church.  The  homiletic  service  regained  its 
ascendency  and  the  Eucharist  was  restored  to  its  early 
simplicity.  Any  attempt  to  penetrate  into  the  inner  mean- 
ing of  the  Christian  cultus  must  take  into  account  these 
revolutions  in  its  history. 


It  has  been  generally  assumed  that  the  change  in  the 
nature  of  Christian  worship,  by  which  it  assumed  what 
is  called  a  magical  character,  and  of  which  there  are  in- 
timations in  the  early  church  before  the  fully  developed 
system  appeared,  was  effected  under  the  influence  of 
motives  derived  from  a  heathen  source.  Illustrations 
have  been  multiplied  from  pagan  ritual  that  reveal  a 
close  and  striking  affinity  with  the  later  Christian  Mys- 
teries. But  it  cannot  be  proved  that  there  was  any 
conscious  purpose  to  imitate  or  reproduce  the  heathen 
worship.  The  similarity,  so  apparent  in  the  prolonged 
fastings,  the  purifications,  the  lustrations,  the  special  dress, 
the  efficacy  of  outward  acts  for  spiritual  ends,  the  reli- 
gious enthusiasm  and  sensuous  forms  of  devotion,  and  at 
a  later  time  the  lights  and  the  incense,  —  these  admitted 
resemblances    to  heatlien   worship    need    not    and    indeed 


442  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

cannot  have  been  the  result  of  intentional  imitation,  nor 
has  it  yet  been  possible  to  trace  the  imitation  to  any  one 
particular  Mystery  among  the  many  forms  of  heathen 
cults.  The  feeling  of  antagonism  to  heathen  mythology 
was  too  strong  to  allow  of  conscious  imitation.  But  it 
must  be  admitted  that  converts  from  heathenism,  fresh 
from  the  moral  or  spiritual  influence  exercised  by  the 
heathen  Mysteries,  may  have  brought  with  them  a  ten- 
dency to  translate  Christian  rites  into  heathen  equivalents, 
as  also  that  certain  writers  may  have  employed  the  ter- 
minology of  the  Mysteries  in  describing  the  significance 
of  Christian  ceremonies.^  The  explanation  of  the  change 
which  took  place  in  Christian  worship  is  not  to  be  found 
so  much  in  tracing  points  of  affinity  between  Christian 
and  pagan  ritual  as  in  the  search  for  some  principle 
common  to  both  alike,  some  deeper  and  widely  prevailing 
tendency  whence  the  later  Christian  Mysteries  were  devel- 
oped as  they  appear  after  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth 
century;  a  tendency  which  in  the  pre-Christian  age  had 
given  birth  to  the  heathen  Mysteries.^ 

From  its  first  appearance  in  the  world,  the  Christian 
church  could  not  escape  the  influence  of  ruling  ideas 
begotten  in  the  great  cycles  of  human  thought.  Beneath 
the  life  of  ever}^  age  there  flows  a  stream  of  tendency 
modifying  the  currents  of  human  existence,  creating  also 
counter  currents,  so  that  opposite  and  contrasted  move- 
ments may  have  a  common  source.  The  strongest  motive 
in   the    first  formative    period   of    Christianity  proceeded 

1  "  Crowds  were  pressing  into  the  church,  mostly  ignorant  and  undisci- 
plined, some  rich  and  wilful.  They  brought  with  them  the  moral  taint, 
the  ingrahied  prejudices  of  their  old  life.  We  learn  from  many  sources 
that  the  same  incongruous  blending  of  the  Gospel  with  pagan  supersti- 
tions, which  recurred  during  the  conversion  of  the  Northern  barbarians, 
existed  in  some  degree  in  the  second  and  third  centuries"  (Bigg,  Chris- 
tian Platonists  of  Alpxanch-ia,  p.  84). 

2  For  a  valuable  discussion  of  the  ancient  Mysteries  and  their  connec- 
tion with  Christianity,  cf.  Anrich,  Das  antike  Mystcrieniiiesp.n  in  seinem 
Einfluss  auf  das  Christentum,  who  dismisses  the  view  as  untenable,  that 
there  was  intentional  borrowing  from  heathen  sources,  or  an  adapta- 
tion to  heathen  usages,  as  the  origin  or  explanation  of  the  Christian 
rites. 


PRINCIPLES   OP   THE   CULTUS  443 

from  the  influence  of  Plato,  whose  contribution  to  reli- 
gious history  lies  to  a  large  extent  in  the  attitude  he 
assumed  toward  the  generating  principle  of  the  nature- 
religions.  These  religions  had  indeed  been  weakened  by 
the  conquests  of  the  Roman  Empire,  for  they  were  national 
religions  with  local  deities ;  and  when  these  deities  were 
proved  too  weak  to  defend  their  respective  territories 
against  the  might  of  Roman  arms  and  Roman  gods,  they 
lost  prestige  and  were  discredited  in  the  estimation  of 
their  worshippers.  But  previous  to  the  Roman  conquests, 
the  process  of  disintegration  had  begun,  destroying  faith 
in  the  conviction  out  of  which  the  nature-worships  had 
proceeded.  The  nature-religions  rested  upon  the  belief 
that  the  world  was  good,  that  a  divine  life  permeated 
the  visible  universe,  wherein  man  also  shared.  In  this 
common  divine  life  Deity,  humanity,  and  outward  visible 
things  were  commingled  together  in  one  organic  whole. 
Hence  had  followed  the  deification  of  the  forces  of  nature, 
as  so  many  impersonations  of  the  divine  life.  Upon  this 
principle  were  built  up  the  ancient  mythologies  in  which 
the  processes  of  nature  were  objects  of  human  worship. 
But  these  religions  were  weak  in  that  they  failed  to 
develop  the  sense  of  personality  in  man  or  to  constitute 
a  foundation  for  the  moral  life.  They  had  been  supple- 
mented by  the  so-called  Mysteries,  where  the  effort  was 
made,  in  some  of  them  at  least,  to  find  in  nature  the 
confirmations  of  man's  immortality,  or  to  banish  the 
dark  fears  which  made  the  future  life  unenviable  and 
unattractive. 

The  aim  of  Plato  had  been  to  call  attention  away  from 
nature,  as  no  longer  the  source  of  the  liighest  revelation,  and 
to  turn  man's  thought  within,  to  the  study  of  himself.  It 
is  significant  that  Socrates  should  have  been  put  to  deatli 
for  disturbing  the  people's  confidence  in  its  religion.  The 
accusation  goes  to  the  heart  of  the  Socratic  philosophy. 
Socrates,  as  it  has  been  said,  was  not  one  wlio  learned 
anything  from  trees  or  fields,  or  the  beauty  and  order  of 
this  visible  world.  He  had  not,  indeed,  wholly  abandoned 
the    popular  religion,  but   he   was  emancipating    himself 


444  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

from  its  inward  motive,  from  that  pantheistic  conception 
of  nature  in  which  Deity  and  humanity  commingle  with 
nature  as  forms  alike  of  one  common  divine  principle. 
He  was  bent  on  self-knowledge  as  the  true  aim  of  human 
learning,  and  the  study  of  nature  was  useless  because  it 
did  not  help  a  man  to  become  more  intelligent  or  more 
virtuous.  Plato  therefore  stands  for  the  beginning  of  a 
new  departure  in  human  thought :  the  study  of  the  inner 
life  of  man,  the  development  of  the  consciousness  of  self- 
hood which  distinguishes  and  separates  man  from  his 
environment  in  the  physical  order.  Plato  affirmed  a  deep 
kinship  between  God  and  man,  but  in  the  life  of  nature 
as  distinct  from  man,  like  Socrates,  he  had  little  interest ; 
the  natural  sciences  languished  wherever  his  influence  was 
felt.  It  was  part  of  the  teaching  of  Plato  that  in  matter, 
or  in  the  substance  of  which  the  visible  world  was  com- 
posed, lay  the  source  of  misery  and  evil.  Bat  such  a 
doctrine  tended  to  kill  the  conviction  that  the  world  was 
good,  and  to  destroy  faith  in  the  visible  world  as  the 
manifestation  of  the  divine. 

TJiis  tendenc}',  inherited  from  Plato,  was  an  accumulat- 
ing force,  gathering  volume  from  many  tributaries  in  the 
human  consciousness,  until  it  may  be  said  to  have  cul- 
minated in  the  second  century  of  the  Christian  era. 
Persian  dualism  contributed  its  quota  to  this  stream  of 
tendency  which  was  develoj)ing  in  man  the  sense  of  evil 
in  himself  and  in  outward  nature.  The  remoter  influence 
of  Buddhism  may  possibly  be  detected  also,  wherein  nature 
was  regarded  as  unmixed  evil  and  religion  was  designed 
to  afford  escape  from  its  control.  The  influence  of  the 
Platonic  philosophy  tended  to  deepen  the  self-conscious- 
ness in  man  by  its  introversive  method,  till  the  only  relief 
from  the  sense  of  evil  within  or  without  was  in  looking 
away  from  this  world  to  another  where  the  spiritual  ideal 
reigned  supreme,  unhindered  in  its  manifestation  by  the 
grossness  of  matter,  which  in  this  lower  world  choked 
its  full  expression.  There  followed  a  disenchantment  in 
the  human  spirit  with  its  visible  abode,  and  the  happy 
life  with  its  unconsciousness  of  self,  whose  embodiment 


PRINCIPLES    OF    THE   CULTUS  445 

had  been  the  glory  of  ancient  art,  disappeared,  never  again 
to  be  entirely  restored. 

The  most  important  feature  of  the  early  Christian  specu- 
lative thought  was  the  Gnostic  teaching,  by  which  matter 
was  reg-arded  as  the  source  of  evil  and  the  outAvard  world 
anathematized  as  an  evil  thing.  The  most  typical  heresy 
was  Docetism,  the  assertion  that  Christ  did  not  possess 
a  human  body.  The  Gnostic  philosophy  was  a  represen- 
tative movement,  whose  teachers  were  unanimous  in  hold- 
ing that  the  physical,  visible  world  was  too  evil  and  the 
human  body  too  gross  to  be  the  creation  of  God,  or  fit  for 
His  indwelling.  The  truly  divine  could  not  come  in  con- 
tact with  matter  without  suffering  degradation.  Gnosticism 
was  at  its  height  in  the  second  century,  to  be  followed  in  the 
third  century  by  a  kindred  movement  known  as  Manichfean- 
ism,  which,  while  in  its  origin  a  nature-religion,  was  working 
at  the  same  problem,  the  disentanglement  of  man  from 
the  impurity  of  life  involved  in  the  natural  order.  Salva- 
tion, in  both  the  Gnostic  and  Manichsean  systems,  was  an 
ascetic  process  aiming  at  the  deliverance  of  the  soul  from 
the  bondage  of  matter,  by  abstention  from  those  rela- 
tionships of  life  in  which  the  tie  was  close  between  the 
spiritual  and  the  physical. 

Gnosticism  and  Manichseanism  mark  the  extreme  limit 
of  the  movement  whose  object  was  to  depreciate  nature 
in  order  to  the  elevation  of  man.  So  far  had  this  move- 
ment gone  in  the  direction  of  criticism  and  dissolution 
of  old  religion,  that  a  prevailing  scepticism  was  a  charac- 
teristic of  the  age  in  which  Christianity  appeared.  But  at 
the  moment  when  the  decline  of  religious  faith  reached  its 
lowest  point,  when  the  mythologies  had  fallen  into  dis- 
credit with  intelligent  heathens,  at  this  same  moment  may 
be  traced  the  beginning  of  a  reaction  on  the  part  of  the 
depressed  and  dying  nature-worships.  The  reaction  is 
seen  in  the  first  century,  revealing  itself  in  a  religious 
unrest  and  dissatisfaction,  that  sought  relief  in  the  restora- 
tion of  the  principle  of  a  divine  life  in  nature,  whereby 
body  and  soul,  the  spirit  and  its  material  abode,  stood 
in  organic  relationship  to  each  other.     The  influence  of 


446  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

the  reaction  was  more  clearly  manifest  in  the  middle  of 
the  second  century,  the  moment  when  Gnosticism  was 
also  at  its  height,  when  the  evil  influences  springing  from 
what  seemed  like  an  ultra-spiritualism  threatened  the  dis- 
integration of  the  social  order,  no  less  than  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  hopes  and  the  happiness  of  man  in  this  lower 
world.  It  is  this  conflict  between  such  extreme  antago- 
nistic attitudes  which,  while  it  confuses  tlie  mind  seeking 
to  trace  the  development  of  Christian  institutions,  is  yet 
the  source  of  light  amidst  the  confusion,  and  explains  the 
contradictions  of  tlie  age.  In  this  struggle  the  sympath}^ 
of  the  church  was  divided,  but,  on  tlie  whole,  the  spiritual 
movement  initiated  by  Plato  predominated  in  Christian 
doctrine  and  in  Christian  worship,  until  the  middle  of  the 
fourth  century. 

II 

The  beginning  of  the  reaction,  which  involved  in  its 
fortunes  Greek  philosophy  no  less  than  Christian  theology, 
may  be  traced  in  the  popular  demand  during  the  second 
century  for  the  nature-worships  of  the  East.^  Egj^pt 
sent  forth  the  veiled  Isis  on  her  travels,  whose  cult  spread 
widely  and  rapidly  throughout  the  Empire.  The  worship 
of  the  Great  Mother,  a  Phrygian  deity,  became  so  popular 
that  she  was  assigned  a  place  among  the  national  deities 
of  Rome.  Baal  and  Astarte  also  came  to  this  solemn 
assembly  of  gods  who  were  repairing  their  injured  reputa- 
tions ;  the  Dea  Syra  and  El-gabal,  whom  Roman  emperors 
received  into  the  highest  honors.  The  worship  of  Mithras, 
in  which  the  Sun  was  adored  as  the  source  of  a  divine 

^  Cf.  Apologies  in  early  Christian  literature,  especially  the  writings  of 
Clement  of  Alexandria ;  Plutarch,  De  Iside  et  Otiride ;  R^ville,  La  Reli- 
gion Hi  Rome  sous  le  Severes ;  Boissier,  La  Religion  Romnine  dWuguste 
aux  Antonins ;  Lenormant,  Recherches  Archeologiques  a  Eleitsis,  and  in 
Mhnoires  de  VAcad.  des  Liscriptions,  1861  ;  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan 
People;  Brown,  Dionysiak  Myth.;  Lajarde,  Recherches  sur  le  Culte  de 
Mithras;  Hatch,  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages;  Alden,  God 
in  His  World.  See  also  DoUinger,  The  Gentile  and  the  Jew;  Preller, 
Romische  Mythologie  ;  Keim,  Rom  und  das  Christenthiim  ;  Tylor,  Primi- 
tive Culture. 


PRINCIPLES   OF   THE   CULTUS  447 

light,  surpassed  all  other  natural  cults  in  the  splendor  of 
its  ceremonials.  These  all  had  their  priesthoods  with  their 
gorgeous  vestments,  their  rituals  and  their  festival  days ; 
nor  were  they,  some  of  them  at  least,  without  a  moral  pur- 
pose, as  revealed  in  exercises  for  the  purification  of  the 
worshipper.  The  scepticism  about  the  gods,  that  had 
marked  the  early  years  of  the  Empire,  gave  way  to  an 
excess  of  religious  sentiment,  to  what  is  known  as  supersti- 
tion ;  reason  became  subordinate  to  instinct,  or  took  refuge 
in  a  vague,  mysterious  naturalism. 

It  seems  irrational  that  men  should  have  returned  to  the 
discarded  superstitions  of  the  nature-worships,  until  we 
recognize  that  in  this  widespread  movement  there  was  an 
almost  frantic  attempt  to  retain  a  conviction  of  the  good- 
ness of  Deity,  as  it  was  revealed  in  the  external  world. 
Spiritual  religion  was  insufficient,  so  long  as  it  was  indif- 
ferent to  visible  nature,  nor  could  it  maintain  itself  while 
it  anathematized  the  physical  order  as  evil,  or  refused 
to  recognize  the  creation  as  divine.  There  are  signs  of 
the  influence  of  this  reaction  within  the  church  also, 
where  God  had  been  defined  as  spirit,  to  be  known  only 
by  the  spirit  in  man.  In  the  growing  importance  attached 
in  the  ante-Nicene  age  to  physical  acts,  such  as  the  magi- 
cal efficacy  of  the  water  in  baptism,  the  material  elements 
in  the  Lord's  supper,  or  the  sign  of  the  cross  made  upon 
the  body ;  in  the  high  estimation  assigned  to  the  ecclesi- 
astical organization  now  passing  over  into  a  priesthood 
that  should  rival  and  surpass  in  its  mystic  endowments 
the  priesthood  of  natural  religion,  —  in  these  are  symptoms 
of  a  blind  desire  to  counterbalance  the  onesidedness  of 
spiritual  religion  as  it  appeared  in  the  Montanist  sect,  or 
in  the  teaching  of  Gnostic  theologians  who  resolved  Chris- 
tianity into  a  school  of  thought.  Even  those  who,  like 
Tertullian,  carried  the  exclusively  spiritual  to  its  furthest 
consequences,  attempted  to  right  themselves  by  the  asser- 
tion of  the  sacredness  of  matter  or  of  the  divine  power 
inhering  therein,  by  which  it  might  become  the  bearer  to 
the  soul  of  spiritual  gifts.  The  doctrine  of  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  flesh,  advocated  by  Tertullian  with  such  ear- 


448  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

nestness  and  even  vehemence,  was  the  growing  symptom 
of  an  impending  change  whose  aim  was  to  restore  to 
humanity  some  divine  gift  of  which  it  had  been  robbed. 
The  world  was  unwilling  to  believe  that  the  natural 
order  of  the  universe  was  evil,  the  work  of  malignant 
demons,  or  that  it  was  doomed  to  destruction  by  fire,  as 
philosophers  and  theologians  had  taught.  The  most  irra- 
tional superstitions  of  the  nature-worship  awakened  a 
response  in  those  who  shrank  from  this  cold  and  hopeless 
negation. 

In  the  earliest  form  of  Christian  literature,  known  as  the 
Apologies,  the  Christian  Fathers  were  not  only  defending 
the  church  against  the  misunderstandings  or  the  malicious 
accusations  of  heathenism ;  not  only  were  they  maintain- 
ing Christian  princij)les  and  setting  forth  rational  and  con- 
sistent statements  of  Christian  truth,  which,  supported  as 
they  were  by  the  employment  of  heathen  philosophy,  might 
appeal  to  the  heathen  mind.  But  they  had  another  aim, 
negative  and  indirect,  yet  of  the  foremost  importance,  —  to 
expose  the  absurdities  and  immoralities  of  heathen  mythol- 
ogy, reappearing  in  the  revival  of  heathenism  under  the 
sanction  of  the  popular  nature-worships.  In  their  resist- 
ance to  these  evil  manifestations  they  make  their  appeal 
to  spiritual  religion,  in  behalf  of  a  worship  correspond- 
ing to  the  idea  of  God  as  a  spirit.  Disti'acted  as  the 
Apologists  were  by  diverse  tendencies,  in  the  midst  of 
which  they  sought  to  preserve  the  balance  of  truth,  yet 
their  predominant  motive  is  spiritual,  rational,  and  ethical 
under  that  influence  proceeding  from  Plato  whose  object 
was  to  rescue  man  from  his  absorption  in  nature  and 
restore  him  to  his  higher  self.  Tertullian  forms  perhaps 
the  chief  exception  among  them.  With  his  j)assionate 
nature  and  susceptible  spirit,  hungering  for  the  satis- 
faction of  blind  instincts  that  impelled  him  in  contrary 
directions,  he  appears  at  one  time  as  the  violent  oppo- 
nent of  the  nature-religions,  and  again  sanctioning  as 
Christian  teaching  the  principles  of  which  these  religions 
were  the  outgrowth.  But  no  one  protested  more  strongly 
than  he  against  the  gross  immoral  symbolism  which  was 


PRINCIPLES    OF    THE    CULTUS  449 

justified  by  its  adherents  as  having  the  sanction  of   the 
mysterious  life  of  external  nature. 

The  charge  brought  by  the  heathens  against  the  Christian 
faith  was  its  lack  of  the  accessories  necessary  to  constitute  a 
religion:  it  had  no  temples,  no  altars  or  priesthood,  no  sac- 
rifices or  images.  In  the  mode  of  defence  adopted  by  the 
AjDologists  to  vindicate  the  church  against  this  miscon- 
ception of  true  religion,  may  be  discerned  the  prevailing 
attitude  of  the  Christianity  of  the  first  three  centuries. 
They  urged  a  spiritual  conception  of  God  as  an  incorporeal 
being,  without  body  parts  or  passions,  who  called  only  for 
a  spiritual  worship,  which  should  consist  in  the  homage  of 
a  grateful  heart,  and  the  offering  of  a  righteous  character. 
Temple  and  altar,  sacrifice  and  image,  from  these  they 
shrank  as  if  they  had  been  debased  by  their  heathen  as- 
sociations or  were  injurious  as  well  as  unnecessary  to  the 
spiritual  imagination.  Had  the  Christians  built  churches 
and  clothed  their  religion  in  the  customary  garb  with  which 
the  heathens  were  familiar,  they  might  not  have  been  sub- 
jected to  the  same  extent  to  heathen  persecutions ;  for  the 
worst  misunderstanding  with  popular  heathenism  would 
have  been  avoided.  When  the  Roman  general  Pompey 
penetrated  the  sacred  shrine  of  Jewish  religion,  he  was 
surprised  to  find  it  empty.  But  the  Christians  not  only 
had  no  correspondent  to  the  Holy  of  Holies  in  the  Jewish 
temple ;  they  eschewed  even  the  Jewish  sacrifice  as  not 
acceptable  to  God.  Thus  Justin  Martyr,  writing  to  the 
Jews,  in  his  Dialogue  with  Trypho,  remarks:  "It  was  for 
the  sins  of  your  nation  and  for  their  idolatries,  and  not 
because  there  was  any  necessity  for  such  sacrifices,  that 
they  were  enjoined."  A  similar  view  was  taken  by  Barna- 
bas and  by  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  Diognetus.  But 
the  Apologists,  who  defended  the  superiority  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  even  vindicated  the  absence  of  altar  and  sac- 
rifice as  though  the  essential  characteristic  of  spiritual 
religion  demanded  their  prohibition : 

"  Those  who  charge  us  with  atheism,"  writes  Athenagoras  (c.  177), 
"have  not  even  tlie  faintest   conception   of  what   God  is,  they  are 
foolish  and  utterly  unacquainted  with  natural  and  divine  things,  and 
2g 


450  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

measure  piety  by  the  rule  of  sacrifices.  ...  As  to  our  not  sacrificing  ; 
the  Franier  and  Father  of  this  universe  does  not  need  blood,  nor  the 
odour  of  burnt  offerings,  nor  the  fragrance  of  flowers  and  incense, 
forasmuch  as  He  is  Himself  perfect  fragrance,  needing  nothing  either 
within  or  without ;  but  the  noblest  sacrifice  to  Him  is  for  us  to  know 
who  stretched  out  and  vaulted  the  heavens,  and  fixed  the  earth  in  its 
place  like  a  centre,  who  gathered  the  water  into  seas  and  divided  the 
light  from  the  darkness,  who  adorned  the  sky  with  stars  and  made 
the  earth  to  bring  forth  seed  of  every  kind,  who  made  animals  and 
fashioned  man.  .  .  .  We  lift  up  holy  hands  to  Him;  what  need  has 
He  further  of  a  hecatomb?  .  .  .  Yet  it  does  behove  us  to  offer  a 
bloodless  sacrifice  and  the  service  of  our  reason"  (Apol.  c.  xiii.). 

Minucius  Felix,  in  the  reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  also 
meets  the  accusation  that  the  Christians  have  neither 
temples,  altars,  nor  images  with  a  similar  reply : 

"  What  image  of  God  shall  I  make,  since  if  you  think  rightly  man 
himself  is  the  image  of  God  ?  What  temple  shall  I  build  to  Him, 
when  this  whole  world  fashioned  by  His  work  cannot  receive  Him? 
And  when  I,  a  man,  dwell  far  and  wide  shall  I  shut  up  the  might  of 
so  great  majesty  within  one  little  building  ?  Were  it  not  better  that 
He  should  be  dedicated  in  our  mind,  consecrated  in  our  inmost  heart? 
Shall  I  offer  victims  and  sacrifices  to  the  Lord,  such  as  He  has  pro- 
duced for  my  use,  that  I  should  throw  back  to  Him  His  own  gift?  It 
is  ungrateful  when  the  victim  fit  for  sacrifice  is  a  good  disposition, 
and  a  pure  mind,  and  a  sincere  judgment.  Therefore  he  who  culti- 
vates innocence  supplicates  God;  he  who  cultivates  justice  makes 
offerings  to  God ;  he  who  abstains  from  fraudulent  practices  pro- 
pitiates God ;  he  who  snatches  man  from  danger  slaughters  the  most 
acceptable  victim.  These  are  our  sacrifices,  these  are  our  rites  of 
God's  worship ;  thus  among  us,  he  who  is  most  just  is  he  w^ho  is  most 
religious"  {Apol.  c.  xxii.). 

Even  so  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  fourth  century,  the 
apologist  Arnobius  can  still  urge  the  arguments  of  Athe- 
nagoras  and  Minucius  Felix  against  the  necessity  of  tem- 
ples and  altars,  sacrifices,  lights,  and  incense  in  order 
to  the  worship  of  God.  It  is  true,  he  remarks,  that  the 
Christians  repudiate  these  things  because  they  think  and 
believe  that  such  honors  are  scorned  by  Deity  (Adv.  Gren- 
tes,  cc.  i.,  ii.,  iii.  ff .,  and  c.  xxv.).  And  again,  Lactantius, 
writing  in  the  early  part  of  the  fourth  centur}^  maintains 
that  only  incorporeal  sacrifices  are  becoming  to  offer  to  an 
incorporeal  being : 


PKINCIPLES    OF    THE    CULTUS  451 

"He  needs  not  a  temple,  since  the  world  is  Ilis  dwelling;  He  needs 
not  an  image,  since  He  is  incomprehensible  both  to  the  eyes  and  to 
the  mind ;  He  needs  not  earthly  lights,  for  He  was  able  to  kindle  the 
light  of  the  sun,  with  the  other  stars,  for  the  use  of  man.  What  then 
does  God  require  from  man  but  worship  of  the  mind,  which  is  pure 
and  holy?  ...  It  is  justice  only  which  God  requires.  In  this  is 
sacrifice;  in  this  the  worship  of  God"  (Instit.  cc.  Iviii.,  Ixviii.). 

But  these  utterances  belong  to  the  church  of  the  first 
three  centuries.  Another  motive  was  destined  to  become 
influential,  which  should  so  reverse  the  spirit  and  the 
action  of  the  Christian  church,  that  not  only  would  lan- 
guage like  this  become  unfamiliar  and  unwelcome,  but  it 
would  even  appear  as  hostile  to  the  principles  of  Christian 
worship  in  a  later  age. 

In  this  assault  upon  heathenism,  no  religion  fared  worse 
at  the  hands  of  Christian  apologists  or  heathen  satirists 
than  the  religion  of  ancient  Egypt.  It  was  in  Egypt  that 
the  nature-worship  had  been  most  fully  developed  and  had 
degenerated  into  the  most  puerile  and  senseless  forms. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  compared  the  women  of  his  time, 
who  lived  only  to  adorn  themselves,  with  the  ornaments 
of  Egyptian  temples  concealing  repulsive  objects  in  their 
innermost  shrine : 

"Their  temples  with  porticos  and  vestibules  are  carefully  con- 
structed, and  groves  and  sacred  fields  adjoining;  the  halls  are  sur- 
rounded with  many  pillars ;  and  the  walls  gleam  with  foreign  stones, 
and  there  is  no  want  of  artistic  painting;  and  the  temples  gleam  with 
gold  and  silver  and  amber,  and  glitter  with  parti-coloured  gems  from 
India  and  Ethiopia,  and  the  shrines  are  veiled  with  gold-embroidered 
hangings. 

"  But  if  you  enter  the  penetralia  of  the  enclosure,  and,  in  haste  to 
behold  something  better,  seek  the  image  that  is  the  inhabitant  of  the 
temple,  and  if  any  priest  of  those  that  oifer  sacrifice  there,  looking 
grave,  and  singing  a  paean  in  the  Egyptian  tongue,  remove  a  little  of 
the  veil  to  show  the  god,  he  will  give  you  a  hearty  laugh  at  the  object 
of  worship.  For  the  deity  that  is  sought,  to  whom  you  have  rushed, 
will  not  be  found  within,  but  a  cat,  or  a  crocodile,  or  a  serpent  of  the 
country,  or  some  such  beast  unworthy  of  the  temple,  but  quite  worthy 
of  a  den,  a  hole,  or  the  dirt.  The  god  of  the  Egyptians  appears  a 
beast  rolling  on  a  pui'ple  couch." ^ 

1  Paedag.,  B.  III.,  c.  2.     Cf.  Juvenal,  Sat.  xv.  1. 


452  CHRISTIAN    WOKSHiP 

And  yet  out  of  Egypt,  despised  and  forsaken,  was  to 
proceed  a  nature-philosophy  whose  aim  was  to  justify 
the  principles  on  which  the  worship  of  nature  was  based, 
resolving  religion  again  into  magic  and  theurgy.  Egypt, 
indeed,  was  the  home  from  whence  the  deepest  inspiration 
for  the  heathen  reaction  proceeded.  She  had  witnessed 
the  decline  of  her  worship  and  the  contempt  into  which 
it  had  fallen,  but  she  still  nourished  it  with  a  sense  of 
pride  and  superiority,  justified  by  the  contemplation  of  its 
history ;  and  above  all,  as  the  outward  symbols  were  neg- 
lected, she  plunged  into  reverie  over  their  secret  inner 
significance.  In  the  Hermetic  books,  there  occurs  a  pas- 
sage, at  once  a  lament  and  a  prophecy,  —  the  last  wail  as 
it  were  over  an  expiring  heathenism,  accompanied  with 
the  imperishable  conviction  of  its  truth : 

"Art  thou  ignorant,  O  Asclepius,  that  Egypt  is  the  image  of 
heaven,  or  rather  that  it  is  the  projection  here  below  of  the  whole 
order  of  heavenly  things.  And  yet,  as  tlie  sages  have  foreseen,  there 
is  one  point  which  it  is  necessary  you  should  know  :  a  time  will  come 
when  it  will  seem  as  if  the  Egyptians  had  in  vain  observed  the  wor- 
ship of  the  gods  with  so  great  piety,  and  as  if  all  their  holy  invoca- 
tions had  been  sterile  and  unheard.  The  deity  will  leave  the  country 
and  reascend  to  heaven,  abandoning  Egypt,  its  ancient  sojourn,  leav- 
ing it  bereaved  of  religion  and  deprived  of  the  presence  of  the  gods. 
When  the  stranger  occupies  the  land,  not  only  will  they  neglect  sacred 
things,  but,  what  is  still  worse,  they  will  forbid  and  punish  by  law 
religion  and  piety  and  the  worship  of  the  gods.  Then  this  land,  con- 
secrated by  so  many  chapels  and  temples,  will  be  covered  with  death 
and  tombs.  O  Egypt,  P^gypt !  there  will  remain  of  thy  religion  only 
vague  accounts  which  posterity  will  no  longer  believe  —  words  graven 
upon  stone,  wliich  will  relate  thy  piety.  .  .  . 

"  Thou  weepest,  O  Asclepius  !  but  there  will  be  even  sadder  things 
than  these.  For  Egypt  herself  will  fall  into  apostacy,  the  worst  of 
evils.  She  which  was  once  the  holy  land,  beloved  of  the  gods  for  her 
devotion  to  their  worship,  will  become  the  perversion  of  the  saints, 
the  school  of  impiety,  the  model  of  every  kind  of  violence.  Then 
man,  filled  with  disgust  for  things,  will  no  longer  have  for  the  world 
admiration  or  love ;  he  will  turn  away  from  this  perfect  work,  in  the 
weariness  of  his  soul ;  he  will  feel  only  contempt  for  this  vast  uni- 
verse, this  immutable  work  of  God,  this  glorious  and  perfect  constitu- 
tion, this  multiplex  harmony  of  forms  and  representations,  where  the 
will  of  God,  fertile  in  wonders,  has  brought  everything  together  in 
one  unique  sjjectacle,  in  one  harmonious  synthesis  worthy  of  perpetual 


PRINCIPLES   OF   THE   CULTUS  453 

reverence  and  praise  and  love.  But  they  will  prefer  darkness  to  light, 
they  will  find  death  better  than  life,  and  no  one  will  retain  regard  for 
heaven"  (^1^/  Asdep.  ii.  8). 

Ill 

An  important  place  must  be  assigned  to  Egypt  in  the 
history  of  man's  religious  development.  It  had  attained 
the  conviction  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  through  the 
belief  in  a  resurrection  of  the  body ;  it  insisted  on  an  ethi- 
cal standard  as  the  test  of  human  life  in  some  final  judg- 
ment. Beneath  its  gross  irrational  cultus  there  lay  vague 
conceptions  of  the  unity  of  God  and  His  spiritual  character, 
—  that  hidden  wisdom  cherished  by  its  hierarchy  wherein 
it  was  believed  there  lay  the  explanation  and  justification 
of  the  outwardly  repulsive  features  of  its  mysterious  wor- 
ship. Situated  at  the  junction  of  the  continents  of  Africa 
and  Asia,  it  had  combined  in  its  religion  the  tendencies  of 
two  races.  From  Africa  came  the  worship  of  the  animal 
creation,  the  most  striking  manifestation  of  the  life  of  nature, 
in  a  land  where  the  luxurious  development  of  the  forest  or 
the  vegetable  world  was  unknown.  From  the  remote  East 
came  the  pantheism  that  merged  God  and  humanity  with 
outward  nature.  The  transition,  never  completely  accom- 
plished, whereby  Egypt  endeavored  to  recognize  in  some 
degree  the  distinction  between  matter  and  spirit,  was  assisted 
by  the  peculiar  character  of  its  civilization,  where  man  was 
called  to  the  struggle  with  nature  in  order  to  his  ph3^si- 
cal  subsistence.  Nature  in  Egypt  presents  no  charm  to  the 
eye  ;  it  is  a  valley  with  a  river  and  low  hills  in  the  horizon, 
a  picture  that  makes  no  forcible  appeal  to  the  imagina- 
tion. Hence  humanity  was  not  overawed  or  intimidated  by 
the  aspect  of  nature,  but  rather  found  its  task  in  so  order- 
ing and  improving  the  physical  situation  as  to  increase  the 
facilities  of  human  support.  To  utilize  the  sacred  river, 
to  take  advantage  of  its  moods  and  subordinate  them  to 
human  welfare,  was  a  task  which  cultivated  a  sense  of  the 
distinction  between  man  and  his  environment,  as  also  a 
sense  of  some  divine  harmony  and  fitness  uniting  them  in 
a  common  sacred  life. 


454  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

At  this  point  the  religious  development  of  Egypt  halted. 
Greece  seized  from  it  the  conception  of  the  human  as  the 
culmination  of  the  natural  order,  —  a  principle  manifested 
in  its  literature,  its  religion,  and,  above  all,  in  its  art. 
Egypt  was  overloaded  with  the  complexity  of  its  prob- 
lem. Its  priests  had  glimpses  of  some  higher  truth  not 
to  be  imparted  to  the  multitude,  or,  if  the  attempt  was 
made  at  expression,  it  was  by  means  of  symbols  and  hiero- 
glyphs, concealing  also  the  thought  for  which  they  stood. 
Egypt  never  produced  a  great  literature.  It  had  no 
Homer  in  song,  no  Plato  in  philosophy,  no  sacred  books 
which  could  rival  those  of  the  Jews  or  of  the  Aryan  races 
in  India.^  In  place  of  these  was  the  uninterpretable 
symbol  which  belonged  to  its  monuments  as  an  integral 
part,  hinting  at  the  divine  life  in  nature,  while  also  it 
buried  its  meaning  in  obscurity.  The  sphynx  has  been 
called  the  most  distinctive  symbol  of  Egyptian  culture, 
whose  eternal  silence  points  to  the  recognition  of  a  mys- 
tery in  life,  over  which  some  veil  is  drawn  that  conceals 
while  it  reveals,  where  no  formula  of  human  speech  is 
competent. 

Neoplatonism  was  a  movement  which,  in  its  latest 
phases,  appropriated  what  was  most  characteristic  of 
Egyptian  religious  culture.  It  combined  Greek  thought 
with  Egyptian  nature-philosophy,  ending  in  results  not 
clearly  contemplated  in  its  origin.  In  its  relation  to 
the  age  when  it  appeared,  it  has  been  summarized  by 
Zeller :  "  Self-dependence  and  the  self-sufficingness  of 
thought  made  way  for  a  resignation  to  higher  powers,  for 
a  longing  for  some  revelation,  for  an  ecstatic  departure 
from  the  domain  of  conscious  mental  activity.  Man  re- 
signed the  idea  of  truth  within  for  truth  to  be  found  only 
in  God.  God  was  removed  into  another  world,  and  stands 
over  against  man  and  the  world  of  appearances  in  an  ab- 
stract spiritual  world.  All  the  attempts  of  thought  have 
but  one  aim, — to  explain  how  it  was  that  the  finite  pro- 
ceeded from  the  infinite,  and  under  what  conditions  its 

1  For  the  literature  of  Egypt,  its  sacred  books  and  hymns,  of.  Renouf, 
Beligion  of  Ancient  Egypt  (Tlie  Hibbert  Lectures,  1879),  cc.  5,  d. 


PRINCIPLES    OF   THE   CULTUS  455 

return  to  God  is  possible.  But  neither  one  nor  the  other 
of  these  problems  could  meet  with  a  satisfactory  solution."  ^ 

There  is  an  affinity  between  Neoplatonism  and  the 
Gnostic  schools  in  the  Christian  church,  in  that  both  held 
to  a  descending  line  of  spiritual  potencies  proceeding 
forth  from  God,  in  their  lowest  range  approximating  the 
nature  of  what  was  evil  and  thus  more  closely  related 
to  man.  But  Neoplatonism  differed  from  Gnosticism  in 
not  sharing  with  it  the  conviction  that  the  world  was  evil, 
nor  was  it  bent  upon  the  exploiting  of  the  evil  or  magnify- 
ing its  sway.  It  sought  to  explain  the  origin  of  evil  with- 
out the  Gnostic  anathema  upon  the  creation.  Although 
it  held  from  Plato  that  matter  was  evil,  yet  it  dwelt  upon 
the  power  of  the  divine  to  associate  matter  with  form, 
thus  imparting  to  it  a  divine  significance  and  potency,  and 
redeeming  it  from  its  pristine  negation  and  impotency. 
Matter  thus  redeemed  enters  into  relationship  with  mind 
and  thought.  The  tendency  of  Neoplatonism  was  toward 
the  consecration  of  the  world  by  the  recognition  of  those 
features  that  carried  suggestions  of  the  divine  creative 
thought  and  goodness.  At  this  point  it  easily  affiliated 
with  the  mystic  lore  of  the  Egyptian  hierarch3\  At  this 
point,  also,  it  discriminated  itself  from  the  teaching  of 
Origen,  who  had  gone  too  far  in  the  excess  of  a  spiritual- 
izing tendency,  to  whom  this  world  appeared  as  a  penal 
institution,  and  the  human  body  as  a  prison  house  for  the 
immortal  soul. 

As  Neoplatonism  developed,  it  became  more  and  more 
identified  with  tendencies  against  which  Plato  would  have 
revolted.  It  was  assuming  that  to  be  true  which  Plato 
had  denied  when  he  asserted  the  supremacy  of  reason,  and 
led  in  the  attack  on  the  nature-mythologies.  In  its  later 
phases  it  commingled  matter  and  spirit,  finding  in  matter 
the  agency  for  accomplishing  the  highest  spiritual  results. 
Even  Plotinus  had  admitted  that  the  beatific  vision  was 
made  possible  by  the  physical  trance,  or  by  influences 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  body.  What  had  happened 
to  Plotinus  but  rarely  was  reduced  to  a  system  by 
1  Stoics,  Epicureans,  and  Sceptics,  Reichel's  Trans.,  p.  35. 


456  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

his  followers.  A  method  was  devised  by  magical  and 
theurgic  practices,  giving  the  vision  as  often  as  it  was 
desired.  From  being  a  system  of  philosophy,  with  a 
religious  tendency,  it  passed  over  or  degenerated  into  a 
religion  whose  object  was  to  restore  the  nature-worships 
and  revive  the  discredited  mythologies.  Its  defence  of 
the  traditional  religions  was  grounded  in  the  conviction 
that  they  contained  a  vital  element  to  which  Christianity 
was  a  stranger,  —  the  doctrine  that  the  world  was  good  and 
not  evil,  that  God  was  immanent  in  the  physical  universe, 
revealing  Himself  and  His  goodness  in  the  organic  life  of 
nature. 

This  change  in  Neoplatonism  may  have  been  mediated 
or  hastened  by  its  contact  with  the  religion  and  religious 
philosophy  of  Syria  and  Egypt.  It  is  to  be  noted  also 
that  this  change  coincides  in  time  with  the  revival  of 
the  Greek  Empire,  when  Greece  had  found  a  national 
centre  at  Constantinople,  and  was  aspiring  to  rule  the 
world  in  the  place  of  Rome.  Against  this  aspiration  the 
provinces  of  Egypt  and  Syria  revolted,  with  the  result 
that  national  schisms  had  followed  the  theological  con- 
troversies. The  revival  that  came  to  the  nature-worships 
affected  the  religion  of  Egypt,  whose  mysterious  inner 
teaching,  held  in  deposit  by  its  priesthood,  was  now  again 
imparted  to  Greek  philosophers,  as  the  supplement  to  the 
one-sided  assertion  of  the  spiritual,  in  God  or  man.  The 
essence  of  Egyptian  religion  lay  in  its  conviction  of  the 
revelation  of  God  in  the  organic  life  of  nature.  In  the 
Hermetic  Books  the  material  world  is  represented  as  if 
infused  with  spiritual  potency,  till  the  distinction  between 
spirit  and  matter  has  almost  disappeared.  "  Is  the  world 
good,  O  Trismegistus  ? "  is  the  question  Asclepius  asks 
of  his  teacher ;  and  the  response  is  simple  and  emphatic, 
"  Yes ;  the  world  is  good."  God  is  the  source  whence  it 
has  proceeded ;  it  shares  in  the  goodness  which  is  the 
essence  of  God,  each  object  in  its  degree,  and  according  to 
its  kind. 

Neoplatonism  did  not  become  a  religion,  or  fulfil  its  lofty 
aspiration  of  meeting  the  widest  range  of  human  needs. 


PRINCIPLES    OF   THE   CULTUS  457 

and  thus  become  a  substitute  for  the  Christian  church.  It 
answered,  however,  a  purpose  in  its  day  by  restoring  a 
conviction  of  the  divine  order  and  goodness  in  the  world 
of  external  nature.  It  threw  a  veil  of  sanctity  over  the 
life  of  man,  and  imparted  a  divine  suggestiveness  to 
human  incidents  and  experience,  binding  together  nature 
and  spirit  in  some  divine  relationship  whereby  the  natural 
ministers  to  the  spiritual,  and  spirit  interfuses  or  pene- 
trates the  natural.  Some  eternal  law  of  correspondence 
was  believed  to  bind  the  soul  in  harmonious  ties  with  its 
material  abode  in  the  visible  world.  The  declining  poly- 
theism seemed  for  a  moment  to  have  found  its  justification 
in  the  reason,  against  the  assaults  of  a  one-sided  spiritual- 
ism. But  these  promises  failed  to  be  realized.  There  was 
not  a  sufficient  basis  in  Neoplatonism  for  a  religion.  But 
whatever  it  held  of  truth,  or  adaptedness  to  its  age,  did 
not  die,  but  passed  over  into  the  Christian  cult,  and  more 
especially  its  conviction  that  in  outward  nature  there  was 
a  veritable  revelation  of  God  to  man. 


IV 

The  failure  of  Neoplatonism  to  become  a  world  religion 
was  as  conspicuous  as  it  was  complete.  The  Emperor 
Julian  attempted  to  restore  the  worship  of  the  gods,  but 
the  world  of  his  time  did  not  respond  to  his  efforts  or  share 
in  his  enthusiasm.  The  gods  of  old  religion  had  been  dis- 
credited, by  the  long  process  of  criticism  ;  the  mythologies 
were  weak  beyond  the  power  of  revival.  Heathenism 
lacked  the  organization  that  the  church  had  developed  ;  it 
lacked  also  the  principle  of  unity  and  simplicity,  for  which 
the  world  was  hungering.  To  bring  together  all  the 
heathen  religions,  with  their  vast  number  of  deities,  differ- 
ing in  name  and  character,  and  to  unite  them  in  one  great 
pantheon,  to  reconsecrate  their  separate  shrines,  and  all 
this  by  means  of  the  great  philosophical  principle  that  they 
contained  a  revelation  of  God  in  the  organic  life  of  nature, 
was  an  imposing  scheme,  but  it  fell  by  its  own  weight. 
Christ  liad  conquered  because  in  Him,  as  the  centre  and 


458  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

head  of  humanity,  as  well  as  the  principle  of  life  for  the 
whole  created  universe,  there  lay  the  unity  and  the  sim- 
plicity which  the  world  demanded.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  church  was  now  beginning  to  assert,  in  emphatic 
ways  of  her  own,  the  neglected  truth  that  in  the  substance 
of  the  visible  creation  there  was  some  kinship  with  Deity, 
as  well  as  in  the  spirit  and  the  reason  of  man.  In  this  way 
Neoplatonism  passed  over  into  the  Catholic  church  and 
became  the  inspiring  principle  of  its  ritual.  Rome  liad 
bestowed  upon  the  church  her  gift  of  organization  and 
administration ;  Greece  had  lent  her  philosophy  and  intel- 
lectual culture  ;  Egypt,  with  Syria,  came  last  and  furnished 
the  motive  of  the  cultus  or  worship,  by  whose  agency  the 
last  vestiges  of  heathenism  were  overcome. 

It  was  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century  that  the 
transition  was  made.  Egypt  was  the  land  where  the  doc- 
trine known  as  INIonophysitism  had  prevailed,  —  that  the 
humanity  of  Christ  was  absorbed  into  His  divinity,  and 
the  body  of  Christ  was  worthy  of  worship,  together  with 
His  spirit,  in  one  common  adoration.  The  emphasis  upon 
the  body  of  Christ,  as  deified  matter,  was  the  essence  of 
the  heresy  of  Eutyches,  which  the  Egyptian  church  cham- 
pioned as  the  logical  sequence  of  its  principle.  In  the 
expression  now  coming  into  vogue,  that  Mary  was  the 
Mother  of  God,  is  involved  the  new  motive  that  the  flesh 
of  Christ,  no  less  than  His  spirit,  is  taken  up  into  His 
divine  life  as  the  Son  of  God,  and  becomes  the  bearer  to 
the  world  of  His  redemptive  power.  When  Nestorius 
protested  against  the  application  to  Mary  of  the  title 
0eoToVo9,  it  became  evident  that  the  term  had  already 
won  the  suffrages  of  the  faithful,  and  was  too  deeply  rooted 
in  their  devotion  to  be  overcome.  In  the  anathemas 
which  Cyril  launched  against  Nestorius,  it  was  the  ever- 
recurring  refrain  to  each  proposition,  "  the  Word  was 
made  flesh."  Like  Luther  when  he  disputed  with 
Zwingli,  not  condescending  to  explain  but  reiterating 
the  phrase  "  hoc  est  corpus  rneum,'^  so  Cyril  does  not 
interpret  but  affirms  the  sacred  but  condensed  formula. 
'O   Xo'709   crap^  iyevero. 


PRINCIPLES    OF   THE   CULTUS  459 

As  the  words  had  been  interpreted  in  the  earlier  period, 
or  as  they  have  been  understood  in  the  church  since  the 
Reformation,  they  mean  that  humanity  Avas  united  with 
divinity  in  the  one  person  of  Christ  as  the  God-man. 
Thus  Athanasius  had  written :  "  To  say  the  Word 
became  flesh  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  the  Word 
became  man."^  The  Athanasian  Creed,  as  it  is  called, 
protests  against  the  notion,  as  Athanasius  also  protested, 
that  in  becoming  man  the  Word  was  transmuted  into 
flesh :  "  He  is  one  Christ,  not  by  conversion  of  the  God- 
head into  flesh,  but  by  taking  of  the  manhood  into 
God."  But  Cyril  did  not  guard  himself  against  the  grow- 
ing popular  conviction  that  the  divine  was  transmuted 
into  flesh  —  the  preparation  for  the  later  belief  in  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  Under  the  influence  of 
Cyril's  teaching,  a  physical  Christology  was  taking  the 
place  of  the  earlier  spiritual  apprehension  of  the  incar- 
nation.2  In  the  teaching  of  the  first  three  centuries  and 
in  the  writings  of  Athanasius  the  incarnation  was  con- 
ceived as  a  spiritual  process  and  spiritual  result.  Tlie 
divine  nature  and  the  human  nature  were  united  in  the 
one  personality  of  Christ  as  the  God-man.  But  in  the 
tendency  that  was  invading  the  church  from  the  time 
of  Cyril,  the  conjunction  of  Deity  with  Mary  was  what 
struck  the  popular  imagination.  In  the  earlier  thought, 
the  miraculous  birth  of  Christ  had  been  viewed  as  a  means 
to  an  end,  —  the  attainment  of  a  perfect  humanity  with 
which  the  divine  nature  should  be  united.  But  the  con- 
ception that  now  began  to  prevail  construed  the  means 
as  the  end,  —  the  conjunction  of  the  supernatural  with 
the  natural  or  physical  in  the  womb  of  the  Virgin  be- 
came in  itself  the  supreme  act  invoking  the  highest  rev- 
erence.'^     In   the   earlier  age,  as   also   in  the   thought  of 

^  Epis.  ad  Epictetum,  lix.,  c.  8. 

2  Dorner,  Person  of  Christ,  Div.  II.,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  73  ff.;  also  Harnack, 
Dogmeugeschichte,  II.,  p.  330. 

3  There  was  from  this  time  a  growing  tendency  in  the  Catholic  church, 
both  in  the  East  and  in  the  West,  to  exalt  the  Virgin  Mnther  to  an 
equality  with  Deity.  For  its  various  manifestations,  cf.  Tyler,  Primitive 
Christian  Worship.     Among  the  significant  products  of  this  mood  was 


460  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

Athanasius,  the  inspiring  motive  was  the  union  of  God 
with  the  human  spirit,  the  divine  reason  with  the  human 
reason.  In  the  new  age  beginning  with  Cyril,  the 
motive  had  changed;  what  was  sought  for  was  the 
union  of  Deity  with  matter,  or  of  God  with  the  human 
body.  According  to  the  earlier  apprehension  of  the  mode 
by  which  the  incarnation  effected  human  redemption,  it 
was  the  personality  of  Christ  that  entered  into  history 
as  an  abiding  force,  an  influence  of  the  divine  spirit 
upon  the  human  spirit,  an  ever-growing  force  in  the 
whole  sphere  of  human  life,  spreading  by  contact  of 
man  with  man,  till  humanity  should  be  lifted  up  out  of 
sin  and  death  into  the  life  of  righteousness  and  true 
holiness.  But  from  the  age  of  Cyril  the  new  motive 
that  began  to  operate,  sought  for  some  physical  en- 
trance of  the  incarnation  into  the  human  body,  as 
though  the  earlier  thought  had  been  vague  or  unreal 
because  invisible  or  intangible.  It  was  the  growing  be- 
lief from  the  fourth  century  that  the  influence  of  the 
incarnation  was  mediated  to  humanity  through  the  sac- 
rament of  the  altar  wherein  the  body  of  Christ,  the 
body  which  had  been  born  of  the  Virgin,  was  the  indis- 
pensable means  for  the  distribution  in  the  world  of  His 
life-giving  power. 

A  corresponding  change  was  also  taking  place  in  the 
thought  regarding  God.  The  belief  of  the  first  three 
centuries  that  God  was  a  spiritual  incorporeal  being  ^  was 
yielding  to  the  popular  demand  which  could  not  grasp  the 
idea  of  God  unless  He  were  conceived  as  possessing  bodily 
form.  It  was  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century, 
when  Christian  thought  was  undergoing  its  great  transi- 
tion, that  the  attacks  first  began  to  be  made  upon  the 
teaching   and   reputation    of    Origen.      The    assault   pro- 

the  Te  Denm  of  Mary,  where  her  name  was  substituted  for  that  of  God, 
and  the  Psalter  of  Mary,  where  the  same  substitution  gave  her  the  higliest 
divine  honors. 

1  The  apparent  exception  among  the  early  Fathers  was  Tertullian,  who 
asserted  that  God  possessed  a  body.  "  Quis  eniin  negabit,  deum  corpus 
esse,  etsi  deus  spiritus  est  ?  spiritus  eniui  corpus  sui  generis  in  sua  elfigie  " 
{Adv.  Prax.  c.  7).     Cf.  Harnack,  Dogmengeschichte,  I.,  p.  487. 


PRINCIPLES    OF    THE    CULTUS  461 

ceecled  from  Alexandria,  which  was  then  feeling  the 
influence  of  the  revived  nature-philosophy,  stimulated 
by  Neoplatonist  thought,  and  by  the  added  force  of 
Syrian  mysticism.  Because  Origen  had  taught  in  spir- 
itual language  that  the  Son  did  not  see  the  Father,  as 
men  see  each  other  in  the  flesh,  the  Scetian  monks  raised 
the  cry  that  Origen  had  taken  away  their  Lord.  What 
is  known  as  Anthropomorphism,  that  God  exists  in  human 
form,  was  now  making  its  way  in  the  church,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  uniform  utterance  of  the  early  Fathers  that 
God  is  a  spirit.  Because  Chrysostom,  the  patriarch  of 
Constantinople,  protected  the  Nitrian  monks  who  were 
not  in  S3anpathy  with  this  materialistic  conception  of 
God,  Theophilus,  the  patriarch  of  Alexandria,  made  war 
against  him  till  he  succeeded  in  procuring  his  banish- 
ment and  his  death  in  exile.  The  Origenistic  Contro- 
versy, as  it  is  called,  has  sometimes  seemed  so  puerile 
and  unworthy,  that  it  has  been  passed  over  as  a  side  issue 
not  closely  concerning  the  fortunes  of  the  church.  Gib- 
bon did  not  deign  to  examine  the  religious  motives  at 
issue,  but  contented  himself  with  exposing  the  villany 
of  the  bishops  of  Alexandria.  It  is,  however,  in  these 
obscure  passages  in  church  history  that  the  symptoms 
must  be  sought  of  deeper  and  inward  transformations. 
The  controversy  over  Origen,  first  raised  by  Egyptian 
monks,  went  on  till  Jerome  was  involved  with  the  bishop 
of  Jerusalem  and  with  Rufinus  in  an  angry  contention 
concerning  this  and  other  features  of  Origen's  theology.^ 

1  Cf.  Hieron.  Epis.  ad  Pajiimachium,  Ixxxiv.,  and  for  the  grounds  of 
Theophilus'  opposition  to  Origen,  Hieron.  Epis.  xcii.,  xcvi.  Cf.  also  Art. 
Origenistic  Controversies  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.  For  the  later  opposition 
to  Origen  in  the  sixth  century,  see  Mansi,  IX.,  pp.  487  ff. ;  Hefele,  Condi. 
Gesch.,  Vol.  VI. ;  also  Walch,  Gesch.  d.  Ketzer,  Vol.  VII.  The  character 
of  Theophilus  is  not  beyond  reproach,  but  one  may  see  that  in  his  con- 
demnation of  Origen  he  was  maintaining  the  rising  sacramental  theology 
which  has  its  root  in  the  belief  in  the  sacredness  of  matter.  Hence  he 
objects  to  Origen's  view  that  this  world  had  its  origin  in  a  penal  system, 
in  order  to  expiate  the  sins  of  another  stage  of  existence,  and  that  the 
body  of  man  is  a  punishment  for  prenatal  sin.  He  emphatically  condemns 
Origen's  principle  that  the  Hnly  Spirit  cannot  influence  matter  or  animal 
life,  because  this  would  destroy  the  validity  of  ba^jtism  and  the  eucharist, 


462  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

Rufinus,  who  had  transhited  Origen  in  happier  days,  fell  out 
with  Jerome  and  their  friendship  was  severed  ;  but  the  life 
of  Rufinus  was  henceforth  a  sad  and  anxious  one.  Ominous 
mutterings  came  from  the  bishop  of  Rome,  indicative  of  a 
fierce  temper  toward  Origen  and  those  who  would  extend 
his  influence,  prophetic  of  the  days  when  the  inquisition 
should  be  the  method  of  extirpating  unwelcome  opinions. 
Nor  should  Epiphanius  be  forgotten,  whose  mission  was  to 
stir  up  disaffection  from  which  the  church  never  recov- 
ered. In  methods  like  these  was  the  influence  of  Egypt 
felt.  Political  or  national  jealousies  combined  to  give  the 
Egyptian  principle  (Monophysitism)  a  stronger  promi- 
nence and  a  deeper  hold  upon  its  adherents.  But  apart 
from  all  these  considerations,  stands  out  the  significant 

rites  whose  potency  does  not  depend  upon  self-consciousness.  In  all  this 
one  may  trace  the  Egyptian  principle,  as  seen  in  the  Hermetic  Books,  or 
in  the  later  Neoplatonists.  Theophilus  also  asserts  that  Origen' s  prin- 
ciple of  contempt  for  matter  brings  marriage  into  disrepute.  Jerome 
takes  the  same  ground  against  Origen,  complaining  of  his  denial  of  the 
resurrection  of  the  flesh  or  of  using  in  place  of  it  the  word  'body,'  by 
which  some  may  be  misled  into  thinking  that  he  meant  flesh.  In  his 
letter  to  Pammachius  he  makes  the  issue  clear,  that  the  opposition  to 
Origen  is  based  upon  his  exalted,  one-sided  spiritualism,  which  detaches 
the  soul  from  the  tabernacle  of  flesh  in  order  to  its  redemption  :  "  For 
my  part,  I  will  hold  fast  in  my  old  age  the  faith  wherein  I  was  born  again 
in  my  boyhood.  They  (the  Origenists)  speak  of  us  as  clay-towners,  made 
out  of  dirt,  brutish  and  carnal,  because,  they  say,  we  refuse  to  receive 
the  things  of  the  spirit ;  but  of  course  they  themselves  are  citizens  of 
Jerusalem  and  their  mother  is  in  heaven.  I  do  not  despise  the  flesh  in 
which  Christ  was  born  and  rose  again,  or  scorn  the  mud  which,  baked 
into  a  clean  vessel,  reigns  in  heaven.  And  yet  I  wonder  why  they  who 
detract  from  the  flesh  live  after  the  flesh,  and  cherish  and  delicately  nurt- 
ure that  which  is  their  enemy.  Perhaps,  indeed,  they  wish  to  fulfil  the 
words  of  Scripture,  '  Love  your  enemies,  and  bless  them  that  persecute 
you.'  I  love  the  flesh,  but  I  love  it  only  when  it  is  chaste,  when  it  is 
virginal,  when  it  is  mortified  by  fasting.  I  love  not  its  works,  but  itself, 
that  flesh  which  knows  that  it  must  be  judged,  and  therefore  dies  as  a 
martyr  for  Christ,  which  is  scourged  and  torn  asunder  and  burned  with 
fire."  For  the  anathemas  against  Origen,  attributed  to  the  Fifth  General 
Council,  cf.  Mansi,  IX.  .S95.  See  also  Hefele,  in  loc,  for  a  discussion  of 
the  question  whether  they  were  actually  put  forth  by  this  Council. 
Hefele  thinks  it  doubtful,  if  not  improbable.  The  spirit  of  the  anathemas 
is  denunciation  of  Origen  for  not  attaching  sufficient  importance  to  the 
flesh  or  body,  whether  in  the  case  of  Christ  or  the  future  life  of  the  saints. 
Cf.  Harnack,  DogmPugoschirMe,  II.  394,  who  holds  that  Origen  was  con- 
demned at  the  Fifth  General  Council. 


PRINCIPLES    OF   THE   CULTUS  463 

fact  that  the  church  had  adopted  the  doctrine  of  the 
sacreduess  or  sacramental  quality  of  matter,  as  a  ruling 
principle  of  its  cultus,  and  was  at  war  with  what  seemed 
the  one-sided  spiritualism  of  its  earlier  history. 

In  the  doctrine  of  the  sacredness  of  matter,  whether 
actual  or  potential,  the  Catholic  church  completed  her 
working  scheme  and  was  henceforth  equipped  for  her 
task.  !She  then  entered  upon  the  f  idness  of  her  career  as 
a  world  power,  with  a  more  complete  message  for  the  age 
wherein  it  was  her  lot  to  be  cast.  The  idolatry  of  heathen 
religions  from  this  time  rapidly  disap^^eared  in  its  external 
form  or  manifestation,  swallowed  up  in  the  imposing  cul- 
tus which  overpowered  the  imagination  till  heathen  rites 
became  meagre  and  insignificant  in  the  comparison.  The 
religion  that  began  with  a  simple  faith  in  order  to  the  vic- 
tory over  the  world,  was  now  clothed  as  an  institution  with 
more  than  the  administrative  power  of  Rome ;  as  a  system 
of  thought,  it  had  robbed  Greece  of  its  philosopliical  teach- 
ing and  learned  to  use  its  dialectics  for  the  illustration  of 
its  own  doofmas  ;  and  at  last  it  had  causrht  the  secret  of  the 
charm  which  heathen  worship  exercised  over  the  imagi- 
nation of  its  votaries.  In  heathen  ritual  the  church  had 
found  its  most  obstinate  opponent;  for  heathenism  con- 
tinued to  survive  in  its  sentiments  of  worship  long  after 
it  had  been  deprived  of  its  political  prestige,  or  when  it 
could  no  longer  justify  itself  to  the  eye  of  reason.  All  the 
greater  then  seemed  the  final  victory  when  the  church  pro- 
duced a  ritual  eclipsing  the  splendor  or  significance  of 
heathen  mythology,  presenting  some  higher  form  corre- 
sponding to  that  for  which  human  instincts  were  seeking, 
when  they  sought  to  revive  the  heathen  ritual  and  restore 
the  physical  worship  of  the  ancient  deities. 

This  movement  within  the  church,  which  reversed  its 
attitude,  substituting  a  ritual  for  the  earlier  spiritual  wor- 
ship and  relegating  the  early  church  to  oblivion,  as  through 
the  condemnation  of  Origen,  has  its  analogue  in  Jewish 
history,  where  the  same  issue  was  involved  from  the  time 
of  the  monarchy  and  the  greater  prophets ;  but  where  the 
opposite  result  was  finally  attained.      The  record  of  the 


464  CHRISTIAN   WOllSHIP 

Kings  of  Jiidali  reveals  the  purer  worship  of  Jehovah  as 
at  a  disadvantage  compared  with  the  attractions  of  Baal 
and  Moloch  or  the  immoral  tendency  of  the  groves  and 
high  places  which  led  Israel  to  sin.  Those  who  did 
what  was  right  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord  were  few  in  num- 
ber compared  with  those  who  would  have  combined  the 
worship  of  Jehovah  with  that  of  the  false  gods ;  but  they 
persisted  in  their  struggle  against  the  fascinations  of 
heathenism  till  at  last  they  conquered,  though  at  a  fear- 
ful sacrifice.  Their  nationality  was  lost,  their  hopes  and 
prospects  for  this  world,  at  the  moment  when  they  had 
attained  the  higher  end  after  the  Babjdonian  captivity 
and  had  eliminated  idolatry  forever  from  their  religion. 
The  same  attitude  toward  the  worship  of  the  creature 
had  been  preserved  in  the  early  Christian  period,  when 
the  Jewish  prohibitions  against  images  and  their  worship, 
or  creature-worship  of  any  kind,  were  regarded  by  the 
church  teachers  as  of  perpetual  obligation.  When  the 
Catholic  church  in  the  fifth  century  adopted  the  worship 
of  images,  making  it  a  necessary  and  constituent  part  of 
its  devotion ;  when  the  devotion  to  the  creature,  to  Mary 
and  the  saints,  rivalled  if  it  did  not  surpass  the  honors 
given  to  Christ,  —  it  was  hopeless  to  expect  any  longer 
that  Christianity  as  it  was  now  understood  could  appeal 
to  the  Jewish  mind.  What  stood  for  truth  to  the  one 
had  become  error  to  the  other.  The  conception  of  heresy 
had  been  reversed;  the  first  principles  of  the  Christian 
cultus  were  the  heresies  of  orthodox  Judaism.  Not  only 
did  Judaism  become  irreconcilably  opposed  to  the  Catholic 
church,  but  in  the  deserts  of  Arabia  preparation  was  made 
for  a  new  religion,  whose  chief  characteristic  would  be  its 
hatred  of  idolatry,  to  whom  the  images  of  the  Catholic 
church  would  be  an  abomination  calling  for  the  vengeance 
of  God.  But  if  the  church  could  no  longer  appeal  to 
Judaism,  or  if  Mohammedanism  was  to  rise  up  in  protest 
against  her  idolatry,  yet  within  the  limits  of  the  Roman 
Empire  she  worked  with  greater  intensity  and  greater 
apparent  success.  Grseco-Roman  and  Egyptian  heathen- 
ism, their  mysteries,  their  cult,  were  destroyed  and  disap- 


PRINCIPLES   OF   THE   CULTUS  465 

pearecl  forever,  superseded  by  Christian  ritual.  The  silent 
protest  against  this  transformation  of  Christian  worship 
became  audible  in  later  years,  in  the  ei^orts  of  the  em- 
perors to  put  down  Catholic  idolatry,  but  it  was  then  too 
late.  Mohammedanism  had  already  taken  possession  of 
the  fairest  territory  of  the  Eastern  church  and  was  ulti- 
mately to  get  possession  of  its  centre,  the  great  Christian 
city  of  Constantinople.  In  all  this  there  may  be  an  alle- 
gory, some  deeper  teaching  than  is  written  in  books,  or  is 
disclosed  on  the  surface  of  events. 

2  H 


CHAPTER    III 

THE   CHRISTIAN   CULTUS  ^ 


The  cultus  of  the  Catholic  church,  as  distinguished 
from  the  simpler  worship  of  the  earlier  Christian  church, 
may  be  described  as  one  vast  effort  to  put  a  leligious 
stamp  upon  both  time  and  space,  and  thus  to  conquer  for 
Christ  the  visible  and  invisible  worlds.  The  appropriation 
of  time  by  the  church  and  its  consecration  to  the  ends 
which  the  church  proposed  is  known  as  the  Christian 
Year.  It  began  with  the  recognition  of  the  weekly  cycle, 
when  the  first  day  of  every  week  commemorated  the  resur- 
rection of  Christ,  when  Wednesday  was  kept  as  the  day 
of  His  betrayal,  and  Friday  of  His  crucifixion.  It  was  a 
distinct  loss  that  the  Seventh  Day,  or  the  Jewish  Sabbath, 
gradually  fell  into  disuse  ;  for  it  represented  the  commem- 
oration of  the  creation  of  all  things  by  God,  when  God 
rested  from  His  work  which  He  had  created  and  made  — 
a  point  of  attachment  to  the  natural  order,  in  keeping 
with  the  Catholic  purpose.  But  the  antipathy  to  Judaism, 
the  necessity  also  of  distinguishing  Christianity  in  some 
marked  way  from  the  earlier  religion  out  of  which  it 
seemed  to  have  emerged,  prevented  the  retention  of  the 
Jewish  Sabbath.  In  the  substitution  of  Sunday,  the  Dies 
iSolis,  there  is,  however,  the  recognition  of  a  kindred 
principle,  so    that  the   worship    of   the  Sun,    hitherto   so 

1  Martene,  De  Antiquis  Ecclesiae  Bitihus,  Vol.  III.  ;  Bingham,  Antiq. 
Bk.  XX.  Smith  and  Cheetham,  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.,  Arts.  Christmas, 
Epiphany,  etc.;  Usener,  ReligionsgeschicMliche  Untersuchungen ;  Creu- 
zer,  Symbolik  und  Mythologie  der  alten  V'olker ;  Duchesne,  Origenes  du 
Culte  Chretien. 

466 


CONSECRATION   OF   TIME  467 

prominent  in  the  nature-religions,  is  henceforth  to  be 
transformed  and  elevated  by  the  superior  power  of  the  Sun 
of  Righteousness.  The  Greek  church  for  a  long  time  con- 
tinued to  observe  both  days,  with  almost  equal  honor,  while 
in  the  West  the  subordination  of  the  Sabbath  was  so  great 
that  it  seemed  to  the  Greek  church  like  a  profanation.  In 
the  older  church  the  custom  prevailed  of  standing  in  prayer 
on  the  Sabbath  and  on  Sunday,  and  of  keeping  the  Sabbath 
during  Lent  as  a  festival  day ;  but  in  the  West  it  became 
a  penitential  day,  when  men  knelt  in  prayer,  unobservant 
of  the  joy  and  glory  of  the  creation,  with  which  the  day 
was  associated  in  the  history  of  Judaism.^ 

From  the  weekly  cycle  the  Catholic  church  passed  to  the 
annual  cycle,  forming  the  nucleus  of  the  Christian  year  by 
the  observance  of  Easter.  The  coincidence  of  Easter  with 
the  return  of  spring  in  the  natural  year  is  one  of  the  points 
of  attachment  between  the  spiritual  and  physical  order, 
and  from  the  earliest  time  served  to  give  the  day  a 
deeper  hold  on  the  Christian  imagination.  The  sentiment 
that  in  the  heathen  world  had  rallied  about  the  chang^es 
of  the  seasons,  or  had  found  in  the  Eleusinian  or  other 
Mysteries  a  religious  expression,  gained  in  the  observance 
of  Easter  a  point  of  contact,  by  which  the  transition  could 
be  made  to  the  Christian  ritual.^     Easter  would  not  have 

1  The  Roman  use  of  kneeling  in  prayer  on  the  Sabbath  was  condemned 
by  the  Greeks  at  the  Concilium  Quinisextum,  G92.  Among  modern 
Protestant  churches  there  is  one,  the  Seventh-day  Baptists,  which  contends 
for  tlie  restoration  of  the  Sabbath,  as  a  day  appointed  by  an  irreversible 
divine  decree.  The  contention  has  a  certain  theological  significance  as 
raising  the  issue  of  the  mode  of  divine  revelation.  The  higher  honor 
given  to  Sunday  is  in  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  the  New  Testament  and 
has  the  consensus  of  all  the  Christian  ages. 

2  Cf.  Hatch,  Hihbort  Lectures,  1888,  pp.  28.3  ff.,  for  the  connection 
between  the  Greek  Mysteries  and  Christian  usages.  In  these  scenic  repre- 
sentations of  the  Eleusinian  Mystery  was  symbolized  "the  earth  passing 
through  its  yearly  periods.  It  was  the  poetry  of  Nature.  It  was  the 
drama  which  is  acted  every  year  of  summer  and  winter  and  spring. 
Winter  by  winter  the  fruits  and  flowers  die  down  into  the  darkness, 
and  spring  after  spring  they  come  forth  again  to  new  life.  Winter  after 
winter  the  sorrowing  earth  is  seeking  for  her  lost  child  ;  th"e  hopes  of  men 
look  forward  to  the  new  blossoming  of  spring.  It  was  a  drama  also  of 
human  life.  It  was  the  poetry  of  the  hope  of  a  world  to  come.  Death 
gave  place  to  life.     It  was  a  purgatio  animae,  by  which  the  soul  might 


468  CHRiSTiAiSr  worship 

been  the  day  it  has  been  to  the  Cliristiaii  heart,  if  the  faith 
in  the  resurrection  of  Christ  from  the  dead  had  not  been 
supplemented  and  confirmed  by  the  natural  joy  and  ex- 
hilaration attending  the  resurrection  of  the  life  of  the 
visible  world,  till  it  is  sometimes  hard  to  say  whether  the 
anticipation  of  Easter  is  a  spiritual  or  a  natural  emotion. 
The  life  of  nature  constitutes  a  tangible  basis  for  Christian 
hope,  while  the  spiritual  resurrection  glorifies  and  conse- 
crates the  external  order,  as  though  it  were  designed  and 
adapted  for  the  furtherance  of  man  as  a  spiritual  being. 

The  next  great  festival  after  Easter  was  the  Epiphany, 
celebrated  at  the  opening  of  the  natural  year  (January  6). 
It  stood  for  the  manifestation  of  light  to  the  world, 
when  Christ  after  His  baptism  began  to  teach  and  to  preach. 
From  the  Eastern  church,  where  it  originated,  it  was 
carried  to  the  West  in  the  early  part  of  the  fourth  century. 
As  first  observed  in  the  East,  it  had  a  twofold  char- 
acter :  it  commemorated  in  a  subordinate  way  the  birth 
of  Christ,  while  it  placed  the  chief  stress  upon  that  im- 
pressive moment  of  His  baptism  when  Christ  began  His 
mission  as  the  light  of  the  world,  by  the  proclamation  of 
the  truth  ;  so  that  His  birth  and  the  preceding  years  of  His 
life  were  but  a  preparation  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  incar- 
nation, as  also  His  manifestation  was  addressed  to  the  reason 
and  the  conscience.  But  when  the  Feast  of  the  Epiphany 
was  carried  into  the  West,  its  interpretation  was  so  changed, 
that  it  almost  lost  its  identity  with  the  festival  as  it  was 
kept  in  the  East.  In  the  Western  interpretation,  the 
manifestation  of  Christ  is  no  longer  presented  as  the  ma- 
tured consciousness  of  His  mission,  for  which  baptism 
was  the  inauguration  ;  but  the  visit  of  the  Magi  to  the 
infant  Christ  is  substituted  as  the  real  epiphany  or  mani- 
festation, when  nature  also  appears  as  in  sympathy  with 
the  new  revelation,  and  a  star  in  the  heavens  discloses  a 

be  fit  for  the  presence  of  God.  Those  who  had  been  baptized  and  in- 
itiated were  lifted  into  a  new  life.  Death  had  no  terrors  for  them.  The 
blaze  of  light  after  darkness,  the  symbolic  scenery  of  the  life  of  the  gods, 
was  a  foreshadowing  of  the  life  to  come  "  (p.  288). 


CONSECRATION   OF   TIME  469 

Saviour  to  the  world.  The  idea  of  revelation  as  light, 
which  was  the  favorite  conception  of  the  Eastern  church, 
becomes  to  the  West  a  physical  light,  and  the  manifestation 
of  Christ  is  in  and  through  the  miracle.  Epiphany  has 
always  been  a  greater  festival  to  the  Eastern  church  than 
to  the  Western,  and  even  the  observance  of  Christmas  in  the 
East  has  never  quite  superseded  it  in  the  popular  devotion. ^ 
It  had  its  affiliation  also  in  the  Eastern  church  with  the 
natural  order.  In  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  we  find  the  same 
recognition  of  the  parallelism  with  nature  in  the  Festival 
of  Lights  which  crowned  the  Easter  festival : 

"  When  the  length  of  the  day  begins  to  expand  in  winter  time,  as 
the  sun  mounts  to  the  upper  part  of  his  course,  we  keep  the  feast  of 
the  appearing  of  tlie  true  Light  divine,  that  through  the  veil  of  the 
flesh  has  cast  its  bright  beams  upon  the  life  of  men ;  but  now  when 
the  luminary  has  traversed  half  the  heaven  in  his  course,  so  that 
night  and  day  are  of  equal  length,  the  upward  return  of  human 
nature  from  death  to  life  is  the  theme  of  this  great  and  universal 
festival  which  all  the  life  of  those  who  have  embraced  the  mystery  of 
the  Resurrection  unites  in  celebrating.  .  .  .  There  is  some  account 
to  be  given  of  both  those  seasons,  how  it  is  that  it  is  winter  time  when 
He  appears  in  the  flesh,  but  it  is  when  the  days  are  as  long  as  the 
nights,  that  He  restores  to  life  man,  who  because  of  his  sins  returned 
to  the  earth  from  whence  he  came.  .  .  .  Has  your  own  sagacity,  as  of 
course  it  has,  already  divined  the  mystery  hinted  at  by  tliese  coinci- 
dences :  that  the  advance  of  night  is  stopped  by  the  accessions  to  the 
light,  and  the  period  of  darkness  begins  to  be  shortened  as  the  length 
of  the  day  is  increased  by  the  successive  additions  ?  For  thus  much 
perhaps  would  be  plain  enough,  even  to  the  uninitiated,  that  sin  is 
near  akin  to  darkness;  and  in  fact  evil  is  so  termed  in  Scripture. 
Accordingly  the  season  in  which  our  mystery  of  godliness  begins  is  a 
kind  of  exposition  of  the  divine  dispensation  on  behalf  of  our  souls. 
For  meet  and  right  it  was  that,  when  vice  was  shed  abroad  without 

1  In  Russia,  "the  services  of  Christmas  Day  are  almost  obscured  by 
those  which  celebrate  the  retreat  of  the  invaders  on  that  same  day,  the 
25th  of  December,  1812,  from  the  Russian  soil.  .  .  .  'How art  thou  fallen 
from  heaven,  O  Lucifer,  son  of  the  morning  ! '  This  is  the  lesson  ap- 
pointed for  the  services  of  that  day.  '  There  shall  be  signs  in  the  sun, 
and  in  the  moon  and  in  the  stars,  and  upon  the  earth  distress  of  nations 
with  perplexity.  Look  up  and  lift  up  your  heads,  for  your  redemption 
draweth  nigh.'  This  is  the  Gospel  for  the  day.  '  Who  through  faith 
subdued  kingdoms,  waxed  valiant  in  fight,  turned  to  flight  the  armies  of 
the  aHens.'  This  is  the  epistle"  (Stanley,  Lectures  on  the  Eastern 
Church,  p.  394). 


470  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

bounds,  the  day  whicli  we  receive  from  Him  who  placed  tliat  light  in 
our  hearts  should  increase  more  and  more.  .  .  .  But  the  feast  of  the 
Resurrection  occurring  when  the  days  are  of  equal  length,  of  itself 
gives  us  this  interpretation  of  the  coincidence,  —  that  we  shall  no 
longer  fight  with  evil  only  ujwn  equal  terms,  vice  grappling  with  vir- 
tue in  indecisive  strife,  but  that  the  life  of  light  will  prevail,  the  gloom 
of  idolatry  melting  as  the  day  waxes  stronger."  ^ 

In  the  development  of  the  Christian  year,  it  is  a  cir- 
cumstance difficult  to  explain  that  Christmas  Day  should 
not  have  been  introduced  until  after  the  middle  of  the 
fourth  century.  It  had  its  origin  at  Rome,  where  it  is 
first  mentioned  by  the  bishop  Liberius  in  360.  From 
Rome  it  was  carried  to  the  East  about  380,  and  in  386 
is  eulogized  by  Chrysostom  as  the  chief  of  festivals.  Its 
first  mention  in  Alexandria  is  in  the  time  of  Cyril,  or  the 
earlier  part  of  the  fifth  century.  Although  its  observance 
spread  rapidly  after  its  first  introduction  and  it  rose  into 
prominence  in  the  popular  devotion,  yet  there  was  opposi- 
tion to  it  in  the  East  on  account  of  the  change  of  the 
birthday  from  the  Gth  of  January  to  the  25th  of  December, 
while  among  the  Armenians  it  was  never  received,  but 
the  earlier  usage  was  maintained.  While  Epiphany  and 
Easter  go  back  for  their  oi-igin  to  the  second  century,  and 
it  is  not  till  two  hundred  years  later  that  the  observance 
of  Christmas  is  mentioned,  yet  from  the  moment  of  its 
first  observance  it  grew  rapidly  in  importance,  especially 
in  the  West,  till  it  rivalled  the  glories  of  the  festival 
of  Resurrection. 

Any  answer  to  the  question  why  Christmas  came  so  late 
takes  us  into  the  inmost  thought  of  the  ancient  church 
and  into  the  heart  of  the  divergence  between  the  Eastern 
and  Western  churches  in  their  apprehension  of  the  common 
faith.  In  the  late  introduction  of  Christmas  Day  and  in 
the  transformation  of  festivals  by  which  Epiphany  lost  in 
the  West  its  original  character  may  be  read  more  clearly 
than  in  the  doctrinal  controversies  the  thought  of  the 
church  from  the  close  of  the  fourth  century.     In  the  pre- 

^  Epis.  ad  Euseb.  Cf.  also  his  homily  for  the  Festival  of  the  Epiphany 
on  The  Baptism  of  Christ. 


CONSECRATION    OF   TIME  471 

ceding  period  the  attention  of  the  church  had  been  con- 
centrated on  the  spiritual  character  of  Christ  as  the  divine 
Word  revealing  the  mind  and  nature  of  God.  The  objec- 
tive events  in  the  life  of  Christ  which  had  been  foremost 
in  the  consciousness  of  the  church  were  the  transaction 
on  Calvary  when  the  sacrifice  was  offered  for  man's  salva- 
tion, His  resurrection  from  the  dead,  and  His  ascension  to 
the  Father.  That  the  birth  of  Christ  was  not  made  equal!}'- 
prominent  is  evident  fi'om  the  fact  that  it  is  not  mentioned 
in  the  creed  set  forth  in  the  great  Council  of  Nicsea. 
That  the  birth  of  Christ  was  subordinated  in  importance 
to  His  spiritual  manifestation  is  evident  also  from  the 
original  idea  of  the  Feast  of  Epiphany,  where  the  matured 
consciousness  of  His  mission  is  seen  to  coincide  with  the 
outward  voice  from  heaven  which  proclaims  Him  to  the 
world  as  the  Son  of  God,  in  whom  the  Father  is  well 
pleased.  At  His  baptism,  when  He  first  began  to  preach 
His  message  of  human  deliverance,  the  incarnation  was 
complete  for  which  the  preparation  had  begun  in  His 
miraculous  birth  or  conception.  The  festival  of  Epiphany 
attached  the  higher  importance  to  this  spiritual  idea  of  the 
incarnation  ;  and  although  the  Festival  came  to  include 
the  commemoration  of  His  birth,  yet  its  strongest  appeal 
to  the  spiritual  imagination  was  the  manifestation  of  Christ 
at  His  baptism  as  the  Light  of  the  world. ^ 

1  Of.  the  Expositor,  November,  1896,  for  The  Disconrse  of  Ananias  of 
Shirak  upon  Christmas  or  llie  Counter  upon  the  Epiphany  of  our  Lord  and 
Savionr.  Ananias  lived  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventh  centnry.  He 
gives  the  argument  for  retaining  the  birthday  of  Christ  on  the  6th  January, 
coinciding  with  His  baptism.  Ananias  attributes  the  origin  of  Christmas 
as  a  festival  independent  of  Epiphany  to  Cerinthus,  the  heretic.  "If  so,  we 
can  understand  tlie  hesitation  of  the  orthodox  church  to  adopt  our  modern 
festival  of  Cliristmas.  Probably  the  real  significance  of  the  early  union 
of  the  Nativity  with  the  Baptism  is  that  the  Baptism  was  regarded  as 
itself  the  true  Birth  of  Christ.  Docetic  opinion  may  have  been  too  strong 
in  the  earliest  church  to  permit  of  His  carnal  or  earthly  birth  being  cele- 
brated at  all.  Sometime  in  the  fourth  century  the  very  early  reading  in 
Luke  iii.  23,  Thou  art  my  beloved  Son,  This  day  have  I  begotten  Thee, 
was  erased  from  nearly  all  codices  ;  no  doubt  because  it  was  the  strong- 
hold of  those  who  liad  declared  the  Baptism  alone  to  be  the  true  nativity 
of  .Jesus  Christ"  (F.  C.  Conybeare,  in  prefatory  note  to  Discourse  of 
Ananias,  etc.). 


472  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

In  the  Western  church  there  was  from  the  first  a  deeper 
importance  attached  to  the  birth  of  Christ,  as  is  evident 
from  its  mention  in  the  Apostles'  Creed.  It  was  Leo,  the 
bishop  of  Rome  (440-460),  who  first  taught  in  a  represen- 
tative way  the  dogmatic  significance  of  the  Cliristmas 
festival,  with  whom  also  the  Roman  bishops  began  for  the 
first  time  to  exercise  the  functions  of  a  preacher.  In  his 
homilies  for  Christmas  Day,  Leo  does  not  present  the  in- 
carnation as  a  progressive  spiritual  process,  taking  its 
initiation  in  the  miraculous  birth,  and  revealed  in  the 
growing  favor  of  the  youthful  Christ  with  God  and  man, — 
a  process  first  manifested  in  the  baptism,  and  culminating 
in  the  agony  of  the  garden  •,  but  rather  the  incarnation  was 
in  itself  complete  in  the  birth,  or  in  the  act  of  His  concep- 
tion. Upon  this  principle  the  Festival  of  Epiphany  was 
readjusted  in  the  Latin  church ;  the  incident  of  the  bap- 
tism was  dropped,  the  manifestation  of  Christ  in  His 
infancy  was  substituted  for  the  manifestation  at  His  bap- 
tism, when  as  a  new-born  child  lying  in  the  manger  He 
exerted  His  kingly  power,  disclosing  the  divinity  of  His 
origin  to  the  Wise  Men  from  the  East  while  still  in  His 
mother's  arms.  Leo  does  not  draw  the  inference  that  wor- 
ship is  due  to  the  Virgin  Mother,  but  gives  the  principle 
on  which  the  worship  will  be  based  in  his  glorification  of 
Mary  as  the  agent  who  shared  with  Deity  in  accomplish- 
ing the  transcendent  act  of  the  incarnation. 

The  influence  of  the  Latin  church  in  the  East,  whose 
earlier  traces  may  be  seen  in  the  third  centur}^,  was  at 
its  height  when  Leo  was  allowed  to  dictate  the  decision  at 
the  Council  of  Chalcedon  in  regard  to  the  relation  of  the 
Two  Natures  in  Christ.  While  that  decision  was  received 
as  final  by  the  Eastern  church,  yet  it  never  reflected  the 
inner  mood  or  aspiration  of  the  Oriental  mind.  At  heart 
the  Eastern  church  remained  Monophysite.  After  various 
attempts  had  been  made  by  imperial  edicts  to  set  aside  the 
formula  of  Chalcedon,  the  result  was  finally  accomplished, 
not  by  its  abrogation,  but  by  a  reversal  of  its  interpretation 
through  a  subtle  dialectic  ;  till  it  no  longer  constituted  an 
obstacle  to  the  development  of  the  cultus  in  the  East  on 


CONSECRATION   OP   TIME  473 

a  Monophysite  basis. ^  While  in  the  West  the  Duophysite 
principle  prevailed,  as  in  the  theology  of  Augustine,  becom- 
ing the  inward  motive  of  Latin  ecclesiastical  institutions, 
in  the  dualism  between  church  and  state,  or  the  religious 
and  the  secular ;  on  the  other  hand,  the  Eastern  church 
pursued  its  own  peculiar  career,  unhampered  by  the  Latin 
dualism.  The  distinction  between  the  human  and  the 
divine  was,  in  consequence,  so  obliterated  that  the  state 
became  of  almost  equal  sanctity  with  the  church ;  the 
distinction  between  the  secular  and  the  religious  had  no 
force  in  controlling  the  development  of  its  institutions. 
In  the  West,  the  ?iexus  between  the  divine  and  the  human 
was  conceived  as  accomplished  by  an  act  of  the  divine 
will,  which  brought  together  and  held  together  conflicting 
attitudes.  In  the  East,  the  bond  of  union  was  a  certain 
inward  fitness  or  organic  affiliation  by  which  the  human 
passed  over  into  the  divine  or  was  endowed  in  its  own 
right  with  a  god-like  quality  and  power.  It  is  this  diver- 
gence which  is  manifested  in  the  differing  conceptions  of 
the  two  festivals,  Epiphany  and  Christmas  Day. 

The  festival  of  Christmas  may  have  been  in  its  origin 
an  adaptation  of  heathen  festivals,  reflecting  the  influence 
of  the  commemoration  of  the  birthday  of  Mithras,  or  it 
may  have  been  a  counter  festival  set  up  in  opposition  to 
the  heathen  custom,  with  the  design  of  supplanting  it.  It 
is  hardly  possible  in  view  of  its  late  origin  that  it  was 
established  independently  and  that  the  coincidence  with 
the  great  day  of  the  Sun,  Natalis  Livicti  Solis,  was  jiurely 
accidental.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  protest  of  Leo 
in  his  Homilies  that  Christmas  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
worship  of  the  Sun,  the  warning  that  Christians  should  be 
on  their  guard  against  the  foolish  errors  of  heathendom, 

1  For  the  method  and  the  influence  of  Leontius  of  Byzantium  in 
reversing  the  interpretation  of  the  formula  of  Chalcedon,  cf.  Harnack, 
Dogmengeschichte,  II.  383  ff.  ;  and  Loofs,  Leontius  von  Byzanz  und 
die  gleichnamigen  SchriftsteUer  der  griechischeii  Kirche^  in  Texte  u. 
Untersiich.,  Vol.  III.  A  similar  instance  of  the  reversal  of  interjaretation 
of  a  theological  document  is  seen  in  Newman,  Tract  XC,  by  which  the 
Articles  of  Religion  of  the  English  Church  were  harmonized  with  the 
Tridentine  teaching.     Cf.  ante^  p.  351. 


474  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

lest  tlie  joys  of  the  Christian  festival  should  lead  them 
back  to  the  darkness  where  men  paid  honor  to  the  lumi- 
naries that  minister  only  to  the  carnal  sight.  But  there 
were  those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  rejoiced  in  the  coin- 
cidence by  which  at  the  darkest  moment  in  the  natural 
year  the  Sun  began  his  return  to  the  world  again  with  the 
promise  of  light  and  life  to  the  physical  world,  and  that 
at  this  moment  the  Sun  of  Righteousness  should  be  com- 
memorated in  the  spiritual  Christian  year.  Thus  Pru- 
dentius  in  his  hymn  on  The  Birthday  of  Christ: 

"  Quid  est,  quod  arctum  circulum 
Sol  jam  recurrens  deserit? 
Christusne  terris  nascitur 
Qui  lucis  auget  tramitem  ?  "  ^ 

Or  again,  Paulinus  of  Nola: 

"  Nam  post  solstitium,  quo  Christus  corpore  natus 
Sole  novo  gelidae  mutavit  tempora  brumae, 
Atque  salutiferum  praestans  mortalibus  ortum, 
Procedente  die,  secum  decrescere  noctes 

Jussit."  '^ 

^  Cathemerinon,  XI. 

2  Poema,  XIV.  Cf.  Sinker  in  Art.  Christmas  in  Diet.  Chins.  Antiq., 
for  these  and  otlier  citations.  The  following  passage  from  a  sermon, 
attributed  wrongly  to  Ambrose,  may  stand  for  a  widely  prevalent  senti- 
ment; "Bene  quodammodo  sanctum  hunc  diem  Natalis  Domini  Solem 
navnm  vulgus  appellat,  et  tanta  sui  auctoritate  id  confirmat,  ut  Judaei 
etiam  atque  Gentiles  in  banc  vocem  consentiant.  Quod  libenter  amplec- 
tandum  nobis  est,  quia  oriente  Salvatore,  non  solum  humani  generis  salus, 
sed  etiam  solis  ipsius  claritas  innovatur "  {Serin.  6  in  Appendice,  ed. 
Bened,  cited  by  Sinker).  It  has  been  suggested  that  the  date  25th 
December  may  have  been  reached  by  an  inference  from  the  general 
belief  that  the  creation  took  place  in  the  spring,  and  that  the  new  spiritual 
creation  was  also  in  the  spring.  The  Annunciation  of  the  Virgin,  fixed 
on  the  25th  March,  may  have  been  the  date  from  which  Christmas  was 
calculated  in  the  West.  There  were  those  in  the  West  who  found  no 
difficulty  in  keeping  both  the  heathen  and  the  Christian  festival.  Cf. 
Labbe,  Condi.  VI.  1170,  where  the  practice  is  condemned.  See  also 
Schaff,  Ch.  His.,  III.  394  ff.,  and  Herzog,  B.  E.,  Art.  We.ihnnchten.  That 
the  twenty-fifth  day  of  December  was  the  day  on  which  Christ  was  born 
is  not  known  and  cannot  be  inferred  from  any  evidence  in  our  possession. 
It  is,  of  course,  not  impossible  that  tradition  may  have  retained  the  day, 
but  if  so,  there  are  no  allusions  to  it  before  the  fourth  century,  and  the 
fact  that  the  Eastern  church  should  have  kept  the  6th  January  militates 
against  this  view.     Modern  scholars  are  divided  in  opinion  as  to  whether 


CONSECRATION   OF   TIME  475 

The  consecration  of  time  in  the  Christian  year  was  a 
process  not  completed  until  every  day  of  the  year  was 
devoted  to  the  commemoration  either  of  some  feature  in 
the  life  of  Christ  or  of  some  saint  in  the  long  roll  of 
apostles  or  prophets,  martyrs  or  teachers.  One-half  of 
the  year  was  occupied  with  the  thought  of  Christ  —  from 
Advent  till  Ascension  Day.  The  four  weeks  before 
Christmas  were  a  preparation  for  the  right  reception  of 
the  coming  of  the  Lord ;  the  forty  days  before  Easter 
were  spent  in  fasting,  after  the  analogy  of  Christ  in  the 
wilderness.  A  great  drama  was  always  enacting  which 
lifted  the  imagination  above  the  sordid  events  of  ordinary 
life  or  the  narrow  interests  of  the  individual,  as  if  human- 
ity were  living  in  Christ,  as  if  in  His  life  all  other  lives 
were  included.  The  great  week  before  Easter  set  forth 
the  events  of  His  betrayal.  His  last  supper  with  His  dis- 
ciples, His  crucifixion,  and  His  burial,  constituting  the 
crisis  of  the  drama,  when  Christian  feeling  rose  to  its 
intensity  and  was  prepared  for  the  transcendent  act  of  His 
resurrection.  Heathen  mythologies  and  mysteries  lost 
their  interest  or  found  their  fulfilment  in  a  scheme  like 
this,  answering  to  every  instinct  of  the  natural  man,  but 
lifting  him  also  into  a  higher  range  of  sentiment  and  an  all- 
embracing  unity,  in  comparison  with  which  the  dreams  of 
Neoplatonists  seemed  meagre  and  unreal.  The  greater 
festivals  were  intensified  not  only  by  the  long  anticipation 
that  preceded  them,  but  each  great  festival  had  its  octave 
in  which  its  day  was  prolonged,  and  to  Easter  were  given 
forty  days  when  the  joys  of  Easter  were  the  predominant 
mood.  In  Ascension  Day  were  dissipated  the  dark  depress- 
ing moods  of  heathenism  or  of  Judaism,  which  had  peopled 
an  under-world  with  empty  shades.  A  higher  world  was 
revealed  in  the  heaven  above,  where  Christ  had  sat  down  in 
triumph  at  the  right  hand  of  the  Father. 

In  this  great  creative  process  wherein  the  Catholic 
church    was    winning    its    final    victory,  the    church    also 

Christ  was  born  in  December  or  in  February.  In  behalf  of  the  earlier  date 
are  the  names  of  Jerome,  Baronius,  Ussher,  Petavius,  Bengel,  Seyffarth ; 
in  behalf  of  the  later  are  Scallger,  Hug,  Wieseler,  and  EUicott. 


476  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

commemorated  herself  and  her  origin  in  the  coming  of 
the  Spirit  at  Whitsuntide,  coincident  with  the  Jewish 
Pentecost.  In  the  six  months  that  follow,  there  are 
traces  of  the  existence  of  a  design,  that,  as  one  half  of 
the  year  had  been  devoted  to  the  commemoration  of 
Christ,  so  the  other  half  should  reproduce  the  life  of  the 
church,  —  its  foundation  as  by  the  Apostles,  its  militant 
stage  as  it  undergoes  trial  and  persecution,  and  its  tri- 
umphant life  as  it  continues  unbroken  in  another  world. 
It  is  in  harmony  with  this  design  that  the  Sundays  are 
counted  from  Pentecost;  that  the  Festival  of  St.  Peter 
and  St.  Paul  should  be  celebrated  on  the  29th  of  June, 
representing  the  planting  of  the  church ;  that  the  martyr* 
Laurentius,  about  whose  death  there  hung  impressive 
memories,  should  be  remembered  on  the  10th  of  August; 
and  that  in  the  fall  of  the  year,  a  day  should  be  given  to 
the  Archangel  Michael  and  All  Angels  who  stand  for  the- 
life  of  the  church  in  glory.  As  the  season  deepens,  in 
the  time  of  the  completed  harvest,  was  fixed  the  day  of 
All  Saints  (November  1st),  to  be  followed  by  the  day  of 
All  Souls,  the  day  of  the  great  majority  of  human  spirits 
who  have  passed  away  from  the  earth.  But  if  there  were 
such  a  design,  it  was  obscured  and  defeated  by  tlie  increas- 
ing number  of  saints  for  whom  a  place  must  be  found,  who 
invaded  the  half-year  of  Christ;  and  especially  by  the 
ever-growing  devotion  to  Mary,  who  gradually  appropri- 
ated a  place  for  herself  in  every  part  of  the  ye'dv.  This 
overloading  of  the  Christian  year  tended  to  weaken  at 
last  its  power  and  its  hold  upon  the  church,  becoming  too 
complicated  a  system  for  the  mind  to  follow.  But  the 
grandeur  of  the  scheme  in  itself  bears  witness  like  other 
Christian  institutions  to  the  power  of  the  life  of  Christ 
perpetuating  itself  in  the  world. 

II 

The  development  of  the  Christian  year,  as  the  appropria- 
tion of  time  to  the  service  of  the  church,  was  accompanied 
by  another  process,  the  consecration  to  the  same  end  of 


CONSECRATION   OF   MATTER  477 

the  elements  of  this  material  world.  The  doctrine  that 
matter  was  evil,  a  doctrine  so  powerful  and  so  prevalent 
in  the  early  church,  that  it  could  not  be  overcome  by 
an  affirmation  of  the  reason  or  by  any  argument,  had 
entered  the  church  as  a  first  principle,  in  the  teaching  of 
Montanists  as  well  as  Gnostics ;  it  had  been  assumed  by 
asceticism  and  had  contributed  to  the  monastic  movement ; 
it  lay  at  the  root  of  the  depreciation  of  marriage  and  the 
exaltation  of  celibacy  to  an  equality  with  the  angelic  life. 
With  one  breath  the  church  accepted  it ;  with  another  she 
rejected  it.  There  had  arisen  a  reaction  in  the  church 
against  the  teaching  that  matter  was  evil  and  the  human 
body  a  tabernacle  of  vileness,  a  reaction  which  had  gone 
so  far  as  to  condemn  Origen  and  to  banish  Arianism  ;  but 
it  had  not  gone  far  enough  to  eradicate  the  principle  itself. 
Whatever  might  be  the  working  of  the  natural  human 
instinct  as  revealed  in  worship,  where  the  heart  spoke  in 
opposition  to  the  head,  there  still  remained  an  intellectual 
conviction  that  the  world  had  fallen  into  the  possession  of 
the  devil,  and  that  the  redemption  wrought  by  Christ  had 
been  accomplished  by  paying  some  ransom  to  the  devil  in 
order  to  induce  him  to  forego  his  grasp.  The  contamina- 
tion of  the  material  world  by  these  adverse  associations,  or 
its  exposure  to  the  malign  influence  of  countless  demons, 
as  the  dethroned  gods  of  heathenism  came  to  be  regarded, 
was  met  by  a  series  of  consecrations  forming  a  list  of  grow- 
ing exceptions  to  the  prevalent  evil  order.  The  cultus 
of  the  church  bears  witness  to  such  a  method,  in  the  pro- 
cess by  which,  in  ever-increasing  degree,  it  appropriated 
the  forces  or  elements  of  nature  for  the  advancement  of 
the  spiritual  life,  or  by  consecrations  of  material  things 
gradually  hallowed  a  space  or  sphere  for  the  residence  of 
the  spiritual  man. 

This  process  began  very  early  in  the  second  century  and 
may  be  said  to  be  contemporaneous  with  the  rise  of  the 
Catholic  church  ;  for  one  sees  no  traces  of  it  in  the  ac- 
credited teaching  of  Christ  or  in  the  writings  of  St.  Paul. 
It  is  to  be  found  also,  as  is  most  natural,  in  those  who  are 
most  deeply  influenced  by  the  doctrine  that  material  nature 


478  CHKISTIAN   WORSHIP 

is  evil ;  that  the  order  of  this  present  world  has  no  rela- 
tion to  the  well-being  of  the  soul.  When  a  man  goes  too 
far  in  one  direction,  he  seeks  to  right  himself  by  going 
in  the  opposite  direction.  Such  an  one  was  Tertullian, 
who,  while  holding  the  ascetic  principle  in  its  extremest 
form,  was  among  the  first  to  proclaim  the  spiritual  agency 
of  material  things.  In  his  treatise  on  Baptism,  —  a 
storehouse  of  suggestions  for  the  process  of  ritual  and 
sacramental  development,  he  seems  to  be  aware  of  the  in- 
consistency of  his  attitude ;  but  all  the  more  bold  is  he  and 
uncompromising  in  his  assertion  of  what  his  spirit  needed 
and  demanded.  He  is  aware  that  the  Catholic  church 
might  be  regarded  as  appropriating  the  features  of  the 
nature-religions,  and  no  one  was  more  familiar  with  them 
than  he  ;  but  he  turns  the  argument  against  them  by  the 
naive  statement  that  in  the  nature-religions  the  devil  is  at 
work  imitating  the  rites  of  the  Christian  faith. ^ 

The  modern  mind  has  become  so  accustomed  to  distin- 
guish between  the  symbol  and  the  truth  which  it  signifies, 
that  it  is  difficult  to  enter  with  any  sympathetic  apprecia- 
tion into  the  feelings  or  thoughts  of  those  in  the  ancient 
church  who  not  only  confused  the  sign  with  the  reality, 
but  boldly  declared  that  the  elements  of  the  physical  world 
were  endowed  by  God  with  spiritual  power.  It  is  only 
when  we  realize  that  the  Catholic  church  had  undertaken 
the  task  of  a  mediator  to  the  heathen  Avorld  that  we  com- 
prehend its  motive  in  the  development  of  a  vast  sacra- 
mental system,  where  physical  nature  and  the  human 
spirit  are  tied  together  as  by  a  necessary  inevitable  bond, 
for  the  work  of  human  salvation. 

It  formed  no  part  of  the  belief  of  the  earlier  church  that 
external  matter  as  such  might  possess  spiritual  gifts.  Or 
if  there  are  allusions  which  may  be  interpreted  in  this  way, 
they  may  also  with  equal  propriety  be  interpreted  in  har- 
mony with  the  principle  which  distinguishes  between  the 
symbol  and  that  for  which  it  stands.     When  Christ  com- 

1  Cf.  Justin  Martyr,  Apol.  c.  Ixvi.,  where  he  speaks  of  "the  wicked 
devils  who  have  imitated  in  the  mysteries  of  Mithras  "  the  sacrament  of 
the  Lord's  Supper, 


CONSECRATION    OF   MATTER  479 

pares  Himself  to  a  vine  and  His  disciples  to  the  branches, 
or  is  said  to  be  the  rock  from  which  flow  living  waters, 
there  is  no  difficulty  in  interpreting  the  language  as  poetic 
or  symbolical.  The  earlier  church  was  rich  in  symbolic 
imagery,  but  its  face  was  set  in  a  different  direction  from 
that  in  which  the  Catholic  church  was  travelling.  It  was 
looking  away  from  this  world  to  another,  nor  did  it  aim 
at  the  conquest  of  existing  institutions  or  religions  or  phi- 
losophies. So  far  as  it  had  a  philosophy,  it  was  compressed 
in  the  belief  in  the  second  coming  of  Christ,  as  an  event 
near  at  hand,  and  about  to  bring  the  final  satisfaction  to 
all  human  needs  and  aspirations. 

But  one  of  the  deeper  issues  of  speculative  thought  in 
the  Roman  Empire  was  the  adjustment  of  man  to  nature ; 
a  reaction,  it  may  have  been,  from  a  Stoicism  attach- 
ing no  importance  to  the  outer  world,  but  concentrating 
its  interest  in  the  inner  life  of  the  soul ;  or  from  Platonism, 
with  a  kindred  tendency,  more  bent  upon  adjusting  the 
relation  of  man  with  God  than  with  his  physical  environ- 
ment. The  world  could  not  acquiesce  without  a  shudder 
in  the  dark  conviction  of  another  school  of  philosophers, 
who  pronounced  the  creation  to  be  wholly  bad.  At  the 
moment,  then,  when  the  revival  of  the  nature-religions 
was  bringing  a  certain  relief  to  many  through  the  feel- 
ings rather  than  through  the  reason,  enabling  them  to 
regard  nature  as  not  alien  to  the  spirit,  we  meet  a  similar 
tendency  in  the  rising  Catholic  church,  to  connect  hopes 
and  aspirations  which  might  otherwise  seem  vague  and 
fleeting  with  the  permanency  of  the  life  of  nature,  conse- 
crating the  body  and  the  physical  senses  to  the  assistance 
of  the  spirit. 

TertuUian  declares  plainly  that  the  water  of  baptism 
possesses  the  power  of  sanctifjang  the  soul,  after  it  has 
been  consecrated  by  the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  He 
recognizes,  indeed,  that  there  are  those  to  whom  such  a 
conviction  will  seem  irrational.  In  the  use  of  water  he 
discerns  a  symbolic  purpose.  It  seems  as  if  he  qualified 
his  words  so  that  actual  spiritual  efficacy  should  not  be 
attributed  to  water,  or  were  taking  refuge  in  a  non-com- 


480  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

mittal  phraseology,  when  he  says :  "  After  the  waters  have 
been  in  a  manner  endued  with  medicinal  virtue,  through 
the  intervention  of  the  angel,  the  spirit  is  corporeally 
washed  in  the  waters,  and  the  flesh  is  in  the  same  spiritu- 
ally cleansed."  ^  But  there  was  one  text  in  the  Old 
Testament  which  impressed  the  poetic  mind  of  Tertullian 
as  having  more  than  a  passing  value,  where,  in  the  account 
of  the  creation,  it  is  said  that  "  the  spirit  of  God  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters."  There  was  in  his  nature 
a  certain  materialistic  tendenc}^,  at  war  with  his  ultra- 
spiritualistic  mood.  He  did  not  refuse  credence  to  a 
report  he  had  heard,  that  some  woman  had  seen  the 
human  soul.  He  was  not  averse  to  thinking  that  God 
possessed  a  body.  He  felt  that  sin  and  evil  contaminated 
the  human  body,  and  that  it  must  be  cleansed  in  order  to 
operate  harmoniously  with  the  purified  spirit.  Of  the 
anointing  oil,  he  speaks  to  the  same  effect :  it  runs  down 
the  body  according  to  its  carnal  nature,  but  it  profits  the 
spirit,  in  that  we  are  freed  from  sin.^  In  the  laying  on  of 
hands  also  there  may  be  "  a  sublime  spiritual  modula- 
tion." ^  In  such  ways  do  the  "  pleas  of  nature  "  combine 
with  the  "privileges  of  grace." 

Tertullian  is  interesting  and  suggestive,  more  than  many 
of  the  ancient  Fathers,  because  in  him  is  revealed  the  pro- 
cesses through  which  the  age  was  passing.  The  contra- 
dictions of  his  nature  find  expression  in  the  varying 
attitudes  of  his  experience.  He  cannot  be  said  to  affirm, 
in  a  dogmatic  way,  the  principles  of  the  later  sacramental 
theology,  bat  he  was  testing  them,  as  it  were,  in  the 
crucible  of  his  soul,  finding  them  in  vogue  already  in  the 
Catholic   church,  wherein  he  had  sought   admittance    as 

1  Be  Bap.,  c.  iv. :  "  All  waters,  therefore,  in  virtue  of  the  pristine 
privilege  of  their  origin,  do,  after  invocation  of  God,  attain  the  sacra- 
mental power  of  sanctification  ;  for  the  Spirit  immediately  supervenes 
from  the  heavens,  and  rests  over  the  waters,  sanctifying  them  from  Him- 
self ;  and  being  thus  sanctified,  they  imbibe  at  the  same  time  the  power 
of  sanctifying."  But  again  :  "  Not  that  in  the  waters  we  obtain  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  in  the  water  under  the  influence  of  an  angel  and  prepared  for 
the  Holy  Spirit."     Cf.  also  Be  Bap..,  c.  vi. 

2  Be  Bap. ,  c.  vii.  3  j)^  j^^^p  ^  (,_  yjii^ 


CONSECRATION   OF   MATTER  481 

a  venture  of  faith.  One  cannot  dismiss  his  treatise  on 
Baptism  without  recalling  the  pathetic  eloquence  of  its 
closing  prayer :  "  Therefore,  blessed  (friends),  whom  the 
grace  of  God  awaits,  when  you  ascend  from  that  most 
sacred  font  of  your  new  birth,  and  spread  your  hands  for 
the  first  time  in  the  house  of  your  mother,  together  with 
your  brethren,  ask  from  the  Father,  ask  from  the  Lord, 
that  His  own  specialties  (and)  distributions  of  gifts  may 
be  supplied  you.  'Ask,  saith  He,  and  ye  shall  receive.' 
Well,  you  liave  asked,  and  have  received ;  you  have 
knocked,  and  it  has  been  opened  to  you.  Only,  I  pray, 
that  when  you  are  asking,  you  be  mindful,  likewise,  of 
Tertullian  the  sinner." 

The  disposition  to  identify  the  symbol  with  the  thing 
signified,  or  to  make  material  elements  the  agencies  for 
inducing  spiritual  effects,  however  widespread  it  may 
have  been,  must  also  have  encountered  scepticism  and 
opposition,  or  Tertullian  would  not  have  labored  so  hard 
to  demonstrate,  whether  to  himself  or  to  others,  its  ration- 
ality. While  the  symbolism  of  material  things  might  be 
suggestive  and  impressive,  yet  it  seems  like  a  long  step 
to  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  external  application 
of  water  or  of  oil  could  have  any  part  in  the  inward  purifi- 
cation of  the  spirit.  But  for  this  step  the  Catholic  church 
was  making  preparation  from  an  early  moment  in  its  his- 
tory. Nearly  two  hundred  years  had  elapsed  after  Ter- 
tullian wrote,  when  we  find  the  church  Fathers  still  labor- 
ing with  the  same  scepticism  or  opposition,  but  also  more 
strongly  convinced  of  the  possibility  that  matter  might 
receive  a  spiritual  endowment  for  the  regeneration  of  the 
inward  nature.  In  his  Lectures  on  the  Mysteries,  the  bishop 
Cyril  of  Jerusalem  fell  back  upon  faith,  which  he  urges 
on  his  catechumens  as  the  means  of  attaining  the  con- 
viction that  the  physical  sign  carried  an  inward  potency. 
The  oil,  he  says,  used  in  the  exorcism  at  baptism  possesses 
a  charm  for  driving  away  of  hostile  influences.  Or  again, 
the  chrism,  the  oil  used  in  the  service  of  Confirmation,  he 
declares,  is  not  plain  ointment,  but  it  is  a  gift  of  grace 
from  Christ,  and  by  the  coming  of   the  Holy  Spirit  "is 


482  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

made  fit  to  impart  His  divine  nature."  And  yet  Cyril  in 
such  sentences  as  these  may  be  using  only  the  exaggerated 
language  of  the  heart,  whose  love  is  capable  of  transfigur- 
ing the  commonest  object;  for  he  also  adds  the  intelligible 
sentence,  that  while  the  ointment  is  symbolicall}'  applied 
to  the  forehead,  the  soul  is  sanctified  by  the  Holy  and  life- 
giving  Spirit. 

But  when  he  speaks  of  the  elements  of  bread  and  wine 
in  the  Lord's  Supper,  his  language  does  not  waver.  He 
calls  on  his  hearers  to  regard  them  not  as  bare  elements, 
but  as  the  body  and  the  blood  of  Christ.  The  senses  may 
suggest  their  material  nature,  "  yet  let  faith  establish  thee. 
Judge  not  the  matter  from  the  taste,  but  from  faith  be 
fully  assured  without  misgiving  that  the  body  and  blood 
of  Christ  hath  been  vouchsafed  thee."  ^  Or  again,  "  trust 
not  the  judgment  of  thy  bodily  palate,  but  trust  to  faith 
unfaltering,  for  they  who  taste  are  bidden  to  taste,  not 
bread  and  wine,  but  the  antitypical  body  and  blood  of 
Christ."  2 

Another  Avriter  contemporaneous  with  Cyril  of  Jerusa- 
lem was  Gregory  of  Nyssa  (350-394  c).  A  special  interest 
attaches  to  the  views  of  both  tliese  men  regarding  the 
symbol,  because  they  lived  in  the  age  when  the  liturgy 
was  in  the  process  of  development.  In  a  sermon  on  the 
Baptism  of  Christ,  preached  on  the  Day  of  Lights  (Epiph- 
any), Gregory  takes  occasion  to  speak  of  the  Mysteries, 
which  cleanse  both  body  and  soul.  In  his  audience  there 
Avere  the  uninitiated  as  well  as  believers,  which  gives  him 
the  opportunity  to  explain  or  recommend  what  is  not  in- 
telligible or  attractive  to  the  unbelieving  mind,  —  the 
relation  of  the  physical  to  the  spiritual  in  the  work  of 
regeneration.  "  This  gift  of  regeneration,"  he  says,  "  is 
not  bestowed  by  water,  for  in  that  case  the  water  were  a 
thing  more  exalted  than  all  creation ;  but  by  the  command 
of  God  and  the  visitation  of  the  Spirit,  that  comes  sacra- 
mentally  to  set  us  free.  Bat  water  serves  to  express  the 
cleansing.'  But  after  having  thus  plamly  set  forth  the 
use  of  water  as  a  symbol  of  spiritual  purification,  accord- 

1  My  stag.,  III.  3.  2  My  stag.,  IV.  6. 


CONSECRATION    OF   MATTEE  483 

ing  to  the  analogy  of  cleansing  the  body  in  the  bath,  he 
turns  to  the  deeper  consideration  of  the  subject,  and  then 
we  lose  his  meaning  in  what  is  sometimes  called  the  sacra- 
mental phraseology,  where  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether 
he  means  to  be  understood  literally  or  not,  —  whether  thei'e 
is  an  objective  reality  and  efficacy  in  the  sacred  symbols 
or  whether  they  represent  some  subjective  process  in  the 
regenerated  mind : 

"  Man,  as  we  know  full  well,  is  compound,  not  simple  :  and  therefore 
the  cognate  and  similar  medicines  are  assigned  for  healing  him  who 
is  twofold  and  conglomerate ;  for  his  visible  body,  water,  the  sensible 
element ;  for  his  soul,  which  we  cannot  see,  the  Spirit  invisible,  in- 
voked by  faith,  present  unspeakably.  For  '  the  Spirit  breathes  where 
He  wills  and  tliou  hearest  His  voice,  but  canst  not  tell  whence  He 
cometh  or  whither  He  goeth.'  He  blesses  the  body  that  is  baptized 
and  the  water  that  baptizeth.  Despise  not,  therefore,  the  divine 
laver,  nor  think  lightly  of  it,  as  a  common  thing  on  account  of  the 
use  of  water.  For  the  power  that  operates  is  mighty,  and  wonderful 
are  the  things  that  are  wrought  thereby.  For  this  holy  altar,  too,  by 
which  I  stand  is  stone,  ordinary  in  its  nature,  nowise  different  from 
the  other  slabs  of  stone  that  build  oixr  houses  and  adorn  our  pave- 
ments;  but  seeing  that  it  was  consecrated  to  the  service  of  God  and 
received  the  benediction,  it  is  a  holy  table,  an  altar  undefiled,  no 
longer  touclied  by  the  hands  of  all,  but  of  the  priests  alone  and  that 
with  reverence.  The  bread,  again,  is  at  first  common  bread,  but  when 
the  sacramental  action  consecrates  it,  it  is  called  and  becomes  the  body 
of  Christ.  So  with  the  sacramental  oil;  so  with  the  wine;  though 
before  the  benediction  they  are  of  little  value,  each  of  them,  after  the 
sanctification  bestowed  by  the  Spirit,  has  its  several  operation.  The 
same  power  of  the  word,  again,  also  makes  the  priest  venerable  and 
honorable,  separated,  by  the  new  blessing  liestowed  upon  him,  from 
his  comnumity  with  the  mass  of  men.  While  but  yesterday  he  was 
one  of  the  mass,  one  of  the  people,  he  is  sutldenly  rendered  a  guide,  a 
president,  a  teacher  of  righteousness,  an  instructor  in  hidden  mys- 
teries ;  and  this  he  does  without  being  at  all  changed  in  body  or  in 
form;  but  while  continuing  to  be  in  all  appearance  the  man  he  was 
before,  being  by  some  unseen  power  and  grace  transformed  in  respect 
of  his  unseen  soul  to  the  higher  condition.  .  .  .  Learn,  then,  that 
hallowed  water  cleanses  and  illuminates  the  man."  ^ 

1  In  the  language  of  Cyril  of  Alexandria  (t  444)  we  find  a  still  more 
emphatic  assertion  of  this  principle  :  "By  the  agency  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
the  water  perceived  by  the  senses  is  metamorphosed  into  a  certain  divine 
and  ineffable  power  :  "  Aid  rrji  tov  irveifiaTos  evepyela^  to  alffdrjTov  vdup 
irpbs  deiav  tlvo,  Kal  diropp-qrov  avaffTOLX^i-ovraL   Sxivap-LV  (^In  Joan.  3,  5). 


484  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

Gregory  recognizes  that  his  explanation  still  leaves 
something  unexplained,  for  he  takes  refuge  in  the  mys- 
tery of  the  origin  of  physical  life,  as  analogous  to  the  birth 
of  the  life  in  the  Spirit ;  so  that  if  anj-  one  still  feels  that 
he  does  not  comprehend,  he  may  be  reminded  that  he  also 
does  not  understand  the  generation  of  life  in  the  natural 
order.     And  there  the  matter  must  be  left. 

The  passage  which  has  just  been  quoted  is  a  remarkable 
one  as  affording  a  cle^y  to  the  interpretation  of  the  litur- 
gies, especially  those  of  Oriental  origin.  Whatever  diffi- 
culties are  felt  in  the  latter  are  found  here  ;  whatever 
merits  or  attractions  the  liturgies  contain  the  language 
of  Gregory  also  possesses.  He  is  describing  the  mood, 
the  attitude  toward  outward  nature,  which  dominated  the 
Catholic  church  in  its  devotions,  where  the  intellectual 
entanglements  of  the  age  were  forgotten,  as  the  heart 
went  forth  in  the  worship  of  God.  But  beneath  the  lan- 
guage of  both,  there  runs  an  intellectual  principle,  even 
though  it  is  not  seen  or  should  be  disowned ;  there  is  a 
philosophical  assumption,  concealed  but  no  less  operative, 
which  it  is  important  to  discern.  The  defect  in  Gregory 
which  vitiates  his  reasoning,  confusing  both  himself  and 
his  readers,  is  a  failure  to  distinguish  between  the  action 
of  the  human  imagination  and  the  power  of  God.  The 
human  mind  possesses  the  capacity  to  transfigure  common 
objects  under  the  influence  of  some  great  passion.  What 
tlie  heart  feels  under  the  spell  of  deep  and  quickened  emo- 
tion, sometimes  finding  expression  in  poetry,  but  here  in 
worship,  is  projected  forth  as  if  an  external  realitj^  exist- 
ing apart  from  the  imagination,  and  as  owing  its  origin  to 
the  exclusive  action  of  the  spirit  of  God.  In  theological 
language,  this  is  known  as  Monophysitism  —  the  doctrine 
of  the  one  nature,  in  which  the  human  and  the  divine  are 
fused  together  and  the  human  is  submerged  in  the  divine. 
What  was  detected  and  condemned  by  the  reason  as  an 
error  in  theology,  was  not  recognized  when  transplanted 
to  the  sphere  of  worship,  where  the  heart  reigns  supreme. 
The  liturgy  had  already  taken  shape  before  tlie  tendency 
which  inspired  it  had  been  cleaiiy  revealed  to  the  reason ; 


THE    SPIRITUAL    AND    THE    MATERIAL  485 

the  spirit  of  the  hour  was  too  strong  to  be  suppressed,  as 
in  its  creative  activity  it  was  moulding  the  forms  of  the 
cultus  under  whose  influence  the  Catholic  church  was 
henceforth  to  move  and  live  and  have  its  being. 

Ill 

The  worship  of  saints,  and  of  the  images  and  relics  of 
saints,  becomes  fi-om  the  fourth  century  an  important 
feature  of  the  Catholic  cultus.  Its  origin  is  easily  con- 
nected with  those  universal  human  instincts  which  find 
expression  in  every  age.  The  recognition  of  great  men  as 
benefactors  of  humanity  in  whom  there  seems  to  dwell  a 
certain  godlike  quality ;  the  need  as  it  were  of  human 
leaders  and  heroes  whom  men  in  honoring  honor  also 
themselves ;  the  desire  to  possess  and  to  see  their  likeness, 
as  if  the  soul  in  them  shone  forth  through  the  body;  the 
feeling  that  one  comes  nearer  to  them  by  something  which 
they  have  touched  and  handled;  the  reverence  which  is 
felt  for  their  ashes,  —  all  these  are  alike  characteristic  of 
men  always  and  ever}- where.  Even  in  our  own  age,  the 
positivist  who  worships  humanity  bears  witness  to  the 
instinct  out  of  which  has  grown  much  of  the  ancient 
polytheism  and  mythology. 

But  in  the  Catholic  church  of  the  fourth  century,  this 
tendency  toward  the  worship  of  saints  and  images  and 
relics  was  part  of  a  larger  movement  having  its  roots  in 
the  past,  in  the  conflicts  of  thought  and  feeling  begotten 
by  the  schools  of  Greek  philosophy.  The  worship  of 
saints  and  relics  was  only  the  consequence  of  that  reac- 
tion against  the  Gnostic  doctrine  that  the  natural  order 
is  evil.  Platonists,  Stoics,  and  others  who  had  distin- 
guished between  spirit  and  nature,  body  and  soul,  God 
and  the  creation,  as  divided  by  some  impassable  gulf,  were 
included  in  the  same  reaction.  A  new  Platonism  had 
reasserted  that  the  world  was  good,  and  had  endeavored  to 
restore  the  unity  of  things,  avoiding  the  dualism  and  dis- 
harmony which  had  resulted  from  the  acceptance  of  the 
tenet  that  matter  was  evil  or  was  unworthy  of  association 


486  CHEISTIAN    WORSHIP 

with  the  spirit.  The  Christian  Fathers  followed  the  move- 
ment, as  though  seeking  to  restore  again  that  earlier  un- 
conscious mood  Avherein  ancient  Greece  had  revelled,  and 
had  developed  the  glories  of  its  art,  when  man  was  but 
part  of  his  environment,  and  the  advice  of  Socrates  that 
men  should  seek  to  know  themselves  had  not  as  yet 
brought  the  sense  of  inward  contradiction. 

Hardly  had  the  doctrine  of  the  incarnation  been  so 
stated  and  secured  by  Athanasius  as  to  become  the  pos- 
session of  the  church,  when  it  was  drawn  into  the  strong 
current  of  this  powerful  reaction  and  subordinated  to  a 
purpose  Athanasius  had  never  contemplated.  The  belief 
in  the  incarnation  produced  indeed  an  inward  mood  of 
exultation,  for  it  involved  the  redemption  of  nature  and 
of  humanity  from  the  stigma  of  evil.  The  victory  over 
Arius  was  equivalent  to  the  assertion  that  the  world  was 
good ;  for  Arius  had  taught  that  an  incarnation  of  God 
was  impossible  on  account  of  the  unworthiness  of  the  ma- 
terial creation  to  be  so  closely  associated  with  the  divine. 
But  Athanasius  had  not  foreseen  how  his  teaching  would 
be  warped  from  its  true  intent  by  this  intenser  mood  which 
now  seized  upon  his  doctrine  and,  changing  its  spirit,  made 
it  the  instrument  of  a  revolution  in  cultus  and  in  theology. 
He  himself  had  protested  against  the  worship  of  the  flesh, 
or  of  images,  as  a  heathen  degradation.^  He  had  dwelt 
upon  the  spiritual  aspect  of  the  incarnation,  as  the  revela- 
tion of  the  inmost  mind  and  character  of  God ;  and  upon 
its  evidence  as  addressed  to  the  spiritual  faculty,  not  to 
sensuous  perception.  When  he  cited  the  expression  "  the 
Word  was  made  flesh,"  he  had  also  carefully  defined  its 
meaning ;  not  as  indicating  that  the  Word  was  transmuted 
into  flesh,  but  rather  as  an  equivalent  expression  for  "  the 
Word  was  made  man."  ^ 

But  it  was  just  that  expression,  the  Word  tvas  made  fie sh, 
upon  which  the  imagination  seized,  as  language  needing 
no  paraphrase ;  in  its  literalness,  it  hinted  at  the  idea  of 

^  Cf.  De  hicar.,  cc.  11-18  ;  also  Epis.  ad  Epictetum,  Or.  III.  c.  Ar.,  25, 
II.  16. 

2  Epis.  ad  Epictet. 


THE    SPIRITUAL    AND    THE    MATERIAL  487 

some  infusion  of  spirit  into  flesh  by  which  the  flesh  was 
also  deified  and  became  tlie  instrument  of  man's  salvation. 
The  doctrine  that  the  body  of  Christ  was  deified  henceforth 
became  the  foundation  stone  of  the  Catholic  cultus,  involv- 
ing the  principle  that  a  life-giving  influence  proceeded 
from  His  body  which  is  imparted  to  men  as  the  food  of  the 
soul  in  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper;  involving  also 
the  apotheosis  of  the  Virgin  Mother,  as  the  source  whence 
He  had  drawn  His  life-giving  body  ;  and  involving  also  the 
worship  of  the  bodies  of  the  saints  in  whom  His  life  had 
been  manifested. 

So  early  as  the  time  of  Tertullian  (f  c.  220  a.d.),  this 
tendency  toward  the  deification  of  matter  had  found  ex- 
pression in  the  Catholic  church.  In  his  treatises  on  The 
Flesh  of  Christ  and  on  The  Resurrection  of  the  Flesh, 
Tertullian  was  fighting  both  heathens  and  heretics,  who 
vilified  matter  and  despised  the  body,  or  who  refused  to 
admit  that  Christ  had  possessed  an  actual  body  (Doce- 
tism).  In  his  opposition  to  this  attitude  he  almost  fell  into 
a  materialism  which  could  speak  of  spirit  in  the  terms  of 
matter.  This  tendency  was  nourished  also  by  the  Chris- 
tian custom  of  burying  the  dead,  in  place  of  the  heathen 
usage  of  cremation,  —  a  custom  out  of  which  grew  much 
that  was  most  beautiful  and  attractive  in  Christian  piety, 
while  also  it  became  the  germ  of  great  abuses,  the  rally- 
ing-point  of  much  of  the  later  development  of  the  Catholic 
cultus.  It  deepened  the  faith  in  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  by  the  importance  it  attached  to  the  human  body, 
which  the  usage  of  cremation  sacrificed ;  and  it  ministered 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  communion  of  saints.  The  resurrec- 
tion of  the  flesh,  of  the  same  body  which  had  lain  in  the 
grave  and  seen  corruption,  was,  however,  to  Tertullian  one 
of  the  things  which  he  believed,  without  reason,  or,  as  he 
says,  even  against  reason,  just  because  it  was  impossible 
and  absurd. 

In  the  church  Fathers  of  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth 
century,  and  more  particularly  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  and 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  there  is  an  effort  to  ground  these 
convictions    of   Tertullian   in  a  materialistic   philosophy. 


488  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

A  greater  significance  is  attached  to  the  body  and  to 
the  senses,  as  the  agencies  on  which  the  mind  is  de- 
pendent. Gregory  of  Nyssa  inclines  to  reverse  the  atti- 
tude of  Athanasius,  who  had  held  that  the  senses  are  the 
instrument  played  upon  by  the  mind,^  and  maintains  that 
the  mind  works  by  means  of  the  senses.^  Tlie  Holy  Spirit 
is  conceived  as  the  bond  which  unites  the  two  spheres,  the 
physical  and  the  rational,  in  some  organic  fashion.  Since 
it  is  the  function  of  the  Spirit  to  sanctify  the  man  whoU}^, 
He  must  needs  act  upon  body  as  well  as  soul,  penetrating 
by  His  power  the  water,  the  oil,  the  bread,  and  the  wine, 
and  bending  them  to  a  spiritual  efficacy  for  the  body,  as 
well  as  acting  more  immediately  for  the  purification  of  the 
inner  life.  On  this  basis  it  is  not  difficult  to  understand 
how  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  could  affirm,  that  "  even  though 
the  soul  is  not  present,  a  virtue  resides  in  the  body  of  the 
saints,  because  of  the  righteous  soul  which  has  for  so  many 
years  dwelt  in  it,  and  used  it  as  its  minister."  ^  Such  was 
the  formula  for  the  worsliip  of  the  bodies  of  the  saints, 
and  of  their  relics,  whicli  became  more  interesting,  more 
real  because  more  tangible,  than  the  worship  of  God  in 
spirit  and  in  truth. 

This  tendency  to  confuse  the  material  and  the  spiritual 
till  they  become  practically  identified,  culminates  in  the 
teaching  of  Gregory  of  Nyssa  in  regard  to  the  eucharist. 
His  ruling  principle  is  that  when  Christ  assumed  a  body, 
He  deified  the  flesh  and  everything  kindred  and  related  to 
it.  But  since  the  human  body  subsists  by  meat  and  drink, 
therefore  wlien  one  looks  on  bread  he  is,  in  a  way,  looking 
upon  the  human  body.  And  when  this  principle  was  applied 
to  Christ,  the  body  into  which  God  entered,  since  it  par- 
took of  the  nourishment  of  bread,  was,  in  a  certain  meas- 

1  Contra  Gentes,  §  31.  ^  j)g  jjom.  Op.,  cc.  viii.,  x. 

3  Cat.,  XVII.  16.  Cf.  also  Greg.  Naz.  to  the  same  effect  in  Adv. 
Julian,  Or.  III.  The  church  Fathers  of  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury were  almost  unanimous  in  accepting  this  principle  ;  cf.  Schaff,  Ch. 
His.,  III.,  p.  457.  Even  Origen,  while  admitting  that  this  growing  ten- 
dency to  the  worship  of  relics,  including  the  body  of  departed  saints,  was 
an  error,  yet  thought  that  a  right  instinct  lay  beneath  it.  Cf.  Con. 
Celsum,  IV.  59. 


THE   SPIRITUAL   AND   THE   MATERIAL  489 

ure,  tlie  same  with  bread,  inasmuch  as  bread  changes  into 
flesh.  Hence  it  follows,  that  since  the  body  of  Christ 
maintained  by  bread  was  transmuted  by  the  indwelling  of 
God  the  Word  into  tlie  dignity  of  Godhead,  so  the  bread 
which  is  consecrated  by  the  Word  of  God  is  changed  into 
the  body  of  God  the  Word.  What  is  true  of  the  bread  is 
true  also  of  wine,  since  the  body  requires  liquids  for  its 
nourishment  as  well  as  solid  food : 

"  Since,  then,  seeing  that  Godhead  containing  flesh  partook  for  its 
substance  and  support  of  this  particular  nourishment  also,  and  since 
the  God  who  was  manifested  infused  Himself  into  perishing  humanity 
for  this  purpose,  viz.  that  by  this  comnmnion  with  Deity  mankind 
might  at  the  same  time  be  deified,  for  this  end  it  is  that,  by  dispensa- 
tion of  His  grace,  He  disseminates  Himself  in  every  believer  through 
that  flesh,  whose  substance  comes  from  bread  and  wine,  blending 
Himself  with  the  bodies  of  believers,  to  secure  that,  by  this  union 
with  the  immortal,  man  too  may  be  a  sharer  in  incorruption.  He 
gives  these  gifts  by  virtue  of  the  benediction  by  which  He  trans- 
elements  (yu,€Tao-Toixetwo-as)  the  natural  quality  of  these  visible  things 
to  that  immortal  thing."  ^ 

In  the  further  development  of  the  cultus  the  church 
reflected  the  influence  of  the  same  tendencies  which  pro- 
duced the  Christian  year.  The  church  was  placing  its 
stamp  upon  matter  and  space  as  well  as  time,  upon  the 
external  world  of  visible  nature  as  well  as  upon  the  inner 
life  of  the  spirit.  It  peopled  space  with  an  arni}^  of  saints, 
who  were  believed  to  share  in  the  divine  omnipotence  and 
omniscience,  with  Mary  the  Queen  of  Heaven  as  their 
head  and  summit.  The  spaces  left  emjjty  by  the  de- 
thronement of  heathen  deities  and  heroes  were  refilled 
with  Christian  martyrs  and  confessors,  ascetics  and  theo- 
logians, with  all  who  had  reflected  lustre  on  the  Catholic 
church.  In  sacred  acts  of  worship,  at  its  most  solemn 
moments,  Mary  and  the  saints  were  associated  with  God, 
as  those  to  whom  alike  a  common  confession  of  sin  should 
be  made,  and  from  whom  alike  pardon  was  invoked.  The 
new  Christian  mythology  was  a  purer  and  higher  thing 
than  that  which  it  supplanted ;  it  gave  richer  food  for  the 

1  Cal.  21a(j.,  XXVII. 


490  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

imagination,  but,  like  the  old  mythologies,  it  had  a  ten- 
dency to  obscure  the  Deity,  to  relegate  to  the  background 
the  great  first  cause,  till  it  became  difficult  for  the  popular 
mind  any  longer  to  conceive  His  presence  or  activity.  In 
moments  of  emergency  the  first  appeal  was  to  Mary  or 
the  saints.  But  whatever  the  defects  of  this  substitute  for 
the  pagan  mythologies,  it  was  successful  at  last  in  remov- 
ing the  traces  of  the  nature-religions,  even  though  it  were 
accomplished  by  tlie  assimilation  of  the  principle  out  of 
which  they  had  grown. 

The  Catholic  church  was  also  putting  its  stamp,  by 
means  of  the  cultus,  upon  the  external  world.  In  so  doing, 
it  practically  sacrificed  or  abandoned  the  truth  for  which 
Plato  and  Greek  philosophy  had  been  struggling,  —  that  the 
spirit  was  superior  to  matter,  belonging  to  some  higher 
order  in  the  grades  of  existence.  The  spirit  henceforth 
became  dependent  upon  the  agency  of  matter  for  its  salva- 
tion; matter  was  no  longer  vilified  nor  contempt  thrown 
upon  it  as  in  the  earlier  age.  The  doctrine  known  as 
the  opus  operatiwi,  according  to  which  the  outward  act 
is  effective  for  salvation,  so  that  the  sacrament  may  work 
its  result  for  the  spirit  apart  from  its  participation  in  Christ 
by  faith,  was  the  issue  of  the  deification  of  matter ;  just 
as  contact  with  a  relic,  the  bone  or  the  clothing  of  a  saint, 
acted  directly  upon  the  soul  without  its  special  conscious- 
ness or  effort  to  appropriate  the  good.  The  only  point  to 
be  determined  was  the  question  of  validity,  whether  of 
sacrament  or  relic,  and  that  determination  rested  in  turn 
upon  some  virtue  communicated  to  matter,  through  a  tan- 
gible relationship,  not,  according  to  the  theory,  begotten 
by  the  self-conscious  spirit.  Just  as  in  the  ancient  nature- 
worships,  where  inanimate  things  were  reverenced  as  di- 
vine, and  animals  occupied  the  most  sacred  shrines  of 
temples,  so  in  this  Christian  materialism,  in  which  the 
spirit  was  submerged  in  a  physical  process,  the  Catholic 
church  seemed  to  revel  without  reference  to  the  claims 
of  the  reason  or  in  defiance  of  them.  Churches  were 
built  over  the  graves  of  saints,  in  order  to  their  high- 
est consecration.       At  last  it  became  a  law  that  a  church 


THE    SPIRITUAL   AND    THE    MATERIAL  491 

should  not  be  consecrated  without  the  possession  of  some 
relic,  whose  hallowed  power,  derived  from  the  body  of 
a  saint,  lent  sanctity  to  the  structure,  and  the  ground 
on  which  it  rested.  If  one  penetrated  to  the  inmost  source 
of  this  physical  sanctity,  the  result  might  seem  as  incongru- 
ous as  when  in  Egyptian  temples  a  cat  or  a  crocodile, 
reposing  in  its  sacred  penetralia,  was  disclosed  to  the  in- 
quiring eye.  In  the  Catholic  church  it  might  be  a  frag- 
ment of  clothing,  or  a  piece  of  bone,  or  a  bit  of  wood. 
Such  was  the  power  of  the  relic,  that  when  the  Persians 
stole  the  Holy  Cross,  the  Roman  Emperor  Heraclius  went 
to  war  for  its  recovery.^  The  essence  of  the  miracle  in  the 
Oriental  church  consisted  in  the  sympathy  of  nature  with 
man,  as  lending  her  agencies  to  his  spiritual  betterment ; 
in  contrast  with  the  earlier  conception  of  miracle,  in  the 
Latin  world,  in  which  man  is  resisting  nature  and  over- 
coming the  laws  which  bind  him  in  chains  to  the  low  and 
hopeless  uniformity  of  its  career.  All  the  evils  which 
beset  and  threaten  the  body  from  without,  and  through 
the  body  endanger  the  life  of  the  spirit,  may  be  banished 
by  a  simple  physical  act  in  the  sign  of  the  cross.  "  Make 
this  sign,"  says  Cyril,  "  at  eating  and  drinking,  at  sitting, 
at  lying  down,  at  rising  up,  at  speaking,  at  walking,  in  a 
word,  at  every  act.  .  .  .  When  thou  art  going  to  dis- 
pute with  unbelievers,  concerning  the  Cross  of  Christ,  first 
make  with  thy  hand  the  sign  of  Christ's  cross  and  the 
gainsayer  will  be  silenced."  ^ 

1  For  the  discovery  of  the  Holy  Cross,  cf.  Socrates,  H.  E.,  I.  17,  and 
Sozomen,  H.  E.,  II.  1.  Both  writers  belong  to  the  fifth  century.  Euse- 
bius  does  not  mention  it,  which  is  significant.  Its  first  mention  is 
apparently  by  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  (cf.  Cat.,  IV.  10  [c.  350]),  who  says 
that  since  its  discovery  the  whole  world  has  been  filled  with  jiieces  of  it. 

'^  Cat.,  IV.  14,  Xl'll.  22.  Cf.  also  Tertullian,  De  Res.  Car.  c.  viii., 
where  he  says :  "  The  flesh  is  the  very  condition  on  which  salvation 
hinges.  Since  the  soul  is,  in  consequence  of  its  salvation,  chosen  to  the 
service  of  God,  it  is  the  flesh  which  actually  renders  it  capable  of  such 
service.  The  flesli,  indeed,  is  washed,  in  order  that  the  soul  may  be 
cleansed  ;  the  flesh  is  anointed,  that  the  soul  may  be  consecrated  ;  the 
flesh  is  signed  (with  the  cross),  that  the  soul  too  may  be  fortified;  the 
flesh  is  shadowed  with  the  imposition  of  hands,  that  the  soul  may  be  illu- 
minated by  the  Spirit,"  etc.  The  anticipation  by  Tertullian  of  so  many 
of  the  features  of  the  later  Catholic  cultus  seems  to  point  to  the  conclu- 


492  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

The  sign  of  the  cross  was  but  one  of  a  series  of 
physical  acts  by  which  spiritual  results  were  secured. 
Benedictions  and  consecrations  innumerable,  whether  be- 
stowed on  man  or  on  objects  and  places  in  the  visible 
external  world,  had  the  effect  of  divinizing  the  environ- 
ment of  life,  as  though  heaven  itself  were  being  repro- 
duced in  this  lower  world.  Churches  and  all  things 
related  to  them,  vestments  and  altar  books  and  bells,  the 
holy  water,  the  private  houses  also  and  the  cemeteries,  were 
redeemed  from  the  curse  of  a  world  which  had  once  lain  in 
bondage  to  Satan,  and  were  secured  or  exempted  from  all 
assaults  of  evil  agencies.  There  were  sacred  places  wher- 
ever a  saint  had  lived  or  died,  and  especially  Jerusalem, 
where  the  footprints  of  the  Saviour  still  remained  miracu- 
lously preserved,  with  the  crowning  sanctity  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre.  To  worship  in  these  places  was  to  be  in  closest 
contact  with  the  spiritual  world.  The  sacred  water  and 
oil,  the  bread  and  the  wine,  the  contact  of  consecrated 
hands  in  the  sacraments  of  confirmation,  ordination  or 
marriage,  the  holy  unction  in  sickness  and  in  death,  —  all 
these  conveyed  a  sanctifying  influence  at  every  stage  or 
turn  of  life.  They  were  the  means  by  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  imparted,  that  Spirit  which  fused  together  in  one 
common  life  God  and  the  natural  world. 

The  development  of  the  nature-philosophy  which  re- 
gards the   elements  and  forces  of  the  material  world  as 

sion  that  in  his  reaction  from  the  one-sided  spiritualism  of  Greek  phi- 
losophy, or  as  represented  in  the  West  by  the  ethical  teaching  of  Marcus 
Aurelius,  Seneca,  Epictetus,  and  others,  which  despised  the  body,  he 
turned  to  the  church  for  relief,  bringing  with  him  a  tendency  toward  a 
materialistic  interpretation  of  the  church's  attitude,  which  must  have 
helped  to  create  in  the  church  what  did  not  before  exist.  That  instinct 
which  TerLullian  sought  to  gratify  in  the  Catholic  church  carried  others 
into  the  nature-religions  of  the  East,  which  were  then  becoming  popular 
in  the  West.  Tertullian  betrays  a  consciousness  of  the  similarity  between 
his  own  position  and  that  of  the  adherents  of  the  nature-religions,  but  his 
defence  is  never  quite  satisfactory.  That  he  found  his  position  untenable 
is  shown  by  his  desertion  of  the  Catholic  cultus,  which  he  had  done  so 
much  to  create,  for  the  ultra- spiritual  sect  of  the  Montanists,  — a  typical 
career,  which  reveals  the  deepest  symptoms  of  the  age. 


THE    SPIRITUAL    AND    THE    MATERIAL  493 

ministering  to  human  salvation  was  the  peculiar  work  of 
the  Oriental  mind  in  the  Eastern  church.  The  distinctive 
principle  in  this  philosophy  is  the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
whose  function  is  primarily  conceived  as  that  of  a  media- 
tor between  external  nature  and  the  human  soul.  Such 
was  the  view  of  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  and  Cj-ril  of  Alexan- 
dria, Gregory  of  Nyssa  and  Ephraim  of  Edessa,  —  writers 
whose  influence  upon  the  cultus  was  most  profound.  It 
is  the  Holy  Ghost  who  mingles  with  the  waters  of  baptism 
and  is  blended  with  the  bread  of  the  Holy  Eucharist. 
In  proportion  as  the  worship  of  the  church  found  its 
chief  expression  in  the  sacrament  of  the  altar,  did  this 
doctrine  of  the  Spirit  prevail.  Its  influence  in  the  Eastern 
church  tended  to  destroy  the  belief  that  Satan  had  this 
world  in  his  grasp.  This  dark  conviction  was  not  met,  as 
in  the  Western  church,  by  a  jJi'ocess  of  thought,  elabo- 
rating the  doctiine  of  atonement,  but  it  seems  to  vanish 
without  argument,  as  under  the  spell  of  some  mighty 
enchantment.  Hence  we  note  in  the  Greek  Fathers  of 
this  period  the  sense  of  the  beauty  of  nature.  The  Cappa- 
docians  more  particularly  gave  expression  to  their  love  of 
nature  in  a  way  almost  modern  in  its  tone,  but  which 
forms  an  exception  in  patristic  literature.  Even  the  Em- 
peror Julian  under  the  kindred  influence  of  Neoplatonism 
has  shown  in  his  letters  a  deep  and  sincere  apprecia- 
tion of  the  beauty  of  scenery,  describing  it  with  the  eye 
of  an  artist.  Again  this  doctrine  of  the  Spirit  modified 
the  conception  of  the  miracle  in  the  Eastern  church. 
It  is  the  Holy  Spirit  working  in,  with,  and  under  the  forces 
of  nature,  who  accomplishes  the  miraculous  birth  of  Christ 
and  His  resurrection  from  the  dead.  So  also  in  the  sacred 
rites  of  the  church  in  baptism,  in  the  chrism,  and  in  the 
eucharist,  the  same  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  continued 
and  perpetuated.  There  is  no  violation  of  the  laws  of  nat- 
ure, no  transcending  of  nature  by  the  human  spirit  or  by  the 
divine  will,  which  in  the  Western  conception  of  the  mir- 
acle was  the  predominant  thought.  The  application  of  the 
atonement,  the  realization  of  the  redemption  through  Christ, 
consists  in  the  interpenetration  of  physical  nature  by  the 


494  CHUISTIAN   WORSHIP 

Holy  Ghost.  Thus  the  incarnation  of  Christ  is  mediated 
to  the  individual  man  by  participation  in  His  deified  body 
given  in  the  eucharist,  rather  than  by  the  power  of  his 
divine  personality  entering  into  human  lives  and  remould- 
ing the  human  consciousness. 

The  church  in  the  West  received  a  certain  influence 
from  the  cultus  of  the  Eastern  church,  but  it  did  not 
receive  this  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  it  apprehended 
the  divine  action  in  the  world  as  exceptional  or  accom- 
j)lished  by  specific  acts  of  the  divine  will,  or  by  the  impar- 
tation  of  the  divine  power  to  the  human  will.  The 
tendency  in  the  West  was  to  regard  the  Holy  Spirit  as  an 
inward  agent  for  the  purification  of  the  soul.^  Hence  there 
came  also  in  the  West  a  theological  activity  and  an  intel- 
lectual life  to  which  the  East  was  a  stranger  after  the  cult 
had  established  its  ascendency  over  the  imagination.  The 
Spirit  which  searcheth  all  things,  even  the  deep  things  of 
God,  was  a  sword  of  division  in  the  Western  church  pene- 
trating the  inmost  nature  of  man,  but  destined  to  bring 
forth  a  higher  result,  when  its  work  should  be  manifest  in 
the  fulness  of  time.  But  the  Western  church  appropri- 
ated in  its  own  way  many  of  the  results  of  the  nature-phi- 
losophy which  had  been  developed  in  the  Oriental  world. 
The  worship  of  Mary,  of  saints  and  images,  relics  and 
sacred  places,  consecrations  of  material  things,  all  these 
found  a  sphere  in  the  devotion  of  the  Latin  church ;  but 
the  principle  of  the  nature-philosophy  was  never  entirely 
domesticated  in  Western  Christendom.^ 

1  Cf.  Augustine,  De  Fide  et  Symbolo,  c.  19;  also  Swete,  H.  B.,  Art. 
on  Holy  Ghost  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog. 

2  The  following  passage  from  a  Latin  writer  in  tlae  thirteenth  century 
indicates  at  once  the  agreement  and  yet  the  divergence  between  the 
Eastern  and  the  "Western  cults  :  "  Observe  that  when  a  person  in  confir- 
mation is  blessed  on  the  foi-ehead,  and  when  salt,  and  water,  and  palls, 
and  vestments,  and  the  like  be  consecrated,  the  hands  are  held  over 
them,  because  there  is  a  certain  virtue  in  consecrated  hands,  wliich  is,  as 
it  were,  stirred  up  when  benediction  is  poured  out  over  anything  with 
the  hands  suspended  in  this  way.  Whence  the  Apostle  admonishing 
his  disciple  Timothy,  saith  :  '  I  put  thee  in  remembrance  that  thou  stir 
up  the  gift  of  God  which  is  in  thee  by  the  laying  on  of  my  hands.'  So 
tliat  devotion  may  be  stirred  up  in  the  body  by  the  suspension  of  hands, 
just  as  in  the  heart  by  the  effect.     For  virtue  existeth  not  only  in  ani- 


DIONYSIUS    THE   AREOPAGITE  495 


IV 

The  foundations  had  already  been  laid  for  Catholic  rit- 
ual, its  corner-stone  had  been  sunk  deep  in  material  nature, 
in  order  to  what  seemed  a  more  real  and  tangible  spiritual 
structure,  when  an  unknown  writer  emerged  in  the  East 
who  completed  the  preparation  and  clothed  the  growing 
cultus  with  an  unearthly  and  almost  ineffable  splendor ; 
justifying  its  inner  principle  by  a  philosopliical  appeal, 
which  went  to  the  heart  of  his  age  and  has  ever  since 
exerted  a  wide  and  profound  influence  in  the  Catholic 
church.  His  time  may  have  been  the  latter  part  of  the 
hf th  century ;  he  was  first  heard  of  in  the  year  532  at 
a  conference  in  Constantinople  when  reference  was 
made  to  his  writings ;  he  is  known  in  history  as  Diony- 
sius  the  Areopagite.^  In  accordance  with  a  literary  cus- 
tom whose  honesty  was  not  then  questioned,  he  wrote  in 
the  name  of  that  Dionysius  whom  Paul  converted  at 
Athens,  addressing  his  books  or  letters  to  Timothy, 
to  Titus,  or  to  Polycarp,  as  his  fellow-presbyters  in  the 
Apostolic  age.  After  writing  his  books,  he  went,  accord- 
ing to  tradition,  into  the  West,  where  he  became  the 
Apostle  of  Gaul  and  the  founder  of  the  church  in  Paris. 
At  that  remarkable  scene  pictured  by  legend,  when  the 
Apostles  came  together  from  all  parts  of  the  world  to  the 
bedside  of  the  dying  mother  of  Christ,  Dionysius  came  also 
among  them,  that  he  might  have  "  the  spectacle  of  that  body 

mate  things  but  also  in  inanimate,  whence  some  do  affirm  that  by  the 
virtue  of  a  church,  if  any  one  entereth  therein  from  devotion,  his  venial 
sins  be  forgiven.  Again,  the  hands  are  thus  held  in  cases  of  exorcism 
especially,  as  if  the  priest  by  the  bodily  act  would  put  to  flight  and 
threaten  the  devil  by  the  virtue  of  the  consecration  of  his  hands"  (Du- 
randus.  Bat.  Div.  Offic,  II.  9,  16.  Cf.  Symbolism  of  Churches  and 
Church  Ornaments,  Neale  and  Webb,  p.  151). 

1  It  has  been  generally  assumed  that  the  time  of  the  Dionysian  writ- 
ings was  the  latter  part  of  the  fifth  century  or  the  earlier  part  of  the 
sixth.  But  in  recent  years  this  date  has  been  questioned,  and  his  time 
carried  back  to  the  latter  part  of  the  fourtli  century.  Harnack  and 
others  agree  m  this  earlier  date,  but  suppose  tliat  his  writings  have  since 
undergone  great  modification.  For  a  review  of  the  discussion  cf.  Diony- 
sische  Bedenken,  by  Draseke,  in  Studien  u.  Kritiken,  1897. 


496  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

which  was  the  beginning  of  life  and.  the  recipient  of  God." 
The  teacher  of  Dionysius  was  also  there,  Hierothius  by- 
name, who,  it  is  said,  surpassed  all  others,  except  the 
Apostles,  in  his  inspired  utterances  of  praise  and  song, 
as  if  some  divine  power  were  making  him  its  oracle. 

Nothing  is  known  of  the  life  of  the  man  who  has  played 
the  r61e  in  ecclesiastical  history  of  Dionysius  the  Areopa- 
gite.  His  personality  was  so  identified  with  his  thought 
that  he  may  have  preferred  to  submerge  it,  in  order  to  the 
^propagation  of  his  peculiar  philosophy.  There  is,  how- 
ever, an  incident  mentioned  in  his  letter  to  Polycarp  which 
may  have  an  autobiographical  value.  From  this  letter  it 
appears  that  Dionysius  was  a  fellow-student  with  one 
ApoUophanes  in  the  Egyptian  city  of  Heliopolis  at  the 
time  of  the  passion,  and  both  were  witnesses  of  the  eclipse 
of  the  sun  and  of  the  total  darkness  which  attended  the 
yielding  up  of  the  life  upon  the  cross.  At  the  moment  when 
these  portents  took  place,  when  both  also  were  ignorant 
of  the  great  tragedy  in  Jerusalem,  ApoUophanes,  moved 
by  some  divine  afflatus,  exclaimed  to  his  friend,  "  These 
events  must  be  the  accompaniments  of  some  divine  trans- 
action." 1  The  remark  of  ApoUophanes  has  been  repro- 
duced ui  several  versions.  According  to  one  of  these, 
ApoUophanes  exclaimed,  "  It  is  a  crisis  in  the  affairs  of 
heaven " ;  and  Dionysius  replied,  "  Either  the  God  of 
nature  suffers  or  the  fabric  of  the  world  is  broken  up."  ^ 
Or  again,  "  Either  the  divinity  suffers  or  sympathizes  with 
some  sufferer."  ^  Or  according  to  another  version,  "  The 
unknown  God  is  suffering  in  the  flesh."  *  But  each  ver- 
sion contains  the  same  idea,  —  the  sympathetic  connection 
between  spirit  and  nature,  which  is  one  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  Dionysian  philosophy.  The  inference  is 
a  simple  one,  that  Dionysius,  so  called,  was  impressed  by 
the  narrative  of  the  portents  which  accompanied  the  cru- 
cifixion and  drew  from  it  an  argument  in  behalf  of  his 

1  Epis.  viil.,  §§2,  3. 

2  Cf.  Westcott,  ReUgious  Thought  in  the  West,  p.  155.  "  Aut  Deus 
naturae  patitur  aut  mundi  machina  dissolvitur." 

^  'H  rd  deiov  iraffxei,  r)  to  wa(Txi>vTi  (TVfxirdcTxfi- 
*  '0  dyvwcrroi  iu  crapx^  ■7rd(rxet  0e6i. 


DIONYSIUS    THE    AREOPAGITE  497 

conviction,  or  it  may  have  been  a  transition  link  between 
his  heathen  attitude  and  his  Christian  faith.  The  as- 
sumption by  this  unknown  writer  of  the  name  Dionysius 
is  in  itself  an  epitome  of  the  substance  of  his  thought,  — 
the  connection  of  Athens  and  Jerusalem,  the  welding  to- 
gether of  Greek  speculation  modified  by  Egyptian  mys- 
teriosophy  with  Christian  devotion. 

This  unknown  writer,  who,  for  convenience,  may  be 
called  Dionysius,  was  familiar  with  the  Neoplatonic 
philosophy,  the  inner  principle  of  which  becomes  the 
foundation  of  his  system ;  he  moves  in  the  Christian 
sphere  with  freedom  after  his  discovery  that  the  Catholic 
theology  and  ritual  might  be  easily  adapted  to  the  cherished 
principles  of  an  earlier  training.  He  accepts  the  Neo- 
platonic principle  of  mediations  by  means  of  heavenly  poten- 
cies, constituted  in  grades  descending  from  the  highest 
to  the  lowest,  until  a  grade  is  reached  which,  communi- 
cating with  men  in  this  lower  world,  superintends  and 
inspires  the  process  by  which  humanity  is  raised  to  share 
in  the  divine  life  and  light.  He  accepts  the  principle  that 
all  divine  truth  must  come  by  mediation,  by  impartation 
from  the  higher  to  the  lower. ^  In  some  points  his  teaching 
has  even  a  reseinblance  to  that  of  Arius,  as  in  his  often- 
repeated  affirmation  that  absolute  truth,  God  as  He  is  in 
Himself,  cannot  be  known  by  man,  who  must  be  content 
to  receive  the  .knowledge  of  the  divine  under  human 
limitations,  adapted  to  his  earthly  intelligence.  Upon 
this  point  he  is  most  emphatic,  that  divine  manifesta- 
tions are  not  and  have  never  been  made  directly  or 
immediately  by  God  to  men.  In  evidence  of  this  position, 
he  adduces  the  words :  "  No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any 
time."  But  those  other  words  of  Christ,  which  underlie 
the  Athanasian  theology,  he  does  not  quote :  "  He  that 
hath  seen  me,  hath  seen  the  Father."  All  revelation  must 
come  through  the  mediation  of  celestial  powers,  who  impart 
truth  to  men,  in  relativity,  as  they  are  able  to  receive  it.^ 
If  any  one  should  think  to  pass  beyond  the  human  limita- 
tion, or  rashly  attempt  to  gaze  upon  the  reality,  he  would 

1  De  Coel.  Hier.,  c.  iv.,  §  3.  ^  De  Eccles.  Hier.,  c.  ii.,  §  3. 


498  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

only  be  blinded  by  the  glare  and  made  incapable  of  vision. 
There  is  much  in  the  writings  of  Dionysius  as  true  and 
elevating  as  it  is  beautiful,  but  in  this  assumption  of  a 
revelation  relative  and  not  absolute,  mediated  and  not 
direct,  is  concealed  the  motive  that  reconciled  men  to 
things  as  they  were,  and  made  the  highest  freedom  and 
most  real  progress  impossible.  Its  tendency  was  to  sub- 
jugate humanity  to  the  mediation  of  the  visible  church, 
in  Eastern  Christendom,  as  in  the  West  the  same  result 
was  accomplished  by  the  assertion  of  the  priesthood,  which 
developed  into  the  absolute  power  of  the  papacy. 

But  Dionysius  has  caught,  too,  that  other  principle  for 
which  the  Neoplatonists  were  also  struggling,  —  that  the 
world  is  good.  His  treatise  on  the  Celestial  Hierarchy 
opens  with  these  words,  as  the  keynote  of  his  special  mes- 
sage, —  "  Every  good  gift  and  every  perfect  gift  is  from 
above  and  conieth  down  from  the  Father  of  lights."  It  is 
further  evident  that,  like  the  dying  heathen  philosophy, 
the  range  of  his  thought  was  taking  in  world  relations, 
when  he  repeats  its  well-known  formula,  that  "  all  things 
are  from  God  and  to  God."  At  this  point  he  makes  his 
Christian  departure.  Where  heathen  teachers  did  not  and 
could  not  follow  him,  and  so  failed  to  establish  a  reli- 
gion, he  invokes  Jesus  as  the  fatherly  light,  the  true  light 
which  lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world,  the 
source  also  of  light  by  whom  we  have  access  to  the  Father. 
That  principle  of  unity  which  Neoplatonisra  could  not 
attain,  centres  in  Jesus,  running  alike  through  all  the 
hierarchies  of  heaven,  filling  and  sustaining  them  all, 
ordering  their  gradations,  but  also  ordering  and  inspiring 
the  earthly  hierarchies,  and  communicating  to  these  also 
the  same  divine  gift,  in  measure  according  to  their  rank, 
or  as  they  are  able  to  receive  it.  From  this  preamble,  he 
turns  to  another  ruling  idea  of  his  system,  ^ — that  the  divine 
light  cannot  illuminate  men  except  as  it  is  veiled  in 
symbols.  The  physical  creation  has  been  designed  by  the 
Father's  wisdom  in  order,  through  the  inherent  fitness  of 
things,  to  become  the  mediator  of  spiritual  light  and  truth. 
The  ritual  of  the  church  and  its  grades  of  ministers  are 


DIONYSIUS    THE    AREOPAGITE  499 

of  divine  institution,  an  imitation  of  heavenly  hierarchies, 
differing  from  them  in  this,  that  the  earthly  order  deals 
with  sacred  pictures  and  material  things  that  it  may  raise 
men  to  that  spiritual  meaning  which  is  without  type  or 
symbol,  as  in  the  heavenly  hierarchies.  It  is  impossible, 
Dionysius  repeats  it,  that  the  human  mind  should  reach 
the  immaterial  or  spiritual  except  through  the  mediation 
of  the  visible  symbol,  whose  correspondence  with  the 
spiritual  is  divinely  ordered,  as  when  the  beauty  of  visible 
things  becomes  a  type  and  revelation  of  the  invisible 
beauty,  or  the  sweetness  of  odors  perceptible  by  the  senses 
a  suggestive  emblem  of  divine  gifts,  or  the  physical  light 
an  image  of  the  heavenly  light.  The  verbal  expositions  of 
truth  correspond  to  an  inward  banquet  of  the  soul ;  the 
graded  ranks  of  the  ministry  speak  of  law  and  harmonious 
order  in  sacred  things ;  the  communion  of  the  holy  euchar- 
ist  of  participation  in  Jesus.  These  material  symbols  are 
given  for  the  deification  of  men,  according  to  human 
capacity ;  and  by  deification  is  meant,  sharing  in  the  life 
and  fellowship  of  God ;  but  they  are  also  temporary,  pre- 
paring for  the  sublimer  grandeurs  of  the  heavenly  order.^ 
Such  is  the  preamble  to  the  treatises  of  Dionysius  on 
the  Heavenly  and  the  Earthly  Hierarchies.  It  has  a  tone 
of  authoritative  conviction,  as  of  a  master  conscious  of 
possessing  truth  which  the  church  of  his  time  needed  but 
did  not  yet  possess,  as  if  he  were  bringing  to  his  age  a 
message  whose  proclamation  he  felt  sure  would  receive  no 
doubtful  welcome. 

The  treatise  on  the  Heavenly  Hierarchy  requires  here 
but  a  brief  consideration  ;  for  though  Dionysius  abounds 
in  eloquent  exposition,  as  he  dwells  on  the  graded  orders 
of  celestial  power,  he  cannot  get  beyond  the  limitations  of 
his  own  or  human   ignorance.'-^      The   importance    of   the 

1  Cf.  De  Eccles.  Hier.  c.  iv.,  §  3.  In  the  treatise  on  Mystic  Theology 
this  thought  is  further  developed,  — that  the  symbolism  of  the  ritual  is  a 
concession  to  human  weakness,  and  even  in  this  world  is  outgrown  by 
those  who  are  advanced  in  spiritual  culture. 

2  "As  though  intoxicated  with  nature  and  given  up  to  ecstasies,  these 
men  (Dionysius  and  others)  ignored  the  ethical  nature  of  God ;  and  yet 
at  the  same  time  imagined  themselves  able  to  advance  an  infinitely  more 


500  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

treatise  for  the  development  of  ritual  lies  in  the  assertion 
of  the  principle  that  heaven  and  earth  are  connected  by 
a  common  life  and  common  worship ;  that  the  church  on 
earth  is  reproducing  in  its  ministry  and  rites  the  sacred 
drama  as  it  is  performed  by  those  who  stand  about  the 
throne  of  God ;  always,  of  course,  with  the  qualification, 
according  to  the  lower  capacities  of  human  powers.  In 
his  speculations  regarding  those  celestial  intelligences 
which  are  higher  than  man,  the  mind  of  the  pseudo-Diony- 
sius  was  chiefly  impressed  with  the  mystic  imagery  of  the 
Book  of  Ezekiel,  the  seraphim  and  cherubim  of  the  Old 
Testament,  and  in  the  New  Testament  with  those  visions 
of  the  Book  of  Revelation  in  which  are  symbolized  the 
glories  and  perfections  of  the  upper  world.  He  consti- 
tuted in  imagination  the  heavenly  hierarchies  by  adding  to 
angels  and  archangels,  already  familiar  to  his  mind,  the 
cherubim  and  seraphim  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  with 
these  he  combined  the  potencies  alluded  to  in  the  Epistle  to 
the  Colossians,  —  thrones  and  dominions  and  principalities 
and  powers.  These,  nine  in  all,  he  divided  into  groups  of 
three,  a  sacred  number,  placing  in  the  highest  rank,  in  close 
proximity  to  God,  seraphim  and  cherubim  and  thrones ; 
next  below  these  stood  dominions,  virtues,  powers ;  and 
beneath  these,  principalities,  archangels,  and  angels.  The 
ano-els  are  the  lowest  in  the  scale  and  are  commissioned  to 
mediate  with  humanity,  to  hand  down  to  the  world  the 
truth  and  light  so  far  as  they  have  received  it.  By  the 
time  that  angels  are  reached  in  the  heavenly  hierarchy, 
there  is  a  vast  remove  from  Deity  Himself,  and  the  revela- 
tion which  they  make  is  meagre  compared  with  the  direct 
vision  of  tliose  nearest  the  eternal  throne.  In  the  larger 
sense  of  the  word  'angels'  all  the  heavenly  powers  are  in- 
cluded as  a  convenient  Avay  of  speaking.  But  the  angel 
of  communication  with  the  world  stands  in  the  lowest 
rank  of  tlie  lowest  grade  of  the  heavenly  hierarchy. 

There  were  two  sources  from  whence  Dionysius  drew  in 
his  arrangement  of  the  heavenly  hierarchy ;  one  was  Neo- 

sublime  conception  of  God  "  (Dornei",  Person  of  Christ,  Div.  II.,  Vol.  I., 
p.  157). 


DIONYSIUS    THE    AREOPAGITE  501 

platonism,  which  conceived  the  going  forth  from  God  in  an 
ever-decreasing  degree  of  the  divine  life  and  capacity,  until 
in  the  lowest  order  a  being  was  found  sufficiently  below 
the  higher  powers,  and  yet  sufficiently  above  man,  to  hold 
contact  with  the  world  of  human  existence  which  stands  at 
an  almost  infinite  remove  from  Deity.  The  other  source 
was  the  Old  Testament.  He  passed  over  the  great  age  of 
Hebrew  prophecy,  when  the  "  Word  of  God  "  came  directly 
to  the  soul  of  the  prophet,  preferring  the  later  phase  of  Jew- 
ish history,  after  the  return  from  Babylon,  when  it  was  no 
longer  the  "  Word  of  God,"  but  an  angel  who  brought 
the  message  the  prophet  was  to  proclaim.  It  was  a  feat- 
ure of  the  age  in  which  Dionysius  lived,  as  it  was  of  the 
age  after  the  captivity,  that  there  was  no  longer  the  "  open 
vision";  the  day  of  prophecy  was  spent,  the  day  of  com- 
mentators and  mediators  was  at  hand.  But  even  so,  the 
system  of  Dionysius  was  a  vastly  higher  thing  than  Neo- 
platonism ;  for  Jesus,  who  is  the  author  and  inspirer  of  all 
the  hierarchies  in  heaven  and  earth,  who  is  also  coequal 
with  the  Father,  is  conceived  as  having  become  incarnate 
in  this  lower  world,  redeeming  it  from  the  evil  of  a 
remote  insignificance  and  connecting  it  in  close  organic 
relationship  with  the  highest.  This  one  idea  of  the  in- 
carnation, which  the  Neoplatonist  stubbornly  refused  to 
accept,  gave  the  life  and  the  unity  to  the  scheme  of 
Dionysius,  that  prevented  it  from  degenerating  into  an 
empty  abstraction. 

The  principle  of  mediation  runs  through  the  hierarchies 
as  an  organic  law;  to  receive  and  to  give  is  the  function 
of  spiritual  life.  Seraphim  alone  receive  directly  from  the 
infinite  source,  and  impart  in  turn  to  cherubim,  so  far  as 
the  latter  can  receive ;  and  what  cherubim  can  give  is 
handed  on  to  the  thrones.  From  this  higher  threefold 
grade,  the  fire  of  divine  life  is  imparted  in  reduced  degree 
to  the  next  grade  in  descent,  and  so  on  to  the  lowest. 
Virtues  receive  from  dominations  and  bestow  on  powers  ; 
the  powers  connect  through  principalities  with  the  lowest 
hierarchy,  which  in  turn  gives  to  archangels,  and  they  to 
angels.     This   is   the   essence    of   hierarchy  as    Dionysius 


502  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

defines  it  —  "a  supreme  order,  and  wisdom  and  energy, 
in  imitation  of  God,  so  far  as  is  attainable,  and  fitted  for 
the  divine  illuminations  granted  to  it  by  God,  in  due  pro- 
portion in  order  to  the  divine  imitation."  ^  Dion^^sius 
struggles  in  vain  to  define  or  to  discriminate  between  the 
distinctive  qualities  of  each  threefold  order  in  the  heav- 
enly hierarchy  with  this  exception,  that  he  finds  an  uniform 
law  pervading  all  things :  the  lowest  potency  in  each  grade 
represents  purification ;  the  middle  potency  stands  for  illu- 
mination; and  the  highest  for  perfection,  in  the  particular 
degree  or  capacity  assigned  to  it.  This  law  also  he  makes 
control  the  earthly  hierarchies. 

Before  turning  to  the  earthly  hierarchy,  two  things  may 
be  noted  in  regard  to  these  speculations  for  which  Dio- 
nysius  claimed  the  sanction  of  the  Apostles,  and  under 
which  claim  they  were  received  by  the  church  down  to  the 
Reformation  as  having  an  equal  authority  with  Scripture 
itself.  They  represent  human  speculation  about  the  un- 
known and  the  unknowable,  which  has  no  clear  warrant 
of  ancient  Hebrew  prophecy,  or  of  Christ  and  His  Apos- 
tles. But  they  also  filled  up  the  void  created  by  the 
dethronement  of  heathen  deities,  giving  food  for  the 
spiritual  imagination,  peopling  heaven  with  pure  intel- 
ligences, symbolizing  those  higher  virtues  for  which  men 
strive  but  never  entirely  attain.  The  influence  of  these 
speculations  about  angels  has  been  immense,  but  it  is 
chiefly  through  poetry  that  the  influence  has  been  felt  in 
later  times.     Dante  referred  to  Dionysius  as 

"  That  taper's  radiance,  to  whose  view  was  shown, 
Clearliest,  the  nature  and  the  ministry 
Angelical." 

Spenser  and  jNIilton  more  particularly  have  reproduced 
what  Dionysius  originated.  In  the  woodcuts  which  illus- 
trate the  missals  of  the  Middle  Ages,  angels  are  hovering 
over  the  rites  of  the  earthly  altar,  as  at  their  higher  altar 

l"E<m  fiiv  Upapx^-o-i  kut'  ifii,  rd^is  lepcL,  Kal  iwi(rTrifj.r],  Kal  ivipyeia  irpos 
rb  deoidis  is  icpiKTov  dcpofxawv/jLevri,  Kal  Trpos  ras  iuSidoinevas  avTT]  deddev 
i\\dfx\j/<Tei%  dva\6yu3s  eni  to  deop.liJ.T]Tov  dvayofievi]  (Z)e  Coel.  Hier.,  C.  iii., 
§!)• 


DIONVSIUS   THE   AEEOPAGITE  503 

they  perform  the  transfigured  ritual  of  heaven.  In  the 
Sarum  Missal  is  the  petition  '"'•  Supplies s  te  rogamus^  om- 
nipotens  Deus,  jube  liaec  perferri  per  manus  sancti  angeli 
tui  in  sublime  altare  tuum,  in  conspectu  divinae  inajestatis 
tuaey  In  the  Trisagion  of  the  present  English  office,  is 
also  retained  the  angelic  commemoration,  "  Tlierefore  with 
angels  and  archangels  and  all  the  hosts  of  heaven."  But 
it  is  also  to  be  noted  that  the  worship  of  angels  never 
became  a  feature  of  the  Catholic  church.  There  are  traces 
of  it  at  the  time  when  the  worship  of  saints  was  becoming 
an  established  usage,  but  they  soon  disappeared.  As  God 
and  Christ  retreated  into  the  background  of  the  popular 
religion,  it  was  Mary  the  Virgin,  the  confessors  and  mar- 
tyrs, the  heroes  of  the  time,  not  angels  or  archangels,  who 
won  the  confidence  of  humanity.  The  poet  Lessing  gave 
the  reason  why  the  angel,  with  his  supernatural  purity  and 
intelligence,  has  never  received  the  homage  of  the  Catholic 
church ;  a  fellow-man  is  dearer  to  the  heart  of  man  than 
any  angel : 

"  Denn,  Daja,  glaube  mir,  dem  Menschen  ist 
Ein  Menscli  nocli  iniiner  lieber  als  ein  Engel."  ^ 

There  are  also  allusions  in  the  New  Testament  that 
did  not  weigh  with  Dionysius  as  he  constructed  the 
heavenly  hierarchies  and  fixed  the  place  of  man  on  earth 
beneath  the  angel.  "•  Know  ye  not,"  says  St.  Paul,  "  that 
we  shall  judge  the  angels  ?  "  And  again  it  is  said  of  the 
transcendent  majesty  of  human  redemption,  that  it  is 
"  a  thing  which  the  angels  desire  to  look  into,"  as  if 
there  were  here  some  greater  and  more  glorious  experi- 
ence than  angelic  existence  can  reveal.  To  have  had 
the  darker  experience  of  sin  and  a  fall,  and  then  to  have 
risen,  may  conceal  possibilities  for  humanity  grander  than 
those  can  know  who  have  never  been  called  to  the  conflict 
and  victory  with  evil.  It  was  one  of  the  speculations  of 
an  early  Gnostic  theologian,  that  redeemed  humanity  would 
be  raised  in  the  world  of  aeons  above  all  other  created 
beings,  in    consequence    of    its    triumph    over   sin.      The 

1  Der  Nathan  der  Weise,  1  Aufz.,  1  Auft. 


504  CHllISTIAN   WORSHIP 

opinion  has  also  been  advanced,  in  order  to  explain  the 
existence  of  fallen  angels,  that  they  revolted  when  they 
learned  that  it  was  to  be  their  mission  to  minister  to  hu- 
manity, since,  when  its  consummation  was  accomplished,  it 
was  to  appear  moi'e  glorious  and  exalted  than  the  angelic 
order.  These  considerations,  which  are  out  of  place  in  the 
Dionysian  scheme,  may  point  to  some  defects  in  his  system 
that  will  be  more  apparent  hereafter. 

The  earthly  hierarchy  is  the  continuation  of  the  heav- 
enly, a  ladder  reaching  down  from  heaven  to  earth  on 
which  angels  are  descending  and  by  which  it  is  divinely 
appointed  that  men  should  rise  to  the  knowledge  and 
possession  of  the  life  in  God.  The  earthly  corresponds 
to  the  heavenly  hierarchy  in  its  constitution,  and  is  divided 
into  three  ranks  or  orders.  The  first  or  highest  grade 
includes  the  three  mysteries  or  sacraments:  (1)  baptism, 
(2)  the  eucharist,  and  (3)  the  chrism  or  anointing  oil. 
In  the  second  rank  is  the  threefold  ministry :  (1)  bishops, 
(2)  presbyters,  and  (3)  deacons.  Beneath  these,  in  the 
lowest  rank,  are  (1)  the  catechumens,  who  are  in  training 
for  the  sacred  rite  of  baptism;  (2)  the  holy  laity,  who 
have  been  admitted  to  the  divine  communion;  and  (3)  the 
monks,  who,  by  the  chrism,  are  initiated  into  a  higher 
life  and,  so  far  as  their  receptivity  allows,  are  being  per- 
fected in  God. 

Each  of  these  threefold  hierarchies  is  conceived  as  a 
supreme  divine  law,  as  the  channel  or  receptacle  of  this 
divine  wisdom,  and  as  charged  with  the  divine  energy, 
each  in  its  order  or  capacity,  —  of  all  which  the  end 
is  assimilation  to  God.  The  same  law  pervades  their 
operations  as  in  the  heavenly  ranks ;  purification,  illumi- 
nation, and  perfection  is  the  method  of  each  separate 
order.  In  baptism  is  the  purification  of  the  body  and 
the  soul  from  evil ;  in  the  communion  of  the  eucharist 
is  admission  to  the  common  life  of  God,  so  that  men 
come  therein  to  the  knowledge  of  God ;  in  the  chrism 
there  is  perfection,  symbolized  by  the  perfume  of  the 
anointing  oil,  the  latter  deserving  the  highest  place 
as  representing  more  fully  Christ,  the   anointed  of  God. 


DIONYSIUS    THE    AKEOPAGITE  505 

In  the  order  of  the  ministry,  the  deacon  (Xeirovpjo'i') 
superintends  the  process  of  purification,  tlie  priest  (I'ejoev?) 
administei's  the  eucharist  (^Koivcovia  re  koi  crut'afi?),  which 
brings  illumination,  and  to  the  bishop  iiepdp^r]<i)  belongs 
the  gift  of  perfecting  the  illuminated,  for  lie  alone  con- 
secrates the  chrism  wliich  brings  to  pei-fection.  In  the 
lower  ranks  of  the  laity  the  catechumens  are  under  the 
training  of  the  deacon  in  order  to  purification,  the  holy 
laity  are  led  by  the  priest  to  the  illuminations,  and  to  the 
monks  alone  of  the  three  is  given  a  special  consecration 
by  the  chrism,  in  order  to  their  perfection  by  a  life  of 
isolation  from  the  world  and  by  exclusive  contemplation 
of  divine  things. 

Sacraments,  ministry,  and  laity  are  then  alike  included 
in  the  hierarchic  order  and  energy  ;  physical  agencies,  no 
less  than  human  personalities,  combine  to  the  spiritual 
result.  The  term  used  for  this  combination  of  the  sen- 
suous or  material  with  the  spiritual  is  Mystery  (^fjLvarijpiov), 
the  Greek  equivalent  for  the  Latin  sacraynentum.  The 
word  '  mystery '  was  at  this  time  used  so  vaguely  that  the 
exact  number  of  the  mysteries  remained  undetermined,^ 
and  miofht  include  the  creeds  or  formulas  of  doctrine. 
By  Dionysius  the  number  of  the  mysteries  was  fixed  at 
six,  —  baptism,  the  eucharist,  the  chrism  or  confirmation, 
ordination,  consecration  of  monks,  anointing  of  the  dead. 
This  arrangement  was  afterward  modified  in  the  Greek 
church,  and  the  mysteries  became  seven  in  number  by  the 
omission  of  the  consecration  of  monks  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  marriage  and  penance.  Dionysius  has  described 
in  detail  in  his  book  on  the  Earthly  Hierarchy  the  cere- 
monies connected  with  each  mystery  in  order  to  its  proper 
performance.  A  special  supernatural  importance  attaches 
to  each  ritual  act  or  slightest  ceremonial  variation  ;  for 
the  physical  symbol  is  everywhere  allied  with  the  spiritual 
purpose,  as  if  indispensably  necessary  to  its  accomplish- 
ment.    Dionj^sius  therefore  becomes   the    founder  of  rit- 

1  "  Die  Zahlung  war  selu'willkiirlich  ;  Mysterium  war  jedes  Siniiliche," 
bei  deiii  etwas  Heiliges  gedacht  oder  genossen  werden  sollte  "  (Harnack, 
Grundriss,  etc.,  p.  173). 


506  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

ualisin.  He  embodied  in  his  system  the  suggestions  of  his 
forerunners,  the  conti'ibutions  of  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  and 
Cyril  of  Alexandria,  and  more  particular!}?  the  deeper  prin- 
ciples of  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  between  whose  thought  and 
his  own  there  is  a  striking  similarity.  The  tendency  of 
such  a  system  was  to  grow  continually  more  subtle  and 
intricate  by  the  additions  of  commentators,  by  the  discov- 
ery of  new  correspondences  between  the  phj^sical  and  the 
spiritual,  until  the  ritual  became,  like  the  Egyptian  mys- 
teries which  it  supplanted,  an  almost  unintelligible  per- 
formance, the  key  to  which  the  priesthood  was  supposed  to 
possess,  but  Avhich  in  reality  had  been  lost. 

The  teaching  of  the  Two  Hierarchies  commended  itself 
to  the  Catholic  church,  although  the  treatises  of  Diony- 
sius  were  first  utilized  by  the  Monophysites,  whose  ap- 
peal to  them  created  suspicion  among  the  orthodox.  But 
the  system  was  so  consonant  with  the  prevailing  tenden- 
cies of  the  age,  it  lent  such  lustre  and  significance  to 
the  ritual  and  to  the  clergy,  that  it  could  not  fail  to  meet 
an  universal  response.  But  there  are  also  features  in  the 
fuller  thought  of  Dionysius  which  do  not  harmonize  with 
what  has  been  called  the  sacramental  theology,  either  in 
that  age  or  in  subsequent  periods.  There  are  glimpses 
of  a  tendency  purely  spiritual,  and  not  material  or  eccle- 
siastical, vistas  opening  up  to  the  view  some  larger  ranges 
of  religious  speculation  which  the  popular  mind  could 
not  follow.  It  is  very  significant,  for  example,  that  Dio- 
nysius almost  invariably  uses  the  human  name  of  the 
Saviour  even  in  his  most  exalted  and  sublimated  ap- 
peals. It  is  Jesus  who  is  coequal  with  the  Father,  Jesus 
who  has  created  the  hierarchies  of  heaven  and  earth,  and 
it  is  the  life  and  spirit  of  Jesus  which  ranges  through  them 
all,  imparting  their  energy  and  validity,  as  though  the 
name  of  Jesus  were  at  once  human  and  divine,  the  name 
at  which  every  knee  should  bow.  Another  unexplained 
feature  in  his  method,  is  his  substitution  of  other  designa- 
tions for  the  clerg}?  than  the  customary  ones  of  bishops, 
priests  or  presbyters,  and  deacons.  Again  he  insists  upon 
the  importance  of  holy  life  among  the   clergy  almost  in 


DIONYSIUS    THE   AREOPAGITE  507 

Montanist  or  Donatist  fashion,  as  an  essential  element  in 
making  the  ritnal  expositions  effective.  For  this  is  part 
of  that  life  of  Jesus  diffused  among  the  hierarchies,  with- 
out which  they  lose  their  power.  And  still  further,  he 
magnifies  the  importance  of  homiletical  expositions  of  the 
meaning  of  the  sacred  rites,  to  be  made  by  the  higher 
clergy,  as  if  in  their  words  alone  resided  the  mystic  effi- 
cacy through  which  the  hearers  are  brought  into  union 
and  communion  with  God.  In  this  way  he  neutralizes  in 
some  measure  the  tendency  in  his  system  toward  a  me- 
chanical theory  of  the  sacraments  that  makes  the  physical 
act  effective  without  the  intelligent  or  conscious  co-op- 
eration of  the  worshipper.  This  feature  in  the  writings 
of  Dionysius,  which  assigns  a  high  importance  to  homi- 
letical instruction  in  its  appeal  to  the  mind  or  conscience, 
appears  in  his  comment  on  the  eucharist,  where  he  seems 
to  intimate  that  the  communion  with  God  wherein  lies 
illumination  takes  place  in  the  sacrament  before  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  symbols  of  bread  and  wine. 

In  his  view  of  the  essential  nature  of  symbolism,  also, 
Dionysius  stands  by  himself.  The  conception  that  the 
symbol  expresses,  more  clearly  than  words  can  do,  the 
deeper  spiritual  functions  of  God  in  the  regeneration  of 
the  soul,  whether  it  be  true  or  not,  is  not  the  concep- 
tion he  adopts  in  his  ritual  expositions.  Rather  the 
sj^mbol  is  obscure  in  itself,  veiling  the  truth  in  darkness, 
until  its  clearer  exposition  is  reached  in  language.  This 
character  of  the  symbol  springs  from  the  very  nature  of 
that  process  of  emanation  by  which  all  things  in  the 
spiritual  or  the  visible  world  have  gone  forth  from  God. 
Since  this  is  conceived  as  a  descending  process,  it  reaches 
its  lowest  stage  when  the  divine  life  is  driven  to  express 
itself  in  corporeal  or  material  forms.  The  visible  creation 
is  good  and  is  filled  with  the  divine  life  according  to  its 
capacity,  but  this  capacity  is,  after  all,  so  inadequate 
that  visible  things  conceal  the  Deity  as  truly  as  they 
reveal  Him.  There  is,  according  to  Dionysius,  in  all  this 
another  purpose,  serviceable  to  the  church.  The  veil 
upon  nature,  or  the  interpretation  of  nature  as  an  allegory, 


508  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

prevents  the  profanations  of  the  divine  mysteries  by  the 
vulgar  or  the  uninitiated.  Only  within  the  church,  and  by 
sacred  expositions  of  which  the  clergy  are  capable  by  special 
divine  illumination,  is  the  veil  withdrawn  and  the  mystery 
of  nature  disclosed.  Between  this  teaching  and  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  ancient  nature-worships,  especially  by  the 
Egyptian  priesthood,  the  resemblance  is  obvious.  But  at 
any  rate  it  is  a  higher  teaching  than  the  opus  operatum 
conception  of  the  sacraments,  which  descends  rapidly  to 
magic,  theurgy,  and  the  lower  aspects  of  religion  without 
resistance  or  protest.  Traces  of  this  doctrine  of  Dionysius 
still  linger  about  the  Oriental  liturgies,  wherein  they  differ 
from  the  Latin,  making  them  obscure  to  one  wdio  comes  to 
them  with  Latin  presuppositions. 

From  this  view  of  the  symbol  or  the  veiled  revelation 
of  God  in  nature,  the  departure  of  Dionysius  was  easy 
in  another  direction,  as  when  he  teaches  that  to  the 
spiritual  enlightened  soul  the  symbol  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary, but  it  gazes  directly,  without  the  aid  of  media,  upon 
the  divine  reality.  Even  in  his  treatises  on  the  Two 
Hierarchies  he  cannot  suppress  this  conviction,  though 
his  object  there  is  to  commend  the  symbolical  worship 
of  the  church.  The  splendor  of  the  divine  light  is  re- 
vealed without  the  symbol  to  men  inspired,  and  their 
intellectual  insight  knows  no  concealment.^  In  their 
degree  and  according  to  their  capacity,  they  resemble  the 
celestial  hierarchy,  acted  upon  from  within,  no  longer  like 
the  multitude  who  are  moved  by  the  things  without. 
This  doctrine  is  brought  out  more  clearly  and  strongl}^ 
in  the  treatise  on  Mystic  Theology,  whose  object  is  to  show 
that  men  may  approach  more  closely  to  God  in  proportion 
as  they  escape  from  their  dependence  on  the  physical  or 
bodily  conditions,  shunning  all  signs  and  symbols  of  the 
divine,  in  order  to  rise  to  the  vision  of  the  reality  and 
the  more  intimate  knowledge  of  God.  A  formal  in- 
consistency like  this  would  seem  to  indicate  that  Dio- 
nysius held  to  the  distinction  of  the  esoteric  and  the 
exoteric,  —  the  one  for  the  few  enlightened  souls,  the  other 
^  De  Eccles.  Hier.  c.  iv.,  §  6. 


DIONYSIUS   THE   AREOPAGITE  509 

for  the  unintelligent  multitude  who  were  gathered  within 
the  church.  And  here  again  may  be  noted  the  influence 
of,  or  the  coincidence  with,  the  teaching  of  the  later  Greek 
philosophy,  and  the  initiations  of  the  Egyptian  priesthood. 
The  merits  and  the  deficiencies  of  Dionysius  appear 
in  their  most  striking  form  in  his  book  on  The  Divine 
Names,  in  some  respects  the  most  important  treatise  in 
the  later  Greek  theology,  after  the  age  of  Cyril.  It  is  a 
profoundly  speculative  work,  but  does  not  profess  to  be 
so ;  rather,  it  starts  with  the  explicit  statement  that  noth- 
ing can  be  known  of  the  names  of  God  or  of  the  nature  of 
God  except  through  Scripture.  The  name  of  God  stands 
for  the  revelation  of  the  divine  character,  as  when  it  was 
asked,  What  is  Thy  name  ?  with  the  answer,  Wherefore 
dost  thou  ask  after  m}^  name  ? 

"There  are  many  names  of  God,  as  when  they  introduce  Him,  say- 
ing, I  am  that  I  am,  —  life,  light,  God,  truth,  or  as  when  those  who 
are  wise  with  the  wisdom  of  God,  raise  to  Him,  the  Maker  of  all 
things,  a  hymn  of  praise  from  all  created  things,  as  the  good,  the 
beautiful,  as  the  wise,  the  beloved,  as  God  of  gods  and  Lord  of  lords, 
as  the  Holy  of  holies,  as  eternal,  He  who  is,  as  the  author  of  the  ages, 
as  the  giver  of  life,  as  wisdom,  as  mind,  as  AVord,  as  knowing  and  as 
having  in  highest  degree  all  treasures  of  all  knowledge ;  as  power  and 
as  ruler,  as  king  of  kings,  as  the  ancient  of  days,  but  not  aged,  or 
mutable;  as  salvation,  justice,  sanctification,  and  redemption;  in  His 
greatness  surpassing  all  things  and  as  subtility  in  the  air.  And  they 
also  say  of  Him  that  He  exists  in  minds,  and  in  souls  and  bodies  and 
in  heaven  and  in  earth,  and  at  once  the  same  in  the  same,  in  the 
world,  around  the  world,  above  the  world,  supercelestial,  supersub- 
stantial,  sun,  star,  fire,  water,  spirit,  dew  and  cloud,  even  the  stone, 
the  rock,  all  things  which  are,  and  nothing  of  the  things  which  are.''^ 

But  these  names  of  God  also  conceal  while  they  reveal. 
The  divine  existence  transcends  all  existence :  His  unity, 
which  it  is  beyond  the  power  of  the  mind  to  conceive, 
transcends  all  intelligence ;  His  goodness  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed by  words,  His  essence  is  above  essence.  His  mind 
inconceivable,  and  His  word  cannot  be  uttered.  He  must 
be  conceived  as  the  negation  of  word  and  mind  and  name. 
His  existence  has  no  analogy  in  other  existence.     He  is 

1  De  Div.  Nom.  c.  i.,  §  6. 


510  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

the  author  of  being  in  all  and  yet  Himself  without  being 
because  above  all  being.^  But  it  is  characteristic  of  the 
method  of  the  book  on  The  Divine  Names,  that  he  no 
longer  celebi'ates  the  ritual  of  the  Hierarchy,  as  the  mode 
of  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  God.  He  has  risen  now  to 
a  height  where  spirit  must  meet  spirit  alone.  Prayer  is 
the  means  of  approach  to  God,  and  this  not  because  God 
is  absent  or  at  a  distance  from  us,  but  because  through 
prayer  we  are  present  to  God  in  mind  and  spirit :  not  so 
much  that  God  approaches  us,  as  that  we  realize  His 
presence,  and  thus  draw  nigh  to  God.^ 

The  treatise  on  The  Divine  Names  so  magnifies  and  as 
it  were  revels  in  the  immanence  of  God,  from  whom  all 
things  proceed,  in  whom  they  exist,  sharing  in  the  divine 
goodness  and  beauty  and  wisdom,  that  it  becomes  a  serious 
question,  how  evil  can  exist  at  all  in  such  a  divine  crea- 
tion. Dionysius  boldly  faces  the  question^  by  denying  its 
existence  altogether.  Evil  is  simply  the  absence  of  the 
good :  it  is  defect  of  existence,  privation,  want,  feebleness 
or  frailty ;  but  it  has  no  positive  being  and  in  the  nature 
of  the  case  cannot  have,  for  all  existing  things  or  entities 
are  from  God,  who  is  goodness  and  love,  beauty  and  truth. 
There  can  be  no  rival  power  to  His  power  which  could 
impart  actual  existence  to  evil.  The  cause  of  all  things  is 
good;  therefore  the  principle  and  end  of  all  things,  even 
those  having  the  marks  of  evil,  things  impotent  or  infirm, 
is  also  good.*  Evil  as  evil  is  not  an  entity ;  does  not 
exist  in  things,  not  even  in  demons,  but  is  rather  lack  of 
power,  imbecility ;  for  even  they  seek  good  in  so  far  as 
they  desire  to  be,  or  to  exist  and  to  know,  but  through 
defect  of  the  true  appetite  they  do  not  reach  the  good.^ 
The  familiar  comparison  is  that  of  cold,  which  is  the  want 
of  heat,  or  of  darkness,  which  is  the  want  of  light.  When 
the  day  darkens  at  its  close,  nothing  is  added  to  what 
existed  before,  but  something  has  disappeared.  And  so 
when    man  is  withdrawn  from  the   world,  since  all  life 

1  De  Div.  JVom.  c.  i.,  §  1.  ^  De  Div.  Nom.  c.  iv. 

2  De  Div.  Nom.  c.  iii.  *  De  Div.  Nom.  c.  iv.,  §  ol. 

^  De  Div.  Nom.  c.  iv.,  §  34. 


DIONYSIUS   THE   AREOPAGITE  511 

comes  from  the  eternal  life,  and  since  by  participation  in 
the  divine  life  alone,  here  and  everywhere,  are  all  forms  of 
life  sustained,  it  follows  that  those  in  whom  the  life  here 
has  been  deficient,  who  have  failed  through  weakness  to 
reap  the  true  results  of  life,  shall  return  again  to  the  one 
life  and  again  become  alive. ^ 

We  have  here,  in  sharp  contrast,  the  difference  between 
the  Greek  anthropology  and  the  Latin.  In  the  one,  man 
appears  as  weak  and  frail,  and  the  Fall  is  the  result  of  human 
feebleness  ;  in  the  other,  man  appears  not  only  as  weak,  but 
as  vicious ;  in  the  one,  he  is  presented  as  the  object  of  the 
divine  compassion,  as  making  by  his  situation  a  touching 
appeal  to  the  divine  aid  and  mercy,  which  responds  readily 
in  the  fulness  of  its  power;  in  the  other,  he  is  an  object 
of  the  divine  condemnation,  because  of  his  self-willed  and 
vicious  purpose,  nor  can  he  be  a  recipient  of  the  divine 
mercy,  until  some  obstacle  has  been  overcome  which  pre- 
vents his  immediate  reception  into  the  divine  favor. 
According  to  Dionysius,  there  is  no  obstacle,  and  no 
atonement ;  the  sacrifice  offered  in  worship  is  an  obla- 
tion of  gratitude  and  thanksgiving ;  there  is  no  original 
sin  in  the  Latin  or  Augustinian  conception  of  the  phrase. 
The  failure  of  man  to  see  or  attain  the  good  is  attribu- 
table to  the  freedom  of  the  will,  not  to  the  lack  of  freedom  ; 
and  the  remoter  cause  of  the  departure  of  the  will  from 
rectitude,  is  weakness  which  the  divine  goodness  aims  to 
strengthen,  or  ignorance  which  the  divine  enlightenment 
aims  to  overcome. 

It  is  among  the  consequences  of  the  Dionysian  system, 
that  it  so  harmonizes  man  with  his  natural  environment 
and  with  God,  as  to  reduce  any  contradiction  in  life  to 
a  nullity.  The  stimulus  to  struggle  is  weakened,  as  well 
as  the  power  to  subdue  the  forces  hostile  to  his  well- 
being.  The  history  of  the  Western  church  was  one  of 
prolonged  antagonism  between  the  spiritual  and  the  secu- 
lar, between  church  and  state,  between  man  and  outward 
nature,  in  which  an  evil  agency  was  believed  to  be  active, 
if  not  supreme.     But  in  the  East  there  was  for  the  most 

1  De  Dili.  Norn.  c.  vi.,  §  34. 


512  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

part  harmony  in  the  relations  between  cliurch  and  state. 
Only  when  the  state  proposed  to  take  away  the  images, 
did  the  monkish  element  rise  in  fanatic  opposition.  And 
again,  the  Dionysian  teaching,  that  in  contemplation  and 
in  prayer  does  man  rise  above  the  ritual  and  come  by 
devotion  to  a  knowledge  of  God  which  the  intellect 
cannot  attain,  had  also  its  effect  in  elevating  the  men  of 
contemplation,  the  monks,  to  the  high  places  of  honor  in 
the  church,  although  they  still  remained  in  the  ranks  of 
the  laity.  In  the  West  there  was  bitter  and  continual 
rivalry  between  the  episcopate  and  the  raonasteiy,  the 
victory  leaning  now  to  one  side,  now  to  the  other.  But 
there  was  no  such  antagonism  in  the  East.  The  holy  laity 
who  had  received  consecration  as  monks,  and  who  bj^  prayer 
contemplated  the  divine  reality,  constitute  the  sacred  class 
out  of  whom  the  bishops  are  chosen,  as  it  is  becoming  that 
those  should  be,  who  are  to  preside  over  the  worship  of 
the  people. 

It  does  not,  indeed,  follow  that  the  Dionysian  teaching 
is  responsible  for  the  stagnation  which  has  characterized 
the  Eastern  church ;  for  this  immobility,  this  lack  of  prog- 
ress, may  be  partly  owing  to  other  causes.  Unlike  the 
West,  the  Empire  of  Constantinople  did  not  receive  the 
influx  of  a  new  people,  who  were  ultimately  to  become 
the  founders  of  a  higher  civilization,  and  who  came 
bringing  with  them  a  native  stock  of  endowment,  quite  as 
valuable  as  the  training  they  were  to  receive  at  the 
hands  of  the  Latin  church.  Nor  was  the  West  shut  in  by 
the  fanatical  adherents  of  a  lower  religion  like  Islam,  who 
were  incapable  of  conversion,  and  on  whom  the  human 
appeals  of  Christianity  made  no  impression.  Under  hap- 
pier auspices,  the  teaching  of  Dionysius,  representing  so 
universally  the  spirit  of  the  Eastern  church,  might  have 
led  to  other  results.  As  it  was,  however  deficient  that 
teaching  may  have  been  in  achieving  the  true  psychology 
of  man,  or  in  stimulating  his  powers  to  their  full  develop- 
ment, yet  in  its  doctrine  of  God  it  rose  to  a  height  which 
the  Latin  church  never  equalled.  It  got  rid  of  the  idea 
of  the  creation  as  evil,  or  as  held  in  bondage  to  an  evil 


DIONYSIUS   THE   AREOPAGITE  513 

2)ower;  it  presented  God  as  the  source  of  unity,  and  though, 
in  His  inmost  essence.  He  was  still  represented  as  incom- 
prehensible, yet  the  devout  mind  could  trace  the  centripe- 
tal movement  of  all  the  lines  of  activity  to  His  central 
being,  in  whom  "  all  the  radii  of  the  vast  circle  of  life  con- 
verge." It  was  no  slight  result  to  have  attained  this  con- 
clusion. And  again  the  ritual  system  of  Dionysius  stood 
to  his  own  age,  as  well  as  to  subsequent  times,  in  place 
of  those  richer  modern  develojjments,  which  it  lacked  any 
longer  the  power  to  create,  —  poetry  and  painting,  music, 
science,  and  the  healing  art,  substitutes  to  the  modern 
world  for  the  mysterious  ceremonial  of  the  altar. 

It  was  the  system  of  Dionysius  also  which  did  for  the 
Western  church  a  work  it  was  unable  to  do  for  itself. 
Not  until  the  ninth  century,  when  his  books  were  trans- 
lated into  Latin  by  John  Scotus  Erigena,  did  the  influence 
of  this  Eastern  mysticism  begin  to  tell  upon  Latin  thought. 
The  Latin  litui'gy  had  already  received  its  form  and  char- 
acter, and  Latin  theology  had  been  developed  upon  an 
Augustinian  basis,  when  the  poetry  of  Dionysius  came 
as  an  enlarging,  elevating,  and  softening  spell  upon 
Latin  severity  and  its  crude  literalism.  More,  even,  than 
Augustine  was  Dionysius  held  in  repute  by  the  school- 
men in  the  Middle  Ages.  To  Aquinas  and  to  other  com- 
mentators upon  his  books,  he  contributed  that  charm  not 
indigenous  to  the  Latin  mind,  which  it  owes  to  its  de- 
spised rival  of  the  East.  Through  Aquinas  his  influence 
passed  into  the  soul  of  Dante,  thus  becoming  the  founda- 
tion of  modern  culture,  ever  and  anon  reappearing,  when 
life  grows  dull  and  sordid,  to  reinvest  it  with  a  divinei- 
meaning.  But  wherever  his  influence  was  felt,  it  carried 
with  it  a  twofold  result ;  on  the  one  hand  it  increased 
the  interest  in  the  ritual,  and  on  the  other  it  prepared 
the  mystics  of  the  later  Middle  Ages  for  the  emancipation 
from  ritual  observance,  or  the  relegation  of  it  to  harmless 
subordination. 1 

1  The  best  edition  of  the  works  of  Dionysius  is  contained  in  Migne, 
Fatr.  Gr.,  Vol.  III.,  followed  in  Vol.  IV.  by  the  Commentary  of  Maximus. 
Among  his  disciples  in  the  Latin  church  after  John  Scotus  Erigena,  who 
2  L 


514  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

first  translated  his  writings  about  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century,  were 
Peter  the  Lombard,  Hugo  of  St.  Victor,  Robert  Grossetete,  Bishop  of  Lin- 
coln, Albert  the  Great,  and  Dionysius  the  Carthusian.  On  the  indebtedness 
of  Thomas  Aquinas,  of.  Migne,  IlL,  Obs.  XII.  90,  for  a  list  of  passages 
cited  by  Thomas  from  his  writings  (ut  sicut  Doctor  Angelicus  ex  illo  sole 
magnum  sapientiae  lumen  accepit).  The  study  of  Dionysius  was  cher- 
ished by  the  mystics  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  was  also  cultivated 
by  the  scholars  of  the  Renaissance  ;  not,  however,  for  the  pui-pose  of 
quickening  an  interest  in  the  declining  fortunes  of  the  Mediteval  ritual, 
but  for  his  philosophy  of  nature  and  his  fusion  of  the  natural  with  the 
spiritual.  In  the  fifteenth  century.  Dean  Colet,  of  St.  Paul's,  published 
paraphrases  of  the  Hierarchies  with  comments  (Eng.  Trans.,  18G9).  In 
addition  to  Bishop  Westcott's  admirable  study  of  Dionysius  in  his  Belig. 
Thought  in  the  West,  cf.  articles  in  Diet.  Chris.  Biog.,  with  a  list  of  the 
literature,  and  Herzog,  Real  Encyc.  See  also  Kanakis,  J.,  Dion.,  der 
Areop,  nach  seinem  Character  als  Philosoph.,  1881. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   lord's    supper  1 

The  last  half  of  the  fourth  century  was  the  beginning 
of  an  age  of  ritual  activity,  in  the  course  of  which  the 
Lord's  Supper  was  transformed  into  the  Mass  of  the 
Roman  church,  or  into  the  imposing  drama  of  the  Oriental 
Mystery.  To  this  process  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  Basil,  Greg- 
ory of  Nyssa,  and  Chrysostom  contributed.  The  doctrine 
of  Cyril  of  Alexandria  regarding  the  incarnation  also  in- 
fluenced the  development  of  the  sacrament  of  the  altar, 
combining  with  a  mysteriosophy,  as  it  has  been  called,  to 
which  Syria  and  Egypt  contributed.  During  this  period 
creative  theological  activity  declined;  the  mind  of  the 
church  became  weary  of  incessant  controversy,  and  scep- 
tical of  the  power  of  the  human  reason  to  attain  the  truth. 
For  reason  was  substituted  tradition,  to  which  the  appeal 
was  henceforth  taken ;  while  ritual  became  to  the  devout 
imagination  a  substitute  for  philosophy,  science,  art,  poetry, 
and  literature. 

1  For  the  earlier  sources  of  the  liturgies,  of.  Apos.  Cons.,  Bks.  II.,  VII., 
VIII.  ;  Cyril,  Mijstrujogic  Catechism ;  the  writings  of  Chrysostom,  in 
Bingham,  Chris.  Antiq.,  Bk.  XIV.;  Dionysius,  De  Eccles.  Hier.  in 
Migne,  Patrol.  Gr.,  Vol.  II.;  the  collections  of  liturgies  in  Assemani 
and  Daniel ;  Brightman,  Liturgies,  Eastern  and  Western,  Vol.  I.,  The 
Eastern  Liturgies;  Swainson,  The  Greek  Liturgies;  art.  Liturgies,  in 
Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.,  with  full  bibliography ;  Eenaudot,  Liturgiarium 
Orientalium  Collectio  ;  Goar,  Euchologion,  sive  Eituale  Graecorum  ;  Bun- 
sen,  Analecta  ante-Nicaena,  Vol.  III.,  and  Hippohjtus  and  his  Age,  Vol. 
IV.;  Neale,  His.  of  the  Holy  Eastern  Church,  Introd.,  Vols.  I.,  II.; 
Palmer,  Origiues  Liturgicae;  Freeman,  Principles  of  Divine  Service, 
Koestlin,  Geschichte  des  christlichen  Gottesdienstes ;  Harnack,  'J'h.,  Christ- 
liche  Gemeindegottesdienst ;  Probst,  Liturgie  d.  drei  ersten  christlichen 
Jahrhunderte ;  Harnack,  Gesch.  d.  altchristl.  Literatur,  Vol.  I. ;  Steitz, 
Die  Abendmahlslehre  der  griechischen  Kirche  in  ihrer  geschichtlichen 
EntioicJdung ;  Gass,  St/mholik  der  griechischen  Kirche;  Hotting,  Die 
Lehre  der  dltesten  Kirche  vom  Opfer  im  Lehen  und  Cultus  der  Christen. 

515 


516  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

The  two  forms  of  worship  which  had  existed  from  the 
first  in  close  relationship  were  gradually  separated  and  fol- 
lowed independent  careers.  The  homiletic  service,  con- 
sisting of  prayer  and  praise,  the  reading  of  Scripture  and 
exhortation,  was  mainly  developed  in  the  monasteries,  espe- 
cially after  the  introduction  of  the  Horse,  when  each  day, 
no  less  than  the  year,  was  stamped  with  the  purpose  of 
devotion.  Thus  was  produced  the  Breviary  of  the  Roman 
church,  the  Horologium  of  the  Greek  church.  Beyond  the 
adaptation  of  this  type  of  worship  to  the  growing  calendar 
of  the  Christian  year,  and  the  introduction  of  the  writings 
of  church  Fathers  for  the  purpose  of  edification  along  with 
Scripture,  for  which  the  early  church  also  contains 
the  precedent,  no  new  principle  was  introduced  into  the 
homiletic  worship.  This  type  of  worship  was  the  expres- 
sion of  religious  experience  in  its  uniform  as  well  as  its 
changing  phases,  bringing  also  the  conscience  and  the 
intellect  into  relation  with  the  service  of  God.  Its 
tendency  was  toward  a  rich  and  dense  intricacy  of  de- 
tail, which  involved  the  necessity  for  reduction  in  order 
to  practical  availability.  As  the  reservoir  of  religious 
experience,  the  Breviary  was  filled  with  legends  and 
miraculous  stories,  reflecting  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The 
recitation  of  the  Psalter,  at  first  one  of  its  leading  feat- 
ures, and  also  the  use  of  Scripture,  were  to  a  large  extent 
superseded  by  what  must  then  have  seemed  the  more 
interesting  extracts  from  the  homilies  of  the  Fathers  or  the 
Lives  of  the  Saints.  Whatever  its  defects,  and  the}^  were 
many  and  great,  the  Breviary  stood  as  a  distinct  mode  of 
worship,  in  its  essential  characteristic  recognized  at  the 
Reformation  as  of  the  highest  importance.  It  became 
therefore  the  prevailing  order  of  worship  in  the  Protes- 
tant churches,  leading  to  the  subordination  of  the  Lord's 
Supper.  The  English  and  the  Lutheran  churches  retained 
more  of  the  forms  of  the  Breviary  than  did  the  Reformed 
church,  where  worship  was  confined  to  prayer,  praise.  Script- 
ure reading,  and  the  sermon,  while  the  recitation  of  the 
Creed,  the  Psalter,  and  of  the  Lord's  prayer  was  omitted. 
But  in  the  extemporaneous  prayer  of  the  Reformed  church 


THE  lord's  supper  517 

and  in  the  sermon  is  still  retained  the  continuation  of  the 
method  which  gave  the  Breviary  its  interest  and  its  power. 
The  expression  of  a  living  religious  experience  with  the 
adaptation  of  religion  to  the  passing  incidents  of  life  tlms 
again  became  an  important  element  of  Christian  worship. ^ 
The  eucharist  was  the  service  for  the  people  as  a  whole 
and  in  their  collective  capacity.  It  was  developed  by  the 
bishops  in  their  parishes  to  meet  the  needs  and  impress 
the  imagination  of  those  who  had  neither  time  nor  disposi- 
tion for  the  cultivation  of  a  subjective  or  inward  piety.  It 
represented  the  "  Christ  for  us  "  rather  than  the  "  Christ 
in  us."  After  the  sixth  century,  the  term  '•liturgy,'  which 
in  the  early  church  included  both  forms  of  worship,  was 
restricted  to  the  eucharist  alone.  In  order  to  measure 
the  extent  and  the  depth  of  the  transformation  of  the  eu- 
charist, it  is  necessary  to  dwell  for  a  moment  on  the  wor- 
ship of  the  early  church  in  the  first  three  centuries. 


The  Lord's  Supper  was  at  first  organically  related  to  an 
institution  known  as  the  Agape  or  Love-feast.  A  certain 
obscurity  still  hangs  about  the  agape,  some  points  relating 
to  it  being  undetermined ;  but  the  main  point  is  clear, 
that  the  eucharist  was  associated  and  in  some  places  iden- 
tified with  it,  as  the  ordinary  evening  meal.  The  first 
step  in  the  transformation  of  the  Lord's  Supper  was  its 
separation  from  the  agape,  and  its  transference  from  the 
evening  to  the  morning,  a  change  accomplished  by  the  time 
of  Justin  Martyr  or  about  the  middle  of  the  second  cen- 
tury. But  the  agape  still  continued  to  be  a  social  Christian 
feast,  observed  in  different  ways  and,  as  at  Alexandria  in 

1  Cf.  Art.  Breviary,  in  Diet.  Chris.  Antiq.,  and  in  Herzog.  B.  E.  ;  tiie 
Breviaries  of  Salisbury  and  Aberdeen,  tlie  Quignonian,  Mozarabic,  and 
Roman;  Palmer,  Orif/ines  Liturfficae ;  Tracts  for  the  Times,  Vol.  III.; 
Freeman,  Principles  of  Divine  Service  ;  works  on  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer  by  Proctor,  Cardwell,  Luckock,  Daniel,  Stephens,  Huntington, 
W.  R.,  and  others;  Kliefoth,  Litnrcjische  Ahhandhingen ;  Richter,  Die 
evanffelischen  Kirrhenordnumjen  des  sechszehnten  Jahrhiniderts ;  Jacobi, 
Die  Litnrgik  des  Reformataren  ;  Lohe,  Agende  fur  christliche  Gemeinden 
des  hitherischen  Bekenntnisses. 


518  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

the  third  century,  still  connected  with  or  followed  by  the 
eucharist.  The  last  stage  in  its  history  is  marked  by  the 
action  of  councils  in  the  latter  part  of  the  third  and  dur- 
ing the  fourth  century,  prohibiting  its  celebration  in  the 
churches  and  finally  suppressing  it  altogether.  Not  until 
this  had  been  accomplished  was  the  way  fully  open  to  sub- 
stitute another  conception  of  the  Lord's  Supper  which  be- 
came the  basis  of  the  Catholic  liturgies.  But  the  agape  did 
not  disappear  without  leaving  traces  behind  of  its  hold  upon 
the  popular  sentiment.  In  the  candles  which  blaze  upon 
the  altar  in  the  full  light  of  day,  there  may  be  the  reminder, 
the  protest  also,  it  may  be,  of  the  time  when  candles  were 
required  for  the  consecrated  evening  meal.  In  the  simple 
ceremony  of  saying  Grace  at  meals  survives  the  prayer  of 
the  earlier  usage  in  the  celebration  of  the  eucharist,  when 
the  spirit  of  Christ's  command  was  perpetuated  in  the 
power  of  simplicity.  This  do,  in  remembrance  of  me. 

The  agape  was  not  an  institution  devised  or  created  by 
the  early  church,  but  must  be  regarded  as  the  continuation 
as  well  as  the  commemoration  of  Christ's  last  supper  with 
His  disciples.  It  is  first  mentioned  by  St.  Paul  ^  (1  Cor.  xi.), 
who  seeks  to  correct  the  abuses  of  the  rite  generated  by  the 
unspiritual  mind,  which  resolved  it  into  a  mere  occasion 
for  satisfying  hunger  with  no  appreciation  of  its  sacra- 
mental purpose.  But  St.  Paul  did  not  propose  its  aboli- 
tion because  of  the  abuse,  but  enforced  its  spiritual  character 
by  giving  to  the  church  of  Corinth  an  account  of  its  origi- 
nal institution.  He  also  endeavored  to  regulate  that  other 
form  of  Christian  worship,  the  homiletic  service  of  prayer 
and  praise  and  exhortation,  where  the  prophets  introduced 
disorder  in  their  eagerness  to  speak  ;  but  he  did  not  propose 
the  suppression  of  the  prophetic  office  in  the  interest  of 
orderly  administration. 

The  account  of  the  Lord's  Supper  which  is  given  in  the 
Didaehe  is  a  description  of  the  agape : 

"  Now  concerning  the  Eucharist,  thus  give  thanks :  Jirst  concerning 
the  cup.     We  thank  Thee,  our  Father,  for  the  holy  vine  of  David  Tliy 

1  Cf.  also  2  Peter,  ii.  13;  Jude,  12. 


THE  lord's  supper  519 

servant  which  Thou  hast  made  known  to  us  through  -Jesus  Thy  ser- 
vant; to  Thee  be  the  glory  forever.  And  concerning  the  broken  bread ; 
We  thank  Thee,  our  Father,  for  the  life  and  knowledge  which  Thou 
hast  made  known  to  us  through  Jesus,  Thy  servant ;  to  Thee  be  the 
glory  forever.  Just  as  this  broken  bread  was  scattered  over  the  hills 
and  having  been  gathered  together  became  one,  so  let  Thy  church  be 
gathered  together  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  into  Thy  kingdom ;  for 
Tliine  is  the  glory  and  the  power  through  Jesus  Christ  forever.  But 
let  no  one  eat  or  drink  of  your  Eucharist  except  those  baptized  into 
the  Lord's  name ;  for  in  regard  to  this  the  Lord  hath  said :  Give  not 
that  which  is  holy  unto  the  dogs. 

'■'■Now  nfler  ye  are  filled  thus  do  ye  give  thanks:  We  thank  Thee, 
holy  Father,  for  Thy  holy  name,  which  Thou  hast  caused  to  dwell  in 
our  hearts ;  and  for  the  knowledge  and  faith  and  inunortality,  which 
Thou  hast  made  known  to  us  through  Jesus  Thy  servant ;  to  Thee  be 
glory  forever.  Thou,  Almighty  Master,  didst  create  all  things  for 
Thy  name's  sake  :  both  food  and  drink  Tliou  didst  give  to  men  for 
enjoyment,  in  order  that  they  might  give  thanks  to  Thee.  But  to  us 
Thou  hast  graciously  given  spiritual  food  and  drink  and  eternal 
life  through  Thy  servant.  Before  all  things  we  thank  Thee  that 
Thou  art  powerful ;  to  Thee  be  glory  forever.  Remember,  Lord, 
Thy  Church,  to  deliver  it  from  every  evil  and  to  make  it  perfect  in 
Thy  love,  and  gather  it  from  the  four  winds,  the  sanctified,  into  Thy 
Kingdom  which  Thou  hast  pi-epared  for  it ;  for  Thine  is  the  power 
and  glory  forever.  Let  Grace  come  and  let  this  world  pass  away. 
Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David  !  AVhoever  is  holy  let  him  come  :  Who- 
ever is  not  let  him  x-epent.  IMaranatha.  Amen.  But  permit  the 
prophets  to  give  thanks  as  much  as  they  will." 

Ill  the  Ignatian  Epistles  the  eucharist  is  identified  with 
the  agape :  "  Let  that  be  deemed  a  j^roper  eucharist  which 
is  administered  by  the  bishop  or  by  one  to  whom  he  iias 
entrusted  it.  .  .  .  It  is  not  lawful  without  the  bishop 
either  to  baptize  or  to  celebrate  a  love-feast."  ^  The  allusion 
in  the  Epistle  of  Pliny  to  Trajan  is  indefinite ;  the  time 
is  not  given,  but  the  language  describes  the  agape ;  the 
Christians  were  accustomed  to  meet  on  a  stated  day,  before 
sunrise,  when  they  sang  a  hymn  to  Christ  as  to  a  god,  tak- 
ing a  vow,  also,  to  abstain  from  all  evil  practices.  Then 
they  separated,  and  again  they  met  for  the  purpose  of 

1  In  the  Longer  Greek  Recension  this  passage  is  amplified  and  the  dis- 
tinction made  between  them  :  "  It  is  not  lawful  without  the  bishop  either 
to  baptize  or  to  offer  or  to  present  sacrifice,  or  to  celebrate  a  love-feast" 
{Ad  Smijr.  c.  viii.). 


520  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

taking  food  of  an  ordinary  and  harmless  character.^  The 
first  intimation  of  the  Lord's  Supper  as  a  rite  distinct  from 
the  agape  is  contained  in  the  Apology  of  Justin  Martyr 
about  the  middle  of  the  second  century ;  but  whether 
Justin  is  describing  the  usage  at  Rome,  or  in  Palestine,  is 
uncertain.  He  does  not  mention  the  agape,  but  in  the 
account  which  he  gives  of  the  worship,  the  eucharist  fol- 
lows a  service  at  which  the  Scriptures  were  read,  prayers 
were  offered,  and  there  was  a  sermon  or  exhortation. 

"  Ou  the  day  called  Sunday,  all  who  live  in  the  city  or  in  the 
country  gather  together  to  one  place,  and  the  memoirs  of  the  Apostles 
or  the  writings  of  the  prophets  are  read,  as  long  as  time  permits ; 
then,  when  the  reader  has  ceased,  the  president  verbally  instructs 
and  exhorts  to  the  imitation  of  these  good  things.  Then  we  all  rise 
together  and  pray,  and,  as  we  before  said,  when  our  prayer  is  ended, 
bread  and  wine  and  water  are  brought,  and  the  president  in  like  man- 
ner offers  prayers  and  thanksgivings  according  to  his  ability,  and  the 
people  assent  by  saying  Amen.  And  there  is  a  distribution  to  each, 
and  a  participation  of  that  over  which  thanks  have  been  given,  and 
to  those  who  are  absent  a  portion  is  sent  by  the  deacons.  And  they 
who  are  well  to  do  and  willing,  give  what  each  thinks  fit,  and  what  is 
collected  is  deposited  with  the  president,  who  succors  the  orphans  and 
widows  and  those  in  sickness  or  want,  the  prisoners  and  the  strangers 
among  us."  ^ 

Justin  has  also  left  another  account  of  the  eucharist, 
where  it  follows  the  baptism  of  a  catechumen,  who  is 
brought  to  the  place  where  those  called  the  brethren  are 
assembled,  when  prayers  are  offered  "  for  ourselves  and  the 
baptized  person,  and  for  all  others  in  every  place.  The 
prayers  ended,  we  salute  one  another  with  a  kiss : 

"  There  is  then  brought  to  the  president  or  leader  among  the 
brethren  bread  and  a  cup  of  wine  mixed  with  water;  and  he,  taking 
tliem,  gives  praise  and  glory  to  the  Father  of  the  univei'se  through 
the  name  of  the  Son  and  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  offers  thanks  at  con- 
siderable length  for  our  being  considered  worthy  to  receive  these 
things.  And  when  he  has  concluded  the  prayers  and  thanksgiving, 
all  the  people  express  assent  by  saying  Amen.     And  when  the  presi- 

1  "  Quod  essent  soliti  state  die  ante  lucem  convenire,  carmenque 
Christo  quasi  dec  secum  invicem  .  .  .  quibus  peractis  moreni  sibi  disce- 
dendi  fuisse,  rursustjue  cneundi  ad  capiendum  cibum,  promiscuum  tamen 
atque  innoxium  "  (Epis.  x.  96). 

2  Apol.  c.  Ixvii. 


THE  lord's  supper  521 

dent  has  given  thanks  and  the  people  have  expressed  assent,  those 
wlio  are  called  by  us  deacons  give  to  each  of  those  present  to  partake 
of  the  bread  and  wine  mixed  with  water,  over  whicii  the  thanksgiving 
was  pronounced,  and  to  those  who  are  absent  they  carry  away  a 
portion."  ^ 

The  reasons  for  the  transference  of  the  eucharistic  ser- 
vice from  the  evening  to  the  morning  are  obscure.  It  may 
have  been  that  the  prohibition  of  secret  societies  by  Trajan 
was  a  motive  for  the  change,  but  other  motives  must  have 
combined  toward  this  result  which  are  not  given.  It  may 
have  been  that  for  a  while  and  in  some  places  the  agape 
was  discontinued,  but  it  was  still  observed  in  North  Africa 
in  the  time  of  Tertullian.^  In  the  account  which  he  has 
given  in  his  Apology^  it  appears  as  a  service  complete  in 
itself,  having  an  eleemosynary  character,  but  revealing  no 
trace  of  its  earlier  connection  with  the  Lord's  Supper.  So, 
also,  at  Rome,  in  the  earlier  part  of  the  third  century, 
according  to  the  recently  recovered  Canons  of  Hippolytus, 
the  agape  was  kept  as  a  charitable  feast.  Beyond  its 
mention  in  these  Canons  in  the  same  connection  with  the 
eucharist,  there  is  no  trace  of  any  other  affiliation  be- 
tween them.  But  the  careful  provision  there  made  for 
the  orderly  observance  of  the  agape  points  to  the  motive 
which  had  led  to  its  separation  from  the  eucharist.  Fear 
of  scandal,  the  base  insinuation  of  heathen  suspicions, 
actual  abuses,  inability  of  the  Christian  people  themselves 
to  observe  the  divine  injunction,  and  thus  rightly  keep  the 
feast  in  remembrance  of  Christ,  were  among  the  potent 
causes  which  led  first  to  the  separation  of  the  eucliaiist 
from  the  supper,  and  then  to  the  final  suppression  of  the 
agape  .^ 

1  Apol.  c.  Ixv.  2  j^pol.  c.  xxxix.     Cf.  Cyprian,  Epis.  Ixii.,  c.  16. 

3  "Si  agape  fit  vel  coena  ab  aliquo  pauperibus  paratur  KvpiaKfj  tempore 
accensus  luceruae,  praesente  episcopo  svirtiat  diaconus  ad  accedendum 
Episcopus  autem  oret  super  eos  et  sum  qui  invitavit  illos.  Et  uecessaria 
est  pauperibus  evxapi.a-Tia  quae  est  in  initio  missae.  Missos  autem  facial 
eos,  ut  separatim  recedant,  antequam  tenebrae  oboriantur.  Psalmos 
recitent  antequam  recedant. 

"  Edant  bibantque  ad  satietatem,  neque  vero  ad  ebrietatem,  sed  in 
divina  praesentia  cum  laude  Dei. 

"  Ne  quis  multum  loquatur  neve  clamet,  ne  forte  vos  irrideant,  neve  sint 


522  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

In  the  time  of  Clement  of  Alexandria,  nearly  contem- 
j)oraneous  with  the  time  of  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus, 
the  agape  still  maintained  its  original  character  as  the 
form  in  which  the  eucharist  was  celebrated.  Clement 
makes  no  distinction  between  them.  His  book,  The  In- 
structor, is  based  upon  the  principle  that  in  the  Lord's 
Supper  the  great  Teacher  was  giving  the  model  of 
every  meal ;  with  which  also  agree  the  words  of  St.  Paul, 
"  Whether  ye  eat  or  drink,  do  all  to  the  glory  of  God." 
The  agape  in  Alexandria  was  not,  as  in  Rome,  a  supper 
for  the  poor,  but  the  evils  accompanying  it  sprang  from  an 
opposite  character :  it  was  a  banquet  of  the  rich,  and  its 
simplicity  and  purity  were  threatened  by  the  variety  and 
richness  of  the  food.  Hence  the  agape  becomes  Clement's 
text  for  a  dissertation  on  the  right  conduct  of  life ;  he 
quotes  St.  Paul's  condemnation  of  the  abuses  caused  by 
not  discerning  the  Lord's  body,  but,  like  St.  Paul,  he 
does  not  propose  the  abolition  of  the  evening  meal,  seek- 
ing rather  for  its  purification,  till  it  reaches  the  high 
standard  set  by  Christ.^  From  Clement's  account,  it  may 
be  inferred  that  the  agape,  or  Lord's  Supper,  was  kept 
weekly  in  the  churches  on  the  evening  of  the  Lord's  day, 
and  also  daily  in  private  houses.^    In  the  latter  case,  where 

scandalo  homiuibus,  ita  ut  in  contumeliam  vertatur  qui  vos  invitavit  cum 
appareat,  vos  a  bono  online  aberrare. 

"  Si  quis  viduis  coenam  parare  vult,  curet,  ut  habeant  coenam  et  ut 
dimitantur,  antequam  sol  occidat"  (cc.  xxxii.,  xxxiii.,  xxxiv.,  xxxv.,  Die 
Canones  Hippolyti,  von  Dr.  P.  H.  Achelis,  in  Texte  u.  Untejsuch.,  B. 
VI,,  H.  4.    Cf.  also  Apos.  Cons.  II.  28). 

1  Paedag.,  II.  c.  1. 

2  Paedag.,  II.  1,  and  II.  10;  Strom.  VII.  7.  For  a  discussion  of  the 
subject,  cf.  Bigg,  Christian  Platonists  of  Alexandria,  pp.  102-106  :  "All 
that  Clement  says  upon  this  subject  is  of  the  highest  value  to  those  who 
wish  to  recast  for  themselves  a  faithful  image  of  the  church  life  of  the 
end  of  the  second  century.  But  of  all  his  phrases,  the  most  important 
ai'e  those  which  assure  us  that  the  ordinary  evening  meal  of  a  Christian 
household  was  in  a  real  sense  an  agape.  It  was  preceded  by  the  same 
acts  of  worship  ;  it  was  blessed  by  a  thanksgiving  ;  it  was  a  true  Eucha- 
rist. The  house  father  is  the  house  priest.  The  highest  act  of  Christian 
devotion  is  at  the  same  time  the  simplest  and  most  natural.  Husband, 
wife,  and  child,  the  domestic  slave,  and  the  invited  guest  gathered  round 
the  domestic  board  to  enjoy  with  thankfulness  the  good  gifts  of  God, 
uplifting  their  hearts  in  filial  devotion,  expanding  them  in  brotherly  love 


THE  loed's  supper  523 

no  bishop  or  presbyter  could  have  been  present,  the  head 
of  the  househokl  must  have  presided  at  the  feast. 

The  agape  continued  to  be  held,  until  after  the  middle 
of  the  fourth  centur}^,  in  the  West  as  a  charitable  supper 
for  the  poor ;  ^  in  the  East,  at  Alexandria,  as  an  ordinary 
evening  meal  with  which  the  Lord's  supper  was  connected. 
But  the  evils  which  waited  upon  it,  even  when  the  admission 
to  the  rite  was  more  carefully  guarded,  as  by  the  Catechu- 
menate,  must  have  greatly  increased  when  the  heathens 
were  flocking  into  the  church  without  any  adequate  prepara- 
tion. The  rise  of  monasticism  also  must  have  generated  an 
influence  hostile  to  its  continuance  in  the  East.^  After  the 
middle  of  the  fourth  century,  its  observance  in  the  churches 
was  forbidden  by  the  influential  Council  of  Laodicea  (Can. 
28).^  The  prohibition  coincides  Avith  the  new  age  of 
ritual  activity,  which  was  bringing  in  a  stately  ceremonial. 
An  incongruity  was  felt  between  the  archaic  simplicity  of 
the  primitive  supper  and  the  solemnity  and  splendor  of 
the  new  churches.  But  opinion  was  still  divided.  The 
Synod  of  Gangra,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century, 
reflects  the  sentiment  in  its  favor:  "If  any  one  despises 
those  Avho  in  the  faith  solemnize  the  agape,  and  for  the 
honor  of  the  Lord  invite  their  brethren  to  it,  and  will  take 
no  part  in  these  invitations  because  he  lightly  esteems  the 
matter,  let  him  be  anathema"  (Can.  11).     The  custom  of 

and  kindness.  To  us  the  word  Eucharist  has  become  a  term  of  ritual, 
whose  proper  meaning  is  all  but  obsolete.  To  the  Greek  it  was  still  a 
word  of  common  life,  thanksgiving  —  the  grateful  sense  of  benefits 
received,  of  good  gifts  showered  by  the  good  Father  on  mind  and  heart 
and  body.  '  He  that  eateth  eateth  unto  the  Lord  and  keepeth  Eucharist 
to  God  ...  so  that  a  religious  meal  is  an  Eucharist  (uis  elvat  tt/k  SiKaiav 
Tpo(pr]v  evxapia-Tiav)''  "  (p.  105).  Of.  Spitla,  Die  urcliristlichpn  Traditionen 
iiher  Ursprung  und  Sinn  des  Abeyndmahls,  1893,  Band  1.,  for  a  valu- 
able discussion  of  the  words  of  institution  given  in  the  Gospels  and  by 
St.  Paul ;  also  of  the  agape  and  the  conception  of  sacrifice  held  in  early 
churcli. 

1  Cf.  Augustin,  Go7i.  Faustina^  XX.  20;  Confess.,  VI.  2;  also  Ep is. 
xxii. ,  where  he  gives  his  reasons  for  suppressing  the  feast,  especially  as 
kept  at  funerals. 

2  Even  Tertullian  when  he  became  a  Montanist  became  averse  to  the 
agape  ;  cf.  De  Jejnn,  c.  xvii. 

3  Cf-  Apos.  Cons.,  Can.  3. 


524  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

receiving  the  communion  fasting,  which  may  be  owing  in 
part  to  a  protest  against  tlie  agape,  was  sanctioned  at  the 
Synod  of  Hippo  in  393 :  "  The  sacrament  of  the  altar  shall 
always  be  celebrated  fasting,  except  on  the  anniversary  of 
its  institution,  Coena  Domini''^  (Holy  Thursday).  With 
this  injunction  there  went  also  prohibition  of  meals  in  the 
churches,  unless  for  bishops  and  clergy  or  when  necessary  for 
the  refreshment  of  guests ;  but  to  these  meals  the  people 
were  not  to  be  admitted  (Can.  28,  29).  In  the  fifth 
century  the  agape,  as  the  form  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  still 
existed ;  but  it  had  become  an  exception  to  the  prevailing 
custom  of  holding  the  eucharist:  "There  are  several  cities 
and  villages  in  Egypt,"  says  Socrates,  "  where,  contrary  to 
the  usages  established  elsewhere,  the  people  meet  together 
on  Sabbath  (Saturday)  evening  and,  although  they  have 
dined  previously,  partake  of  the  mysteries  "  (^H.  E.^  VII.  19).i 
The  agape  was  finally  prohibited  in  the  Second  Trullan 
Council  (692),  but  how  deep  had  been  its  hold  on  the 
popular  affection  is  seen  in  the  custom  in  the  Oriental 
church,  which  still  prevails,  of  distributing  to  the  people, 
in  connection  with  the  eucharist,  bread  which  has  been 
blessed,  but  not  consecrated  upon  the  altar.^ 

II 

The  agape  possesses  a  special  importance  because  it  is 
the  commentary  on  the  Lord's  Supper,  contemporaneous 
with  its  institution.  It  tells  us  how  the  early  genera- 
tions of  Christian  believers  interpreted  the  words,  "  This 
is  my  body.  Do  this  in  remembrance  of  me."  In  the 
evening  meal,  at  the  close  of  the  day,  the  first  disciples 

1  This  statement  is  confirmed  by  Sozomen  in  his  important  enumera- 
tion of  the  differences  iu  ecclesiastical  usage  in  the  fifth  century:  "The 
EgyjJtians  in  the  neighborhood  of  Alexandria,  and  the  inhabitants  of  The- 
bai's,  hold  their  religious  meetings  on  the  Sabbath  (Saturday),  but  do 
not  participate  of  the  mysteries  in  the  manner  usual  among  Christians 
in  general ;  for  after  having  eaten  and  satisfied  themselves  with  food  of 
all  kinds,  in  the  evening,  making  their  oblations,  they  partake  of  the 
mysteries"  {H.  E.,  V.  22). 

^  For  the  history  of  the  agape,  of.  articles  in  Herzog,  R.  E.  ;  Diet. 
Chris.  Antiq. ;  Binterim,  DenkwUrdigkeiten,  II.,  Pt.  II.,  pp.  3  ff. 


THE  lord's  supper  525 

met  together,  praying  over  the  bread  and  the  cup,  eating 
and  drinking  in  remembrance  of  the  Master.  As  He  had 
eaten  of  the  food  which  the  earth  supplies  for  human 
sustenance  in  a  spirit  of  consecration  to  the  will  of  His 
Father,  so  His  disciples  had  at  their  command  the  same 
food  which  had  nourished  the  body  of  Christ.  If  it  were 
eaten  in  His  spirit,  whose  meat  and  drink  Avas  to  do  the 
Father's  will  who  had  sent  Him,  then  the  food  of  common 
life,  the  bread  and  the  wine,  were  transmuted  by  faith  into 
elements  that  ministered  also  to  spiritual  life,  and  made 
them  one  in  body  and  spirit  with  Christ. 

But  there  were  difficulties  to  be  encountered  in  the 
early  church,  which  it  required  an  effort  to  overcome, 
in  order  to  keep  this  spiritual  feast.  The  ascetic  mood 
which  despises  the  body,  as  a  hindrance  to  the  spirit,  or 
a  prison  house  in  which  the  spirit  is  confined,  was  wide- 
spread in  the  ancient  world  and  was  destined  to  change 
the  simple  faith  of  the  first  disciples.  An  exaggerated 
one-sided  spiritualism  characterized  the  age,  springing 
from  its  philosophy  and  affecting  the  best  and  noblest 
characters  of  the  time.  It  may  be  felt  in  the  Meditations 
of  Marcus  Aurelius,  or  in  the  TJioughts  of  Epictetus,  as  a 
transcendental  mood  which  regards  the  union  of  body  and 
soul  as  an  accident,  bringing  with  it  evils  onl}'  to  be  sur- 
mounted by  the  renunciation  of  the  body  and,  as  far  as 
possible,  of  the  visible  world.  On  the  other  hand,  this 
same  mood  begot  a  reaction  toward  Epicureanism  tending 
to  promote  the  cultivation  of  the  body  and  the  gratifi- 
cation of  the  senses,  and  doubtful  of  any  higher  reality. 
While  the  church  felt  the  influence  of  these  attitudes  of 
thought  and  life  in  the  world  of  the  time,  yet  in  neither  of 
these  attitudes  is  to  be  found  the  supreme  difficulty  con- 
fronting the  Christian  mind.  It  was  the  Gnostic  teachers, 
the  Docetists,  who  brought  home  to  the  church  most  closely 
the  evil  tendency,  that  not  only  made  a  true  eucharist 
impossible,  but  resolved  Christ  Himself  into  a  transcen- 
dental dream.  The  denial  of  a  human  body  to  the  Saviour 
might  not  have  seemed  so  dangerous  an  error,  or  might 
have  been  more  easily  refuted  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 


526  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

belief  in  the  resurrection,  that  made  it  impossible  to 
point  to  the  tomb  or  the  grave  as  the  visible  evidence  that 
Christ  had  once  possessed  an  actual  body  and  was  not 
merely  the  manifestation  of  some  celestial  intelligence. 
But  no  stone  marked  the  s]3ot  where  He  was  buried;  there 
was  no  cultus  of  the  tomb.  The  attitude  of  the  first 
disciples,  who  stood  gazing  up  into  heaven  for  the  body  of 
their  Master,  was  typical  of  the  earlier  church;  and  to  this 
mood  Docetisni  could  appeal  with  force  when  the  words 
of  consolation  spoken  by  the  angel  no  longer  availed: 
"Ye  men  of  Galilee,  why  stand  ye  gazing  up  into  heaven? 
This  same  Jesus  which  is  taken  up  from  you  into  heaven 
shall  so  come  in  like  manner  as  ye  have  seen  him  go  into 
heaven."  When  the  belief  in  the  speedy  return  of  the 
Saviour  in  visible  form  faded  away,  as  was  the  case  in  the 
second  century,  the  eucharist  became  its  substitute,  hence- 
forth the  object  of  the  devotion  and  reverence  that  would 
otherwise  have  centred  in  a  sacred  tomb.  Although  He 
had  risen  and  ascended,  yet  His  body  was  still  on  earth, 
for  the  material  elements  composing  that  body  were  still 
furnished  to  His  disciples  in  the  memorial  supper ;  as 
when  He  gave  them  the  bread  and  said :  "  Take,  eat,  this 
is  my  body." 

Ignatius,  the  bishop  of  Antioch,  in  the  early  part  of  the 
second  century,  was  the  first  to  attach  a  doctrinal  signifi- 
cance to  the  Lord's  Supper.  His  motive  was  to  resist 
Docetism,  the  fear  of  which  runs  through  his  Epistles,  as 
an  error  fatal  to  the  Christian  life  or  the  existence  of  the 
church.  So  important  was  the  eucharist  in  the  thought  of 
Ignatius  and  so  strenuously  does  he  present  it  as  the  bond 
of  faith  and  Christian  communion,  that  at  times  it  seems 
to  have  been  his  chief  motive  in  writing,  to  urge  obe- 
dience to  the  bisliop  as  the  means  of  securing  the  right 
observance  of  tlie  Lord's  Supper.  Tlius  his  crowning  argu- 
ment against  the  Docetists  and  their  denial  of  a  real  body 
to  the  Saviour,  lies  in  pointing  to  the  bread  and  wine  in 
the  eucharist,  by  which  believers  feed  upon  the  body  of 
Christ  as  the  bread  of  immortality.  The  Lord's  Supper  is 
the  evidence  that  Christ  possessed  an  actual  body.     These 


THE  lord's  supper  527 

false  teachers  abstain  from  keeping  the  feast  and  the  reason 
for  their  abstention  is  because  they  do  not  confess  the  eu- 
charist  to  be  the  body  of  Christ  (^Ad  Smyr.  c.  vi.).  To 
keep  witli  the  bishop  is  also  to  hold  by  the  eucharist,  which 
it  was  the  bishop's  peculiar  function  to  administer  (c.  viii.). 

The  teaching  of  Ignatius  regarding  the  bread  and  wine 
has  been  sometimes  interpreted  as  the  first  indication  of 
the  coming  belief  in  transubstantiation.  But  although  this 
comparatively  late  dogma  can  make  use  of  the  language  of 
Ignatius,  yet  the  teaching  of  Ignatius  does  not  imply  the 
later  meaning.  Indeed,  his  words  can  only  be  explained 
on  the  principle  that  the  material  food  which  nourished 
the  body  of  Christ  is  still  with  us  as  the  food  of  life,  and 
that  by  the  consecration  of  this  food  through  the  remem- 
brance of  Christ,  eating  and  drinking  the  bread  and  wine 
in  His  spirit,  our  bodies  become  the  same  with  His  body, 
or,  in  other  words,  we  feed  upon  His  body  and  drink  His 
blood.  Thus  he  remarks  in  bold  unqualified  language  :  "  I 
desire  the  bread  of  God,  the  heavenly  bread,  the  bread  of 
life  which  is  the  flesh  of  Jesus  Christ ;  .  .  .  I  desire  the 
drink  of  God,  namely  His  blood,  which  is  incorruptible 
love  and  eternal  life  "  (^Ad  Rom.  c.  vii.).  The  principle 
underlying  the  thought  of  Ignatius  is  again  revealed  in 
another  passage,  where  metaphor  and  reality  are  distin- 
guished wliile  they  are  combined,  as,  when  referring  to 
his  approaching  martyrdom  he  exclaims :  "  I  am  the  wheat 
of  God,  and  let  me  be  ground  by  the  teeth  of  the  wild 
beasts,  that  I  may  be  found  the  pure  bread  of  Christ "  (Ad 
Rom.  c.  iv. ).  The  language  of  Ignatius  has  not  hardened 
into  a  formula.  Beneath  it  we  may  detect  the  subtle  pro- 
cess of  the  spiritual  imagination. 

Similar  language,  with  a  corresponding  freshness  of 
spiritual  apprehension,  is  found  in  the  Didache,  in  the 
allusion  to  "  the  broken  bread  which  was  once  scattered 
over  the  hills  and  having  been  gathered  together  has  be- 
come one  "  (c.  ix.)  ;  or  in  the  consciousness  of  the  analogy 
between  earthly  and  heavenly  food:  "Food  and  drink 
Thou  didst  give  to  men  for  enjoyment,  in  order  that  they 
might  give  thanks  to  Thee  ;  but  to  us  Thou  hast  graciously 


528  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

given  spiritual  food  and  drink  and  eternal  life  "  (c.  x.). 
Nor  does  Justin  Martyr  go  beyond  this  teaching,  although 
he  gives  it  in  condensed  form,  without  the  statement  of  the 
process  on  which  it  rests :  "  For  not  as  common  bread  and 
common  drink  do  we  receive  these ;  but  in  like  manner  as 
Jesus  Christ  our  Saviour,  having  been  made  flesh  by  the 
word  of  God,  had  both  flesh  and  blood  for  our  salvation, 
so  likewise  have  we  been  taught  that  the  food  which  is 
blessed  by  the  prayer  of  His  word,  and  from  which  our 
blood  and  flesh  by  transmutation  are  nourished,  is  the  flesh 
and  blood  of  that  Jesus  who  was  made  flesh  *'  (^Apol.  c.  Ixvi.). 
And  again  the  language  of  Irenieus  implies  the  same  anal- 
ogy between  the  bread  of  ordinary  life  and  the  bread  from 
heaven :  "  For  as  the  bread,  which  is  produced  from  the 
earth  when  it  receives  the  invocation  from  God,  is  no 
longer  common  bread,  but  the  eucharist,  consisting  of  two 
realities,  earthly  and  heavenly ,  so  also  our  bodies,  when 
they  receive  the  eucharist,  are  no  longer  corruptible,  having 
the  hope  of  resurrection  to  eternity  "  (^Adv.  Haer.  iv.  18,  5).^ 

The  Lord's  Supper  was  not  regarded  as  a  sacrifice  in  the 
technical  sense  of  the  word  by  any  of  the  church  writers 

1  For  other  passages  illustrating  this  same  mode  of  speaking,  cf .  Clem. 
Alex.,  Paed.,  I.  6,  II.  2  ;  Strom.,  IV.  25.  Origen,  more  clearly  than  any 
other  church  Father,  enforced  the  distinction  between  symbol  and  thing 
signified,  while  the  others  were  occupied  with  enforcing  the  analogy. 
Cf .  his  Horn.  XI.  on  Matt.  The  words  of  TertuUian  reflect  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  analogy,  and  yet  of  the  symbolism:  "  Christus  enim  panis 
noster  est,  quia  vita  Christus  et  vita  panis.  .  .  .  Panis  est  sermo  Dei 
vivi,  qui  descendit  de  coelis.  Tum  quod  et  corpus  ejus  in  pane  censetur : 
Hoc  est  corpus  meum  "  (De  Orat.,  6).  See  also  the  passage  from  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  cited  ante,  p.  489.  For  a  discussion  of  these  and  other  refer- 
ences to  the  eucharist,  cf.  Anrich,  Das  antiJce  Mysterienwesen,  pp.  179  ff. 
The  emphasis  placed  by  Ignatius  upon  flesh  and  boclij,  in  his  opposition 
to  Docetism,  runs  through  all  his  Epistles.  To  his  statement  of  the  Rule 
of  Faith,  which  strikingly  resembles  the  Roman  creed,  he  adds  the 
words,  "  He  ate  and  drank."  Cf.  Ad  Trail,  c.  ix.  ;  Ad  Smyr.  cc.  i.,  ii.  ; 
also  Ad  Eph.  cc.  vii.,  xxi.  ;  Ad  Mag.  cc.  i.,  xiii.  ;  Ad  Trail,  cc.  ii.,  viii.  ;  Ad 
Phil.  cc.  iv.,  V.  ;  Ad  Smyr.  cc.  i.,  ii.,  iii.,  v.,  vi.  Irenseus  employs  the 
same  argument,  —  the  Eucharist  is  "the  consistent  declaration  of  the 
fellowship  and  union  of  the  flesh  and  si^irit"  (C.  Haer.,  iv.  18,  5).  For 
the  general  character  of  Ignatius'  theology,  his  conception  of  Christ,  his 
use  of  the  term  'flesh,'  and,  in  a  word,  his  personal  religious  attitude, 
cf.  Von  der  (inltz,  Ignatius  von  Antiochien,  als  Christ  und  Theolog. 


THE  lord's  supper  529 

of  the  first  three  centuries,  with  the  exception  of  Cyprian, 
the  bishop  of  Carthage.  In  the  language  of  common  life, 
upon  which  the  Jewish  and  heathen  conceptions  of  sacri- 
fice had  left  a  certain  imprint,  they  indeed  spoke  of  the 
bread  and  wine  furnished  for  the  agape  as  an  offering  or 
oblation  {Ovcrla^  ava(f)opd^  Trpoacfiopd,  sacrijiclmn^  ohlafio^,  but 
there  was  also  contained  in  this  use  of  familiar  words  an 
accommodation  to  a  higher  conception  of  sacrifice  and 
always  a  protest  implied  against  the  lower  conception. 
They  seem  also  to  have  been  aware  of  the  ambiguity  of  lan- 
guage, as  well  as  the  danger  of  its  perversion,  and  guarded 
against  the  danger  by  explicit  statements  of  the  true  nature 
of  sacrifice.  The  only  sacrifice  acceptable  to  God,  they 
were  agreed  in  holding,  is  a  heart  consecrated  to  God, 
obedience,  righteousness,  and  prayer,  which  only  a  spiritual 
priesthood  can  offer.  If  in  one  place  Justin  Martyr  speaks 
of  the  Christians  "  who  in  every  place  offer  sacrifices  to  Him, 
that  is  the  bread  of  the  eucharist  and  the  cup  of  the  eu- 
charist,"  ^  he  elsewhere  explains,  "  Now,  that  prayers  and 
giving  of  thanks,  when  offered  by  worthy  men,  are  the 
only  perfect  and  well-pleasing  sacrifices  to  God,  I  also 
admit.  For  such  alone  Christians  have  undertaken  to 
offer,  and  in  the  remembrance  effected  by  their  solid  and 
liquid  food,  whereby  the  suffering  of  the  Son  of  God 
which  He  endured  is  brought  to  mind."  ^  Irenseus  closes 
his  discussion  of  the  nature  of  Christian  sacrifice  with  a 
statement  as  beautiful  as  it  is  clear  and  comprehensive: 
"  It  is  also  his  will  that  we,  too,  should  offer  a  gift  at 
the  altar,  frequently  and  without  intermission.  The  altar, 
then,  is  in  heaven,  for  toward  that  place  are  our  prayers 
and  oblations  directed ;  the  temple  likewise  is  there,  as 
John  says  in  the  Apocalypse,  '  And  the  temple  of  God 
was  opened ' ;  the  tabernacle  also :  '  For  behold,'  he  says, 
'  the  tabernacle  of  God,  in  which  He  will  dwell  with 
men.' "  3 

Still  more  emphatic  is  the  statement  of  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria : 

1  Dial.  c.  Tryph.  c.  xli.  '^  Dial.  c.  Tryph.  c.  cxii. 

2  Con.  Haer.  iv.  17,  18. 
2  M 


530  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

"  We  rightly  do  not  sacrifice  to  God,  who,  needing  notiiing,  supplies 
all  men  with  all  things ;  but  we  glorify  Him  who  gave  Himself  in 
sacrifice  for  us,  we  also  sacrificing  ourselves;  from  that  which  needs 
nothing  to  that  which  needs  nothing;  and  from  that  which  is  impassi- 
ble to  that  which  is  impassible.  For  in  our  salvatiou  alone  God  does 
delight.  .  .  .  And  neither  by  sacrifices  nor  offerings,  nor  on  the 
other  by  glory  and  honor,  is  the  Deity  won  over ;  nor  is  He  influenced 
by  any  such  things."  ^ 

There  is,  indeed,  a  certain  difference  in  tone  between  the 
langfuag'e  of  Clement  and  on  the  other  hand  of  Justin  and 
Irenseus,  when  speaking  of  the  eucharist,  or  of  oblation 
and  sacrifice.  The  earlier  Alexandrian  School  was  content 
with  the  inward  spiritual  recognition  of  divine  things, 
while  Justin  and  Irenseus  betray  the  Oriental  tendency 
which  called  for  the  expression  of  the  inner  mood  by  the 
external  act.  But,  speaking  generally,  the  idea  of  sacrifice 
in  the  church  of  the  first  three  centuries  was  the  idealiza- 
tion or  transfiguration  of  human  life  before  God,  holding 
it  up  before  him  as  evidence  of  an  inward  appreciation 
and  obedience,  and  more  particularly  the  offering  of  the 
bread  and  the  wine,  in  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  a  thankful 
recognition  of  the  union  of  body  and  spirit,  wherein  the 
spirit  consecrates  all  food  to  the  highest  end,  and  earthly 
elements  nourish  the  body,  which  in  turn  ministers  to  the 
consecrated  spiritual  life.  Nor  was  this  idea  ever  effaced 
from  the  Oriental  liturgies,  however  it  may  be  obscured  by 
a  complicated  ceremonial.  The  doctrine  of  Cyprian,  which 
constitutes  the  exception  to  this  teaching,  never  gained  a 
complete  hold  upon  the  Oriental  churches.  Cj-prian  com- 
bined a  doctrine  of  Cliristian  priesthood  after  the  analogy 
of  the  Jewish  priesthood,  with  a  doctrine  of  sacrifice,  also 
conceived  after  Jewish  analogies.  He  does  not  guard 
against  misinterpretation  of  his  language  as  Justin  or 
Irenseus  had  done,  or  qualify  the  popular  use  of  terms 
by  the  statement  of  the  spiritual  principle.  His  language 
is  literal  and  explicit  and  becomes  the  foundation  of  the 
Roman  Mass.  The  Lord's  passion  is  the  sacrifice  which  we 
offer,  —  Passio  enim  Domini  sacrijicium  est  quod  facimus? 

1  Strom.,  VII.,  c.  S.  See  also  similar  expressions  regarding  sacrifice,  by 
Minucius  FeUx,  Anobius,  Athenagoras,  Lactantius,  etc.,  cited  ante,  p.  450. 

2  Epis.  Ixiii.  17 


THE  lord's  supper  531 


III 


The  liturgy  in  the  eighth  book  of  the  Apostolical  Con- 
stitutions may  be  taken  as  representative  of  the  worship 
of  the  Eastern  church  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury. Two  hundred  years  had  then  elapsed  since  Justin 
recorded  the  mode  of  conducting  worship  in  the  earlier 
church.  The  ritual  in  Justin's  time  was  simple,  and  rubri- 
cal directions  were  few.  What  Tertullian  had  said  re- 
garding the  mode  of  administering  baptism  applied  with 
equal  force  to  the  administration  of  the  Lord's  Supper: 

"  There  is  absolutely  nothing  which  makes  men's  minds  more  ob- 
durate than  the  simplicity  of  the  divine  works  which  are  visible  in 
the  act,  when  compared  with  the  grandeur  which  is  promised  thereto 
in  the  effect ;  so  that  from  the  very  fact  that  with  so  great  simplicity, 
without  pomp,  without  any  considerable  novelty  of  preparation, 
finally  without  expense,  a  man  is  dipped  in  water,  and,  amid  the  utter- 
ance of  some  few  words,  is  sprinkled  and  then  rises  again,  not  much 
the  cleaner,  the  consequent  attainment  of  eternity  is  esteemed  the 
more  incredible.  I  am  a  deceiver  if,  on  the  contrary,  it  is  not  from 
their  circumstance,  and  preparation,  and  expense,  that  the  solemnities 
of  idols  or  the  mysteries  get  their  credit  and  are  built  up.  Oh, 
miserable  incredulity,  which  quite  deniest  to  God  His  own  properties, 
simplicity  and  power."  ^ 

By  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  all  this  had  been 
reversed.  Splendor  and  impressiveness  characterized  a 
ritual  which  had  become  rich  in  all  the  accessories  of  wor- 
ship. It  had  been  the  boast  of  the  early  church  that  it 
had  neither  temple  nor  sacrifice  nor  altar ;  it  was  the  pride 
and  joy  of  the  later  church  that  it  could  exhibit  to  the 
heathens  temples  and  sacrifices  and  altars  surpassing  their 
own  in  all  that  makes  a  powerful  appeal  to  the  sensuous 
imagination.  The  formula  of  the  earlier  church  had  been 
that  God  stood  in  no  need  of  sacrifices  or  offerings,  and 
therefore  it  was  unbecoming  to  present  them  to  Him. 
The  later  church  carefully  retained  the  formula,  but  re- 
jected the  inference.  Although  He  did  not  need  them, 
yet  were  they  acceptable  and  well-pleasing  in  His  sight. 

1  De  Bap.  c.  11. 


532  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

The  transition  from  simplicity  to  a  complicated  and  im- 
posing ritual  is  difficult  to  trace,  and  the  connecting 
links  have  not  yet  been  recovered.  There  was  no  discus- 
sion of  ritual  motives,  as  there  was  of  theological  jjrinci- 
ples.  The  acts  of  councils  throw  but  little  light  on  the 
process  whereby  the  change  was  accomplished ;  they  may 
record  conclusions,  but  do  not  reveal  the  process  of  their 
attainment  nor  the  consciousness  of  their  significance. 
The  ritual  of  the  church,  according  to  the  familiar  com- 
parison, was  an  underground  stream,  emerging,  after  the 
age  of  Constantine,  in  a  powerful  river,  making  a  channel 
at  its  will,  which  no  acts  of  councils  can  control,  against 
whose  current  all  resistance  was  in  vain. 

In  the  absence  of  definite  information  as  to  the  succes- 
sive steps  of  ritual  advance,  we  must  turn  to  principles 
whose  working  can  be  clearly  traced,  even  when  not  con- 
fessed, acting  like  deep  instincts  with  an  unconscious  influ- 
ence. The  first  of  these  principles  is  the  tendency  toward 
dramatization  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  as  the  most  effective 
method  of  reacliing  the  popular  imagination.  It  was  the 
last  supper  of  Christ  with  His  disciples  that  still  remained 
the  central  point  about  which  revolved  the  deepest  Chris- 
tian feeling.  The  other  method  of  worship,  the  homiletic 
service  so  prominent  in  the  early  church,  had  gradually 
disappeared  to  give  way  for  the  ritual  of  the  altar  as 
including  what  was  most  essential  for  human  salvation. 
To  this  rite  the  name  of  '  liturgy '  began  to  be  exclusively 
applied,  although  in  its  earlier  use  the  word  stood  for 
any  form  of  Christian  worship  or  service.  The  tendency 
to  dramatize  the  Last  Supper  began  at  a  very  early  period, 
when  the  congregations  having  become  too  large  to  sit 
down  at  the  table,  the  bisliop  and  his  presbyters  surrounded 
it  after  the  exam[)le  of  Christ  and  His  disciples.  But  this 
simple  form  of  drama  yielded  to  another  and  different 
type,  when  the  idea  of  oblation  and  sacrifice  had  been 
developed.  The  passing  away  of  the  agape  became  the 
occasion  of  a  great  transformation.  In  that  simple  rite 
the  contributions  of  the  people  for  the  common  table  were 
accepted  and  blessed  as  offerings,  and  were  known  as  obla- 


THE  lord's  supper  533 

tions.  When  there  was  no  longer  occasion  for  these  con- 
tributions, the  bread  and  the  wine  intended  for  the  eucha- 
rist,  as  distinct  from  the  supper,  became  invested  w^ith  a 
new  meaning  and  a  higher  solemnity. 

In  the  Clementine  Liturgy,  as  it  is  called,  contained 
in  the  Apostolical  Constitutions,  it  is  manifest  that  these 
transformations  have  already  been  accomplished.  This 
liturgy  was  a  private  compilation  from  sources  which 
have  not  been  wholly  determined ;  there  is  no  evidence 
that  it  was  used  as  a  public  form  of  worship ;  or  that  it 
was  intended  as  such ;  but  it  was  the  work  of  a  creative 
mind  which  left  its  influence  upon  the  church,  becoming  in 
its  main  outlines  the  type  to  which  the  Eastern  liturgies 
of  a  later  age  conformed.^  The  time  when  it  was  set  forth 
may  be  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century,  or  even  earlier. 
It  may  be  taken  as  the  picture  of  the  worship  in  the  great 
see  of  Antioch,  in  the*  age  of  the  Emperor  Constantius. 
Its  theology  is  somewhat  uncertain  ;  it  reflects  the  influence 
of  the  Apollinarian  heresy,  with,  possibly,  a  tinge  of  semi- 
Arianism,  but  its  attitude  toward  Christ  is  reverential  in 
the  highest  degree.  It  is  given  as  following  a  service  for 
the  consecration  of  a  bishop,  and  its  opening  rubrical  direc- 
tions suggest  a  scene  where  preparation  is  made  for  some 
great  solemnity : 

"  Let  the  children  stand  at  the  reading-desk  and  let  a  deacon  stand 
by  them  that  they  be  not  disorderly.  Let  the  deacons  walk  about 
and  watch  the  men  and  the  women  that  no  tumult  be  made,  and  that 
no  one  nod,  or  whisper,  or  slumber.  Let  the  deacons  stand  at  the 
doors  of  the  men  and  the  sub-deacons  at  those  of  the  women,  that  no 
one  go  out  nor  a  door  be  opened  even  for  one  of  the  faithful  at  the 
time  of  the  oblation.  But  let  one  of  the  deacons  bring  water  to  wasli 
the  hands  of  the  priests,  which  is  a  symbol  of  the  purity  of  the  souls 
that  are  devoted  to  God." 

The  injunction  is  then  given  by  the  deacons  for  the  de- 
parture of  the  unbelievers,  the  catechumens,  the  penitents, 
and  the  hearers ;  the  faithful  who  remain  are  exhorted  to 

1  On  the  identification  of  the  compiler  of  the  Clementine  liturgy  with 
the  pseudo-Iiiiiatius,  wlio  was  the  author  of  the  Longer  Greek  Recension 
of  the  Ignatian  Epistles,  cf.  Brightman,  Liturgies,  Eastern  and  Western, 
pp.  xxvii  ff. 


534  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

have  nothing  against  any  one,  to  come  in  sincerity,  and 
to  stand  upright  before  the  Lord  witii  fear  and  trembling 
to  make  the  offering: 

"  Then  let  the  deacons  bring  the  gifts  of  bread  and  wine  to  the 
bishop  at  the  altar,  and  let  the  presbyters  stand  at  his  right  hand  and 
at  his  left  as  disciples  stand  before  the  Master.  But  let  two  of  the 
deacons  on  each  side  of  the  altar  hold  a  fan  made  of  some  thin  mem- 
brane, and  let  them  silently  drive  away  the  small  animals  that  fly 
about,  that  they  come  not  near  tlie  cups.  Let  the  High  Priest  pray 
by  himself,  and  let  him  put  on  liis  shining  garment  and  stand  at  the 
altar  and  make  the  sign  of  the  cross  upon  his  forehead  with  his 
hand." 

At  this  point  begins  what  in  the  Greek  liturgies  is  known 
as  the  Anaphora,  the  Sursum  Corda  ^  of  the  Latin  Mass : 

"  Let  the  High  Priest  say :  The  grace  of  Almighty  God,  and  the 
love  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  the  fellowship  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
be  with  you  all  ;  to  which  all  the  peof)le  are  to  respond  with  one 
voice,  And  with  thy  spirit.  The  High  Priest:  Lift  up  your  mind; 
and  the  people:  We  lift  it  up  unto  the  Lord.  The  Priest:  Let  us 
give  thanks  unto  our  Lord  God ;  the  people :  It  is  meet  and  right  so 
to  do.  Then  let  the  High  Priest  say:  It  is  very  meet  and  right 
before  all  things  to  sing  an  hymn  to  Thee,  who  art  the  true  God,  who 
art  before  all  things,  from  whom  the  whole  family  in  heaven  and 
earth  is  named." 

Such  is  the  beginning  of  the  long  prayer,^  which  with- 

1  "  One  result  seems  to  follow  from  the  comparison  between  one  copy 
of  these  liturgies  and  another  ;  it  is  this,  that  we  must  look  to  the  Anaph- 
ora in  each,  commencing  with  the  Apostolic  Benediction  and  conclud- 
ing with  the  Lord's  Prayer,  as  containing  the  only  ancient  parts  of  the 
service"  (Swainson,  The  Greek  Liturgies,  p.  xliii). 

2  That  prayer  in  the  early  church  was  to  a  certain  extent  the  free 
utterance  of  the  impassioned  heart  must  be  inferred  from  the  language  of 
the  Didache  (c.  x.),  where  it  is  said  that  the  prophets  are  permitted  to 
give  thanks  as  much  as  they  will,  et)xap'<'''''f'»'  Sera  d^Xovaiv  ;  also  from  the 
allusion  of  Justin  (Apol.  c.  Ixvii.),  where  the  president  is  sakl  to  offer 
prayers  according  to  his  ability,  oar]  dvvdfiis  avTuj.  In  the  Clementine 
liturgy,  says  Brightman  (p.  xxxiii),  "Liturgical  formulae  are  not  re- 
garded by  the  compiler  as  rigidly  fixed  ;  .  .  .  at  some  points  he  gives 
only  the  drift  of  the  prayers  without  prescribing  a  formula."  Cf.  also 
Duchesne,  Origines  chi  Culte  Chretien,  p.  171  :  "  Le  sacramentaire  l^onien 
donne  lieu  de  croire  que  I'improvisation,  ou  du  moins  1' intercalation  de 
phrases  pr^par^es  par  P officiant  lui-meme,  etait  encore  pratiqu^e  au 
sixifeme  si6cle." 


THE  lord's  supper  535 

out  any  break  proceeds  to  glorify  God,  in  His  wisdom 
and  goodness  and  power,  and  then  at  some  length  and 
with  much  detail  to  commemorate  the  creation  of  the 
whole  world,  and  the  goodness  which  is  revealed  in  its 
adaptability  to  man.  The  creation  of  man,  the  garden  of 
Eden,  and  the  Fall  are  next  mentioned,  and  the  beginning 
of  the  process  of  redemption.  After  the  leading  features 
of  the  Old  Testament  history  in  the  successive  stages  of 
the  process  of  I'edemption  have  been  rehearsed,  there  fol- 
lows the  Cherubic  Hymn,  as  the  preparation  for  the  re- 
countal  of  the  story  of  the  Incarnation : 

"  For  these  things,  glory  be  to  Thee,  O  Lord  Almighty,  whom 
innumerable  hosts  of  angels,  archangels,  thrones,  dominions,  princi- 
palities, authorities,  and  powers,  with  their  everlasting  armies,  do 
adore,  saying  together  with  thousand  thousands  of  angels  and  ten 
thousand  times  ten  thousand  of  angels,  —  saying  incessantly  and  with 
constant  and  loud  voices,  —  and  let  all  the  people  say  it  with  them: 
Holy,  Holy,  Holy,  Lord  God  of  Hosts,  heaven  and  earth  are  full  of 
Thy  glory.     Glory  be  to  Thee,  O  Lord  most  high." 

The  incidents  of  the  life  of  Christ  leading  up  to  His 
crucifixion  are  then  given ;  He  is  glorified  in  His  redeem- 
ing work  as  a  preparation  for  the  climax  of  the  office, — 
the  sacred  words  of  the  institution  of  the  Supper,  when 
He  broke  the  bread  and  took  the  cup.  The  language  of 
the  prayer  grows  more  intense  and  intimate  in  the  inter- 
cession which  follows  for  the  living  and  the  dead,  till  it 
finally  concludes  with  the  angelic  hymn,  the  Gloria  in 
Excelsis^  the  preliminary  to  the  distribution  of  the  ele- 
ments. To  the  waiting  congregation  in  the  attitude  of 
standing,  the  bishop  in  turn  gives  the  elements,  saying 
"  The  body  of  Christ,"  and  the  deacon  gives  the  cup 
with  the  words,  "  The  blood  of  Christ,  the  cup  of  Life." 
And  while  the  communion  is  in  process  is  said  the  thirty- 
fourth  Psalm,  and  a  more  exquisite  Psalm  could  not  have 
been  chosen :  "  O  taste  and  see,  that  the  Lord  is  gracious. 
Blessed  is  the  man  that  trusteth  in  him."  After  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  elements,  a  shorter  prayer  follows,  and 
the  office  concludes  with  the  benediction,  which  has  a 
tendency,  as  in  later  Oiiental  liturgies,  to  expand  itself, 


536  CHlllSTIAN    WORSHIP 

until  it  has  been  illustrated  anew  what  the  blessing  of 
God  may  mean. 

The  most  important  feature  of  the  Clementine  liturgy, 
and  also  constituting  its  chief  ritual  innovation,  is  the 
oblation  of  the  elements  of  bread  and  wine,  after  their  con- 
secration by  the  recital  of  the  words  of  Christ  at  the  insti- 
tution of  the  Supper.  The  word  '  oblation  '  had  liitherto 
been  used  in  a  general  and  untechnical  way,  to  cover  the 
contributions  of  the  people  for  the  agape,  or  it  had  been 
applied  to  the  sacrament  also  in  a  similar  way,  especially  to 
the  eucharistic  prayer,  as  in  itself  a  sacrificial  offering.  But 
when  the  distinction  began  to  be  made  between  the  lesser 
and  the  greater  oblation,  the  former  became  equivalent  to 
what  is  now  called  the  offertory,  while  the  "  greater  obla- 
tion "  consisted  exclusively  in  the  bread  and  wine  which 
were  placed  upon  the  altar.  Connected  with  it,  was  what 
is  known  in  the  Eastern  church  as  the  Great  Entrance, 
when  the  clergy  enter  the  church  bearing  the  sacred  ves- 
sels on  their  way  to  the  sanctuary.  The  Little  Entrance, 
on  the  other  hand,  and  the  comparison  is  significant  for 
the  change  that  has  taken  place,  consists  in  previously 
bringing  in  the  sacred  books,  to  which  is  no  longer  assigned 
the  pre-eminence.  The  prayer  of  the  oblation  runs  as  fol- 
lows in  the  Clementine  rite : 

"We  offer  to  Thee,  our  King  and  God,  according  to  His  constitu- 
tion this  bread  and  this  cup,  giving  Thee  thanks  through  Him  that 
Thou  hast  thought  us  worthy  to  stand  before  Thee  and  to  sacrifice  to 
Thee ;  and  we  beseech  Thee  that  Thou  wilt  mercifully  look  down 
upon  these  gifts  which  are  here  set  before  Thee,  O  Thou  God,  who 
standest  in  need  of  none  of  our  offerings.  And  do  Thou  accept  them 
to  the  honor  of  Thy  Christ,  and  send  down  upon  this  sacrifice  Thine 
Holy  Spirit  .  .  .  that  he  may  show  this  bread  to  be  the  body  of 
Thy  Christ  and  the  cup  to  be  the  blood  of  Thy  Christ,  tliat  those  who 
are  partaking  thereof  may  be  strengthened  for  piety  and  may  receive 
the  remission  of  their  sins,  may  be  delivered  from  the  devil  and  his 
deceits,  may  be  filled  with  the  Holy  Ghost,  may  be  made  worthy  of 
Thy  Christ,  and  may  obtain  eternal  life  upon  Thy  reconciliation  to 
them,  O  Lord  God  Almighty." 

In  the  earlier  worship,  the  oblation,  so  far  as  that  word 
may  be   used  in  a  technical  sense,  was   made  before  the 


THE  lord's  supper  537 

consecration  of  the  elements ;  in  the  later  ritual,  it  fol- 
lowed their  consecration. ^  By  this  change,  the  Lord's 
Supper  was  transformed  into  a  sacrifice,  in  the  narrower 
sense  of  the  word  '  sacrifice,'  or  as  it  was  popularly  under- 
stood by  Jews  and  pagans.  In  this  respect  the  Greek 
mystery  and  the  Latin  sacrament  agree,  that  they  make  the 
oblation  of  the  consecrated  elements  the  climax  of  the 
divine  ofhce.  But  at  this  point,  also,  of  their  closest 
resemblance,  the  widest  possiljle  divergence  in  practice 
occurs,  indicating  a  radical  difference  in  the  manner  of 
contemplating  the  eucharistic  solemnity.  In  the  Latin 
Mass,  the  priest  elevates  the  elements  after  their  consecra- 
tion as  a  symbol  of  the  sacrifice,  an  indication  of  the  tran- 
substantiation  of  the  bread  and  wine  into  the  body  and 
blood  of  Christ ;  this  is  the  moment  when  the  congregation 
kneels  and  worships.  In  the  Eastern  church  the  most 
imposing  moment  in  the  service  is  not  that  Avhich  follows 
the  consecration  of  the  elements,  but  is  connected  with  the 
Great  Entrance,  when  the  congregation  fall  down  in  the 

1  It  is  possible  tlaat  the  compiler  of  the  Clementine  liturgy  may  have 
drawn  upon  older  material  for  the  idea  of  the  prayer  of  oblation.  In  the 
Anaphora  of  the  Ethiopic  Church  Ordinances  there  is  a  prayer  after  the 
consecration  of  the  elements,  which  contains  the  oblation,  but  not  in 
such  emphatic  form  :  "  Remembering  therefore  His  death  and  His  resur- 
rection, we  offer  Thee  this  bread  and  this  cup,  giving  thanks  unto  Thee  for 
that  Thou  hast  made  us  meet  to  stand  before  Thee  and  do  Thee  priestly 
service.  We  beseech  Thee  that  thou  wouldest  send  Thine  Holy  Spirit  on 
the  oblation  of  this  church  :  give  it  together  unto  all  them  that  partake 
(for)  sanctification  and  for  fulfilling  with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  for  con- 
firming true  faith,  that  they  may  laud  and  praise  Thee  in  Thy  Son  Jesus 
Christ,  through  whom  to  Thee  be  glory  and  dominion  in  the  holy 
church  both  now  and  ever  and  Avorld  without  end.  Amen."  Bright- 
man,  I.,  p.  190;  cf.  also  Die  Canones  Hippolyti,  in  TextP,  etc.,  pp. 
48,  54.  Egypt  may  have  been  the  source  from  which  the  principle 
of  the  oblation  came.  But  in  the  Antiochene  worship  as  described  by 
Chrysostom,  whose  time  is  contemporaneous  with  the  compiler  of  the 
Clementine  rite,  it  is  doubtful  whether  there  was  a  specific  form  of  the 
oblation.  But  cf.  Brightman,  p.  474,  for  the  reconstructed  office  in  use 
by  Chrysostom  ;  Hammond,  The  Ancient  Liturgy  of  Antioch,  p.  15 ; 
Bingham,  Bk.  XV.,  c.  3.  In  the  reformed  communion  office  of  the 
Church  of  England  the  oblation  after  consecration  was  omitted,  as  in  the 
other  Protestant  churches.  In  1662,  the  word  'oblation'  was  restored  in 
the  Prayer  for  the  Church  Militant,  but  as  thus  used  it  applies  to  the  ele- 
ments before  consecration. 


538  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

very  path  of  the  jJi'iests  and  worship  while  the  elements  are 
still  unconsecrated  and  have  not  yet  been  placed  upon  the 
altar.  The  difference  is  profoundly  suggestive.  It  can 
only  be  explained  on  the  ground  that  the  real  transformation 
takes  place  in  the  mind  of  the  worshipper,  who  recognizes 
in  the  purpose  to  consecrate  in  formal  manner  the  bread 
and  wine  an  antecedent  divine  action  by  which  the  mate- 
rial gifts  of  God,  the  food  and  drink,  reveal  the  divine 
goodness  and  the  divine  life  in  the  natural  order.  Out  of 
this  conviction  had  grown  the  sense  of  the  value,  the 
mystic  importance  of  the  Lord's  Supper.  In  this  popular 
reverence  paid  toward  the  elements  of  bread  and  wine, 
while  as  yet  common  food,  there  may  be  a  trace  of  the  ear- 
lier worship  which  associated  them  with  the  body  of  Christ, 
before  the  impressive  ceremonial  had  been  introduced,  trans- 
forming the  agape  into  the  mystery  of  the  altar .^ 

IV 

The  Clementine  liturgy,  although  marking  a  great  ad- 
vance in  the  direction  of  dramatic  worship,  is  still  charac- 
terized by  simplicity  when  placed  in  comparison  with  the 
later  liturgical  development.  After  the  custom  of  the 
earlier  worship,  the  sacrament  was  restricted  to  the  faith- 
ful, and  the  distribution  of  the  consecrated  elements 
was  conceived  as  an  essential  feature  of  every  celebration 
of  the  Lord's  Supper.  In  the  later  usage,  these  features 
disappeared.  The  rite  was  thrown  open  to  the  whole 
congregation,  although  the  injunction  was  still  repeated, 
which  called  upon  unbelievers,  catechumens,  and  others 
to  depart;  all  might  be  witnesses,  but  for  the  majority  of 
the  congregation,  tliere  was  no  participation  of  the  sacred 
elements.  Again,  the  ritual  acts  and  directions  are  few  in 
number  in  the  Clementine  liturgy ;  no  regulations  are 
given  for  the  entrance  into  the  sacred  edifice  or  for  the 
bringing  the  bread  and  the  wine  to  the  altar;  the  long 
prayer  flows  on  with  no  break  in  its  homiletic  unity  and 

1  Cf.  Neale,  Translations  of  the  Primitive  Liturgies,  pp.  xxvii,  11, 
109,  135 ;  also  Hammond,  Liturgies,  Eastern  and  Western,  p.  xxxvii. 


THE  lord's  supper  530 

impressiveuess  through  rubrical  emphasis  or  separation  of 
its  parts. 

The  liturgies  continued  to  develop  in  the  centuries  that 
followed  mainly  on  the  line  of  what  is  called  ceremonial- 
ism. The  specification  of  ritual  acts  crowded  out  more  and 
more  the  homiletic  element,  till  the  liturgies  finally  de- 
veloped through  the  combination  of  dramatic  and  cere- 
monial motives,  into  an  intricate  religious  service,  Avhose 
meaning  was  almost  lost  in  the  bewildering  maze  of 
symbolic  presentations.  The  ceremonial  motive  was  the 
adaptation  or  reproduction  of  the  court  etiquette  of  an 
Oriental  monarch,  as  the  standard  for  symbolizing  or 
dramatizing  the  soul's  approach  to  God.  Gregory  of 
Nyssa  in  his  treatise  on  the  Holy  Spirit  has  stated  the 
principle  in  explicit  language,  and  illustrated  its  action : 

"Inasmuch  as  men  when  approaching  emperors  and  potentates  for 
the  objects  Avhich  tliey  wish  in  some  way  to  obtain  from  those  rulers, 
do  not  bring  to  tlieiii  their  mere  petition  only,  but  employ  every  pos- 
sible means  to  induce  them  to  feel  pity  and  favor  towards  themselves, 
clasping  their  knees,  prostrating  themselves  on  the  ground,  and  put- 
ting forward  to  plead  for  their  petition  all  sorts  of  pathetic  signs  to 
wake  that  pity,  so  it  is  that  those  who  recognize  the  true  Potentate, 
by  whom  all  things  in  existence  are  controlled,  when  they  ai-e  suppli- 
cating for  that  whicli  they  have  at  heart,  some  lowly  in  spirit  because 
of  pitiable  conditions  in  this  world,  some  with  their  thoughts  lifted  up 
because  of  their  eternal  mysterious  hopes,  seeing  that  they  know  not 
how  to  ask  and  that  their  humanity  is  not  capable  of  displaying  any 
reverence  that  can  reach  to  the  grandeur  of  that  glory,  they  carry  the 
ceremonial  used  in  the  case  of  men  into  the  service  of  the  Deity. 
And  this  is  what  worship  is,  that  worshij)  I  mean  which  is  offered  for 
objects  we  have  at  heart  along  with  supplication  and  humiliation." 

When  this  principle  was  fully  recognized  and  applied,  it 
influenced  every  aspect  of  the  ritual.  It  was  as  if  the 
heavenly  king  were  holding  a  reception  upon  earth  present 
indeed  although  invisible,  as  the  Oriental  liturgies  imply ; 
present  in  the  person  of  his  delegates,  the  priesthood,  accord- 
ing to  the  Latin  conception.  Whatever  does  honor  to  an 
earthly  sovereign  is  therefore  required  on  the  occasion  of 
God's  worship,  —  the  formal  entrance  to  tlie  sanctuary, 
which  represents   His  presence,  the  imposing  procession. 


540  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

the  magnificent  vestments,^  the  accessories  of  light  and 
music,  perfume  and  color,  and  on  the  part  of  the  officiants 
the  punctilious  performance  of  a  religious  etiquette.  Great, 
indeed,  was  the  loss  and  the  injury  when  the  true  worship 
of  the  Father  was  obscured  in  its  essential  principles  as 
Christ  had  given  them.  In  this  ceremonial  dramatization 
of  the  soul's  relations  with  God  was  an  exaggerated  for- 
mality incompatible  with  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 
But  it  miay  not  have  been  without  an  educational  influence. 
It  was  something  that  souls  shut  out  from  the  presence  or 
sympathy  of  the  earthly  sovereign  were  still  able  at  their 
will  to  enter  the  presence  of  the  King  of  kings.  There 
was  thrown  around  the  worship  dignity  and  majesty,  as 
well  as  beauty  and  splendor,  and  religious  functions  were 
kept  in  accordance  with  good  taste  —  so  rare  a  gift  that  it 
might  seem  to  serve  as  a  substitute  for  piety.  As  it  was 
the  function  of  the  bishop  to  regulate  the  ritual  of  the 
altar  for  his  diocese,  we  may  trace  his  influence  as  a  medi- 
ator, in  bringing  something  of  the  habits  and  environment 
of  royalty,  in  whose  presence  he  was  accustomed  to  stand, 
to  bear  upon  the  elevation  and  refinement  of  the  people. 

1  There  is  a  reference  to  the  dress  of  the  clergy  in  the  o7th  of  the 
Canons  of  Hippolytus  :  "  Quotiescunque  episcopus  mysteriis  frui  vult, 
congregentur  diaconi  et  presbyteri  apud  eura,  induti  vestimentis  albis 
pulchrioribus  toto  popiilo,  potissimuni  autem  splendidis."  But  the  cau- 
tion is  added  :  "  Bona  autem  opera  omnibus  vestimentis  praestant."  In 
the  liturgy  in  the  8th  book  of  the  Apostolical  Constitutions,  the  high  priest 
is  said  to  put  on  his  "shining  gannent"  {Xaixirpav  ea-0i]Ta  fxerevdi/s).  Cf. 
also  Jerome,  in  Ezek.,  c  44:  "  Religio  divina  alteram  habitum  habet  in 
ministerio  alteram  in  usu  vitaque  conununi "  ;  also  in  ^-Idi'.  Pelagianos, 
i.  9,  where  he  remarks  that  it  would  not  be  an  offence  to  God  if  he  were 
to  wear  a  comelier  tunic,  or  if  the  clergy  were  to  be  dressed  in  white. 
For  a  discussion  of  these  passages  cf.  Marriott,  Vestiarnm  Christianiim, 
c.  iv.,  who  concludes  that  the  early  dress  of  the  clergy  was  not  distinc- 
tive in  shape,  during  the  first  four  centuries,  but  was  white  in  color ; 
they  honored  the  occasion  of  the  sacred  rites  by  putting  on  their  best 
clothes.  The  transition  to  a  distinctive  dress  in  the  Western  church  was 
made  in  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  clergy,  having  retained  the  ancient 
Roman  dress  which  was  in  marked  contrast  with  the  prevailing  dress  of 
the  laity,  justified  and  explained  tlie  difference  on  the  theory  of  its  Levi- 
tical  origin  ;  c.  viii.  See  also  Bock,  Gesch.  d.  litttrgischen  Gpumnder  des 
Mittelalters ;  also  Macalister,  Ecclesiastical  Vestments,  with  literature  in 
Appendix  III.,  and  Stanley,  Christian  Institutions,  c.  viii. 


THE  lord's  supper  541 

The  deepest  theological  influence  exerted  upon  the 
Oriental  worship  was  inspired  by  the  belief  concerning 
the  Holy  Spirit,  set  forth  by  Eastern  church  writers  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  century.  It  has  often  been 
remarked  that  the  thought  of  the  ancient  church  concern- 
ing the  office  of  the  Holy  Spirit  was  left  incomplete.  In 
one  sense  the  criticism  is  true.  The  Eastern  church  never 
gained  the  conception  of  the  Spirit  as  working  within  the 
soul  which  has  been  fruitful  in  Western  Christendom, 
and  more  particularly  in  the  modern  church.  But  none 
the  less  did  its  writers  have  their  own  peculiar  conception 
of  the  Spirit's  working,  —  a  conception  that  was  not  lack- 
ing in  definiteness  and  power.  They  regarded  the  Holy 
Spirit  as  the  bond  organically  uniting  the  spirit  within  a 
man  and  the  mysterious  divine  life  in  outward  nature,  — 
that  nature  which  has  a  voice  for  the  human  heart,  if  only 
it  could  be  interpreted  aright.  Hints  of  this  conception 
are  given  by  Cyril  of  Jerusalem,  in  his  Catechetical  Lect- 
ures, as,  when  speaking  of  the  water  of  baptism,  he  says, 
that  "  whatever  the  Holy  Ghost  has  touched  is  surely 
sanctified  and  changed" ;  or  by  Cyril  of  Alexandria,  in  his 
teaching  that  "  by  the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit  the  ele- 
ments of  bread  and  wine  are  metamorphosed  into  the  body 
and  blood  of  Christ."  Gregory  of  Nyssa  more  particularly 
developed  this  conception  of  the  Spirit,  as  having  a  close 
relation  to  the  visible  creation  : 

"  The  creation  is  guided  by  the  Spirit,  while  the  Spirit  gives  guid- 
ance ;  the  creation  is  governed,  while  the  Spirit  governs ;  the  creation 
is  comforted,  while  the  Spirit  comfoi-ts  ;  the  creation  is  in  bondage, 
while  the  Spirit  gives  freedom."  ^ 

The  effect  of  this  teaching  was  reflected  in  the  Oriental 
liturgies,  in  the  consciousness  they  reveal,  that  the  sun- 
dered harmony  between  man  and  nature  has  been  re- 
stored, in  the  conviction  that  the  world  is  good,  that  the 
Avhole  creation  must  be  glorified  before  God  in  devout 
thanksgiving,  as  an  essential  condition  of  all  true  worship. 
After  the  Anapliora,  the  next  step,  says  Cyril  of  Jerusalem, 

1  Ad  Simplicium ;  cf.  De  Bap.  Christ, 


542  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

is  to  commemorate  the  creation  :  "  We  make  mention  of 
heaven  and  earth  and  sea,  of  sun  and  moon,  of  stars, 
and  all  the  creation  rational  and  irrational,  visible  and  in- 
visible." ^  A  prominent  feature  of  the  encharistic  prayer  in 
the  Clementine  liturgy  is  the  emphatic  and  beautiful  com- 
memoration of  nature,  external  nature  and  this  visible 
world.  The  story  of  the  creation  is  rehearsed  in  detail, 
and  the  beauty  of  the  kosmos  is  acknowledged  in  eloquent 
language.  God  is  praised  for  having  beautified  the  world 
and  for  our  comfort  rendered  it  illustrious  with  sun  and 
moon  and  choir  of  stars  which  forever  praise  His  glorious 
majesty.  The  water  is  commemorated  also  for  drink  and 
cleansing,  the  air  for  respiration  and  for  sound,  the  fire  for 
our  consolation  in  cold  and  darkness,  the  navigable  ocean 
and  the  land  with  the  animal  creation,  the  sweet-smelling 
and  healing  herbs,  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  tlie  order  of  the 
seasons,  the  courses  of  the  clouds  and  the  winds  which  blow 
when  commanded  by  God.  For  all  these  things  praise  is 
given  to  Him  in  the  eucharistic  prayer,  as  though  it  formed 
an  indispensable  element  in  worship  to  acknowledge  the 
glory  and  the  beauty  and  especially  the  goodness  of  God  in 
the  visible  world  of  external  nature.  So  also  Dionysius  the 
Areopagite  in  his  outline  of  the  eucharistic  office  makes 
the  hierarch  first  celebrate  the  works  of  God  before  pro- 
ceeding to  consecrate  the  divine  gifts.  In  his  own  words 
or  in  those  attributed  to  him : 

"The  commemoration  of  Thy  gifts,  O  Lord,  exceeds  the  power" of 
mind,  or  speech,  or  thought,  nor  can  human  lips  or  minds  glorify 
Thee  as  Thou  art  worthy  to  be  praised.  For  by  Thy  word  the 
heavens  were  made,  and  by  the  breath  of  Thy  mouth  all  the  supernal 
powers,  all  the  lights  which  are  in  the  firmament,  sun  and  moon,  the 
sea  and  the  dry  land,  and  whatever  in  them  is.  Things  which  have 
no  voice  by  their  silence,  and  those  endowed  with  speech,  praise  Thee 
perpetually  through  word  and  song,  because  Thou  art  by  nature  good 
and  in  Thy  incomprehensible  essence  above  all  praise.  This  visible 
creation  related  to  the  senses  praises  Thee,  O  Lord,  as  well  as  that 
higher  intellectual  world  above  the  conditions  of  sensuous  perception. 
Heaven  and  earth  glorify  Thee,  sea  and  air  proclaim  Thee,  the  sun  in 
his  course  praises  Thee,  the  moon   in   its  changes  venerates  Thee. 

^  My  stag.,  V.  6. 


THE  lord's  supper  543 

Troops  of  archangels  and  hosts  of  angels,  powers  elevated  above  the 
world  and  above  all  human  faculty,  send  their  benedictions  to  Thy 
throne,  sweet  songs  and  pure,  free  from  all  earthly  stain,  joining  all 
in  one  eternal  hymn  of  praise  :  Holy,  Holy,  Holy."  ^ 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  Greek  liturgy  differs  funda- 
mentally from  the  Latin  Mass,  wherein  no  recognition 
is  made  of  the  goodness  of  God  in  the  visible  world,  or 
the  beauty  and  the  joy  of  the  whole  creation.  The  West- 
ern world  was  a  stranger,  at  the  moment  when  the  Latin 
liturgy  was  in  process  of  formation,  to  the  peculiar  reli- 
gious philosophy  developing  in  Alexandria  and  Syria,  that 
combination  of  theosophical  and  naturalistic  tendencies 
in  union  with  Christian  ideas,  which,  issuing  out  of  the 
old  religions,  formed  a  new  mysteriosophy  as  it  has  been 
called,  the  basis  of  the  Christian  mysteries  of  the  Oriental 
church.  Hence  also  the  Roman  liturgy  does  not  contain 
the  Invocation  of  the  Holy  Ghost  after  the  recital  of  the 
words  of  Institution,  found  in  every  Eastern  liturgy,  and 
regarded  as  essential  to  the  mystic  or  sacramental  trans- 
elementation  of  the  bread  and  wine.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  Greek  church,  the  Roman  sacrament  of 
the  altar  is  lacking  in  an  element  at  once  vital  and  indis- 
pensable. The  Greek  conception  is  more  akin  to  the  Prot- 
estant view,  that  asserts  the  necessity  of  faitli  in  order  to 
any  helpful  reception  of  the  sacrament.  In  the  Prayer  to 
the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  liturgy  of  the  Armenians,  we  may 
discern  the  fuller  thought  implied  in  the  more  condensed 
forms  of  other  liturgies : 

"  By  Thee  and  through  Thee,  did  the  offspring  of  the  patriarchal 
family  of  old,  called  seers,  declare  aloud  and  plainly  things  past  and 
things  to  come,  things  wrought  and  things  not  yet  come  to  effect. 
Thou,  O  energy  illimitable,  whom  Moses  proclaimed  Spirit  of  God 
moving  on  the  face  of  the  waters,  by  Thine  immense  brooding  and  by 
Thy  tender  sheltering  of  the  new  generations  under  the  overspreading 
of  Thy  wings  madest  known  the  mystery  of  the  font ;  who  after  the 
same  pattern  spreading  first  the  liquid  element  as  a  veil  on  high  didst 
in  lordly  wise  form  out  of  nothing,  O  mighty,  the  complete  natures 
of  all  things  that  are.  By  Thee  all  creatures  made  by  Thee  shall  be 
renewed  at  the  resurrection,  the  which  day  is  the  last  of  this  existence 

1  Liturgia,  8-  Dio7i.,  in  Migne,  Patrol.  Gr.,  III.  1125. 


544  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

and  the  first  of  the  land  of  the  living."  And  again,  in  the  form  of 
Invocation  in  the  same  litm-gy :  "  We  adore  and  we  beseech  Thee, 
O  good  God,  send  upon  us  and  upon  these  gifts  here  set  forth,  Thy 
coeternal  and  consubstantial  Holy  Spirit,  ...  by  whom  blessing  this 
bread  and  this  wine  Thou  wilt  make  them  truly  the  body  and  blood 
of  our  Lord  and  Saviour  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 

The  development  of  the  Oriental  type  of  ritual  was  still 
further  influenced  by  the  writings  of  Dionysius.^  He  con- 
ceived the  two  sacraments  as  vehicles  of  one  vast  mystic 
spiritual  force,  including  in  its  common  potency  confirma- 
tion or  the  chrism,  ordination,  monastic  consecration,  and 
the  unction  of  the  dead.  Under  the  influence  of  this  su- 
preme conviction,  the  usages  of  worship  were  presented  as 

1  Cf.  Brightman,  I.,  pp.  417,  439. 

2  In  the  account  which  Dionysius  has  given  of  the  liturgy  of  his  own 
time  it  was  still  comparatively  simple,  and,  with  the  exception  of  incense, 
did  not  differ  greatly  from  the  worship  described  by  Cyril,  Gregory,  or 
Chrysostom : 

"The  hierarcli,  having  finished  his  prayer  by  the  altar,  begins  by  in- 
censing it,  and  then  makes  the  circuit  of  the  holy  building.  Returning 
to  the  altar,  he  begins  to  chant  the  psalms,  all  the  ecclesiastical  orders 
joining  with  him  in  the  sacred  psalmody.  After  this,  the  lesson  from 
Holy  Scripture  is  read  by  the  minister ;  and  when  it  is  ended,  the  Cate- 
chumens, together  with  the  penitents  and  those  possessed,  are  ordered  to 
depart  from  the  sacred  enclosure,  those  only  remaining  who  are  worthy 
of  the  sight  and  the  communion  of  the  sacred  mysteries.  Of  the  lower 
ranks  of  the  ministry,  some  are  standing  near  the  closed  doors  of  the 
sanctuary,  while  others  perform  some  functions  pertaining  to  their  order. 
Those  who  hold  the  highest  place  among  the  deacons  (leitourgoi)  assist  the 
priests  in  bringing  to  the  altar  the  sacred  bread  and  the  cup  of  blessing, 
chanting  at  the  same  time,  together  with  the  whole  assembly,  the  universal 
hymn  of  praise.  Then  the  divine  hiei-arch  completes  the  sacred  prayers 
and  announces  to  all  the  peace  ;  and  when  they  have  made  the  mutual 
salutation,  there  follows  the  mystic  recital  of  the  names  inscribed  in  the 
holy  diptychs.  The  hierarch  and  priests  having  washed  their  hands,  the 
hierarch  stands  at  the  middle  of  the  holy  altar  surrounded  by  those  chosen 
from  among  the  deacons  together  with  the  priests.  After  the  hierarch 
has  celebrated  the  marvellous  works  of  God,  he  consecrates  the  divine 
mysteries  and  offers  to  the  view  the  things  celebrated  beneath  the  sym- 
bols reverently  exhibited.  When  he  has  thus  exposed  to  view  the  gifts 
of  divine  power,  he  partakes  of  the  communion  himself  and  then  invites 
the  others  ;  and  when  he  has  received  and  given  to  others  the  divine  com- 
munion, he  closes  with  a  sacred  act  of  thanksgiving.  But  while  the  com- 
mon people  liave  seen  the  mysteries  under  the  veil  of  the  symbol,  he 
himself  is  led,  always  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  through  spiritual  contempla- 
tion, and,  as  becomes  a  hierarch,  to  the  intellectual  types  of  the  cere- 
monial in  their  original  purity"  (Z)e  Eccles.  Hier.,  c.  iii.  2). 


THE  lord's  supper  545 

parts  of  a  great  whole,  and  invested  with  a  deeper  meaning. 
Other  church  writers  of  this  age,  when  speaking  of  the 
symbols  of  bread  and  wine,  vacillated  in  their  views  and 
utterances,  at  times  seeming  to  recognize  the  distinction 
between  the  symbol  and  the  thing  signified ;  and  again 
apparently  disowning  the  distinction  in  a  desire  to  maintain 
that  the  consecrated  elements  were  a  perpetuation  of  the 
body  of  Christ,  an  avenue  for  the  entrance  into  humanity 
of  the  life-giving  power  of  His  incarnation.  But  while  Di- 
onysius  never  lost  sight  of  the  distinction  between  the  sym- 
bol and  the  higher  reality,  yet  he  interpreted  the  distinction 
in  his  own  way,  endowing  the  symbol  with  an  independent 
mystic  power,  that  made  it  indispensable  to  a  true  worship. 
In  his  thought,  the  symbol  possessed  a  sensible  or  physical 
correspondence  with  the  spirit,  at  once  the  evidence  of  the 
existence  of  the  spiritual  and  also  its  representation.  It 
was  his  aim  to  raise  the  initiated  to  a  fuller  conception  of 
the  spiritual  truth  for  which  the  symbol  stood.  The  priest- 
hood shares  witli  the  symbol  in  being  one  of  the  elements 
in  a  secret  divine  process,  but  is  not  endowed  with  power 
in  itself  to  transmute,  as  in  the  Latin  conception,  the  mate- 
rial food  into  the  higher  divine  reality.  The  priest  is  him- 
self but  a  higher  symbol,  and  likewise  the  instruction  he 
imparts  to  the  people.  The  priesthood,  the  homiletic 
teaching,  and  the  bread  and  the  wine,  —  these  three  con- 
stitute the  sacrament,  all  alike  expressions  of  a  secret,  yet 
everywhere  active,  divine  process.^ 

But  the  chief  indebtedness  of  Oriental  ritual  to  Diony- 
sius  lay  in  the  consciousness  he  inspired  or  strengthened, 
that  the  revelation  of  heaven  to  the  world,  dimly  fore- 
shadowed in  heathen  mysteries,  was  opened  to  the  Chris- 
tian worshipper  at  every  moment  in  the  sacred  liturgy. 
The  liturgy  was  no  human  work,  but  an  organic  part  of 
Christian  revelation.  All  that  went  on  in  the  worship 
of  the   church  on   earth  was  a  reproduction,  actual  and 

1  "Die  consecrirten  Elemente  selbst  werden  als  Symbole  behandelt. 
Die  realistische  Anschauung  des  Chrysostomus  findet  sich  bei  Dionysiiis 
nicht.     Der  Realisinus   liegt  sozusagen  in  der  Stabilitat  und   Integritat 
des  liturgischen  VoUzuges  "  (Harnack,  Dogmengeschichte,  II.  437). 
2n 


546  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

real  in  its  degree,  however  imperfect,  of  the  worship  of 
the  heavenly  hosts.  In  the  commentary  of  Symeon,  Arch- 
bishop of  Thessalonica,  who  lived  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
who  was  also  a  devout  student  of  Diouysius,  we  have 
the  interpretation  of  the  Eastern  liturgy,  when  its  long 
development  was  at  last  complete.  Some  conception  may 
be  given,  in  the  following  condensed  abridgment,  of  the 
spirit  of  Oriental  worship: 

"  The  descent  of  the  bishop  from  his  throne  to  begin  tlie  divine 
office  is  a  figure  of  the  condescension  of  the  Son  of  God.  The  pres- 
ence of  Christ  on  earth,  His  manifestation  even  to  His  death  and 
descent  into  hell,  are  represented  by  the  priest  going  toward  the  West 
as  far  as  the  doors  of  the  church.  The  deacons,  standing  by  the 
bishop,  typify  not  only  the  apostles,  but  the  holy  angels  ministeiing 
in  the  mysteries  of  Christ.  The  coming  forth  of  the  priests  from 
within  the  Bema  after  the  recital  of  the  opening  prayers  represents 
the  descent  of  the  angels  at  the  ascension  of  Christ.  At  the  Little 
Entrance,  when  the  deacons  go  two  by  two  in  procession  bearing 
torches  and  carrying  the  Holy  Gospels,  the  priests  following  and 
chanting  the  invitation  to  worship,  or  when  the  deacon  gives  the 
invitation  to  stand  while  the  Gospel  is  read,  in  all  this  is  shadowed 
forth  the  resurrection  and  ascension  of  Christ.  But  the  bishop  in  the 
procession  is  a  type  of  Christ  Himself  manifested  to  the  disciples. 
The  nave  of  the  church  is  a  type  of  earth ;  and  the  holy  Bema,  or 
veiled  sanctuary,  is  the  figure  of  heaven.  The  doors  of  the  Bema 
opening  for  the  entrance  of  the  clergy  and  closing  again  recall  the 
words,  '  Lift  up  your  heads,  O  ye  gates,  and  the  King  of  glory  shall 
come  in.'  The  incensing  the  holy  table  figures  the  descent  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  The  signing  of  the  Gospel  by  the  bishop  in  the  form  of 
a  cross  with  a  double  taper  teaches  the  doctrine  of  the  incarnation 
and  the  double  nature ;  but  when  it  is  signed  with  a  threefold  taper, 
there  is  to  be  understood  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.  When  Christ 
Himself  is  speaking,  as  in  the  reading  of  the  Gospel,  the  bishop  lays 
aside  his  omophorion,  which  is  otherwise  a  symbol  of  the  incarnation. 
The  washing  of  the  hands  manifests  the  irreproachable  purity  of  the 
hierarchy.  In  the  Great  Entrance  which  next  follows,  when  there 
is  full  procession  of  readers,  deacons,  and  priests  bearing  the 
lamps  and  the  holy  vessels,  there  is  typified  the  second  coming  of  the 
Lord  in  glory ;  and  at  the  same  time  the  burial  of  Christ  who  is  to 
be  hereafter  the  beatific  vision.  This  is  the  moment  when  the 
people  cast  themselves  at  the  feet  of  the  clergy,  worshipping  the 
good  gifts  of  God  in  the  bread  and  wine.  The  bishop  goes  within 
the  Bema,  and  the  doors  are  closed,  because  it  is  not  fitting  that  the 
mysteries  be  disclosed  to  the  people.  The  bishop  alone  is  without 
intermediary  in  approaching  the  holy  table,  and  through  him  even 


THE  lokd's  supper  547 

the  priests  must  be  admitted  into  the  participation  of  the  awful 
mysteries.  The  kiss  of  peace  which  is  then  given  represents  the  love 
■which  exists  in  heaven.  That  the  veil  should  be  placed  over  the 
elements  until  the  recital  of  the  Creed  indicates  the  necessity  of  con- 
fessing a  true  faith  in  order  to  see  Christ  within  the  veil.  After  the 
Triumphal  Hymn  has  been  sung,  the  celebration  of  the  mysteries 
begins.  When  the  words  of  institution  have  been  said  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  invoked  to  bless  the  elements,  theia  Christ  lies  upon  the  altar 
in  His  very  essence,  at  whose  sight  the  celebrant  becomes  bold  for  the 
intercessory  prayer,  commemorating  also,  at  the  time  of  the  obla- 
tion, the  Virgin  Mother  and  the  saints,  who  with  the  people  are 
united  by  means  of  the  one  great  sacrifice.  There  are  other  symbolic 
acts  to  be  performed  befoi'e  the  communion  :  the  elevation  of  the 
bread,  which  is  Christ  upon  the  Cross ;  the  commingling  of  water 
with  the  wine,  a  reminder  of  the  water  and  the  blood ;  the  bread 
broken  and  placed  crosswise,  which  is  Jesus  crucified  ;  warm  water 
added  to  the  cup,  a  sign  that  the  body  of  Christ,  after  death,  still 
retained  its  life-giving  power.  In  the  exhibition  of  the  elements  to 
the  people,  the  veil  is  still  upon  them,  for  it  is  not  lawful  that  the 
people  should  gaze  on  them  directly.  After  the  communion,  the- 
symbolism  points  to  the  ascended  Christ.  Most  of  the  people  have 
not  communed,  for  they  are  not  worthy.  And  yet  they  should  be 
sanctified,  and  their  sanctification  must  be  by  means  of  material  things, 
since  the  soul  is  united  with  the  body.  Therefore  bread  blessed  in 
the  sacristy,  but  not  consecrated  on  the  altar,  is  distributed  to 
the  congregation."  1 

V 

The  Byzantine  liturgy  is  the  national  liturgy  of  Antioch, 
Alexandria,  and  Jerusalem  as  well  as  of  Constantinople. 
It  is  used  also  in  Greece  and  Russia,  Servia,  Bulgaria, 
and  Roumania.  Even  the  heretical  churches  of  the  East 
have  approximated  its  order.  Its  origin  and  the  history 
of  its  growth  have  not  yet  been  fully  traced.  There 
is  no  objection  to  the  tradition  that  it  received  some 
influence  from  Basil  and  from  Chrysostom,  but  what  or 
how  great  that  influence  was  is  not 'definitely  known.  In 
its  present  form  it  is  not  their  work,  but  the  result  of  a 
long  period  of  growth.  There  are  many  Oriental  liturgies 
in  some  respects  resembling  and  in  others  differing  from  it, 
but  the  majority  of  them  are  no  longer  in  use,  and  their 

1  Cf.  De  Sacra  Liturgia,  in  Migne,  PatnA.  Gr.,  CLV.,  273  ff. 


548  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

origin  and  history  are  obscure.  The  resemblance  between 
these  liturgies  may  be  explained  by  tlieir  indebtedness 
to  some  common  source.  As  the  ancient  creeds  have 
for  the  most  part  a  common  framework,  because  they  are 
expansions  of  the  baptismal  formula,  so  these  ancient 
liturgies  have  their  common  ground  in  the  institution  of 
the  Lord's  Supper.  But  the  history  of  Christian  worship, 
also,  within  certain  limits,  shows  a  tendency  toward  uni- 
formity. As  in  an  age  when  solidarity  is  the  prevailing 
motive  there  is  a  tendency  in  fashion  which  leads  to 
uniformity  in  dress  throughout  the  civilized  world,  so 
in  the  matter  of  Christian  worship  it  would  seem  that  a 
common  instinct  drew  men  together,  that  they  would 
fain  worship  alike,  whatever  their  differences  might  be,  — 
a  conviction  that  there  must  be  some  right  method  of  ac- 
ceptable worship,  incumbent  upon  all  to  follow.  In  this 
way  may  be  explained  the  fact  that  the  Bj^zantine  liturgy 
has  become  the  prevailing  standard  in  the  East,  and  that 
the  Roman  Mass  has  at  last  succeeded  in  supplanting 
other  uses  in  Western  Europe,  where  the  Galilean,  the 
Mozarabic,  and  the  Ambrosian  liturgies  have  either  been 
prohibited  or  reduced  to  an  occasional  performance.^ 

The  differences  between  these  two  rites  have  already 
been  suggested,  but  they  are  so  important  as  to  demand 
further  consideration. ^       The   first  and    in  some  respects 

1  Anglican  liturglolooists  have  maintained  tliat  the  Gallican  liturgy 
was  derived  from  Epliesus,  whence  it  was  carried  into  Gaul.  For  a 
criticism  of  this  theory,  cf.  Duchesne,  pp.  84  ff.,  who  holds  that  it  came 
through  Milan,  which  from  the  latter  part  of  the  fourth  century  took  the 
lead  among  the  churches  of  Western  Europe.  These  Western  liturgies, 
especially  the  Gallican  and  Ambrosian,  show  faint  traces  of  an  Eastern 
origin.  Cf.  Hammond,  Liturgies,  Eastern  and  Western,  for  comparative 
tables. 

^  Cf.  Isidore  of  Seville,  De  Libris  et  Officiis  Ecclesiasticis  ;  Durand  Guil- 
laume,  Bationale  Divinotnm  Officiornm  ;  Miiratori,  Litiirgia  Bomana 
Vetiis  ;  Martene,  De  Antiqnis  Ecdesiae  liitibns ;  Rock,  Hierugia,  or  the 
Holy  Sacrifice  of  the  3Iass ;  Bellarmine,  De  Sacramento  Eucharistiae ; 
Moehler,  SymboUk ;  Duchesne,  Origines  dn  Culte  Chretien;  Ch.  Rohault 
de  Fleury,  La  Messe,  Etudes  archaeologique  siir  les  monuments ;  Hahn, 
Die  Lehre  von  den  Sac.ramenten  in  ihrer  geschichtlichen  Eiitwicklimg 
innerhalb  der  abendUindischen  Kirche,  bis  ziim  Council  von  Trient;  also 
Herzog,  Beal  Encyc,  XIII.,  Art.  Sacramente ;  Art.  Sacraments,  in  Diet. 
Chris.  Antiq. 


THE  lord's  supper  549 

the  most  striking  of  these  divergences  dates  from  the 
hour  when  they  had  their  origin,  —  a  monument  to  the 
deeper  moods  of  humanity  in  the  great  crisis  of  its  his- 
tory. The  Greek  liturgy  is  eucharistic  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  word,  the  expression  of  religious  joy  and 
gratitude,  a  sustained  hymn  of  praise  and  thanksgiving, 
wliile  the  Latin  liturgy  is  penitential,  with  an  undertone 
of  sorrow,  and  pervaded  by  a  cry  for  deliverance  from 
existing  or  impending  evil.  In  the  Greek  litui-gy,  one  is 
walking  in  the  light  of  a  revelation  which  diffuses  happi- 
ness and  peace  ;  in  the  Latin,  one  is  laboring  under  the 
conviction  of  sin,  the  sense  of  a  divine  law  which  has  been 
broken.  In  the  one,  the  attitude  in  worship  is  standing,  as 
the  proper  attitude  for  receiving  the  revelation  ;  in  the 
other,  the  only  position  is  kneeling,  as  becoming  suppliants 
in  sorrow  and  liumiliation.  The  Latin  liturgy  retains,  in- 
deed, the  Ter-sanctus  and  the  Gloria  in  Excehis  ;  but  while 
music  can  do  much  to  neutralize  its  prevailing  mood  of 
depression,  it  cannot  wholly  overcome  the  penitential  chant 
of  the  Agnus  Dei,  which  is  the  very  core  of  the  office,  nor 
the  Psalm  with  which  the  Mass  is  begun  :  "  Why  art  thou 
cast  down,  O  my  soul,  and  why  art  thou  dispirited  within 
me  ?  "  In  the  Greek  liturgy  the  world  is  good,  and  God  is 
"  the  good  Lord  and  the  lover  of  men  "  ;  the  creation  is 
in  itself  a  subject  of  grateful  commemoration  and  praise ; 
but  the  Latin  rite  is  silent  about  the  goodness  of  the  natu- 
ral order  and  sparing  of  its  epithets ;  its  hope  is  in  the  un- 
deserved mercy  of  the  Almighty  and  Eternal  God.  The 
Greek  liturgy  is  not  wanting  in  expressions  of  i-epentance 
and  in  prayer  for  deliverance  from  sin  -,  but  sin  is  con- 
ceived as  resulting  from  the  feebleness  of  man,  or  from 
a  want  of  true  knowledge, — a  weakness  which  the  divine 
forgiveness  stands  ever  ready  to  reinforce,  an  ignorance 
which  the  divine  light  must  dispel.  Humanity  in  its  very 
feebleness  is  always  making  a  mute  but  successful  appeal 
to  the  divine  sympathy.  But  in  the  Latin  rite  there  is  a 
suspicion  of  some  deeper  source  of  the  evil  and  misery, 
the  consciousness  of  wilful  transgression  of  the  divine 
commandment,  disturbing  the  soul,  difficult  to  reach  and 


550  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

to  subdue,  forever  invoking  penalty  and  inevitable  con- 
sequence. The  one  liturgy  has  measured  the  depth  of 
human  joy  in  tliis  world,  the  other  has  sunk  its  plummet 
deep  in  the  waves  and  storms  of  human  agony. 

While  these  divergences  may  be  traced  in  part  to  the 
constitutional  difference  in  temperament  between  Oriental 
and  Occidental  peoples,  yet  there  is  also  another  cause 
to  be  sought  in  the  influences  of  the  time  when  the 
liturgies  appeared.  Although  there  are  no  liturgical 
manuscripts  dating  from  the  age  when  the  liturgies  are 
assumed  to  have  taken  form,  yet  there  is  no  ground  for  re- 
jecting the  tradition  that  the  liturgy  of  Constantinoijle  is 
indebted  to  Basil  and  Chrysostom  in  the  fourth  century,  or 
that  the  Roman  liturgy  received  some  impression,  accord- 
ing to  tradition,  from  the  hands  of  Leo  the  Great,  and  of 
Pope  Gelasius  in  the  fifth  century,  and  still  later,  from  Pope 
Gregory  the  Great.  It  is  significant  that  the  Greek  tradi- 
tion goes  back  a  century  earlier  than  the  Latin,  pointing 
to  a  later  liturgical  development  in  the  Roman  church. 
The  Roman  use  has  not  caught  that  spirit  of  triumphant 
joy  and  gi-atitude  which  the  events  of  the  fourth  century 
produced  in  the  Eastern  church.  Indeed,  the  victory  of 
Constantine  meant  rather  desertion  and  humiliation  to 
ancient  Rome.  The  building  of  Constantinople  and  the 
transfer  of  the  Capital  from  the  Western  to  the  Eastern 
empire,  meant  victory  and  enthusiasm  for  the  East,  and 
greater  strength  and  permanence  of  its  political  constitu- 
tion ;  while,  for  the  West,  it  meant  the  weakness  of  ex- 
posure to  impending  barbarism.  Constantinople  stood  for 
the  triumph  of  Greece  over  the  city  which  had  held  her  in 
bondage  for  centuries.  The  religious  significance  of  these 
events  is  also  important.  The  victory  of  Constantine 
as  interpreted  in  the  East  meant  that  the  long  duel,  as  it 
were,  between  the  heathen  deities  and  the  Christian  God 
was  over ;  that  God  had  vindicated  His  power,  and  had 
visibly  manifested  His  love  and  protection  for  His  people. 
But  heathenism  in  the  West  still  had  its  stronghold  in  the 
neglected,  abandoned  city.  Again,  the  triumph  of  Athana- 
sius  was  mainly  an  Eastern  victory,  as  was  the  controversy 


THE  lord's  supper  551 

regarding  the  incarnation.  It  was  mostly  Eastern  writers, 
Athanasius  himself,  Basil,  and  the  two  Gregories,  whose 
persistent  energy  and  powerful  eloquence,  springing  from 
deep  inward  conviction,  at  last  won  the  cause  so  vital 
to  the  interests,  not  only  of  the  church,  but  of  humanity. 
Nothing  in  the  history  of  the  cliurch  ever  went  so  deep  in 
motives  or  in  results  as  the  Nicene  victory.  But  in  all 
this  the  Western  church,  for  the  most  part,  participated 
indirectly,  as  compared  with  its  Eastern  rival.  The  sense 
of  exhilaration  and  of  gratitude  Avhich  is  among  the  most 
powerful  of  religious  emotions,  the  assurance  of  the  lov- 
ing care  of  God,  the  conviction  that,  after  all,  the  world 
is  good,  sentiments  which  penetrate  and  dominate  the 
Eastern  ritual,  are  not  unrelated  to  this  external  order  of 
events  in  the  processes  of  time. 

When  the  Latin  liturg}^  began  to  take  form,  it  Avas  Pope 
Leo  the  Great,  if  we  follow  the  tradition,  who  is  first 
recorded  to  have  left  an  imprint  upon  it.  But  the  time  of 
Leo  (440-461)  corresponds  with  the  evil  hour  when  the 
barbarian  general  was  marching  upon  Rome,  with  all  the 
impending  horrors  of  its  capture.  Leo  went  forth  for  its 
relief,  strengthened  by  faith  in  the  invisible  presence  of 
the  Apostles,  Peter  and  Paul.  It  was  a  great  deliverance, 
wrought, by  God,  yet  manifestly  through  the  agency  of 
the  priesthood,  as  represented  by  the  bishop  of  Rome. 
With  the  age  of  Leo  coincides  the  beginning  of  the  Latin 
church  in  its  independent  career,  as  also  the  first  assertion 
of  the  Roman  papacy.  The  Latin  liturgy  bears  the  traces 
of  deliverance  from  evil,  but  also  a  consciousness  that  the 
source  of  the  evil  still  exists,  and  has  not  been  wholly 
removed.  In  the  age  of  Pope  Gelasius,  toward  the  close 
of  the  fifth  century,  there  was  another  humiliation  for  the 
West,  when  the  young  Augustus  resigned  his  crown,  and 
Italy  passed  under  the  rule  of  a  barbarian  conqueror.  In 
the  century  that  followed,  while  the  empire  in  the  East 
rose  to  the  height  of  its  power  under  Justinian  (527-565), 
the  West  was  a  prey  to  the  hordes  of  barbarous  peoples 
that  swept  over  it  in  wave  after  wave  of  invasion.  It 
was  no  creative    mood,  whether   for  liturgy  or  doctrine, 


652  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

that  such  events  inspired.  While  the  East  was  eagerly 
receiving  the  philosophy  of  Dionysius,  which  reconciled 
man  as  a  spiritual  being  with  his  environment  in  the 
physical  creation,  and  the  last  vestiges  of  the  old  Gnostic 
teaching  that  the  world  was  evil  had  disappeared,  Rome 
was  receiving,  year  by  year,  fresh  lessons  on  the  muta- 
bility and  tlie  vanity  of  all  earthly  things.  Only  the 
church  of  God  remained  for  its  consolation.  We  may  re- 
call the  language  of  Gregory  the  Great  as  he  looked  forth 
from  his  retreat  when  the  waters  were  at  last  subsiding, 
who  may  also  have  left  an  impression  upon  the  Roman 
liturgy  in  harmony  with  his  experience :  "  What  is  it 
that  can  at  this  time  delight  us  in  this  world?  Every- 
where we  see  tribulation ;  everywhere  we  hear  lamen- 
tation. What  is  it,  brethren,  that  can  make  us  contented 
with  this  life  ?  Let  us  honestly  despise  this  present  world 
and  imitate  the  works  of  the  pious  as  well  as  we  can." 

Again  it  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Oriental  liturgies,  that 
the  divine  action  appears  more  prominently  tlian  the 
human.  It  is  the  power  of  the  divine  presence  that 
operates  in  the  transaction  of  the  ritual,  of  whom  the 
priesthood  is  but  the  mouthpiece.  It  is  God  who  is  the 
actor  in  all  sacramental  ordinances,  while  the  priest  de- 
clares His  action  to  have  been  performed,  or  prays  for  its 
performance.  In  the  office  for  holy  baptism  in  the  Rus- 
sian church,  "  Form  thy  Christ  within  him  "  is  the  pra3'er 
for  the  candidate  ;  or  in  absolution,  "  Behold,  my  child, 
here  stands  Christ  invisible,  and  He  receives  thy  prayer 
of  penitence  "  :  or  again  in  ordination,  "  Not  by  the  laying 
on  of  my  hands  but  by  the  descent  of  Thy  rich  mercies 
is  grace  given  to  those  who  are  worthy  of  Thee."  "  From 
the  throne  of  the  glory  of  Thy  kingdom  come  and  sanctify 
us.  Thou  that  sittest  above  with  the  Father,  and  art  here 
invisibl}^  present  with  us,"  is  the  prayer  that  precedes  the 
delivery  of  the  elements.^  In  the  Alexandrian  liturgy  (St. 
Mark's)  the  priest  declares  to  his  assistants,  "  The  Lord 
shall  bless  and  minister  with  you."  ^ 

1  Bjerrins,  Offices  of  the  Oriental  Church,  pp.  69,  91,  106,  118. 

2  Neale,  Primitive  Liturgies,  p.  28. 


THE  lord's  supper  553 

One  misses  emphatic  expressions  like  these,  in  the  Latin 
ritual ;  instead  there  is  the  anxious  importance  attached 
to  the  action  of  the  priest,  as  a  delegate  commissioned  in 
the  place  of  Christ  or  of  God.  In  the  Mass,  the  recogni- 
tion of  a  divine  presence  in  the  rite  is  postponed  until  the 
priest  by  the  recital  of  the  formula  of  institution  has 
brought  down  Christ  upon  the  altar.  Hence  the  petitions 
in  the  Missal  wliere  the  priest  prays  exclusively  for  him- 
self that  he  may  be  adequate  to  perform  the  divine  mystery, 
are  more  numerous  and  specific  than  in  the  Eastern  litur- 
gies, and  indeed  in  the  original  Clementine  liturgy,  they 
are  wanting  altogether.  The  Greek  liturgies  betray  rather 
an  anxiety  for  the  people  that  they  should  understand 
and  be  inwardly  impressed  with  the  meaning  and  impor- 
tance of  the  divine  action.  Hence  their  tendency  was 
toward  rhetorical  fulness,  the  expansion  of  formulas  by 
amplification  until  the  wealth  of  their  meaning  should  be 
disclosed.  The  Latin  condensed  the  forms  of  absolution 
and  benediction  into  the  briefest  possible  compass ;  the 
Greek  expanded  them,  until  all  that  was  involved  in  the 
divine  forgiveness  or  the  divine  blessing  should  be  realized 
by  the  people  ;  as  though  God  Himself  could  not  act  in  the 
great  transaction  without  the  intelligent  participation  and 
sympathy  of  the  congregation.  But  the  words  of  the  Latin 
liturgy  do  not,  and  were  not  intended  to,  enlighten  the 
mind  of  the  hearer  or  arouse  his  spiritual  and  moral  nature  : 
they  are  rather  a  mechanical  means  to  an  end,  where 
rhetoric  would  be  an  offence  and  the  expansion  of  formu- 
laries would  only  delay  the  great  consummation.  While  the 
Latin  liturgy,  like  the  Greek,  is  dramatic  in  its  construction, 
yet  its  predominant  purpose  is  pragmatic,  — ■  the  perform- 
ance of  a  transcendent  act.  And  to  this  end  the  words  to 
be  used  by  the  priest  require  no  emphasis  to  make  them 
impressive.  They  are  charged  by  their  simple  and  ra[)id 
recital  with  supernatural  power.  In  the  Latin  Mass  the 
priest  seems  to  stand  alone,  overawed  by  the  majestic  func- 
tion intrusted  to  him  by  the  divine  will  and  condescension, 
supi-emely  solicitous  that  he  shall  not  fail  to  perform  it 
aright  through  any  hidden  weakness  of  his  own ;  in  the 


554  CHRISTIAN    WOESHIP 

Greek  rite,  not  only  is  God  present  though  invisible,  and 
Himself  responsible  for  the  transmutation  of  human  food 
into  a  divine  sustenance,  but  angels  ascending  and  de- 
scending are  witnesses  of  the  mystery  and  Jesus  Himself, 
the  head  and  inspirer  of  the  heavenly  and  the  earthly  hie- 
rarchies, is  the  confidence  and  support  of  the  faithful. 
Angels  also  are  not  absent  from  the  Latin  rite,  but  their 
function  is,  when  the  act  of  transubstantiation  has  been 
accomplished  by  the  priest,  to  bear  away  the  new  sacrifice 
and  to  present  it  before  the  throne  of  God.^ 

The  difference  between  the  Latin  and  the  Greek  concep- 
tion of  the  sacred  rites  of  the  church,  and  pre-eminently  of 

1  An  illustration  of  the  divergence  in  principle  between  the  Latin  and 
Greek  rites  is  clearly  seen  in  the  oflSces  of  coronation.  According  to  the 
Latin  use  the  prince  receives  the  crown  from  the  bishop,  who  is  delegated 
to  act  in  the  place  of  God,  and  who  therefore  appears  in  the  transaction 
with  a  dignity  which  reflects  the  majesty  of  the  King  of  kings.  "Cum 
hodie  per  manus  nostras,  optime  Princeps,  qui  Christi  Salvatoris  nostri 
vice  in  hac  re  fungimur  (quam  vis  indigni)  sacram  unctioneni  et  Regni 
insignia  sis  suscepturus. "  Or  again,  at  the  giving  of  the  sword  :  '•  Accipe 
gladium  de  altari  sumptum  per  nostras  manus,  licet  indignas"  ;  and  at 
the  bestowal  of  the  crown  :  "  Accipe  coronam  regni  quae,  licet  ab  indig- 
nis,  Episcoporum  tamen,  manibus,  capiti  tuo  imponitur." 

In  the  Greek  rite  according  to  the  Russian  church,  the  situation  is 
reversed  ;  God  is  acting  directly  and  the  agency  of  the  bishop  is  subor- 
dinate. The  prince  ascends  the  throne  in  the  centre  of  the  church  as  his 
first  act,  instead  of  the  last,  as  in  the  Latin  ceremonial  —  the  evidence 
that  the  service  which  follows  is  an  act  of  recognition  of  what  the  divine 
will  has  already  ordained.  While  all  around  him  kneel,  even  the  officiat- 
ing metropolitan,  he  alone  remains  standing.  He  himself  places  the 
crown  upon  his  head,  he  takes  up  the  sceptre,  and  it  is  he  who  makes 
the  coronation  prayer  that  he  may  be  endowed  with  wisdom  for  his  great 
work.  The  address  of  the  bishop  at  each  step  is  in  the  nature  of  a  dis- 
claimer of  any  priestly  power  in  the  transaction  :  "  With  this  visible  and 
corporal  adornment  of  thy  head  is  clear  proof  that  Christ  invisibly  crowns 
thee  head  of  the  Russian  Empire."  And  once  more,  after  he  has  taken 
the  sceptre:  "God  hath  crowned  this  God-given,  God-adorned,  most 
God-fearing  autocrat  and  great  monarch  Emperor  of  All  the  Russias. 
Take  thyself  the  sceptre  and  ball  of  the  empire,  the  visible  image  of  the 
sole  sovereignty  over  the  people,  given  by  the  Most  High  for  their  govern- 
ment, promotion,  and  every  desirable  well-being."  Only  when  all  these 
acts  have  been  performed,  comes  the  priestly  anointing,  which  in  the 
Latin  rite  precedes  the  others.  From  a  ritual  point  of  view,  the  Eastern 
rite  devolves  the  responsibility  of  the  coronation  upon  the  immediate 
action  of  God,  and  the  Latin  upon  the  priest  who  acts  in  the  place  of 
God. 


THE  lord's  supper  555 

the  eucharist,  is  further  revealed  in  the  designation  by 
which  they  are  commonly  known.  In  the  Latin  Vulgate, 
sacramentum  is  the  translation  of  the  Greek  fivarrjpiov. 
Both  these  words  are  heavily  and  unmistakably  charged 
with  an  antecedent  meaning  derived  from  the  inner  depth 
of  divergent  civilizations  and  cultures.  The  oath  of  alle- 
giance in  the  sacred  engagement  entered  into  by  the  Roman 
soldier  stands  for  what  was  most  profoundly  important 
in  the  consciousness  of  the  Latin  people,  —  the  binding 
sanctity  of  engagements  where  the  vital  interests  of  two 
parties  are  concerned.  On  the  other  hand,  the  word  'mys- 
tery' had  associations  with  heathen  religions  in  their  lower 
as  well  as  their  better  form,  with  philosophical  speculations 
also,  grounded  in  the  most  solemn  convictions  of  the 
Oriental  mind.  Two  more  characteristic  words  could  not 
have  been  chosen,  for  representing  and  translating  the 
varying  apprehensions  of  the  Christian  faith.  Trans- 
formed though  they  were  by  Christian  usage,  it  was  im- 
possible that  there  should  not  cling  to  them  something 
of  the  meaning  and  force  which  led  to  their  adoption, 
or  made  their  use  necessary,  in  order  that  the  heathen 
mind  might  comprehend  the  purpose  of  the  new  religion. 
At  first  these  words  were  used  in  a  general  way,  so  that 
they  included  doctrines  and  confessions  of  faith  as  well 
as  external  acts  and  rites.  But  their  application  came 
for  the  most  part  to  be  restricted  to  the  external  repre- 
sentation of  the  faith  in  a  symbolic  ritual.  The  words 
'sacrament'  and  'mystery'  borrowed,  it  is  true,  from  each 
other,  until  sacramentum  became  to  some  extent  synony- 
mous with  ixvarrjpiov;  but  the  difference  between  the 
present  Latin  Mass  and  the  Greek  liturgy  still  points 
back  for  its  origin  to  the  distinct  conceptions  embodied 
in  these  venerable  words.  In  East  and  West  alike  these 
terms  'mystery'  and  'sacrament'  came  finally  to  include 
seven  distinct  rites ;  but  they  also  retained  something 
of  their  primitive  significance.  In  the  seven  'mysteries' 
of  the  Greek  church,  there  is  implied  a  conjunction  of 
the  physical  with  the  spiritual  operated  by  the  Holy 
Spirit;    in    the   Latin   church  they  still  retain  the    char- 


556  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

acter  of  sacred  engagements  as  by  a  solemn  irrevocable 
vow. 

In  its  conception  of  the  sacraments,  as  in  its  theology 
and  its  organization,  the  Latin  church  lays  the  stress  upon 
the  will  as  that  which  is  most  distinctive  in  God  or  man. 
From  the  time  that  Augustine's  religious  experience  be- 
came the  normal  standard  of  Latin  Christianity,  this 
question  of  the  human  will  and  the  divine  will  became  the 
ruling  issue  in  every  department  of  ecclesiastical  life.  Not 
the  nature  of  things,  not  the  reason  of  things,  was  the  ulti- 
mate appeal,  but  an  infinite  will  whose  decree  was  final, 
and  a  human  will,  endowed  by  the  divine  will  with  some 
superhuman  power.  To  this  question  of  the  will,  and 
its  prerogatives,  are  chiefly  owing  the  difficulties  and  the 
controversies  about  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper 
in  the  Latin  church.  The  Greek  church  has  not  been 
troubled  with  an  issue  from  which  the  Latin  church  has 
never  been  entirely  free,  —  the  question  of  what  constitutes 
the  validity  of  the  sacrament.  The  problem  was  raised  by 
the  Donatists,  who  insisted  that  the  moral  character  of  the 
officiant  must  have  some  connection  with  the  validity  of 
sacred  rites.  The  same  question  was  raised  by  the  action 
of  Hildebrand  when  he  practically  occupied  the  Donatist 
position  in  order  to  enforce  his  decree  of  the  celibacy 
of  the  clergy,  and  from  that  moment  the  issue  became  in- 
creasingly prominent  in  the  Latin  church.  In  the  Protes- 
tant churches,  so  changed  is  the  definition  of  the  sacrament, 
that  the  difficulties  regarding  what  constitutes  validity 
have  faded  away,  and  the  question  itself  has  become  almost 
unintelligible  to  the  Protestant  mind. 

A  certain  conception  of  the  function  of  the  human  will 
combined  with  the  Roman  temperament  —  to  which  obedi- 
ence is  the  primal  virtue,  and  the  desire  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  order  the  highest  ideal  —  to  give  to  the  Roman 
priesthood  from  the  first  a  peculiar  character,  fundament- 
ally different  from  the  sacerdotal  principle  embodied  in  the 
Greek  ritual.  Hence  the  Roman  priest  refused  to  be 
reduced  to  a  mere  machine  in  ecclesiastical  functions,  but 
insisted  on  the  power  delegated  to  him  by  God  in  order  to 


THE  lord's  supper  557 

the  valid  performance  of  sacramental  acts.  In  the  Greek 
liturgy  it  is  the  power  of  God  acting  directly  which  con- 
stitutes the  valid  sacrament.  This  action  of  the  divine 
agency  culminates  when,  after  the  recital  of  the  words  of 
institution,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  invoked  to  complete  the 
mystic  process.  The  absence  of  this  invocation  in  the 
Latin  rite  makes  the  momentous  instant  to  coincide  with 
the  utterance  of  the  words  Hoc  est  corpus  meum.  But 
unless  the  priest  who  recites  the  formula  possesses  some 
personal  power  which  gives  vitality  to  the  language,  he 
becomes  a  mere  animated  machine  for  the  utterance  of  an 
incantation.  In  the  Greek  liturgy  the  responsibility  is 
thrown  upon  God,  the  Holy  Spirit ;  but  in  the  Latin  Mass 
it  becomes,  according  to  the  prevailing  interpretation,  a 
heavy  burden  on  the  shoulders  of  the  priesthood  which 
claims  to  act,  by  the  divine  will,  in  the  place  of  God. 
The  question  of  the  validity  of  orders,  therefore,  becomes  of 
supreme  importance.  Whether  the  priesthood  can  be  sure 
that  it  possesses  the  power  is  a  point  involving  the 
validity  of  the  sacrament.  These  questionings  and  scruples 
come  to  a  focus  in  an  issue,  haunting  the  Latin  church 
with  a  dread  uncertainty  which  in  ordinary  times  may  not 
be  apparent,  but  rises  like  a  ghostly  visitant  whenever  the 
discussion  goes  below  the  surface,  or  some  vital  conse- 
quence may  be  at  stake.  In  ecclesiastical  language,  this 
difficult}^  is  known  as  the  doctrine  of  intention. 

It  was  in  the  age  of  scholastic  theology,  when  more 
distinctions  were  generated  than  the  mind  could  receive 
or  harmonize,  that  the  question  came  up  for  discussion 
as  to  what  constituted  the  validity  of  the  sacrament  of  the 
altar.  In  the  thirteenth  century,  when  the  papacy  was  in 
the  plenitude  of  its  power,  and  the  priesthood  also  was  fully 
conscious  of  its  dignity  and  its  mighty  prerogatives,  the 
formula  of  absolution  was  changed  from  a  prayer  to  the 
positive  declaration:  "I  absolve  thee";  the  dogma  of 
transubstantiation  was  set  forth  for  the  first  time  by  an 
imposing  council ;  and  the  priesthood  claimed  the  power 
of  "  making  the  bod}^  of  Christ."  This  was  the  moment 
when  the  question  was  raised  by  the  scholastic  philoso- 


558  CHRISTIAN    WORSHIP 

pliers,  whether  the  priest,  since  he  possessed  this  power, 
ought  also  to  have  a  conscious  will  or  intention  to  exer- 
cise his  power.  In  the  age  of  the  Schoolmen  the  question 
still  remained  a  speculative  issue,  and  its  consideration 
showed  a  certain  vagueness  and  irresolution ;  but  the 
tendency  of  opinion  was  to  affirm  the  necessity  of  priestly 
intention,  as  elevating  the  priest  above  a  mere  puppet 
mechanically  performing  a  ceremonial  act.  To  this  con- 
clusion the  influence  of  Thomas  Aquinas  contributed,^  who 
with  his  master,  Albertus  Magnus,  is  the  founder  of  the 
later  Roman  doctrine  of  the  Mass,  —  that  the  consecration 
of  the  elements  by  the  priest  and  not  the  faith  of  the 
recipient  constitutes  the  essence  of  the  rite.^ 

What  had  been  a  speculative  question  in  the  schools 
assumed  a  practical  character  in  the  age  of  the  Re- 
formatory Councils  when  heretics  were  multiplied,  with 
whom  it  was  an  axiom  that  to  God  alone  belonged  the 
power  which  the  priesthood  claimed.  In  order  to  meet 
this  growing  scepticism,  disowning  with  a  special  vehe- 
mence the  power  of  the  priest  in  the  sacrament  of  the 
altar,  or  asserting  that  an  evil  character  vitiated  all  sacra- 
mental rites,  the  doctrine  of  intention  was  virtually  pro- 
claimed by  the  Council  of  Constance  (1418),  with  the 
approval  of  Pope  Martin  V.,  in  the  condemnation  of 
those  who  held  that  a  wicked  priest,  if  he  used  the  due 

1  Sentent.  IV.,  Dist.  6,  Art.  2  and  Summa  III.,  Qu.  LXIV.,  Arts.  8,  10. 

2  "  Under  the  supreme  authority  of  Aquinas,  the  doctrine  of  intention, 
which  had  been  so  long  struggling  for  recognition,  found  a  secure  lodg- 
ment in  the  theological  structure.  Durand  de  Saint-Pour^ain,  who  wrote 
about  half  a  century  later,  treated  it  as  an  accej^ted  fact  that  without 
intention  the  words  of  the  sacrament  are  an  empty  formula.  He  illus- 
trates the  absolute  necessity  of  a  specific  intention  by  a  celebrated  propo- 
sition, which  has  been  authenticated  by  its  adoption  in  the  Rubrics  of  the 
Roman  Missal.  If,  he  says,  a  priest  has  eleven  wafers  before  him  to  con- 
secrate, and  thinks  there  are  only  ten,  but  intends  to  consecrate  them  all, 
they  will  all  be  consecrated  ;  if  he  intends  to  consecrate  only  ten,  and 
fixes  his  mind  on  one  to  be  excluded  while  he  repeats  the  formula,  then 
only  that  one  remains  unconsecrated  ;  but  if  he  does  not  exclude  one, 
then  none  are  consecrated,  for  the  intention  with  regard  to  each  one  is 
imperfect"  (Lea,  H.  C,  in  an  article  in  The  Independent,  New  York, 
Nov.  20,  1890,  reprinted  in  Mruj.  of  Chris.  Lit.,  Dec.  1800,  which  contains 
an  important  discussion  of  this  question,  with  a  full  citation  of  references). 


THE  lord's  supper  559 

matter  and  form  and  had  the  intention  of  doing  what  the 
church  does,  could  not  perform  a  valid  sacrament.^  Again 
at  the  Council  of  Florence  (1439)  Pope  Eugenius  IV.  re- 
affirmed more  positively  the  principle  that  the  absence  of 
intention  made  the  sacrament  imperfect.^  But  there  were 
even  graver  difficulties  in  the  way  than  the  opjDOsition  of 
heretics  who  boldly  denied  the  church's  teaching.  In  the 
age  of  the  Reformation  the  spirit  of  doubt  had  so  far 
invaded  the  church  itself  that  Latin  theologians  were  in 
a  quandary,  whether  it  were  safer  to  affirm  or  deny  the 
doctrine  of  intention.  On  the  one  hand,  the  church  itself 
was  distrustful  of  its  priesthood  because  of  the  existence 
of  a  Protestant  sympathy  within  its  fold.  If  intention 
were  necessary  and  if  the  priest  had  the  power  to  with- 
hold his  intention  or  had  become  sceptical  about  the  mys- 
tery of  the  altar,  it  lay  also  in  his  power  to  invalidate  the 
sacraments  upon  which  the  existence  of  the  church  de- 
pended. Who  could  tell,  so  long  as  the  priest  was  silent, 
whether  intention  were  present  or  absent?  The  conviction 
was  in  the  air  that  the  faith  of  the  believer  gave  value  to 
sacramental  acts.  It  might  then,  at  least,  be  inopportune 
at  a  time  when  a  large  part  of  Western  Christendom  had 
already  broken  away  from  the  papal  fold  to  reassert  the 
doctrine  of  intention.  At  the  Council  of  Trent  the 
bishop  of  Minori  urged  the  bishops  assembled  to  abandon 
the  doctrine.  He  gave  a  picture  of  the  results  that 
might  follow  if  the  doctrine  were  affirmed.  There  might 
be  a  knavish  priest  who  had  no  intention  to  administer 
true  baptism  to  a  child  who  should  afterwards  become  a 
bishop  in  some  large  city  and  there  ordain  a  large  number 
of  the  clergy.  Since  he  was  not  baptized,  he  is  not  or- 
dained, nor  are  they  ordained  who  are  promoted  by  him. 
In  that  great  city,  therefore,  there  will  be  neither  eucharist 
nor  confession,  millions  of  nullities  of  sacraments  by  the 
malice  of  one  minister  in  one  act  only.^     On  the  other 

1  Cf.  Harduin,  Coll.  Cone,  VIII.  915. 

2  Harduin,  Coll.  Cone,  IX.  4.S8. 

3  Cf.  Sarpi,  History  of  the  Council  of  Trent  (Eng.  Trans,  by  Brent), 
11. ,  pp.  240  ff. 


560  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

hand,  in  the  Catholic  reaction  led  by  the  Jesuits,  who 
pushed  every  Latin  tendency  to  its  logical  conclusion, 
the  doctrine  that  the  priest  must  exercise  his  intention 
was  a  vital  one  for  the  restoration  of  his  waning  importance. 
Such  was  the  dilemma  to  which  the  Latin  church  was  re- 
duced in  the  time  of  its  extremity.  Under  these  circum- 
stances the  Council  of  Trent  took  the  most  prudent  action 
which  the  exigency  permitted.  It  did  not  affirm  the  doc- 
trine, but  it  anathematized  those  who  denied  it :  "  If  any 
one  shall  say,  that,  in  ministers,  whilst  they  effect  and 
confer  the  sacraments,  there  is  not  required  the  inten- 
tion at  least  of  doing  what  the  Church  does,  let  him  be 
anathema."  ^ 

The  difficulties  attending  the  study  of  the  ancient  litur- 
gies are  so  great  as  to  seem  almost  insuperable.  To  secure 
accurate  texts  is  the  first  step  as  well  as  of  highest  impor- 
tance. But  in  order  to  their  comparative  study  after 
the  texts  have  been  obtained,  qualifications  are  called  for 
in  the  student  which  are  rarely  found  in  combination. 
Those  who  are  otherwise  fitted  for  the  task  lack  interest  in 
its  pursuit,  while  those  who  cultivate  an  interest  in  litur- 
giology  are  too  often  wanting  in  the  severe  training,  the 
ample  knowledge,  the  wide  sympathy,  which  the  subject 
demands.  None  the  less  is  the  subject  an  important  one. 
In  the  search  for  truth,  the  inquiry  into  the  meaning  of 
creeds  and  doctrines  is  but  part  of  the  process  to  which 
we  are  called  if  we  would  do  justice  to  the  contents  of  the 
Christian  soul  in  the  historical  development  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  But  even  on  the  surface  of  their  investigation, 
the  ancient  liturgies  have  much  to  offer.  All  alike,  those 
in  use  and  those  neglected  and  forgotten,  contain  the 
essence  of  Christian  piety,  —  the  heart  of  man  going  forth 
toward  God,  with  the  consciousness  of  a  divine  response  ; 
the  devotion  to  Jesus  as  the  revelation  of  God  in  human 
form;  the  sense  of  sin,  the  need  of  redemption  from  its 

^  Condi.  Trident,  Sess.  vii.,  c.  11 :  "  Si  quis  dixerit,  in  ministris,  dum 
sacramenta  conficiiint  et  conferunt,  non  requiri  intentionem  saltern  faci- 
endi  quod  facit  ecclesia,  anathema  sit." 


THE  lord's  supper  561 

misery  and  guilt,  the  assurance  of  pardon,  the  identifica- 
tion of  the  sinner  with  the  sacrifice  on  Calvary  as  in  some 
unutterable  way  the  sinner's  hope  and  confidence  ;  the 
desire  for  righteousness  of  character ;  the  weakness  plead- 
ing for  divine  protection  in  the  ordering  of  the  world ; 
the  recognition  of  a  brotherhood  of  human  souls  within 
the  church ;  the  need  of  Christian  sympathy,  of  charity 
for  the  sick,  the  poor,  and  the  unfortunate ;  the  disclosure 
of  heaven  to  this  lower  world  and  its  close  organic  relation 
through  faith  in  Christ  with  the  life  that  now  is,  the  sure 
conviction  of  immortality  and  of  future  blessedness ;  such 
are  the  positive  elements  finding  expression  in  the  ancient 
worship  of  the  church,  never  wholly  obscured  or  made 
inoperative  by  ritual  congestion.  In  this  worship  there  is 
a  bond  of  connection,  making  the  Christian  world  feel  its 
kinship  with  the  past,  as  it  can  be  felt  in  no  other  way, 
as  though  we  also  were  still  sustained  and  invigorated  by 
the  prayers  of  the  ages,  so  that  when  faith  grows  weak, 
there  may  be  here  a  refreshment,  the  sense  of  oneness  with 
the  children  of  God  in  every  generation. 

The  spiritual  imagination  which  produced  the  ancient 
liturgies  lost  its  creative  power  after  the  fifteenth  century, 
since  when  there  has  been  no  further  liturgical  develop- 
ment. Just  as  work  suddenly  stopped  on  the  great  cathe- 
drals, leaving  them  unfinished,  as  if  the  workmen  had 
been  called  away  to  some  other  task,  so  at  the  same  time 
the  liturgies  ceased  to  grow,  becoming  monuments  of  a 
past  rather  than  teachers  of  a  living  age.  They  were 
rejected  by  the  Protestant  world,  as  incompatible  with  its 
spirit.  So  deep  was  the  protest,  so  complete  the  condem- 
nation, that  they  no  longer  possessed  sufficient  interest  to 
become  even  objects  of  curious  research.  It  is  only  within 
recent  years  that  the  attention  of  Protestant  scholarship 
has  been  turned  to  them. 

The  causes  for  this  neglect  lie  in  their  inadequacy  to  the 
hiofher  needs  of  the  modern  world.  The  new  agfe  ushered 
in  at  the  Reformation  demanded  an  expression  in  worship 
stimulating  to  the  intellectual  and  moral  nature,  inspiring 
man  with  courage  for  fresh  conquests,  for  reclaiming  the 
2  o 


562  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

whole  world  in  the  name  of  God.  The  Greek  liturgies, 
were  they  to  be  reintroduced,  might  act  on  the  modern 
world  as  an  anaesthetic,  checking  the  progress  of  humanity ; 
for  they  have  no  word  for  the  intellect  seeking  to  under- 
stand God  or  interpret  His  ways  with  man.  They  repre- 
sent Deity  as  indwelling  in  nature,  but  that  earlier  view  of 
the  Greek  Fathers,  which  dwelt  upon  the  divine  imma- 
nence in  the  reason,  they  abandoned  after  the  condemna- 
tion of  Origen  had  secured  the  banishment  of  free  inquiry 
in  theology.  Of  the  three  reverences  enjoined  by  Goethe, 
they  acknowledge  two,  —  the  reverence  for  what  is  above, 
and  for  what  is  beneath,  but  they  lack  the  reverence  for 
what  is  within.  Hence  they  do  not  appeal  to  reason,  bent 
upon  the  endless  search  for  truth.  They  make  an  ethical 
appeal  indeed,  but  subordinate  it  to  other  issues  ;  hence  they 
do  not  rouse  but  rather  soothe  the  conscience.  They  point 
to  another  world,  and  therein  lie  their  value  and  power; 
but  they  do  not  impel  men  to  demand  the  transformation  of 
this  lower  world  in  accordance  with  the  heavenly  pattern. 
But  nothing  which  the  Greek  liturgies  possess  as  in  a 
symbol  has  been  forfeited  by  their  disuse.  Hints  of  higher 
possibilities  which  they  conserved  have  now  ripened  into 
actualities.  Science  has  resumed  the  task  of  consecrating 
and  redeeming  the  world  of  outward  nature,  by  a  deeper 
reading  of  its  secrets,  —  those  thoughts  of  God  about  which 
Dionysius  dreamed  uneasily,  turning  over  in  his  mind  the 
significance  of  the  physical  symbol.  The  poet  Wordsworth 
has  illustrated  with  almost  divine  fulness  the  meaning  of 
nature,  and  interpreted  its  voice  for  man,  —  the  fulfilment 
of  the  conviction  of  Dionysius  and  others  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  the  bond  of  communion  between  man  and  the 
world  of  external  nature.  In  the  ages  when  the  liturgies 
were  growing,  the  higher  forms  of  art  had  disappeared. 
Above  all,  there  was  no  poetry,  the  highest  of  the  arts  and 
the  bearer  of  the  revelation  of  the  soul  to  itself.  In  com- 
parison with  Dante  or  with  Milton,  the  poetic  mood  of 
Dionysius  in  the  Hierarchies  seems  empty,  as  though  he 
failed  because  his  imagination  had  no  concrete  material  for 
the  construction  of  the  fabric  he  saw  as  in  a  glass  darkly. 


THE  lord's  supper  563 

There  are  other  deficiencies  in  Greek  ritual  for  whicli  a 
hint  must  suffice.  The  liturgies  were  the  outcome  of  a 
determined  struggle  to  regain  the  earlier  Greek  convic- 
tion of  the  beauty  and  the  goodness  of  the  natural  order, 
as  the  basis  of  religion  and  of  life.  Origen  had  been 
condemned  because  he  bore  witness  to  the  evil  existing;:  in 
the  visible  creation.  But  the  modern  scientific  mind,  bent 
on  reading  the  deepest  secrets  of  nature,  is  not  so  sure  as 
was  Dionysius  and  others  that  there  is  no  evil  in  nature, 
nor  will  it,  in  optimistic  fashion,  shut  itself  out  from  dark 
suggestions  that  nature  may  conserve  processes  that  are 
immoral,  or  that  it  lacks  the  seal  of  perfection  or  of  fin- 
ished work.  The  conviction  grows  that  nature  is  given 
to  man  as  so  much  material  whereon  to  expend  his  ener- 
gies, lifting  it  to  some  higher  ideal  conception.  The  evil 
in  man  may  have  its  reflex  in  nature,  as  though  the  crea- 
tion were  ordered  to  reflect  the  constant  struggle  for  the 
victory  over  evil,  whether  within  or  without  the  soul. 
The  growth  of  modern  art,  one  of  the  deepest  character- 
istics of  the  modern  age,  is  inspired  by  the  belief  tliat  the 
artist  is  endowed  with  a  measure  of  the  divine  insight 
and  creative  skill,  in  order  to  the  rej^resentation  of  things 
as  they  should  be,  and  not  as  they  are. 

If  the  Greek  ritual  is  inadequate,  so  also  is  the  Latin. 
The  Protestant  mind  has  finally  and  forever  rejected  the 
idea  that  the  priest,  whether  with  or  without  the  exercise 
of  his  intention,  can  "  make  the  body  of  Christ."  On  that 
point  the  history  of  worship  turned  in  the  age  of  the  Ref- 
ormation. The  Mediseval  presuppositions  regarding  the 
spiritual  life,  whence  proceeded  the  question  of  what  con- 
stitutes validity  in  sacraments,  are  now  so  remote  that 
they  seem  unintelligible,  as  belonging  to  some  foreign 
sphere  without  relation  to  the  life  of  the  spirit  fed  by  the 
bread  of  heaven.  The  superessential  bread  for  which  we 
pray  cannot  depend  upon  the  question  of  the  intention  of 
a  human  priesthood.  If  there  be  transubstantiation  of  the 
bread  and  wine,  it  is  wrought  by  the  faith  of  the  congre- 
gation, in  the  strength  imparted  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  taking 
of  the  things  of  Christ  and  showing  them  unto  us.     The 


564  CHRISTIAN   WORSHIP 

Greek  ritiical  comes  nearer  the  truth  at  this  point,  however 
liturgiologists  may  regard  it  as  an  incongruity,  when  the 
worship  of  the  gifts  of  God  as  good  anticipates  their  con- 
secration on  the  altar. 

It  is  possible  that  the  Protestant  world  now  stands  on 
the  eve  of  some  transition,  waiting  for  the  manifestation 
of  its  full  content  in  a  consummate  act  of  worship.  It  has 
been  said  that  worship  is  one  of  the  lost  arts  ;  but  if  so,  it 
is  not  to  be  found  by  compressing  the  spiritual  wealth 
secured  by  the  Protestant  Reformation  in  the  providence 
of  God  into  the  moulds  of  ages  inferior  to  our  own. 
Rather  must  we  go  forward,  taking  all  that  the  past  can 
offer  in  so  far  as  it  can  harmonize  with  a  greater  ideal,  but 
reconstructing  in  some  more  comprehensive  way  the  wor- 
ship and  the  conception  of  the  sacrifice  acceptable  to  God. 
In  this  waiting  moment  there  may  be  spasmodic  attempts 
to  escape  the  uncertainties  of  the  hour  by  restoring  ancient 
forms  not  without  their  charm  for  the  passing  moods  of 
the  soul.  As  in  architecture,  for  want  of  a  creative  ca- 
pacity there  has  been  a  return  to  the  styles  of  other  ages, 
so  in  ritual  a  similar  tendency  has  been  witnessed.  But 
Protestantism  has  a  future  yet  to  be  revealed,  as  it  has 
also  resources  f  whose  significance  it  is  hardly  yet  aware. 
What  remains  to  be  done  is  to  gather  up  in  one  inclusive 
act  of  sacrifice  all  that  these  modern  ages  have  contributed 
to  the  knowledge  of  God,  to  consecrate  and  transfigure  in 
His  sisfht  all  that  the  heart  and  the  reason  hold  as  ines- 
timably  dear  and  precious.  From  this  sacrifice  cannot 
be  withheld  any  contribution  made  by  the  human  mind 
toward  the  solution  of  the  mystery  of  existence.  The 
sacrifice  will  include  every  department  of  human  interest 
and  inquiry,  —  music,  art,  and  poetry,  as  well  as  science, 
philosophy,  and  theology.  It  will  include  the  life  of  the 
whole  church  in  every  age.  It  will  be  a  Christian  sacrifice, 
for  Christ  Himself  will  be  the  supreme  offering  of  human- 
ity to  God,  —  He  in  whom  are  hid  all  the  treasures  of 
wisdom  and  knowledge,  in  whom  dwelt  all  the  fulness  of 
the  Godhead  bodily. 

The    early   Christian   church   had  glimpses    of   such   a 


THE  lord's  supper  565 

sacrifice :  it  was  to  be  a  bloodless  sacrifice,  a  reasonable 
offering:  the  presentation  of  the  mind  to  God  with  all 
that  it  discerns  of  the  mind  of  God,  the  true,  the  beau- 
tiful, and  the  good.  "  The  noblest  sacrifice  to  God,"  said 
Athenagoras,  in  his  Apologij^  "  is  for  us  to  Icnow  Him  who 
is  the  creator  of  the  world  and  of  man."  "What  then 
does  God  require,"  said  another  Christian  writer  of  the 
same  period,  "  but  the  worship  of  the  mind  which  is  pure 
and  holy."  This  worship  of  the  mind,  wanting  in  ancient 
ritual,  has  been  enjoined  by  Christ  Himself,  as  when  He 
urged  the  love  of  God  with  all  the  heart  and  soul  and 
mind.  In  the  light  of  this  injunction,  that  the  worship 
of  the  mind  is  essential  as  is  the  worship  of  the  heart, 
is  seen  more  plainly  the  meaning  of  those  other  words, 
which  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  :  "  God  is  a  spirit ;  and 
they  who  worship  him,  must  worship  him  in  spirit  and 
in  truth." 


INDEX 


Abelard,  on  the  motive,  as  compared 
with  the  outward  act,  413. 

Agape,  the,  517  sq. ;  iu  the  description 
of  St.  Paul,  518 ;  in  the  Didache,  519 ; 
in  the  Ignatian  Epistles,  ib. ;  its  de- 
cline and  suppression,  523,  524. 

Ambrose,  on  Baptism,  405. 

Ananias  of  Shirak,  on  the  Epiphany, 
471. 

Ancyra,  Council  of,  its  canon  prohibit- 
ing ordination  by  presbyters  and 
chorepiscopi,  119. 

Anglican  ordinal,  on  the  threefold 
ministry,  10. 

Anrich,  on  the  influence  of  the  Greek 
Mysteries,  442. 

Anselm,  as  illustrating  the  Monastic 
attitude  in  the  Investiture  Contro- 
versy, 221 ;  influence  of  his  Cur  Deus 
Homo,  281 ;  on  the  miracle,  336;  his 
doctrine  of  atonement,  3G5. 

Antony,  Life  of,  311 ;  his  letter  to 
Constantine,  312. 

Apostles,  their  functions  spiritual  not 
administrative,  25,  30;  their  restric- 
tion to  the  Twelve,  30 ;  larger  con- 
ception of  their  ofHce,  31  sq. ;  their 
work  in  planting  churches,  33  sq. ; 
the  picture  of,  in  the  Didache,  57  sq. ; 
disappearance  of  the  office,  98 ;  writ- 
ings falsely  attributed  to,  104. 

Apostles'  Creed,  in  its  original  form, 
282;  its  historical  interpretation, 
283;  its  later  additions,  291. 

Apostolate,  the,  how  regarded  in  the 
time  of  Tertullian,  98;  as  limited  to 
the  Twelve  by  Tertullian,  ih. 

Apostolic  succession,  4;  Irenreus' the- 
ory of,  94;  Tertullian's  theory  of, 
96;  as  formulated  by  Cyprian,  127; 
differing  estimates  of,  in  the  Greek 
and  Latin  churches,  182;  in  what 
sense  held  by  the  Reformers,  274. 

Apostolical  Constitutions,  the  Liturgy 
in  the  eighth  book  of,  531  sq. 

Aquinas,  on  the  relation  between  the 


episcopate  and  the  papacy,  222 ;  on 
the  sin  of  heresy,  224;  on  ordina- 
tion, 249;  on  the  miracle,  336;  on 
indulgences,  422. 

Arianism  in  the  Roman  Empire,  306 
sq. ;  among  the  barbarians,  313  sq. 

Aristotelianism,  supplants  Platonism, 
360. 

Arius,  his  conception  of  Deity,  his 
tenets  as  given  in  his  Thalia,  308. 

Athanasian  Creed,  318  sq.,  323,  324, 
459. 

Athanasius,  his  book,  De  Incarna- 
tione,  281 ;  his  persecution  by  Roman 
emperors,  306;  the  essence  of  his 
teaching,  308 ;  his  relation  to  monas- 
ticism,  311 ;  on  the  Word  becoming 
flesh,  459. 

Athenagoras,  on  the  nature  of  true 
sacriflce,  450. 

Atonement,  the  doctrine  of,  in  the  age 
of  the  Reformation,  246,  352  sq. ;  in 
the  thought  of  Athanasius,  355;  as 
implying  redemption  from  the  power 
of  Satan,  357,  358;  influence  of,  felt, 
when  not  acknowledged,  389. 

Augustine,  on  the  teaching  of  the 
Donatists,  164;  on  the  universality 
of  the  Catholic  church,  191 ;  on  the 
miracle,  335  ;  his  influence  upon  the 
Latin  church,  351 ;  his  Confessions, 
ib.;  stimulates  individualism,  352; 
on  the  Trinity,  362;  on  predestina- 
tion, 363. 

Augustinianism,  in  comparison  with 
Calvinism,  370;  in  its  relation  to  the 
idea  of  God,  377. 

Bancroft,  defence  of  episcopacy  on 
the  ground  of  its  divine  right,  10. 

Baptism,  399  sq. ;  an  essential  prin- 
ciple of  Christianity,  400;  illus- 
trated by  Cyprian's  experience,  401 ; 
changes  in  method  of,  402;  as  ad- 
ministered by  laymen,  403;  in  the 
name  of  Jesus  only,  403  sq. ;  anony- 


5G7 


568 


INDEX 


mous  treatise  ou  the  repetition  of, 
404,  40.5 ;  as  accompanied  by  the 
catechumenate,  406 ;  transition  from 
adult  to  infant,  407  sq. ;  infant,  as 
overcoming  infanticide,  408. 

Basil,  bishop  of  Caesarea,  his  influence 
on  Eastern  monasticism,  144. 

Baur,  theory  of  the  episcopate,  16. 

Becon,  Catechism  on  bishops,  9. 

Bede,  the  Venerable,  on  substitution 
in  punishment,  414. 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux,  his  devotion 
to  poverty,  165 ;  on  the  difference 
between  the  monastic  and  the  popu- 
lar devotion,  215. 

Bigg,  C,  on  pagan  superstitions,  442; 
on  the  Lord's  Supper  at  the  end  of 
the  second  century,  522. 

Bishops,  see  Episcopate  ;  controversy 
regarding,  in  the  Anglican  church, 
8  sq. ;  their  close  connection  with 
the  deacons,  25,  26,  43,  50,  51, 
108  sq. ;  plurality  of,  25,  43,  60; 
growth  of  their  importance,  51 ; 
their  mode  of  appointment,  52 ;  as 
drawn  in  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas, 
55;  their  function,  59;  exalted  by 
Ignatius,  62-64 ;  alone  to  celebrate 
sacraments,  63 ;  as  the  successors  of 
Christ,  63,  64,  84,  87,  115;  as  the 
successors  of  the  Apostles,  87 ;  as  the 
centres  of  unity,  66,  70,  117 ;  at 
first  pastors  of  the  local  churches, 
70,  121  sq. ;  not  synonymous  with 
presbyters, 79 sq.,  139 sq.;  associated 
with  deacons,  80;  their  connection 
with  the  Lord's  Supper,  81  sq. ;  as 
financial  administrators,  ib.;  in  the 
place  of  Apostles,  88 ;  as  voucliers  for 
the  documents,  90,  97 ;  as  alone  en- 
dowed with  the  Spirit,  103,  104,  129; 
as  heads  of  dioceses,  107  sq. ;  their 
mode  of  appointment.  111  sq. ; 
method  of  making,  given  in  detail 
by  Cyprian,  115  sq. ;  appointment 
of,  by  bishops  alone,  117,  128  sq. ; 
equal  authority  of,  123 ;  persecution 
of,  by  the  state,  131 ;  as  mediators 
between  the  church  and  the  world, 
133  sq. ;  relation  of,  to  the  monas- 
teries, 144  sq. ;  opposition  of,  to 
celibacy,  162;  exi^ansion  of  their 
dioceses,  204. 

Boniface,  the  Apostle  of  Germany, 
151,  162;  influence  of,  in  reorganiz- 
ing the  church  iu  Western  Europe, 


208;   his  oath  of  allegiance  to  the 

pope,  209. 
Book  of  Common  Prayer,  426. 
Bornemann,  definition  of  the  miracle, 

336. 
Breviary,  the  book  of  the  monastery, 

178,  516. 
Brothers  of  the  Common  Life,  239. 
Buddhism,  its  rejection  of  the  miracle, 

341. 
Burial,  custom  of,  487. 
Bushnell,  on  the  Vicarious  Sacrifice, 

373. 

Caesarea,  the  creed  of  the  church  in, 

286. 

Calvin,  246,  249;  on  the  government 
of  the  church,  271;  on  the  doctrine 
of  the  Trinity,  329. 

Calvinism,  as  the  antagonist  of  abso- 
lutism, 370. 

Campbell,  J.  McLeod,  on  the  atone- 
ment, 371. 

Canon  Law,  the,  Jerome's  statement 
on  episcopacy,  cited  from,  7,  8. 

Canon  of  the  Mass,  a  popular  service, 
178. 

Canon  of  the  New  Testament,  89,  93. 

Canons  of  Hippolytus,  their  form  for 
making  bishops  and  presbyters,  120. 

Catechumenate,  importance  of  as  re- 
lated to  baptism,  405;  as  yielding 
to  the  penitential  system,  409. 

Catholic,  first  use  of  the  term,  102; 
claimed  by  the  West,  148. 

Catholicism,  as  defined  in  standards 
of  the  English  church,  273,  and  in 
other  Protestant  churches,  ih. ; 
claimed  by  the  Reformers,  273. 

Catholicity,  popular  use  of  the  term, 
1 ;  Protestant  claim  to,  3  sq. ;  in 
some  of  its  aspects  a  Latin  creation, 
182  ;  as  defined  by  the  Roman  church, 
235 ;  its  authoritative  historical  defi- 
nition, 327. 

Celibacy,  in  the  Eastern  church,  161 ; 
its  enforcement  in  the  West  by  mo- 
nastic influence,  162  sq. 

Ceremonialism,  principle  of,  539. 

Chalcedon,  Council  of,  action  on  the 
Roman  claim,  193;  definition  of  the 
two  natures,  376;  its  decision  re- 
versed by  dialectic,  473. 

Charlemagne,  as  Roman  Emperor,  198 ; 
his  view  of  the  relation  between 
church  and  state,  210. 


INDEX 


569 


Cherbuliez,  on  the  emancipation  of 
man  from  nature,  3o9. 

Chilperic,  on  the  wealth  of  the  bishops, 
205. 

Chorepiscopi,  the,  supi^ression  of,  108, 
130. 

Christ,  as  the  Son  coequal  with  the 
Father,  308  ;  the  person  of,  382  sq. ; 
as  the  teacher,  385,  386. 

Christian  ministry,  the,  historical  sur- 
vey of,  5  sq. ;  classification  of  New 
Testament  writings  in  their  relation 
to  its  origin,  21,  22;  as  presented  in 
the  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  23  sq. 

Christian  year,  the,  466  sq. 

Christianity,  extension  of,  2. 

Christmas,  date  of  its  origin,  470 ;  why 
it  came  so  late,  471. 

Chrysostom,  on  Acts  vi.,  26. 

Church,  R.  W.,  on  the  influence  of 
Christianity  in  building  up  Greek 
nationality,  184 ;  on  the  place  of  the 
episcopate  in  history,  228. 

Clement  of  Alexandria,  on  the  grades 
of  the  ministry,  115;  on  Egyptian 
worship,  451 ;  on  the  Lord's  Supper, 
522;  on  the  nature  of  sacrifice, 
530. 

Clement  of  Rome,  46-54 ;  appealed  to 
by  Corinth,  47 ;  enjoins  obedience, 
47 ;  compares  clergy  to  Old  Testa- 
ment priests,  48  sq. ;  on  transmission 
of  authority,  50,  51 ;  criticism  of  his 
theory,  52  sq. ;  compared  with  Igna- 
tius, 63  n.  1,  67n.  1. 

Clementine  writings,  on  James,  75  n.  3. 

Clergy,  separation  of,  from  laity, 
124  sq. ;  identified  with  Jewish 
priesthood,  48,  124  sq. 

Clovis,  relation  of,  to  the  episcopate, 
204. 

Clugny,  161  sq. 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  on  the  use  of  '  Cath- 
olic,' 274  ;  on  the  sacraments,  400. 

Confessional,  the,  410,  412. 

Confirmation,  different  views  of,  in 
Greek  and  Latin  churches,  404. 

Constance,  Council  of,  its  relation  to 
nationality,  228  sq. ;  as  reflecting 
opinion  in  regard  to  the  organization 
of  the  church,  2.36. 

Constantine  the  Great,  significance  of 
his  victory  for  Christian  worship, 
550. 

Constantinople,  influence  of  its  rise 
ujion  the   Greek   church,   183  sq. ; 


First  Council  of,  its  ax)proval  of  the 
creed  of  Cyril,  289. 

Conybeare,  F.  C,  on  Ananias  of 
Shirak,  471. 

Coronation,  difference  in  the  Latin 
rite  of,  compared  with  the  Greek 
rite,  554. 

Corpus  Juris  Canonici,  its  citation  of 
Jerome's  statement,  7  n.  1. 

Cranmer,  246. 

Creeds,  the  Catholic,  279  sq. ;  silence 
of  the,  392. 

Cremation,  as  compared  with  the  cus- 
tom of  burial,  487. 

Cultus  and  mysteries,  2,  438  sq. 

Cyprian,  on  appointment  of  deacons, 
26 ;  his  theory  of  the  transmission 
of  power,  109;  his  direction  for 
making  a  bishop,  116,  117 ;  his  the- 
ory of  ordination,  118 ;  his  doctrine 
of  apostolic  succession,  118 ;  his  con- 
ception of  the  episcopate  as  constitut- 
ing a  solidarity,  123;  his  resistance 
against  the  Roman  claim,  ib. ;  his 
assertion  of  sacerdotal  character  of 
the  ministry,  124  sq. ;  his  view  of 
the  Lord's  Supper  as  a  sacrifice, 
125 ;  his  attitude  toward  the  state, 
131 ;  his  strict  dealing  with  the 
lapsed,  136  ;  his  treatise  on  the  unity 
of  the  church,  186;  his  treatise  on 
almsgiving,  251 ;  his  religious  experi- 
ence at  baptism,  401 ;  his  conception 
of  sacrifice,  in  the  Lord's  Supper, 
530. 

Cyril  of  Alexandria,  on  the  person  of 
Christ,  377;  on  the  metamorphosis 
of  water,  483. 

Cyril  of  Jernsalem,  his  influence  on 
the  creed,  287  sq. ;  on  the  inward 
efficacy  of  external  acts,  481. 

Daille,  on  Ignatius,  14. 

Dante,  on  the  nature  of  punishment, 

418. 
Deacons,  see  Diaconate  ;  as  described 

in  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  55  sq. ;  in 

Dldache,  5,  8. 
Decius,  persecution  of  the  church  by, 

131. 
Denmark,  why    the    episcopate    was 

rejected  in,  258. 
Development,  as  applied  to  organiza- 
tion, 15. 
Diaconate,  its  origin  and  function,  25, 

26;  Chrysostom's  comment  on  the 


570 


INDEX 


received  view  of  its  appointment, 
26. 

Dictatns  Hildehrandini,  235,  328. 

Didache,  the  influence  of  its  discovery 
on  the  question  of  church  organiza- 
tion, 20;  word  'apostle'  in,  32;  its 
value  as  showing  the  transition  from 
the  Apostolic  age  to  the  age  of  Igna- 
tius, 57  sq. ;  date  of,  57  ;  conclusions 
from,  58-60;  cited  on  the  Lord's 
Supper,  518,  519. 

Diocletian  persecution,  132. 

Diouysius  the  Areopagite,  497  sq. ;  his 
time,  ib.;  his  personality,  496;  re- 
flects Neoplatonic  influence,  497, 
498;  on  the  heavenly  hierarchy, 
499;  on  the  ministry  of  angels, 
502  sq. ;  on  the  earthly  hierarchy, 
504  sq. ;  on  the  mysteries,  505 ;  his 
use  of  the  name  '  Jesus,'  506 ;  on  the 
nature  of  symbolism,  507 ;  on  the 
names  of  God,  509;  on  the  nature 
of  evil,  510;  influence  of,  in  the 
West,  513 ;  on  the  commemoration  of 
nature,  in  worship,  542 ;  on  the  order 
of  M'orship  in  the  Eucharist,  544. 

Discipline,  409  sq. ;  hidden  cause  of 
weakness  in,  420;  rejected  at  the 
Reformation,  425. 

'Divine  right,'  7,  10,  11,  13. 

Docetism,  the  typical  heresy  of  the 
early  church,  445 ;  its  relation  to 
the  Lord's  Supper,  525  sq. 

Doctrine  histories,  their  method,  394, 
395. 

Dollinger,  on  Luther,  429. 

Dominicans,  desertion  of  mendicancy 
by,  168;  as  the  agents  for  extermi- 
nating heresy,  223. 

Dorner,  A.,  on  the  deistic  tendency  in 
Augustine,  362. 

Dorner,  J.  A.,  on  the  teaching  of 
Hilary  of  Poitiers,  313;  on  the  dif- 
ferences between  Greek  and  Latin 
churches,  362. 

Egypt,  its  place  in  religious  history, 
453,  454. 

Eleusinian  Mystery,  467. 

Endless  punishment,  414. 

England,  its  retention  of  the  episco- 
pate, 2.57 ;  Church  of,  in  the  age  of 
the  Reformation,  265  sq. 

Epiphany,  festival  of,  468  sq. ;  its  in- 
terpretation, ib. ;  how  regarded  by 
Gregory  of  Nyssa,  469. 


Episcopacy,  controversy  regarding,  be- 
tween Anglicans  and  Puritans,  7  sq. ; 
change  of  attitude  in  defending,  in 
seventeenth  century,  13. 

Episcopate,  the,  theories  regarding 
the  origin  of,  67  sq.,  72  sq. ;  plural, 
43,  53,  60;  Ignatian,  61  sq. ;  mo- 
narchical, 66-68;  Ignatian,  a  local 
office,  70;  Ignatian,  compared  with 
that  of  James,  76;  theory  that  it 
arose  by  localization  of  the  Apostles, 
77  sq. ;  its  identification  with  the 
presbyterate,  79  sq. ;  Jerome's  the- 
ory of,  79 ;  the,  influence  upon  of  the 
formation  of  the  Canon  of  New  Testa- 
ment, 88  sq. ;  condition  of,  in  the  age 
of  Cyprian,  107  sq. ;  diocesan,  devel- 
opment of,  121  sq. ;  its  efficiency  as 
affected  by  monasticism,  in  the  East- 
ern church,  144,  214 ;  not  one  of  the 
creative  factors  of  the  Mediaeval 
church,  150 ;  its  struggle  with  the 
monastery,  160 ;  its  modification 
by  the  papacy,  177,  179:  as  the 
natural  ally  of  the  state,  180;  its 
situation  in  the  Merovingian  period, 
207 ;  its  distinctive  characteristics, 
as  compared  with  the  presbyterate, 
213  sq. ;  its  work  in  the  Middle  Ages, 
215 ;  in  its  relation  to  nationality, 
219;  in  the  Investiture  Controversy, 
220 ;  its  relation  to  the  papacy,  221 ; 
its  failure  as  an  agent  for  extirpating 
heresy,  223 ;  its  work  in  history,  226, 
228 ;  as  represented  in  the  Council  of 
Constance,  236 ;  its  retention  in  the 
Reformation,  253  sq. ;  its  associa- 
tion with  royalty,  at  the  Reforma- 
tion, 257  sq. 

Eucharist,  see  Lord's  Supper;  its 
early  connection  with  the  episco- 
pate, 65,  82  sq. ;  celebrated  by  the 
bishop  alone,  63 ;  opposed  to  Docet- 
ism, 65  ;  a  picture  of  the  last  supper, 
82,  115;  celebrated  by  i^resbyters, 
107  sq. 

Eusebius  of  Caesarea,  on  the  accession 
of  Constantine,  181 ;  on  James  the 
Lord's  brother,  74  n.  1,  75  n.  2. 

Evangelists,  their  relation  to  the  Apos- 
tolate,  40,  42. 

Fairbairn,  A.   F.,  on  the   defects   of 

Nicene  theology,  305. 
Forged  Decretals,  212. 
Francis  of  Assisi,  his  conception  of  his 


INDEX 


571 


order,  238,  239;  on  the  motive  of 
charity,  251. 

Franciscans,  the,  rise  of,  166 ;  conflicts 
among,  168 ;  their  type  of  organiza- 
tion, 237  sq. 

Frankfort,  Capitulary  of,  210. 

Freeman,  E.  A.,  on  the  relation  be- 
tween religion  and  nationality,  189. 

Froude,  J.  A.,  on  the  value  of  indi- 
vidualism, 157. 

Gelasius,  Pope,  influence  of,  on  the 
Roman  liturgy,  551. 

Germany,  its  relation  to  nationality, 
258. 

Gerson,  his  defence  of  the  presbyter- 
ate,  236. 

Gnosticism,  its  doctrine  of  the  world 
as  evil,  445. 

Gnostics,  the,  influence  of,  on  church 
organization,  88  sq. 

God,  change  in  thought  regarding, 
under  the  influence  of  Augustine, 
361  sq. ;  the  fatherhood  of,  371 ; 
change  in  thought  regarding,  in 
fourth  century,  461. 

Goethe,  on  the  three  reverences,  562. 

Great  Entrance,  the,  in  the  Greek 
church,  536,  537. 

Greek  church,  the,  as  differing  from 
the  Latin,  182. 

Gregory  the  Great,  147, 149 ;  his  action 
in  consecrating  Augustine,  208 ;  in- 
fluence of,  on  Roman  liturgy,  552. 

Gregory  II.,  attitude  of,  toward  Leo 
the  Eastern  emperor,  197 ;  his  rela- 
tions with  Boniface,  208. 

Gregory  VII.,  162  ;  sacramental  theory 
of,  163. 

Gregory  of  Nyssa,  on  the  deification 
of  man,  309;  on  the  meaning  of  the 
Epiphany,  4()9 ;  on  the  consecration 
of  matter,  483;  on  the  body  of 
Christ,  as  related  to  bread  and  wine, 
4S9:  on  ceremonial  worship,  539. 

Gregory  Thaumaturgus,  the  creed  of, 
285. 

Gregory  of  Tours,  his  conversations 
with  the  Arians,  315  sq. 

Hall,  on  episcopacy  by  divine  right, 
11,  12. 

Hardwick,  C,  on  the  Protestant  Ref- 
ormation, 278. 

Harnack,  on  the  early  relations  of 
bishop  and    presbyter,   19,  20;    on 


Apostles,  prophets,  and  teachers,  31 ; 
on  Irenseus'  doctrine  of  atonement, 
357 ;  on  the  significance  of  the 
reader  among  the  Minor  Orders, 
105 ;  on  Cyprianic  priesthood,  126 
n.  2 ;  on  Augustine's  view  of  the 
church,  359. 

Hatch,  E.,  on  the  organization  of  the 
church,  18;  on  the  laying  on  of 
hands.  111;  on  the  limitation  of 
episcopal  authority,  165 ;  on  the  ex- 
pansion of  the  bishop's  diocese,  204  ; 
on  the  Eleusinian  Mystery,  467. 

Hegesippus,  on  the  succession  of 
bishops  at  Rome,  92. 

Ilegoumeiioi,  use  of  the  term  in  Epis- 
tle to  the  Hebrews,  41 ;  in  Clement's 
Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  53. 

Henry  VIII. ,  suppression  of  the  mon- 
asteries by,  172. 

Herbert,  George,  on  the  relation  of 
the  divine  and  the  human,  381. 

Heresies,  relation  of,  to  nationality, 
190. 

Heresy,  as  endangering  the  social 
order,  410,  433. 

Hernias,  Shepherd  of,  the  ministry  as 
presented  in,  54  sq. 

Hermetic  Books,  on  the  decline  of 
Egyptian  religion,  452. 

Hesse,  the  organization  of  the  church 
in,  249. 

Hilary  of  Aries,  319. 

Hilary  of  Poitiers,  his  teaching  on  the 
incarnation,  312. 

Hildebrand,  his  enforcement  of  celi- 
bacy, 162;  by  means  of  Donatist 
principles,  163 ;  his  relation  to  na- 
tionality, 218;  his  conception  of 
catholicity,  2.35. 

Hippolytus,  Canons  of,  cited  on  the 
Agape,  521. 

Holy  Spirit,  the,  as  the  inspirer  of  the 
prophets,  28 ;  reformation  in  the 
name  of,  by  the  Montanists,  100  sq. ; 
as  the  special  endowment  of  the 
episcopate,  102;  the  invocation  of, 
at  the  consecration  of  the  reader, 
106;  His  antecedent  action  in  ordi- 
nation, 110  sq. ;  function  of,  in  or- 
dination, 247 ;  as  the  bond  between 
man  and  external  nature,  541 ;  invo- 
cation of,  in  the  Greek  liturgies, 
543  sq.  ;  wanting  in  Roman  liturgy, 
ib. 

Horooousion,  significance  of,  313,  314. 


572 


INDEX 


Hooker,  on  the  episcopate,  10. 
Humanity,  deification  of,  308  sq. 

Ignatian  Epistles,  how  regarded  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  14. 

Ignatius,  purpose  of,  to  exalt  the 
bishop,  62  sq. ;  his  references  to  the 
threefold  order  of  the  ministry,  62; 
his  estimate  of  tradition,  (57;  his 
doctrine  of  the  Eucharist,  G5 ;  his 
character  as  a  man,  in  its  relation 
to  his  purpose,  66;  disclaims  for 
himself  any  Apostolic  authority,  67 ; 
exalts  the  bishop  in  his  capacity  as 
a  prophet,  68 ;  silence  of,  regarding 
the  order  of  prophets,  68,  69;  com- 
parison of,  with  St.  Paul,  70;  his 
plea  for  unity,  71 ;  on  the  connec- 
tion of  the  bishop  with  the  Euchar- 
ist, 84;  on  the  Rule  of  Faith,  283; 
his  subordination  of  the  miracle  to 
a  theological  motive,  335 ;  on  the 
significance  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
526  sq. 

Incarnation,  controversy  regarding 
the,  376  sq.;  Cyril's  doctrine  of,  458, 
459. 

Individualism,  as  the  motive  of  the 
monastery,  156  sq. ;  finds  expression 
in  the  doctrine  of  predestination, 
352. 

Indulgences,  419. 

Institutions,  definition  of,  1. 

Intention,  the  doctrine  of,  557  sq. 

Investiture  Controversy,  219  sq. 

Irenseus,  his  letter  to  Florinus,  92;  on 
the  traditions  of  the  presbyters,  93 ; 
his  doctrine  of  Apostolic  succession, 
94. 

James  (St.),  the  Lord's  brother,  17,  33, 
74  sq.,  83 ;  in  pseudo-Clementine 
writings,  75 ;  in  Clement  of  Alex- 
andria, 74;  in  Eusebius,  75;  extent 
of  his  authority,  76. 

Jerome,  on  the  origin  of  the  episco- 
pate, 7,8;  on  the  names  '  bishop ' 
and  '  presbyter '  as  synonymous, 
10  sq.,  79  sq. ;  on  ordination  of 
bishops,  at  Alexandria,  114;  on  the 
purpose  of  monasticism,  138 ;  on  the 
equality  of  bishop  and  presbyter, 
139  sq.,  177 ;  influence  of  his  prin- 
ciple of  the  equality  between  bishop 
and  presbyter,  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation,    254,    267;    his    con- 


demnation of  the  errors  of  Origen, 
462. 

Jerusalem,  creed  of  the  church  in,  288. 

Jesuits,  the,  their  organization,  17U; 
at  the  Council  of  Trent,  560. 

Joachim,  on  the  principles  of  the 
Eternal  Gospel,  243. 

John  (St.),  his  relation  to  the  origin 
of  the  episcopate,  78. 

John  XXII.,  on  apostolic  poverty,  108. 

Judaism,  in  its  opposition  to  nature- 
worship,  464. 

Justification  by  faith,  as  operating, 
when  not  recognized,  389;  the  com- 
plaint against,  424. 

Justin  Martyr,  on  the  Eucharist,  81 ; 
on  sacrifice,  449;  on  the  Lord's 
Supper,  520;  on  the  Christian  sacri- 
fice, 529. 

Lactantius,  on  the  worship  of  God, 
451. 

Laurent,  on  the  relation  of  the  papacy 
to  nationality,  227. 

Laying  on  of  hands,  110,  111,  116, 117 ; 
in  Anglican  and  Roman  ordinals,  121. 

Lea,  H.  C,  on  the  doctrine  of  inten- 
tion, 558. 

Leo  the  Great,  on  the  significance  of 
Christmas,  472 ;  influence  of,  on  the 
Roman  liturgy,  551. 

Leo  the  Isauriau,  relation  of,  to  the 
schism  between  Greek  and  Latin 
churches,  198. 

Lessing,  on  the  worship  of  angels,  503. 

Lewis  the  Pious,  the  rebellion  against, 
211. 

Lightfoot,  Essay  07i  the  Christian 
Ministry,  18,  19;  on  the  terms 
'  bishop '  and  '  presbyter '  as  synony- 
mous, 19,  79;  on  St.  Paul's  call  to 
the  Apostolate,  34;  on  the  ministry 
at  the  close  of  the  Apostolic  age,  45 ; 
on  the  claims  of  Ignatius  for  the 
episcopate,  64 ;  on  the  relation  of 
the  bishop  to  the  Apostle,  79;  on 
ordination  of  bishops  at  Alexandria, 
114 ;  on  the  sacerdotal  conception  of 
the  ministry,  126. 

Liturgy,  the,  use  of  the  word,  517;  in 
eighth  Book  of  Apostolical  Consti- 
tutions, 531  sq. ;  the  recognition  of 
nature  in,  541 ;  the  Greek,  in  its 
difference  from  the  Latin,  543;  in- 
debtedness of,  to  Dionysius,  545. 

Loofs,  on  the  teaching  of  Anselm,  366. 


INDEX 


573 


Lord's  Supper,  the,  515  sq. ;  as  related 
to  the  agape,  517  sq. ;  its  transfer- 
ence to  the  morning,  521 ;  not  at 
first  regarded  as  a  sacrifice,  528, 
529 ;  dramatization  of,  532. 

Lothaire  II.,  supported  by  the  bishops 
against  the  pope,  211. 

Loyola,  Ignatius,  170. 

Ludovicus,  Cardinal,  on  the  power  of 
the  episcopate,  236. 

Luther,  on  the  friars,  173;  influence 
of  his  doctrine  of  justification,  252; 
on  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  331 ; 
relation  of,  to  the  Mediaeval  disci- 
pline, 421  sq. ;  on  the  freedom  of  the 
Christian  man,  432. 

Lutheran  church,  as  expressing  the 
German  spirit,  429. 

Makower,  on  the  relation  of  church 
and  state  in  England,  263. 

Marriage,  relation  of  the  state  to,  172. 

Marsilius  of  Padua,  on  bishop  and 
presbyter,  8 ;  reference  of,  to 
Jerome's  theory,  8. 

Mary,  the  mother  of  Christ,  459;  the 
worship  of,  472,  487,  489,  494. 

Mason,  A.  J.,  on  Confirmation,  in  the 
Greek  church,  195. 

Mass,  the  Latin,  differences  between, 
and  the  Greek  office,  548  sq. ;  prag- 
matic rather  than  dramatic,  in  its 
construction,  553. 

Matter,  the  doctrine  of  the  evil  of, 
445  sq.  ;  its  consecration  by  the 
church,  477  sq. 

Maurice,  F.  D.,  on  the  value  of  nation- 
ality, 227;  on  the  atonement,  371. 

McGiffert,  on  St.  Peter  in  Rome,  77 
n.  1. 

Melanchthon,  the  representative  of  the 
teacher,  245 ;  on  the  episcopate,  253. 

Metropolitan,  the,  appearance  of,  129. 

Milton,  on  the  value  of  antiquity,  12. 

Ministry,  the  classification  of,  by  Puri- 
tans, 9. 

Minori,  the  bishop  of,  on  the  doctrine 
of  intention,  559. 

Minucius,  Felix,  on  the  nature  of  wor- 
ship, 450. 

Miracles,  historical  significance  of, 
333  sq. ;  unconscious  influence  of, 
389;  modern  difficulty  with,  390. 

Mohammedanism,  its  expulsion  from 
Western  Europe,  322  ;  no  recognition 
of  the  miracle  in,  341. 


Monasticism,  2,  137  sq. ;  as  a  return  to 
the  country,  138 ;  relation  of,  to  Mon- 
tauism,  141 ;  alliance  of,  with  the 
papacy, 149, 155, 160, 162, 167  ;  agency 
for  converting  Europe,  150  sq.  ;  in- 
tellectual importance  of,  152 ;  reli- 
gious attitude  of,  153 ;  contradictions 
of,  154  sq.,  174  sq. ;  motive  of,  indi- 
vidual, 156  sq. ;  vows  of,  158  sq. ;  in- 
dependent of  episcopal  authority, 
141,  160  sq. ;  in  its  origin  a  lay 
movement,  159 ;  extension  of  its  vow 
of  poverty,  165  sq. ;  decline  of,  167  ; 
its  loss  of  living  motive,  169;  sup- 
pression of,  169  sq. ;  its  vow  of  obe- 
dience, 170;  its  relation  to  life,  171; 
deeper  purpose  of,  175  ;  influence  of, 
on  organization,  177;  its  type  of 
worship,  178;  its  alliance  with  the 
papacy  in  exterminating  heresy,  224 ; 
in  its  relation  to  the  German  Refor- 
mation, 239,  240;  as  related  to  the 
changes  at  the  Reformation,  261  sq. ; 
its  influence  relatively  weak  in  Eng- 
land, 262  ;  its  treatment  by  England 
in  the  Reformation,  266;  its  lead- 
ing types  preserved  in  Protestant 
churches,  275  sq. 

Monophysitism,  as  seen  in  theories  of 
revelation,  380,  458;  acceptable  to 
the  Eastern  church,  472;  its  influ- 
ence on  the  cultus,  484. 

Montalembert,  on  the  English  episco- 
pate, 154. 

Montanism,  a  protest  in  behalf  of  the 
prophets,  100;  issue  with  Catholi- 
cism, 103;  suppression  of,  104;  its 
affinity  with  monasticism,  141. 

Morison,  J.  H.,  on  the  office  of  Christ, 
386. 

Mozley,  Canon,  on  resistance  to  mira- 
cles, not  implying  their  rejection, 
389. 

Mysteries,  the  Greek,  relation  of,  to 
Christian  worship,  442  sq. ;  the  Chris- 
tian, 505. 

Nationality,  relation  of,  to  organiza- 
tion, 5  sq. ;  influence  of,  upon  the 
church,  6;  its  predominance  in  the 
Greek  church,  181;  as  the  supreme 
motive  in  the  schism  between  the 
Greek  and  Latin  churches,  192;  as 
the  principle  of  organization  in  the 
Oriental  church,  200;  as  promoted 
by  the  bishops,  219. 


574 


INDEX 


Nature,  in  its  relation  to  the  mii'acle, 
339  sq. ;  tlie  appreciation  of,  in  the 
ancient  churcli,  493;  under  tlie  in- 
fluence of  the  Holy  Spirit,  541 ;  rec- 
ognition of,  in  the  Greek  liturgies, 
541  sq. 

Nature-worships,  revival  of,  in  the 
Roman  Empire,  446  sq. 

Neoplatonism,  454  sq. ;  its  relation  to 
Gnosticism,  455 ;  under  Egyptian  and 
Syrian  influence,  456;  its  failure  to 
become  a  religion,  457. 

Nestorianism,  375. 

Nestorius,  connection  between  heresy 
of,  and  national  aspirations,  190.    , 

Netherlands,  the,  rejection  of  the 
episcopate  in,  258. 

Newman,  on  the  Thirty-nine  Articles, 
in  Tract  XC,  473. 

New  Testament  documents,  classifica- 
tion of,  21  sq. 

Nicrea,  Council  of,  its  canon  for  the 
consecration  of  a  bishop,  205. 

Nicene  Creed,  its  original  form,  286 ; 
the  creed  substituted  for  it,  290; 
characteristics  of  this  substitute, 
293 ;  accepted  by  the  Roman  Empire, 
326. 

Obedience,  chief  Jesuit  vow,  170;  the 
means  of  freedom,  176. 

Oblation,  the  earlier  use  of  the  word, 
536;  its  technical  use  in  Clementine 
liturgy,  536,  537. 

Offerings,  time  and  manner  of,  fixed 
by  Christ,  48 ;  made  by  the  bishop, 
52. 

Old  Testament,  quoted  as  authority 
by  Clement,  48,  50;  cf .  59. 

Opus  operatum,  the  principle  of  the, 
423,  490. 

Ordinal,  Anglican,  preface  to,  10. 

Ordination,  Cyprian's  theory  of,  com- 
pared with  that  of  Clement,  109 ; 
instances  of,  in  New  Testament,  110 ; 
absence  of  allusion  to,  in  writings  of 
the  second  century,  111  sq. ;  no  light 
thrown  upon,  by  Clement  of  Rome, 
111;  or  by  Ignatius,  112;  in  the 
Didache,  112 ;  part  of  the  presbyter 
in,  12  sq. ;  rule  regarding,  in  Apos- 
tolic Ordinances,  112 ;  possible  pre- 
cedent for,  in  Clementine  writings, 
113;  method  of,  at  Alexandria,  114; 
regulation  of,  in  Cyprian,  116;  ob- 
jection of  monks  to,  139;  acceptance 


of,  by  Western  monks,  159;  change 

in  conception  of,  at  the  Reformation, 

247  sq. 
Organization  of  the  church,  theories 

regarding,  at  the  Reformation,  6  sq. ; 

in  the  present  day,  15  sq. ;  differed 

in  different  places,  72  sq.,  85  ;  at  the 

end  of  the  third  generation,  85  sq. 
Origen,  on  the  interpretation  of  the 

Apostles'  Creed,  284 ;  his  view  of  the 

miracle,  335. 
Origenistic  controversy,  the,  461,  462. 
Oxford  Movement,  the,  as  showing  a 

monastic  tendency,  271. 

Papacy,  the,  its  rise  and  early  oppor- 
tunity in  Western  Europe,  145  sq. ; 
origin  of,  a  compromise,  148;  allied 
to  monasticism,  149,  160,  162,  167 ; 
as  trustees  of  ecclesiastical  property, 
221 ;  causes  of  its  decline,  225. 

Papias,  consults  the  presbyters  when 
collecting  the  traditions,  91. 

Paris,  Council  of,  its  declaration  re- 
garding the  mode  of  ejiiscopal  elec- 
tions, 206. 

Pastor,  40  sq. 

Pastoral  Epistles,  date  and  authorship 
of,  22,  42-44 ;  importance  of  pres- 
byters in,  42;  bishop  and  deacon 
distinct  in,  43. 

Patriarchal  system,  216. 

Patriarchate,  not  developed  in  the 
West,  146  ;  contrasted  with  the 
papacy,  148. 

Paul  (St.),  passages  in  Epistles  of, 
bearing  on  the  origin  of  the  minis- 
try, 22  sq.,  39  sq.,  42  sq. ;  his  call  to 
the  Apostolate,  31  sq. ;  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  Apostolate,  33,  34;  on 
the  Lord's  Supper,  518. 

Paulinus,  on  the  birthday  of  Christ, 
474. 

Pelagian  ism,  377. 

Penitential  Books,  410. 

Peter  (St.),  his  residence  at  Rome, 
77. 

Pfleiderer,  on  the  absence  of  miracle 
in  Buddhism  and  Mohammedanism, 
341. 

Philip  the  Fair,  in  his  relation  with 
the  papacy,  224. 

Photius,  protest  of,  against  the  Roman 
church,  195. 

Pirminius,  of  Gaul,  his  expansion  of 
the  Roman  Creed,  291. 


INDEX 


575 


Pliitonisni,  its  influence  on  the  early 
church,  443  sq. ;  as  undermining  the 
principle  of  the  nature-religions, 
448. 

Pliny,  letter  of,  to  Trajan,  519. 

Plotinus,  on  the  beatific  vision,  455. 

Post- Apostolic  age,  46-60;  literature 
of,  46. 

Poverty,  attempt  to  impose  the  vow 
of,  upon  the  secular  clergy,  1(55  sq. ; 
papal  interpretation  of,  167. 

Prayer,  attitude  in,  467 ;  a  free  utter- 
ance, 534;  of  the  oblation,  536;  to 
the  Holy  Ghost,  in  the  liturgy  of 
the  Armenians,  543. 

Preaching  and  prophecy,  relation  of, 
27. 

Predestination,  larger  significance  of, 
42(),  427. 

Presbyterate,  the,  transformation  of 
its  office,  84,  87,  90,  94,  97,  108;  as 
represented  at  the  Council  of  Con- 
stance, 236 ;  its  restoration  to 
equality  vpith  the  episcopate  at  the 
Reformation,  250;  at  the  Reforma- 
tion, 256. 

Presbyters,  of  equal  authority  with 
bishops,  7,  8;  references  to,  in  ear- 
lier New  Testament  writings,  37  sq. ; 
in  the  second  generation,  38-44 ; 
their  first  appearance  in  the  Apos- 
tolic age,  37  sq. ;  as  described  in  the 
Pastoral  Epistles,  42 ;  in  the  Epistle 
of  Clement,  47 ;  ordination  of,  40 ; 
their  functions,  40,  41 ;  as  described 
in  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  55 ;  how  the 
true  is  to  be  known  from  the  false, 
55,  57  sq. ;  mentioned  in  Bidache, 
60;  as  successors  of  the  Apostles, 
64  sq. ;  as  bearers  of  the  tradition, 
65,  84;  the  name  used  interchangea- 
bly with  bishops,  79  sq. ;  their  rela- 
tion to  the  bishop  in  the  celebration 
of  the  Eucharist,  82  sq. ;  change  in 
the  functions  of,  84, 87,  97  ;  their  sub- 
ordination to  the  bishop,  88  sq.,  108 ; 
consecration  of  bishop  by,  at  Alex- 
andria, 114;  forbidden  to  ordain, 
119  sq. 

Private  judgment,  as  illustrated  by 
Luther,  430. 

Prophecy,  appeal  to,  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  church  by  Ignatius,  68; 
employed  by  the  popes,  in  the  transi- 
tions of  the  Middle  Ages,  198;  its 
return  in  the  age  before  the  Refor- 


mation, 242  sq. ;  as  supplemented 
by  the  work  of  the  teacher,  245  ;  in 
Jewish  history,  269. 

Prophets,  their  place  as  an  order  of 
the  ministry  in  Apostolic  age,  27  sq., 
57,  61,  67  sq.;  function  of,  28,  29; 
St.  Paul's  estimate  of,  29;  their 
appointment  of  St.  Paul  to  the 
Apostolate,  34 ;  account  of,  in  the 
Bidache,  58,  59;  as  they  ajjpear  in 
the  writings  of  Ignatius,  68,  69; 
causes  for  the  decline  of  the  order, 
98  sq. ;  their  relation  to  Montanism, 
100;  succeeded  by  the  Readers,  105; 
as  not  requiring  ordination,  110,  111. 

Protestantism,  relation  of,  to  catho- 
licity, 3;  not  the  antithesis  of 
Catholicism,  272;  its  analogy  with 
Medifeval  monastic  organizations, 
275  sq. 

Prudentius,  on  the  birthday  of  Christ, 
474. 

Purgatory,  deliverance  from,  416  sq. 

Puritans,  their  recognition  of  four 
classes  of  ministers,  9;  their  answer 
to  Hall,  12;  their  theory  of  'divine 
right,'  13. 

Pusey,  E.  B.,  his  opinion  of  the  bishops, 
271. 

Quicunque  Vult.  See  Athanasian 
Creed. 

Ratramnus,  treatise  of,  On  the  Body 
and  Blood  of  the  Lord,  439,  440. 

Reader,  the,  last  relic  of  the  prophetic 
order,  105,  106. 

Reformatio  Legum  Ecclesiasticuin, 
330. 

Reformation,  the,  influence  of,  on  or- 
ganization, 3,  6,  231  sq. ;  the  fulfil- 
ment of  nionasticism,  137  ;  cf .  164  sq., 
173. 

Reformed  Church,  in  its  difference  from 
Lutheran  and  Anglican  churches, 
427. 

Renan,  on  the  rise  of  the  Christian 
ministry,  17. 

Revelation,  threefold  form  of,  297  sq., 
387,  396,  397. 

Reville,  on  the  time  of  the  Pastoral 
Epistles,  22 ;  on  the  use  of  the  term 
'Evangelist,'  40;  on  the  sacerdotal 
tendency  in  Clement  of  Rome,  49. 

Ritscbl,  on  the  origin  of  the  episco- 
pate,  17 ;    on  the    doctrine  of   the 


576 


INDEX 


Trinity,  as  the  principle  of  Catholi- 
cism, 331. 

Roman  church,  its  early  influence,  95. 

Roman  Creed.     See  Apostles'  Creed. 

Roman  Empire,  influence  of,  upon 
Christianity,  1,  2. 

Rothe,  R.,  explanation  of  the  rise  of 
episcopacy,  16 ;  his  definition  of  the 
miracle,  391. 

Rule  of  Faith,  89,  93  sq. 

Sabbath,  the  Jewish,  466. 

Sacerdotalism,  in  Cyprian,  124  sq. ; 
in  Clement,  126;  in  the  Mediaeval 
church,  241. 

Sac7-amentum,  the  Latin  equivalent 
for  the  Greek  'mystery,'  505;  its 
significance  as  compared  with  Mus- 
terion,  555. 

Sacrifice,  see  Lord's  Supper ;  in  what 
sense  the  term  was  applied  to  the 
Lord's  Supper,  529. 

Sanday,  Professor  W.,  on  the  primitive 
bishop,  70. 

Schaff,  P.,  on  the  miracle,  338. 

Scotland,  its  rejection  of  the  episco- 
pate, 257. 

Scriptures,  the,  as  containing  a  divine 
and  human  element,  378  sq. 

Seeley,  on  the  modern  state,  261. 

Servetus,  his  denial  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  332. 

Seven,  the,  in  Acts  vi.,  26,  50  sq. 

Shepherd  of  Hernias,  the,  its  date,  54; 
its  enumeration  of  church  offices, 
54  sq. 

Sign  of  the  Cross,  the,  491. 

Simeon,  head  of  the  church  at  Jeru- 
salem, 75. 

Sinker,  article  of,  in  Diet.  Chris. 
Antiq.,  474. 

Socrates,  443. 

Sohm,  R.,  on  the  connection  of  the 
Eucharist  with  the  rise  of  the  bishop, 
82 ;  on  ordination  in  the  Lutheran 
church,  248. 

Stanley,  A.  P.,  on  the  pope's  posture 
at  the  Communion,  83 ;  on  analogies 
with  baptism,  402. 

Switzerland,  its  rejection  of  the  epis- 
copate, 258. 

Symeon  of  Thessalonica,  on  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  Greek  liturgy,  546. 

Taylor,  Jeremy,  on  the  origin  of  the 
threefold  ministry,  13. 


Teacher,  office  of  the,  28,  29,  40,  42, 
55,  57,  61,  120,  244,  245  ;  allusions  to, 
in  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  55;  reap- 
pearance of  the  office  at  the  Refor- 
mation, 245. 

Tertullian,  on  organization,  7 ;  his 
statement  of  Apostolic  succession, 
96  sq. ;  as  a  Montanist,  101  sq. ;  on 
the  priesthood  of  the  laity,  126 ;  on 
the  sacredness  of  matter,  447,  448; 
on  the  water  of  baptism,  479  sq. ;  on 
the  importance  of  the  flesh,  492 ;  on 
simplicity  of  worship,  531. 

Theodosius,  the  Emperor,  edict  of, 
promulgating  the  Nicene  Creed,  326, 
327. 

Transubstantiation,  decline  of  its  hold 
on  the  imagination,  241 ;  denial  of, 
439,  440. 

Trent,  Council  of,  its  decision  on  the 
doctrine  of  intention,  560. 

Trinity,  the  doctrine  of,  295  sq. ;  as 
a  summary  of  divine  revelation, 
297  sq. ;  the  proclamation  of,  as 
causing  no  schism,  302;  its  relation 
to  Greek  philosophy,  304;  why  it 
may  not  have  been  acceptable  to 
Roman  emperors,  306;  its  national 
significance,  314 ;  as  the  principle 
of  catholicity,  327 ;  accepted  as 
such  by  the  Reformers,  328  sq. ; 
in  the  Augsburg  Confession,  ih. ; 
as  set  forth  in  Cranmer's  Reforma- 
tio Legum  Ecclesiasticarum,  330; 
significance  of  its  denial  by  Serve- 
tus, 332. 

Trullan  Council,  the  Second,  con- 
demnation of  Roman  usages,  194. 

Tubingen  School,  the,  its  view  of  or- 
ganization as  development,  15,  18. 

Twelve,  the,  as  distinguished  from  the 
larger  Apostolate,  31  sq. ;  historical 
evidence  regarding  their  activity, 
33,  34  ;  disappearance  of,  37. 

Two  Natures,  the,  controversy  regard- 
ing, 375  sq. 

Unity  of  the  church,  principle  of,  as 
held  by  Cyprian,  186;  as  related  to 
nationality,  201. 

Verdun,  Treaty  of,  213. 

Vestments,  540. 

Vincentius  of  Lerins,  his  relation  to 
the  Augustinian  theology,  320;  as 
quoting  from  the  Athanasian  Creed, 


INDEX 


577 


ib. ;  his  opposition  to  Augustine's 
teaching,  364. 

Wesley,  appointment  of  bishops  by,  15. 

Westcott,  on  Platonic  idealism,  3U0. 

Whitgift,  ground  of  defence  for  epis- 
copacy, 9. 

Worship  of  saints,  underlying  princi- 
ple of,  485  sq. 


Wycliffe,  on  the  function  oi  the  pres- 
byter, 8 ;  reference  to  Jerome's  the- 
ory, ib. ;  prophecy  of,  concerning 
the  mendicant  monks,  173;  on  the 
property  of  the  church,  252;  as  the 
type  of  English  Reformer,  263, 
264. 

Zeller,  on  Neoplatonism,  454. 


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information,  richness  of  thought,  and  affluence  of  apt  and  luminous 
illustration.  Its  style  is  singularly  clear,  simple,  facile,  and  strong. 
Too  much  gratification  can  hardly  be  expressed  at  the  way  the  author 
lifts  the  whole  subject  of  ethics  up  out  of  the  slough  of  mere  natural- 
ism into  its  own  place,  where  it  is  seen  to  be  illumined  by  the  Chris- 
tian revelation  and  vision." — The  Advance. 

'  *  Far  from  narrowing  the  subject  by  the  apparent  limitation  of  the 
title.  Christian  Ethics,  Dr.  Smyth  has  broadened  it  as  one  broadens 
his  landscape  by  ascending  to  the  highest  possible  point  of  view. 
The  subjects  treated  cover  the  whole  field  of  moral  and  spiritual  re- 
lations, theoretical  and  practical,  natural  and  revealed,  individual 
and  social,  civil  and  ecclesiastical.  To  enthrone  the  personal  Christ 
as  the  true  content  of  the  ethical  ideal,  to  show  how  this  ideal  is  re- 
alized in  Christian  consciousness  and  how  applied  in  the  varied  de- 
partments of  practical  life— these  are  the  main  objects  of  the  book 
and  no  objects  could  be  loftier." — The  Congregationalist. 

"  It  is  a  noble  book.  So  far  as  I  know  Ethics  have  hitherto  been 
treated  exclusively  from  a  philosophical  point  of  view,  as  though 
there  were  no  prophet  of  the  Moral  Law  whose  interpretation  of  it 
we  accept  as  final  and  authoritative.  In  treating  Ethics  from  the 
Christian  point  of  view  Professor  Smyth  has  made  a  notable  con- 
tribution both  philosophically  and  practically.  His  well-balanced 
statement  of  the  Christian  sociological  principles,  his  moderate  and 
well-balanced  statement  of  the  relations  of  the  Church  to  sociolog- 
ical evolution,  and  his  exposition  of  the  duties  of  an  agnostic  toward 
the  God  who  is  unknoa-n  to  him,  and  yet  whose  existence  is  not 
denied,  strike  me  as  among  the  most  admirable  features  of  a  book 
admirable  throughout,  which  I  hope  may  find  its  way  into  our  Chris- 
tian schools  and  seminaries  as  a  text-book." 

— Extract  from  a  letter  of  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott. 


Apologetics ; 

Or,  Christianity  Defensively  Stated. 

By  ALEXANDER  BALMAIN    BRUCE,  D.D., 

Professor  of  Apologetics  and  New  Testament  Exegesis,  Free  Church  College, 
Qlasgow  ;  Author  of  "  The  Training  of  the  Twelve,"  "The  Humilia- 
tion of  Christ,"  "  The  Kingdom  of  God,"  etc. 


Crown  8vo,  528  pages,  $2.50  net. 


Professor  Bruce's  work  is  not  an  abstract  treatise  on  apologetics, 
but  an  apologetic  presentation  of  the  Christian  faith,  with  reference 
to  whatever  in  our  intellectual  environment  makes  faith  difficult  at 
the  present  time. 

It  addresses  itself  to  men  whose  sympathies  are  with  Christianity, 
and  discusses  the  topics  of  pressing  concern — the  burning  questions 
of  the  hour.  It  is  offered  as  an  aid  to  faith  rather  than  a  buttress  of 
received  belief  and  an  armory  of  weapons  for  the  orthodox  believer. 

"The  book  throughout  exhibits  the  methods  and  the  results  of 
conscientious,  independent,  expert  and  devout  Biblical  scholarship, 
and  it  is  of  permanent  value." — T/ig  Congregationalist. 

' '  The  practical  value  of  this  book  entitles  it  to  a  place  in  the 
first  rank." — TAe  Independent. 

"  A  patient  and  scholarly  presentation  of  Christianity  under 
aspects  best  fitted  to  commend  it  to  '  ingenuous  and  truth-loving 
minds.'  " —  The  N^atioi. 

"The  book  is  well-nigh  indispensable  to  those  who  propose  to 
keep  abreast  of  the  times." — Western  Christian  Advocate. 

"Professor  Bruce  does  not  consciously  evade  any  difficulty, 
and  he  constantly  aims  to  be  completely  fair-minded.  For  this 
reason  he  wins  from  the  start  the  strong  confidence  of  the  reader." — 

Advance. 

"  Its  admirable  spirit,  no  less  than  the  strength  of  its  arguments, 
will  go  far  to  remove  many  of  the  prejudices  or  doubts  of  those  who 
are  outside  of  Christianity,  but  who  are,  nevertheless,  not  infidels." — 
A'ew  York  Tribujte. 

"  In  a  word,  he  tells  precisely  what  all  intelligent  persons  wish  to 
know,  and  tells  it  in  a  clear,  fresh  and  convincing  manner.  Scarcely 
anyone  has  so  successfully  rendered  the  service  of  showing  what 
the  result  of  the  higher  criticism  is  for  the  proper  understanding  of 
the  history  and  religion  of  Israel." — Andover  Review. 

"  We  have  not  for  a  long  time  taken  a  book  in  hand  that  is  more 
stimulating  to  faith.  .  .  .  Without  commenting  further,  we  repeat 
that  this  volume  is  the  ablest,  most  scholarly,  most  advanced,  and 
sharpest  defence  of  Christianity  that  has  ever  been  written.  No 
theological  library  should  be  without  it." — Zions  Herald. 


History  of  Christian  Doctrine. 

BY 

GEORGE  P.  FISHER,  D.D., 

Titus  Street  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  Yale  University. 

Crown  8vo,  583  pages,  $2.50  net. 


"  He  gives  ample  proof  of  rare  scholarship.  Many  of  the  old  doc- 
trines are  restated  with  a  freshness,  lucidity  and  elegance  of  style 
which  make  it  a  very  readable  book." — TAe  New  York  Observer. 

"Intrinsically  this  volume  is  worthy  of  a  foremost  place  m  our 
modern  literature  .  .  .  We  have  no  work  on  the  subject  in  English 
equal  to  it,  for  variety  and  range,  clearness  of  statement,  judicious 
guidance,  and  catholicity  of  tone." — London  Noncon/ortnist  atid  Inde- 
pendent. 

"  It  is  only  just  to  say  that  Dr.  Fisher  has  produced  the  best  His- 
tory of  Doctrine  that  we  have  in  English." — The  New  York  Evangelist. 

"  It  is  to  me  quite  a  marvel  how  a  book  of  this  kind  (Fisher's 
•History  of  Christian  Doctrine')  can  be  written  so  accurately  to 
scale.  It  could  only  be  done  by  one  who  had  a  very  complete  com- 
mand of  all  the  periods."  — Prof.  William  Sanday,  Oxford. 

"  It  presents  so  many  new  and  fresh  points  and  is  so  thoroughly 
treated,  and  brings  into  view  contemporaneous  thought,  especially 
the  American,  that  it  is  a  pleasure  to  read  it,  and  will  be  an  equal 
pleasure  to  go  back  to  it  again  and  again." — Bishop  John  F.  Hurst. 

"  Throughout  there  is  manifest  wide  reading,  careful  prepara- 
tion, spirit  and  good  judgment." — Philadelphia  Presbyterian. 

"  The  language  and  style  are  alike  delightfully  fresh  and  easy 
.  .  .  A  book  which  will  be  found  both  stimulating  and  instructive 
to  the  student  of  theology." — The  Churchman. 

"  Professor  Fisher  has  trained  the  public  to  expect  the  excellen- 
cies of  scholarship,  candor,  judicial  equipoise  and  admirable  lucidity 
and  elegance  of  style  in  whatever  comes  from  his  pen.  But  in  the 
present  work  he  has  surpassed  himself." — Prof.  J.  H.  Thayer,  oJ 
Harvard  Divinity  School. 

"  It  meets  the  severest  standard;  there  is  fullness  of  knowledge, 
thorough  research,  keenly  analytic  thought,  and  rarest  enrichment 
for  a  positive,  profound  and  learned  critic.  There  is  interpretative 
and  revealing  sympathy.  It  is  of  the  class  of  works  that  mark  epochs 
in  their  several  departments." — The  Outlook. 

"  As  a  first  study  of  the  History  of  Doctrine,  Professor  Fisher's 
volume  has  the  merit  of  being  full,  accurate  and  interesting." 

— Prof.  Marcus  Dods. 

"  .  .  .  He  gathers  up,  reorganizes  and  presents  the  results  of 
investigation  in  a  style  rarely  full  of  literary  charm." 

—  The  Interior, 


Slje  littenational   Critical   Commrntarj 

on  tl)e  ^oig  Scriptttres  of  tl)e  (S)lb  anb 
ISiem  (?l£stament0. 


EDITORS'     PREFACE. 


There  are  now  before  the  public  many  Commentaries, 
written  by  British  and  American  divines,  of  a  popular  or 
homiletical  character.  T/ie  Cambridge  Bible  for  Schools, 
the  Handbooks  for  Bible  Classes  and  Private  Students,  The 
Speaker  s  Commentary,  The  Popular  Commentary  (Schaff), 
The  Expositor  s  Bible,  and  other  similar  series,  have  their 
special  place  and  importance.  But  they  do  not  enter  into 
the  field  of  Critical  Biblical  scholarship  occupied  by  such 
series  of  Commentaries  as  the  Kurzgefasstes  exegetisches 
Handbuch  zum  A.  T;  De  Wette's  Kurzgefasstes  exegetisches 
Handbuch  zum  N.  T;  Meyer's  Kritisch-exegetischer  Kom- 
mentar;  Keil  and  Delitzsch's  Biblischer  Comtnentar  iiber  das 
A.  T;  Lange's  Theologisch-homiletisches  Bibelwerk ;  Nowack's 
Handkotmnentar  zum  A.  T. ;  Holtzmann's  Handkommentar 
zum  N.  T.  Several  of  these  have  been  translated,  edited, 
and  in  some  cases  enlarged  and  adapted,  for  the  English- 
speaking  public  ;  others  are  in  process  of  translation.  But 
no  corresponding  series  by  British  or  American  divines 
has  hitherto  been  produced.  The  way  has  been  prepared 
by  special  Commentaries  by  Cheyne,  Ellicott,  Kalisch, 
Lightfoot,  Perowne,  Westcott,  and  others  ;  and  the  time  has 
come,  in  the  judgment  of  the  projectors  of  this  enterprise, 
when  it  is  practicable  to  combine  British  and  American 
scholars    in    the    production    of    a    critical,    comprehensive 


EDITORS     PREFACE 

Commentary  that  will  be  abreast  of  modern  biblical  scholar- 
ship, and  in  a  measure  lead  its  van. 

Messrs.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons  of  New  York,  and  Messrs. 
T.  &  T.  Clark  of  Edinburgh,  propose  to  publish  such  a 
series  of  Commentaries  on  the  Old  and  New  Testaments, 
under  the  editorship  of  Prof.  C.  A.  Briggs,  D.  D.,  in  America, 
and  of  Prof.  S.  R.  Driver,  D.D.,  for  the  Old  Testament,  and 
the  Rev.  Alfred  Plummer,  D.D.,  for  the  New  Testament, 
in  Great  Britain. 

The  Commentaries  will  be  international  and  inter-con- 
fessional, and  will  be  free  from  polemical  and  ecclesiastical 
bias.  They  will  be  based  upon  a  thorough  critical  study  of 
the  original  texts  of  the  Bible,  and  upon  critical  methods  of 
interpretation.  They  are  designed  chiefly  for  students  and 
clergymen,  and  will  be  written  in  a  compact  style.  Each 
book  will  be  preceded  by  an  Introduction,  stating  the  results 
of  criticism  upon  it,  and  discussing  impartially  the  questions 
still  remaining  open.  The  details  of  criticism  will  appear 
in  their  proper  place  in  the  body  of  the  Commentary.  Each 
section  of  the  Text  will  be  introduced  with  a  paraphrase, 
or  summary  of  contents.  Technical  details  of  textual  and 
philological  criticism  will,  as  a  rule,  be  kept  distinct  from 
matter  of  a  more  general  character ;  and  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment the  exegetical  notes  will  be  arranged,  as  far  as 
possible,  so  as  to  be  serviceable  to  students  not  acquainted 
with  Hebrew.  The  History  of  Interpretation  of  the  Books 
will  be  dealt  with,  when  necessary,  in  the  Introductions, 
with  critical  notices  of  the  most  important  literature  of 
the  subject.  Historical  and  Archaeological  questions,  as 
well  as  questions  of  Biblical  Theology,  are  included  in  the 
plan  of  the  Commentaries,  but  not  Practical  or  Homiletical 
Exegesis.     The  Volumes  will  constitute  a  uniform  series. 


THE   INTERNATIONAL   CRITICAL  COMMENTARY. 


The    following    eminent    Scholars    are    engaged    upon    the 
Volumes  named  below  : — 


Genesis. 

Exodus. 

Leviticus. 

Numbers. 

Deuteronomy. 

Joshua. 

Judges. 

Samuel. 
Kings. 

Chronicles. 

Ezra  and 

Nehemiah. 

Psalms. 

Proverbs. 

Job. 

Isaiah. 

Jeremiah. 

Daniel. 

Minor  Prophets. 


THE    OLD    TESTAMENT. 

The  Rev.  T.  K.  Cheyne,  D.D.,  Oriel  Professor  of  the 
Interpretation  of  Holy  Scripture,  University  of  Oxford. 

The  Rev.  A.  R.  S.  Kennedy,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew, 
University  of  Edinburgh. 

The  Rev.  H.  A.  White,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  New  College, 
Oxford. 

G.  Buchanan  Gray,  B.A. ,  Lecturer  in  Hebrew,  Mans- 
field College,  Oxford. 

The  Rev.  S.  R.  Driver,  D.D.,  Regius  Professor  of 
Hebrew,   Oxford.  [jVow  Ready. 

The  Rev.  George  Adam  Smith,  D.D.,  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  Free  Church  College,  Glasgow. 

The  Rev.  George  Moore,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew, 
Andover  Theological  Seminary,  Andover,  Mass. 

\_N oiv  Ready. 

The  Rev.  H.  P.  Smith,  D.D.,  late  Professor  of  Hebrew, 
Lane  Theological  Seminary,  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 

The  Rev.  Francis  Brown,  D. D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew 
and  Cognate  Languages,  Union  Theological  Seminary, 
New  York  City. 

The  Rev.  Edward  L.  Curtis,  D.D.,  Professor  of  He- 
brew, Yale  University,  New  Haven,  Conn. 

The  Rev.  L  W.  Batten,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew, 
P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia. 

The  Rev.  Charles  A.  Briggs,  D.D.,  Edward  Robinson 
Professor  of  Biblical  Theology,  Union  Theological 
Seminary,  New  York. 

The  Rev.  C.  H.  Toy,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Hebrew,  Har- 
vard University,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts. 

The  Rev.  S.  R.  Driver,  D.D.,  Regius  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  Oxford. 

The  Rev.  A.  B.  Davidson,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  Free  Church  College,  Edinburgh. 

The  Rev.  A.  F.  Kirkpatrick,  D.D.,  Regius  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  Cambridge,  England. 

The  Rev.  John  P.  Peters,  Ph.D.,  late  Professor  of 
Hebrew,  P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia,  now 
Rector  of  St.  Michael's  Church,   New  York  City. 

W.  R.  Harper,  Ph.D.,  President  of  the  University  of 
Chicago,  Illinois. 


THE  INTERNATIONAL  CRITICAL  COMMENTARY.  —  Continued. 


THE    NEW   TESTAMENT. 

St.   Mark.  The  Rev.  E.  P.  Gould,  D.D.,  Professor  of  New  Testa- 

ment Literature,  P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia. 

\_Now  Ready. 

St.  Luke.  The  Rev.  Alfred  Plummer,  D.D.,  Master  of  University 

College,  Durham.  \_Now  Ready. 

Harmony  of  The  Rev.  William  Sanday,  D.D.,  Lady  Margaret  Pro- 

the  Gospels.  fessor  of  Divinity,  Oxford,  and  the  Rev.  Willoughby 

C.  Allen,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 

Acts.  The  Rev.  Frederick  H.  Chase,  D.D.,  Fellow  of  Christ's 

College,  Cambridge. 

Romans.  The  Rev.  William  Sanday,  D.D.,  Lady  Margaret  Pro- 

fessor of  Divinity  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 
and  the  Rev.  A.  C.  Headlam,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  All  Souls' 
College,  Oxford.  \_Now  Ready. 

Corinthians.  The  Rev.  Arch.  Robertson,  D.D.,  Principal  of  King's 

College,  London. 

Galatians.  The  Rev.  Ernest  D.  Burton,  A.B.,  Professor  of  Nevir 

Testament  Literature,  University  of  Chicago, 

Ephesians  The  Rev.  T.  K.  Abbott,  B.D.,  D.  Lit.,  formerly  Professor 

and  Colossians.  of  Biblical  Greek,  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

Philippians  The  Rev.  Marvin  R.  Vincent,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Bibli- 

and  Philemon.  cal  Literature,  Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York 

City.  \_Now  Ready. 

Hebrews.  The  Rev.  T.  C.  Edwards,  D.D.,  Principal  of  the  Theo- 

logical College,  Bala;  late  Principal  of  University 
College  of  Wales,  Aberystwyth. 

St.  James.  The  Rev.  James  H.  Ropes,  A.B.,  Instructor  of  New  Tes- 

tament Criticism  in  Harvard  University. 

The  Pastoral  The  Rev.  Walter  Lock,  M.A.,  Dean  Ireland,  Professor 

Epistles.  of  Exegesis,  Oxford. 

Peter  and  Jude.       The  Rev.  Charles  Bigg,  D.D.,  Leamington,  England. 

Revelation.  The  Rev.  Robert  H.  Charles,  M.A.,  Trinity  College, 

Dublin,  and  Exeter  College,  Oxford. 


Other  engagements  will  he  announced  shortly. 


^Ttt  |tttjcrnati0ual  ©vitical  dTiommtutavij, 


"  A  decided  advance  on  all  other  commentaries^  —  The  Outlook. 


DEUTERONOMY. 

By  the   Rev.  S.   R.  DRIVER,  D.D., 

Regius  Professor  of  Hebrew,  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford. 


Crown  8vo.    Net,  $3.00. 


"  No  one  could  be  better  qualified  than  Professor  Driver  to  write  a  critical 
and  exegetical  commentary  on  Deuteronomy.  His  previous  works  are  author- 
ities in  all  the  departments  involved;  the  grammar  and  lexicon  of  the  Hebrew 
language,  the  lower  and  higher  criticism,  as  well  as  exegesis  and  Biblical  the- 
ology; .  .  .  the  interpretation  in  this  commentary  is  careful  and  sober  in  the 
main.  A  wealth  of  historical,  geographical,  and  philological  information  illus- 
trates and  elucidates  both  the  narrative  and  the  discourses.  Valuable,  though 
concise,  excursuses  are  often  given."  —  The  Congregationalist. 

"  It  is  a  pleasure  to  see  at  last  a  really  critical  Old  Testament  commentary 
in  English  upon  a  portion  of  the  Pentateuch,  and  especially  one  of  such  merit. 
This  I  find  superior  to  any  other  Commentary  in  any  language  upon  Deuter- 
onomy." —  Professor  E.  L.  Curtis,  of  Yale  University. 

"  This  volume  of  Professor  Driver's  is  marked  by  his  well-known  care  and 
accuracy,  and  it  will  be  a  great  boon  to  every  one  who  wishes  to  acquire  a 
thorough  knowledge,  either  of  the  Hebrew  language,  or  of  the  contents  of  the 
Book  of  Deuteronomy,  and  their  significance  for  the  development  of  Old  Tes- 
tament thought.  The  author  finds  scope  for  displaying  his  well-known  wide 
and  accurate  knowledge,  and  delicate  appreciation  of  the  genius  of  the 
Hebrew  language,  and  his  readers  are  supplied  with  many  carefully  con- 
structed lists  of  words  and  expressions.  He  is  at  his  best  in  the  detailed 
examination  of  the  text." — London  AthencEum. 

"  It  must  be  said  that  this  work  is  bound  to  take  rank  among  the  best  com- 
mentaries in  any  language  on  the  important  book  with  which  it  deals.  On 
every  page  there  is  abundant  evidence  of  a  scholarly  knowledge  of  the  litera- 
ture, and  of  the  most  painstaking  care  to  make  the  book  useful  to  thorough 
students." —  The  Lutheran  Churchman. 

"The  deep  and  difficult  questions  raised  by  Deuteronomy  are,  in  every  in- 
stance, considered  with  care,  insight,  and  critical  acumen.  The  student  who 
wishes  for  solid  information,  or  a  knowledge  of  method  and  temper  of  the 
new  criticism,  will  find  advantage  in  consulting  the  pages  of  Dr.  Driver."  — 
Zion's  Herald. 


glxiC  Juttrnati0uat  CH^ritltal  CC^ommetttavjj. 


"We  believe  this  series  to  be  of  epoch-making  importance T 

—  The  N.  Y.  Evangelist. 


JUDGES. 


By  Dr.  GEORGE  FOOT  MOORE, 

Professor  of  Hebrew  in  Andover  Theological  Seminary. 


Crown  8vo.    Net,  $3.00. 


"  The  typographical  execution  of  this  handsome  volume  is  worthy  of  the 
scholarly  character  of  the  contents,  and  higher  praise  could  not  be  given  it." 
—  Professor  C.  H.  Toy,  of  Harvard  University. 

"  This  work  represents  the  latest  results  of  '  Scientific  Biblical  Scholarship,' 
and  as  such  has  the  greatest  value  for  the  purely  critical  student,  especially  on 
the  side  of  textual  and  literary  criticism."  —  T/ie  Church  Standard. 

"  Professor  Moore  has  more  than  sustained  his  scholarly  reputation  in  this 
work,  which  gives  us  for  the  first  time  in  English  a  commentary  on  Judges  not 
excelled,  if  indeed  equalled,  in  any  language  of  the  world."  —  Professor 
L.  W.  Batten,  of  P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia. 

"  Although  a  critical  commentary,  this  work  has  its  practical  uses,  .\nd  by 
its  divisions,  headlines,  etc.,  it  is  admirably  adapted  to  the  wants  of  all 
thoughtful  students  of  the  Scriptures.  Indeed,  with  the  other  books  of  the 
series,  it  is  sure  to  find  its  way  into  the  hands  of  pastors  and  scholarly  lay- 
men."—  Portland  Zion's  Herald. 

"  Like  its  predecessors,  this  volume  will  be  warmly  welcomed  —  whilst  to 
those  whose  means  of  securing  up-to-date  information  on  the  subject  of  which 
it  treats  are  limited,  it  is  simply  invaluable. "  —  Edinburgh  Scotsman. 

"  The  work  is  done  in  an  atmosphere  of  scholarly  interest  and  indifference 
to  dogmatism  and  controversy,  which  is  at  least  refreshing.  ...  It  is  a  noble 
introduction  to  the  moral  forces,  ideas,  and  influences  that  controlled  the 
period  of  the  Judges,  and  a  model  of  what  a  historical  commentary,  with  a 
practical  end  in  view  should  be."  —  The  Independent. 

"  The  work  is  marked  by  a  clear  and  forcible  style,  by  scholarly  research,  by 
critical  acumen,  by  extensive  reading,  and  by  evident  familiarity  with  the 
Hebrew.  Many  of  the  comments  and  suggestions  are  valuable,  while  the 
index  at  the  close  is  serviceable  and  satisfactory."  —  Philadelphia  Presbyterian. 

"  This  volume  sustains  the  reputation  of  the  series  for  accurate  and  wide 
scholarship  given  in  clear  and  strong  English,  .  .  .  the  scholarly  reader  will 
find  delight  in  the  perusal  of  this  admirable  commentary."  —  Zion's  Herald. 


"ght  %nUvnntiomxX  Critical  CH^ommcutavyi^ 

"  IVe  deem  it  as  needful  for  the  studious  pastor  to  possess  himself 
of  these  volumes  as  to  obtain  the  best  dictionary  and  encyclopedia.'^ 

—  The  CONGREGATIONALIST. 


ST.  MARK. 


By  the  Rev.  E.  P.  GOULD,  D.D., 

Professor  of  New  Testament  Exegesis,  P.  E.  Divinity  School,  Philadelphia. 


Crown  8vo.    Net,  $2.50. 


"  In  point  of  scholarship,  of  accuracy,  of  originality,  this  last  addition  to  the 
series  is  worthy  of  its  predecessors,  while  for  terseness  and  keenness  of  exegesis, 
we  should  put  it  first  of  them  all."  —  The  Congregationalist. 

"The  whole  make-up  is  that  of  a  thoroughly  helpful,  instructive  critical 
study  of  the  Word,  surpassing  anything  of  the  kind  ever  attempted  in  the 
English  language,  and  to  students  and  clergymen  knowing  the  proper  use  of 
a  commentary  it  will  prove  an  invaluable  aid."  —  The  Lutheran  Quarterly. 

"  Professor  Gould  has  done  his  work  well  and  thoroughly.  .  .  .  The  com- 
mentary is  an  admirable  example  of  the  critical  method  at  its  best.  .  .  .  The 
Word  study  .  .  .  shows  not  only  familiarity  with  all  the  literature  of  the  sub- 
ject, but  patient,  faithful,  and  independent  investigation.  ...  It  will  rank 
among  the  best,  as  it  is  the  latest  commentary  on  this  basal  Gospel."  —  The 
Christian  Intelligencer. 

"  It  will  give  the  student  the  vigorously  expressed  thought  of  a  very  thought- 
ful scholar."  —  The  Church  Standard. 

"  Dr.  Gould's  commentary  on  Mark  is  a  large  success,  .  .  .  and  a  credit  to 
American  scholarship.  .  .  .  He  has  undoubtedly  given  us  a  commentary  on 
Mark  which  surpasses  all  others,  a  thing  we  have  reason  to  expect  will  be  true 
in  the  case  of  every  volume  of  the  series  to  which  it  belongs."  —  The  Biblical 
World. 

"The  volume  is  characterized  by  extensive  learning,  patient  attention  to 
details  and  a  fair  degree  of  caution."  —  Bibliotheca  Sacra. 

"The  exegetical  portion  of  the  book  is  simple  in  arrangement,  admirable 
in  form  and  condensed  in  statement.  .  .  .  Dr.  Gould  does  not  slavishly  follow 
any  authority,  but  expresses  his  own  opinions  in  language  both  concise  and 
clear."  —  The  Chicago  Standard. 

"  In  clear,  forcible  and  elegant  language  the  author  furnishes  the  results  of 
the  best  investigations  on  the  second  Gospel,  both  early  and  late.  He  treats 
these  various  subjects  with  the  hand  of  a  master."  —  Boston  Zion^s  Herald. 

"The  author  gives  abundant  evidence  of  thorough  acquaintance  with  the 
facts  and  history  in  the  case.  .  .  .  His  treatment  of  them  is  always  fresh  and 
scholarly,  and  oftentimes  helpful."  —  The  New  York  Observer. 


"  //  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  this  series  will  stand  first 
among  all  English  serial  commentaries  on  the  Bible T 

—  The  BiblicXl  World. 


ST.  LUKE. 

By  the  Rev.  ALFRED  PLUfinER,  D.D., 

Master  of  University  College,  Durham.     Formerly  Fellow  and  Senior  Tutor  of 
Trinity  College,  Oxford. 


Crown  8vo.    Net,  $3.00. 


In  the  author's  Critical  Introduction  to  the  Commentary  is  contained  a  full 
treatment  of  a  large  number  of  important  topics  connected  with  the  study  of 
the  Gospel,  among  which  are  the  following :  The  Author  of  the  Book  —  The 
Sources  of  the  Gospel  —  Object  and  Plan  of  the  Gospel  —  Characteristics, 
Style  and  Language — The  Integrity  of  the  Gospel  —  The  Text  —  Literary 
History. 

FROM   THE  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE. 

If  this  Commentary  has  any  special  features,  they  will  perhaps  be  found  in 
the  illustrations  from  Jewish  writings,  in  the  abundance  of  references  to  the 
Septuagint,  and  to  the  Acts  and  other  books  of  the  New  Testament,  in  the 
frequent  quotations  of  renderings  in  the  Latin  versions,  and  in  the  attention 
which  has  been  paid,  both  in  the  Introduction  and  throughout  the  Notes,  to 
the  marks  of  St.  Luke's  style. 

"  It  is  distinguished  throughout  by  learning,  sobriety  of  judgment,  and 
sound  exegesis.  It  is  a  weighty  contribution  to  the  interpretation  of  the 
Third  Gospel,  and  will  take  an  honorable  place  in  the  series  of  which  it  forms 
a  part."  —  Prof.  D.  D.  Salmond,  in  the  Critical  Revitiv. 

"  We  are  pleased  with  the  thoroughness  and  scientific  accuracy  of  the  inter- 
pretations. ...  It  seems  to  us  that  the  prevailing  characteristic  of  the  book 
is  common  sense,  fortified  by  learning  and  piety."  —  The  Herald  and  Presbyter, 

"An  important  work,  which  no  student  of  the  Word  of  God  can  safely 
neglect." —  The  Church  Standard. 

"The  author  has  both  the  scholar's  knowledge  and  the  scholar's  spirit 
necessary  for  the  preparation  of  such  a  commentary.  .  .  .  We  know  of 
nothing  on  the  Third  Gospel  which  more  thoroughly  meets  the  wants  of  the 
Biblical  scholar."  —  The  Outlook. 

"  The  author  is  not  only  a  profound  scholar,  but  a  chastened  and  reverent 
Christian,  who  undertakes  to  interpret  a  Gospel  of  Christ,  so  as  to  show 
Christ  in  his  grandeur  and  loveliness  of  character."  —  The  Southern  Church- 
man. 

"■  It  is  a  valuable  and  welcome  addition  to  our  somewhat  scanty  stock  of 
first-class  commentaries  on  the  Third  Gospel.  By  its  scholarly  thoroughness 
it  well  sustains  the  reputation  which  the  International  Series  has  already 
won."  —  Prof.  J.  H.  Thaver,  of  Harvard  University. 

This  volume  having  been  so  recently  published,  further  notices  are  not  yet 
available. 


*'  J*'or  the  student  this  new  commentary  promises  to  be  indispen- 
sable.''—  The  Methodist  Recorder. 


ROMANS. 


By  the  Rev.  WILLIAM  SANDAY,  D.D., 

Lady  Margaret  Professor  of  Divinity,  and  Canon  of  Christ  Church,  Oxford, 

AND   THE 

Rev.  A.  C.  HEADLAH,  M.A., 

Fellow  of  All  Souls'  College,  Oxford. 


Crown  8vo.    Net,  $3.00. 


"  From  my  knowledge  of  Dr.  Sanday,  and  from  a  brief  examination  of  the 
book,  I  am  led  to  believe  that  it  is  our  best  critical  handbook  to  the  Epistle. 
It  combines  great  learning  with  practical  and  suggestive  interpretation."  — 
Professor  George  B.  Stevens,  of  Yale  Universily. 

"  Professor  Sanday  is  excellent  in  scholarship,  and  of  unsurpassed  candor. 
The  introduction  and  detached  notes  are  highly  interesting  and  instructive. 
This  commentary  cannot  fail  to  render  the  most  valuable  assistance  to  all 
earnest  students.  The  volume  augurs  well  for  the  series  of  which  it  is  a  mem- 
ber."—  Professor  George  P.  Fisher,  of  Yak  University. 

"The  scholarship  and  spirit  of  Dr.  .Sanday  give  assurance  of  an  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  which  will  be  both  scholarly  and  spiritual." 
—  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott. 

"  The  work  of  the  authors  has  been  carefully  done,  and  will  prove  an 
acceptable  addition  to  the  literature  of  the  great  Epistle.  The  exegesis  is 
acute  and  learned  .  .  .  The  authors  show  much  familiarity  with  the  work 
of  their  predecessors,  and  write  with  calmness  and  lucidity."  —  New  York 
Observer. 

"  We  are  confident  that  this  commentary  will  find  a  place  in  every  thought- 
ful minister's  library.  One  may  not  be  able  to  agree  with  the  authors  at  some 
points,  —  and  this  is  true  of  all  commentaries,  —  but  they  have  given  us  a  work 
which  cannot  but  prove  valuable  to  the  critical  study  of  Paul's  masterly  epis- 
tle." —  Zioti's  Advocate. 

"  We  do  not  hesitate  to  commend  this  as  the  best  commentary  on  Romans 
yet  written  in  English.  It  will  do  much  to  popularize  this  admirable  and 
much  needed  series,  by  showing  that  it  is  possible  to  be  critical  and  scholarly 
and  at  the  same  time  devout  and  spiritual,  and  intelligible  to  plain  Bible 
readers."  —  T/ie  Church  Standard. 

"  A  commentary  with  a  very  distinct  character  and  purpose  of  its  own, 
which  brings  to  students  and  ministers  an  aid  which  they  cannot  obtain  else- 
where. .  .  .  There  is  probably  no  other  commentary  in  which  criticism  has 
been  employed  so  successfully  and  impartially  to  bring  out  the  author's 
thought."  —  N.  Y.  Independent. 

"We  have  nothing  but  heartiest  praise  for  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
commentary.  It  is  not  only  critical,  but  exegetical,  expository,  doctrinal, 
practical,  and  eminently  spiritual.  The  positive  conclusions  of  the  books  are 
very  numerous  and  are  stoutly,  gloriously  evangelical.  .  .  .  The  commentary 
does  not  fail  to  speak  with  the  utmost  reverence  of  the  whole  word  of  God." 
The  Congregationalist, 


Date  Due 

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